Parade of Tributes: Wrath of the Righteous Characters

That is a nice change up to the character mat! But even more awesome change ups to the characters. Seelah can help anyone at her location!

So we've got "corrupted" and "cohort" as new PACG things.

"Alain the cavalier makes his ACG debut in this set, and he comes to the party with a shocking lack of tragedy in his backstory" might be my favorite sentence in this blog.

"Alain the cavalier makes his ACG debut in this set, and he comes to the party with a shocking lack of tragedy in his backstory" might be my favorite sentence in this blog.

But in someways, his backstory is the most tragic.

Nah, he's just a jackass. But he's my favorite jackass to play.

"Alain the cavalier makes his ACG debut in this set, and he comes to the party with a shocking lack of tragedy in his backstory" might be my favorite sentence in this blog.

Alain is the one I've picked out to use since he was first mentioned, so I'll be looking forward to his card and finding out what cohorts do.

And Shandra's ability- oh wow, I want to bring her along. That's fantastic.

I may be missing something but I think its only Harsk's third appearance.

I may be missing something but I think its only Harsk's third appearance.

You are correct.

I may be missing something but I think its only Harsk's third appearance.

You didn't get the super secret S&S Harsk promo? You have to send in the UPC codes from all the S&S products to to get it.

Nah, just kidding.

Will the Ultra Pro mats be available at PaizoCon??

Crowe's fascinating

Am I missing something or is Balazar just... bad? With single-use attack spells and low strength, he's not very useful in combat and he doesn't have a strong complement of skills to make up for it. Unless there are ways he can use his monsters or arcane skill that aren't attack spells, I really don't see myself playing him

I imagine that as a summoner, his cohort is probably supposed to do most of the fighting so it may have abilities which help.

Am I missing something or is Balazar just... bad?

In the hands of a cunning player, Balazar is indeed quite the bad-ass.

Unless there are ways he can use his monsters or arcane skill that aren't attack spells, I really don't see myself playing him

I suspect several of these characters might not make full sense until the cohort blog, but rest assured that only the boldest and most powerful heroes are heading into the Worldwound.

Will the Ultra Pro mats be available at PaizoCon??

I hope so, but can't yet guarantee it.

Two sentences went missing from this blog (though one of their periods stayed behind). We'll put them back tomorrow. They are:

At the end of the Balazar paragraph:
Like Alain’s horse Donahan, Padrig is a cohort card.

At the end of the Shardra paragraph:
Kolo is a cohort card in Wrath.

All together I really like the theme of this set and what these characters bring. Really looking forward to it.

But.. Can we please get Damiel back? ^^'

Speaking of the Ultra Pro Mats, any word on the Ultra Pro Adventure Case?

Very nice. I can't wait to see all of the characters and their cohorts in full detail.

As an RPG player, the new Seelah is one of the most interesting characters to me. It still makes me a little sad that her Divine skill is based off of Wisdom instead of Charisma. However, I love that the Divine Grace class ability got translated into the card game!

Very excited ^_^

I am just glad to see Fortitude in Seelah's skill set this time around. Her not having it on the RotR version was very curious in my opinion, especially with Armor being her favoured type.

Super excited. Question about seelah's first power: does that apply to any check or would it only apply to checks in text boxes that say "before you act"?

It applies to things like "Before you act, succeed at a Dexterity or Acrobatics 7 check or you are dealt 1d4 Ranged Combat damage."

I am just glad to see Fortitude in Seelah's skill set this time around. Her not having it on the RotR version was very curious in my opinion, especially with Armor being her favoured type.

One thing I noticed about the blog post was that we only got the fronts of the character cards, so we don't know if Seelah's favored card type is still Armor, or if she can take items.

I suspect several of these characters might not make full sense until the cohort blog, but rest assured that only the boldest and most powerful heroes are heading into the Worldwound.

Please tell us that the cohort blog is next week; the suspense is figuratively killing us.

Also, I wonder if we'll see Class Deck Lini use the cohort rules, or (likely more of a longshot) if WotR Harsk's Biter is also a cohort. (I have a fondness for badgers in RPGs, you see).

Crowe looks super strong, like better than Amiri in every way.

It looks like there are also two mandatory powers in what we've got:

1. Balazaar's banishing of spells with the attack trait.
2. Seelah's burying of boons with the corrupted trait.

They join with Drunken Master Sajan's drawing a card and Ranzak's boon exploration powers. (Though I guess you could also consider all the "you gain the skill..." powers to be mandatory too.)

Also, friendly suggestion: Daily PACG blogs for the next month.

Charisma instead of Dexterity for Seelah is massive - she now feels much more confident fighting dragons!

Crowe looks super strong, like better than Amiri in every way.

Yeah with the ability to drop an extra 1d10 on every combat check, he seems like the strongest fighter in the game to date. We can't see his deck composition, though, perhaps he has a major weakness there.

New Seelah looks pretty rad! I'll take that pre-combat Charisma check, though I'll miss the card-counting aspect of recharging Spells and Blessings (maybe for a role card). Now she's like a super bard that discards instead of recharging. Not sure what the thematic RPG power that's meant to represent is.

Ilpalazo wrote:

Crowe looks super strong, like better than Amiri in every way.

Yeah with the ability to drop an extra 1d10 on every combat check, he seems like the strongest fighter in the game to date. We can't see his deck composition, though, perhaps he has a major weakness there.

It should also help him to recharge and acquire spells or any other time an Arcane check is called for.

But don't discount Amiri's power to move others with her. That was awesome. And Crowe's has to trigger off of defeating a monster, not just simply ending your turn.

I'm just reacting to the fact that he can recharge instead of bury a weapon or attack spell to fuel his extra D10, and the versatility of being able to play attack and support spells.

Amiri's move power is indeed awesome, and Crowes move is more limited, but in reality you are going to stick him where there are the most monsters, so he shouldn't have too many problems getting that power off.

Still, let's see what his roles are and his deck composition, that should answer a lot of questions. At first glance this may be the strongest melee fighter ever. I imagine Class Deck Dragon Initiate Seoni is the strongest offensive character period though.

And I really can't wait to see how the Eidolon's work, as I have been wanting to play a summoner for a while.

I do agree that initially Balazar seems...underwhelming. Although the ability to draw a bunch of cards off of monsters is strong and he can be a great support character throwing D4s for any boon acquisitions or barrier encounters.

I assume he can discard multiple monsters to give multiple D4s to a single check, because then you can do a lot of interesting things where you discard a bunch of spells to draw monsters and help someone facing a tough barrier or wanting to grab a great piece of loot with multiple d4s.

If unlike Oloch the support is capped at only 1D4 though, then boy I hope that Eidolon is amazing, because no one is going to play Balazar otherwise.

Since you can only use a power once per step, I'm thinking it'll be limited to one monster. Just like Lem can't recharge every card in his hand even though he has a bunch of them.

Looks good.

You're probably right, Oloch is specifically worded so that he can use his power multiple times as long as he has the cards.

So then I assume the great appeal of Balazar will come from his Eidolon.

Couple things:

1. On the power of Crowe's bury ability, not that he only gets to recharge if it has the attack trait, so essentially only spells. He's probably not going to have a massive number of spells in his deck, so it's going to be bury more often than not.

2. I'm calling it now, the Eidolon will have the ability to use monsters from hand to gain 'evolutions' (adding dice or possibly traits), so it's only truly effective with the summoner.

3. Really curious about corruption, because I'm genuinely not sure if Seelah's ability is upside, downside or both.

Just one thing:

It looks awesome! We are so stoked about this.

Great calls Isaic - lets see how it works!

Couple things:

1. On the power of Crowe's bury ability, not that he only gets to recharge if it has the attack trait, so essentially only spells. He's probably not going to have a massive number of spells in his deck, so it's going to be bury more often than not.

but, if he doesn't need to move, then every time he defeats a monster, he can pull that recharged spell back to the top of his deck- so, with 2 spells, should be able to pull this off fairly consistently.

As far as the Melee goes, I'm pretty underwhelmed - bury powers are too costly to use in my experience (Lirianne was constantly struggling as she either buried cards, and ran out of deck, or didn't bury and failed combat) - give me Valeros's D10 +3 any day.

Think I'm most excited for the cohort blog post to find out more about Donahan. I've not really gone melee before, but I'd love a massive horse.

I think it depends. In our group that's never been a problem for Lirianne, and back in RotR I don't really remember that being an issue for Amiri. The bury powers are a "break the glass in case of emergency" type thing. A special boost you use when your already significant attack power doesn't quite cut it.

Crowe is a natural D12 with a potential +4 (+5 due to melee), so with a decent weapon I imagine he can take care of most things through the first few adventure decks. Lirianne was crushing people most of the time once she had archers bracers and sniper goggles and a bunch of points into her dex.

Two sentences went missing from this blog (though one of their periods stayed behind). We'll put them back tomorrow. They are:

At the end of the Balazar paragraph:
Like Alain’s horse Donahan, Padrig is a cohort card.

At the end of the Shardra paragraph:
Kolo is a cohort card in Wrath.

Ah, well if the great chicken is a cohort, then I'll reserve full judgement on Balazar until we see what they do and how they work. Regardless, I hope it's incredibly awesome to balance out Balazar's deficiencies

Ah, well if the great chicken is a cohort, then I'll reserve full judgement on Balazar until we see what they do and how they work. Regardless, I hope it's incredibly awesome to balance out Balazar's deficiencies

Maybe it's just me, but I would tend to avoid pre-judging any character until one sees a) the role cards, and b) all the cards designed to interact with that character. To be sure, some characters (e.g., Jirelle in S&S, with swashbuckling and ship-specific powers) are clearly designed to be used most effectively only in particular adventure paths, where they interact with cards particular to that set (e.g., cohorts). Likewise, the powers regarding "corrupted" cards may be more or less useful depending on how prevalent they are in the set.

I think it depends. In our group that's never been a problem for Lirianne, and back in RotR I don't really remember that being an issue for Amiri. The bury powers are a "break the glass in case of emergency" type thing. A special boost you use when your already significant attack power doesn't quite cut it.

Crowe is a natural D12 with a potential +4 (+5 due to melee), so with a decent weapon I imagine he can take care of most things through the first few adventure decks. Lirianne was crushing people most of the time once she had archers bracers and sniper goggles and a bunch of points into her dex.

in Runelords, I don't think Amiri used the power very often. But in Runelords, we basically just threw skill feats at the primary combat stat until there was no more room.

In S&S, Lirianne needed to take Wisdom and Constitution points to be able to deal with barriers/ships/locations etc, so even by adventure 6 she was only about +3 for Dex (she had bracers, then goggles, but never seemed to manage to draw them - one of the difficulties of shuffling rather than recharging)

it'll be interesting to see how Crowe fares in actual play - if you can afford to throw all those feats into strength, he'll be pretty good, but if you're having to spread out to cover Charisma, Constitution etc, then it might not work so well

3Doubloons wrote:

Ah, well if the great chicken is a cohort, then I'll reserve full judgement on Balazar until we see what they do and how they work. Regardless, I hope it's incredibly awesome to balance out Balazar's deficiencies

Maybe it's just me, but I would tend to avoid pre-judging any character until one sees a) the role cards, and b) all the cards designed to interact with that character. To be sure, some characters (e.g., Jirelle in S&S, with swashbuckling and ship-specific powers) are clearly designed to be used most effectively only in particular adventure paths, where they interact with cards particular to that set (e.g., cohorts). Likewise, the powers regarding "corrupted" cards may be more or less useful depending on how prevalent they are in the set.

I agree. However, I think it's probably a little harder not to pre-judge Balazar, since there's nothing on his card that immediately jumps out as 'This is a set thing, so don't make any conclusions about how this works' the way Swashbuckling and Structural damage were for Jirelle. There's also the very tough question of whether he'll be able to consistently have his cohort with him if that is the key to his power, since you're limited to your hand, and there's no obvious way to fetch an ally on his card.

My wife played Amiri and used the bury power a lot. Especially on with Armor she'd acquired. We looked for opportunities for Amiri to pick up cards at low cost (We can recharge that blessing this turn because it matches, go ahead and use it to acquire that spell). Then Amiri would burn them for her power. It was especially nice if that card was a spell Ezren wanted or a potion Drunken Master Sajan wanted, since they would play blessing for Amiri to acquire it, and then she would use it for her power, giving it to them at the end of the scenario.

There's also the very tough question of whether he'll be able to consistently have his cohort with him if that is the key to his power, since you're limited to your hand, and there's no obvious way to fetch an ally on his card.

I'm not sure cohort are allies. The blog post calls them a "new type of card". I'd assume type was meant in the sense of weapon, spell, armor, etc. I think they might be like ships in S&S, not fitting into any of the RotR buckets. They might not even be boons (ships weren't banes).

isaic16 wrote:

Couple things:

1. On the power of Crowe's bury ability, not that he only gets to recharge if it has the attack trait, so essentially only spells. He's probably not going to have a massive number of spells in his deck, so it's going to be bury more often than not.

but, if he doesn't need to move, then every time he defeats a monster, he can pull that recharged spell back to the top of his deck- so, with 2 spells, should be able to pull this off fairly consistently.

True, but using that power still forces him to end his turn. You'll have this tricky situation: "Hmm...I just defeated a monster. I could explore again, but I could also put the bottom card of my deck on top and end my turn. What are the odds that next card will also be a monster?"

isaic16 wrote:

There's also the very tough question of whether he'll be able to consistently have his cohort with him if that is the key to his power, since you're limited to your hand, and there's no obvious way to fetch an ally on his card.

I'm not sure cohort are allies. The blog post calls them a "new type of card". I'd assume type was meant in the sense of weapon, spell, armor, etc. I think they might be like ships in S&S, not fitting into any of the RotR buckets. They might not even be boons (ships weren't banes).

Oh, duh. Yeah, that was rather foolish of me. I just automatically read new type of card as 'new ally trait' despite there being absolutely no reason to. Well, that just makes me even more curious!

If it does end up as a new card type that just stays in front of you or something, then I am going to be spamming the Homebrew forums so hard in a few months. My mind is already flooding with possibilities, and I don't even have any idea what this thing is.

I don't understand Seelah's power: "When you attempt a check before you act, you may use your charisma skill instead of any listed skill." Why wouldn't someone use this power on every single check? What is it that I am not understanding?