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Mandor's page

Goblin Squad Member. 307 posts. 7 reviews. No lists. No wishlists.


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plaidwandering wrote:

If you're not delivering bad touch to opponents then why take cartomancer?

A vast majority of the time you could already deliver heals to party members with a base witch's familiar without risking it.

Why lose the hex and familiar benefits, if you aren't going to do what the archetype brings to the table?

Losing a familiar(and improved familiar possibility) isn't nothing, you need to exploit what you gain in exchange to be worth it

1. Theme.

2. It adds bad touch at range to my repertoire at the cost of a single hex.

3. I don't have to worry about my spell book dying.

The bad touch has been great, especially Touch of Idiocy. I just don't see the value in giving up 2 precious hexes in order to get precise shot. If all opponents are engaged in melee with party members I can use hexes, non-touch spells, or simply ask a party member to 5 foot step away so I can throw a card.


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I also have a level 8 cartomancer. My thoughts:

All my feats have been Extra Hex as hexes are fun and I want as many options as possible. I agree with the guides that say hexes are better than almost all feats, though I do plan to take Accursed Hex at level 9.

I throw cards to heal party members while still cackling or to throw touch spells at targets that are not basing party members. Occasionally that means I ask a party member to take a 5 foot step so I can throw a card. The Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot feats are great if throwing cards is your primary offense (Magus build), but as a witch, throwing cards is a change-up ability I do occasionally.

At level 8, my witch has the following hexes: Cackle, Evil Eye, Flight, Fortune, Healing, Misfortune, Scar, Slumber, and Soothsayer.

Scar allows me to Fortune/Cackle and Heal party members up to a mile away. Great for avoiding movement in combat as well as chase scenes or when the party rogue wants some help in his moonlighting activities.

Soothsayer is a great hex. Normally when I Evil Eye an opponent for -4 to saves the hex ends at the beginning of my turn before I can hit the opponent with a spell or Misfortune. With Soothsayer, the hex starts on the turn the target first makes a save so it's still in affect when it comes to my turn. As a bonus, it also allows me to put Fortune Hexes on customers of my shop or just walk through my town throwing out Fortune Hexes at random.

If your DM allows you to retrain, plan on getting a Cackling Hag’s Blouse as soon as possible and retraining the Cackle hex to something else.


James,

In the tabletop games industry, it's not uncommon for games to miss their release dates. FFG, for instance, has gotten a bit of a reputation for late games. I can't think of any games that released early. Is there a reason why publishers pick a release date which they sometimes miss rather than picking a more conservative date and possibly shipping early?

Thanks.


Four full sets this year. That's very unexpected. And painful. I thought I had plenty of disposable income in my budget to cover all my Pathfinder wants. Guess not. I'm going to have to cut some books and look more to the singles market rather than cases.


jjaamm wrote:
I have players that do historic battles. It dosnt work with fantasy. by the time the players are there own captain and crew they have magic spells. soon they can be throwing mercy fireballs from 1200 feet away with a rod of reach and without it is still 600 feet. My players tried the catapults and ballista once, just to give it a go. After that forget it. this is a fantasy game and spells will trump ship guns every time.

This. 1 or 2 Fireballs will kill enough crew to make a sailing ship uncontrolled.

Military vessels will either use oars and sails or will have some kind of magical defense.


Now that the pledge manager is live, how do I add individual miniatures? The only option is to add one each of the full set. Will the goblinworks store have the individual miniatures for sale later?


How are you handling pursuit of the prey? Each pirate ship pilot needs to make a separate skill check. With a d20, there will likely be differences in their results which means one pirate ship getting to the prey before the other resulting in a 1-on-1 fight (made tougher by the PCs being split between the 2 ships).

If the pirate ships want to stay together, that would mean both pilots accepting the lower of the two skill checks which means a lot more prey escaping (resulting in less plunder and a less happy crew).

As for sea monsters, take a look at the different Sea Serpents in Dead Man's Chest from Necromancer Games.


DraconicBlessing wrote:
I have read some of the concerns about the AP, and I shared them. I feel that the underwater dungeons are a bit much, that the island with swarms is also pretty hardcore for the characters at their level and more.

As Warrant said, the underwater dungeons are fun and unique. Just make sure the players are aware this is a water campaign and there will be underwater adventuring.

The swarms in the 1st module are too powerful for most groups, but it's easy enough to tone them down (a useful DM skill is knowing when to tone down or power up encounters based on your group's capabilities). My group of 5 had only a cleric that channels negative energy to deal with the swarms. So I reduced the swarms to a medium base with 5hp and doing 1d4 damage. The stockade will be the last encounter my players do in module 1 so I'm leaving that swarm as is.

Funny thing, after running out of channels my players wanted to continue exploring the cornfield so I allowed them to use lit torches as improvised weapons for 1d2 damage. Priceless moment #1 - party makes it out of the cornfield and 3 players are surprised they are still on the beach. Priceless moment #2 - when 2 of these players had to make 8+ fort saves vs disease after resting.


Marc Radle wrote:
Oh yeah? What does it look like? Does it look like the mysterious yellow d6 on the main masthead graphic of the shop section of q-workshop's site?

The yellow d6 you mention is for the Kingsburg board game. It's been in the works for a long time but hopefully will release by the end of the year.

The Skull & Shackles prototype d6 is on their facebook page (signing in not required).


Looks like Skull & Shackles is next. Q-Workshop posted a picture of a prototype d6 for the set on their Facebook page.


Erik Mona wrote:

Fire Giant is coming later in this set. A female Cloud Giant was cut from Rise of the Runelords, and is still floating around, waiting for its moment (and for another set where we finally do Huge minis again). There are at least three additional giants currently in production for either Shattered Star or the set after that.

We'll get male and female versions of all the core giants eventually.

Good to hear. I like how Reaper has a male and female of each giant. Unfortunately, I'm not impressed by their look.

The nice thing about how the huges were packaged, it's seems easy to add a six pack to any set. Maybe you could do it once a year.


DeciusBrutus - I count 125 miniatures from the standard case. Looks like you are 2 rares short and 1 uncommon short of normal distribution. Could you please check and see what the 3 missing minis are?

Pygon - Are you sure you received a sealed case? Besides missing 3 rares, you are the only person to report 4 copies of a uncommon and 3 copies of a rare. My inital reaction was it looks like you received 4 bricks rather than a case.

Enlight_Bystand wrote:
Just double checked - definateley 128 minis. I've got one more common than the standard 52, but one less rare - I have exactly one of each medium rare, whilst the standard distribution would have a duplicate of one of them

My fault. I misstyped a rare and had you down for 12 rares.


Received my order tonight but instead of getting a case, I found 4 bricks in the box (not pleased). I ended up with 2 extra commons and short 2 rares. So my data is useless.


Distribution seems pretty even. A standard case should contain 128 miniatures:
52 commons
32 medium uncommons
12 medium rares
24 large uncommons
8 large rares

No very rares this set. There is a possibility Highlady Athroxis and Runelord Karzoug are slightly rarer than the rest of the rares (1 per case rather than 1.1 per case) but we'll need a lot more reports to verify.

Enlight_Bystand - You have one extra mini. Probably a common.

wxcougar - You are short one mini. Probably a common.

Charles Scholz - Thanks for the update. Makes a lot more sense now.


Liz Courts wrote:

I haven't gotten an update on this set yet from our distributor.

Walter, I'm not aware of what is upcoming in future sets, though a Jade Regent one would be super sweet! :D

Liz,

What about the Serpent's Skull dice? Q-Workshop had them at Gen Con (looked great, btw). I expected to be able to buy them here when I got home but they aren't even listed yet.


2.59 for commons
2.29 for uncommons
1.11 for rares
2.40 for large uncommons
1.60 for large rares
Looks like this is the average number of each piece you will find in a case, based on the early case reports.

I am very pleased to not be getting a lot of duplicate rares like we did in H&M. The number of commons and uncommons are still too similar considering, in general, most uncommons are not pieces people will want multiples of while DMs need multiples of the commons. A 3:2:1 distribution ratio would have been better, but this is much improved from H&M's 2.55 : 2.22 : 2 distribution.


Vic Wertz wrote:
I just (re)confirmed that the goal for the first set was near 100% case completion, and the goal for this set is 93%, with the other 7% short one figure.

I can understand the near 100% case completion. Basically, WizKids is saying that's the intention, but mistakes occasionally happen.

93% case completion is odd. The only explanation I can come up with is there will be super rares, at least one of which will be produced in a quantity slightly less than the total number of cases (say 10,000 cases but only 9300 Karzougs, or 9750 each of Karzoug, Lamatar, and Athroxis).


Selgard wrote:
Leaving a bad guy alone for a day after you've announced your presence is usually a pretty good way to find a *much* stronger force awaiting your return- especially when its that smart.

That is the plan. Instead of going through the complex and having many small fights as the module specifies the bad guys are now prepared and will fight in large groups in terrain they choose.

The cave is the location of the first fight. Flooding it will likely surprise the party, will allow the skum stationed there to swim, and will make fireballs much less effective. Unfortunately, I have little experience with underwater fighting and the rules are a bit lighter than I expected.


Selgard wrote:

If you go your way though- Do you have something planned for if this wipes the party?

Not knowing the backstory behind it and all that of course, but it sounds like a simple recipe for them all dying at once.

My experienced players entered a complex under a lake, wasted a lot of resources unnecessarily, then decided to teleport to safety after a "15 minute adventuring day" figuring they would come back the next day completely buffed and power through whatever was left. Their opponents are Int 25 Mi-Go. Both on principle and for story reasons I have to make this tough for them (but do it fairly). If I get a TPK, we move on to Skull & Shackles and hopefully they will have learned a lesson. Worst case scenario, they don't learn anything.


At the next game session, my players are going to teleport into a large cave about 500ft underground which the sorcerer has studied carefully. Since the last time they were there, the cave has been flooded by opening up a tunnel to the lake it is under.

I'd like to make sure I have to following correct so I can adjudicate this properly:

1. The players can hold their breath for a number of rounds equal to twice their constitution. I can find no rules differentiating between taking a deep breath then jumping into water vs being surprised by suddenly finding themselves in water.

2. The sorcerer can teleport the party back out the next round as long as he makes the concentration check for casting underwater (DC 15 + spell level).

3. If the sorcerer fails the concentration check, he begins to drown as casting a spell with a verbal component means he is no longer holding his breath. He falls unconscious (0hp).


Hard to believe none of the convention goers have taken and posted better pics of the mini displays yet. Hopefully someone will by the end of the night.


Vic Wertz wrote:
Grollub wrote:

when will this be coming out??

We don't have a firm date yet, though September seems likely.

Dang. I would love to see this at Gen Con.


I have about 50 Stack-On cases for storing most of my miniatures for D&D and Star Wars. I store the minis standing up which makes them easy to find with the clear plastic top.

For large bases too tall for the Stack-On, I use Artbin Super Satchel cases. Again, I like how the miniatures can be stored standing up making them easy to find.


GentleGiant wrote:
A super majority on paper only. There were dissenters within the Democratic party (e.g. Blue Dogs) - which has always been their downfall. They don't stick together and vote the party line as the Republicans do when it comes to lots of issues.

The Republicans have a few willing to cross party lines. Olympia Snow comes to mind. Unfortunately, the moderates are fast disappearing from Washington.

Pelosi has shown an impressive ability to keep her house members together. Both as minority leader before 2006 and now as well as her time as speaker in between. Boehner wishes he had half her ability.


ciretose wrote:
Really.

Yes really. There are a lot of similarities between the bills, just like there are a lot of similarities between D&D 3.5 and 4E, but the 2000 page Obamacare is not the same bill as the 70 page Romneycare.


ciretose wrote:
"Obamacare" is Romneycare

That's a lie. And a pretty obvious one when you compare the bills.

Pelosi didn't say to read Romneycare because they wanted to pass the same thing and they wanted it out in the open for everyone to read and understand. No. She said the bill had to be passed in order to learn what was in it. Democrats needed to keep it hidden until they had coerced/bribed enough senators to pass it.


Scott Betts wrote:
Mandor wrote:
Neither side is interested in compromise
The Republican party does not want compromise. They do not want everyone to be involved in the process. They do not want a discussion of opinions. They have their goals, and they will accept no action which does not further them.

Odd how you perfectly described the healthcare bill - except that you got the party wrong.

But at least you have the democratic party's spin right. "Democrats bend over backwards to compromise. Republicans never compromise." Sure, Massachusets didn't buy that lie and the super majority disappeared, but if you keep repeating it, you might con some people into believing it.


Neither side is interested in compromise and both parties are bleeding moderates making compromise even less likely in the future.

And while Obama promised to work with Republicans during the campaign, you can't blame him for not following through when the election gave him a super majority for a short time (until Massachusetts voiced their opinion on what the super majority was doing). Unfortunately, that first year set the tone and made compromise nearly impossible afterwards.


Leo_Negri wrote:
There was a redcap in the Dreamblade Miniatures game (Bloodthirsty Redcap, Base Set #78) as well and with re-basing it's pretty close to scale with the pathfinder redcap. (Actually it is a little large, but not too much so, however its axe is waaaaaay oversized for Pathfinder.).

It was also difficult and expensive to get a hold of. I'll be very happy to get a bunch of the Pathfinder Redcaps.


Berk the Black wrote:
It is a shame that the Storm Giant is the first Giant chosen to be female, as it is the only giant WOTC decided to portray as female....

I found that odd as well.

It's also a strange pose... looking up into the air... about to throw a trident. Nice pose for a medium mini but not for a huge.


deinol wrote:
The fact that people care enough to keep talking about it means they already succeeded.

Or maybe it's because they came so close.

Phil Hornshaw has a good article on gamefront. One of his concluding paragraphs is:

Quote:
Arguably, gaming continues to fail as a storytelling medium because of a variety of factors. Mass Effect may be a shining pillar of the medium’s ability to tell meaningful stories in many regards, but because of the ending and its resultant backlash, it has become just as much an example of the failures of the industry to deliver competently all the way through. As a Twitter friend of mine put it, Mass Effect has gone from being a classic to being a case study.

So very, very close.


Tinalles wrote:

If this had been spread out across two sets separated by a few months, I might even have gone for it.

There are a lot of sweet minis in this set. But at that price, all at once? No.

We did know this was going to be more expensive than H&M as the set is larger, huges are part of the set, and the special piece is a gargantuan. I've been putting money aside each week since H&M released figuring I might want 2 cases of this.

The $40 Rune Giant is a much better price than I expected as I had in mind WotC's $75 Orcus.


This is looking like a great set and I'm happy we have some of the product information. But for those of us considering pre-ordering multiple cases, we need to know what the rarity levels mean.

In H&M the rarity levels worked out to 2.55 : 2.22 : 2 : 1.33 (common : uncommon : rare : ultra rare) for the mediums. Excepting the ultra rares, the rest of the rarity levels were almost meaningless.

Should we expect the same rarity levels for the RotR set? Or will we get a much more meaningful difference like 3 : 2 : 1?
(Or more likely 3 : 2 : 1.5 : 1 assuming that WizKids produces secret ultra rares like the usually do).


The Scorpion Style chain is part of the monk's bonus feats. I allow my players to substitute another style for the Scorpion Style if they wish.


Erik Mona wrote:

I know a lot of folks with huge collections of PPMs kind of frown when a set has player character/NPC miniatures, but the nature of the line (and the fact that we can't assume everyone already has giant collections) necessitates a certain amount (a relatively significant amount, in fact) of this type of miniature in our Pathfinder Battles sets.

I've already heard a lot of minis-fiends happy about stuff that can be used as townsfolk, so I'll definitely keep that in mind for the future. But what sort of non-monster, non-furniture miniatures might meet the approval of folks who already have tons of miniatures?

More PCs/NPCs are great pieces to have, even for those of us with large DDM collections and who have raided other lines like Mage Knight. More variety for players to pick from is always a good thing.

The problem with PC figures is what is the pull rate for a case and what percentage of the set are PCs. These are both important factors in deciding how many cases to buy. If there are 2-3 of each PC mini in a case, like H&M, and most DMs prefer to keep only 1 or 2 copies of a PC mini, there is less incentive to buy a second case. If 9 of 40 minis in the set are PC minis, it's now a very easy decision to buy only one case. Convince me to buy two or three cases - make PC minis ultra-rares (one per case).

As for Humanoid minis I'd like to see...
Crossbowman - A useless PC weapon in 3.x but great for minions and guards. Only one we have is from DDM's second set.
Ruffian/Thug - For barfights, back alleys, and press gangs along the docks. Poorly dressed, poorly equipped.
Highwaymen - For the first Kingmaker module.
Sailors/Pirates - Badly needed in the set after RotR. You can't plan for bosses or even a lot of the monsters when an AP isn't written yet, but you can produce the obvious generic pieces.
Barbarians - A PC and generics. We have some, but nothing my players want to pick or I'm happy to put on the table.
Half-Orcs - Same as Barbarians.
Generic elves in respectable clothing
Scantily clad female with concealed dagger - assassin or disguised succubus
PC minis with Falchions - a favorite weapon of min/maxers
Minis to represent guards of an evil temple - preferably 2 minis similar to the great Watch minis from H&M
Female minis - I was happy to see a lot of females in H&M and look forward to getting more


Excellent pieces. Two useful non-combatants and the Skinsaw Man is amazing.

My only concern is how many there will be in a case. What will a rare mean in RotR? In H&M, a case averaged 2 of each rare but only 2.55 of each common. Most cases had one rare with a quantity of 3 and one commmon with a quantity of 1. Will RotR be similar? Will it be possible to pull 3 rare Aldern Foxgloves but only 1 common Sinspawn?


Impressive. Both the Bard and Elf Archer fill holes from DDM. I just hope they are all rares and the rarity levels are more differentiated than with Heroes and Monsters.


Cpt_kirstov wrote:
Taliesin Hoyle wrote:

I ordered a case with dragon for $200 in November from a company called Popular Collections. I emailed them a couple of days ago to ask for a tracking number, or to confirm the minis have been shipped, and they have not responded, then I googled them, and found plenty of Heroclix collecters have had issues with them in the past.

Caveat Emptor and all that, but still an excellent price, as long as we get our minis.

Card was charged at the time we ordered in November.

Yeah, they are pretty notorious for only preordering what was ordered in the first few days, and then scrambling for stock to cover the orders made after that. They usually fill everything, but they're a month behind.

I used to order SWM and DDM from them. Best price on the Web, but most of the time it took a month to get my case which meant I was a month behind on trading and buying singles. With WizKids printing a set very close to pre-orders, I would not be comfortable ordering WK minis from Popular Collections.


@Mathwei ap Niall - Bricks 1 and 3 are both short 3 boosters.


Joey Virtue wrote:
Low My spectre got knocked off the table and shattered

Wow. How many pieces did it break into?


Updated spreadsheet. 57 case reports. 45 detail brick reports. Colors indicate oddities.


brock wrote:
Mandor wrote:
brock wrote:


Vic, I've not ground the statistics myself, but I think that we have seen only the results of order 100 cases being opened on the boards. I think that the confidence levels in the statistics presented are still low.

Depends on what you are looking at.

It's certain the Chimera, Manticore, Giant Caveweaver Spider, Frost Giant, Succubus, Lich, and Vampire are ultra-rares. Every reported case has fit the pattern.

I'm not disputing that it's likely to be the case. I'm saying that I don't think that 100 samples is enough to achieve statistical significance.

We might just be seeing an effect of the kind where someone packing three items into a case with both hands will pick right-left-right, and then repeat for the next case.

Sure, packing like that has happened before. One report from opening LotR Heroclix was a store received 8 identical cases - an obvious case of clustering considering the chase pieces in the set and cases generally did not come with a complete set of commons.

But that theory doesn't hold water here. The case reports are from cases received from all the different sources - Paizo, at least 4 online retailers, and retail stores. There is no clustering.

So we have case reports from a wide variety of sources all showing the same thing with no exceptions, we have opening day singles availability numbers from 2 online retailers, we have singles pricing consistent across all "reasonable" singles resellers (Paizo has never been known for reasonable pricing), and we have the set list with the 7 ultra-rares listed last. It's certain.


brock wrote:
Vic Wertz wrote:

All I'm really prepared to say about aspects of randomization are that I've been surprised by a lot reading the customer case reports from Heroes & Monsters, and I was the project coordinator and printer liason for Magic: The Gathering for a couple of years, so practical randomization is not exactly a new concept to me. I also popped a *lot* of D&D Minis cases for sale as singles her at Paizo.

The biggest surprise is that I was expecting the difference between rarities to be more sharply defined, and the variation within a given rarity to be a bit lower.

Vic, I've not ground the statistics myself, but I think that we have seen only the results of order 100 cases being opened on the boards. I think that the confidence levels in the statistics presented are still low.

Depends on what you are looking at.

It's certain the Chimera, Manticore, Giant Caveweaver Spider, Frost Giant, Succubus, Lich, and Vampire are ultra-rares. Every reported case has fit the pattern. Based on math and confirmed by case reports, we also know the average pull rates from a case are 2.55 of each common, 2.22 of each uncommon, 2 of each medium rare, 2 of each large rare, 1.33 of each ultra-rare, and 1 of each large ultra-rare. So we know there is little difference between a common, uncommon, and rare.

Other observations are only speculation and we will probably never have enough case reports to prove them. Things like cases generally have exactly one common with a quantity of 1 and exactly one common with a quantity of 4. And the Medusa's pull rate is so high it could be considered an uncommon while the Gnome/Rat booster's pull rate is so low it could be considered a rare.


bigkilla wrote:
So I got the full set with each case. Looks like 83 figures from each case.

Looks like you also got identical cases. All 4 bricks in case 1 exactly matched the 4 bricks in case 2.


Pader wrote:
Has anyone tried dipping pre-painted plastic minis in the Army Painter's Quick Shade? How does it come out?

Really well.

For the last three weeks, I've been testing the MinWax PolyShade and Army Painter Quick Shade on cheap, extra minis, learning how the dip method works and getting comfortable with it. Army Painter works better for me as it's a bit thinner and slopping on with a paint brush works better than dipping. This weekend I started doing some keeper minis - the Orc Brute and some Heroclix and WoW minis.

The Brute came out great with a slightly darker skin color and good shading in all crevices of a sculpt I now like a lot more. I'm going to Quick Shade all my Pathfinder Orcs and probably pick up some more from the singles market. I tried taking a picture, but can't get the light right to show the contrast in shading.

I also plan to do a lot of Mage Knight, Horrorclix, Heroclix, and WoW minis as these lines had a number of nice sculpts with plain paint jobs. The pieces I did this weekend, like Heroclix Boon which will make a good monk, transformed from bland paint jobs to solid minis that look much better on the table.

I don't think I will do any other Pathfinder minis. None of them really need it like the orcs do. I also don't think I'll do any of the Arkham Horror monsters I got this week.


thenobledrake wrote:
I just put in my order for the whole set plus dragon (and an extra frost giant) between Paizo and Auggie's, and I am getting that night before Christmas and I still believe in Santa sort of feeling.

Did you order some Dungeon Crawler minis as well? I received my Kraken Tentacles and Plant Vines along with the Pathfinder single I order and was very pleased with all of them.


Cpt_kirstov wrote:
Anguish wrote:
To be fair - and I'm almost always on Paizo's side - nothing says anything about the scale of this production run. I'm sure it wasn't truly small, but we have no current way to know how many cases were created.
This is normal for wizkids... many of their last few heroclix sets sold out before they even shipped

Yep. WizKids produces quantities very close to the preorders for a set. The major positive of this approach is WK won't lose money on a set (like WizKids/Topps did and WotC did) which keeps them in business. The negative is demand can exceed supply.


sveden wrote:
Anyone want to play "Guess the missing booster?"

Based on your case contents and the limited brick breakdowns we have, I'd guess a toss up between a Human Rogue or Human Ranger. I'll go Ranger.


Sveden – Your report is one booster short. Probably an uncommon from Brick 4.

Enlight_Bystand – Thanks for the detailed report. The Set Summary was short two uncommons which were easy enough to find from the bricks – Elf Wizard and Human Druid should both be 2.

goldsaturn27 – Report is missing one booster. Probably a common.

Bagpuss – Report has two extra boosters. Uncommons are 3 higher than normal and rares are 1 less than normal.

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