Not a fan of forced role card replacement

[ryric]

I just finished playing

Spoiler:

adventure 3-5

and I really don't care for the mandatory replacement of a role card, especially for solo play. There are a lot of characters that become nearly nonfunctional if you blot out their starting powers box and someone starting the AP without reading ahead could find themselves stuck at this point. My character "merely" took an effective -9 to combat checks because of losing Melee with Finesse weapons (went from a d8+8 Melee to a raw d6 Strength). I'm really glad I didn't try to play an alchemist in this campaign.

Optional replacements are fun and fine. Mandatory replacements can make someone have an unplayable deck, built around powers they no longer have. These scenarios were not really fun because of trying to get 20s on checks on 2d6+3d4+1 or so, and that's with discarding a weapon and a blessing.

Just very frustrating and annoying.

[Eric Clingenpeel]

I agree. Two of our players have powers that would really screw us over if we'd been forced to take the card. One was playing Varril who basically can make any check a divine check which is how he does everything, the other is playing Zetha who without her powers can't get the monsters that fuels her powers. Thankfully our third had similar enough powers that she wasn't hindered but kept forgetting her new powers that would have helped several times if she'd remembered them.

[Keith Richmond]

Noted. That varied a bit over the course of testing and editing. I believe it was changed to must because otherwise there was too high a chance that it would be ignored and put one of the scenarios into an unwinnable state.

If you haven't played it yet, you're soloing, and you hate the idea of replacing your role card, it's a good time to grab a pregen and put the role card on the pregen.

I experimented with a different non-mandatory option later, that required no changing of Role card at all.

[ryric]

I see the purpose of the role card, in that scouting is extremely useful in these scenarios. The big problem is losing basic powers that make a character even function. I'd be happy if character retained all their base powers despite the role card - something like "For this scenario, uncheck all your power feats. Gain the powers on the role card. At the end of the scenario regain all your previously checked feats." Then you wouldn't have alchemists suddenly unable to use half their deck, or Finesse fighters suddenly reduced to bumbling idiots with weapons. I'm not even sure what would happen to a Mavaro deck with a forced role card replacement.