(Repost from Tumblr) Nobody Asked For This But Here It Is Anyway: Cam’s OCs In The DST Forge

[cameoflage]

Darcy: Melee/darts, starts with darts. Reacts to the sweltering heat and mortal peril with stoic equanimity. Has an extra inventory slot because he had hammerspace powers before it was cool, allowing him to juggle two weapons with ease.

Detroit “Aggie” Agate: Main tank, starts with a Forging Hammer but can also use darts, has 300 HP* and the same buff to the electrical damage of the Anvil Strike that WX does. Actively scared of the Infernal Staff, and not very happy about fighting near molten rock. Can technically equip staves and books but can’t use the special move for either category and just uses them as bludgeons. Aggie’s perks are uncomplicated, they’re just basically indestructible once you put the marble or stone armour on them.

Dora: Staff/book mage; like Maxwell, she has a signature weapon else-canon that’s melee-based, but she’s a nerd with no jock to her at all who’s not suited to swinging a hammer or a polearm around all day. She has a normal amount of HP though, because while she’s unathletic she’s not actively sickly. I really want a unique book to drop for her that summons a swarm of Webber-type tiny spiders even though she’s only like the 3rd most spider-related character in my lineup. (She starts with the Petrifying Tome like the other book mages though; the Tome of Spiders would drop after maybe the Snortoise wave.)

Dunsmuir: Melee/darts. Starts with the Rusty Foghorn, a unique weapon with a cone-shaped AOE special that does low damage but inflicts a relatively long-lasting stun. Uses it as a bludgeon otherwise. (This is the only viable thing I could think of that’s even remotely connected to Sunless Sea combat, except maybe some kind of harpoon thing.) Not exactly happy about being here, but taking it in stride.

Emerson: Staff/book mage, with the exact same perk as Wilson where he can revive people faster and with more health. Can see enemy HP totals. Predisposed to a healer/crowd control role, but can technically also be an offense mage. The support character.

Gareth: Melee/darts/staves; like Winona, he has high HP and starts with a Forging Hammer. Unlike Winona, he has a dodging perk with the same chance (50%? 25%?) of going off as WX’s shock, causing him to use his intangibility powers when he’s hit by an attack and take no damage or knockback from it. (Canonically the visual effects of going intangible are very subtle but for gaming purposes he probably changes colour or turns translucent or something.)

Ian: Staff/book mage; not buff enough for more physically demanding weapons. Confused and freaked out by being here, but will protect his friends or (more likely “and”) die trying.

Ivy: Weird-ass melee/staff DPS build with absolutely nothing in between. Either she’s doing AOE damage or you’re wasting her time. Has a cumulative bonus to damage done for each enemy caught in the blast radius. Starts with a Forging Hammer. Kind of enjoying being able to cut loose and destroy a bunch of shit at least.

Joss: Melee/darts/staves. Has a bonus to fire damage, can combust herself and deal damage to enemies that are in range to hit her. I’m not sure exactly how this is activated if it’s not weapon-specific, maybe it’s a passive like WX’s shock or Gareth and Milo’s dodge but I’d prefer for it to be at-will with a cooldown. Maybe you have to click on yourself to activate it? She’s in her element in a very literal sense, although her mad science and cartoon powers are largely irrelevant here.

Libby: Melee/darts, starts with a Forging Hammer or maybe some sort of polearm. Non-bosses that hit her with melee attacks are prevented from using their special moves - projectile acid spit, spinning, summoning Battle Standards, you name it - until a countdown expires. She’s pretending she’s having fun, but actually scared out of her wits.
Milo: Darts and darts only. Excels at getting and keeping aggro, also shares Gareth’s intangibility dodge. He was put on this earth for no purpose other than to be annoying and hard to hit. He’s not enjoying having to fight, but he gets some schadenfreude out of seeing the enemy mobs get the shit slapped out of them, especially if they actively provoked it.

Moiré: Darts/staves. Loses aggro more quickly than other characters, so they can slip away easily to cast spells… or if the shit hits the fan and more than half the team is dead, to revive Wilson/Emerson/Ophelia. Their quotes for mobs and equipment are very deadpan; they’re keeping a stiff upper lip about being sent into gladiatorial combat and their actual feelings about it are no one else’s business. It does seem like an unpleasantly Arcadian scenario in general, but it doesn’t really resemble their own durance to any substantial degree.

Ophelia: Darts/staves. Always has full health when revived and will revive herself if she’s left dead long enough (another player trying and failing to revive her doesn’t interrupt the countdown). Lavinia II would have the exact same perks and proficiencies, so she doesn’t get her own entry. Ophelia is just kind of resigned to being in this surreal, horrific situation; her inner reaction is like, “This might as well happen to me.”

Rory: Darts only. Why are they here? What’s happening to them? Why is a giant pig-man chasing them? Please help. They have a slight boost to their base speed, so they’re basically stuck being a runner ‘cause they suck at everything else.

Sid: Melee only. He probably has the best chance of being able to just walk out of the Forge whenever he wants because he can teleport by phasing in and out of another dimension, but I think Battlemaster Pugna would make it clear that if he deserted, his friends would have to keep fighting without him (as a team of 5, in a game mode that’s balanced for 6). As such, he uses his teleportation in the arena; he has a chance of passively flash-stepping out of the way of attacks and can use it actively to catch up to an out-of-range enemy.

Sigma: Hates this entire situation and everything about it. Darts/staves, she’s too spindly for hammers and not nerdy enough for magic books. Has a mild cooldown buff and holds aggro longer than average once she’s got it, making her best suited to a runner role but also capable of being a particularly besieged healer. Has a very unhappy quote for the Infernal Staff but won’t actually refuse to wield it. (Her quote for the Molten Darts is “The fire goes the OTHER way.”)

Tamsyn: Melee/darts/staves. DPS-oriented off-tank, but incidentally can also do healing. Starts with her ice axe as a unique weapon, the Icebreaker. Its special is on a short cooldown and interrupts guarded enemies; it can stop spinning Snortoises but not flip them over. The Spiral Spear drops for her as well as for Wigfrid. She’s legitimately enjoying herself in this bloodbath, though the heat is a bit much.

Thurlow: Staves/books/darts, I honestly don’t care whether that’s balanced, although I can’t think of an obvious reason why it wouldn’t be. Just because nobody else in this batch of characters gets to bring a Bernie/Abigail-type NPC ally, I want them to be able to periodically summon Thursnow, who loses health constantly even when not being attacked because they’re basically just a very fancy snowman and it’s baking hot in here but has a powerful attack to make up for that. Thurlow can also regain small amounts of health by dropping their weapon and biting enemies, which has the same animation as the one for biting rocks or enemies as if their teeth were a pickaxe in regular DS. They’re enjoying themself somewhat, because they have experience with bloodsports and temporary death so they aren’t taking this as seriously as most of the others.

Zaffre: Darts/books, starts with darts; prefers to stay at long range and avoid being a high-profile target. Moves significantly faster at low health, but unlike Wolfgang doesn’t get any extra damage or defense from it. Probably best as a runner, not that they like this idea. They’re just gonna hide behind the tanks as long as possible.

*For those playing along at home: The canon Don’t Starve characters, in Forge mode, have HP values ranging from 75 to 200 with 125-150 as the median.

Now that all the new items and some of the new enemies are out:
 

• Darcy is an ideal dual-wielder of the Hearthsfire Crystals and another item (probably most often darts, but it can be someone else’s melee weapon or the Blacksmith’s Edge).
• The aforementioned firebomb item kinda throws a wrench in my AOE plan for Ivy, but oh well, there are enough other characters who can wield it, I’m not changing her proficiencies to include darts just for that. (She’s a good early to mid-game character, and a good choice for getting rid of the Grand Forge Boarrior’s lapdogs with the fire staff, but merely average against bosses.)
• Aggie is nigh-invulnerable in the Steadfast Grand Armor. Good luck, they’re behind 400 hit points. Even one of the other new armors’ +50 or +75 is pretty nice, but +100 is just ridiculous on them.
• When Thurlow wears the Whispering Grand Armor, Thursnow’s health pool doubles and the health drain slows by 50%.
• When Dora wears the Whispering Grand Armor, the spiders from the Tome of Spiders get buffed the same way as when Webber wears it (double damage and a cosmetic makeover).
• The Rusty Foghorn becomes quite handy when fighting the Rhinocebros. So does the Icebreaker.
• I think the best way to handle Joss’s overheat is to give her a button on her UI with a fire on it; I am, inevitably, picturing the one from Sunless Sea.
• Shoving Libby in between the Rhinocebros is just as effective as shoving WX-78 in there. It’s not a stun, but it‘s a devastating and consistent debuff in a way that didn’t really apply to the Boarrior. (My thinking there is that since her power is negating superpowers and this could reasonably extend to magic in the DSverse, it would cancel the thing where he shoots fire through his hooks after slamming them on the ground, but not his variations on the theme of ‘run up and hit you with a melee weapon’; the Bros, on the other hand, can buff each other.) Just make sure she has good armour.

The Swineclops wasn't released when I wrote the second portion of this on Tumblr, but I imagine Emerson would be helpful there for the same "the tanks tend to die several times" reasons as Wilson. Libby's debuff doesn't work against melee attacks and he uses only those, so she would actually be less effective against him than against the Boarrior. I'd recommend giving Joss the Blacksmith's Edge at that point since her combustion works at least as well as a combo with the parry special as WX-78's shock, only it's damage-over-time rather than damage with a stun. Gareth's a good second tank for the Swineclops but his intangibility dodge means the Blacksmith's Edge is kinda wasted on him, so give him a hammer or something. Aggie is probably my third choice for a Swineclops tank, just because of their vast ocean of hit points.