Chad Brown's page

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Lest it slip by unnoticed: Nathan himself was a huge part in bringing Pathfinder Adventures to life. :salute:

I'm digging into this now, trying to make sure that we have a good, clear rule that works going forward and backwards.

The general concept we used for Wands and similar things is that there is a risk/reward element of pushing your luck, and that went over well in our testing. This approach also seemed to be a better match for where wands had conceptually gone in the Pathfinder 2 draft rules. Beyond that, there's the complication that PACG is an exception-based game, and there are a few special cases lurking in the darker corners of this conversion rule.

This is all by way of being clear about where I'm starting, but I'd also like to safety-check that it doesn't dramatically break important gameplay loops for a mixture of pre-Core and Core+ cards.

In summary: assume for the moment that the rule is some variant of "Wands and Plants can either be safely buried, or riskily banished-or-recharged."

Does this break anything?

Thanks in advance.

I don't see a link to a downloadable PDF. I can't guarantee internet access at the locations where we run PACS games, so I really need a printable version I can have with me at the table.

My hope is that people can read this blog post to understand the idea behind the changes (including motivations, if that interests you), and then use the FAQ for the detailed card-by-card material. With that in mind, I think you won't need a reference copy of this post.

If that turns out to be wrong, please do let me/us know; it probably suggests something that we should add to the FAQ.

Thanks!

zeroth_hour wrote:

Is it bad that I really like the card type symbols so much that I want them in the physical game?

Not as much as Chad wants them.

Truth.

Hello, everyone! I want to reassure everyone that we are watching this thread!

I haven't said much yet, because a combination of a redacted deadline and an anniversary trip took a big chunk out of my schedule, but we're watching.

One thing that I wanted to add (something that Keith pointed out to me but I wasn't able to get into the blog post in time) is that the ability to temporarily close locations is a big, big factor in favor of larger groups. Selectively choosing which locations to explore (especially after you know that your least-favorite banes are there) versus which to defend can have a huge impact on the timing and success of large groups. As Keith put it to me: in solo games, you're almost always closing every location. In 6 character games, you can usually leave 2-3 of them barely explored. Of course, more characters means more chances that someone can scout, which acts as a force multiplier for this effect.

More specific feedback to come, but meanwhile, thanks everyone for commenting, and thanks again for playing!

Welcome! Looking forward to seeing your good/evil work!

Chad, re-reading what you wrote I was the one that knee jerked!

You were proposing a hypothetical and then said it probably wasn't the answer. My apologies.

I appreciate and accept the apology, thanks. I do understand that things in WotR are more frustrating early-on for many people than we'd thought (and wanted, planned, hoped, etc) - and I appreciate that we're all trying to make it better.

Also, I can't fault anyone who references Paranoia, although I certainly don't know what you're talking about, because the Computer is my Friend. :-)

Thanks again!

Anyway, those were tough scenarios in the RPG (in particular Elven Entanglement was a killer) and it seems like they are the same in the card game.

Without putting too big a spotlight on it, yeah, these scenarios turned out to be a little tougher than we had intended for the "natural second" scenario. In our playtesting it went fine, but that's always a risk in playtesting - at some point, the playtesters (especially our internal playtesters) are pretty good at the set (I assure you, there's an overlapping but different skillset for each AP), and so even on a fresh play-through, things end up balanced harder for the real players than we intended.

Like I said before, we're still looking at this to see if we need to take some sort of action (which would presumably errata of some sort), but in the meantime, I strongly encourage people who are feeling the fun flagging to press on past those scenarios for now, and come back later (or just leave them for a potential future).

We're also looking closely at the role of the B scenarios in teaching the game to brand new players, teaching the specifics of the AP to people who've have some other PACG experience, and also to providing an interesting on-ramp for people who've played PACG a lot (maybe this AP, maybe many others) and are looking to get into the story in an easy and fun way.

This ties deeply into the nature of the B scenario construction and the B scenario rewards. As a hypothetical example: if the WotR B adventure reward was something like "Each character chooses a type of boon other than loot and draws a random non-Basic boon of that type from the box." instead of "Each character gains a card feat.", would that be better? Probably, people would feel more inclined to just skip over B scenarios that they didn't like, but that's not obviously an improvement - we made those scenarios to be fun to play (remembering that there are many different kinds of fun and many different kinds of player), so maybe it's better to help people skip over the "intro", but maybe it's better to get people to complete the on-ramp instead.

It's a tricky question, and my exposure to board games, card games, video games, and demos of all of the above tells me that there's not yet One Right Answer. For my part, I'm sorry that some people aren't having fun with WotR, ecstatic that others are, and trying to figure out how to get more of the latter and fewer of the former. Thanks again for all your help, and thanks for playing!

If you're talking about 1-2

Yep, I either typo'ed or thinko'ed that one.

that paragraph helped most characters and surprisingly hurt Seoni a bit due to it disrupting her best combat-readiness option.

Interesting! I know that we tested that scenario with Seoni, and I don't remember that problem, but it totally makes sense to me.

With Crowe, forgot about his rage. >.<

If you read his backstory, you'll find that that is excellent roleplaying. :-)

The other Sharks have suggested that I tell you all that there will be some dissenting opinions (theirs) on which is the Best Character in the weeks to come. I'm sure that their posts will be witty, eloquent, well-reasoned, and incorrect. I'm looking forward to it already.

Further, it is my sad duty to report that the Paizo.com tech team, awesome though they are, was unable to accommodate my request to title the post "Seelah: You're the Best", and have it play this song after the page loaded.

Luckily, you're all singing it now.

To elaborate on what Mike said: sometimes we want an effect like "the monster you hit with this spell is less effective at dealing damage", and sometimes we want an effect like "the character you hit with this spell is protected from damage". These often produce a similar outcome, but not always. Thus, sometimes we prevent damage dealt by a bane, and other times we prevent damage dealt to a character. The first stops Structural damage, and the second doesn't. This is intentional.

It's not an accident that we put some cards that *can* reduce Structural damage in the set with Ships. It might be an accident if we put cards in RotR that effectively reduce Structural damage, and we'd like to hear about those.

Thanks for playing!

Imagine there are 2 players and 4 locations, where both players begin at the same location. On the first player's turn they decide to move to another location and player 2 decides to stay. Now both players are on different locations. Player 1 ends their turn and now player 2 begins their turn......piloting the ship? That is ... weird.

Don't think of it as "piloting" the ship. On each character's turn, they are commanding the ship - that is, they are giving the orders, and the crew of the ship are carrying out those orders. A typical ship will have more crew than even the largest PACg game, and they're busy doing crew/ship things, not adventurer/exploration things. These things include sailing from location to location between turns.

This is also why many of the Task barriers let characters use as many allies as they have at hand - those specific barriers are the sorts of things where you benefit from having as many people as possible helping. Put another way: you don't want 6 people navigating, because no matter how many courses you get from those 6 people, the ship can only go in one direction. If you're swabbing the decks, though, the more the merrier (or at least, more effective-ier).

So essentially the ships during movement only allow for extra movement on other players turns if you are in the same location an active player is when they move, you can move with them ... and that is it? Did I get that right?

All ships have a power that they give to the commander, and they collect plunder. They also allow the commander to bring characters along when they move. They don't allow characters at other locations to move anywhere, because those people aren't where the ship is. If you want to know why you can't "swing by and pick people up", the answer is "the same reason that you can't do that in RotR without a ship." During your turn you don't have time to run grab other people on your way hither and fro -- unless you do, in which case a power will tell you that you do.

I have to say, I like the new Merisiel WAAAAAAYYY better than the old one. Hard to see myself ever going back to RotR version.

Great! She's a little more about the swashbuckling combat, and a little less about dealing with traps and barriers. The Rogue Class Deck Merisiel is different yet again.

It's my fervent hope that some people believe that the S&S Merisiel is obviously better than the RotR Merisiel, while others are sure that the RotR Merisiel is clearly superior, and still others know that the Rogue Deck Merisiel is the only true Merisiel.

As others have mentioned, hand size can be both a benefit and a liability. In general, a "tough" character will have a smaller hand size, leaving them less exposed to damage. An extremely versatile character will have a larger hand size, giving them access to more tools.

On the other size of the coin, you really want to look at the expected play patterns of the character. An early version of Valeros tended to `lock up' with a good hand, which made many people happy (once he reached a steady state, he was at least competent at the things he should be good at until something bad happened). It also felt a little too static to other people, so Valeros got a power that let him `cycle' his weapons into his deck if he wanted - giving him a chance to see more of his deck (and just more variety), without sacrificing his long-term longevity. This lets him stay tough without also making him too static.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have Ranzak... but you haven't seen Ranzak yet. :-)

Another good guideline for character design: you're obviously not restricted to things that can fit on a physical card, but it's a good constraint nonetheless. The 'no more than 11 skills' guideline is related: if you had the 6 standard skills and then 6 more, that's a lot of complexity, and a lot of vertical space on a card. Similarly, the more skills you put on a card, the fewer/shorter powers you want. If you build a character and think "there's no way this would fit on a card", then it's likely (not certain) that the result is too complex in addition to being too long.

Put another way: if we can get the ranger, bard, and rogue down to 11 or fewer total skills, your concept can probably fit in that same constraint.

To these guidelines, I would add "No individual bonus higher than +3, and only those in specific circumstances, including but not limited to 'not with a d12'."

The iconics should be good guidance for most skills, especially if you're familiar with the characters or their iconic-trope nature. For example, Valeros and Amiri are each both strong and good with melee weapons. Valeros relies more on training, while Amiri relies more on raw ability. A custom character that is also very good with melee weapons could have an effective Melee skill like Valeros's 1d10+3 or Amiri's 1d12+2, but should not have 1d12+3. Similar for Ezren and Seoni's Arcane, or Merisiel's suite of roguey goodness.

Interesting character skills design is usually more about where you want to put the weaknesses than the strengths, and making each character feel distinct. It's certainly not impossible to make a fun character with 3 d6's and 3 d8's, but it's not where I'd recommend you start.

Hope that helps!

I have another question concerning what happen when Muck isn't encountered in the Woods. The last paragraph of Muck's card says something like (from memory) "If undefeated, another random character at this location encounters this card ; put it at the bottom of the location deck." If no one has a way to add the fire trait to the check, what happens ? I'm guessing you don't have an infinite loop of encounters but is it A) the card is put at the bottom of the location deck after 2 characters encounter the monster ; or B) the card is put at the bottom of the location deck after all characters at the location encounter the monster.

A.

The idea is that Muck tries to beat up one other character at the location, and then retreats to safety (i.e. the bottom of the location deck) regardless of the outcome of that second attack.