First of all I want to say I love this game, and I played through the Burnt Offerings adventure multiple times and finally got The Skinsaw Murders yesterday, already playing 4 out of 5 scenarios of it last night, and I'm eagerly awaiting more of it. Kudos to the team!
In my eagerness for future adventures I got to thinking about how the card pool is going to improve as per the Rise of the Runelords adventure path rules regarding banishing cards with the Basic (and later, Elite) trait. I know it isn't relevant yet, because the Hook Mountain Massacre isn't out yet, but in thinking ahead, I'm a little unclear about a few details.
As currently written, the bane card pool is going to steadily improve (i.e. get harder), because all you generally do with banes is banishing them, which then removes the Basic (and later Elite) ones from the card pool.
The boon card pool, on the other hand, looks to improve much more slowly, because banishing boons is actually not that simple.
As I see it, the main two ways in which you can banish a boon is either if you fail to acquire it, or if you close a location deck that still includes some boons. There are some cards that get banished on use, but that's not the norm, and there's some other card effects (like the When Closing effect on some locations) that banish boons, but also not something that happens too often.
I read up on rebuilding the deck between scenarios, and the rulebook says "If you have cards left over after rebuilding all of the surviving characters’ decks, put them back in the box."
Now my questions are as follows:
Should this read "banish" instead of "put back in the box"? That way you could get rid of unwanted Basic boons even though you'll be acquiring them quite often during the game, since many of them are easy to acquire, and you'll often have many of them left over after rebuilding your decks.
If the answer to this is "no, they should be put back in the box, and you won't get rid of Basic boons that way", that opens up two further questions:
When I encounter a boon, do I HAVE to attempt the check to acquire it, or can I simply choose to fail it, if I would rather banish that boon to get rid of it from the card pool?
If I do have to attempt the check, do I have to acquire the card when I succeed on the check (or when there is no check at all), even if I would rather banish it to improve the card pool for future scenarios?
If all of these are used as currently written in the rules, the card pool for banes will improve much faster than for boons, and some cards specificially, for example Blessing of the Gods, are going to be quite hard to get rid of.
Hoping for some insight on this matter so I can put my mind to rest and also so I know for sure how things are supposed to work once The Hook Mountain Massacre comes out!
You are definitely not required to pick up a boon. With our late-game characters we've stopped even trying for things like Potions or Daggers, to avoid bloating our decks (and also to reduce post-game clean-up).
Half-considering stenciling in "and also Potions" to the "You may banish a boon with the Basic trait" in the next expansion. :D I think I can count the times where we just happened to have the potion, and actually used it at a time where it would've mattered, on two fingers.
Thanks for pointing that out, I missed that. So you may banish any boons you encounter rather than acquiring them.
That still doesn't answer my main question however. Specifically with Blessing of the Gods, I see practically no reason why you wouldn't want to acquire it during the game, so it would feel a little frustrating if you encounter it and even though it would be good for you during that scenario to acquire it, you shouldn't because it won't improve the blessing pool in the long run.
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It never really hurts to pick up a blessing if you can (of course there are a few exceptons.) BoG is useful even if only to explore again.
If you are short a blessing when you reconstruct your deck, BoG will be the one that you have to take to fill things out. I see no drawback in acquiring it when encountered.
It's an interesting point about what happens to cards you acquired but decided that you didn't want to keep. I always just thought they would be 'banished' back to the box. But the wording does just say 'Put all other cards back into the box'.
I wonder if this is the intent? (i.e. that, as you pointed out, the boon pool improves much more slowly than the banes)
But it's possible that you don't want to explore your location. But it doesn't matter; you can't not acquire BotG I think.
But that's actually kind of interesting for an edge case.
Let's say (for the purposes of discussion) you banish all BotG from your pool. There are 13 named blessings up to the HMM (each adventure pack except for 5 gets a new one). That equates to 65 blessings.
You have 30 blessings for the blessing deck; if you have Sajan (8 + card feats), Seelah (6 + card feats), Kyra (6 + feats), Lem (5 + feats), that's already 55 blessings. If you have a 6 person game you can include 2 more characters with 4 blessings each. And you can add more due to card feats (you get two from the first two adventure packs). Let's say each of those characters choose as many blessings as possible for their card feats.
It's possible to run out of blessings for even the blessings deck (I'm not saying it's likely, but possible). What happens in that case? I would say you don't get 30 cards in the blessings deck and you should examine why exactly you did such a silly thing (maybe you always wanted a chance to recharge, I don't know). But what about constructing the locations? Do you construct the location blessings first or make the blessing deck first?
Again, it's a silly edge case but inquiring minds like to know :)
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If cards are removed from the game as you encounter them, it should be unlikely that Blessing of the Gods cards will all be removed...it's really not too often that a location deck has more than one blessing in it. It's also not really all that attractive to remove those from the game, either, as they're auto-acquire and versatile. Parties that eventually remove all BotG from the game also remove that auto-acquire boon and turn it into a usually-5-check boon...many characters don't have the Divine skill to really capitalize on that check...and seriously: who's going to burn a blessing to boost a check to acquire a blessing?
There's a very interesting / ingenious dynamic in the game where you have some cards that are more difficult under Blessing of the Gods turns on the blessings deck. Early on, you're unlikely to have a lot of specific blessings...if and when the party decides to get those other blessings into the deck, the banes that love BotG get more difficult. The party actually has control of this: they could make such banes easier, but at the cost of controlling the blessings available to them (and losing the once-in-a-blue-moon recharge ability for blessings).
Chief Technical Officer
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It's possible to run out of blessings for even the blessings deck (I'm not saying it's likely, but possible). What happens in that case? I would say you don't get 30 cards in the blessings deck and you should examine why exactly you did such a silly thing (maybe you always wanted a chance to recharge, I don't know). But what about constructing the locations? Do you construct the location blessings first or make the blessing deck first?
You're told to build the location decks before you create the blessings deck.
And then there's this bit: "If you need to summon or add a number of cards and there aren’t enough copies of that card in the box, the current player decides how to distribute the cards that are there; ignore the rest." While the rules to "Create the Blessings Deck" uses the word "draw" rather than "add", I'd say that the same applies—if you've banished so many blessings that you can't build a full blessings deck, that's your own problem.
However, I'm not clear on how you're banishing all of those Blessings of the Gods. As it stands, the cards you're choosing not to use at the end of a scenario are put back in the box, not banished, and, as pointed out, you automatically acquire Blessings of the Gods, so they're not subject to the "banish if you fail to acquire" rule. And if you're not banishing them, the "remove from the game" rule from the AP card never comes into play.
(To be clear here, they're not Basic because we want you to be able to weed them out—they're Basic because we want you to be able to use them in starting decks.)
Well, you can banish BotGods by closing locations... in my game tonight I think three or four were banished this way during one scenario (they got in there when a Villain escaped and we had six open locations). So I guess it's possible to banish them.
By the way, Vic, thanks for clarifying that cards not used for deck-building are just put back into the box (not banished back to the box), hence are not eligible to be removed during the higher level adventures.
However, I'm not clear on how you're banishing all of those Blessings of the Gods. As it stands, the cards you're choosing not to use at the end of a scenario are put back in the box, not banished, and, as pointed out, you automatically acquire Blessings of the Gods, so they're not subject to the "banish if you fail to acquire" rule. And if you're not banishing them, the "remove from the game" rule from the AP card never comes into play.
(To be clear here, they're not Basic because we want you to be able to weed them out—they're Basic because we want you to be able to use them in starting decks.)
That's why I called it a silly edge case :) It was never meant to be realistic except in a totally artificial scenario.
But since you asked, my theoretical party kept failing HMM scenario 1 by running out the blessing deck, after defeating Henchmen/Villains at the earliest possible opportunity to banish location piles. Or using Shrine to Lamashtu's two banish abilities (when closing, and when it's permanently closed. Since you draw random blessings from the box, it's even better). Or using Town Square/Village House/General Store's on close banish. Then the party has to banish enough to make at least 1 deck lack blessings. I'm probably missing some other ways to banish blessings/cards.
@redred81 - read everything on the Rise of the Runelords "Adventure Path" card and then it should be clearer :)