A simple way to add more story to your exploration


Homebrew and House Rules


In this variant you use actions instead of the normal move then explore.
The actions are as follows.

Move - move to another location

Move and explore - move to another location and explore.

Explore - When exploring a location with no current encounter cards, roll a d4 -1 (minimum result is 1) and flip that many cards, you must then encounter a card in the following order. Monsters - henchmen - barriers - villains -boons.
If you explore a location that already has face up encounter cards choose a card in the correct order to encounter.
The cards stay face up until they are all encountered in the correct order, or until a power, skill or action sees them shuffled back into the location deck our banished.

Villains still act the same as before.

Run away - if there are no barriers face up at your location you can choose to move to another location, move to another location and explore or move on at the same location.

Move on - If you start your turn at the same location and there are no banes, shuffle all current face up cards at the current location and explore again

Evade - immediately after flipping for exploration you can choose to shuffle all of the cards back into the location deck.

Hide - If you start at a location that already has an encounter you can choose to hide and not encounter a card this turn but You can still heal etc.

I have thoroughly tested this variant and I like it alot.
It feels like there are locations within the locations and allows for allot more teamwork with the ability to let the right character deal with the right cards.

Let Valeros do the initial explore and deal with any may monster that he is forced to encounter and then Lem can pick up the awesome spell the monster dropped. It makes allot more sense to me.

Let me know what you think.


Sry Adam I have to disagree. Your set up is only good for weapon base characters that can reuse a single weapon over and over.

Also by exploring up to three card per search you basically remove the threat of the blessing deck (timer).

If I was playing Lem I would be bored of playing really fast. Your setup removes the mystery of what around the next corner (card), when you flip three cards you know what is next, you know what cards to hold for which encounter and what you can poor onto an encounter.

It looks to me form your post is that you are basically forming one character out of two. Either Val is the strong arm for Lem, so he can safely gather all the goodies, or Lem is the pocket healer/boon collector for Val.

Sry for disagreeing, but for me the mystery of the next card, and the can I defeat that card when I explore too far is part of the excitement for me. I understand that everyone's play styles are different and mine has lead to the death of character before.


This seems like it would make the game a bit too easy, no?

I also feel it would cause turns to last much longer, and discount a lot of the powers from characters who have the evade or scout/oracle type abilities.


Thanks for the feedback guys. I think I have to be a little clearer with my wording. You can only encounter 1 card when exploring.

I will try to explain how it would work in action.

Say Lem and Valeros are both at the same location. Flip a blessing for the timer. Valeros explores and rolls a d4 -1, the result is a 4 so he flips 3 cards. A warewolf, bandit and an item. Valeros must encounter a card and chooses to encounter the warewolf. He passes because he is a badass. He doesn't want to play any blessings to encounter another card so its time for Lem to encounter. Flip a blessing from the timer. there are still 2 cards out so Lem has to encounter the bandit, unless Valeros agrees to running away which involves shuffling the 2 cards back into the deck and rolling again. Which can result in the bandit being flipped again anyway (chasing them down) but they decide to stay and fight. Lem then encounters the bandit because he has to finish off monsters before boons. he has a blessing in his hand and chooses to explore again so he dicards it and encounters the item.

as you can see, you actually dont go through the game any faster and sometimes it is harder.

If you roll 2 cards and you flip an awesome weapon then a tough monster you have to encounter the monster first to encounter the weapon NEXT exploration.

I will try to make it clearer in the write up.

I have tweaked the way barriers are encountered too. If you flip a barrier you must immediately stop flipping cards. So if you rolled 3 cards and flip a barrier first up you cant flip the rest.

Thanks again for the feedback :D


It seems that I cant edit my original post..

here is the update

In this variant you use actions instead of the normal move then explore.
The actions are as follows.

Move - move to another location

Move and exploree - move to another location and explore.

Explore - When exploring a location with no current encounter cards, roll a d4 -1 (minimum result is 1) and flip that many cards, you must then encounter a single card in the following order. Monsters - henchmen - barriers - villains -boons.

If you explore a location that already has face up encounter cards choose a card in the correct order to encounter.

The cards stay face up until they are all encountered in the correct order, or until a power, skill or action sees them shuffled back into the location deck our banished.

NOTE, you can only encounter a single card per explore. You can only explore again by using a card that gives you the ability.

If you flip a barrier you must immediately stop flipping cards. As an example, if you rolled 3 cards and flip a barrier first up you cant flip the rest of the cards.

Villains still act the same as before.

Run away - if there are no barriers face up at your location you can choose to move to another location, move to another location and explore or move on at the same location.

Move on - If you start your turn at the same location and there are no banes, shuffle all current face up cards at the current location and explore again

Evade - immediately after flipping for exploration you can choose to shuffle all of the cards back into the location deck.

Hide - If you start at a location that already has an encounter you can choose to hide and not encounter a card this turn but You can still heal etc.

Here is an example of play

Lem and Valeros are both at the same location. Flip a blessing for the timer. Valeros explores and rolls a d4 -1, the result is a 4 so he flips 3 cards. A warewolf, bandit and an item. Valeros must encounter a card and chooses to encounter the warewolf. He passes because he is a badass. He doesn't want to play any blessings to encounter another card so its time for Lem to encounter. Flip a blessing from the timer. there are still 2 cards out so Lem has to encounter the bandit, unless Valeros agrees to running away which involves shuffling the 2 cards back into the deck and rolling again. Which can result in the bandit being flipped again anyway (chasing them down) but they decide to stay and fight. Lem then encounters the bandit because he has to finish off monsters before boons. he has a blessing in his hand and chooses to explore again so he dicards it and encounters the item.

I have thoroughly tested this variant and I like it alot.
It feels like there are locations within the locations and allows for a lot more teamwork.

Let me know what you think.


It seems like a cool variant, but what about characters that already Evade? Merisiel's ability to evade anything is one of the most powerful abilities in the game, but most of this variant makes it almost pointless. How would you work that in?


Here is the way I have been using evade.

"Evade - immediately after flipping for exploration you can choose to shuffle all of the cards back into the location deck."

Basically you can have a look at the potential scenario and just say "Nope! Im not dealing with that!" Shuffle them back into the deck.

It is how it works now

You can just evade current cards by running away if there is no barrier at the location and if you don't like the new cards you flipped from running away, evade them like in the above rule.

maybe a good idea for evade is to be able to run away while there is a barrier?


currently only Merisiel has perma evade, some spells and a location or two allow it for a cost.

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