Captain Bulldozer's page

Cap'n Bulldozer -- I'd never thought about the Class decks and hadn't really dug into those. In fact, I can't even say that I have a good idea what's in those boxes. It didn't make sense to me considering that the B+C boxes already came with 11 characters and probably 300(?) cards worth of items, weapons, armors, etc. It never occurred to me to even consider a Class deck. Can you tell me more about this?

In short, the class decks (and ultimate add on decks) were originally designed to supplement organized play. They each consist of a few new characters, as well as around 100 boons that, at least theoretically, complement the characters in the box. There's one for each of the Pathfinder classes; Monk, Paladin, Druid, etc. as well a few that introduce completely new classes (some even with primarily Goblin based stuff). The decks themselves are relatively inexpensive, figure 10 to 20 bucks for one (though you can sometimes find them for much less).

The thing is, quite a few of the cards in those class decks are totally new cards that aren't found in any of the Adventure paths. Some of them are repeats as well, but it would mean you could use them to have access to cards from outside the AP. At least some of the cards are quite good as well.
(You can check out https://pacg.fandom.com/wiki/Pathfinder_Adventure_Card_Game_Wiki
for deck lists and text of the cards, etc.)

I personally never got into organized play, but I still have picked up almost all the class decks, and will select a few specific cards to add when playing, both for some new "rare" cards and also sometimes to adjust the difficulty, or to compensate for the AP card selection being not to my liking. Some people prefer to add in the entire class deck, but I found that clutters up the box too much most of the time, and tends to add a bunch of cards you don't really want in there from time to time.

As a bit of a warning, the cards you add can affect your play experience in some strong ways. For example, when I recently played through S&S with the S&S version of Lini, we added a toad ally from a class deck, as well as some mastiffs. Toad let that Lini get spells back from her discard pile easily every turn, while the mastiffs essentially let her draw 2-4 extra cards a turn. That meant she was usually playing 2 divine favor spells a turn and still having a ton of other action. The class decks are not balanced around the APs, so you might want to carefully consider what you add if anything. (In my case I was playing with my 9 year old son, so we didn't care too much about having uber powered Lini or Mother Myrtle, but some would find that less fun obviously)

I'll confess, I really didn't like some of the choices made in Wrath (I even dropped out of the playtest early because it just wasn't much fun for me). At the top of that list are banes like the blood demon, or others that you have to defeat effectively without weapons/spells.

With the existing mechanics, there's often very little player choice about which character fights which bane, so it always seemed like bad design to have so many foes that certain characters just have no realistic way to beat, or where you were severely punished for actually winning.

It probably would have been more interesting for everyone (players and designers both) if the local group could have determined how encounters played out a bit more rather than having each player treated as separate most of the time.

That being said, another way you can modify the difficulty/fun is to selectively include cards from outside the AP. Cherry pick some nice class deck cards and throw them in each chapter. More than a few of the class decks suffered from power creep and came out after Wrath. When I play these days with my kids, we always do this and it keeps the game from being too frustrating most of the time. Also, I might suggest bringing your party size down to 3 rather than 4. With 3 characters, each character should get 10 turns, and there will be 50 cards in the location decks. With 4 characters, those numbers are 6/7 turns and 50 location cards. Having played with multiple different groups of people and party sizes of every size from 1 to 6, 3 really felt like the sweet spot most of the time.

I was really hoping to see some nice BF/CM sales on the remaining PACG stock... It's bad enough to have the line discontinued and unsupported, but to have to pay full price for (some of) it even now? As it is, there's nothing of enough interest to me in the sale for me to buy. Kinda sad because I would have been happy to support paizo otherwise.

Fortunately, Mike seems to have managed to not be banned for an additional 25 years. He also taught me that pretty much every PACG scenario can be won if you assume you succeed at every die roll you make ;)

Thanks to all involved with making these!

They weren't able to get the updated sheets in time for Core, and since Core has released these are now considered legacy and they aren't updating them anymore (besides, if you haven't seen the massive Core overhaul thread for all the old characters, even if they did release them they'd be obsoleted almost immediately).

But you're not out of luck, as otakugirly and redeux had mocked up the rest and put them up on BGG.

Awesome! Thanks so much!

I've always like using the downloadable character sheets (and their pre-cursors) to be able to print off a character sheet, so as not to have to mark up my actual cards when playing through an AP. Looking through the current file for the class/character decks, though, I'm noticing a few seem to be missing from the file (magus, tales, Hell's vengeance, etc). Is there any chance this file will be updated soon to include them?

Pretty please?

Just an FYI:

If anyone is interested in doing some PACG GMed by the legendary Mike Selinker, head on over to Ypsilanti, Michigan next month for the u-con gaming convention. The convention is the weekend of November 22nd.

Last I checked, there are still several open spots for his sessions.

See the website for more info (https://www.ucon-gaming.org )

After not playing it since the play-test, I've decided to go back and try out S&S. Life sort of got busy for me way back then, and my play-test experience was honestly a bit mixed when it came to the parts of the adventure path my group was saddled with testing. Looking back, I think I also wasn't that happy with the boons available for the AP in that set, especially when compared with those from RotR.

On a whim, I recently picked up the Alchemist and Paladin class decks and integrated them into S&S. I'm honestly finding the AP much more enjoyable with those small additions (and with both CD Damiel and CD Koren in my teams).

So, I suppose my questions are these:

1. What other class decks do people recommend specifically for S&S (if any) that you found improved your experience (and also which ones would be good to avoid for S&S?)

and

2. Basically the same as above, but for WotR. I was involved in the play-test for that one as well, but as I recall the playtest materials were much more limited for that one, and I never got around to playing the final release (though I'm planning to sometime soon now that I have time to potentially devote to it).

At some point I might check out MM as well, so if you'd like to address that one, feel free.

I'd say Damiel's biggest downside is his Charisma die. Some of the most valuable assets each character will have in S&S (unlike RotR as a general rule) are allies. Having the right ally at the right time in some scenarios is quite literally the difference between life and death. Damiel's worst ability is acquiring those allies. Granted, this can be compensated for by having a potion of charisma, but that still will take up precious item slot(s) in your deck, and still doesn't work for the allies that need a WIS/Survival check. He also never gets many of those allies to take along (his max ally deck restriction is 2). Otherwise, though, he is a great character.

It may not seem like the glamorous option, but I seem to recall the character that actually made it through every part of the AP solo was the Swashbuckler. Might want to consider her if you're planning on soloing the whole thing.

I suppose it's fair also to point out that most fantasy themed settings don't really deal with morality all that well. Even some of the deepest fantasy, like Tolkien for example, brushes truly moral considerations aside by boiling things down to what is essentially "good vs evil", ignoring virtually all of what morality is actually about. I never remember any of Tolkien's characters being all that worried about the moral issues of killing Orcs, Goblins, Dragons, "evil men", etc.

From what I've seen of Pathfinder, it isn't that different, and in PACG it's pretty fair to say the context is not so far from "the player characters are the good guys, any allies are good/neutral and banes are evil." Even the idea of "random monster" avoids moral complexity by pretty clearly identifying it as a "monster" (i.e something bad). While the RPG campaigns may involve more moral complexity (or not, I can't say from experience) not much of that really seeps into PACG unless you go out of your way to include it.

In short, if you really want to help your kids learn about the moral complexities of the real world, PACG is not designed to be a vessel to do that. That being said, if you don't mind the simplistic moralistic approach of "good vs evil" then PACG (and specifically S&S) should not involve anything too objectionable. Yes, you'll occasionally kill things: animals, creatures, other humans; but the context is generally that these things are attacking you, so by defeating/killing them you're doing so in self defense (which is actually something that often the real world paragons of morality, such as Christ, Ghandi, MLK, etc. were unwilling to do). Whether self defense is enough morally is something only you can decide.

My play varies widely.

When I play solo, I usually play 2 characters at a time, but play 6 characters total. Doing a single scenario per team tends to take about 45 minutes on average, and sometimes I play the same scenario 3 times in a row with the three teams. Other times, only once or twice.

When I play in a group, it depends on the group ;)

I have a group of 4-6 players; we usually play once or twice a month. A single scenario with that group tends to take 2 and a half hours.

I have another group of 4 people, we play once or twice a month as well. A scenario with this group tends to take around 2 hours, and we typically do 2-3 scenarios per play session.

My experience with S&S suggests that the scenarios take longer than they did for RotR, so I suppose that might be a factor as well.

Consider me in the "while" camp... but then, I think it should have been "while" all along; and I *think* some of the rules don't quite agree with that (I'm thinking back to the Blessing of Pharasma debate).

"You gain the skills Arcane and Divine equal to your Craft skill while you play or when you would banish a spell that does not have the Attack trait."

This handles the recharge question, but still perhaps leaves open the question of whether Damiel can play a spell like aid to be able to use his craft spell to acquire arcane check cards or defeat arcane check barriers. How should we interpret "while you play" a card?

(Yes, I'm fully aware that this wording may not be the final official wording)

That power was why The War Priest was a big favorite in both my play-test groups. So many cards were saved thanks to that! Also, even though it proved to be sub-optimal, he was able to use muskets to decent effect, especially with his reveal to add bonuses power.

I doubt that is the intended behavior mlvanbie. The wording csouth provided a few posts up would, however, avoid that case (and would avoid the problems with aid-type cards as well).

So, wouldn't giving Damiel the option to recharge potions make them function similar to spells for casters? Other characters can not recharge potions as a general rule, so I'm not seeing why he'd have to specifically recharge spells thematically...

Good point, I somehow missed that. In that case, I think that wording would probably be just fine.

Would you suggest that wording implies the spell is banished csouth? Or not? Since the banishment is not a check, rather an automatic effect of playing the spell without the listed skill, I'd think that wording would result in the spell being banished.

Side note: perhaps another way to go would be to make a rule that says recharge always takes priority over banishing as well as discarding, then your wording would allow those spells to be recharged. That might prove to be too extreme of a change though, I'm not sure.

Based on the RPG, Damiel's spells should be no more one-shot than Ezren's. They are essentially the same type of "casters" with both of them having "spellbooks" and preparing "spells" at the start of the day or leaving preparation slots open to prepare what is needed when a situation arises. The only difference (and the reason for excessive "quotations") is that Damiel isn't technically a caster, his spellbook is called a formula book, and his spells take the form of potions. Otherwise, his extracts/infusions act exactly as spells do (including being affected by dispel magic) and he can prepare them for free at the beginning of the day just like a wizard can, day after day.

From your description, that sounds an awful like like in the RPG, potions are a mechanic that work similarly to how spells work. As you say, they're not actually spells. Unless I'm missing something, that is easily addressed in PACG by making potions that functionally work like spells (something they've already done quite a bit even by Chapter 2, both offensively and defensively). Is it, for example, the case that in the RPG an alchemist can ready the exact same teleport spell the a wizard can? Or rather does he have a similar ability in potion form? If its the former, than using a spell for him would be essentially using a scroll, hence the argument for banishing it. With more limited space in PACG, the designers may want to make him able to actually use spells repeatedly, simply to not have a potion form of some existing spell card, but if so it would be natural to make him use craft to imply that he is still using his "potion" skills. Just how I see it anyway.

Regarding the "step" issue, I completely agree. The issue of timing has been one of the least well defined parts of the whole game. It still makes my head spin that we've been told that "when you encounter" a card literally means "when you flip the card over and read it", yet plenty of those cards also talked about doing something "before the encounter"... I mean, how do you do something you haven't done "before" something you've already done? Little did I know PACG was actually a game played by time travelers!

Except it's not what the designers intended. Damiel later gets benefits for passing Craft checks. He doesn't need to be using Craft to recharge, he just needs to have Arcane and Divine equal to his craft, and there's a reason they wrote it that way. He isn't supposed to be making Craft checks, just doing something with equal skill.

I'll let the designers speak to what they intended (if they want to anyway), but I can say that during the play-test, the power was worded in such a way as to be clear that Damiel could make a check (it was a craft check for at least part of the play-test, I don't remember if that lasted through the whole thing) to keep his banished potions and non-attack spells. So I'm fairly certain the INTENT is that he somehow recharges those spells. Making that work through a craft recharge check is almost certainly the easiest way to go, so long as it doesn't break the power on his roll card. So far, I'm not seeing anyone really even arguing that would happen, only that it's something to pay attention to.

To be fair, thematically, an alchemist doesn't necessarily even use spells much. Perhaps he shouldn't have been able to recharge non-attack spells in the first place. That would be a hard sell though, since his character always has at least 2 spells in his deck.

Actually, the finesse/melee issue works somewhat differently. You gain the melee skill when you play a weapon, which is during the step which defines which skill you'll be using for the check.

The problem with the arcane language is that you're gaining the skill "when you play the spell" which can easily be interpreted as "if you play a spell you gain the arcane skill". That's a big issue because one of the first things you'd have to do after playing the spell is banish it if you didn't have the arcane/etc. skill. The designers, I think, meant for you to gain the skill literally "as you play the spell" but that's not really a specific step in the process. So it's unclear whether gaining the skill happens before or after you would see if the spell gets banished.

Again, the various wording suggestions made by myself, Hawkmoon and others in this thread would all be perfectly acceptable except PERHAPS for the issue of letting Damiel peak/draw a card for making the recharge check; something I personally do not think is overpowered at all, and is only even an issue for players taking that particular roll card.

Given that non-attack spells never seem to actually use the arcane skill for anything but the recharge check, another possible wording is just

"After playing a spell without the attack trait, you may attempt to recharge that spell instead of banishing it, using your craft skill instead of the listed skill."

There's also

"After playing a spell without the attack trait, you may attempt to recharge that spell instead of banishing it. For this check you gain arcane and divine skills equal to your craft skill."

I wouldn't say it is necessarily broken, but it is better than before. It may be better than was intended. Based on discussions around other errata/potential errata (Restoration, Radillo) I expect they want to playtest that and see if it does feel OP or not.

That's certainly possible. Still, given the ramped up difficulty of S&S (at least compared to how it was in the play-test) I really don't think this power would prove to be too powerful. There are certainly some useful items, but my recollection is that using allies well was the biggest key to success; items tended to be pretty situational and Damiel is likely to be built in such a way that the items he'll have are mostly (all?) potions, many of which will be for combat. Also, at max, his deck can only have 4 spells, so we're not talking about a huge number of extra craft checks here as far as I can see.

The recharge check is always meant to be optional. It's been stated that the wording on some of the new cards makes it sound as though the recharge check is mandatory, but that is not how it should be. Just as in RotR, recharge checks are NEVER supposed to be mandatory.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would that particular power be broken if recharging spells activated it? Afterall, it wouldn't be that different from Ezren's spell power....

"For the powers of a spell that does not have the Attack trait, you may replace the Arcane or Divine skill with the Craft skill."

Looks like we're thinking alike, eh? I guess the troublesome part is still wording on the spells themselves that says "If you do not have the arcane/divine skill, banish this card." (or whatever the actual wording is)

I think I see where you're trying to go there, but I'm not sure any skills would be "determined by a spell". You also don't want to falsely imply that he can use his craft skill for other checks the spell may require.

Incidentally, the play-test Damiel didn't even have a power like this as I recall. I think his power back then never actually gave him the arcane/divine skills at all, but just said he could (in effect) get it back (I don't recall if it was using craft or not). Not sure why they eventually changed that wording; I personally found it much less confusing, though it probably had something to do with how "reaquiring" a card works.

Temporarily giving a character a skill seems rife with logistical problems to me, really.

How about "You may use your craft skill in place of the divine or arcane skills when playing any non-attack spell." ?

Seemingly, that would apply to recharge checks for the spell, as well as any future design space that uses arcane/divine skills on non-attack spells. It also avoid the troublesome "step" language.

I'm pretty sure aid would have to be played after determining the difficulty of the check, meaning determining which skill you'll be using to make the check. So, I don't see it working that way myself, though of course I could be missing something.

Fair enough. I'm pretty sure they mean "step" as a part of your encounter, not as part of your turn. I vote for using "phase" for the parts of your turn (i.e. explore, move, etc.) and "step" for the parts of any particular phase. but that's just me.

Still, the wording I suggested would at least answer the question of recharges, so it at least has that going for it. Though, off the top of my head I can't think of many non-attack spells that actually need to use the arcane/divine skills for something other than the recharge check (there probably are some out there, I just can't think of any right now).

I'm thinking that the designers want Damiel to be able to recharge spells, but don't want Damiel to gain the arcane/divine skills long enough to be able to cast attack spells. If that is indeed the case, it seems like the designers have written themselves into a corner with the wording they went with.

May I cautiously suggest his power be modified to something like

"When you play a spell that does not have the Attack trait, you gain the skills Arcane and Divine equal to your Craft skill until the end of the step. You may then use your craft skill in place of the listed skill to attempt to recharge that spell."

I'm sure there's a shorter better way of wording this, but that's what I came up with in the 4 minutes I spent thinking on it ;)

If you play with only two (or one) characters and standard number of locations, then clouds won't do you much, it's true. That's why I mentioned playing with 8 locations - even two player games are pressed for time with 8 locations. Makes the game more frantic and challenging. Not that you should necessarily do that all the time. But it's worth trying.

I'd say that even in solo games they're good to have in your deck, so long as you don't go overboard with them. They can help with multiple checks, for example. If you have more than one character, their value just goes up. They can also be useful on characters like Merisiel, who can have spells but don't get the spellcasting skills like Arcane/Divine, etc. Sure, you'd have to banish the spell, but at the end of the scenario, depending on your progress, you might be able to just add it back to your deck.

As yet another example of why you might want to play such a card, suppose you encounter a villain with multiple checks. Playing a cloud spell there let's you gain the extra dice for each of those checks, regardless of which character is facing the check. Those spells can be as powerful as some weapons individually, but EVERY character gets to use them for every check on that turn AND can use weapons/spells as normal for those checks.

The only real downsides to them are 1) Some of them deal damage to characters at the end of the turn and 2) your spell caster can't use them like a regular attack spell. That is, if Ezren encounters a monster and ONLY has a cloud spell, he doesn't get to roll his arcane die, but rather has to roll his STR die + the bonuses from the cloud spell. As long as you're not overloading your arcane casters with those spells (or if those casters have reliable weapons) they are really handy.

This is just my recollection from the S&S playtest, so take that for what it's worth; the base set cards have already undergone some significant changes since then with a general trend of making things slightly easier than the play-test. All that being said, I found playing with fewer than 3 characters to be far more difficult in S&S than it was in RotR.

I found that when trying 2 character runs many pairings of characters were just hopelessly behind the difficulty curve, but there are still some pairings that can pull through (Valeros and Lem was one of the best I found). At the time, structural damage was far less prevalent than it seems to have become, and it was already bad enough.

In general, though I didn't know it at the time of the play-test, my feeling is that Chapters 3 and 4 of S&S were roughly on par with the difficulty I've seen in Chapters 5 and 6 of RotR. I can't say with certainty, but I do have the impression that the game is designed much more for larger groups than it is for smaller ones. If that is indeed the case, it would make sense, but for me one of the biggest appeals of PACG has always been to ability to sit down and play solo with a couple of characters as well as play in bigger groups. While S&S still has that feature, I tend to find playing some of the scenarios with small parties far more like work than fun. But hey, to each their own, right? ;)

Well, I'm sure players are still using common sense (whether it is common or actually sensical is as you all know, is a different question) when they're playing the game. That is, I'm sure players discuss the situation, and come to a ruling in their group, then continue on with the play. It's later, after their common sense has been applied that they begin to seek certainty, especially if there is still some group disagreement on the issue. Hence, we come to the forum and aske for Mike or Vic or Tanis' or Chad, etc view of common sense for the situation, as we tend to assume they knew what they meant when they designed the cards.

But yes, usually the problems occur because what "they" meant isn't always what they "said"; and we mostly have what they "said" to go by.

I tend to agree, I'm fairly certain the check being described is the "check to defeat. However, even if we can all agree on that, there is still another related question: what about a monster with multiple checks to defeat, like a villain? If they had used the phrase "the check" rather than "your check" they'd have been specifying a unique check which receives those modifiers, so in that case I would tend to lean towards it applying to just the first check to defeat, but what if the character who encountered the ambush does not attempt that check? The phrase "your check" does imply a singularity, but that may not be the intended interpretation.

Thematically, an ambush would mean you're weaker against the initial onslaught, not necessarily against later attacks.

Good catch on this one csouth! Should make for an interesting discussion.

Hawkmoon269 wrote:

Oh yeah. I've never gotten the impression you liked Lini because she was "easy to make powerful". I get the impression that you like powerful things, but that you like to sort of have to make them powerful, by choosing particular cards or feats or other combinations of things. Which is sort of what I like too. So our difference of preference is probably more with the other things you feel about her. I prefer Arcane spells and generally don't like the Divine stuff.

That's a good way of putting it.

My favorite thing about Divine is the flexibility. I like "toolboxes,*" a term you may be aware of from other games, and therefore I like how Divine can allow me to heal myself to be self reliant, as well as heal others if needed or help any check (Aid as opposed to Cloud Spells).

*Toolbox builds are ones that have a tool for any situation. Someone like Seltiel who can only do combat, however well he does it, is the opposite of a toolbox, whereas a character that can handle ANY situation, any possible combination of cards that can come up, is the ultimate toolbox (like the build I tried to come up with in the Restoartion Errata thread - the game could not have a single situation it couldn't handle). RotR Lini can be the most toolboxy of any of the characters I've played so far. Damiel shows promise as well.

I myself prefer the term "utility belt" over toolbox, as one conjures up images of a heroic figure, while the other conjures images of my garage ;)

The only one that really got me was Ordikon's Staff. Kyra (or maybe Lini) is pretty much the only one that will get use out of it's "For your combat check" power, since it requires 4 things:

1. Proficiency with weapons.
2. Strength
3. Item in deck list.
4. Spells.

Seelah can't take it due to #2. Ezren and Seoni can't take it due to #1. Lem can't get good use out of it due to #2. (And Lini sort of the same thing.) And the non-spell casters likely don't have enough spells in their decks.

That is the only one that I often passed up on taking.

Agreed on that one big time. It only even remotely made sense on Kyra in any of our groups, and she already had plenty of weapons... whereas she only ever gets 2 items max, so taking up a spot for this would be silly.

When I said my comment about loot, I included chapter 4, but I really shouldn't have. I like the loot in chapter 4 and used it right to the end, for the most part. More than one of the groups I played in never used an Arcane caster other than Lem, so those many loot rewards that leaned heavily towards increasing intelligence checks or using arcane dice often got tossed aside. Meanwhile our Harsk, Valeros and Seelah players were BEGGING for some useful loot, but those requests went largely unfulfilled. It is, of course, nice to have a decent arcane caster, but all the people in those groups picked their characters before we got to see the nicest of the arcane cards. In my most recent playthrough of the AP we had one character pick Ezren just because that group had never gotten to use the arcane stuff much, and another player picked Lem (again). We actually found that a lot of the arcane oriented loot still didn't work very well for Lem, and Ezren just could keep it all (some of it he certainly didn't want to keep, as having multiple items that add 2 to your intelligence check in your hand stopped being exciting at the point where he was holding all those cards and not drawing things like attack spells or allies).

The Emerald codex on Merisiel? I wouldn't have done that myself... it seems like such a no brainer for Lini or Kyra in our groups.

The staff of hungry shadows is amazing on Seoni or Ezren. Discarding a spell to drop another character's combat check by 1d12+6 can make even the most difficult fights trivial.

Yep, that was the only one I kept on any of my characters ;) But if no one in the party is playing either Seoni or Ezren (as has been the case in several of my groups), a whole lot of stuff in the game is almost completely wasted, including a lot of the loot cards.

I would recommend RotR myself. I'm not much of a fan of piraty stuff in RPGs either, and I did find some of that stuff in S&S to be a bit of a distraction. I also think the RotR characters are just more fun to play. Also, the potential for failing a scenario seems higher in S&S (we've seen reports on these forums of veteran players failing the first few scenarios 4-5 times a piece). If you have plenty of time you're able and willing to commit to the game, that's probably not a big issue... but for me I only have so much gaming time per month so I really hate wasting it on scenarios that have significant chances of failure designed into them. One of the biggest things people seem to like about PACG in my groups is the progressive leveling up of the character and deck building mechanics, and that stuff tends to become very sluggish the more the difficulty of scenarios ramps up.

It's off topic of course, but I felt that way about most of the loot in Chapters 4 and 5. The most annoying for me were the items from the scenarios with the three villains. I don't remember the card names, but they were all items which didn't really seem to fit well for any of the particular characters. I remember getting really excited about one of them, thinking it would work really well in Seelah's deck, but then I remembered that Seelah has no items; then I though it could work alright in Kyra's deck, til I checked about found that the items she had were already working better than this one would for her. In short, I think Ezren got one of them, but only because half of its powers could be useful to him (the other half... not so much). I've since learned that the designers don't necessarily design weapons/items/etc. with which characters might use them as a primary consideration, so now I can at least understand how those loot card made it in to the set in the first place.

This can of worms just got industrial sized.

Hence why I'm arguing against numbers 2-6 on my list being the rule ;)

There are a couple cards that allow you to evade and move. And S&S Valeros has a role that has a power to move when another character encounters a villain.

Neither of those happen during an encounter as I understand it; If you evade and move, the encounter is done after evading, as evidenced by the card being immediately shuffled back into the location deck (baring summoned monsters anyway) so moving after evading would presumably be happening in a different step.

Moving when a villain is encountered, I should think, is more akin to "before the encounter/before you act" wording. That is, you wouldn't encounter the villain, start activating it's powers and THEN move with Valeros' ability. Then again, the timing sequence of encounters is something that's proven somewhat difficult to nail down firmly in the rules, and I could be thinking of it wrongly here.

I'd go highest printed difficulty, even though the card does not explicitly state that, which does not include the veteran bonus.

And let's be honest, if you were playing the Summon Monster spell and hoping to actually win a combat check with it, you must be crazy. I thought it was a funny card, but in reality the only combat you'd be likely to win is really easy combat you would win without that spell. It's really just a sorta-kinda-but-not-really-evade card.

That was my original interpretation as well. Our Lem character was actually quite surprised that this *might* be a case where he could actually win a combat with that spell, which is quite possibly why he fought so hard to include the veteran's power ;)

The only problem with #7 is that I don't think the rules forbid moving during an encounter. It's not normally possible due to restrictions on what you can play during an encounter but there is nothing in the rules to prevent the designers from creating a card that lets you move in the middle of an encounter.

I agree. This is a problematic situation because seemingly the rules do not specify what to do. My leaning towards #7 is only because currently all other known ways of moving specify that they cannot be used during an encounter. Due to the potential can of worms that is options 2-6, I'd say the best resolution is to add a FAQ entry or bit to the next incarnation of the rulebook that simply says, your character may never move during encounters. Yes, this restricts design space somewhat, but in a way that is probably for the best given all the other issues not doing so could cause. I suppose the design space is still potentially there, as future cards could say to move during the encounter and (for example) evade the current encounter.

It seems to me that the problem case is only when you fail your combat check against the elemental... so possible outcomes would be:

1) You take your combat damage, move to a random location which is in fact the location where you encountered the villain (i.e you "randomly" move to the same location). There doesn't seem to be a rule problem with this option.

2) You take your combat damage and then move to a random OTHER location. This terminates the original encounter with the villain, so you'd apply any after-type effects, and treat the villain as undefeated.

3) You take your combat damage and then move to a random OTHER location. This terminates the original encounter with the villain, and you'd treat it as if you had evaded the villain.

4) You take your combat damage and then move to a random OTHER location. This does NOT terminate the original encounter. The villain moves with you to the other location. In particular, that could mean you end up closing a different location (if you beat his check) than the one where you encountered him.

5) You take your combat damage and then move to a random OTHER location. This does NOT terminate the original encounter. The villain moves with you to the other location. On beating his check, you close his original location.

6) You take your combat damage and then move to a random OTHER location. This does NOT terminate the original encounter. The villain does not move, meaning you could close a location that you aren't actually at, by defeating the check.

7) You take your combat damage, but cannot move because you are still involved in the original encounter, and moving is not allowed during encounters.

Did I miss any? I'd have to say that by far the simplest solution would be #7, which is also consistent with the idea that movement can not occur mid-encounter.

Typically, cards that move characters specifically can not be played during an encounter. I'd tend to agree with Hawk here, based on that alone. There are no nested checks, but this is a case where you have a nested encounter; as such I'd say you're still encountering the original monster even when you are facing the summoned one. So, if a FAQ entry said something to the effect of "Characters may not move during an encounter" which seems to be the intent, I'd think that would be enough here.

I think I see what you meant now, thanks for taking the time for the lengthy reply!

I'm not really that attached to the idea of a symbol here, I only think it makes something clear that the current wordings don't. I'm sure every time I comment on this thread, at least half a dozen paizo employees/game designers roll their eyes, shake their heads and mutter "corner case!" to themselves... but there is still the issue that as the various paragraphs on a monster card are described in the rules as "powers" it seems as though the only proper rules interpretation here is that the part adding to a veteran's difficulty to defeat is a power as well.

Now, the rules typically are quite clear about when powers are (or can be) triggered: 1) When you play a card, 2) whenever it makes sense for you to use a character's power(s), so long as you don't use the same power more than once per step and 3) when you encounter a card, such as a monster or barrier.

I just doubled checked the text of "Summon Monster" to be sure. Here it is: "For your combat check, discard this card to draw a random monster from the box. Use the drawn card's highest difficulty to defeat as the result of your check, then banish the drawn card. No other cards or powers may be used on this check. If you fail the check, the monster is undefeated but deals 0 damage."

The wording is such that you are never playing the card (which sort of wouldn't make sense anyway, since it's a monster). Nor are you encountering the card, and obviously this isn't a character's power. So, none of the three specified setting for triggering a power apply here. Moreover, there's the additional wording that "no other ... powers may be used on this check" which adds an additional level of uncertainty (in fact, one of our group members claimed this line would possibly prevent the encountered monster from using its powers, though I tend to think that wouldn't be the case). So, I'm not really seeing any reason why that veteran power should be triggering based on the rules, other than Mike's having stated that he is leaning in the direction of saying the power does activate (and also perhaps the general guideline in the FAQ that Hawk mentioned). No doubt this is a minor point (though I hear Pathfinder has a summoner class as well, so it might be something to pay attention to if the summoning power of the spell were going to be re-used at some point), but it does seem to me that this is intended to work in a way that is contrary to what the rules state.

I'd do it, but I may be being roped in to hosting/playing sessions of BSG instead. There's no rush, though, they're accepting submissions up until the event, so long as space is available.