Hell's Vengeance 2, All Hell Breaks Loose

Monday, November 6, 2017

Hey, I just got done revealing the surprise fifth entry in our upcoming Ultimate Add-On Deck series, and now it's time to get back to evildoings. Remember when I showed you in Hell's Vengeance Character Deck 1? I'll bet you thought, "Okay, these guys are awful people. But I get them. Linxia's just the anti-Seelah; strong and lawful but not at all good. Lazzero is Kyra with a downward-pointed star around his neck. Urgraz is kinda like Oloch with his pounding things flat and his abilities to 'help' his 'allies' with 'useful' tricks." And before you got too caught up in all those air quotes, you thought, "I'll bet the three characters in Hell's Vengeance Character Deck 2 are gonna be just like that."

I'mma go with a big "No" on that one, pally. The next three characters you will meet are not like anything we've ever done before. And the fact that they're willing to gut you like a trout makes them all the more likable.

Let's start with Zelhara.

She's got scars upon thars.

Zelhara is an inquisitor just like Imrijka! Except in no way like Imrijka. Because Zelhara is a straight-up torture fiend. Burying cards, shuffling other people's discarded cards into her deck, making her companions discard their allies—Zelhara is a pincushion of uncomfortable choices.

This whole deck is loaded with cards that have the Corrupted trait. Zelhara is so corrupt that she barely knows the rules for Corrupted cards exist. She doesn't even interact with the Redemption card that's in the deck (or the one in Wrath of the Righteous). She just blasts by all those penalties and clamps the thumbscrews to the world.

Oh, also, Zelhara is into whips and chains. She's so good with those that she can use her Divine skill to cut things to ribbons. Rolling Divine checks for weapons is awesome. Especially when these cards are on the table:

You don't know chains till they're coming out of your eyes.

Next, see this guy Emil? He's a pitborn, with a little bit of Hell in him. We've done a pitborn character before; what makes Emil special is he's our first-ever assassin. Here's what that's like:

Killing you softly.

Emil doesn't fight anything unless he wants to, and can evade his encounters at the cost of your cards. He can Harsk you from a distance. He can handle poisons like no one else; burying cards to poison is what happens to other people.

And when he turns into a bug-faced Red Mantis Assassin, he turns weapons into killing machines without having to play them as weapons, which means no Harpy Monk is gonna ruin his day.

Here are some cards Emil's going to want to have around:

Reepazo called. She wants her mask back.

Finally, we get to our first-ever kinda-undead character. Nyctessa is a dhampir, the offspring of a vampire and a human. Lone Shark's editor Aviva recently told us all about what happens in the Twilight novels when this occurs, and I tell you, Chad and I have never been more horrified. Anyway, Nyctessa is many things, but sparkly isn't one of them.

Life is for suckers.

Nyctessa is a necromancer in the style of my favorite character, Darago. But Nyctessa is really, really good at it. She hoovers up monsters and banishes not only them but allies and Corrupted cards, which might be your cards if she's checked the right boxes.

Then there's what might be the most interesting power in the whole box. Once per turn, if Nyctessa would die, she doesn't. If she checks both boxes on that power, she might siphon her discards when she's in dire straits. She's not invulnerable, but she's way less vulnerable than most beings tend to be.

Plus she does these things with those beings:

Death is for suckers too.

Hell's Vengeance Character Deck 2 completes the cycle of evil for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. It really felt good to get that out of our system. I promise we'll only do sweetness and light from now on. C'mon, you can trust me. I'm one of the good guys.

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Lead Designer

P.S. In case you missed our design team playing four hours of Wrath of the Righteous on Paizo's Extra Life gaming marathon, here are all eight videos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Enjoy!

Not Half Bad Indeed: Hell's Vengeance Makes Its PACG Debut

Thursday, October 5, 2017

Finally! I get to tell you about the most fun I've had designing the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. It's time to talk about the Hell's Vengeance Character Deck 1, the first half of the two-part evil block in the PACG line.

When we first thought of adapting the Hell's Vengeance Adventure Path, we knew we couldn't resist some of our darker impulses. These guys work well in groups, but not in a way that benefits everyone equally. Playing them takes some selfishness.

The first trio of these rotters is the more martial half of the team; we saved the sneakier folks for the next deck. First up, the interrogator extraordinaire, Linxia the Hellknight.

So many spikes!

I don't think we've made a character more lawful than Linxia. She demands order, and not the for-the-good-of-all kind. Take a look at that last power on Knight of the Rack. It sounds good, right? A character can banish a boon to add a turn to the scenario—but wait, it's a boon of the character's favored card type. The stuff you like. Linxia is going to be saying "You don't really need that" a lot, and you will find yourself agreeing with her.

And that second checkbox on the Knight of the Rack's second power! It's totally like healing. When James Ernest and I went to a Vegas time-share presentation, we had a sleazy agent who said things like "It's like taking money from this pocket and putting it into that pocket! Except this pocket is in my pants." Linxia's like that. She's the first character I can remember who heals you for your own bad.

I think he sharpens his beard.

The Antipaladin Urgraz has a phrase we've used exactly once on a character before: "increase the damage." When we gave it to the Goblins Burn! Class Deck's Zibini, we didn't expect our playtesters to take it. They took it. A lot. But that was on a checkboxed power on a role. This is on the main power on the character card. Along with a handy ability to discard cards from other players' decks.

Then when Urgraz gets into his roles, it gets even more colorful. You can redirect that damage you'd suffer from failing a check to someone else. You can take cards other people bury and put them in your hand. Now, of course, you should really give those back afterward.

At least the hat is nice.

The Cleric Lazzero has his own painful sort of healing. And he does some magnificent things with blessings of a particular evil type. Good news: Quite a few of the blessings in here are Corrupted. But the even better news is that power which says "You may ignore the Corrupted trait on a blessing you play on your (□ or any) check." That sounds great, right?

Hey, let's just check the rules on that. The Golden Rule says "If a card tells you to ignore something, the thing you're ignoring never has any effect on you." Those last two words are really important. Because Lazzero's happy to give you that d12 on whatever you're doing. But you sadly don't have his ability to ignore the Corrupted trait. And so this stuff happens.

Does Mephistopheles really "bless" people?

That doesn't sound so fun if you're the beneficiary of Lazzero's largesse, but to Lazzero it sounds great! All the major devils get new Corrupted blessings. Some of them do great things at a price. If you're Urgraz, it might be a price other people pay.

The spells in this deck do some things we haven't had spells do before; that theme is followed through in a big way in the next deck. The allies have a nice evil feel too: some imps and devils, a few hellknights, and even a Redeemer Blacksmith to temper what I'm about to show you.

I feel dirty already.

Here's my favorite thing about this deck: It comes with its own redemption card, similar to the one in the Wrath of the Righteous Base Set. If you have it, you can redeem the boons when you play Wrath, or via methods such as banishing that Asmodean Disciplines. (You can even banish that book to redeem itself.)

And oh, the things you get to do. Banish allies you encounter to heal yourself. Grab monsters and turn them into fireballs. Deal damage to other characters to reduce damage dealt to you. All the things an evil person would want to do, and feel good doing it.

Sound like fun? Trust me, it is. And wait till you see Deck 2!

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Lead Designer

A Look at PACG's Murder in the Marketplace

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Not your friends.

Season of Factions' Favor, our current—and weirdest—Adventure Path for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is well underway. Designed by Keith Richmond with story by Katina Davis, Adventure 1, Chasing Yellow Sails, kicked off at Gen Con, leading the adventurers into the slave markets of Okeno in pursuit of a captured criminal. It's a rollicking adventure, and the upcoming Adventure 2 is also a mindbender.

But it's our first free promo scenario, the newly released Murder in the Marketplace that takes place between those adventures, that I think everyone will talk about for some time.

When the Pathfinder Society's John Compton and Tonya Woldridge first approached me about their plans for this Adventure Path, they had to answer the burning question: How do we justify the inclusion of our upcoming Hell's Vengeance Character Deck 1 and Deck 2? The characters in Hell's Vengeance are all unrelentingly evil. Unlike in the RPG side of organized play, the ACG can handle evil characters. So characters like Wrathack, Tontelizi, and Wu Shen are all street-legal. But with Hell's Vengeance, these folks have a purpose. They work as a team. An evil team. For evil.

To make it clear why they would work with good guys, we needed to justify their inclusion in the story arc. I won't spoil for you why they're there. But I will tell you the way we set it up, because it's cool. Designed by Keith and written by Linda Zayas-Palmer, Murder in the Marketplace is not one scenario, it's three. Each one is a battle to find and defeat one of the Deck 1 iconics: the cleric Lazzero, the hellknight Linxia, or the antipaladin Urgraz. You can play any one of the scenarios you want, or all three. Because the purpose is not only to defeat these baddies, it's to unleash them.

If you win one of these Murder-fests, you get a special reward. Here's Lazzero's, with Linxia's and Urgraz's following the same pattern.

Each player may, for each future scenario, choose to exchange his character that completed this scenario with Lazzero from Hell's Vengeance Character Deck 1. Lazzero gets the same number of skill, power, and card feats as the exchanged character, as well as all other applicable rewards that character has earned (including any valid deck upgrades and a role card if appropriate). Build Lazzero's deck from the Hell's Vengeance Character Deck 1 box using the Hierarchy from the Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild Guide. The exchanged character receives any rewards and upgrades from the scenario. Report the character as Unlocked Cleric Lazzero.

When you unlock this character, you can swap him in for any other Adventure Card Guild character that completed that version of P1. At any time. At any tier. You don't have to build up the character over time. You just pick a character to swap for and say "I want to play this scenario with the guy in the devil hat here." Or the woman with the forehead tattoo. Or the guy with the crossbow bigger than his body. Whatever. And something similar will occur between adventures 2 and 3 for the Deck 2 characters.

Why do they get this amazing flexibility? I already told you that. It's because they're evil. And rules are for suckers. We'll have a preview of Deck 1 next time, and you can see what I mean.

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Lead Designer