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That looks like some really obnoxious armor. Doesn't he ever take it off? I mean, who needs armor for drinking wine?


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I really hope that she an Gom-Gom are in the ACG, though I wonder how they'd implement her powers.


The Skull Bomb cracks me up. I may build a goblin just so to use it and not lose it.

My party freed Arue the other night, spent last night cobbling together a deck for her to replace Adowyn. It's going to be tough going without a healing scout until I can unlock her redeemed role powers.


The Knight Argent wrote:

I think Vic is saying that the Owner mechanic overrides the "no loot" rule.

That's how I read it as well, which makes sense because the owner mechanic trumps all the other requirements for building a deck, it would make less sense for it to override everything BUT loot instead of just being a blanket override.


Mike Selinker wrote:

Note that Tower of the Fourth Sphere says "a player," not "a player who is already playing another character." So this is an excellent time to invite a friend to join you.

More on this subject when Paul's blog goes live on Tuesday.

I didn't think of that! Looks like my party is expanding to 5!


I'm really torn who I can have leave the party to make room for Arueshalae, she looks so cool! Maybe Seelah will get a vision she's needed elsewhere...


Beware, Spoilers below!

So I just received my subscription copy today and while I have yet to tackle the first scenario I have had had a chance to flip through some of the cards. I am just blown away by how awesome this deck is, it takes the bar set with Sword of Valor and jumps over it by a country mile.

I'm going to start gushing about cards below this line...:

Arueshalae?! New character?!?! A freaking playable demon?!?! Stats seem very interesting, she's a ranged weapon user with ok base stats and a huge charisma. Her powers look interesting, she has Enora's shield built in and the potential to use corrupted cards freely is awesome.

Rod of Viper, can be used as a normal weapon or plant it in the ground before you explore and have it attack all your banes the rest of your turns? It makes me think about some sort of Harry Dresden type shenanigans.

Sawtooth Saber?!??! Designed to make multi tear enemies easier! "If you succeed at your first check to defeat a bane that requires sequential checks to defeat, the difficulty of checks to defeat during this encounter is decreased by 5." Unbelievable!

Create Spiked Pit- finally the banes feel the pain of traps. A non attack damage spell, perfect for Balazar. Can be discarded and used as an evade or used during your combat check for big damage.

Hellmouth Lash is another beast! You can use the 2d6+1 with arcane, isn't OR melee! This spell came out of Crowe's wildest dreams. Fail the attack roll? No, you get to auto evade the bane.

I could keep going about pretty much every boon, this set really ramps up your decks, which is good because yard trash like the road demon are a 28?! To defeat. Can't wait to really dig into this set!


Does your Balazar have the ability to spend monsters to help with barriers yet? If so you can have him discard spells to get monsters to help, then you won't need to use blessings on him. Other than that it's going to be all about the medals you have, the allies you have, and your buff spells. also keep an eye out for the horn that gives bonuses against armies, I believe I used that a lot. Armies are definitely easier with a smaller party, my group was built to complement each other so I have Aowyn for ranged and stealth, Seelah for divine, diplomacy, and Melee, Enora for knowledge and arcane, and Balazar for str, char, and arcane. It took me until about half way through AD2 to start to appreciate Balazar's ability to discard spells for monsters, having a 4 monster hand makes most checks fairly trivial (provided they use the right stat.

One thing you might want to do is put Kyra first in turn order. That way on your first check if you get an army right away she has her full mitt of cards, then she will have a fresh hand as you power through the first location or two.


Well dang, looks like I now have no idea what I'm using the tuning fork for. Oh well, it was a fun plan until the rules got in the way;p


Radiance is one of the main reasons I went with Seelah instead of Crowe or Alain in my party. Between that and her recently redeemed +3 mace she's a sword and board machine!


I personally plan on using mine to channel the location that lets you redeem corrupted cards.


Feel free to talk about wine any time! I live in the middle of Oregon wine country and usually have a bottle open when I'm playing, coincidentally, I also live in the middle of Oregon beer country, so on those occasions I don't have wine I have a bottle of beer.


I'm surprised that it's just armies that are causing you to burn tons of cards. I'm running Balazar, Enora, Aowyn, and Seelah, and pretty much any of the "everyone in he party gets hit" type barriers cause me to use up at least one characters hand. This is one of the things I love about this set, I really have to think about evrlery move I make and prepare for contingencies. I also burn a lot more turns healing up instead of in RotR where you just keep pushing guns blazing without worry. Character movement, grouping vs spreading out, turn order, etc all play a huge role! I have yet to lose to an army, though many were close, but this is because I usually don't explore the next turn after one if one of my characters is low on cards in their hand. Of course this also slows my gameplay down a bit, my group of three players with one AP guy (not me) churns out scenarios about 1 an hour or so, each WotR takes me about 2 hours solo, and afterwards I'm mentally spent, and I love it! One thing that helps is keeping an assortment of allies with you at all times, allies that give you noncombat stat bonuses have been huge, I have had to fight the instinct of just using them as explore fodder. I also have balanced out Enora's deck with spells that boost other stats, Sagacity lets me use Seelah on a divine check to defeat an army, Glibness can help with a diplomacy check, Etc... Also, don't be afraid to use those corrupted blessings even if the top of the blessing deck is corrupted, 2d on a roll can be huge even at the cost of tossing away another card. It boils down to, would you rather beat it and rest a turn, or it and suffer the consequences.

Being able to cycle your deck is the most important ability in WotR, if the bulk of your party doesn't have a way to cycle cards you're in for a very tough time. Enora ends up playing like a versatile Sajan with her ability to pull spells that she's played back into her deck, by the end of most scenarios she's seeing the same spells she just played drawn right back into her hand, Balazars top decking his cards to activate Padrig is huge, in a worst case scenario where he's had to fight or make str checks out of his turn being able to pull important cards out of harms way has been life saving. I keep the loot shard on him that gives the user a one time heal if buried, so once it's in hand I usually make it my prime top deck card, so I always know where it is keeping it safe from hand wipe until I need it. Aowyn is constantly recycling good cards to pull her wolf back into hand, which in turn lets me protect a heal that was drawn too early.

I think one of the things that would make the armies crazy hard would be using home brewed characters. The heroes in the box are designed with an eye towards this set and the challenges it poses, if you're using home brewed they don't take into account things that may be important in these later scenarios simply because they weren't made by the devs, it is impossible for their creators to know what to expect. Wrath is geared so strongly towards party make up and synergies that I could easily see people getting to a point where they face nearby winnable conditions simply because they are too clustered in their skills. That said the one thing that really makes me cringe is thinking of the Abbotier (sp?) with 6 members in your party, yikes!


As other people suggested, I'm not sure why this location wouldn't be your priority to close first? When I played through it I put all four characters there and powered right through it, then spread out after that. I found this scenario to actually be fairly easy once we closed the chasm, I ended up having to kill the villain twice but by the second time I knew where he was and made sure I could temp close all the locations before the final encounter. With Radiance on hand I think Seelah had something like a +9 or so on her attempt against him.


You're going to coast through AD1 now, my solo party of Balazar, Enora, Aowyn, and Seelah got very lucky on 0.2 and we beat it first try (1 blessing left and everyone almost dead, I have no desire to ever play it again) but we found 0.5 incredibly difficult and got smacked around by it a bunch. Despite people thinking Enora was too weak, she's definitely my go to closer, especially once you get mythic roles, her shield has saved my bacon multiple times and her sheer dmg output is second to none, especially when I have her follow Aowyn around to scout locations for her. Who has been your groups villain killer?


The thing everyone is forgetting that has been reiterated by the devs repeatedly is you do not have an option with boons, you have to make a check when you encounter them, even if you don't want them.


I always forget about Padraig giving scenario bonus.


That should be legal as long as she doesn't try to play another spell during that check.


For more info on the brilliance Enora dynamic this thread sums it up quite well http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2sc5i?Enora-power-timing.

Joe Homes pretty much summed up everything I was originally trying to say though, the whole point isn't infinite out how to play with a small hand before the damage hits. The more you can recharge the better. Actual damage will still hurt, but since the casters don't have the luxury of armor or a lot of cards then can discard without worry. Anytime Enora or Balazar take actual damage they feel it. Wrath really demands a balanced party through the base adventure, the first scenario in deck 1 is much more in line with the previous games, still harder than RotR but much less so than the base adventure, I still used all my heals but I for once I only had 1 char (Balazar) on the brink of death, but since I tend to play him a little recklessly so that I can get monsters in hand he's pretty much always a hand wipe from death. I think you really need to be reckless in your card playing with the casters to get the most out of them in this set, yeah you will be walking a fine line between life and death but if you build them to just use Attack spells and only play one spell a turn you're destined to get wiped without actually accomplishing anything beforehand. When/if she gets hit I want to have recharged as many cards bedorhsnd as possible. The absolute queen for recharging is the hunter, she's incredible and unfortunately I feel that the biggest flaw in Wrath is that she almost feels necessary for any party to survive. She makes every party more survivable.


Dave Riley wrote:

Not at the moment of the Combat check. Brilliance doesn't have a "Before You Act" stipulation that would allow you to do that. Though you could do an end run around that if the bane required an Intelligence/Knowledge check Before You Acted, for example. I think Carter is saying you could already have Brilliance primed, or you could've played Good Omen on another character's check to acquire. Basically, keep your hand small before trouble starts.

(not always an option, of course; on the first two turns of AP2 Kyra and Adowyn suffered back to back hand wipes from, you guessed it, a Carrion Golem and a Demonic Horde)

See I knew someone would be able to explain it better! By playing your buffs outside the actual encounter you've pulled them from your hand, recharged a spell from your discard pile and provided help to either yourself or someone else on their checks as well as given you a chance to recharge them regardless of how crappy the rest of your turn plays out. The only card you will be playing on actual checks are the attack spell and then possibly your mirror image/arcane armor (which I don't believe is in WotR but could be brought in through a class deck). My buff spells will be out of hand long before that encounter card has been flipped, sometimes you get extra lucky and the monster that is about to while you is using fire and cold and you can using an extra attack spells to power your special ability, turning what could have been disaster into basically just a hand reset (I say hand reset because all the cards you've played and hopefully recharged leading up to that point, I'm not saying the ability actually resets your hand).

The caster is still fragile, bad rolls still hurt them worse, but they are still surprisingly more resilient than I ever expected.


What I mean is I play brilliance at the second it gets in my hand so it cycles, you will eventually get to the point where you thin your deck out enough you are seeing the same spells every turn to every other turn. So I don't just wait for a monster to appear, I always have it going if possible, and yes you can play more than one brilliance on yourself (can't find link but it was confirmed in another thread). You could in theory have a turn where you have glibness, brilliance, and agility all in play. Those spells get played and then all checks for that turn receive the bonus, much like how you play a cloud spell out of combat so then it effects all combat checks that turn. I'm not sure how you could ever win a fight with just brilliance since you can't attack with your intelligence, though I guess it would help acquiring items or what not but that seems like a waste to only play it for that.

For being such a simple card game he depth of the rules at times can be quite staggering. It took me forever (and multiple posts of being hit over the head with the rules) before ttr concept of skills versus check clicked with me. The people on these forums are absolutely wonderful resources and I'm sure one of the powers that be (or hawkmoon, sandslice, etc) will post soon to either confirm or deny and properly explain things.


Donny Schuijers wrote:
You can only play one spell per check though, so if you encounter Carrion Golem, you can't just hammer down all your spells with Enora (or any caster).

Ah, but that's where you're wrong, there are some spells that you can play on checkd with other spells, like mirror image. Also, there are lots of spells you can play outside of checks, such as brilliance and good omen. With having 6 cards in hand, 6 of which are spells at the start, there is a good chance I will always have multiple spells in hand. The only way I get in a lot of trouble is if I have too many Attack spells since those are as you correctly pointed out 1 card per check. Also, with Enora your items should be books, and there are books that have recharge abilities, so I'm using those every opportunity I get as well. I guess I should have said in my original post, on every turn I'm playing as many spells as I can and not just if I think I'm going to wipe.

None of this is to say that if you play Enora like this you will never die, that's just crazy talk, what I'm just saying is that I treat her more like Sajan where I've built her to constantly play things that get recharged each turn, with the added bonus that I can heal myself while doing it provided I have spells that I lost as damage or botched my recharge roll (which does happen a fair amount). Even when I have a bad turn of dice rolling chances are I will be able to pull those spells right back the very next turn, plus having party members that can heal around helps (but that helps no matter what character you are).

To be really successful you still want to figure it a party that has scouting and place Enora behind them, this has saved my bacon many times, where I've looked ahead to see what's coming before I send Enora in, I rarely have her go into a location blind if I can help it, whereas Balazar with a few monsters, Alain, or Seela can pretty mich just stomp right in weapons/spells/monsters blazing. Turn order plays a huge roll in this versus RotR where you can lead off with Kyra face first into a monster heavy location and usually survive.


Wow that is an absolutely ton of traits! Only other one I saw missing is aberration from ally (from the silly little carbuncle).


I have found that I focus a lot more on scouting and closing locations as soon as possible, also making sure to have some healing around at all times. I have Enora in my solo party and I make sure to have more than just Attack spells in her deck. Her ability to cycle and recharge spells is amazing, and people forget to use it defensively when fighting the golem. If it looks like I'm going to hand wipe i play as many spells as I can before hand to fatten my deck back up. Her ability to recharge a spell from discard is huge, she usually has the most cards left in her deck of my entire party by the time a scenario is over. Spells like Brilliance have been invaluable to her since they a)pull a spell out of discard but b) let her still play yet another spell or spells during the rest of her turn. So even when she does occasionally hand while I am pulling at least 1 if not 2 of those wiped spells back into her hand each turn afterwards. also it is important to remember people can play blessings on any check, not just combat, so on those precombat checks that could potentially cripple her sometimes get more blessings okayed on them than on the actual combat. And when all else fails she's still a d6 str. Against the summoner villain she actually took out the pet with her bare hands and a corrupted blessing.


I feel this is offset by the cards that keep popping up that say "if you have the summoner trait add 1d8 to the check..." Or the cards that have "banish to..." Next to them. He is spectacular in he last scenario of the base set, probably the only reason I won.


I had little interest in Ezren at first, then tossed him in my solo party for RotR and fell in love, now he's my main character in my groups play through for RotR.


Except you'd just be banishing s basic spell that you can replace after the scenario, plus I'd rather have 3d4 that 1d12 +1. I prefer having a range of possible outcomes on my rolls in WotR be as small as posible thus having possible results of 3-12 > 2-13. now if I had a blessing is rather just use that on a melee attack and get the 2d12, so I agree if using a blessing melee is the way to go. The problem with Crowe though is his lack of explore power and no allies means I'm using blessings with him mainly to get extra explores.


Torture Chamber is just nasty. Once I realized it didn't matter where my guys were, they were getting hit anyway, I stacked the party there and closed it as fast as I could, then went to Manor House to restock. I think this strategy is the only reason I beat the third scenario.


See that's the problem I was having, I was seeing Glibness as affecting the skill, despite everyone reminding over and over that it only effects checks where the root is in charisma.


I think I see the difference, the key being the language on glibness, I think I was zoomed in too closely on each individual skill instead of stepping back and looking at what Glibness said it actually affected. So, Glibness would only help Balazar if he were casting an arcane spell since his arcane skill uses a charisma check? Now do sill points I put into charisma still get used on these strength checks since those points aren't likited only to charisma checks?


I get the difference in the Mythic path though, in that case I would be double dipping from the same skill, here you aren't. You're casting a spell to modify something that is a named element of a characters power.
This whole issue definitely lends itself down a slippery slope and ultimately could lead to a question of why were the cards and skills set up the way they are, what's the point of ever putting a + in charisma if it doesn't do anything for the base power and under that theory why even make Balazar a Charisma caster? At the endgame will he even be viable? Of course I still have faith in you guys so I'm anxious to wait and see how he progresses.


I still don't get the whole argument that Glibness doesn't apply to the Padrig checks. I understand that the arcane trait is not added to the check, to me that means the actual train"arcane" doesn't get added to the check I'm making, I.e. My combat does not include the term arcane, which is very relevant when I'm trying to acquire a boon that gives me one value for a str or combat check to acquire and a lower value if I use arcane. I get it there, I don't get to use all those dice and then go after the lower arcane check. This is saying I get to use my arcane skill. My arcane skill is 1d10(+ whatever my chsridms bonus is)(+2). So if I have +1 to charisma my arcane skill by definition is 1d10+1 +2, or in reality it means my arcane skill is anywhere between 4-14 depending on how the dice shake out. That range is what all those olus and dice mean, that range IS how skilled I am at arcane, those pluses are not traits, they're the modifiers that give you your range when using that skill. this is also more consistent with how the term "trait" is used. Traits are the words associated with skills and checks, they've never been the die modifiers. I think we're trying to break things down so much we lose the intent and meaning of what we're doing. If Balazar has worked hard and trained to give himself a bonus to make him better at arcane he doesn't suddenly forget that spell casting ability when he's using a skill that relies on it. The primary reason for a char spellcaster to use glibness is to make his magical powers stronger, the primary benefit of Balazar is that his magical powers enhance his pets, it would be rediculous to not allow him to do that heck, I would contend it makes more sense for him to only get modifiers on char than on str since he's not the one actually doing the punching, but that would require even more complicated rulings. Now I know the majority will disagree with me here, but this is the only way the rules make sense to me from a thematic standpoint, and that is why I play this game.

Worse comes to worse my interpretation becomes a house rule, but that's the beauty of games like his versus video games, here we are given the tools and framework to play the game as we the consumer deem fit, and I think Vic, Mike, Paul and everyone else involved have done an amazing job providing that for us.


So far I'm 3-0 in the base set adventures, however I have to say these are incredibly difficult and have really stretched my brain to navigate. RotR felt like a fun light dice chucker on par with Elder Signs where as WotR gives me the satisfying brain burn of Mage Knight or Robinson Crusoe. It is by no means impossible but sometimes you just have to accept that his is about survival and not dominating the scenario, you can't afford to have junk cards, and every boon is worth going after if for no other reason than to have it in hand to discard later. I'm loving it! Balazar is definitely one of the most unique characters I've used I a game like this, I love that I'm constantly trying to get in fights with him to fuel my monster card engine.

I haven't played S&S yet but if you like challenging coops then you really can't go wrong with WotR. I am looking forward to catching my breath once I start deck 1.


I had a similar question, glad you asked MSpekkio!