Designing the Ultimate Decks

Thursday, October 26, 2017

We're deep in design on the Ultimate add-on series of character decks for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game—Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Intrigue, and Ultimate Equipment. (We broke the news on this series in an earlier blog.)

So far from final art, it's not even in the same dictionary as "final" and "art."

The idea is to supplement all the character decks we've made so far with decks of new cards. If you're playing a home game, you can just add Ultimate decks into any Adventure Path box. If you're playing in organized play, you'll be able to use a character deck—say, the Wizard Class Deck—and one Ultimate deck. If you'd like to play the character that's in the Ultimate deck, you can supplement that character with the cards from one other character deck. (There will likely be some limitations on which decks you can use with each of the characters from the Ultimate decks, but we haven't settled this yet.)

So as we're making these decks—moving cards in and out, designing cycles, even rethinking their reasonings for existence—we keep hitting three questions. If you'd like to participate in helping us think these things out, leave your suggestions in the comments.

Question 1: What utility cards must be in the decks?

We need to give all of the existing characters the cards they need to be more awesome. For some of those characters, they need cards they don't have access to, such as Potion of Healing. A melee character who can't get a Greatsword at any tier is going to be sad about it. And even if your character deck has a Cure in it, you're unlikely to be upset about having access to a second Cure. So we're tracking all the cards we just can't get along without.

Sometimes "boring" is another word for "gimme that."

And sometimes we need to help characters play in sets they weren't designed for. All those Curses in Mummy's Mask are pretty nasty, so you might want Remove Curse. A lot.

Where in the Ultimate series such a card goes is also relevant. Ultimate Intrigue doesn't need a Greatsword. Ultimate Combat does.

Just as significantly, we're looking at cards we don't need to put anywhere. We don't need to put any Blessings of the Gods in the Ultimate decks, because the other character decks have as many as they need. Low-powered cards like Dart and Leather Armor seem unlikely to make an appearance in a deck with the word Ultimate in the title.

Question 2: What cards are our favorites?

We want to see reappearances of many of the cool things we've created over the years, especially since Skull & Shackles. (That's the set that was mostly done when we made the first seven class decks.) Every designer on this team has a different set of these, but there are some we're quickly reaching consensus on.

One of these is particularly fun at parties.

For example, Mummy's Mask was the set where we made some bizarre armors. Even people who ragged on armor on a daily basis were stopped cold by a card like Falcon Crown from Secret of the Sphinx.

We also love cards that let someone be something their deck wouldn't otherwise allow them to be. Riffle Scrolls, from the Pathfinder Tales Character Deck, lets a player with the Fighter Class Deck hold on to spells he might play, even if that opportunity is rarer than it is for, say, Ezren.

And of course, it's often just about what makes a certain designer smile. For example, I find the Baby Triceratops adorable. Hey there! Who's a good little trikey-wikey? You are. YES, YOU ARE. So yeah, there's probably going to be a Baby Triceratops in one of these decks. You might want to prepare to bury a lot of cards.

Question 3: What cards are missing?

This is where we're spending a lot of our time. Usually when we make a set or a character deck, we're trying to model something specific. Write a Demon-fighting set, make a lot of things to fight Demons.

But left unchained, what are we going to do? Well, a lot of things. Create more stained-glass blessings for our favorite gods, for example. Japanese weapons for Hayato. New books for Enora. Maybe some new poisons in Ultimate Intrigue. And some just weird things like—hey, did you know there's a luchador mask in the Ultimate Equipment book? We did.

Por el bando rudo.

Chad noted the other day that we had exactly one pair of non-promo shoes in the entire game, the Boots of Teleportation. (I suggested the Reed Moccasin, but he wasn't buying it.) Now, why do we need more shoes? Beats me. But now that he's said it, somebody on the team is likely to demand more shoes.

There are all sorts of things we'd like to do with these decks. But what do you want to see? Leave comments below about what cards you'd like us to include and where. Thanks!

Mike Selinker
Adventure Card Game Lead Designer