Yeah, neither of those characters looks very good, admittedly, and most chaos lords would fall fast if they took the armour. Or anything, as they wouldn't have the points to compare to people who can fill up their allowance.
The one combo I can see working, though, is the Armour with a great weapon. Most enemies will hit his WS8 on a 4+, resulting in approximately one hit per round, with an average S of what, 5 in arenas? That means about half a wound per turn, or 6 turns to kill him. On the other hand, he has 5 S7 attacks back, which hit on 3 and wound on 2, with enemies having maybe a 5+ save and 4-5+ ward. I think he'd do pretty well, and if you want me to back it up I'll enter him in your next arena. Just as a show of my confidence. ;)

Oh, and I think it's pretty safe to say that all arena characters have lost more than they've won; eventually they'll come up against someone with a combo that's good against them, or who simply gets better luck...

All overpowered items, which means they are overpowered for 1v1 combat, will be placed here for future referance. You can also recommend then discuss what items should or should not be banned.

Current list:

-Hellfire Sword
-Von Horstmann's Speculum

Armour of Damnation. If not banned, definitely increased in points.
30 points, reroll all hits, and a 4+ Save; this really is too powerful.
While I acknowledge that cross-list comparisons aren't the best way to do this, they're by far the easiest. ;)
O&G list, Ugbrag's Lucky Shield. 30 points for a 6+ save and ignore the first hit. Sure, it's a shield, which means it stacks with armour and makes it slightly better, but the same cost!? The AoD basically halves the number of hits you take, for the whole fight. Does anyone else see something wrong with this?

I was thinking about including the Armour, but noted that if a Chaos Lord took it, he would have very little more choice in any other items. If a Exalted/Aspiring Champion took it, there statline, when compared to those of any other Lord, would balance it. The problem in alny with Beastlords, who have a decent enough statline, and can take 100 points of magic items. I will leave this up for discussion.

I will allow the Shield, just because it is 30 points for +1 wound, yet no other magic armour can be used. Again, I'll leave this up for discussion.

Eh? I wasn't complaining about the shield; it was a reference. It's not even an extra wound, it's one less hit. Nothing wrong there.
Even a chaos lord can do really well with the AoD, by the way.Give him a great weapon with the rest of the points, and he's got 5 S7 attacks...

Ah, I see. I thought you were talking about banning the shield.

:) Aesgareth doesn't like banned items very much.

And I have some contributions to your list:

The Sword of Fate (nominate one enemy character, against him/her the wielder wounds on a 2+ and ignores armour saves)
The Bane Head (nominate one enemy character, against him/her all wounds are doubled)
The Tress of Isolde (nominate one enemy character, against him/her the Brettonian player can nominate one turn when the bearer hits on a 2+)
The Grudge Rune (see Bane Head)

If you want to see the Rezephua list of Banned items (built up over 17 AoDs), go here:

http://pub68.ezboard.com/fthearenaofrezeph...opicID=21.topic

*Groans loudly in exasperation*

Now tell me, what did that accomplish? You didn't really give an opinion, and you made absolutely no effort to justify it. If you want to debate it, do so. Otherwise, don't waste your, or my time.

Vriishnak, if you've been watching the "Banned items" thread in the arena of Rezephua for the last half year, you'll see that I have given plenty of good arguments against banning all of chaos' good items. The fact of the matter is, I don't want to waste my time trying to change the minds of a bunch of whiners who are determined to win by banning all the other races good combos. I've already posted up paragraphs and paragraphs about this; if nobody has paid any attention to my arguments so far, I don't see why they would start doing so now.

So instead, I shall simply post little "time wasting" one liners to convey my general displeasure regarding the subject. I think that it will save a lot of my time, and, since nobody actually cares what my arguments are, your time as well.

I would just like to note, though, for Arch-Seer's sake, that the armour of Damnation isn't as big an advantage for banebeasts as you might think. The re-rolled hits is good, but keep in mind that banebeasts can't take steeds, which means that though they might have this good piece of armour, the best save that they will ever get is 2+ armour save, which really isn't all that good. Also keep in mind that most banebeasts take big expensive magic weapons and regular (or no) shields, so most banebeasts are running around with 3+/4+ saves. So the re-roll hits effect is really just there to soak up the hits that an extra 5+ save from a barded steed would.

I understand your frustration but if you posted in a different site how are we meant to know?

Okay, when did I mention any other chaos items? Or express myself in a manner that could be considered whining, rather than expressing something that I consider unbalanced in a calm, collected manner. If I'd said 'AoD is super-cheap' and left it at that, your comment would be justified. As it is, you're just coming off as a hypocrite, trying to keep your powerful items so you can win over other races. Isn't it you who runs the Banebeast who's the only character to win multiple arenas? And doesn't he use the AoD? No need to take shots at me for having a different opinion from yours.

Oh, and glancing through the topic at Rezephua, I'm not seeing any arguments over there, either. You call everyone bitchers and whiners, then tell them nothing should be banned aside from nominate items. Basically what you just did to me here. I have no problem debating my ideas, but try to keep it to the ideas and not resort to attacking me, okay? And actually debate the ideas, too?

(Just thankful you aren't King Gor; I'd forgotten about that mass of near-incomprehensible letters...)

Chili, I have also banned all "nominate one enemy character..." items.

First, the big expensive magic weapons are the player's choice; they could make a really good defensive character if they wanted. AoD/Gaze of the Gods makes a character nearly impossible to kill.
Second, rerolled hits is MUCH better than an additional 2 to AS. Against weapons that don't allow saves, it still has an effect, it doesn't decrease in effectiveness against high-strength attacks. And the funny thing is, the points are actually quite similar. :D

You are right that re-rolled hits is better than an extra save, USUALLY, but you are forgetting one thing; Banebeasts have WS 6. This really reduces the item's effectiveness, because most of the time, the other characters only have to re-roll a 3+, not exactly a difficult roll to make. And a defensive banebeast isn't nearly as good as you might think. Take Vrath, for example. He has the best defensive combo possible for banebeasts, but in many of his fights, he gets reduced to 1 wound before scraping by on a KB. Banebeasts are an offensive character type. Besides, defensive characters really don't work that well, since even really offensively oriented combos tend to have a good save, which the defensive character's lack of attack power will fail to dent (If you look through the archives in AoR, you'll see a good example of such a situation in my Arena, "The Battle Ring." A defensive chaos lord only managed to inflict one wound on a Saurus Hero with a 1+ save, a low ward save (or none, I can't recall) and S8 over the course of two fights.)

Agreed that a defensive banebeast isn't necessarily a good idea, but the WS doesn't matter that much; either way you're roughly halving the hits that get through, more of an effect than the AS will have in the same situation. Also, you have to take into account the Chaos Lords can take it, and that they have WS8. This armour with a great weapon results in a VERY powerful character, even though they've only used 30 points of magic allowance...

Erm...

If the AoDs here are based on the "common standard" (250pts), taking the Armour of Damnation leaves a Chaos Lord 10pts to spend on his character. So, you can have, at best:

A Chaos Lord with the AoD and Enchanted Shield, giving him a 2+ armour save and re-rolling all successful hits gainst him

Or

A Chaos Lord with the AoD and Biting blade, giving him a 4+ armour save and re-rolling all successful hit against him, while subtracting an additional 1 from his enemy's armour save.

In my experience as an Arena Master, that character would hardly ever reach round 2. Someone with Ignore Armour saves, a high strength, a high number of attacks, or even just a better defensive combo would pound him.

Yes, Vrath has won many arenas. He has, however, lost more than he has won. if you read his entry in the hall of flame, you'll find that Zharok/Aesgareth built in a "failsafe" piece of fluff of Vrath being teleported to safety when he loses fights after the first four or so failures.

I actually used that combo a few times (back when AODs were held in the WFB forums) and, while it did win a few fights, it had far too many weaknesses to be feasible. Killing Blow, Weapons that cause multiple wounds, weapons that ignore saves completely... I eventually got fed up with losing in rounds 1-2, and went back to the drawing board.

Really, this debate is proving little, though. We have come to the impasse that all debates about magic items do; there are as many disadvantages (or nearly as many) as there are advantages. Hence the fact that it shouldn't be banned/changed. Try to keep in mind that banning items is a drastic countermeasure that should only be used if an item is causing characters to consistently wipe the floor with anything that they face unless their opponent is insanely lucky (Fellblade, Daemon Sword+Mark of Khorne, etc.) If an item gives a character somewhat of an advantage over his opponents, that simply means that the item is good for arenas. I could argue all day about how half the items in the game "unbalance" arenas, but that would do nothing to prove that they need to be banned. In fact, when building your character, what you are doing is searching for the proper combo to give your character an advantage over his opponents, "unbalancing" the fight, if you will, in the hopes of winning. To ban an item because it is a sound investment for certain characters just defeats the purpose of logicalmagic item selection.

Fair enough; I never really wanted to ban it in the first place. I was simply thinking that increasing it to 40 points or so might limit the potential combos without completely removing a useful item.

Items should only be banned or changed if they have a specific advantage because of the specific arena rules. A good example of this is the Gaze of the Gods. Effectively a 4+ ward for 30 points, no drawback because of the arena rules. This is why LCP changed it over at Rezephua. Granted, the Armour of Damnation is an extremely useful bit of kit and one of the best items there is to take, but it is not unbalanced. It's usefulness is not increased by the Arena rules and it will not win you arenas on it's own.

from the information goblit has given us,the thundermace looks pretty powerful for its points.

Are BSB's legal? For example(250 points arena, assume heros get 100 points in magic items)

Wight Lord[60]
Heavy Armour[4]
Shield[2]

Sword of Kings[25]
The Flayed Hauberk[30]
Obsidian Amulet[45]

BSB[25]
Banner of the Barrows[45]

Barded Nightmare[12]

Total-248

WS4 BS3 S4 T4 W2 I4 A3 LD9

All hits hit on 3+, Killing blow on 5+. 1+ Save cannot be improved, 4+ WS vs all forms of magic.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think you can take any other magic items if you take a magic banner unless you're a slann

I played against someone who did it so I assume its true, I dont have my BRB on me rite now tho

The guy who you played against was cheating. BSBs cannot take any magical items aside from the no-cost-restriction banner, and cannot take any mundane equipment except for upgrading their armour and/or a warhorse of some sort.

That Bast***, Oh well I still won that game. Too bad, it would've been an awesome character.