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, 34567, and 8. Enjoy!

More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Character Decks Hell's Vengeance Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

That not dying power is really interesting. The implications are running through my brain.


I really like what you’re doing with the decks. I can’t wait to play as Nyctessa.


This deck is just perfect, wow.
Amazong job, can't wait to get this one in the mail :)

You really should consider making Darago an unlock for this deck somehow.


This deck presents some very interesting possibilities and new gameplay mechanisms. I really look forward to trying them out.

On a whiner note, neither the Brand of Hobbling nor Sacrificial Dagger links are working.


Brother Tyler wrote:
On a whiner note, neither the Brand of Hobbling nor Sacrificial Dagger links are working.

Not working for me either.

For consistency's sake, shouldn't Animate Dead have the Veteran trait?

Animated Horde underwhelmed me a bit. Its explore power doesn'r really do much unless you have other cards in your hand to fuel it, and if you *do* - it only gives you a 0.5 average over the ever-popular Velociraptor. Per check, per monster banished.
Also, as our first ally with the epic-sounding Army trait (I believe?), I kinda expected it to have some extra efficiency against those awful WotR Armies. But I can understand if everyone wants to pretend those never happened.

A question about Emil's power: "you may ignore that trait and immunities to it" - is this an AND/OR proposition? I.e., if I chose to ignore an Undead's immunity to Poison, can I still keep the Poison trait of the check (for purposes of blessing it, or what have you)?

Lone Shark Games

Doppelschwert wrote:
You really should consider making Darago an unlock for this deck somehow.

That is a very tempting proposition.


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Animate Dead, Robe of bones, Haste, a combat spell, and a monster in hand is almost a sufficient win condition for any character with arcane or divine.

Use Animate dead, instead of discarding it, banish a monster. Draw at least two monsters from the box. Repeat until you have enough monsters, and resupply as needed.

Have enough monsters in hand to absorb the worst-case damage.

Not quite sufficient to be a win, since it's possible to lose to a villain and lose cards directly from the clock and lose, or to have encounters that place conditions on the cards that may be discarded as damage, or have effects that end your turn, or even to be at a location that you mathematically cannot close or meet the requirements to move from.

Shadow Lodge

I have a mighty need.

Lone Shark Games

DeciusBrutus wrote:
Animate Dead, Robe of bones, Haste, a combat spell, and a monster in hand is almost a sufficient win condition for any character with arcane or divine.

This combo didn't turn up in testing (among other things, Haste just isn't part of the normal test pool, and 5 cards is a big combo requirement), but it's a good catch. We'll look at it.

Scarab Sages

Why are we talking about the mechanics of this and not just gushing effusively about the awesome mental pictures these cards conjure up?

I myself am imagining these cards being like when Harry Dresden turned a tyrannosaurus rex skeleton into an undead zombie and rode it around Chicago. This "Animate Dead" card is just like that. Now if only there were a tyrannosaurus rex monster promo to use it with...


Calthaer wrote:
Now if only there were a tyrannosaurus rex monster promo to use it with...

Well, you can always use an Improvised Dinosaur... :)


So, question about a couple of powers the characters have:

Zelhara wrote:
Once per turn (⁊ or any number of times on your turn), when a power happens if a boon has the corrupted trait, you may ignore that power.
EMil wrote:
When you play a boon that has the poison (⁊ or corrupted) trait, you may ignore that trait and immunities to it. If the boon would require you to bury any cards from your hand or deck, recharge them instead.

My interpretation of Emil's power is that being able to ignore the corrupted trait on a boon you play doesn't mean you get to ignore a power that triggers because of the corrupted trait, as that's what's Zelhara's power explicitly allows you to do. But that being the case, what does ignoring the corrupted trait actually do then? I think there might be one bane that says it's immune to cards with the corrupted trait, which would make spending a power feat to ignore the corrupted trait very narrow. Am I overthinking things?


I think the distinction is this:
Emil let's you ignore the Corrupted trait on the cards you play, while Zelhara lets you ignore the Corrupted trait (on a potentially different card) while you play a card that cares.

As an example, a lot of blessing in WotR care about the Corrupted trait on the top card of the blessings discard pile. Zelhara would be able to ignore that Corrupted trait, while Emil wouldn't. On the other hand, they both would be able to ignore the clause on Hangman's Noose that cares whether it has the Corrupted trait.


@Doppelschwert - I see, good catch.

Next question: Both Hell's Vengeance decks have a basic ally called Cult Acolyte. They're identical except for their first powers, which are each worded differently:

Cult Acolyte, Hell's Vengeance Deck 1 wrote:
Recharge this card and shuffle the top card of the blessing deck into your location deck to add 1d8 to your Arcane or Divine check
Cult Acolyte, Hell's Vengeance Deck 2 wrote:
Recharge this card to at 1d8 to your Arcane or Divine check, then search the blessings deck for a blessing and shuffle it into your location deck

Is one of these powers a misprint?

Lone Shark Games

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Not really a misprint, more of a continuous improvement. The second was a wording change that we figured was better over the long haul, because nobody wins when a Sandstorm is in their deck. But we made that change after Hell's 1 went to print.


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Another question: Hell's Vengeance Deck 2 has a redemption card, but doesn't have any cards that allow you to redeem a card - unlike Hell's Vengeance Deck 1 which has The Asmodean Disciples. Season of The Righteous only allows you to redeem loot rewards. It is intended that you never redeem cards in HVD2?


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This is some very cool stuff.

But I implore y'all:

Zelhara wrote:
On your check that invokes the Chain, Finesse, or Knife trait, you may use Divine instead of the listed skill.

This is a lot like Varril's power, and we still don't know how to play him. Now we have two characters replacing the listed skill with Divine. Can we please have a ruling on whether the check retains the original listed skill as a trait?


DeciusBrutus wrote:

Animate Dead, Robe of bones, Haste, a combat spell, and a monster in hand is almost a sufficient win condition for any character with arcane or divine.

Use Animate dead, instead of discarding it, banish a monster. Draw at least two monsters from the box. Repeat until you have enough monsters, and resupply as needed.

Have enough monsters in hand to absorb the worst-case damage.

We let Zetha do such combo and we have pretty big chance to finish scenario at round 1. She can move by banishing monsters, evade encounter sshe doesn't like, use monsters as armors and she doesn't need combat spells to fight. And passes almost every non-combat check with that combo. Now that is what I call game-breaker


elcoderdude wrote:

This is some very cool stuff.

But I implore y'all:

Zelhara wrote:
On your check that invokes the Chain, Finesse, or Knife trait, you may use Divine instead of the listed skill.
This is a lot like Varril's power, and we still don't know how to play him. Now we have two characters replacing the listed skill with Divine. Can we please have a ruling on whether the check retains the original listed skill as a trait?

+1 on this. Really needs an official ruling

A year seems long enough to make a decision
Call it one way or the other and be done and move on, don't try to get it perfect

Lone Shark Games

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Matsu Kurisu wrote:
elcoderdude wrote:

This is some very cool stuff.

But I implore y'all:

Zelhara wrote:
On your check that invokes the Chain, Finesse, or Knife trait, you may use Divine instead of the listed skill.
This is a lot like Varril's power, and we still don't know how to play him. Now we have two characters replacing the listed skill with Divine. Can we please have a ruling on whether the check retains the original listed skill as a trait?

+1 on this. Really needs an official ruling

A year seems long enough to make a decision
Call it one way or the other and be done and move on, don't try to get it perfect

Sorry, we just forgot about this. We'll talk it out and get a ruling soon.


I don't understand what Paizo has against cool looking characters, Nyctessa is among the coolest character that exist, (In my opinion anyways). Or maybe you have something against Necromancers, Nyctessa card and power are weak, she is bearly stronger than Durago also one of the coolest character but also, one of the weakest, if not the weakest character of the entire game.

On her role card she gains 1 power. One. SO lets look at her power...She can lose permanently a card deck; (Banish) a card from her hand to gain 1 d4, 1D4 right.

My God, did you say 1 D4, OP!!!!...holy shit this is so powerful. Not only that but she has in fact 3 power, because 1 of them is if she move card(s) from her deck and there isn't enough, she doesn't die once per turn.

So what, are you suppose to purposefully put yourself at risk so that you can say doesn't matter, I can't die once per turn, we're cool.

Even Zetha from the Summoner Deck, again, cool character getting short side of the stick, (she can't play spell with attack trait, or she must banish it). But for some reason even zetha is better at getting monster, she can put 2 or 3 (when you get the role card). And she has more use for them.

Why can't Durago or Nyctessa get something powerful like Amiri, when she bury a card any card(by the way) to get 1d10... or Brielle does 1d12 or Ostog 1d12, not banishing simply bury. NOt only that but brielle even get to recharge the card if she succeed. You might say ok but they are barbarian, ok what about Tup, he can recharge 1 card any, to give you 4 and the fire trait. or Mogmurch who can discard any card to give any character combat check 1d6(+1 if you check the box) and; if that card was an Alchimical (or attack or poison) an additional 1d6 (2d6 on one of the side of the role card) (and the other side, that card adventure deck number).

I never play rpgs unless I can play a necromancer, I love them, but I never found this game so boring than when I played with Duraga. Everyone was helping and doing some cool shit and having a good time except for me, one of my friend was playing Zarlova, and got to put multiple time holy light on top of his deck. the other was playing Cogsnap, and could heal us, throw potion, fight with ranged weapon and even use spell, he was like a 1 man army. The other was playing Feiya, and roll d12plus 2 for arcane, + she could actually heal herself with her Familiar Daji. What was I doing I could'nt even put any monster in my hand, because you have to wait to fight a monster with the undead trait, and %95 of the monsters were outsiders demon and what not, and when we finally saw 1, well, I wasn't the one fighting it, not to talk about the fact that before I got to unlock that power , I was a necromancer who can't raise nothing. I got a 1d4 against bonus against undead, which I never got to use not even once.

Why could Nyctessa be like Varian he has d12 in Intelligence, he gets to draw a spell at the end of his turn, and return the rest to the deck. This is f***ing amazing. And on his role card he gets to roll melee : Intelligence +2. And that is just 1 of his powers. But Has I am finishing to write this wall text I am wondering if there is even a point to write all of this, because I am also sure it is too late to change her and even if its wasn't I don't think you guys would change her just because some nobody in Canada (I am talking about myself) think she is weak.

Ever since that blog entry;

Meet the Villains—Nyctessa
Friday, May 6, 2016

I have been waiting for you guys to bring her to this game. I actually accepted to play this game entirely and solely because of her, because her design, because she looked so god**am cool. The only thing I love more than necromancer in Videogames and RPGs, are Vampire, and you get both or almost, Dhamphir is still pretty close.

My only hope is that the other side of her card, she is stronger, but at this point I don't really expect that to happen, if Durago is any indication, the other side, is probably even worse.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Um, you get to draw defeated monsters. You use those as your banish fodder. You literally animate the corpses of your foes to get those d4s. (Or the corpses of hapless NPCs you happen to encounter.) Plus as you level you get d4s equal to the cards deck number. So when you beat a deck 6 monster, you get to turn it around into 6d4 to a check.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
Um, you get to draw defeated monsters. You use those as your banish fodder. You literally animate the corpses of your foes to get those d4s. (Or the corpses of hapless NPCs you happen to encounter.) Plus as you level you get d4s equal to the cards deck number. So when you beat a deck 6 monster, you get to turn it around into 6d4 to a check.

But that is only when you get to scenario 6 which is almost the end of the game. my average result on d4 are 1 and 2, so multiply that by 6 and you get maybe=12 to the result, maybe 16 if you get a 4. Zetha gets to add 2 monster from the box independently of if she fights or not, it should be the same for her.

Nyctessa should have more use for her monters than just to add 1d4 or a couple for combat. or to get an ally. Zetha can banish 1 monster to use her stealth check for non combat check, why can't she do something like that.

I would have given her like bury or discard an ally to draw a monster with the same adventure deck number as that discarded ally. If that ally has the undead trait recharge that ally instead. One per turn you can display 1 or 2 monster or card with the undead trait, you can bury displayed card to reduce combat damage by 1 or 2.

On the roll card, once per turn, when you reset your hand, you may draw from 1 card with the undead trait from your buried card as one of the card you would have drawn when reseting. something cool.

Maybe she can draw a number of monster from the box at the start of the turn equal to the numnber of allies burried, like she brings them back as undead. Maybe if she is really good at it, like they said in the article above, when she defeat a henchman monster she can draw the card, and use it like an ally or a cohort for the rest of the scenario.

Edit: It makes sense to me that bringing back buried allied or monster should be a specialty for any powerful necromancer, thematically it makes sense.

Made she could shield herself from monster effect that happens before or after she act, like the wall of undead shielding her from the attack of the bane. Ignore the effect of bane that would evade you., you cut off their escape route with a wall of undead. Give her some more utility, because as of right now, she is really weak

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Yes, if the henchmen is a monster she gets to draw it when defeating it. I honestly don't see your complaint about coolness, but then I haven't been playing this past year so maybe I'm out of the loop on ACG power levels.


I think Nyctessa is overly powerful, don't quite understand this complaint. This may be unintuitive, but the more dice you have, the more stable the expected value of your roll will be - even a single d4 is making a roll much more predictable and stable, and several of those greatly enhance your checks from a statistical point of view. If you've ever played with a bard, you will surely know what I mean.

That being said, you'll regularly have cards with AD2+ on your hand for the most part of the AP, which is really a big boost to checks.


Re: Nyctessa, I think it's hard to say what all she's going to be able to do until you see the collection of Spells in the deck and how many card slots she will have available for them. She's a Wizard, not a Summoner.

In that vein, the Animate Dead spell shown is a good way to get more Monsters to fuel her support power.


Undead Master Nyctessa could get an interesting engine going. She could suck cards from other characters' discard piles, then use them to reset her hand.

Arcaneumkiller, I'm trying to be sympathetic to your views, but I'm not understanding your comment that Nyctessa gains a single power on her role card. She has six additional powers to choose from on her role card (in addition to two hand size increases). (Also, most players would select the boost from 1d4 to AD#d4s on the character card, before gaining the role card, I think. Even adding 2 or 3 d4s to checks is significant -- you don't need AD6 cards for this to matter.)


I am saying that she is underpowered compared to other characters. I am saying that she could have, and in my opinion should have more power on her role card. entire box with other powers, she has 1 utility for the monster and that is to give herself #'s d4 for combat or to acquire an ally.

Edit: And she can also banish an ally to get that 1d4, how is that an acceptable cost to get a 1d4. Discarding an ally to get 1d4 is acceptable, burying an ally to get 1d4 is ridiculous, banishing an ally to get 1d4 is absolutely insane in my opinion, I would never take an ally from my hand and lose is forever to get 1d4. on a check. Most ally will give you more than 1d4 by simply recharging it or discarding it.

I would expect from a master necromancer something more impresive. So basically until you get to destroy a mosnter, you can't use your power. Also, the 3rd power is that if you run out of card , you don't die. Which is cool but at the same time really lame, because 95% of the time you are not dying, out decking out.

It never happened to any of us to deck out, it was close once or twice, but we use cure, and heal each others. So in a way its almost has if she has 3 powers.

1st- if you Kill a monster, you may add it to your hand instead of banishing it.
2nd- Banish a monster from hand to add 1d4 or several d4 to combat or to acquire an ally
3rd- if you deck out, once per turn you don't die
4th- if you fight against a monster with undead you get a 1d8 (1d12)

I don't see how you guys look at that character card or role card and see an overpowered character.

Why doesn't she has other utility for her monster in her hand. if it must be a simple utility, and her 1st is simply to add a monster and her third is not to die when decking out.They could give her power at least 2 other power on that role card, look how big is the box for the flavored text on the role card is. The role card power is almost half emptied. If they must reduce hand size, or other balancing fine, but they should add powers, make us actually go, oh shit, look at what that character can do, it's really nice.

The only thing, that gives me a glimmer of hope, is that we have not seen the other side of the role card yet. which may redeem this awful side, which is half emptied. Getting a bonus die to fight undead is just...when you have so few powers, its ridiculous. What if she could use the monster to help her recharge spell, or what if she can't recharge, but she can exchange a monster from her hand with a spell from her discard pile. Give her something special.More utility for her monsters than just 1 d4 for her combat or acquiring allies.

Maybe she can draw monster that other characters at her location defeat, like that Dwarf Magus in the Magus deck does with Barrier. What if she was the first character who, when building deck before a scenario, she can add or treat monster as if they were allies, and keep monster in her deck, or something crazy like that.

I have 1 question though, that third power on her role card;

( and you may reset your hand from your discard pile). Is that something you can do, even if you have enough card in your deck to reset normally, or not having enough card in your deck is also a condition for the reseting your hand from the discard pile part ?


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Arcaneumkiller wrote:


Also, the 3rd power is that if you run out of card , you don't die. Which is cool but at the same time really lame, because 95% of the time you are not dying, out decking out.

It never happened to any of us to deck out, it was close once or twice, but we use cure, and heal each others.

It's going to happen more if you are banishing a bunch of cards.

It also allow Nyctessa to use a very different playstyle. Particularly when she gets that reset from your discard pile power


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I think the main take away I get from Arcaneum's post is that they think Nyctessa lacks utility. I think there's some truth to that, or maybe it's just because we're playing armchair PACG instead of actually playing her. I do think that she seems to be incredibly strong because of the scaling d4 skill.

Arcaneum's secondary complaint (at least how I read it) is that the d4 skill seems "meh" but again, I find it to be incredibly strong.

Once role card is unlocked it takes precisely 2 power feats to be able to boost another character's check to defeat a monster with a scaling ability.

For fun, let's say Nyctessa banishes a AD3 card. That is 3d4 or average of 7.5.

Now, also for fun, let's say Valeros is in the same team and put all his power feats into 1d4+4. So that's 4 power feats for an average of 6.5.

Sure, Nyctessa's power has some strings to it...but that is already strong just that she can out utility him on the combat checks with 2 power feats to his 4. That's not even taking into an account it could be an AD6 card for 6d4 or average of 15. That's huge and no doubt the world is a less scary place with an undead master by your side. There's nothing "meh" about that. BTW her other role card lets her bury the card instead of banish it. She can't help an ally but that opens up the ability to bury your high level AD cards rather than count on high level monsters or cards you don't care about. I'd dare say that even without your role card just spending 1 power feat to get the scaling is going to keep her at least on bar with other "smash" power feats.

As far as the not dying thing is...I think that is pretty cool considering how she is to be played. I am playing Linxia and Linxia banishes and buries a lot of cards. I've had a few games where I've banished or buries 5-6+ cards and suddenly my deck feels very thin even with no cards in my discard pile. Nyctessa doesn't have to worry about that as much. I also haven't fully read through all the spells but from the ones I've read it seems she has a lot of good options.

Both role cards have ways of manipulating the discard pile, either by resetting your hand from it or being able to add cards from discard to your deck. Maybe nothing mind blowing to make everyone at the table worship you, but still pretty neat.

So overall, yes, I think she lacks a bit more utility outside of her d4 ability, but at least playing armchair PACG she seems pretty legit to me for the people who just want to watch the world burn at their or their allies' feet.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

Nyctessa doesn't look that bad to me. She can be a solo beast in combat - in a late game combat, when she casts Disintegrate or some other high powered attack spell, she's looking at d10+4d6+,say,5d4+6, just from the spell and her own powers. That's an average of 38, which is enough to handle most AD6 villains, let alone normal monsters. Toss a single +1 die blessing in there and you've got an average of 43.5, which is enough for most ending villains. And with so many dice, her average is a pretty good indicator of where she'll end up.

Also for solo play, death is a constant looming threat which she mostly sidesteps.

She will have issues with barriers, but that's not uncommon for wizard types. Also, strangely enough, she'll have big problems at "swimming" locations or other forced Con checks.


ryric wrote:
Also for solo play, death is a constant looming threat which she mostly sidesteps.

Although most people neglect solo play (understandable given the huge setup time; but the Pathfinder Adventures app is excellent to try this play mode!) , I cannot emphasize enough how awesome is Niyctessa for it.

She outshines pretty much any other caster by virtue of not needing a spell to combat (which may be something Arcaneumkiller is missing), and even better - she can bypass those pesky monsters like Satyrs, Hags and Golems. You try to solo-Ezren the Karzoug Statue and then we can talk again about how Nyctessa sucks (pun intended :)

Even better, her "reset hand from discard" upgrades lets her CHOSE the cards in her hand. This pretty much makes her optimal solo play leaving her in a constant near-dead state (or is that "undead"?) - where she becomes pretty much immortal (only really exposed to effects that take cards from your deck, instead from your hand)- and lets you curate your hand EVERY TURN, to meet the challenges at hand. If I was playing her, I wouldn't be able to discard my whole deck fast enough.. Now that I think about - she outshines pretty much *every other character ever* for solo play!

(I do agree with the lack of versatility though, which bothers me primarily from a "thematic" point of view; and obviously all "once per turn" power are severely devaluated the more players there are in the game)


Longshot11 wrote:
and obviously all "once per turn" power are severely devaluated the more players there are in the game)

"Once per turn" and "once per your turn" are different. She can save herself from dying once per turn, it doesn't have to be her own turn.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

A fun necromancer or summoner power could be to banish a monster from hand to evade a barrier - thematically having a minion walk in front of you to set off traps.


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
ryric wrote:
Also, strangely enough, she'll have big problems at "swimming" locations or other forced Con checks.

Not strange at all, from a lore perspective: Dhampyrs still need to breathe, and have a racial -2 CON penalty. Also, it's unlikely her daddy taught her how to swim growing up, given that whole "Vampires vs running water" thing.


Longshot, while it is not uncommon for me to have a different take on things than you do, nearly always I understand exactly what you're saying. But not this time.

Longshot11 wrote:
She outshines pretty much any other caster by virtue of not needing a spell to combat (which may be something Arcaneumkiller is missing), and even better - she can bypass those pesky monsters like Satyrs, Hags and Golems.

Spellless combat is OK at the low end of banes, but not the high end. If she fights with her hands and banishes/buries a AD6 card, she has d6+6d4 (vs non-Undead, at least). That's about 18 average -- good enough for hags, but not all golems, and definitely not villains. The Karzoug statue is 28, for example. (Also, I am confused by "bypass" -- I looked in vain for an evade power. You mean defeat?)

Although, it is cool that her boost works on all checks to defeat, not just Combat checks.

Longshot11 wrote:
Even better, her "reset hand from discard" upgrades lets her CHOSE the cards in her hand.

"CHOOSE" is also confusing me. You can't reorder your discard pile, so when she resets from her discard pile you are just taking the top card of the discard pile -- you aren't rummaging through it and selecting what you want.

If you're saying you can toss the dross from your hand without fear of that killing you, that I can see. (Playing on the edge of death could kill her if she met a Carrion Golem in a low AD scenario, though.)

EDIT: I'm dead cold wrong, and keen-eyed Longshot has found an exploit in Nyctessa's powers.

MM rulebook p. 14 wrote:
RESETTING YOUR HAND...Finally, if you have fewer cards than your hand size, you must draw cards until the number of cards in your hand matches your hand size.
MM rulebook p.12 wrote:
DEALING WITH CARDS...When you draw a card from a faceup pile, such as your discard pile, the blessings discard pile, or any other pile the game tells you to create, draw a card of your choice.

Longshot is correct -- once Nyctessa is resetting her hand from her discard pile, she can just pick whatever she wants. Like I said above, though, it is at a risk of being killed on your reset after encountering a card that takes cards directly off your deck, of which there are a number.


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Mike Selinker wrote:
elcoderdude wrote:
This is a lot like Varril's power, and we still don't know how to play him. Now we have two characters replacing the listed skill with Divine. Can we please have a ruling on whether the check retains the original listed skill as a trait?
Sorry, we just forgot about this. We'll talk it out and get a ruling soon.

Cool, thanks. Since you're making rulings on character powers, this might be a good opportunity to revisit Mavaro and make a ruling on his display/recharge ability - which has also been a long time coming. (See here for details.)


elcoderdude wrote:
Longshot11 wrote:
She outshines pretty much any other caster by virtue of not needing a spell to combat (which may be something Arcaneumkiller is missing), and even better - she can bypass those pesky monsters like Satyrs, Hags and Golems.
Spellless combat is OK at the low end of banes, but not the high end. If she fights with her hands and banishes/buries a AD6 card, she has d6+6d4 (vs non-Undead, at least). That's about 18 average -- good enough for hags, but not all golems, and definitely not villains. The Karzoug statue is 28, for example. (Also, I am confused by "bypass" -- I looked in vain for an evade power. You mean defeat?)

Sorry, what I meant is - she doesn't *need* to succeed Arcane/Divine/Wisdom to have a fighting chance against Harpies and Hags, compared to other casters, and she has an offensive (as opposed to evade/soak up damage) recourse against Attack-immune Golems.

(On reflection, this is based on her having at least 1 weapon slot, though; otherwise, you could argue her power just 'makes up' for that 1 'in case of emergency' weapon other casters would carry. Still, I can't think of many weapons that give you an in-built average of +15 by AD6)

In the Karzoug case - compare her to RotR Ezren , who is pretty much dead on arrival in this encounter, and he has to posses a couple very specific cards (from among hundreds!) to have a fighting chance. Nyctessa, on the other hand, will start at an average of +16 (Str d6 + 5d4 from the AD5 henchman she'd have in her hand) - still a long way to beat Karzoug, but definitely a better start than what what most casters can manage against Golems. Imho.


Two questions about powers on these characters:

1) Zelhara's "When a power happens if a boon has the Corrupted trait, ignore that power".

How would that work with, say, the Hangman's Noose, a weapon that seems pretty much made for her? Since a power is a complete paragraph, the Noose has only one power. So she could either ignore the whole thing (making it pointless to play the weapon) or none of it (making her character power pointless in this case)?

2)Emil's "When you play a card that has the Poison trait, you may ignore that trait and immunities to it."

Should that be "you may ignore that trait OR immunities to it"? As it stands, it seems like if you play a weapon with the Poison trait against a monster which is immune to it, you'd ignore the immunity, but at the same time you wouldn't have the Poison trait on your check anymore anyways?


@Shnik

1) You would just ignore the power that happens for the Corrupted trait; so Zelhara doesn't have to bury a card, since the Noose doesn't have the Corrupted trait. She basically redeems every card automatically, except that she is so bad she doesn't.

2) Some cards apply to when a card has the Poison trait with being a Monster that is immune to it. Two sides of the same coin.


Shnik wrote:


1) Zelhara's "When a power happens if a boon has the Corrupted trait, ignore that power".

How would that work with, say, the Hangman's Noose, a weapon that seems pretty much made for her? Since a power is a complete paragraph, the Noose has only one power. So she could either ignore the whole thing (making it pointless to play the weapon) or none of it (making her character power pointless in this case)?

That's ... actually a very good catch. Only, I think you may be looking at it from the wrong angle:

Yes, the Noose has one power but with 3 separate manifestations - and they all *happen* when you *reveal* or *discard* it, not 'when it has the Corrupted trait'. Technically, the Corrupted instruction is not at all different than the ones on Corrupted (or any, for that matter) Blessings that say "If the top card of the blessings discard has the Corrupted trait / is the same as this card...", and if space was permitting, it would more appropriately have a separate paragraph for itself, saying:

"If you discarded this card to reroll the dice and has the Corrupted trait, bury this card instead."

If the above was the case, you would have no confusion that you should ignore the Noose's powers through Zelhara's 'ignore' power. Still, that would leave us with the issue that Zelhara's power is then useless on the Noose at all. What's the solution?

In all cases I can think of, NO "power happens when a boon has the Corrupted trait" - these *all* happen when you Reveal, Recharge, Discard, etc. What *actually* "happens when a boon has the Corrupted trait" is an "effect" (vague notion by my standards, but there you go. To add further confusion, this applies to the boons themselves; you could theoretically have a Location that says "When you play a boon with the Corrupted trait..." and THAT would be considered power, which would then satisfy Zelhara's power as written. Yes, it is an inconsistency that vexes me to no end.)

So, the real 'fix' here would be to FAQ Zeltara's power into "When an effect happens if a boon has the Corrupted trait...". I don't actually expect a FAQ to happen as this is pretty niche issue, and the *intent* seems pretty intuitive so no *new* player will think twice about how to play it out. However, if it just bugs you to know - this is how things should be. IMHO, obviously.

Shnik wrote:

2)Emil's "When you play a card that has the Poison trait, you may ignore that trait and immunities to it."

Should that be "you may ignore that trait OR immunities to it"? As it stands, it seems like if you play a weapon with the Poison trait against a monster which is immune to it, you'd ignore the immunity, but at the same time you wouldn't have the Poison trait on your check anymore anyways?

I asked this question earlier in the thread, but still no official answer. Most of the time these two are redundant (no sense to ignore the immunity if I'm ignoring the trait, and vice versa), but there are cases when it matters - if I want to play Scorpion Whip on Undead and *then* double-boost myself with Poison blessing.

For the time being, I'd treat that powers as saying "and/or" - you can ignore both, or either.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Longshot11 wrote:
A question about Emil's power: "you may ignore that trait and immunities to it" - is this an AND/OR proposition? I.e., if I chose to ignore an Undead's immunity to Poison, can I still keep the Poison trait of the check (for purposes of blessing it, or what have you)?

It's and/or. Added to FAQ.

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