Ironvein's page

3. Don’t shove it all into increasing #. There are other options too.

That seems like the easy solution here. Since you’re allowed to pick the wildcards, you can easily pick a handful that won’t do much for the scenario. Some of the wildcards are even arguably beneficial. You can also do larger locations or other options as well.

This post seems very much like “If I’m walking barefoot over hot ground it hurts my feet. I came up with some ideas to make the ground less hot.” — try wearing shoes instead. In other words, the game doesn’t need massive overhauls to “fix” a self-inflicted problem.

We've tried that too though unless you even include the initial 3 that carried over from DD (did not think of that), but that would also mean adding a total of 6 other things to scale the difficulty and most of those end up adding more cards to slog through.

And what wildcards are 'beneficial'? At best there are some that are 'one and done' where you make a change at setup and then you don't have to remember it after that.
Our current run has Monstrous, Perious, and Withering with # of 8 (since only 5D is left, there is also Deadly) and we are still having trouble making headway, not dying, just stuck.

So my group has a team who finished Dragon's Demand and took those characters into Curse of the Crimson Throne. We decided to use Curse's rules to increase # by 3 (Level at the end of DD) and add 3 modifiers (wildcards, bane #, more/larger locations, etc) to continue being able to advance our characters (Deck 1 effectively Level 4 and so on.)

For a while, things seemed to be fine. Challenge is keeping up with the team, so things weren't too easy and we still felt like we could take on the world.... until deck 5 (actually deck 5, not virtual 5). With Deck 5's enforcement of 4 Wildcards on its own, we pretty much had to go another route than using wilds as the modifiers (could you imagine trying deck 5 with seven wildcards... yeesh). So we tried putting it all in bane # increase... making # at that point eleven. (Deck 5 + 3 (coming from DD) + 3 (addition modifier to balance the first 3)). This made nearly every veteran monster combat check in the 30s and we only had a chance at by throwing everything we could at it... and that was just for random encounters.

Long story short, I think PACG now has the opposite problem than it did in the beginning with veteran only adding # once. Now # is scaling up too quickly or rather, banes can currently scale up indefinitely, while characters do not (max of +4). Hard to feel heroic when monsters beat your score 4-5 times over (## at 8 is 16 and we were attempting it at 11).

And before you say it, yes I know the game wasn't really designed to go past 6 and when # was 6, it felt fine. However, when you make it an option; you need to make sure it is viable to the extremes.

So suggestions on how to balance this:

1) Cap the veteran power: rather than an unchecked #, limit how high that check can go.
Something along the lines of check can't be more than double the base number for example (I mean how can a Red Mantis Initiate have a 30+ combat check and STILL be an initiate, right?)

2) Make Hero Points do more than just re-roll as that just isn't enough at that high of a check. Maybe something akin to Wrath of the Righteous and Mystic Charges. Upgrading dice and/or adding # to the check. (More things with Hero Points should be another discussion because right now, they are kinda lame).

Anyone else experiencing this too? How far have you been able to push # before the game stops feeling like you have a chance?

Sorry, this came out kinda ranty. We've had to replay 5D in Curse for so many times now that we are kinda just about ready to quit due to the ## being nearly insurmountable.

Thanks Jenceslav, I missed the danger answer in the FAQ.

We also seem to be on the same page for Core Vault Building, I was mostly unsure of Blessings.

Your advice is helpful and appreciated :)

I wasn't sure which thread this question belonged, not exactly a rule question but not home-brew either.

So we have a conversion guide to handle how Pre-Core cards play with Core rules...

But what about building the Vault?

I would think that just throwing ALL the cards from previous sets would cause a major imbalance to the card ratios since, with the exception of blessings, there are only single copies of cards in Core.

So how should we handle creating a Core Vault for a Pre-Core Adventure Path?

Do we just use a single copy of every card from the set? Omit cards that have Core equivalents?

How many Blessing of the Gods or other unique blessings should we add?

And a little off-topic, but do we add a Danger in case one is called for and what should that Danger be?

This is more hypothetical than anything. I'm currently in the midst of two groups playing various levels of DD and COTCT, but I have all the Pre-Cores minus MM and was thinking about future plays with those rather than random generation right away.

No, it only says to increase their level by that amount - which only effects powers that specifically refer to levels. It has no effect on their difficulty.

K, was playing that correctly then. Thanks for the clarification.

The rulebook says the number of feats is limited by the # of the last scenario you've completed; so if you are increasing #, you also increase the number of feats you can acquire.

(However, you may wish to note that the Dragon's Demand Adventure Path Reward gives you an alternative option for proceeding into Curse, or any other Adventure Path, which may be easier; though it would grant you fewer feats to work with.)

I did forget that, but then we wouldn't be able to spend many hero points for feats until deck 4. Which bothers me a little. I just wanted to confirm my understanding of Curse's rules for returning characters.

Follow Up question in regards to Curse: On page 3, where it talks about the adjustment to #, it seems to be implying that not only banes with # are adjusted, but all banes' difficulty is adjusted by the # of the previous adventure path... am I correct in that understanding? Other banes that don't normally have # would still get (in my case) a +3 difficulty?

So I have a party that has finished Dragon's Demand and wanted to keep their characters for Curse of the Crimson Throne...

CotCT is pretty good with the instructions on how to start with returning characters, but my question is about character progression at this point. Am I to assume that the modified # due to playing another adventure path equates to adventure level?

For example, my group has finished Dragon's Demand so by the rules of returning characters, # gets a +3 moving forward. As we get hero points are we to consider Deck 1 of CotCT to be 'level' 4 and we can get up to four skill feats, power feats, and card feats? Or do we just collect hero points until the ACTUAL deck 4?

I thought occurred and wanted someone else's take on it.

If, by making a random scenario, you had a story bane as the danger, but it had the ability where you had to encounter the danger. How do you resolve it?

My instinct would be that you'd have to fight it twice. The danger gets summoned, the danger summons itself, you encounter the summoned danger's summon and then encounter the original danger. The danger would not keep infinitely spawning right?

Is that the correct way to interpret it?

Thank you for your response, but I'm mainly focusing on technical scenario procedure. If she takes on the first Villain and, say, defeats it, does that banish the remaining cards in that location deck? Does that cause added Blessings from the box into the game? etc.

Pretty sure that defeating the villain would still clear the location of cards except for any other villains in it. And defeating it would still mean taking extra blessings from the box for remaining open locations, that's still normal.

The only complication is whether the location closed due to defeating the villain and that depends if there are other villains remaining in it.

Sorry for not understanding the scenario rules for 'Bizarre Love Triangle', so let me be specific:

4 players, including Merisiel, thus 6 locations:

Let's say the players spread across 4 locations and Merisiel is the first to encounter a Villain. Assuming she could defeat it based upon her deck resources and others' in the party, should she encounter it or evade it?

If she encounters it and defeats it, what occurs to that Villain, that location deck of cards, that location's open/closed state, etc. If this is a positive result, do added Blessings come from box or Deck?

Thank you.

Well, let's clarify. Are you saying that this is early game and Merisiel found your FIRST villain? Then I'd say evade it, the villain stays in that deck and you can funnel the rest into that location. If not, probably should fight it; just to close the location or to make that location the 'only villains' location, so you can again funnel the other villains into that location.

Yes, banish does have two meanings now, depending on whether the card has recovery text. And, as I've mentioned before, I don't love that.

The distinction I'm making is that the alternative I was replying to would require that banish have multiple meanings differentiated by when the card was printed in addition to the presence or absence of recovery text. Specifically, in foxoftheasterisk's proposal, on new cards, "deplete" would mean "put in recovery" and "banish" would mean "put in the vault," while on old cards, "banish" would map to "deplete" in some cases and "banish" in other cases. To me, that's turning the potential for confusion up a notch, not down a notch.

I would like to think that the fact that we as a community are actually having this discussion that we are actually smarter than that.

It seems to me that it boils down to if the card has recovery text; banish = 'deplete'. With the caveat that depleted cards banish if recovery check fails unless the card states otherwise.

1: is that not exactly what you've done with "banish"? Yes, there's the indicator of recovery text, but it's not exactly straightforward even then. (For prime example, banishing a card with recovery to another card's effect.)

I think you unintentionally restated Vic's point there.

My proposal is to change Banish only on cards with Recovery text to a new word for Sending to the Recovery Pile. Cards that banish other cards aren't supposed to be affected; those cards remain as Banish because you are sending them directly to the box, no recovery possible. As it should be in that case.

2: I don't see how using a new keyword for recovery would do that?? You'd just be saying to replace the word in question with (e.g.) "deplete" rather than "banish". No double meanings required, as far as I see?

But Banish DOES have multiple meanings currently, you either

1) Return a card to the box OR
2) Put it in the Recovery Pile, which is then usually sent to the box if you fail the Recovery check.

This is a discussion on decoupling these two actions into separate terms. Not trying to change the rules, just make it more readable and less confusing.

While the conversion guide necessarily has to tell you to replace this word with that word, telling you that a word on this card means something different from the exact same word on that card is a bridge too far.

Really? I thought that I described what it could be in two sentences earlier...

General envision was that if the card innately has a recovery text, then the banishes on the card that activates powers would change to say Tap instead. The recovery section would then have the assumption that the card is Banished if you fail the recovery check (unless the card specifically says otherwise, like getting Buried or Discarded instead)

I can't think of any cards without a recovery text where banish would mean anything other than putting the card back in the box... isn't the recovery text the indicator for which meaning of banish to use?

For teaching new players, I wouldn't distinguish between "banish to vault" and "banish to recovery". Make "banish to recovery" the default, and then during recovery, if a card doesn't have a "during recovery" power, it goes into the vault.

There are very few specific characters or cards that will be treated differently handling things this way, but those are for players who are comfortable with the rules.

... that would actually work. I like it. It'd only require a change to the rulebook rather than the cards, so shouldn't break anything. Nice :)

Problem is, although the idea is really good, this is impacting way to many cards to be a reasonable request IMHO.

Probably, it may just be something for a Core 2.0 or something. I was hoping it wouldn't do that. Mechanically, I didn't think it'd change much.

General envision was that if the card innately has a recovery text, then the banishes on the card that activates powers would change to say Tap instead. The recovery section would then have the assumption that the card is Banished if you fail the recovery check (unless the card specifically says otherwise, like getting Buried or Discarded instead)

There is a programming principle that a function/subroutine SHOULD do one thing, and one thing only. It makes it easier to track down errors when there is only one place that a thing could possibly trigger. In this case, the keywords would be those functions/subroutines.

In short; I agree in principle, and I'd have supported having two distinct definitions of "Banish" to clarify the difference between "Send to Recovery" and "Send to the Vault".

A big issue is that any further terminology change would make pre-Core cards and character powers a bit harder to adapt to the new parlance, perhaps especially for previous Alchemists who have to interact both with Recovery and standard Banishing effects. Not saying it's impossible, but new terminology would have to come alongside cohesive Conversion Rules as well.

Hmm, I didn't consider preCore; mostly my OCD would get triggered. Who are you referring to as a character that interacts with both Recovery and standard Banish? I can't think of one off the top of my head.

I thought that for the most part, my suggestions wouldn't affect the main flow of the game, so knowing the edge cases would maybe help refine my idea. The programmer in me has been triggered >.<

Disclaimer: The suggestions I'm attempting to make is not intended to change the gameplay, but the presentation of information.

To preface why I had this thought, I've been a veteran player since the game's inception but just recently got the Core Set and I'm playing with a new group of complete novice players.

One of those players had the card Balmberry and the question was raised on why'd you ever WANT to banish it to use its effect. I had to read the entire card before I got it myself, the recovery step and anyone with a good Craft skill or a character power (another player was using Fumbus). But then it began to bug me... why did it take reading the entire card, to know what to do with it? Answer: Keyword Banish, or more specifically that Banish means more than one thing in-game.

On the player reference card, banish is the only keyword that has multiple meanings. Either put in recovery pile or box depending on if it has a recovery step. I feel this kinda causes some unnecessary confusion that can break the flow of the game.

The solution? My thought is to make a new keyword specifically for sending a card to recovery and then in the recovery text, handle the conditions to prevent a card from being banished.

Suggested words:

1) Exhaust. First one to come to mind. Easy to imagine (recover from exhaustion), however with the Scourge Exhausted, may cause confusion.

2) Spend. Again easy to imagine (recovering spent cards), however, it reads funny to me. (For your combat check: Spend to roll Arcane + X .....). Feels like something else is required.

3) Tap. This one is interesting, I hadn't thought of it until I was looking up synonyms for Exhaust. This has some added benefits that any experienced CCG player would instantly understand what to do and its natural implication to recovery. Heck, you can have the card display at 90 degrees and it's clear that it's a card to recovered later. It would probably change the Recovery Pile to a Recovery Phase instead, but that might be a good thing (my newbie players have mixed up discard and recovery piles before).

Regardless, I think that splitting Banish's options into two separate terms would greatly improve the clarity of what we need to do with those cards without having 'to know' what the appropriate option is while not changing functionally what the game does.

Thoughts?

Thanks Jenceslav, the "A Few Rules..."seems the be the part I kept glossing over.

When I reread 8 and 9 by themselves though, I still feel like there is room for misinterpretation. Maybe over-explained, idk. May just be me. Thanks again.

The actual limit is for check or step, not the whole encounter. You can play 1 boon of any type in each step, including "before acting", "check to defeat", "2nd check to defeat" and so on :)

Oh good. I was hoping/expecting something like that, but I couldn't find an adequate explanation. Where does it say that exactly, anyway? I feel like a must be glossing over it or something.

I'm a little confused about some of the new rules.

It is my understanding that now the party can only play one of each boon card collectively per encounter.
An encounter is resolving a card, right?

What about banes with "then'? If you can only use one weapon for a check, you can't use a weapon for a second... can you?

I think I'm misunderstanding either the definition of encounter or the party collective rule but can't seem to find the answer in the rulebook.

Could someone clear this up for me plz?

You are completely correct. My point is that the turn you just described is turn 30. And no, you don't get to explore on that turn, but the party gets to take the last chance to defeat the villain in an all-or-nothing battle, and I think that's pretty exciting, and better than actually exploring.

I'd have to disagree, A villian battle that grants me nothing is not exciting, it's annoying. By the time you get to the last round, it's likely you had already fought Brinebones a few times. It's just giving the villain a free round to kill us.

When you *lose* a scenario on turns, it happens when you advance the blessing deck at the beginning of a turn. Why should winning be in a different place?

Except with Inside Lucrehold, you have an additional lose condition.

Shuffle the villain Brinebones into the blessings deck.
When you discard Brinebones from the blessings deck, a random character summons and encounters it; then advance the blessings deck and shuffle Brinebones into the blessings deck. If there are no blessings in the blessings deck, you lose the scenario.

The cards are read as a paragraph being a set of instructions that must be followed to completion before doing anything else. So let's examine the case of the blessing deck with BrineBones on top and 1 Blessing underneath.

1) BrineBones is discarded
2) Random character encounters BrineBones
3) Last Blessing is advanced and BrineBones returns to the blessing deck
4) Because of the last sentence, a check is now made for no blessings in the blessing deck; there is none (only BrineBones) so you lose. That's how it reads.

I blame the English language for this kinda thing. It (English) is broken.

As for the Free Captain's Regatta; I'm not sure that I'd bother finishing the last turn if I knew I couldn't win. Especially if my character's would risk dying for an encounter that might be a boon.

We ended up playing it wrong, as we saved the check for the end of the turn. But that made things that much more epic for us. We had all but one location secured by the last turn, so the last character pushed for all she was worth (3 explores) and STILL couldn't find the ship... when we made the check at the end and the next card WAS the Enemy Ship, we were ecstatic. It was like winning the race by the skin of our teeth.

As for Inside Lucrehold, since the check for no blessings is in the same paragraph; it reads as the game ends immediately after the Brinebones encounter. Even if there were 1 remaining blessing with Brinebones on top of the blessing deck.

I'm just saying that the wording for these scenarios are vague and confusing on when exactly play ends and if we have 30 turns to do something, then win conditions should be checked at the end of the turn so that all the party's efforts are meaningful toward finishing the scenario.

I don't really think it was intended to happen at all. They probably meant to check at the end of turn AND the blessing deck is empty... something along those lines. Because losing a half turn like that is just odd, no?

Also regarding the blessings deck, scenarios can indeed abruptly end in the middle of a turn if the deck is empty, specifically if you would need to remove cards from it while it is empty (see pg 8 of S&S rulebook). I'm not entirely sure what your issue with this is besides that you may not like the mechanic.

I'm not referring to a Cultist power or Undefeated Villain escaping. I'm talking about two scenarios where it is impossible to have a full 30 turns as their effects cut in the middle of the last turn (making a max of 29.5 turns). So you have less time compared to other scenarios for no apparent reason. Essentially you would have lost the previous turn, but you still have some extra action required afterword. It's weird.

Referring to The Free Captains' Regatta and Inside LucreHold. Both check to see if the blessing deck is empty before you are allowed to explore, so the last turn is always lost.

Very nice detailed feedback. A general comment about not liking the weapons, spells, or other cards in the set, I think a lot of that has to do with the style of this set. Personally, I would highly recommend getting class decks so you can have some more of the cards you'd like to see. Want awesome melee weapons and heavy duty armor? Mix in the Fighter Deck. Are you playing with an arcane spellcaster or two and really want Augury and Scrying back? Mix in the Wizard Deck. I actually just use my class decks for organized play, but they can be a really nice tool for home games. This can be the case not only for Skull & Shackles, but also if Wrath of the Righteous or future sets down the line are missing specific types of cards that you wish were there or don't properly support a class that you love.

I don't have any Class decks yet; this is just an impression after going through S&S once. The balance between Melee/Ranged felt slanted to the point that I'd feel that a Melee fighter would be a bad choice for the adventure path.

When I do get Class decks, I'd add them only if one of the character's were of that class as to not break the theme too much.

Ironvein wrote:

Allies and Swashbuckling for Non-Combat: I don't think I've ever encountered a non-combat check where a Swashbuckling trait was important. Seems like a effect that wasn't thought all the way through.

The primary way that this can come into play is with Jirelle. She can reroll when a check has the Swashbuckling trait. Also, if you play Lem and go Freebooter, there's a power he can learn that adds d12s when he plays blessings on Swashbuckling checks. That might be it though. I'm assuming you weren't playing with Jirelle? And if Lem was in the game he probably went Sea Singer because d4s are amazing.

Hmm, seems to be a lot of cards to support a single character (or two). I was just thinking that some non-combat checks with Swashbuckling would have more effects. Like if you Acquired a Rapier and the check had Swashbuckling, you could explore again... and the like. Bonuses/Negatives effects for SB Non-combat checks. But it didn't and it was generally and extra trait that did little. The application happened a lot but rarely was it used for anything.

Ironvein wrote:

Implications of the ‘Make Good’ Scenario: .... The Reward should be better though(probably a skill, power, and/or card feet).

I definitely didn't expect them to put a feat as a reward for an...

I was referencing my idea of a SideQuest reward (something that may never happen in game), the reward should be big for a once in an Adventure Path chance.

Just wanted to give my overall impression now that we have finished Skulls & Shackles.

Difficulty: Higher than Rise of the Runelords overall, although it was inconsistent on the difficulty in certain scenarios. Not sure it was difficult for the right reasons though. Weaker weapons and higher difficulties is a bad combo.

Ship powers: Other than damage reduction, the powers of ships were largely forgotten. The scenario was either too hard where we needed the extra turns or so easy than those powers were not necessary.

On a ship and Anchored Ships: Card with this condition tended to be powerful cards, but if the scenario anchored the ship they were nearly useless. It made for hard decisions on whether to keep or toss those cards in favor for weaker, but more versatile ones. It made me wish that the game included a mechanic similar to keeping a side deck where we can hold a certain number of extra cards to modify are decks before playing the next scenario. Like up to the size of our fleet or something…. Just a thought.

Veteran Power and Henchman: Standard veteran power is insufficient for Henchman as you continue through the game, deck four was a glaring example of it as one scenario’s power was dependent on losing to a henchman; something very unlikely as they were no challenge and would not see that they ever would be at that point. I would suggest a flat increase on top of the Veteran Power for Henchman, something like: Adding the adventure deck + the number of characters participating in the scenario. That ought to scale the difficult appropriately without going so far as to screw solo players.

Weapons: Overall, they were kinda bland in combat potential; particularly Melee weapons (so many d4s). The weapons that stood out were for the secondary powers rather than strength. One of the reason S&S was harder than ROTL is that while the average damage of a particular weapon was higher; rolling max damage was a lot lower.

Rolling 12 on d12: 1 in 12, on 2D6: 1 in 36, on 3D4: 1 in 64

Just couldn't get excited with the weapons.

Spells: Found that there was little distinction between Arcane/Divine for attack spells at least till deck 5. Became problematic with multiple spell slingers in the group, as there wasn't enough attack magic to go around. Augury and Scrying spells were sorely missed.

Armor: Definitely comes more into to play than before with a higher frequency of ‘Before you Act’ Damage than before; although seems to be less over armor cards than before. Shields are still largely useless. There was also a lot of involuntary Recharging happening too, which is quite annoying due to no way to defend against it. Maybe have shields have a similar power like body armor’s banish/bury to make damage 0 but for involuntary recharges. I don’t mind monsters with that power, but I do not like that there isn’t a way to defend against it. With a good mix of both, choosing armor vs shields would be more prominent.

Items: see On a Ship above

Allies and Swashbuckling for Non-Combat: I don't think I've ever encountered a non-combat check where a Swashbuckling trait was important. Seems like a effect that wasn't thought all the way through.

Blessings: no real gripes, although we stayed away from the ones that cost a hand to be buried to use. Strong power, but cost seems to be too high.

Immortal Powers due to location deck size: Usually it’s a case where a monster is defeated if it is the only card in the location deck, this is more a problem for the computer version of this game. It becomes increasingly more likely that said monster will stay on top as the deck diminishes. Live players will (either on purpose or not) ensure the monster isn't the top card; but a computer will be completely impartial. The game is supposed to be about choices, but this power takes that choice away. Maybe insure the next card is set aside and shuffle the rest and put the set aside card on top to ensure at least some progress is made. Again, this is more likely a problem for the tablet version of the game than regular play.

Weird Abrupt Ends: A couple of scenarios imply that a game can end as soon as the blessing deck is empty (the race and the one with a dragon in the blessing deck), thereby losing the last turn; basically making those scenarios last 29.5 turns. Probably should make this an ‘end of turn’ check.

Summon Locations: Disappointed that this wasn't more of a thing (only once for a scenario). I kept expecting a barrier to suddenly appear and give the villain another place to run. Another wasted opportunity.

Implications of the ‘Make Good’ Scenario: With this, a precedent is now available… The Side-Quest: An optional scenario that is only available if certain conditions are meet. Whether it’s part of a scenario power, or a certain card that you can only encounter once (Acquiring/Defeating opens the Sidequest and card is removed from the game after it’s encountered so you only have one shot at it). The Reward should be better though(probably a skill, power, and/or card feet).

Overall, the game was certainly more interesting and challenging, the weapons feels a little nerfed though.

If you don't like it then yes, you would have to remove all higher deck cards playing a lower scenario. (Realized I didn't finish answering the question >.< )

Had a discussion like this during ROTL... an unofficial rule that was developed can be found here.

Basically an optional rule to simulate the 'removed from the game' effect without actually taking cards out of the box.

I like using this when playing on my own.

I had a slightly different approach to making the game more difficult....

The 'Speed Run' or 'Time Waits For Noone'.

Basically, you play each scenario once and ONLY once.

If you lose a scenario, you miss out on the reward and are forced to continue without it.

Adventure rewards only gained if more than half of the scenarios were completed successfully.

Adventure Path reward only if half the Adventures are deemed successful.

The catch: On any scenario failure, any villain or henchman that are still in play are carried over to the next scenario as added complications.

Those include:

1) Any Villain/Henchman still within an open location at the end of the scenario.

2) Any Villain/Henchman that existed somewhere outside of the traditional format (bane piles, inside the blessing deck, any 'next to this card', etc.); basically anything that hadn't already been returned to the box when the scenario ended.

3) Any Villain/Henchman that COULD have been summoned due to a scenario or location power. (Location powers being the most common).

When setting up the next scenario; build as normal. The carried over cards are then distributed evenly among the locations; adding random barriers to the mix if the distribution is uneven. Victory conditions are treated as normal (either by the scenario power or the scenario's villain being defeated).

Making new characters during this mode is treated as normal (Basic Equipment til deck 3; than anything from 2 decks back), but the character starts with the same number of feats that the team has managed to secure upto that point.

This can be more difficult as if you fail on the scenario that provide feats or loot, they are forever lost making further progress more daunting.

Huh? Wouldn't it be a case of 'ignore impossible instructions'? If the Merchantman is in the fleet deck, then he isn't in the ship deck of the box to pull out.

I'd think the Wormwood would just be stuck wrecked (and thus repairable).

... or maybe not, Wormwood doesn't specify pulling the Merchantman from the box....

Instinct says that the scenario shouldn't be taking 2 ships out of you fleet deck after one ship encounter.

Although I don't see why you'd want to put the Merchantman into the fleet deck in the first place as it'd just increase the number of higher class ships that the enemy can draw upon when adding to the difficulty.

I will suggest an option #4.

S&S Rulebook p16 wrote:

If the villain is undefeated, do the same thing, but retrieve the blessings from the blessings deck instead of from the box.

Brinebones is not a blessing. Therefore, he can not fulfill the requirement of this part of encountering a villain. You check to make sure you have blessings and not Brinebones. I'd suggest that if you happen to get Brinebones, set him aside, get another blessing, then shuffle Brinebones back in with the remaining blessings, as that seems to fit the spirit of the scenario power.

And just to verify that you are indeed allowed to examine those random blessings from the blessings deck, see this post. I usually don't examine them, but there is nothing that says you can't as far as I know.

Yeah, I think I agree with this one. Just wouldn't have thought to do it that way as you rarely mess with the blessing deck in most circumstances. It is important to be clear on edge cases like this though.

While this has not happened yet; what would happen if BrineBones moved into a location deck due to losing to the regular villain (blessings from the blessing deck.... it's not impossible)? Would we then have to defeat both villains to win? Would encountering BrineBones this way throw it back into the blessing deck?

But another big factor with using the Filthy Lucre means we don't have to encounter it, which is a huge relief.

Amen to that. Had to replay the 2nd scenario of deck 6 three times and each time ran into Lucre; a frustrating encounter every time. My least favorite ship right now due to trauma.

My team either have no time to spare in a scenario due to difficulty or the scenario flies by so fast that we tend to forget to even use ship powers. So whatever ship at the time with the best damage reduction is our usual pick.

Only when the spell moves. It's probably fair to say that the punctuation mark before "each character" should be a semicolon.

Thx Mike. That's pretty much the way we played it, just wasn't sure we were doing that right or not.

The Promo card: Vomit Twin has an effect that hits everyone in that location with a Fort check or recharge a card; but the timing is unclear...

Is it:

1) Only at the time of the original cast

2) as above, but also if the spell moves due to the evade power at the new location

3) a persistent effect for anyone in that location; if so, when (start/end of turn?)

Thank you!

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rxgc?Armor-Shortage-in-Best-Served-Cold#1

Oddly, this link loops back to this thread instead of intended for me.

It took two tries to beat this one for our group. After we lost the first one, we learned two major points from encountering the henchmen/villian. You had a 50/50 chance of either running into someone the penalizes you for having Divine or NOT having Swashbuckling.

My teams' makeup was made up of three characters: Oracle, Sorcerer, and Gunslinger. Pretty much screwing the Oracle and requiring the Sorcerer to fight the henchmen as he was the only one that still had Swashbuckling weapons.

The Oracle did have the ability to encounter boons when she used her examine power; so we monopolized on that. She would look through all the locations and when she hit a bane, the other two would go there to clean up. It was kinda key to be able to find the henchmen/villain without actually encountering them. That way we pretty much neutralized the time loss effect of Garret and the Villain. After clearing the other locations, we insured the ones fighting each had an armor to get past the Villain's recharge power and hit him with everything we had.

That was our strategy anyway. I'll admit there was a few lucky rolls in there, but the theory was solid and we actually finished with time to spare.

1) Hrgenzwhatsisname does structural damage to your ship; not the location. Not even in this scenario.

2) Ship is anchored at another location in the first scenario. Cannot be moved.

3) Being alone at the Shrine buries the force damage you'd take. Just not wise to be alone there.

4) ???

Thought so, thanks Klein. We just played the first scenario last night, freakin brutal. Almost won, last turn had the villain on top of Shrine of Norgorber (another nasty location) and only the 'Theater of Corruption'(?) still open. Unfortunately, when attempting to temp close the Theater; random other location for close check ended up being the Shrine (Bury Norgorber blessing or banish 2 other blessings) and the character in that location only had one blessing. So close.

The 'At This Location' power triggers at the start AND end of the turn correct, if you're there. One of my group was wondering if it was only a once per turn with the (At the start OR end of ....).

refer to p. 11 Side bar (Rules: FaceUp Cards)

Face Up cards are still on the top of the deck so it still counts for powers that peek at the top card. Any faceup cards would need to be considered first in case of Spyglass that checks multiples.

And while it says faceup cards cannot be shuffled until they are resolved, I'm pretty sure that it includes any attempt to move them from the top of the deck (so no, you cannot reorder a faceup Task card under a facedown card; multiple faceup Tasks cards though, sure).

Many thanks, Hawkmoon. By the way can I now add all of the cards in the Character Add on Deck as well? I'm thinking...the more possibilities, the more fun. I just hope that as we level up that the old cards don't become such easy kills and acquisitions that it becomes dull or methodical. Thanks again and God Bless.

It's only required to add the Addon Deck if you are playing more than 4 people as the base game only supports a 4-character game. The Addon simply expands the party size capacity upto 6. The Addon can added immediately; even if you hadn't started the Black Fang adventure.

Has anyone got deck 5 yet? I've noticed it in the webstore. But it is not showing in my subscription. My subscription says the next deck is going to be deck 6 and shows no record of deck 5 in the history.

Ah yes. The perennial "Zees game, eet eez too eazeee!" post.

A particular group with whom I play PACG whips out this line frequently, and almost always in jest and in reference to people coming on these boards with this complaint.

It's interesting that the people who think it's "too eazeee" come here to complain, and get a lot of affirming comments, but those who come on here to say they found a scenario challenging often get told "you're doing it wrong."

Different groups will have different experiences. I would like to think that there is a "bell curve" of perceived or real / measured difficulty with any given scenario. Some people will have lots of lucky rolls and easy random cards in the decks; others will have challenging random draws and poor rolls. Most are probably in the middle. Skill obviously plays a role, too.

It's hard to know which factors combine to leave ten cards in the blessings deck (an experience which could very well be at the extreme end of the bell curve). In addition, anecdotal evidence is, in my view, a bit of an oxymoron. Thus, in my view, the jury's still out and always will be - until, that is, the computerized PACG game (hypothetically, mind you) tracks everyone's play experience(s) and reports it back to Lone Shark for analysis. Real verification on the "too eazeee" front will otherwise be impossible.

I didn't say the game itself was easy, just the last couple of scenarios failed to keep pace with the difficulty level. My team has had it shares of troubles and replays; it's just the last two scenarios in particular do not seem to work.

Red Rum's henchman power didn't have a chance to activate normally as my team were +7/+8 in their base combat rolls, so by the time we determined the number of dice for the check, rolling 1s wouldn't make a difference; it was an auto succeed vs a henchman and the main henchman of the scenario at that. That is an oversight pure and simple. Being able to auto succeed on the primary threats in a scenario is the very definition of 'too easy'. So with this, Red Rum's banish power is nil thereby making Red Rum's other power useless as well; all because the henchman cannot pose a threat.

I see, it's been kinda bothering me why they make cards like these where there is only one of those powers that you'd ever use; so I thought I was missing something fundamental. I see little reason to ever use the display ability over the healing power. Pretty much everything would have to do Structural Damage to make me want to use it that way.

POWERS
Handsize - 6 []7
- Choose 1 ([] 2) spell(s) with that don't have the divine trait. When you cast these spells treat them as a reveal instead of a discard.

- When casting a combat spell you may, reveal,recharge,discard,bury, or banish for a d4, d6 ,d8 ,10, or d12 respectively.

Being able to choose any spell to essentially never leave your hand is too much. Maybe make it similar to the gunner's ability to replace another card instead would be better. Or just give a 'fireball' ability instead at a cost of a card.

As for the second power, I can see this power being abused to forcefully banish a card so they can choose a pick from the box after the scenario is over due to lack of cards.

Anyone else get the feeling that after the midpoint of the adventure deck four that the difficulty just plummeted?

I personally blame the deck B/C henchmen as even with the Veteran power, they are too weak (not even reaching difficulty 15, where other henchman from deck 4 were in the 20s. The gap at this point the game is huge.

The fourth scenario effect where you could lose plunder due to losing to an henchman was pretty much an impossibility; only Hisozath(?) the island turtle from Pinnacle Atoll could pose a threat.

It left us with a feeling of 'was that it?' and wondering if we did something wrong.

Just looking for some clarification before deck 5 is released.

1) If I used the Bottles display power for ship armor, could I later use it's bury power to heal?

2) If displayed, could another character use it's heal power for themselves?

It seems like it should be related to other 'equip ship' items but the wording is different.

Figured as much, just too lazy to actually dig out the book and look it up. ;p

So the gem effectiveness is best for the STR check, but could work with the WIS check if the character has a high natural STR.