1-6B Question (Pathfinder Society, Unite!)

[Iammars]

The scenario rules trigger off the Cultist trait, and the new henchman called "Duergar Cultists", but they don't actually have the Cultist trait. Should they actually have the Cultist trait?

[Keith Richmond]

They probably should, yep.

[Keith Richmond]

This should be fixed soon, if not already. Thanks for pointing it out!

[Tanis O'Connor]

Yar.

[James McKendrew]

Here's another one. Do Demonic Hordes suck as much as I think they do?

First, whoever encounters it recharges their hand (Losing a card count) because they encountered a bane (barrier) with the Demon trait. Then for each demon you randomly, you get to recharge and lose ANOTHER card. It seems really likely that you could absolutely lose up to your number of players +1 turns every time it comes up.

[Keith Richmond]

Being able to scry and/or evade them is a tremendously good idea, yep. It's pretty unlikely you'd lose # of players + 1 turns, though you do lose that many cards and defeating all of them can require quite a bit of luck.

[Donald Hiles III]

Just to clarify the part we are anxious about is the other bit of scenario text "When you fail to defeat a card with Demon or Cultist trait, discard a card from the blessing pile."

This is the the real stickler because of the random assignment nature of the horde.

Flip Blessing deck card.

Encounter Demonic Horde (Demon trait)

4 Favor of Deskari to party. (Demon trait)

Fail to defeat any due to recharging scenario power.

Discard 4 cards from blessing deck (1 for each servitor demon undefeated)+ Discard 1 card from blessing deck for horde.

At least 6 cards from the blessing deck have been discarded this turn.

If thats RAI thats g~@ d#~n brutal, especially since a 6 player party can see almost a third of their turns gone in one horde.

I don't think I'd have a problem if this was clearly called out, its the ambiguity of that this is probably what happens that makes it feel so brutal. You have a feeling that the scenario's success is a lot less in your control after losing so many turns in one shot. It makes sense flavor wise of the demonic horde suddenly appearing and being a pitched battle, but mechanically it feels very much out of your control. You loose the feeling of investment and determination when things are nebulous and this sort of result happens.

I believe tho it shows the intent for why the cohort's mechanics are such that they are.

This scenario is a horrible experience the first time around but much more enjoyable, and even fun, the second time around. The first trip is bad because it breaks your mental model of how to play the game by now wanting a big hand of your lower impact cards so you can be recharged into your good ones. Once you adjust, the second trip is a more enjoyable experience because you know whats going to happen and you adjust your play style. Our first trip thru this scenario I was ready to quit on the second turn due to the villain being on top and recharging into cards I couldn't win with and then having to send chunks of my deck into the location. I was visibly frustrated, annoyed and was a bit short with my group, and the rest of that gaming night was colored by that experience, even when we played Rise for our second game.

Just things you think as a user experience designer by day cuz you can't it off even when nerding out with a game you love :P

[James McKendrew]

Actually, I thought it was fairly frustrating the second time around, too. I just wanted that one to be over with. We won mostly out of luck the second time, which means that, until the very end, we were staring down the possibility of going through it a THIRD time. That would have been a chore, rather than a game. I didn't feel like we had a sense of accomplishment at the end, so much as relief.

[Keith Richmond]

The hand recharge aspect simulates the timey whimey mishaps that are going on in the stronghold. It definitely helps to play this one in a different way than you might normally (for instance, keeping more buffer cards and thinking through your deck makeup to spread out boons). This can be trickier with large groups, so scouting abilities are particularly useful in this scenario, IME. Augury-ing and Scry-ing for barriers should work great.

In the event that someone with very few cards in hand triggers a Demonic Horde for a large group, and most of the demons randomly attack that person, then yes, that could be very costly indeed. I was envisioning a more normal demonic horde, not that worst case scenario.

And, yes, the cohort was very precisely mechanic-ed to allow you to recover a needed weapon with regularity / setup your deck (as well as to fix inhospitable locations). I'll admit, I may be an exception in that I carefully order my recharges and "count" my deck contents, at least for the important stuff (Cures, weapons, etc)

[James McKendrew]

I paid enough attention on my hand-recharges to space out my weapons which did increase my odds of having a weapon in hand after the NEXT hand-recharge. And every chance we got to scry 'n' spy, we took. It definitely engendered a different style of play.

On 1-6C, on the other hand, cornering the second villain was awesome, 'cause our Mythic Marshal handed the active character 5 Mythic Charges on top of the 5 he already had, and he rolled 9d20 for the final combat (Total: 113, only because Meliski couldn't let him reroll two d20s that rolled 4s after he already succeeded.)