Jenceslav's page

Hello everyone, my friend asked me to help with translating the Mummy's Mask into the Core Set terminology, similarly to what I did to the Skull & Shackles. It took quite a while, obviously, and there were many instances where I felt there is a need for (or I was forced to do) some tricky rewording or outright changes.
Sometimes, there were puzzling things such as Hunga Mungas and Chakrams having inconsistent proficiency requirements. I am aware that many people would disagree with some changes I've made here and there, but that's why it's a homebrew ;)
You can download it at BGG:
Here

I just submitted a conversion of the scenario and adventure rules, but not in any "pretty" story book, as that will be my friend's work and there will be a different format to it. Once it is approved, you can find it there as well.
If you would like to discuss some changes (or point out any errors that might still be there despite my checking it several times over), please feel free to do so here :)

Hello everyone, based on Brother Tyler's idea, I decided to try something I was thinking about for quite some time - converting the Skull & Shackles into the Core terminology so that you can use the S&S set similarly to the Curse of the Crimson Throne. That is, shuffle it into Core and play with that.
The first step is obviously translating the cards. I've already completed the locations, which can be found in here, as well as preliminarily ships and story banes.
This thread is supposed to be about potential discussions about "controversial" (= not obvious) cards or powers or translations to Core terminology.

The first major thing extremely prevalent in story banes is that the difficulty of checks changes based on traits of the check. Obviously, they did not have Vulnerable and Resistant at that time, so it would not be a good translation if it was simply exchanged for Resistant (the difficulty changes span between 1 and 10).

If the check to defeat has the Ranged or Attack trait, the difficulty is increased by 2.

It works like the Resistant to Attack and Ranged, so I thought that it could be represented as Resistant to trait:X (and classic Resistant to Fire would be Resistant to Fire:4):

Resistant to Attack and Ranged:2

Similarly, adding dice to checks with traits may be represented by Vulnerable:X

If the check to defeat has the Bludgeoning or Swashbuckling trait, add 1d4 to it.

would directly translate to:

On your check to defeat, if it has the Bludgeoning or Swashbuckling trait, add 1d4

while Vulnerable:X leads to:

Vulnerable to Bludgeoning and Swashbuckling:1d8

What do you think about this modification / extension of Resistant and Vulnerable? It seems to me quite easy to understand and does not change the balance of numbers at all.

While playing the scenario 6B, I encountered a head-scratching situation. The party consisted of Merisiel, Hakon: Blackjack, Varian.

When you would close the location, search the location for an Evidence, if there is one, do not close the location. … You may banish the Evidence.

Later in the scenario, Merisiel defeated Togomor in Cells with 3 more locations open, shuffling the Villain somewhere. Hakon closed Cliffs the next turn and moved to Arsenal. There he encountered Sermingatto his next turn - Varian guarded the Castle, Merisiel guarded the Cells.

Hakon successfully defeated the Villain and started closing the location. But ouch! Evidence was there.
…
Ugh. What next? *scratch scratch*
So, the Villain was defeated, which leads to automatic closure of a location; the scenario rules trump the closing as there is Evidence in the location (it was banished promptly). Therefore, the location did not close. I played it (most probably wrong) by banishing the Villain and trying to close the other locations the hard way. It did not work, I was 2 explores short and ran out of time.
Later, going through the rules step by step, I assume the correct action is that the Arsenal would not be closed, probably is not guarded, so the Villain escapes into it again. However, all the other cards remain there, as there was no other Villain and the location would close.

So I wanted to ask, what is the actual resolution rules-wise?
1) (very improbable) Villain was defeated and we won.
2) The first bullet point for "When Villain is defeated" step applies, location is closed not closed, Evidence is banished (or reloaded, but Hakon chose not to) and cards remain there. Villain in the next step escapes to the same location and is shuffled back in.
3) As number 2, but all cards are banished first - that is, if the procedure for closing of the location in the Villain step is overruled only in the point of "close the location".
4) (what I did)
5) something else?

I am pretty sure now that the number 2 is the correct answer, but wanted to ask just in case. I don't mind replaying the scenario, especially when Varian found the nice Staff of Greater Healing.

During my play through the scenario 6A, when the party returns back to Korvosa, one hero defeated the second Villain in the last remaining location and I was a little uncertain about timing.
The scenario directs to add a new location Plaza when Villain is defeated and banish all other locations, while also saying that when location is closed, the non-Veteran story banes are shuffled into a random other location. So which is the order it's supposed to be and why?

1) Villain #2 is defeated, Plaza is added, non-Veteran banes don't get shuffled into Plaza
2) Villain #2 is defeated, Plaza is added, non-Veteran banes do get shuffled into Plaza

In order to not make things easier than they might be intended, I shuffled all 3 remaining non-Veteran story banes into Plaza. It did not matter, because the explore-and-examine expert Merisiel encountered the Dragon on the first exploration of Plaza. So sad, I so much wanted the Plaza to get me some nice AD6 boons.

This power of the Real Rabbit Prince promo has me somewhat confused:

While this card is in your hand or when you play it, treat it as either an ally or a blessing.

First, when some card like a Traitor discards an Ally, can we choose to treat the RRP as blessing and not an ally (either, or) and the other way around (such as "when discarding cards as damage, discard blessings first")?

And more importantly, is it supposed to work when rebuilding your deck as well? That is, can it be added to the deck instead of an Ally? The only two similar cards are Bound Imp (which can be considered a Monster card, but that is not in any character's card list) and Serithtial with a different wording that specifically says that it can be treated as an ally during rebuilding.

Is there any official guidance or a tiny rule mention of that? My Zorro Hakon with 3 blessings would benefit from a 4th blessing, errr, a special Ally. If it is not possible, I suppose he might have to take the Djinn or Naval Hero instead.

During our first playthrough of Dragon's Demand 2B scenario (A Piece of the Auction), the interaction between the location Plaza and Scenario rules became somewhat unclear:

When you encounter a boon from a location, before acting, succeed at … If you acquire the boon, put it into a winnings pile

When you would encounter a boon, draw a new one of the same type, encounter 1 and banish the other

If any boon is flipped over at the start of the exploration, another one is drawn from the box. But the scenario power states that the boon has to be encountered from a location. Does it mean that if the original boon is banished as we like the other one better, the scenario power does not trigger as the boon did not come from a location? That seems really harsh, if that is true. And what would become with such boon - would it go directly into character's hand if acquired and to the box if it wasn't acquired?

Can anyone shine a little bit of (wall of) light on this? Thank you

As a side note, we forgot to put the non-acquired boons to a hoard pile, which only a second reading through the text (now) revealed. Ugh, I have to read more carefully. Still, with Seelah and her Diplomacy + upgraded "Crusade" ability (reacharge top card if it's armor or blessing to aid local checks) along with Ezren's Magic-trait 1d4 shenanigans, we acquired so many boons it was OK. We even had to throw away a Keen Rapier as we had too many nice magic weapons for both of us, counting Wyrmsmite.

1) While the Holy Symbol item has Divine trait, the corresponding Spellbook doesn't have Arcane trait. Is there any reason to break the symmetry? Spellbook has only powers helping with Arcane checks, so it is not an "empty spellbook" and probably should have Arcane.

2) Bound Imp may be played as an Ally or as a Monster? That is really something strange. Apart from some Class deck characters that like to have Monster cards in hand and circumventing any "when you play an ally" effects, what are the possible uses of that? As the Bound Imp just draws cards, it is probably not meant to sidestep the "1 card of a type played on 1 check/step". Any insights from the community? :)

The Confusion spell in the Core lacks an Attack trait, which was errata-ed into Skull&Shackles and was probably printed in other instances of Confusion in the Class Decks.
S&S FAQ entry on Confusion
And I am confused. Is this a new revision of the Confusion (with its broadened functionality), or is it an oversight? Does it apply for the older Confusion spells as well? If not, then we might be confused playing different Confusions.
So much Confusion, in every sentence :)

I just wanted to ask about timing / rules about the Locked Door barrier from Core (lvl 1). If the following situation has some problems rules-wise, correct me please.
So character #1 does not defeat the barrier, the location gets marked with Entangled and (per rules for Scourges), all local characters suffer the scourge, receiving identical marker. The barrier gets reloaded into the location. Character #2 arrives to this location, explores, encounters and defeats this barrier. #2 does not suffer the scourge, as he/she/it wasn't at the location at end of turn while it was marked, right? The location becomes unmarked, but all the characters suffering from Entangled are affected by that scourge still.

So, by following rules - all the former characters are still Entangled, but #2 is not and can leave after #2 smashed / lockpicked the doors. From RPG point of view that does not make sense, but the game apparently has no way of knowing if the characters were entangled from another source before. So I wanted to be sure if understood it correctly.
Thank you!

I have one question about the Story Bane 1 Cultist. Its power says: "If undefeated, examine the top # cards of the hourglass; if any are blessings, shuffle them into your discards".
Shouldn't that be "hourglass discards" instead of your = character's discards? The RoTR_Cultist shuffled the blessing into the location when undefeated, this is different.

Slowly going through Core cards, I generally really like what I see there. For example, white rectangle for then in "<check> THEN <check>" really helps! A few boons in S&S had two checks and it can be easily overlooked and mistaken for OR. But I found several confusing things:

1) Fire Bolt has no Fire Trait
2) Do I understand correctly that you can display an armor at any time even if you are not dealt damage? E.g. Chain Mail: "Display. While displayed: You may ..." If that is true, you can have as many armors displayed as you want, right? Apart from not being able to play them all at once, nothing prevents you from doing that - based on my reading of the rules. So, many fighter characters can now free their hands of armor (not Helms and Shields, of course).
3) Some of my cards have slightly different shade of the top side - e.g. lvl 0 spells are purplish, while lvl 1 spells more bluish. I found it rather cool (level indicator), but now I am not so sure as the other cards do not have this distinction.
4) Wand of Flame / Wand of Enervation - so many keywords. Bury / Banish. If you banish => recovery, and are proficient, discard; if you succeed at check, recharge. Huh, such versatility in outcome.
5) Giant Fly (1) - "After acting, shuffle this monster into a random other location". Nooooo, you cannot get rid of this annoying fly. When there is no other location, it is impossible and that power is ignored, so you CAN get rid of the fly, right?
6) Red Trigger band on an orange Monster (Termite Swarm) is rather hard to notice. Nice and visible on Barriers, though.

I believe these will be covered by the card-specific rule changes in the near future, but maybe it's best to list them here.

Let's start with Light Armor proficiency ending - noooooooooooo! :) Joking. So there is no Light Armor Proficiency anymore, so some characters will be influenced a lot. What about playing Lini in the RotR with new rules? You play with the same rewards, so you get 3 power feats before you get your role, right? Lini has four boxes, out of which one is Light Armor Proficiency. So all the RotR Linis will lose their slight uniqueness and all will be the same regarding the power section? I'm sad, less variability. *hums Little boxes, on the hillside …*

Second, closed locations are no more, and we should ignore the powers interacting with closed powers. Pan to a close view on the Letter of Marque and Safe Harbor from Skull&Shackles. First adds a type of boon to a closed location, the second makes a closed location temporary place of healing. Both have no other power - so in the new ruling they would become almost useless. Granted, I saw both cards as boons comparable in useability to the old_Blast_Stone (well, Damiel can use it better than everyone else, so it's not exactly useless).

Reading the first two pages of storybooks for the Dragon's Demand (Core) and Curse of the Crimson Throne (Curse of the Crimson Throne, duh), I noticed something strange regarding if you want to play Curse after Dragon's Demand.
Dragon's Demand Adventure Path reward: "You may play another Adventure Path starting with adventure 1. … and treat # as 3 during adventures 1,2,3"
Curse of the Crimson Throne: "You may … or bring in characters who have started Dragon's Demand Adventure Path first. If the latter, you should add one wildcard for every adventure in the Dragon's Demands that the characters have completed; also, increase # by the # of the last scenario you completed, and treat encountered banes' level as higher by that same #"

OK, there are some inconsistencies between rulebooks as written. DDAP reward allows you to play other APs - but Curse allows to play even if you did not finish DDAP. OK, that's a tangle, but suppose Curse allows that and other APs may not - and what is not forbidden, is allowed. So we let it slide.
Wildcards? Yay, some difficulty for the experienced heroes so they are not bored by too-easy banes!
But here's the crucial point - DD says: Curse_# = 3 during 1,2,3. Curse says: Curse_# = Adventure number + # of the last scenario you completed in DD (not adventure????). I do not think these statements can be both true - will the # be 4 in the first adventure or 3? #=5 or 3, #=6 or 3, #=7 or 4 in the subsequent adventures?
Storybook > cards, but when two Storybook contradict? *confused*