Thanks for at least making me feel better about questioning what happens to this card.
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Kind of figured, thanks for the quick response!
We just picked up the Cloud Elemental ally from AP5 - the card is displayed at a location and can grant additional dice to checks at that location, when used you roll a die and on a 1 it is banished. However, the card doesn't say anything about what to do with it beyond that. Is it returned to the player's deck after the location is closed, after the adventure, or does it just go back to the box after the adventure?
I agree this rule is far from obvious. Also, since several armors allow you specifically to play another armor on the check (I'm guessing that is then intended just to override the "one armor per source of damage rule") but to me that additionally muddles the issue because when I see cards like that it just confirms what I'd originally thought to be a hard and fast rule, namely that only one card of each type can normally be used on a check. To be honest this is the perfect example of why I think PACG often overcomplicates *itself*. There's a lot of really twisty rules out there and oftentimes those rules end up being created because of situations like this - where a decision was made to make an exception to one of the core rules of the game (an exception that doesn't even really seem needed) and that causes additional rulings and FAQ entries to be created to explain this exception.
Okay, thanks as always Hawk.
Hey folks, Question that came up in our game last night. There are several cards (the Chakrams that I carry on Yoon come to mind) that cancel "before you act" powers (mostly on non-villain monsters). I don't want to misquote the actual wording of the powers in question by trying to paraphrase them and getting it wrong (don't have my cards in front of me at the moment), but there are multiple cards with this sort of power in the MM set. I don't think they specify that it has to be "your" encounter but they also don't specify that it can be "any" encounter, either. My question is are these cards intended to be able to only cancel before you act powers on monsters you are encountering, or can someone across the table discard a Chakram to cancel a before you act power on someone else's encounter? Then my second question is if a before you act power makes everyone at the location make a check - if I discard a Chakram to cancel that power, does it negate it completely for everyone or just stop that particular character from having to make the check? Thanks!
I don't suppose any party with a Blessing of Maat will even register this issue anyway.Not only is this the fifth scenario in which you might acquire one of the five Blessings of Maat in the game, but it even seeds additional blessings into some of the locations. Well.. this isn't really a complaint about Maat or Shardizhad (we picked him up but I wouldn't have really minded missing him, the regular traders already have let us see pretty much all of the new cards that they can trade, so we haven't found him necessary to use) - but I would like to point out that my Drelm has only been able to pick up 2 Abadars (and the second one was in the very last scenario of AP2) out of all the missions through AP2. (And that's with all 6 members of our group trying to get them for him when they appear) In my experience there are usually a couple of boons that slip through each new deck and you never see them (particularly if there isn't a trader for them like with blessings) until later and then you have a "how have I not seen this card yet" moment when they pop up during the next adventure. So saying it's the fifth scenario where you might acquire one does mean there's a decent chance that you've been able to do so, but it's hardly guaranteed. And it's likely that there's one, maybe two floating around amongst all the character decks. Not exactly always available to adjust the perfect check to make that exact roll. Once again, I didn't find Shardizhad hard to acquire but I also don't think that automatically assuming there's going to be a Maat to make that happen is correct either. It just seems pretty luck based to me as well, which doesn't really bother me because I wasn't that concerned about acquiring him.
Makes sense, thanks!
Regarding Immunities, the MM Rulebook says this (pg 9) - "If the card you're encountering states that it is immune to a particular trait, during the encounter, characters may not play cards that have the specified trait or use powers that would add that trait to the check. The card you're encountering might require or allow a check that can affect your check to acquire or defeat; you must resolve that check before you begin the check to acquire or defeat." (Really only the first sentence applies, I quoted the whole paragraph just to be complete). The Fire Gecko allows you to explore and then during that exploration you are told to add d4 and the Fire trait to your combat check. There is no "may" (unlike the Shock Lizard) in the text. Now I had been thinking that if you used the Fire Gecko to explore and ran into something immune to fire that you were just out of luck, but actually based on the rule I just quoted, it very specifically says that the only requirement is that during the encounter you can't play cards involving that trait. So.. if you've played the Fire Gecko beforehand to give you an explore which happens to turn into a fire immune monster.. can you still get the d4/fire from the Gecko as well as roll normally on the check even though it's immune to fire?
Btw regarding #2, I noticed there's a FAQ entry for the Bewilder spell (which apparently gives an explore after letting you evade your current combat) so that you can still use it when not exploring and it just makes the exploration available only if you were already exploring. Is this possibly relevant to using a Blessing of Horus to move when it's not your turn (you can get the explore if you're exploring, if you're not then you don't get that part of the card power)?
Thanks, was pretty sure about 2 and 3. Not so much about #1 but yeah that's how we played it. (I'd rather it played that way honestly, it seems too easy to get good cards for free otherwise). Btw did we ever get a confirm that you still have all the excess cards from the scenario to work with (and purchase cards with) when visiting traders?
Hi guys! Got some more for ya. 1) Probably the most game-affecting question here - when utilizing Traders after a scenario, are all trades considered to be simultaneous or could you use cards purchased from one trader to help buy a card sold by another Trader? To explain a bit further - we noticed during the B and deck 1 scenarios that for the most part we're not paying any actual real cost to buy cards from traders. There's always so many excess B cards floating around after a scenario that are going back to the box anyway after we're done - that purchasing anything up through AP1 was basically free. Now that we're looking at the AP2 cards we actually had to pay more attention to whether we had AP1-2 cards available to buy those cards with. HOWEVER, if you could buy a couple AP1 cards that we don't actually want off the traders with some random B cards we don't want, and then use those cards to purchase an AP2 card... it's going to continue to make the cost of buying stuff from Traders kind of trivial. Or is there no trading allowed during the trader step so you couldn't use a card to pay for another card because no trading and each character can only buy one card. So I'm curious how this is supposed to work. And as a side note, would love an official answer (which I don't believe we ever got) to the previous thread where we were asking for a more comprehensive breakdown of how end of turn stuff is supposed to work, specifically with regards to traders (before or after excess cards back to the box, before or after buried cards returned to decks, etc). 2) So my understanding is you're not supposed to be able to explore outside of the explore step of your turn. What about the power on the Blessing of Horus that allows you to move, then you may explore. Can you discard the Horus to do this outside of your turn? Can you just get the move, but not the explore? 3) In the first adventure of AP2, you win the scenario based on the number of cards in decks. Is the scenario immediately over when this happens (I would kind of assume yes, since usually whenenever you fulfill winning conditions it's immediately over) or can you continue the scenario once you've reached the winning requirement?
Everyone has questions when they start playing. Happy to help. 1) Yes, anyone can use Melee. If the skill is not listed on their character sheet, they just use a d4. You can normally only use Strength or Melee for a combat check but some cards and powers allow you to make exceptions to this. For example, Seoni's power (I don't have her card in front of me for the exact wording either) does allow you to use her Arcane die (which I believe is Charisma + something) plus 2d4? for her combat check if you discard a card. And no you can't use Seoni's Arcane skill for a combat roll without discarding a card to activate that power. Many spell cards allow you to use your Arcane or Divine skill for combat as well for that one combat (and then the spell card is either discarded or recharged depending on whether you make the recharge roll). And some weapons use different stats such as Dexterity or Ranged for your combat check instead of Strength/Melee. Similarly to Arcane, you can't roll Dexterity or Ranged for a combat check without a power or card allowing you to do so - Strength or Melee is the default. 2) Yes.
3) Your example is exactly correct. You only have to discard as many cards as you have in hand, even if you take more damage than that (unless the card dealing you damage tells you otherwise). And if you had to draw more cards than you have in your deck at the end of your turn (or any other time) you would die.
I mean, yeah, I would put enough blessings in to cover the most blessing-heavy character choices. Player characters from other sets is one thing, but if a character from a class deck is going to possibly be a problem then that character should come with extra blessings to make up for this. But for characters just within MM, I could see it requiring the character add on deck. But otherwise, I wouldn't design a situation where you don't have the cards to fulfill card feat choices not turning into a detriment for the players. But it's not like there aren't alternate options for this. For example, once this became a problem if adding more blessings was something that was really that difficult, maybe implementing a rule where if there aren't enough of a card type to build all decks for a scenario, then you can substitute another card for that type. And I'm sure the response to this is you could house rule that - but my point is that I shouldn't have to house rule something that's completely predictable based on choices that players could legitimately make when choosing card feats. I understand and am aware of the Limited Resources rule but that rule in my opinion, makes a lot more sense when you're talking about a situation like only having X Curse of Poisonings and through random happenstance and luck, the players take Poison damage 20 times in an adventure. Versus a situation like this which is entirely predictable ahead of time as a possible, though unlikely result of deck build decisions. *shrug* Obviously your opinion is different on this matter but if it were me I'd be putting that into the design decision of the game. (Okay we have a max of X of card type Y that could be in decks by this point, this gives us Z cards to work with when planning a scenario). And I'm frankly surprised that it's not.
1) Ok. That's how we played it as well, but it was more of a "I guess this must work this way because otherwise ???" decision, rather than anything based on the rules. I mean you COULD go through the deck to find the Quicksand Bunyip and encounter it, regardless of whether it had been shuffled in or not. 2) My point wasn't "how would you handle this?" or even that it was a serious problem. I guess the analogy I would use is if (insert random RPG computer game here) had a bug where if you created a fighter with a strength of 3, the game crashed/screen turned blue/sharks with laser beams flew out of your computer, then I would think that bug would be fixed. Sure it's not a likely scenario that someone does this, but it's within the rules and capability of the game for this to happen, so if it does, the game should be able to handle it. That is all. I don't really get making excuses for a situation (blessings aren't that good anymore so who cares, various workarounds you could do if it happens) that shouldn't be a problem in the first place.
So got a couple more for you guys - 1) Blessing of Bastet vs Quicksand Bunyip. A character plays a Blessing of Bastet "Discard this card to examine the top card of your location deck. If it is a bane, encounter it and it may not be evaded otherwise, you may encounter it." The card examined is the Quicksand Bunyip - "When you examine this card, either discard a card that has the Bludgeoning or Liquid trait or you are dealt 1d4 Electricity damage. Then shuffle the Quicksand Bunyip into your location deck." Ok so - Bunyip is examined, possibly does some electricity damage, then is shuffled back in as the final part of the trigger resolution. Then, the Blessing of Bastet wants you to encounter it. How is this resolved? Most other examine then encounter cards (like the Blessing of the Ancients) just say examine then "explore your location", but Bastet specifically wants you to encounter the card that is supposed to have been reshuffled back in. 2) More of a comment than a question. I don't know if anyone else noticed this but in the last scenario of AP1 we only had 5 blessings left in the box after building the blessings deck + locations (full 6 man team). After reviewing decks, we realized that it would be possible to not have enough blessings to set up the scenario if more people had taken blessings as card feats. 2 card feats per character so far and we'd only taken 3 as blessings total, so we could have taken 9 more blessings if we'd maxed it out - all 6 of our characters had the capability of taking 2 more blessings. Any more than 5 more and not enough cards - it would be a lot of blessings for sure, basically 2/3rds of the card feats so far taken as blessings - not likely but not impossible. I'm surprised not enough blessings were included to cover the eventuality of as many as possible blessings taken as feats.
Btw is this official? I mean I understand that the trigger blurb in the rules doesn't say anything about it having to be location decks but this is a strange enough situation (examining your own deck might for example cause you to acquire Sebti the Crocodile after you already acquired her) where it would be nice to get a "Yep, that's intended".
While I agree that it's possible that people might misinterpret the "While displayed, after you reset your hand, recharge a random card" wording, it doesn't really change the fact that this would be more of a correct wording for those who actually understand the game and follow the cards as written vs "what we think is meant" by the cards. Instead of trying to overthink which wording might be less likely to be read wrong, how about just use a wording that actually says what you want the cards to do? The current wording as written would indeed have an exponential effect.
Wait. If I examine my own deck (there's some basic item that let's you do this) and find a card that has a trigger effect, then the trigger happens? Even if that means encountering the card that I already had in my deck? Actually this makes sense. But we weren't playing it that way.
Hum I would disagree. For me the card turns into "Discard this card to examine..., then you may recharge it to explore...". Which is not the same (if what you find when you examine is such that you can't or don't want to explore, then you cannot recharge). This is exactly what I was wondering. It's not so much a question of whether you're still playing the card if you recharge vs discard. Sure you are. In fact you are "playing" a card even if you use a reveal power on it (I think), it's whether you can get a recharge when the main part of the power is an examine, and the explore is more of a secondary thing. If the consensus is that you can get the recharge but only if you take the explore, that makes sense. Thanks!
Thanks guys! So related to (3) - The blessing I was referring to was Wadjet (I didn't want to say too much to avoid being spoilery in case anyone wasn't looking ahead at role cards) and it reads "Discard this card to examine the top card of your location deck. Then you may explore your location;..." The power in question reads "When you would discard a blessing that has the Abadar or Wadjet trait to add 1 or more dice to a check or to explore your location, you may recharge it instead" Still counts as playing to explore?
So, my friend and I are playing a 6 character game and one of my characters is Zadim and one of his is Damiel. I've noticed that they have some interesting synergy and conflict. Damiel can recharge an alchemical card to add 1d4 and acid or poison to a combat check by a character (Zadim) at his location. Then Zadim can recharge a card to add his int skill to that check since it now invokes poison. Zadim can discard a non 2-handed weapon to give Damiel a combat boost. Damiel can heal Zadim (healing pot) to get back all the cards he invariably discards to give himself and Damiel combat boosts. Zadim also carries an ally from deck 1 that can be used to give anyone at his location poison added to their combat check, which can benefit either himself or Damiel, who has a similar ability to add a d6 by recharging when his check invokes poison. But... all good things must end, right? Then we start acquiring boons. This is how I imagine the conversations might go (in reality we have a much friendlier exchange of cards) :) Zadim - This ally adds poison to a check!
Zadim - (Finds a Poisoned Sand Tube) Oh look it's a poison weapon!
Damiel - What's that card you just picked up?
Zadim - NO SCORPION WHIPS FOR YOU!
Hi again! After playing two scenarios of Deck 1, I've got a couple new questions. 1) A character managed to get hit by both Memories of Violence ("when you encounter a monster, evade it") and Echoes of Confusion ("you may not evade banes") at the same time. Not 100% sure how to handle this. I found the bit in the rulebook that says "if one card tells you that you cannot do something and another card tells you that you can, comply with the card that tells you that you cannot" so based on that we played it so that "you may not evade banes" which actually helped us because we didn't have a way with that character to evade banes anyway. Was this correct? 2) The Sun Falcon monster when defeated is shuffled into the blessings deck. Then, "When this card is discarded from the blessings deck, banish it and draw a blessing from the box." Normally when you draw a card, the person having the encounter is drawing it into their hand. In this case, the draw effect is happening at the beginning of a turn, unrelated to an encounter as the falcon appears on the blessings deck. We were unsure whether the drawn card is meant to replace the falcon on the blessings deck or whether the person who's turn is starting is supposed to get that drawn blessing into their hand. 3) Looking ahead, one of the characters can gain a (role card) power that allows them to recharge a blessing when used for an explore. One of the blessings in question doesn't have a direct explore power - instead it has a power (paraphrasing here) that allows you to discard to examine the top card of their location, then explore. Would that power allow that character to recharge a blessing used that way? I'm guessing the intent is yes, but unsure. Thanks!
I see very little difference between those two examples - to me, hitting something that's "on fire" vs hitting something that "breathes fire" isn't really any different. It seems like a strange distinction to me and creates unnecessary complication. (Between a check invoking something and the bane you are fighting invoking something but not the check)
Interesting. I didn't look at all the points in detail before enough to notice the step involving a dead character. I've never had a character die (and continue - I've had some die when I was first starting and then just gave up and started over from scratch) mid-adventure so haven't perused those rules in detail. But am surprised that you keep those cards at all, would have thought all of the dead character's deck would just go back to the box. I don't want to derail but is this a house rule or do other characters indeed have the ability in the rules to get cards from a dead character's deck after the adventure?
A friend and I are playing a 6 character game. He is Damiel, Alahazra and Mavaro, and I'm playing Drelm, Yoon, and Zadim. So far surprisingly, Drelm is the hero on my team. That guy destroys obstacles right out of the gate, and once I get my hands on some Blessings of Abadar he should get even better. Yoon seems strong except I can't roll to save her life and I think once I get some better cards on Zadim, he's going to be quite good. My friend has loved Damiel since S&S so I don't think any complaints there, Alahazra's ability to +/-2 to every roll looks really amazing and Mavaro... is just crazy. I suspect there will be some really nice combos for his ability once we see some more cards, and just as a side note, (and comfirmed in another thread by Hawkmoon) Mavaro can basically auto-recharge any cards he doesn't immediately need at the end of his turn by using his power on them.
That's my take on it as well, however I think that section of the rules could use some cleaning up to make it more clear that it's all technically "legal." I like your point by point breakdown above. The only part I still wonder about from the way it's probably intended to play is whether you're supposed to get rid of excess cards (back to the box) before trading (thus making the trades more difficult (at least initially we have so many excess cards that there's really no "cost" to these trades, we've got plenty of junk to throw at the traders for the couple of cards we might want) as you would end up short cards and needing to take some basics after trading (vs having excess cards available to choose from still). I *think* that your way is probably correct but I'm not 100% sure.
I should have been more clear. I was just trying to describe the exact situation where they could have ended up in a location deck. The villain is encountered and undefeated. Blessings are then pulled from the blessings deck to be put in open locations. Can Sandstorms be pulled or should those cards be checked to make sure Sandstorms are not pulled? If Sandstorms can be shuffled in, what happens when they are encountered in the locations? Btw you have the same name as a guy I used to work with about 20 years ago ;)
So in our first attempt at scenario #2, had a couple things come up - 1) In another thread the question was asked about Sandstorms being shuffled in to location decks from the blessings deck when a villain is undefeated but I didn't see a final answer. Since the Sandstorm has check to defeat "none" and no text about encountering the card, although it does have a trigger for when it's examined... are they ever supposed to be in location decks? Basically when a villain is undefeated can Sandstorms be shuffled in or should we be only shuffling in blessings and leaving all Sandstorms in the blessings deck? And if Sandstorms can be shuffled into location decks are they auto defeated when encountered? 2) More specifically, we had a situation where a character used a Blessing of Nethys to examine the top 2 cards of their location deck. The top card was an Aghash which caused the top card of the blessings deck to flip, which was a Sandstorm, which moved everyone. So... that character should have been able to examine 2 cards via the Blessing of Nethys, so do they still get the 2nd examine and how does that work? The obvious options seem to be - A) Examine 1 card at original location, get moved, examine 1 card at new location. B) Examine 1 card at original location, get moved, examine 2nd card at original location. But really unsure how this works.
Thanks, Hawkmoon. Yeah a bit of official clarification on the trader / buried cards thing would be good, but I think overall the intent probably is that all of those cards are available.
Thanks for the speedy response! Couple more quick questions. Regarding Marvaro, I'm a little unsure on the timing of when you can use his ability to display a card and gain the appropriate skills for the rest of the turn. Can you display multiple cards for example after your last exploration, before the end of your turn? What I'm getting at is it appears that he can basically freely use that ability to recharge any unwanted cards in hand every turn, since those displayed cards are recharged at the end of the turn. Is this the case? Or is there a limit to how often you can use that power? Regarding Traders, I understand that you can freely trade cards between characters before visiting the trader. But the section on rebuilding your deck between scenarios, including putting buried cards back in your deck, is in the next section of the rule book, after the trader rules. I find it hard to believe that buried cards wouldn't be back in circulation before visiting traders but I'm unsure because of the order that everything's written in the rules. Would love some clarification on this.
1) Can you use more than one applicable power from the same character on one check? I know you can't use more than one type of card per character per check but not sure about powers. Specifically I'm wondering about Zadim as both his powers that add dice to checks could apply to the same combat check. 2) Pretty sure I know the answer to this one but can Zadim use the reveal power on a weapon card for his combat check and then discard that same weapon for his power to add his stealth skill to that combat check? (This feels to me like Lini being able to reveal an animal to add a d4 and then use that same animal card for its own card text on the same check, but want to make sure) 3) Invoke. So if I understand this term correctly, a check invokes the poison trait if either the character attempting that check has the poison trait as part of their check or the bane you are against has that trait listed. Assuming that's correct, the rules also say that "a bane invokes a trait if it deals only damage of the type that matches that trait." So a bane that does all poison damage invokes poison. However, in that case, would the CHECK invoke poison as well? Zadim's power is specifically activated when you are making a "check that invokes the poison trait". If he's up against a bane that doesn't have the poison trait listed but does all poison damage would he then be able to use that power? Thanks!
Nice, thanks for clearing that up for me.
Okay final question regarding this stuff - when the Ring of Rat Fangs causes you to recharge something from your discard pile, does that activate Seltyiel's power to draw cards (assuming he had the appropriate feats and the card being recharged had the Pirate/Swashbuckling trait) or is there an understanding that the power means only cards recharged from your hand?
Can Seltyiel's Marauder power to draw cards when discard/recharging Pirate/Swashbuckling cards activate more than once on the same check if multiple pirate/swashbuckling cards are recharged or discarded for that check? Something to the effect of when you beat a combat check by 4 or more you may recharge a random card from your discard pile. Just basically confirming that a weapon used for that combat check is in the discard in time to be recharged by the ring. Thanks for the speedy answer btw.
Couple S&S Questions - Can Seltyiel's Marauder power to draw cards when discard/recharging Pirate/Swashbuckling cards activate more than once on the same check if multiple pirate/swashbuckling cards are recharged or discarded for that check? Example - If he recharges or discards a Swashbuckling weapon (either by playing it or using it as part of his combat power) and on the same combat check recharges an Eye Patch, would that power activate for both of those cards being recharged or just once per check? Second question - I'm a bit unsure on the timing on Ring of Rat Fangs. If I have no cards in discard when encountering a monster but discard a weapon for the combat check and then beat the check by enough to activate Ring of Rat Fangs, is that weapon considered already in the discard pile before Ring of Rat Fangs activates to be recharged by the ring? Thanks!
I would like to have my P:ACG subscription cancelled. I may resubscribe at a later date, but at this time I do not have the funds or desire to start over with a new base set. I'm not sure what the proper way to cancel is but I noticed others posting here that appeared successful, and I could not get through when I tried the customer service phone number. Thanks for your help.
Maybe Amiri had it and used it for TP since in my world barbarians can't read.
What makes the game different each time is mostly the randomness of the card draws and the different combinations of characters that your group chooses to play. While I definitely agree that the game has good replayability, I wonder if that will last once the entire AP is released. It might, or the unknown/surprise value of the new cards being gone might make replaying it seem a bit less fun. I'm not sure. I can say that at this point I've started up several different groups with the game. I don't really think the plot of the AP arc matters as much with the card game. There's flavor text telling the story but the game is much more of a card game with some rpg elements than a rpg that you play with cards, in my opinion. I wouldn't worry about the plot, it might matter a little if you played this THEN the RotR RPG as maybe some of the flavor text / card abilities might give away plot elements. But, if you played RotR first, I don't think your experience with the card game would change much. Most of the people I've played with have barely paid attention to the "story", even experienced roleplayers. The card game is much more about acquiring/defeating cards, building decks and making strategic play decisions in the game.
I tried a venomous dagger for a while. Recharging it was nice when she had two weapons in hand, but it was otherwise crap when she was waiting to pull her real weapon. I dropped it the next time Deathbane Light Crossbow came up. The Giant's Bane seems even more situational. I know there's a ton of giants right, but, not knowing how the tabletop AP flows, I don't know if that'll last forever. Regardless, I don't know if I'd want to keep a situational 3d4 clogging my hand when I could just keep the deck cycling and using my regular d8. On my Merisiel solo mission she's got 2 Venomous and the Deathbane as her three weapons and that works pretty well. She keeps the Deathbane in her hand and recharges a Venomous on the first moderately difficult non-poison immune monster that comes up after she draws it. I wouldn't trade a Venomous for a Giantbane - as you said, too situational. Now maybe once the AP is over and I can look through all the cards and know exactly how many giants are coming up, I might decide differently if there's more Giants than I expect there will be... but yeah it was a little of a downer when I opened the new pack and saw the Giantbane after already having the Venomous. This is also a reason why I think it would be a neat idea for the characters to have a sideboard (call it the party safehouse or whatever you want). I'd be much more likely to keep something situational like the Giantbane or the Crown of Charisma and then if my adventurers are going on a mission that involves killing giants or recruiting allies, someone could swap out for one of those cards.
Yep, I don't see ever banishing it either. Even if there is a better item in a future pack, I don't see why you wouldn't keep the Codex AND the new item and just dump something else. I have a tough time imagining enough better items in the last 2 sets to where the Emerald Codex is the worst item in your deck. It's also by far the most interesting loot card so far - after 3 copies of the exact same Medallion, it's a nice change.
A friend of mine came up with this idea and to me at least it sounds like a good way to make room for more cards and cut down on multiple copies of cards that are only used once or twice. Instead of printing multiple copies of the non-unique henchmen cards (like Ancient Skeleton or Harpy Monk, for example) just print 1 copy of each and in the base set you would have a set of Generic/Standard(whatever word you want) Henchmen placeholder cards. Then for an example scenario you could list
When you built the decks, you would shuffle Black Fang, Bruthazmus, and however many Generic Henchmen cards you need to fill the decks. You'd just keep the Ancient Skeleton card handy to refer to when any of the Generic Henchman cards are encountered during the adventure. End result, you could cut way down on printing duplicate Henchman cards that would only be used once or twice anyway and make room for more interesting and different banes and boons that could fill those slots in the adventure packs. There may well be reasons why this wouldn't work but it seemed like a good enough idea that I thought I'd share it on the forums to see what you guys thought.
Trying to read between the lines here - if the point is to get back to where Ezren can use his power immediately upon casting a spell (which is how most people probably play it anyway) instead of at some point later in the encounter, then that looks good. This also means he could go back to using his power during each step, if I understand this correctly.
I definitely think you're correct about all of that. Also, I think some people's definition of "easy" are different from others, which is why someone posting about how the game is overall too easy for them is kind of pointless unless they are going to give a LOT of details about how their games play. Personally I think if you increased the difficulty to the point where characters died with regularity, you'd get much more complaints than what you get now. Especially now that you have quite a bit of adventures to run a new character through to get them back on the same level with the party.
Interesting. I hadn't really noticed that it just says what you quoted instead of "you may recharge it instead of discarding" which is how I always read it in my mind. But, I don't think it really matters. To fully quote that power, it says "When you play Blessing of Iomedae, you may recharge it (...) instead". In the case of her lay on hands power, she's not playing the blessing, she's using a power that causes her to bury a divine card as the cost. The Blessing is only "played" if you use the card for the powers on the card. So, short answer - Nope.
He can do it if he wants but there's nothing in the rules that says cards put back into decks go upside down so it's not playing by the letter of the rules. If you are looking for opinions, that seems kind of excessive to me, as we're not talking about one card here - he could end up with his entire remaining deck face up if he gets rid of everything but spells and blessings. However, when I play my 6 character solo game I leave cards face-up that I've looked at with Harsk's ability to make it easier on myself to remember - and that's also not technically legal. But what we think doesn't really matter - I suspect you already know it's not by the rules - if it bothers you then that might mean it's not how you really want to be playing and you might politely mention to your friend that it's not correct. On the other hand, if you're fine with it then go for it.
Yeah for all that I enjoy playing PACG, two entire sets a year is a bit much for me as well. I might be somewhat more likely to stick with it if at least one of those continued already existing characters, since for me that's half of the fun. Overall, buying an entirely new AP that's unrelated to any of the others (but not necessarily that different from the others) every 6 months is fairly unappealing.
Well, I was convinced by this. I also don't think that just because it's a co-op game, that loopholes like this shouldn't be closed. Imagine bringing the game to a gaming store or a con and sitting down with random players, one of which ends up being a power gamer who starts doing stuff like this. I'd rather have it not be an option than have to tell someone to stop playing that way or have the game experience ruined.
I agree the Staff/Restoration combo is pretty ridiculous. Now there are a few effects that cause you to draw/discard cards directly from your deck - those might be problematic since you'd only be wanting 1-2 cards in your deck at a time, but at least as of right now those effects are few and far between. Also, obviously anything that causes you to bury a card would take it out of the cycle. It's also worth noting that you can't really get this combo going until fairly far in - you don't get the Lem self-use on his ability until AP4. Restoration was added in AP3 or AP4, not sure which.. so IF something were to pop up in AP5 that would invalidate this - a monster that causes you to draw/discard cards directly from your deck as a before the encounter effect or something - then you might run into some problems. And if the combo was only really good for AP4 then it's probably not worth too much concern. But... barring something like that, I agree it's a pretty crazy combo that isn't countered by much of anything currently in the game.
I'd love to have a video of the 'game is too easy' crowd to find out how they are consistently defeating the odds. Yes. I was playing a game of Sentinels of the Multiverse over skype with a friend and his roommate about six months ago. We defeated a Villain that my friend and I had never won against before - which the roommate then declared was "easy". It was only later that I found out from my friend that the roommate (who had been playing a hero that I wasn't familiar with) had been repeatedly playing a card that said "Return all cards of type X to your hand" as if you could pull all cards of that type from in play AND from his discard pile, which was not the case. So he was burning through those cards and then getting them all back from his discard and through this incorrect play had gotten a bunch of extra damage on the Villain. I'm not sure why my friend didn't say anything at the time but in the end all that mattered was that the only reason we won was because he'd been playing incorrectly (it was a pretty close game). Ever since then I've been a lot more wary about anyone who labels something as too easy. It's certainly possible that others have developed strats that are superior to mine and have created always-win scenarios. But, as Calthaer mentions above, just getting on here and declaring that the game is too easy doesn't really mean anything.
On an entirely different note, a thought just occured to me. The Helm of Opposite Alignment affects the ethical component of your alignment as well as your moral one. So what would this society do about a Lawful Evil person? Hell, as a Lawful person, he might even submit to the Helm out of self-interest (it being the best option for him to get back to his life without jail time or what-have-you). But now he is suddenly Chaotic Good, and probably feels intensely violated by what just happened to him, since Freedom of Choice is probably one of the cornerstones of the CG alignment. Now, he fully embraces being Chaotic Good, and part of that is clinging to his new-found conviction to the right of personal freedom with a passionate intensity. He does not want to go back to being Lawful Evil, but he does want to stop any and all future uses of the Helm. (Being Good means you are altruistic and you think of others, so he would want to spare everyone else the intense violation he feels.) Now this country just turned a selfish, manipulative person into a Freedom Fighter, and made a much bigger problem for themselves. Which is to say, they probably shouldn't be changing anyone to Chaotic alignments.
Red has the shortest wavelength in the visible spectrum? Since when? Derp, sorry, got my science facts mixed up. It is the least energetic, so that would make it the longest, right? Anywho, so, yeah, I do have to own up to not noticing the bit about the starmetals. What threw me was I was reading this from the Pathfinder Reference Document, where I thought they had removed most campaign setting details. I wasn't expecting non OGC stuff to be informing the content. I understand that the choice was made to make tech seem alien in yet another way. I can understand why that choice was made, but I'm not sure I agree with it. It forces players to devote additional headspace to this alternate color scale, and that seems like just more mental arithmetic that's unnecessary. You made identifying items in PF easier than 3.5 for exactly that reason. Because it was a hassle and dumb to make players jump through hoops to figure out what's better than what. If you have a color scale in place to easily grade tech, just make it one every player will recognize, so there are no hoops to jump through, having to learn a scale that is completely arbitrary. (And it is abritrary, your assignment of which starmetals go where on the scale is simply a design choice, adhering to no laws of physics or universal constants. It's an artistic decision with no reasoning behind it other than what makes internal sense to the fiction, and is therefore arbitrary.)
So, sure. I can understand how this makes sense for the Pathfinder Campaign Setting now. It just isn't as useful as it could be to people wanting to use it as a "tech source" for other PF games.
I'm sorry. This is dumb. But I have to vent. The technology color scale is screwed up in so many ways. In order of lowest level to highest, it goes Brown, Black, White, Gray, Green, Red, Blue, Orange, Prismatic. I'm sorry, but this is complete gibberish. Let me tell you how many ways this makes my head asplode. Headsplosion 1: The inclusion of Prismatic if both Black and White exist makes my head asplode because color either goes subtractive (like light waves), in which all colors combine to make white, or additive (like with pigments), in which the addition of certain colors makes black (like how some color printers can simulate black ink if you run out).
Headsplosion 2: If we go by the placement of Prismatic at the highest level to mean that this is an subtractive scale, where all colors equal the best, you must subtract colors from the high end to give you individual colors.
Headsplosion 3: The inclusion of both Brown and Grey in a chromatic scale is nonsense, because grey only exists in monochrome scales. There is no color grey. If you add a color, or hue, to grey, it becomes a brown. (Try mixing random paints willy nilly, you get a muddy brown color). There ARE certain pigments that when mixed can give you a grey (which is why grey paints exist), but that is actually the carefully formulated combination of many pigments, and not a color all on its own. At the very least, grey should be below Brown, as it contains "less information" than a brown would. (A brown contains a hue and a shade, where a grey just contains a shade.) So here we are so far: Keep "Prismatic" just because you want to be fancy, fine. But then White should be second highest. Black should be lowest. Grey should be second lowest, and Brown should be after that. But what are we left with? Headsplosion 4: THE ACTUAL ORDER OF REAL COLORS DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE EITHER! Green, Red, Blue, Orange? What? How do you even? Colors are actual measurable wavelengths! You can put them in a sequence! Scientifically! Red has the smallest wavelength! Then Green! Then Orange! Then Blue! This is not a subjective decision by a culture, this is SCIENTIFIC FACT! Even if you decide to jump to an additive scale for the colors, why are Orange and Green, both non-primary colors, at opposite ends of the sequence? And with the subtractive scale, you're jumping all over the place! Just.... ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH! I'm not even going to begin to fathom why you didn't just go Black, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, White, Prismatic. You picked your odd color choices, so be it. But it should have looked like this: Black, Grey, Brown, Red, Orange, Green, Blue, White, Prismatic. That at least would have made some sense.
As I said earlier, it may sound harsh, but if you want to play Strength based melee, you can play literally any other melee class. Though it should ideally support many different builds, this ought to be the one Dexterity based melee class.I mostly agree in principal, but I hope that at least some of the archetypes allow for alternative weapon choices (two handed swords only, for instance, or possibly heavy blades only). Meanwhile, I think perhaps the deeds should be reworded to specify light blades; as in the Fighter weapon group. The saber or cutlass could easily be rapiers reskinned as cutting weapons, or if you have your own homebrew stats you could just add them to the light blades group, and as such they'd be included in all of the deeds. I heartily agree. Let's change the Swashbuckler to using "light and one-handed weapons of the blades weapon group (as per the fighter's weapon groups)". This can only add to the "Fighter half" of this hybrid class, and reinforces the actual archetype the class is trying to represent (all dex-based sword fighters) rather than one specific example of that archetype (rapier fighters, and doing it poorly at that). Don't like how that would include the Swashbuckler being able to "fence" with a longsword? Well I don't like how the current Swashbuckler is able to "fence" with a morningstar or trident. Take your pick. I am also voicing my desire for a Two-Weapon Fighting Swashbuckler build/archetype. I mean really, the rules for using a light weapon in your off-hand making TWF easier (less penalties) is based entirely off historical warriors that were more Swashbuckler than Fighter. Saber and main gauche? That's totally a swashbuckler thing to do. Florentine style. Two-Weapon Fighting is an "archetype" (in the English dictionary sense, not a game term) of the Swashbuckler, so let it be part of the class.
I would rather remove the doubling-damage-for-a-panache and let the Precise Strike damage multiply on critical hits, so that it encourages builds with x3 crit modifier weapons. The weapon selection is already severely limited for the Swashbuckler, but if we allow more options to get their maximum effectiveness, then so much the better. As for the unlimited use of Precise Strike... I know this might sound insane... but the limited daily uses of abilities aren't really an issue. A class's damage math is balanced for when they are running at maximum effectiveness. Play the game with unlimited barbarian rages, smites, a ranger getting his highest favored enemy bonus against all creatures, and with sneak attack working on everything without needing to flank it or deny its Dex. It will not break the Challenge Rating system, because characters are assumed to activate everything they need to beat an encounter. That being said, taking away limitations like that would be bad for the game, because it removes interesting tactical and strategic gameplay. So I am not suggesting doing that. But where limitations don't make sense, they shouldn't be there. A swashbuckler should be able to land his precise-strike damage all day long, like a Rogue can land sneak attacks all day long. The rogue is limited to flanked and denied-dex targets purely for flavor reasons, because the rogue is supposed to be a dirty fighter that gangs up on opponents or shivs them from ambush. A swashbuckler just fights with his flourishy, dexterous style, all day long, so there is no flavor basis for limiting the damage. And the reason why a precise strike damage should multiply and sneak attack should not, is because one is a static bonus to damage, and the other adds dice. That is the only reason from a mechanical point of view.
There are 3 Precise Strike abilities in the game. Duelist, a Feat, and the Swashbuckler. Two of the three are strictly called out as Precision damage, the third isn't, RAW, called out as being precision damage. Here's an interesting thing. The 2 abilities that are explicitly called out as being "precision damage"? They are bonus damage DICE, and no one here is arguing to have bonus damage dice multiply on a critical hit. Do you know why? Because from a non-flavor-purely-mechanical point of view that would be broken. The other ability that's not explicitly called out as "precision damage" is the duelist's Precise Strike. Do you know why people are saying it shouldn't count as precision damage? Not because they are munchkins, trying to pull one over on the DM, or because they are terrible rules-layers, trying to enforce an unrealistic black-and-white interpretation of RAW with no room for real-world logic... but because from a non-flavor-purely-mechanical point of view it would NOT BE BROKEN TO THE GAME'S MATH IF IT DID. It also makes a unified, simple, rule for how crits work. "Flat bonus multiplies, additional dice do not" Period. Done. End of story. For proof of how unbroken it would be for a Duelist's precise strike to multiply on a crit: see Smite Evil, which does multiply. If you can explain to me why a Paladin isn't being a munchkin when his +1 damage per class level multiplies on a crit, but a Duelist is, then you will have taught me something. Little hint: The limitation on evil targets is purely flavor-based and has no bearing on system math. For proof of how arbitrary it is for a flat-bonus to be labeled as "non-multiplying" (ie, "precision damage"), please provide the counter-argument for why a Ranger's Favored Enemy damage bonus (which represents knowing a creature's weak points and how to strike them) multiplies on a critical, while a Duelist's/Swashbuckler's Precise Strike (which represents being extremely accurate with all finesse-type attacks) does not. The only reason Favored Enemy multiplies and Sneak Attack doesn't is because Favored Enemy is a static bonus, which wouldn't break the math of the game to multiply, and Sneak Attack is bonus damage dice, which would break the math of the game to multiply. There is no other reason.
I would still like a Developer response to what "1d6+11" would do on a crit for swashbucklers. As Malachi Silverclaw has already pointed out twice, there is no quick way to figure out critical damage for a swashbuckler using precise strike by reading his stat-block. A DM would have to reverse engineer it by subtracting the NPC's swashbuckler level from the "+11", then take the remainder and multiply that, then add back the swashbuckler level. This is a hassle. If Smite Evil multiplies on crits, as a 1-for-1 scaling damage bonus from another class, then so should Precise Strike. Just remove the ability to double damage for a panache entirely, and let it multiply on crits already. If the ONLY reason it's not being multiplied on critical hits is because the ability is flavored as being precision damage, then change the flavor. Or change it to bonus damage dice. Not letting a flat-damage bonus multiply is unheard of and it makes DMing npcs that do it a headache because of the "how much damage does this do on a crit" problem.
There really is no defensible justification for denying flat damage bonuses to be multiplied on a crit. THANK YOU. This is what I was trying to say the other day, but people got hung-up on the definition of "precision damage".
I think you are tilting at windmills if you expect the devs to allow precision damage of any type to multiply on a crit. So then.. lets not call it precision damage? All previous precision damage is bonus dice, which cannot under any circumstances multiply on crits, and I would never suggest them doing so. Why is a static bonus to damage not multiplying? It breaks previous rules assumptions for little reason. Unless I'm missing something, there is NO other static bonus to damage in the game that does not multiply on critical hits. The Duelist PrC's Precise Strike does multiply on critical hits, and is not called out as precision damage. But even if it was, as you said there is no rules-element to the wording of "precision damage" in the PRD, so there is no rule stating, hard and fast, that "precision damage never multiplies". Therefore the Duelist's precise strike, which does NOT have a clause disallowing multiplication on critical hits, would multiply on critical hits, whether it's precision damage or not.
Could anyone explain to me a mechanical reason why the Precise Strike damage does not multiply on a critical hit? As far as I know, all non-dice bonus damage multiplies on crits, such as from Power Attack. I think even the Duelist's version of Precise Strike multiplies on crits. So why is the Swashbuckler's bonus singled-out? The part about it being "precision" damage is a little iffy for a reason, because the only precision damage we've seen before have been bonus damage dice, right?
Tried to do a thorough search before making this thread, but couldn't find anything on it, so here we go! I started DMing with 3.5, moved onto 4e, and have recently returned to my first love in the form of Pathfinder. While I have come to terms with preferring the verisimilitude offered by 3.5/Pathfinder's simultationist design philosophies, one thing I really miss about 4e's "game-ism" is the encounter design. In other words, I really miss minions. Using lower-CR creatures just isn't a satisfying answer to the problem either, as they just end up missing a lot and generally not being much of a threat. So I want minions. I've thought things over, and I came up with the Minion subtype/template. Let me know what you think. Minion Subtype: Minions represent creatures that, enmass, can still threaten player characters with their strength and skill (rather than luck, i.e. hoping to roll critical hits), but are ultimately small-change and can be taken out easily. The minion subtype can be added to any creature, and provides the following traits:
I've never seen an enhancement bonus to AC (generic). It's always an enhancement bonus to an armor or shield bonus. The target of the spell shouldn't matter. The Arrow and the Bow example is the best comparison: A +1 Arrow does NOT have "an enhancement bonus to the arrow's attack and damage".
A +1 Arrow DOES have "an enhancement bonus to attack and damage".
The enhancement bonus is to the same thing, therefore it does not stack. A suit of +1 Fullplate DOES NOT have "an enhancement bonus to Armor Class".
A suit of +1 Fullplate DOES have "an enhancement bonus to the armor's Armor bonus to AC".
The enhancement bonus is to different things ("Armor bonus" and "Shield bonus"), therefore it does stack. The spell Magic Weapon DOES NOT give "an enhancement bonus to the weapon's attack and damage."
The spell Magic Weapon DOES give "a weapon" an "enhancement bonus to attacks and damage."
The enhancement bonus apply to the same thing ("enhancement bonus to attacks and damage"), therefore they do not stack. *The Fury of the Abyss ability actually only applies to melee attacks and melee damage (as well as CMB checks but that's irrelevant). Melee attacks are a kind of attack, and are therefore a sub-set of "attacks". The bonus still applies to the same thing, "attacks", just a specific kind of "attacks". This IS NOT THE SAME as the "Armor bonus" and "Sheild bonus" situation. Shield bonuses are not a subset of Armor bonus, and Armor bonuses are not a subset of Shield bonuses.
So, I'm solid on the order of operations when leveling up. 1. Select Class. Must meet prerequisites for taking class prior to this step. 2. Apply Ability Score increase if any. 3. Integrate new class features, then roll for Hit Points. Then we get to... 4. Add new skills and feats. But what if the feat you want has a skill rank prerequisite? Is the order "4a) add new skills; 4b) add new feats"? Is it interchangeable? Simultaneous? Essentially, can I meet a skill rank prerequisite for a feat at the same level I want to take the feat? For example, I'm 2nd level and want to take a feat that requires 3 ranks in a given skill when I level up. My max ranks are 2 right now. Then I level up. Can I put the 3rd rank in the relevant skill, and then take the feat? |