After having read countless threads here regarding Mr. Fixer and his viability or lack thereof, and having struggled with him myself (and had other players struggle with him in my games) I'm going to take action. Honestly I feel he is rather severely outmatched as a hero: If I was to rank the heroes by how effective they each are, Fixer would probably be in the lowest tier. By himself! Whereas other characters may require luck or skill to become effective, it seems Fixer requires absolute ideal circumstances to be effective. So I'll aim to do that, as simply as possible. I love Greater Than Games for putting out this amazing card game, but I don't think they are necessarily above criticism on the gameplay front. I will note that this is simply a couple of potential house rules for playing Mr. Fixer if you feel (as I do) that he basically boils down to being the Dan Hibiki of the game: a joke character that you should never pick in a serious situation.
I'm just going to make two changes. First: Fixer's character card.
STRIKE - Power: Mr. Fixer deals 1 target 2 melee damage.
This, I feel, fixes 75% of the problems with Fixer. Strike is essentially his only power, it is a damage dealing power, and it's so low as to in many circumstances negate his usefulness entirely. He needs a damage boost to be effective, plain and simple. In late play this will end up being just 1 extra damage on top of his, meaning he will be more useful early on and not excessively overpowered in the late game, making him in general more 'fun' to play.
Next: Tool Box.
Keep text as before, add Power: Search Mr. Fixer's deck for a tool and place it into play or into your hand. Shuffle your deck. Destroy this card.
Now Tool Box has a dual use: Either use it to expand your deck quickly as is the >G-written intention of the card, or burn it to search it for the tool you need -right now- at the cost of losing it into your trash. There's only two Tool Box cards in Fixer's deck so I believe this strikes a balance between utility and scarcity. It's not supposed to be Impromptu Invention, and you should have to -think about- whether you want to burn your Tool Box for a single tool. But it saves you the problem of trying futilely to dig through a mountain of cards you don't need to get to the ONE you do in a tense situation. Maybe it's something you'll kick yourself for doing later... It's supposed to be that way.
I've considered lowering Fixer's max hp on the character card to 26 or 27 to offset these changes, but I honestly believe that Fixer is underpowered enough that this isn't necessary to keep him from being any sort of game dominating powerhouse. I have not yet playtested these changes but let's take a look at that +1 damage and how it affects some of Fixer's cards and effective combos:
Riveting Crane: Right out of the gate, this style is no longer useless without a tool or a buff from another character. If you're fighting an enemy with DR/1, you're now able to punch through it and actually deal him damage, allowing the Riveting Crane effect to take place and let your allies beat on him to their heart's content. You're now the table hero instead of the schmuck frantically looking through your deck for the other card you need to be useful.
Jack Handle + Grease Monkey Fist: Oh, we're talking now. Mr. Fixer now can potentially deal 3 damage to every non-hero target on every turn. Is that overpowered? No, I really believe it isn't. Tempest can do 3 damage total a turn to all targets with Electrical Storm and Grievous Hail Storm in play. And unless there's a -lot- of foes in play, Wraith can do it with Throwing Knives and Targeting Computer, as well as have a bunch of other equipment in play simultaneously. Hell, with a Utility Belt she can even fire off another power, like Razor Ordinance.
Let's go wild: Okay, punks. It's time to really put this to the test. Grease Monkey Fist, Dual Crowbars, and Harmony in play already. You play Overdrive. You now can deal two targets five damage.... twice. Dang, right? Well, it was four damage to four targets (or to two targets twice, totalling 8 to each) before, and very hard to pull off. I will admit that this gave me pause at first, though. Well. It's also true that Fixer doesn't get as much play at my table as other heroes but in the games I have seen I've never seen anything close to this being pulled off. Not to say it -can't-, as I'm sure it happens. And my changes to Tool Box will make it easier to pull off... though not much easier.
Really REALLY wild: Let's add our buddies to the mix. Legacy is on the table, he's used Galvanize and has Inspiring Presence on the field. That's an extra +2 to damage. Argent Adept uses Inspiring Supertonic to let Fix use his Strike again. And an Incap Tachyon allows Fix to play a card on her turn, and he just -happens- to have another Overdrive. So this round Fix deals an incredimazing SEVENTY TOTAL DAMAGE split between two targets and holy god NERF OP HOW CAN YOU EVEN TALK ABOUT ADDING THESE CHANGES TO MR. FIXER?
Thing is? Fixer can already do that. My change to Fixer's base damage only added 10 more to that total damage. Without those changes? Fixer can, in that scenario, deal SIXTY damage in a single round total. So why doesn't it happen?
Because it's really, really, REALLY HARD to pull off. It requires a VERY specific team to have specific cards and specific situations in order to unleash that sort of power. What I just described? It's that ONE game, that perfect situation where your team all happen to have the right stuff out to put out tremendous earthshaking power. Even if you played a hundred games with that exact team, I don't think you'd be able to pull something off like that more than once or twice tops. And if you tried to do it deliberately? You'd probably get killed by the villain first trying to set it up. If you ever pulled it off? I doubt ten more damage total would shift the balances THAT much. Whatever you were attacking aside from the villain probably died before you could even get the full 30 or 35 damage you were firing at them off anyways.
Let's also note that with vanilla Fixer swapping out Jack Handle for the same setup I described under 'Let's go wild' Fixer could do 6 damage to -every- non-hero target on a single turn. I've never seen that happen either. Are these combos significant already? Yes, they are. Will my changes make them more significant? Yes, they will (Jack Handle+GMF+Harmony+Overdrive with my damage boost will make him deal 8 damage total to every non-hero target. That's probably enough on its own to wipe all but the most hardened minion team off the board and do some nasty damage to the villain as well). But an important thing to note is that these are NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO PULL OFF ALREADY. I doubt that in many games Fixer will be -usually- be putting out much more than 4 or 5 damage total a turn even with these changes in place. (In nearly every game I've played with Fixer, he's rarely put out more than 3 damage per turn, adding a single point of base damage won't change that, I think).
I'll be playtesting this soon, hopefully, but feel free to leave your thoughts here.