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I'd argue that maybe they should be able to just switch without the death rule then if they aren't having fun and think that the character is the problem.

There isn't much to be gained from forcing someone to play something they don't enjoy.

I agree with you, if a player came to me saying "you know, I'm really not having fun playing this character" I wouldn't hesitate to let them switch with no penalty.

But in the situation that happened, he wouldn't have wanted to switch if it was seen as properly out of reach. The second time was even easier since he set precedent already, and he'll probably do it again before we're done, less out of not having fun and more just because he can. The grass is always greener for some people, especially once they see there is no fence.

But the bottom line is that everyone should be having fun so I won't stop him now. It's already a recurring joke that if our party came up against something we weren't suited for we could just stab him and make him regenerate Doctor Who style.

I've witnessed both sides of the d2 on this.

In Runelords one of my players died, and though I offered leniency he wanted to play by the official rules. But my group didn't want to replay all the scenarios to get him leveled, so he started with AD3 equipment on AD5, with no feats or role card. As Lem he could still buff the party, but was pretty useless on his own turns. He died again a few scenarios later and stopped coming to game night until we started S&S.

In Wrath I house-ruled that death meant choosing an unplayed character, but with full feats and an AD-minus-2 deck, and their previous deck is banished. It was met with full agreement. Most of my group still properly fear dying, more from losing the character they grew attached to than from losing their good cards. But one player grew bored of his and used the death rules as a "free" character swap twice. Definitely degenerate behavior, but it resulted in a no-longer-bored player and didn't affect the rest of us so it's not really a problem.

My opinion of the death rules are that they need to be there as a starting point even though most groups won't use them fully. Each group can house rule it down to the level that fits their time constraints and hardcore-ness. And for the rare but existing players who would whine at any level of punishment for dying, the other players can point to the rulebook and say, "Well at least it's not this harsh."

Merisiel has a power "You may evade your encounter."

The Guard Tower location says "At the start of your turn, summon and encounter a Bandit henchman."
Meri is at the Guard Tower, starts her turn, and says "I evade the Bandit." Does the bandit go into the location deck or back in the box?

Similarly, Meri is in the Warrens. The location text says "When you encounter a monster put a random monster from the box on top of another random open location deck." Meri explores, draws a monster and says "I evade the monster." Does a random monster get put out or not? 'Encounter' is both a verb and a noun, and Meri is stamping her foot saying "I didn't encounter the monster, I evaded the encounter."

Harsk, at another location (obviously), draws Skeleton Horde. Meri is at an open location, so she has to summon and encounter and Ancient Skeleton. Meri says "I evade the Ancient Skeleton." Can she? If she can, does the Ancient Skeleton go in the location deck or back in the box? I've been playing that she can evade and the monster goes back in the box.

1. Summoned encounters always go back to the box unless the thing that summoned them says otherwise. She can sneak around the Guard Tower with no consequences.

2. You are still encountering cards you evade. The evasion step comes after the When You Encounter step. Evading it just means it is neither defeated or undefeated. So yes, a new monster gets put in.

3. She can evade and it will go back in the box. You'll only get tripped up if the barrier says that all summoned monsters must be defeated, since her evasion does not defeat her monster.

I agree there is a certain charm to watching Harsk make a Charisma check. But you only 'gather' allies for the duration of the scenario, then they all go back in the box. The scenario gives your party a chance to buff their allies, and that's it. For PCs that don't care much about allies, big whoop. In contrast, giving everyone a skill feat is rewarding to each in their own way.

The concern is really that the newly available allies from the Adventure 1 deck were less useful than the B and C deck allies the PCs already had.

I think your expectations for progression may be too high. Pathfinder isn't just about upgrading your deck, it's also about overcoming whatever is facing you using what you have. So it's okay to end up with no deck changes after a scenario even most of the time. At least in this one you had 12 potential rewards to choose from, compared to scenarios with multiple boon-starved location decks where the reward is one loot card for only one of your six party members.

Also, although the banish allies are a poor choice with six characters when you need all the explores you can get, they are still not objectively bad. I'd pick seeing a whole deck once with the Mayor over an extra d6 that I could keep around. After you call in your favor and banish one, even if you can't get your old ally back you will probably end up with one that can at least explore. And it's worth noting that unless you have constant heals on everyone, those discard allies are effectively single-use as well.

It's quite a difference to someone standing next to Crowe (or to a Crowe without the reduction feats) either taking 2 damage or 4 damage when he is making two combat checks in one encounter. So I wouldn't have it extend to all checks as that's a buff from the intention expressed in the FAQ.

But any change from the wording of Before You Act does prevent it from being reduced by certain powers which are not exclusive to Crowe. Blight Scout Adowyn comes to mind most quickly.

Perhaps something like "Before you act, for each combat check you will attempt in the encounter, you may deal 2 Electricity or Force damage to all characters at your location to add 1d8 and the Magic and the chosen trait to that check."

Last night my group played WotR 5-1, Audience with the Inheritor. For weeks I gleefully awaited my group's surprise and struggles against an ambushing non-combat 70 check.

That is, until the player with Mythic Champion used one mythic charge, negating the good Lady's additional 50.

The difficulty of the check to defeat is increased by 10 times the number of characters.

Then you may expend 1 or more mythic charges. If you do, ignore effects that increase the difficulty of the check.

So now he was rolling a d20+10 by himself against a 20. With the extra d12's from Heaven the roll was trivial.

So, was this legal? If so, it's not really an edge case, as most parties with a physical attacker will have a Champion. I guess you could say we got lucky that the random character that had to fight Lady of Valor was him, but still. It made for a very meh ending to what I hoped would be an exciting start to deck 5.

"If the scenario you’re playing lists any cohorts, after drawing starting hands, each character may add 1 of the listed cohorts to her hand."

This rule just means that one of your players can't take all of the cohorts. Each player gets 1 of them max. But when they run out, they run out.

An explanation for your friends: Each named NPC you meet doesn't have triplet siblings. Each super awesome loot item doesn't come on a rack with enough duplicates for everyone currently standing in front of it.

Even if the rules don't explicitly forbid printing more cards, it's clearly against design to do so. If you start with loot, what's to stop you from printing more copies of a certain ally you find useful, or a powerful weapon that only comes one per box?

I can't say if you're missing anything, but I can speak to the strategy my group used.

The monsters being on top is actually an advantage. You now know the first few cards of each deck as long as you don't shuffle them. Martials love monsters, let your weapon users hop around taking care of the monsters on top of each location while your spellcasters stay behind hoping to get the swarms. 17 isn't that high when you're getting a free d8 and have around a +6 by this point from skill feats and mythic passives.

Even if your weapon users find a swarm and don't want to banish a weapon, they can still probably make an unarmed 11 through powers and mythic charges. It has never been the end of the world before when you banished a henchman without closing the location, right? Especially when you know that there won't be a single monster in the location afterward. Also remember that Harsk can evade them since they're Vermin. Really only Adowyn should be afraid of finding one, that I can think of.

The barriers, well... If you get a Horde or Blight it's a bad time no matter what scenario it is. But at least in Wrath you have a good chance of getting temptation barriers that (can) do nothing to you.

I hope this helps!

Out of curiosity, why is either valid? My group confronted this issue and determined that the "each player selects a character" clause is an action itself (because it tells you to do a separate and distinct thing) and therefore subject to the "once you start something, complete it" rule.

I'm wondering what the opposite point of view is there.

My take on the other point of view is that once the first person rolls, the chosen character has a summoned encounter in front of them. By that same rule, this becomes something that needs to resolve before the rest of the card can continue.

I compare it to a henchman that summons a monster. You are still fighting the henchman overall, but you can't continue with the text on the henchman card until you first take care of that monster.

What could be more piratey than stumbling out of your captain's quarters reeking of rum and punching everything in sight?

Actual ideas though: For Drunken Master, you could find a way to grant Swashbuckling so he punches pirate-style, perhaps tacking a checkbox to the combat blessings power. "If you do, add the Swashbuckling trait." You'd have to remove another checkbox to balance that on principle, though it doesn't seem that overpowered to get that trait only on combat checks and only ones you're already committing blessings to.

For Zen Archer, you could maybe turn that into Zen Gunner, changing "When you play a weapon with the Ranged trait, you may recharge it instead of discarding it." to something gun related, like "When you bury a weapon with the Firearm trait for its power, you may recharge a card from your discard pile." That would keep the intent of not being hurt when you use a big weapon power, while not making guns overpowered since you still bury them away as written.

Neither of these are needed changes to viably play Sajan in S&S of course, just ideas for edits since you asked.

I share the opinion that any party is viable. So more than power synergy or fully-covered stats, the thing I try most to keep track of when creating a party is potential for loot disputes, especially when playing with kids.

Jirelle and Merisiel both use Finesse weapons best so they will be fighting over them, which alone is probably fine. But most of those Finesse weapons are one-handed melee weapons, which is something Seltyiel would be looking for as well. And Lem prefers Finesse too if you switched to him instead (although when playing as support it doesn't matter as much). So every time you see a Finesse weapon you will have to decide which of the three of you get this one, which will make it much slower to progress each character than if they had sole access to their craved cards. And I don't know about you, but if they were my kids I would just end up with a deck of hand-me-downs.

Another side effect is that while you all rush to grab one subsection of weapons, through your entire campaign any time you encounter a Ranged weapon, Two-handed Melee weapon, Divine spell, or non-Attack Arcane spell, no one will really care. That might dull things a bit.

Personally I would disallow it.

You could not use the "Bury this card to move" power if you had nowhere to move to. Moving is explicitly described as going to another location. Since the card does not say "you may," it's mandatory to move when you play that power. So adding an evade effect before that still leaves you playing a card that forces you to move when you can't. In other words, adding a separate legal part to the play doesn't make it less of an illegal play. That's how I would rule it anyway, I'm open to being corrected.

I've always assumed flavor-wise that the way the cape helps you evade is through movement away from the danger. If you cover yourself with a magic cape but don't go anywhere, you'll still get hit!

You have to understand that you don't die just because you have no cards in your draw pile, but that at the end of your turn when you must reset your hand, you have no cards to draw from.

I agree, and that's why I said Ranzak has 9 HP and not 8. He can lose that 8th card and still be alive, but when he loses what would be the 9th, he won't have enough to reset and will die at the end of the turn.

I'm very much suggesting that the cards in your hand are never part of your HP. Once you draw your starting hand, that number of cards is permanently subtracted from the number you can lose overall and still be alive, since your hand will always reset up to that many.

Put another way, if Ranzak has 8 cards in his deck and 7 in his hand, he would be considered "fully healed", yes? No amount of Curing alone can make his safety net bigger than 8, because he is forced to reserve 7 cards away from his deck at the end of every turn.

I think the widespread explanation of "whole deck = HP" is what is causing the misunderstanding in the first place. In your example, bbKabag, Ranzak only lost 14 of his 15 HP to damage yet is now dead. He could have lost 9 cards and still be dead, so his actual starting HP is 9, while Valeros' is 12.

If you call the whole deck his HP and say everyone has an equal 15, people will naturally wonder why they are dead when they still have some part of that 15 HP left undamaged.

Yes, I think that Feral is the definite way to go for that combat power alone, letting me fill my spell slots with cures and other non-combat spells. My advice above is sort of built toward that so take it with a grain of salt if you go spellcaster.

But the Aquamancer power to put monsters in your hand that Joseph mentioned isn't terrible either. My vision of this in action would be to use that monster as a free discard for your d12 power rather than banishing it for a d4. If it isn't used by the end of your turn, discard it when you reset your hand, giving you more curable "max HP" while not clogging up your hand for the next turn.

I mainly play her, so I'll give my two cents. S&S Lini isn't a combat character at all to me, she's a jack-of-all-trades speedster.

The ability to turn your lowest two dice to d12 means that she has a way higher skill total than any other character (none of which have even two double-digit skills), and this can be taken further with the Feral power to make Con a d12 as well. This means that more than any other character, she will not be caught off guard encountering something she has to roll a low die for.

That strength of hers synergizes with her other main strength, which is exploring like mad. Once she gets her first power feat, she can put animals on the top of her deck when using them to explore again. Where everyone else has to discard to keep going, she only recharges and gets them all back to use again next turn. That's huge, and it lets you keep blessings around to use on your checks, particularly combat if you don't have your weapon out yet.

My advice for the out of the box character: Build your deck with two cures, but let your group know that you're not a healer, those cures are for you to counteract your discard power unless really necessary. Don't forget to check banes for the Aquatic trait, very common in S&S, which will let you recharge that d12 card instead of discarding. Cycle your deck to get to your weapon to defend against Combat as quickly as possible (or take a Call Weapon spell). Never use blessings to explore, save them for checks. Finally, find both Parrots, they will let you re-roll any check failed by 4 or less for the low cost of a recharge.

An XP system would also minimize the gaming of the system discussed above where players seek to play the scenarios in a particular order to maximize how they gain feats.

I agree with this part and that it would be nice to have some way to combat this.

But I don't think it's true that players who miss a session would ever catch up in this system, at least any more than they would as things are now. Assuming you can only get XP for each scenario once so that people can't just grind, if the group never goes back to replay the one you missed you will still be down a feat by the end of the AP. It might just be a different one than you would have missed otherwise. You would have, for example, only the feats 38 XP gets you while the group has the feats that 40XP gives.

A scaling XP system where feats cost increasingly more but later scenarios are worth more would remedy the falling behind problem, but then you're back to the initial problem of people playing later ones first to get ahead.

This would mitigate the pain a missing a scenario with a Feat reward and keep things a little more balanced amongst party members who had to miss a week do to such crazy things as Life!

To me the XP idea seems like a step backward on this goal. You're taking a system where people who miss a session might miss out on a feat if it was that scenario's reward, and turning it into a system where no matter which scenario they miss they will be guaranteed to be behind the party in getting each subsequent feat for the rest of the campaign. Especially if the role card is given at a set XP.

I agree that it's obvious, but exploiting exact wording to bypass obvious intent is what some tabletop gamers live for. And without a reason not to do it in the rules somewhere I couldn't really stop him.

I'll take the "no one can take your turn" rule though. It's a good point that when it says "recharge this card to roll" it implies you doing the rolling yourself on another person's check, and not just replacing a die with your die. Thanks again!

Last night I had a player point out to me that the skill gem items in the S&S base set don't specify that they have to be modifying your check. "Recharge this card to roll your (whichever) die instead of the normal die on a non-combat check."

He asked me why he couldn't recharge it to, say, swap his d10 Charisma die in for a d4 Wisdom die that someone else was using for their check. Other than saying it most likely wasn't in the spirit of their design (only my assumption of course), I could not find any reasons why not in the rules or messageboards to give him. Anyone have any more solid rulings? Thanks in advance.