So got a couple more for you guys -
1) Blessing of Bastet vs Quicksand Bunyip. A character plays a Blessing of Bastet "Discard this card to examine the top card of your location deck. If it is a bane, encounter it and it may not be evaded otherwise, you may encounter it." The card examined is the Quicksand Bunyip - "When you examine this card, either discard a card that has the Bludgeoning or Liquid trait or you are dealt 1d4 Electricity damage. Then shuffle the Quicksand Bunyip into your location deck."
Ok so - Bunyip is examined, possibly does some electricity damage, then is shuffled back in as the final part of the trigger resolution. Then, the Blessing of Bastet wants you to encounter it. How is this resolved? Most other examine then encounter cards (like the Blessing of the Ancients) just say examine then "explore your location", but Bastet specifically wants you to encounter the card that is supposed to have been reshuffled back in.
2) More of a comment than a question. I don't know if anyone else noticed this but in the last scenario of AP1 we only had 5 blessings left in the box after building the blessings deck + locations (full 6 man team). After reviewing decks, we realized that it would be possible to not have enough blessings to set up the scenario if more people had taken blessings as card feats. 2 card feats per character so far and we'd only taken 3 as blessings total, so we could have taken 9 more blessings if we'd maxed it out - all 6 of our characters had the capability of taking 2 more blessings. Any more than 5 more and not enough cards - it would be a lot of blessings for sure, basically 2/3rds of the card feats so far taken as blessings - not likely but not impossible. I'm surprised not enough blessings were included to cover the eventuality of as many as possible blessings taken as feats.
1) It's been shuffled away, so you can't encounter it. FEAR THE BUNYIP.
2) Hmm. So of 74 blessings, 11 are in the 8 locations, 30 are in the blessings deck, leaving 33 for players. Our absolute most blessing hungry characters - assuming every card feat is spent on blessings - are Yoon (8), Alahazra (7), Estra (6), Drelm (6), Mavaro (6), and Ezren with entirely Blessings of the Elements instead of items (6). I can assure you that such a group and tactic never came up in playtesting, though. In this particular instance, since you build the blessings deck last, that means that you'd have enough blessings for characters and locations, but would be carving away turns. So certainly the most efficient tactic is to avoid creating such a group that spends all its card feats on blessings. At least not for a couple of ADs to find some more blessings. We'll keep an eye on this for future sets, though.
Happy playing!
Interesting point. Just for info, I know that if we ran into something like that we would house rule to get some blessings from class decks or other boxes, with preference going to those existing in the MM set (*) and would complete the blessing deck (after locations are built, so that they don't end up aquired by characters during the game) with those just for the duration of that scenario.
(*) Abadar, Nethys, Pharasma, Elements... can be found easily
So certainly the most efficient tactic is to avoid creating such a group that spends all its card feats on blessings. At least not for a couple of ADs to find some more blessings. We'll keep an eye on this for future sets, though.
Far being from me claiming "game too easy, make more 'hardcore'!", but Id actually prefer this 'mod' (starting the scenario with a smaller blessings deck) than getting more Blessings stuffed in the box for unlikely contingency. Of course, the simplest solution is to just balance location lists, but here's a fun fact: In WotR, blessings card feat were *the last* card feats we took (in 6-play, no less!), while in RotR we didn't bother upgrading anything else until all blessings slots were full.
Of course, you can chalk some of it up to player strategy evolving, but I'd say it's much more due to you guys finding a better balance between "useful" Allies and Items -and, ok, I'll say it - even Armors- and the previously "trump-all" Blessings. (In 6-play, each ally is just an 'explore', so the Blessing advantage is obvious; when you have an AD2 ally that can add up to +6 to your combat checks during exploration - that really turns things around).
So, bottomline, I think Lone Shark is heading the right direction with balance between card types, so the OP scenario should be getting increasingly unlikely (all player stacking up Blessings) - and this is a much better solution to the 'problem' overall.
If we ran out of blessings in a shorted blessings deck, I'd just shuffle in a few random blessings from the discard pile the next time we needed a card from the blessings deck. ::shrug::
1) Ok. That's how we played it as well, but it was more of a "I guess this must work this way because otherwise ???" decision, rather than anything based on the rules. I mean you COULD go through the deck to find the Quicksand Bunyip and encounter it, regardless of whether it had been shuffled in or not.
2) My point wasn't "how would you handle this?" or even that it was a serious problem. I guess the analogy I would use is if (insert random RPG computer game here) had a bug where if you created a fighter with a strength of 3, the game crashed/screen turned blue/sharks with laser beams flew out of your computer, then I would think that bug would be fixed. Sure it's not a likely scenario that someone does this, but it's within the rules and capability of the game for this to happen, so if it does, the game should be able to handle it. That is all. I don't really get making excuses for a situation (blessings aren't that good anymore so who cares, various workarounds you could do if it happens) that shouldn't be a problem in the first place.
I don't really get making excuses for a situation (blessings aren't that good anymore so who cares...
I suppose this is aimed at my comment, but that's not what I was saying. I concur such situations should not be allowed to occur; I was just pointing out why they're indeed increasingly becoming the equivalent of building a STR 3 Fighter, and why I can understand why they slipped during playtest, and why it's not such a big deal in the end (again, not as an excuse, but rather as "Yes, that ONE Boss gets -33% on his timer, if you're playing a STR 3 Fighter, which sucks verily, but does not in fact make the Boss unbeatable, and would make beating him more satisfying even" thing).
As for workaround suggestions - they can only be of help for people who happen to have built their STR 3 Fighter, while they wait for an official "patch", when and IF that happens (In the RPG analogy - I wouldn't hold my breath for devs actually fixing that, as it would probably be assigned a "very low impact" priority)
I'd grab extra blessings from a class deck or two to fill out the blessings deck if needed.
Printing extra blessings means printing less of other card types, so this isn't as easily fixed as a computer program where you can increase just one count. Removing other card types also means that you may be removing Basic boons, in which case you'll have to adjust/reconfigure the suggested starting decks in the rulebook (which is a pretty difficult thing to piece together as-is -- good thing Mike likes puzzles). It would also mean possibly reconfiguring the mold for the stock insert to allow for more blessings to fit in there, which would possibly have a large expense to create said new mold.
I don't really expect anything to be addressed here, maybe they'll offer a "blessings pack" on drivethru that you can purchase to expand your blessings deck a bit, but that'd be about all I can think of.
Yeah, Keith says they'll keep an eye on it for the future. I'd just house rule it so you have a full blessings deck one way or another, whether that is getting blessings from another source or just remembering you are X blessings short and shuffling that many back in at some point.
You didn't really do anything you shouldn't have done to create the problem. It isn't even like the issue where you could do this to yourself by removing too many Blessings of the Gods in RotR.
Chief Technical Officer
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My point wasn't "how would you handle this?" or even that it was a serious problem. I guess the analogy I would use is if (insert random RPG computer game here) had a bug where if you created a fighter with a strength of 3, the game crashed/screen turned blue/sharks with laser beams flew out of your computer, then I would think that bug would be fixed. Sure it's not a likely scenario that someone does this, but it's within the rules and capability of the game for this to happen, so if it does, the game should be able to handle it. That is all. I don't really get making excuses for a situation (blessings aren't that good anymore so who cares, various workarounds you could do if it happens) that shouldn't be a problem in the first place.
First, be aware that the number of cards in the box is largely determined by the size and number of press sheets we have, which means if we add 6 extra blessings to cover this edge case, we'd have to remove 6 other cards from the game. Doing that would make the game a little bit better in the situation you describe, which very few people would ever experience, but it would actually make the game a little bit worse for everyone else.
But even if we added as many blessings to the box as you needed to support tricking out Keith's 6 blessing-hungry characters with every blessing card feat there is, that *still* breaks down as soon as you swap out any of the 6-blessing characters on that list for any character from any other set that has more than 6 blessings. So should we then put another 10 or so blessings in the box to support a party of 6 8-blessing characters? (Should we then make sure we never create a 9-blessing character? I haven't done the math, but it wouldn't surprise me if we can now create this situation in earlier sets, even if we couldn't when they were released.)
All that said, it is actually addressed by the rules, in the Limited Resources sidebar: "If you’re required to do something with a certain number of things and there aren’t that many things available, use as many as there are." Which is why Keith said "In this particular instance, since you build the blessings deck last, that means that you'd have enough blessings for characters and locations, but would be carving away turns." If you don't like that answer, and want to house rule something less painful (like pulling in blessings from other products), feel free, but this situation *is* covered in the rulebook. And that rule exists exactly *because* giving you more copies of cards you already have in order to cover weird edge cases doesn't always make the game better. (Take this recent thread for two other examples.)
I mean, yeah, I would put enough blessings in to cover the most blessing-heavy character choices. Player characters from other sets is one thing, but if a character from a class deck is going to possibly be a problem then that character should come with extra blessings to make up for this.
But for characters just within MM, I could see it requiring the character add on deck. But otherwise, I wouldn't design a situation where you don't have the cards to fulfill card feat choices not turning into a detriment for the players.
But it's not like there aren't alternate options for this. For example, once this became a problem if adding more blessings was something that was really that difficult, maybe implementing a rule where if there aren't enough of a card type to build all decks for a scenario, then you can substitute another card for that type. And I'm sure the response to this is you could house rule that - but my point is that I shouldn't have to house rule something that's completely predictable based on choices that players could legitimately make when choosing card feats.
I understand and am aware of the Limited Resources rule but that rule in my opinion, makes a lot more sense when you're talking about a situation like only having X Curse of Poisonings and through random happenstance and luck, the players take Poison damage 20 times in an adventure. Versus a situation like this which is entirely predictable ahead of time as a possible, though unlikely result of deck build decisions.
*shrug* Obviously your opinion is different on this matter but if it were me I'd be putting that into the design decision of the game. (Okay we have a max of X of card type Y that could be in decks by this point, this gives us Z cards to work with when planning a scenario). And I'm frankly surprised that it's not.
I'm completely in agreement with Vic on this.
There's going to be a fixed number of cards in the game. It's always a trade-off between what you include and what you leave out.
I'd rather they include 6 interesting cards than include 6 blessings whose only purpose is to cover this unlikely edge case which affects a tiny percentage of players.
A less intrusive solution is your last one, that they not use locations with so many blessings at this point. As a player, I always appreciate when locations have blessings. I'd rather not reduce that for a situation unlikely to affect nearly anyone.
It's also only shy by the extra card feat given out in B or early 1, so it'd be fixable by moving a card feat later basically.
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Don't delay our card feats!!! If you do, how do I get to fit so many of these awesome new cards in my deck early on?
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It's also only shy by the extra card feat given out in B or early 1, so it'd be fixable by moving a card feat later basically.
NO.
To be fair, it wouldn't delay it much; just move it to the adventure reward instead of the scenario reward, and swap the power feat earlier.
Because I think it's possible to trigger this problem with armors, if your group took every possible armor feat and had the armoriest guys. And, I mean, that's even less likely, but if we _have_ to cover for every possibility...
Granted, Mavaro particularly can screw that up by just going "All my cards are armor" so it wouldn't even have to be the most armoriest group you could armor.
To be fair, it wouldn't delay it much; just move it to the adventure reward instead of the scenario reward, and swap the power feat earlier.
Because I think it's possible to trigger this problem with armors, if your group took every possible armor feat and had the armoriest guys. And, I mean, that's even less likely, but if we _have_ to cover for every possibility...
Granted, Mavaro particularly can screw that up by just going "All my cards are armor" so it wouldn't even have to be the most armoriest group you could armor.
Damn, Keith, remind me to carry Fire/Acid weapons if I have to encounter you...