Design Stab at Hero Academy Dwarves

Robot Entertainment is scheduled to release a third race in the future: the "Dwarves".  You can see a very short preview at the end of their Master Class video.

I thought it would be fun to take a stab at designing out the units.

Caveat: This is not the official design!  This is a completely independent take on the units based on the concept art.  It's just random ramblings I thought would be cool.

Here's the concept art screenshot they provide at the end of the video.

As I documented in my previous post, each of the existing races follows a specific pattern.  For the purposes of this exercise I'm going to assume that Robot wants to stick to this general pattern.  I'm going to reiterate, I have no idea what the actual design is, I'm just making this up for fun because I love the game and I like designing stuff.

So the first observation is that there are 7 units depicted, but each race only has 5 units.  This has 3 possibilities

• The dwarves have more than 5 units
• This is just concept art for unit ideas, but not all of them made the cut
• Some of the units depicted are "upgraded" versions

I'm going to assume the third.  Obviously the two on the right are the same unit.  I'm going to pretend that the top two middle units (the two ranged shooters) are actually the same unit and I'm also going to assume that the two on the bottom middle are the same unit too.

Based on the art, I'm thinking there is the standard +20% Magic Resist magic helm.  As a racial specific upgrade, I'm giving the Dwarves a +1 range upgrade.

Here is my design stab:

#	Name	Pic	Health	Armor	MR	Move	Range	Damage	Special
1	Mountain Giant		1200	20%	20%	1	1	400 Phys	Enemies hit by the Mountain Giant are stunned, and cannot perform any action next turn
3	Berserker		1000	20%	0%	2	1	300 Phys
3	Rifleman		800	20%	0%	2	3	200 Phys	Deals 100 splash damage to enemies adjacent to the target square.
3	Sapper		800	20%	0%	3	2	200 Magic	If killed, explodes for 200 damage to adjacent enemies
3	Valkyrie		800	20%	0%	2	2	200 Magic	Can heal for 450, 2 square range
2	Grog								Heals 1000 Life or revives a unit.  Also permanently increases the unit's damage by 50
2	Scroll								3x damage on next attack
2	Oktoberfest								Deal 350 Damage to enemies and heal allies for 350 Life in a 3x3 area.
3	Sword								Adds +50% Attack
3	Helm								Adds 10% health and 20% Magic Resist
3	Range Upgrade								Equipped unit has +1 Range

A few notes.

First, I gave the dwarves 20% inherent physical resist on every unit.  The Dark Elves have life leech, and the humans have priests that heal for extra large amounts.  At the same time  think 20% inherent physical resist on all units is probably strong, so I tried to compensate by making the healer range 2, and only heal for 450 (50 more than a Dark Elf Priestess I think?).

The other big thing is the range upgrade!  I figured the Warrior with the range upgrade would get a throwing axe.  The Rifleman could also get a range upgrade. Normally already range 3, with the range upgrade he would be range 4.

Some other ideas I had.  Thought maybe the dwarves could have passive life regen as a passive rather than phys armor, but regen might best be saved for a future race like trolls or undead.  I had an idea that the Mountain giant was beefier and could move 2 but could only be given one move command a turn.  I originally had it that the 3x3 bomb dealt damage and reduced the armor and magic resist of enemies int the area to 0 for the remainder of the current turn, but I thought that might be too mathy.

Can't wait to see what the real Dwarves look like for real!

Edit #1: Jeff G. mentioned that there should be some AOE damage and the Rifleman paralled the Archer too much and I agreed.  Changed Rifleman from 300=>200 damage but gave the Rifleman splash damage.  But that left the Dwarves without a 300 damage unit, which I gave to the Warrior, and renamed him a "Berserker".  That actually struck me as really good, as a differentiating point for the Dwarven race.