Foxiferous's page

Krellend, you've also missed the amulet of life and sihedron medallion. Both of those items just say 'reduce damage', not 'reduce combat damage'.

So it's fairly pertinent for the shrine to say it's mental damage that can't be reduced. There are also character traits and armours (shield of fire resistance) that reduce fire/acid/electricity or damage of a specific type. So saying it's mental damage is flavour, we know how our character is getting hurt, saying it can't be reduced means you have to suck it up and take the pain regardless of items/powers that would normally reduce damage of that type.

The best wording I've come up for with 'Before & After the Encounter' affects is the following:

"Before your check to acquire/defeat this card do X". So on a boon card it would be - "Before your check to acquire this card", on a bane it would be "Before your check to defeat this card".

"After your check to acquire/defeat this card do X".

Having multiple instances and different states of 'encountering' cards is very confusing.

I actually really liked this scenario and would like to see it used again. Something with a special item like a holy grail and you have to find it before the villain etc.

My wife and I are using a two player group, Kyra and Ezren, we powered through the academy to hunt up spells (because we love spells) and then hit the village while BM was eating everything at the turtleback ferry. We rolled randomly and she just kept eating at the ferry till it was empty, then she never went back.

But the feel of the race was really exciting, the giant pile of cards under Black Magga was scary! It was traumatic when we failed to acquire one of the allies. Then at the end when we looked at it and realised we had saved 5 allies and Black Magga only ate 4, that was great.

Yes the adventure is very random, but I like the 'race' nature of it as opposed to 'easily beat the villain' nature of the other scenarios. It still has strategy and you have to start at the right locations and team up, but sometimes, you will definitely just lose to the giant outsider snack water demon as it eats everything.

Well I'm in Brisbane and we can't even find a character pack for at least a month in the stores.

We found one copy of skinsaw and one copy of the hook so we're sorted there...

Hrm, am I patient enough to wait for the promos :D

I like the idea of cursed or problematic items.

I'd really like to see a weapon that was cursed proper though. "You automatically acquire this weapon, you cannot remove it from your deck" etc, along with some other effects.

Yeah it takes a while to adjust to, but strength and intelligence are just a skill.

Arcane and melee are just skills. It lists arcane and intelligence so that spellcasters can use arcane and have a better roll of D12 +2. Meanwhile, Kyra can use her intelligence and roll a D6.

The only you make an unskilled roll would be if it calls for diplomacy or stealth and they aren't listed on your card at all.

Good to hear Steve as I am in Australia as well

Since heal isn't a check, you can't play blessings to aid it. It's always 1d4+whatever, sorry. :(

Actually I think you're wrong. I was reading the FAQ and saw a question about wands. It should apply equally to cure and other spells that just roll die with no skill.

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1gk#v5748eaic9r4a

The die on some wands doesn't mention a skill—it's just a fixed die type. Can I use a blessing to get an extra die? What type of die do I add?
You can use a blessing; it will add more of the type listed on the card.

Resolution: On page 16 of the rulebook, change the last sentence of the "Blessing" section to:
"The dice added are normally of the type associated with the skill the character is using for the check; if a card instead specifies the exact dice to roll for the check, the added dice are of the type specified by that card."

Or maybe i am still wrong. The cure doesnt say combat or divine. But you are still making a heal check. Rolling a die and checking the result etc.

The way I rationalise it Quester, if you bash open the chest with a mace, you're more than likely to bash open the pretty items with the mace on the way in.

The strength check is a check of carefully applied brute face. The combat check is bashing in your opponents face with a mace as hard as possible.

I don't know about the Dam Flood - I was pretty excited and even with failing to acquire an ally we still spanked Magga.

But I completely get 'farming'. We still haven't picked up lightning bolt or major cure and I want them in my deck. I wouldn't just add them in, but I would 'farm (lit: replay the game with our characters)' again.

Why would I stop playing when it's fun?

One thing we're thinking about doing is nightmare mode, once we hit the end of hook mountain (1 more adventure to go). We'll start at brigandoom and use a party of two with all the locations. Not sure if it'll still be easy or not but we'll see.

Any idea how long the shipping takes on these? I've pre-ordered stuff before and it doesn't usually get shipped till release date or after and then it has to travel over hill, dale and ocean. By the time it gets to me, it's usually been in stores for a few weeks.

I'm interested in subscribing for the promo's, but shipping cancels out the discount and then makes it only about $1-$2 cheaper than the shops.

If I knew I'd be receiving it within a week or two of release I'd probably subscribe and then not have to worry about the shops being sold out :D

We played it as 'Reveal goblin, roll 1d4 and that goblin is that much tougher'.

At the fortress it was Reveal Goblin, +2, +1d4, which made for a couple of combat check 14 + 15 goblins. It was an exciting location :D

We've been playing that unless the location says otherwise (a couple say to keep the cards) you banish everything when it's permanently closed, either due to henchperson or villain.

There's a couple, like the general store that say 'When closing add 1d6 items to this location'. So you can visit and acquire those ones, but everything else would get banished.

I admit the rulebook was a bit confusing when it said you can still acquire cards there and we didn't see the location that adds cards after closing for a couple of adventures.

I'm playing Kyra in a two party group with my wife playing Ezren.

I'm curious, why are you guys staking Saranrae blessings? Is it just in preparation for her role power where they can be recharged? Or some other reason that I am completely missing. So far I found them the most underwhelming blessing. I would much prefer Pharasma (add 2 dice to a spell so I can cast cure and heal 3d4+1) or Gorum (add 2 dice to a strength combat check). I'm running 7 blessings and I have a mix so that I hopefully I can have the dex check blessing when I make a dex check etc.

One of the things I plan on house ruling in a later play through is the cleric can nominate their deity the same way that lem can nominate the favoured card. Then replace all instances of Saranae with the chosen deity.

Ok so I'm playing as Kyra and everything was going fine, she started with a mace and I found the flaming mace really early on. This was brilliant, every time I hit a monster, henchmen or villain I was able to scream out the glorious chant of my Goddess as I smote the evil. "Mace to the Face!" or "Flaming Mace to the Face!".

Now she is proficient with weapons and the wife calls her a warrior with healing spells, given I just hit everything in the face and I consistently fail wisdom rolls. I make about 1 out of every 5 wisdom rolls.

To the help required! I'm using the Bastard Sword +1 and ... I have no phrase with which to cry out for the glory of my Goddess as I smite evil and it's affecting my smiting of the evil. I'm rolling low and I believe it's because my Goddess is unhappy that I am not calling out her glory as I slice and dice. The best I've come up with 'It's nice to slice!' is just not as glorious as 'Flaming Mace to the Face you undead ghoul spawn!'.

Also - I'll be picking up the Impaler of Thorns at the end of the next scenario as part of the loot grab, so I'll need a glorious phrase to sing the praises of my Goddess for that as well. It's at times like this that I need my Goddess to be Gabrielle. Then it's easy, "Gettin Stabby for Gabby". But sadly her name is Saranae. :(

Thanks OberonViking, that makes the wife much happier. We were playing it that way till I read the faq yesterday and saw the following:

"Take damage, if necessary. If you fail a check to defeat a monster, it deals an amount of damage to you equal to the difference between the difficulty to defeat the monster and your check result. Unless the card specifies otherwise, this damage is Combat damage. For example, if the difficulty to defeat a monster is 10 and the result of your check is 8, the monster deals 2 Combat damage to you. See Taking Damage, below. Remember that players may not play more than one of each card type during a check, so if you previously played a spell to affect the check, you may not play a spell to reduce damage."

She was very unhappy that she could no longer use arcane armor! I didn't actually see the entry for arcane armor/mirror image and how they can be used in addition so thanks for pointing it out.

I think if you're finding it very easy, especially with larger groups, just limit it to 'Only one type of card can be used per check. Period'. So one player can use a blessing, one player can use a spell, one player can reveal a weapon. But you can't have two players use blessings etc.

My experience is just with a two player group using the normal rules (Ezren and Kyra) and to be honest, the thing that makes it easiest is temporarily closing locations. I think the blessings timer would come to matter a lot more in every game if you can't temporarily close a location.

I also feel that the scenario rules need to be looked at a bit more, but we're only halfway through skinsaw, which should be fairly easy compared to later adventures. The ones we've had trouble with where the 'Add 1d4 difficulty to goblins' which made them tough and the haunts from the Skinsaw man scenario which made all your checks harder. Encountering the haunts earlier on made that really difficult and we had 1 card left in the blessing deck at the end and we were both almost completely dead. I had two cards in my deck, none of them divine and no cure when I had to fight the skinsaw man to win or lose. And losing would have killed me and then we would have lost the scenario the next turn. In that scenario, if we'd shuffled the villains/henchmen into the bottom half, it would have made the adventure much easier early on.

So I would definitely like more scenario's that add some kind of difficulty to the encounters, in different ways naturally :D

I wasn't playing it that way, as I understood the wording of 'draw up to your hand size', but that's only because I've played a lot of magic the gathering.

But I can completely understand where people are being confused, especially given that those two rules are 5 pages apart in the book.

"Draw up to your hand size" Ok!
"Dead if I can't draw" Ok!

They both make sense, but then you hit the "I have two cards in my deck and I need to draw 4 cards to fill my hand to 6. I can't draw to my hand size, but I can draw. Since I am able to draw some cards when I'm required to draw, I must be fine."

That's a reasonable way to interpret the way the death rule is written. It's obviously wrong to anyone that has played a card game before. But not for people that are new to the idea of drawing an exact number of cards for exact reasons.

Also the whole people are saying it's easy so they must be playing wrong? Could just be they are using Kyra or not. We found the Lost Coast and pretty much all of Burnt Offerings super easy with Kyra and Ezren. So it may just be the characters and number of that are causing people to comment on the ease or difficulty of the game.

My wife bought it for me for christmas and has loved it. I keep joking that she bought me a present for herself. Like how you see on commercials where the husband buys a drill for his wife, for him to use ;p.

Especially when I came home and found out she was playing it solo.

We're just playing a duo through the main adventure of Ezren and Kyra. Hadn't even considered using extra locations, but if we load it up again once we hit the end of the hook section, I'll suggest it, the starting adventures were pretty easy, but it may just be Kyra's over powered healing factor. I've found the cleric to be pretty awesome.

Sorry for being a bit late to this thread - I received the game for Christmas and my wife and I have been playing it a bit (halfway through Skinsaw).

Now to start with, we both enjoy the game (as you can tell from us being halfway through skinsaw), but as someone who has played both RPG's, card games, board games and video games for years, I felt very confused at the start and even after reading the faq here, I'm still confused about a few subjects and have a couple of suggestions for clarification.

I'd also like to add, I'm not posting these because I'm trying to power game the system, if anything I felt the game was too easy with the rules as written and I was seeking clarification to whether we were playing it correctly, or cheating. I'm also not going to read 1500 threads, we've done a bit of searching, but I'm not going to spend multiple hours reading up every Q&A thread around, so apologies if this stuff has been covered. With that, I apologise for the wordy nature of this post.

The first thing I'd like to mention is, if you've the option of included a basic gameplay example in your book or a complicated one, always use the complicated one as it will answer questions that may not be evident in the rules.

Example 1: "Ezren and Kyra are both at the Temple location, Kyra explores and encounters the Arcane Runes Barrier. Ezren cannot attempt to defeat the barrier, Kyra encountered it, so she must solve the arcane puzzle. Ezren can't use his masterwork tools either as that would be using an item to defeat the barrier. If however, Ezren had a spell that gave Kyra a bonus to her intelligence or disable checks, he can play that spell. If Ezren has a blessing or card that adds a 'die (or more) to a check', he can play one card of that type on Kyra's check. Kyra can use one card of each type (if any apply) to assist her. She must then declare what effects she is using, roll the die (adding in any bonuses to her checks from Ezren) and suffer the consequences."

Example 2: "Ezren is at the Woods and encounters a Bunyip, Ezren must make a wisdom check before encountering the Bunyip. Ezren is not very wise and has asked for help. Kyra is over at the warrens with a handful of blessings, she discards a blessing of the gods to allow Ezren to add one die to his check. Ezren checks his character card and notes that his wisdom check is 1d8. The extra die from the blessing is therefore a d8. He will roll 2d8 (1 for his skill, 1 for the blessing) to try and outwit the Bunyip.

Example 3: "Oh no a wild villain appears! Ezren was happily exploring the dusty chambers of the guard tower when he stumbles across THE SKINSAW MAN. The skinsaw man is a particularly vicious villain who requires two checks to defeat. Luckily for Ezren, Kyra also happens to be at the guard tower as well and will be happy to help out in this fight. The Skinsaw man requires a 14 combat to beat THEN a 16 combat to beat. Ezren MUST attempt one of the checks and suffer all the consequences, but then Kyra can also assist on this fight and do either the first or second check, whichever Ezren doesn't want to do. She will suffer any damage from her check however. Ezren goes first as Kyra is particularly good at fighting undead, she's opted for the tougher check. Ezren casts Acid Arrow and rolls his dice (1d12 + 2 for his arcane die, +2d4 from the acid arrow spell). He gets an 8, 1 and 1 on the dice, +2 for his arcane skill. A total of 12, which is not enough to beat the check of 14. He suffers 2 pts of damage and cannot play Arcane Armour as he already used a spell on the check. Now Kyra must attempt the second check, even though The Skinsaw Man will not be defeated any way, BOTH checks on a card must be completed if the card involves a THEN statement."

So in the above examples, 1 clearly shows what items can and can't be used to assist other players, something we weren't clear on for ages. Example 2 shows that you can play cards from other locations to assist players that aren't with you at the same location. Example three goes through a combat where there is a then statement. It clears up a lot of rules confusion if there is pertinent examples of actual game play. You shouldn't need to youtube a video to learn how to play a board game, even a complicated card version.

I also really dislike the phrase 'just use common sense' when the game's core base does not involve common sense. By that I mean I should not be able to assist a player at another location with any kind of assist and I should be able to jump in and help them defeat encounters if we are at the same location. It does not make any sense that Kyra and Ezren can be both be at the farm house when Ezren encounters a skeleton and for Kyra not be able to mace it to the face with holy power. It also doesn't make any sense that Kyra can use a blessing on Ezren when he is in a completely different location. So I really struggle when someone has said 'use common sense' because my common sense is very different from the designer of the game, so I have no idea which is the correct or incorrect way to interpret things when that phrase is used. I mean according to this thread, I can cast augury at any time, but can only detect evil on my own turn. That's just weird. I also find it really confusing that we can't both try to acquire things when we're at the same location. If Ezren flips up a wisdom/constitution item and cant' make the roll, Kyra should be able to try if she's in the same place. Common sense tells me that when you party together, you encounter things together.

The last point (and I haven't checked yet) is, does the box have enough space to put protective sleeves on all the cards? There is an awful lot of shuffling (which I quite enjoy), but from what I can see the box has enough room for all six expansions, but not for card sleeves. I'd really appreciate future game box to have enough space for card sleeves. Some of our cards are already starting to feel worn and we're not even on the third adventure yet! This also gives paizo an option to start selling their own branded card sleeves. *wink*wink**nudge*nudge*

Again sorry for the long post, I'm on my lunch break at work :D