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Basic abilities, their impact on success and failure, and why none of it may matter.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there's probably a bit more material about the Investigators of this game than can be fit into one article, so the C: DMD series may end up being a four-parter (or more) as we move along here. Part of that is simply the number of Investigators that comes with the game. I wrote about 42 different FAITH agents in my series on The Others. There are 95 different investigators including all of the various KS extras and whatnot and that's not including either Asylum Eddie from CMON's Iron Maiden promotion or the incoming 5 Investigators included with Cthulhu: Dark Providence that has yet to make delivery or the incoming Investigators from the new stuff that Asmodee is now producing. It's, appropo, insane. So, while I am going to give some detailed assessments of the Investigators I've played (with some help from Thilo's excellent records sheet; Thilo is a regular participant on the BGG fora for the game), I can't possibly give an honest appraisal of all of them because I haven't played all of them and likely won't be able to for some time, there being only so many hours in our non-Yog Sothian day/week/month/eon. That being the case, I thought I'd take a look at some of the basics of the different roles that players could take on, including some of the high style points (Salvador Dali!) and cool stuff involved in being one of those tasked with resisting the Great Old Ones attempting to infest/conquer/devour our reality.
The main topic that emerges on most discussions of the Investigators is the prevalence of certain skills. There are six standard skills that each Investigator will have two of: Arcane Mastery, Brawling, Marksman, Stealth, Swiftness, and Toughness. The two considered most popular are Arcane Mastery and Toughness, followed by Marksman and Swiftness, and then Brawling and Stealth. The argument for AM is simple: in a game based on dice, having more chances for success is irrefutably a good thing. The three standard black dice that everyone can roll have 1 Elder Sign on them, along with three other successes (!), including one with a Madness tentacle, then a blank and just a Madness tentacle. The green dice that come with skills, weapons/items, and Sanity loss, have an Elder Sign, an Elder Sign with a success, 2 blanks and 2 more successes. So, right away, a character with Arcane Mastery has an increase of 33% in terms of success on one die. Before it was half the results that were positive. With AM, it's 2 of 3 on that die. Similarly, the green dice not only have that same increase, by counting the lone Elder Sign as a success, but also gain a double success result on the *! face. It takes just one level of advancement (through Sanity loss or Companions (from Episodes)) to make all of those Elder Signs count as successes. Over the course of the game, those increases are statistically enormous. Now, it does require the usual assessment of odds with the dice. If you don't roll stars, you get nothing for your ability. It also doesn't impact rolls against you in the form of your character's survivability or your ability to engage scenario elements that don't involve rolling dice. But there is a lot of dice rolling in C: DMD and being better at it will generally push you a long way. Similarly, Toughness means that you can take damage better than anyone without it, since you get the opportunity to roll dice in response to anything doing damage to you, be it a monster or environmental effects like fire or- with upgrades -any source, including GOO attacks in the endgame. In a game that's largely based around dice combat between players and creatures, being able to take the hits better will, like AM, take you a long way toward victory, since you can engage more risk than other players and often shrug off situations that would be fatal to those without your durability.
Likewise, in a game based on combat that usually involves miniatures being in the same room as each other. Marksman is often a key edge for the players, since monsters will almost always have to be standing next to you to hit (and damage) you, while Investigators with Marksman can safely pick things off from the next room and, for that matter, often clear space before their compatriots even have to move into those occupied spaces. Swiftness is about movement and, in most games like this just as in most wargames, movement is key. Getting there "fustest with the mostest" is never a bad thing and especially in many scenario instances where getting to places on opposite ends of the map before the GOO arrives is important, Swiftness is your best friend. Not only that, but Swiftness also comes to be about action efficiency, since one of the first upgrades to it is being able to take a free Run action every turn. So now you don't always need to spend one of your precious three actions to move somewhere. You can do it for free. In contrast, Stealth and Brawling fall a little bit behind.the others. Stealth allows you to move away from spaces that have monsters in them (otherwise, they follow you to wherever you go) but only 1 at the base level and the frequency of monsters appearing in groups is far greater than appearing singly. Also, it's plainly situational, since if there are no monsters present, the ability does nothing and it also doesn't help with combat or movement. Brawling at higher levels can be brilliant, since you'll be able to dish out damage to everything in the room, rather than the sngle target that everyone else is limited to. But it also means that you have to expose yourself to risk because it's only effective when you're standing in the same room with the monsters, unlike Marksman. There is, of course, a visceral satisfaction with diving into a room full of Ghouls and Nightgaunts and trashing them all in one action and that sensation can't be denied as part of the package of this game or any other (e.g. having fun is just as important as any fancy mechanism, if not more) but in terms of game efficiency, it's a step down, even in the later stages of a scenario. Whereas Agatha with Marksman could stand outside a room and plug Hastur twice with her two actions, Muñoz in the same position would have to take one action to move into the room (but not if he had level 2 Swiftness!) before getting one chance to swing. All that said, Brawling and Stealth can still have tremendous upsides in the rigbt circumstances and many other players value Steatlh much more highly than I do, so these comparisons are certainly impacted by playstyle, as well.
To that point, as with many games, you'd generally like to have a mix of abilities so that your chance to respond to different circumstances is higher and there are no basic skills that would normally be perceived as "useless." Just as with FAITH agents, the key is usually a unique ability and the basic stats of the character in question that tend to determine their value. Unlike that game, there essentially is no basic stat variation among DMD Investigators (with a couple exceptions.) Everyone starts with 4 wounds and 4 stress (Yes, there are five spaces for each, but since the marker starts on the fifth space, you can only spend 4 stress before you're maxed out (Fully Stressed) and only take 4 wounds before you die from taking the 5th one. Why did they design it like this? I have no idea.) The key to most of them is their unique ability, which have a wider level of variation than the FAITH agents, in addition to there being more of them. Now, admittedly, some of my insight is going to be colored by personal experience and some of it is going to be colored by Thilo's tracking sheet which does tend to mirror my own experience. For example, it seems pretty obvious to me that Rasputin is one of the best Investigators in the game, but his success rate is also affected by sample size and his basic abilities, one of which is among the best (Arcane Mastery) and the other which is one of the third placers (Brawling.) I think the former heavily outweighs the latter in terms of success rate (e.g. AM is simply that good) but it's all part of the overall combination.
Also, some of the success rates are likely beneficiaries of both their longevity in the game and, consequently, the number of times they've been played. Rasputin, of course, is one of those included with the base set. That means that he, like the rest of them in the main box, will have been played more times not only by those who got into the game at the beginning, but also those who spent on the base box and stopped with it or maybe only got one or two other things (I'd always recommend additional GOOs over everything else, just like with The Others.) You look at Thilo's records and it would seem obvious that the Investigators have gotten more powerful as we've gone along, given the increasing success rate with them. But the other side of that equation is the fact that new players to the game are more likely to fail, so if they're playing those first games with the base set's people, those success rates will be impacted accordingly, whereas more experienced players might be playing with those from the Unknowable Box and have a better set of results in those later games, maybe because those Investigators are better or maybe because they're better at the game or both.
Player count also impacts these statistics. As noted, having more Investigators with diverse base skills will definitely help moreso than having all Brawlers or all Stealthers, on average. On the other hand, maybe having a small party is better in certain scenarios, not least because you're drawing fewer Mythos cards and, as a consequence, will generally be seeing fewer monsters and if you have a couple combat machines with good combat-oriented uniques like, say, Agatha, who can take Stress to do additional wounds, you can keep the board clear more easily to do lots of Investigating (i.e. findng Discovery cards with Companions and items.) Per Thilo's records, the sweet spot seems to be 3 or 4 Investigators, which makes sense as the midpoint between the two conditions we've outlined. Our best (safest) results have typically come with 3 players, just as an anecdotal add-on. But, as with all other things, the GOO in question will have a huge impact on what happens in each game, as will the scenario to a lesser extent and, for that matter, the playstyle of the group in question. If you're the gangbusters type, then Raputin is probably for you. If you're the play-it-safe gang, then you'll probably trend more toward people like Peters (can heal other players) or Julian (can heal himself.) My experience in games like these and many others (e.g. Hearthstone) is that healing is never as useful as being able to kill things faster (i.e. best defense is a good offense), but there's no denying that being able to recover from damage dealt is usually almost as good as avoiding it entirely (aka Toughness) most of the time, so there is an argument to be made toward having a cleric in the party.
Anyway, that's probably enough of the hard numbers. Next time, we take a closer look at as many Investigators seems feasible and why they'd be great, good, or meh additions to your party of intrepid tentacle smashers.
