[ACG] BR skizzerz's Season of Faction's Favor (Inactive)

Game Master eddiephlash

Upgrades:

Aric: Armor 6, Ally 6

Ezren: None

Seoni: Ally 6, Spell 5?

Zelhara: Armor 6, Blessing 5

Raz: None

Armor 6: Gravewatcher Chain Mail replaces Shark Skin Armor

Ally 6: replace Dreamstalker by Eyebiter.

For loot, Ezren is taking as usual:
Khepresh of Refuge (swapping out Shield Cloak)
Unwrapped Harmony (swapping out Apprentice)
Sand Elemental (swapping out Acadamae Student)
Vision (swapping out Cloudburst)

At Agymah, assuming that there is a spell he wants, Ezren will trade Walking Stick and Death's Touch 2 for it.

Ezren is interested in displaying Mortevia but will yield to someone else if they really want it.

Ezren is also interested in Guard Captain cohort, though I imagine it'll be useful to almost anyone.

Hero Point
Card Feat
Ally 3 [X]4 [X]5
Filling empty space with Ally 4 Forensic Physician

Upgrades
Replacing Armor 3 Steel Ibis Lamellar with Armor 6 Aegis of Recovery

Replacing Blessing 0 Blessing of Wadjet with Blessing 5 Blessing of Yaezhing

Hero Point
Card Feat
Armor 1 [X]2

Upgrade
Adding to newly empty slot Armor 6 Elemental Brass Mail

Bringing Mavaro to the next scenario!
I'll take Xandhul as I'm likely the worst combatant, but am prepared to roll off!
Joining Ezren at Agymah

Seoni will go to Ghoul Market. Haven’t finalized loot yet- still thinking about whether Golden Serpent Armband, but that won’t affect traders, and rest should be same as last scenario. Interested in Varanthe the Paralyzer but would defer to Raz.
(Glad we took that hiatus. My December was unexpectedly chaotic. Things haven’t fully settled down yet, so I may be a little slower than usual, but I should be able to keep up.)

4-6D: FACE OF FATALITY Available Upgrades

Hearth Elemental (Ally 4)
Aunty (Ally C)
Sand Elemental (Ally 5)
Clawhand Shield (Armor 3)
Advocate's Armor (Armor 3)
Blessing of Ptah (Blessing 6)
Blessing of the Ancients (Blessing B)
Blessing of the Lady of Graves (Blessing 5)
Blessing of Maat (Blessing 2)
Blessing of the Ancients (Blessing B)
Cenovath (Item 5)
Sunrod (Item 4)
Hand of Glory (Item 6)
Ice Storm (Spell 4)
Dune of Doom (Spell 5)
Canopic Conversion (Spell 6)
Boneshatter (Spell 6)
Chakram of Ruin (Weapon 6)

Reward

Each character chooses a type of boon other than loot and adds a card of that type that has an adventure deck number of 6 from the game box to the cards acquired during this scenario.
Adventure Card Guild characters may choose a bonus deck upgrade.

Hero Point: saved - now have 2 hero points in reserve.

Choose Spell 6 for the card type to add to the upgrade pile.

Upgrades:
Spell 6: 1d1000 ⇒ 146

Bonus Upgrade: Wait to see what's left after everyone takes their initial upgrades but probably Spell 6 again.
Spell 6: 1d1000 ⇒ 686

No further upgrades really needed. Will give my upgrade choice to the table, and choose Blessing for upgrade if nobody has any strong needs.

Bank hero point, bringing total to 9.

Seoni will take Ally 6 (Autumn Witch) for her reward upgrade.
For the normal upgrade, 1st choice is Item 6 (Pearl of Magic), if there’s enough to go around? Or if not, maybe Spell 6 (Dominate), but I’m not sure what I’d swap out- still don’t really feel good about replacing the anti-Undead Wall of Fire with a Mental spell.

I'm planning to run Zelhara through the last two so will only focus upgrades on her.

Upgrade Preferences
Weapon 6: 1d1000 ⇒ 737
Item 6: 1d1000 ⇒ 453
Blessing 6: 1d1000 ⇒ 790
Spell 5: 1d1000 ⇒ 92

Presuming two Spell 6 upgrades (per Discord):

Spell 6: replace Death's Touch 2 with Repulsion

Spell 6: replace Ice and Fire with Meteor Swarm

Upgrade
Replace Weapon 4 Thousand Stings Whip with Weapon 6 Traitor's Blade.

Reward
Replace Item 4 Dryad Sandals with Item 6 Ring of Serene Contortions.

Hero Point
Stored. Up to 5 now.

Heading to the Auction House.

I think regardless of story banes, Seoni will be going to Ghoul Market. Interested still in Varanthe unless someone else wants a turn?

Ezren is still interested in taking Mortevia but will give it up if someone else wants it.

Go to Agymah as usual.

Just a heads up that I'll be on a trip from this Friday through June 28. I'll probably still be able to post from time to time but it'll be erratic.

Sounds like I'll be taking this over. Waiting on Paizo support to hand the reins over, and looking into what needs done on the acg site.

4-6D Reward Breakdown:

Aric: TBD?

Ezren: Spell 6, Spell 6. 2 hero points remain. Agymah trader. Mortevia

Seoni: Ally 6, Item 6. ?? Hero points remain (sheet says 7). Ghoul Market trader. Varanthe.

Zelhara: Weapon 6, Item 6. 5 Hero Points remain. Auction House trader.

Raz: No upgrades. 9 Hero points remain. Sunburst Market trader.

Seoni has 8 now- I hadn’t updated yet.

I’ve tried to connect there with my phone while on a trip during the week to no result. It works better now on my computer.

I’ve seen a couple messages from Discord on my phone and tried to reply. To access my discord account I need to receive a mail but the mail does no get dispatched so I can not connect to discord anymore. I had the issue for a while and tried to contact their support with no result for now.

My apologies for the lack of news, time flew away this last couple of month.

I’ve tried to connect there with my phone while on a trip during the week to no result. It works better now on my computer.

I’ve seen a couple messages from Discord on my phone and tried to reply. To access my discord account I need to receive a mail but the mail does no get dispatched so I can not connect to discord anymore. I had the issue for a while and tried to contact their support with no result for now.

My apologies for the lack of news, time flew away this last couple of month.

Is it all of discord that's giving you trouble or just our server?

I’ve tried to connect there with my phone while on a trip during the week to no result. It works better now on my computer.

I’ve seen a couple messages from Discord on my phone and tried to reply. To access my discord account I need to receive a mail but the mail does no get dispatched so I can not connect to discord anymore. I had the issue for a while and tried to contact their support with no result for now.

My apologies for the lack of news, time flew away this last couple of month.

Sorry to hear this. We just started up the scenario assuming you had dropped. Given the long hiatus, I'm inclined for us to continue and play out the scenario, but I will definitely ping you both here and on Discord to see if you want to join us for the next one! Which will either be the capstone, or the finale again if we fail the first attempt.

I'm happy to remain BR regardless.

My SoPluTo table just finished the capstone, so now Raz finally gets to make use of the reward to visit Sunburst Market in addition to any other trader. I'll probably hit up Shardizhad with Aric.

Scenario 4-6E wrap-up:

Please list the following, assuming this is not a replay:

10th xp at tier 6. Bank hero point, spent one during the scenario, so back to 9.

Bonus Power Feat for 4-7: When a distant character encounters a monster ( ☑ or a weapon or an armor ) , you may bury ( ☑ or discard ) a card with the Mount trait to allow that character to evade the monster, you then move to that location and encounter it.

No change in loot (still taking Life Lantern and Cartouche of Protection)

Trader: Trove + Sunburst.

Pass on Upgrades.

Bring on the epilogue!

Upgrade Preferences
Weapon 6: 1d1000 ⇒ 594
Armor 6: 1d1000 ⇒ 221
Blessing 6: 1d1000 ⇒ 506

Reward
☑ When you would discard cards as damage, you may recharge up to 2 of them instead.

Traders
Definitely Trove of Tef-Naju and Sunburst.

Hero Point
Banked. Up to 5

Seoni’s vote is Deal. (CHA, Diplomacy, and this Pharasman has already befriended undead and evil clerics, so why not devils too?)

Seoni used a hero point, gained a hero point.

Loot/trader/power feat will depend on the scenario specifics- will confirm once we know locations/story banes. (Although there’s a good chance Seoni goes to Ghoul Market regardless.)

First choice for upgrade is Blessing 5 (of the Lady of Graves). Only other possibility is Spell 6 (Dominate), but still don’t think I want it, especially after Ezren’s experience last scenario.

Please list the following, assuming this is not a replay:

XP and Tier upon completion of the scenario.
Tier 6, 5 xp.

What to spend your new Hero Point on, and your current remaining Hero Points.
Save hero point. Now have 3 in the bank.

Interest in the new Loot and Planned change of loot for next scenario
Same as usual.

Planned Trader visit
How do I see what is on offer at Tef-Naju? And I assume that Ezren still can only choose one trader rather than two? One of the advantages of Agymah is that it lets me cycle Walking Stick out of my deck (I typically trade it and one spell for Agymah's spell) - would I still be able to do that at Tef?

Upgrade preferences.

Ally 6: 1d1000 ⇒ 849 replace Acadamae Scholar with Autumn Witch

Temp power feat for upcoming scenario (I assume that we can go over the limit for this one?):
I'm pretty sure my only option is to increase the bump I give to Seoni to +3 (which is not bad at all!)

4-6E Reward Breakdown:

Ezren: Ally 6. 3 hero points remain. TBD trader.

Seoni: Blessing 5. 7 Hero points remain. Ghoul Market trader.

Zelhara: Weapon 6. 5 Hero Points remain. Trove of Tef-Naju and Sunburst traders.

Raz: No upgrades. 9 Hero points remain. Trove of Tef-Naju and Sunburst traders.

Seoni actually has 8 hero points- again, hadn’t yet updated.
Taking the same loot. Unless anyone else wanted a turn with Varanthe?

My feat choice feels like the classic Timmy/Johnny/Spike:
[] You may bury a card to add its adventure deck number to your check.
[] After you are dealt Acid, Cold, Electricity, or Fire damage, you may draw 1 card.
[] Hand size 7
I’m going Timmy: as much as I hate burying cards, it really does combos with Ezren. Johnny only combos with Zelhara if I actually discard to damage, and I might not even encounter any Elemental Arachnids. Spike is boring.

Display the scourge Curse of Daybane next to the scenario; all characters with a scourge next to their character deck also suffer Curse of Daybane.

Remove Curse etc say “Recharge this card to banish a displayed card that has the Curse trait.” But I’m assuming that we couldn’t simply turn off the adventure power that way.

Upgrade
Replacing Weapon 4 Hangman's Noose with Weapon 6 Master's Lash

Raz was my 1002 character. I played them through two separate multi-table specials and skipped out on Adventure 3 of this scenario. Ended with 11 xp at tier 6 and 9 hero points. Certainly not the most powerful character in the game, and one in retrospect whose powers would have been a lot more effective in a live game, I still had a blast playing them with their unique mechanics.

Thanks all, and hope our paths cross once again.

Huge thanks to all the BRs that ran this, for me it was first Hawkmoon, skizzerz, 勝20100, then eddie! One my very first pbp! Balancing two characters throughout and surprisingly ended up prefering Zelhara overall.

And huge respect for everyone who held on until the end, EmpTyger, eddiephlash, and Abraham Z!!

Anyone interested in final upgrades? I kind of want to take Spell 6 (Dominate) for flavor.

Quite the adventure! Yes, thanks to all, and double-thanks to eddiephlash and all the other box runners. I’m truly glad we got to finish it out.

It’s no secret that I love playing sorcerers, but Tattooed Mystic surprised me with how elegant the play was. (Step 1: Acquire boon with Knowledge. Step 3: Throw boon with Arcane. Step 2: Profit!) She definitely became one of my top 3 sorcerers. And pleased that I got to 40 cards on that last scenario.
A couple times, I did wonder if I should have chosen my feats differently. My first feat, (extra +2 on Magic acquires) felt excessive, and also unnecessary in earlier adventures where there were more non-Magic boons. On the other hand, I had originally chosen it because it felt the most party-friendly, the better to get upgrades with. (Never imagining how Ezren would turbocharge the pool!) And of course, the fantasy of drawing 4 or 8 cards off an Elemental Arachnid.

This wound up also being my first experience using Ultimate Magic. That’s another what-if, had I stuck to the pure Sorcerer deck build? (Ironically, if I had, I’d probably would still have had Crown of Charisma during the capstone. Not that we needed to trivialize it!)

eddiephlash: Don’t sell Raz short. I was much more comfortable pushing my explores, knowing that there was a panic button if I ran into a construct. The number of times that power was actually used was much less than the invisible number of times it came into play for me.

Yes, thanks so much to everyone, especially the box runners! What a journey! Ezren was my first PACG character and 99% of my play of the game has been through PbP so this has really be quite a journey. I've had a blast and I thoroughly enjoyed playing Ezren. I'd be curious to know if people have suggestions of other characters that play similarly (not necessarily in the sense of being arcane casters) but in the sense of often having a lot of rich strategic choices.

And yes, I had the same reaction to having Raz around - it made me much more willing to know that I could explore and examine!

Thanks again, everyone, this was really fun for me!

One of my favorite characters to play in that vein was CotCT Varian. By the end, with a huge hand size, and a power to recharge/redraw nearly my whole hand, and a lot of examine/exploration spells, I felt like he was never caught flat footed. And with his cohort Radovan, even barriers were unscary. His turns definitely took a long time, and I would strongly advise against him in a live game, or maybe spec him in a different direction.

And yeah, Raz being there for insurance was definitely unaccounted for. And with lots of armors and relatively small hand size, there are probably situations where charging in to take a hopeless fight still makes sense because it will hurt Raz less than the character that originally encountered it. I still think that knowing Ezren would have eventually built into the transmogrification god, I would have picked some different power feats, or maybe the alternate role.

Also, it was super fun seeing the "evil" characters being used. They don't get as much play, though I think an all evil party playing through one of the newer seasons would be a lot of fun.

I think Ezren's Transmog power is *too* good. It should probably be Local only. But it sure was fun to have it! :-)

Varian looks like a great choice for me. Do you have any suggestion of another deck to use with him besides Ultimate Magic? It's filled with good cards but I'm starting to feel a bit repetitive with it - so many of my characters end up taking it. And the Adventurer's Packs are fun but ultimately often feel a little too thin.

Varian looks like a great choice for me. Do you have any suggestion of another deck to use with him besides Ultimate Magic? It's filled with good cards but I'm starting to feel a bit repetitive with it - so many of my characters end up taking it. And the Adventurer's Packs are fun but ultimately often feel a little too thin.

I'm running Varian with Arcane and Occult Adventure Packs plus Hell's Vengeance 2. It's giving me some good options all around.

Ezren Z. wrote:

Varian looks like a great choice for me. Do you have any suggestion of another deck to use with him besides Ultimate Magic? It's filled with good cards but I'm starting to feel a bit repetitive with it - so many of my characters end up taking it. And the Adventurer's Packs are fun but ultimately often feel a little too thin.

I'm running Varian with Arcane and Occult Adventure Packs plus Hell's Vengeance 2. It's giving me some good options all around.

What enables you to use Varian with Hell's Vengeance? Is that a boon of some kind?

Could be fun to use with the Corrupted boon we just got since as I recall there are a lot of Corrupted cards in the HV decks... nvm, I guess my memory is faulty. Where are the corrupted cards that will be good together with our new boon?

Count Jeggare wrote:

Ezren Z. wrote:

Varian looks like a great choice for me. Do you have any suggestion of another deck to use with him besides Ultimate Magic? It's filled with good cards but I'm starting to feel a bit repetitive with it - so many of my characters end up taking it. And the Adventurer's Packs are fun but ultimately often feel a little too thin.

I'm running Varian with Arcane and Occult Adventure Packs plus Hell's Vengeance 2. It's giving me some good options all around.

What enables you to use Varian with Hell's Vengeance? Is that a boon of some kind?

All Wizards can use that deck! There are corrupted cards in both HV decks, but there are a lot of non-corrupted options there too.

I used Varian with the Pathfinder Tales Character Deck - probably my favorite of the "Character" decks. I was then able to add 2 adventure packs, so used Arcane and Occult.

Ok I'm glad to hear that you were both able to run a Wizard without using Ultimate Magic. It's full of great spells but I'm just bored by it at this point. If PACG had kept getting developed by Paizo I think an Ultimate Magic 2 would have been a very good move.

In any case, thanks for the suggestion. I'm in another game where we are going through all the seasons of PACG one by one - I played Shardra for Season 0 and am currently playing Merisiel for Season 1 so I am thinking about what would be a good choice for Season 2 and it sounds like I'll probably do Varian (incidentally, I also played Radovan and loved him so it'll be a nice switch to play his pal).

On my list of things-I-might-try-someday is a Hell’s Vengeance 2 WotR Seoni. It would *not* be a legal build, but why should wizards (and inquisitors) get all the fun? I’m curious how well Corruptor Seoni could then go on a non-WotR adventure.