Dave Riley's page

Didn't see a thread for this, so putting this out there to say we, uh... did pretty well! After a fairly routine scenario (though not being able to close locations when we encountered a curse was a pain!) we corned the Kraken and our two person party, with the help of Exalted we acquired after the previous scenario, played 3x Blessings of Pharasma on it at once for a total of 10d12 on Amaryllis's Poison Blast. My wife was still counting her result as I was packing up the cards, I think it was somewhere in the >80 range.

We've run through all of S&S twice now and, while waiting for the next one, I'm wondering if anyone has thought about sorting through the class decks to create a homebrew box? I was thinking of trying it out with Rise of the Runelords scenarios and banes and seeing how it goes. I figure there's probably enough cards to make an AP out of each, maybe supplementing with RoRL base cards as needed.

I'm not sure how the basic power levels feel across different adventure deck numbers in different class decks, but I haven't really scrutinized the class deck cards to get a feel for how many of what types would feel right. But I'm thinking about trying this out since my wife and I won't be getting into OP anytime soon, we have all the class decks, and we'd rather try something slightly different rather than go through S&S for a third time and burning out on the content before AP3 even comes. :D

Say you've got to kill a monster to close a location, does Gozreh work on it?
Say you've got to kill a pirate ship to defeat the Pirate Hunting barrier, does Abadar work on it?

Searching around the forums didn't turn up anything at first blush. I don't think we ever encountered situations like this in RotR--our random monster closes were probably just never that tough? But we had a Combat 13 crocodile and a Gozreh on hand, and were curious.

My instinct is no, that technically those locations don't HAVE a check to close. And anyway I'd rather nudge the game a bit harder than a bit easier, if I had to choose without a ruling or clarification. Still, there's just a little niggling bit of doubt. They're both A check to close a barrier or location, they're just not THE check attached to that barrier or location, which technically has none.

Just thought you guys would like to know your slippery pig led to Merisiel and Kyra's near-demise.

My wife and I came home tonight after a great dinner with friends to find AP3 waiting for us in the mail room. Best day ever!

Well of course we dealt the cards out as quickly as possible. Kyra heads to the Woods and plays Augury on our first turn. One of those new Ogrekin henchmen shows up. Perhaps against our better judgment, we say "hey, we're not in the habit of losing on time; let's put him on the bottom of the deck and see if we get a chance at any of those new cards." Later, Kyra encounters the slippery pig and promptly loses. No big deal! She's got armor to deal with the combat damage, and, after double checking to make sure we don't banish it, Squealy Nord goes back into the pile.

Soon, after a defeated henchman and a failed check to close, the deck is whittled down to three cards: the Ogrekin (we rolled a 4 for his power, and so he retreated to the bottom of the deck after his defeat), the non-henchman Ogre with the same die rolling power, and the Squealy Nord. With only three cards on deck, our bad luck keeps pulling the swine from the pile, and nothing will kill this frigging pig! We try blessings, we try discarded weapons. We try Wisdom checks, we try Combat checks. The pig won't die, and my wife's Khan-like screams of "Piiiig!" get louder each time. Even with +4 to her rolls from magic weapons, Strength skill points, and Melee bonuses, she just can't manage it. To make matters worse, every time one of the Ogres shows up we roll a 4 and they trot right back to the bottom of the pile!

Meanwhile my Merisiel is closing locations left and right. Farmhouse done, Wooden Bridge done, Turtleberry Ferry whittled down to a slim stack of cards, and still the plaintive cries of "Piiig!" echo from the woods. Kyra's still throwing good discards after bad, and that pig keeps slipping away, but at least we're making progress!

Eventually Merisiel flips over the villain. A 19, wow! And with 3 added henchmen, she'll have to roll a 22. By now her hand is pretty stacked, and Mama tips over without a problem... but what's this? The first time Mama is defeated, turns out she really isn't!

Mama retreats, and with her she takes 2 of the 3 remaining blessings from the deck. Looking at the three still-open locations in front of them, the team decides to call it a day. As Kyra emerges from the Woods -- the location she started the game in -- Merisiel can't help but ask "What the hell were you doing in there?" Kyra looks away with an uncharacteristically sheepish expression. "You see," she says, "There was this pig..."

On the plus side, at least we removed a crapload of Guards, Burglars, Potions, and Slings from the game! Thanks for the early Christmas present, Paizo!

This is more of an idle thought than an actual rules question or anything, but I'm wondering...

Given that the Character Addon Deck gives you a bunch more like, short swords, maces, chainmail, cure spells, I'm wondering if the suggested decks for all/most characters should be prepared even if you're not playing as them, to reduce the rate of appearance for common weapons/items/allies to something more reasonable.

I would assume no, but given that, having the Character Addon Deck makes you more likely to gain trash you don't want. There are, what, three half-plates in the armor deck? It's hard to count how many times we've found a wooden shield or short sword in our many adventures, but we only saw Poog once (we got him, thankfully, but we spent our blessings!)

Of course, some of the thrill is in having the appearance of these cards being a rare occurrence. We would not have burned our blessings on Poog if we'd seen him six times before (actually, we "cheated" that game and scanned the leftover allies to see if he was in there, when we found that he wasn't, we stopped closing locations until their decks were empty/obviously exhausted of allies, so we made the scenario quite a bit harder!)

The flip side is that the game feels less exciting when every weapon is a long sword, and every armor a leather jerkin. Almost wish there were some way to guarantee a 'rare.' As it is, the mechanisms of the game are fun -- fun enough to play most adventures more than once, and to then start making random adventures of our own -- so I don't mind the lack of new loot, but when your third item draw in the deck is a potion, again, which you never want (and as Merisiel, are unlikely to acquire anyway) it can get you a little bummed out.