Nefrubyr's page

I generally weigh the difficulty of closing locations against the difficulty of defeating the villain.

If the villain is relatively easy to beat (e.g. one combat check with only a penalty for failing) I'll be more inclined to actively chase it into hard to close locations.

If the villain is hard to beat or a major resource drain (multiple checks, automatic damage, summoned monsters - you know the sort) then I'll close as many other locations using henchmen as I can, and try to fight the villain only once.

(Reacher is 6'5").

Which is presumably how he got his name.

On topic...

Salim has been my favourite character to play so far, and I never knew he was a character from an existing story. Pretty cool to learn. (Although yesterday Angban picked up his "Living Cannon" role card and is now mounting a strong challenge for the position.)

Haunts in Rise of the Runelords AD2 and AD6 have exactly the same issue. Each one has a power that says something like: "Add 1 to the difficulty of your checks for each Haunt displayed next to your character card."

I've been deliberately ignoring the issue and assuming the intention is to just add 1 for each Haunt.

An observation on checks invoking traits... it helps me remember the rule, maybe it will help others:

In S&S and the first wave of class decks, several characters got the "Finesse Melee" power:

For your check that has or is against a card that has the Finesse trait, gain the skill Melee: Dexterity + 2

The intention being that those characters gain Melee both for combat checks using a Finesse weapon (the check has the trait), and for acquiring Finesse weapons (the check to acquire is against a card that has the trait).

"Invoke" was introduced to cover exactly these two situations:

For your check that invokes the Finesse trait, gain the skill Melee: Dexterity + 2

Same power. Less wordy.

Daji is displayed as the card states to do, so that is not considered part of my hand. The centipede would be considered as part of my hand since the power says to "add to your hand".

Just to clear this up: all cohorts that you begin a scenario with are added to your hand as part of setup. Both Daji and the centipede start the game in your hand (as does Padrig, if you're playing Balazar).

A lot of cohorts, though, have a power that begins "Display this card." (including all the Witch class deck cohorts). Normally you'll display them before doing anything else on turn 1. Once you've done that, they are displayed, and not in your hand.

I base my choice on the scenario. If all things are equal, I often go with the Turtle, 'cause, Fortitude is your friend.

Interesting. After a whole Runelords campaign, the turtle is the only one I didn't use.

I mostly switched between Squirrel and Centipede early on, making the most of Raheli's high Dex. A big deciding factor was whether Stealth or Acrobatics were needed for closing in a particular scenario. In the scenario (scenarios?) where just about every closing check is Wisdom or Survival, I took the dinosaur.

Towards the end I got used to having Divine spells in her deck and took the Flesh Poppet every time.

For those thinking/implying that triggers are all bad, notice that the check to acquire Kafar is a lot easier when you trigger him than when you encounter him through normal means, unless you were hoping to acquire him with Wisdom.

I'm curious about whether triggers apply on cards in your deck (because acquiring a card you already have is weird; failing to acquire it is weirder), and whether his "If you fail to acquire..." only applies to the trigger power, or any time you fail to acquire him (I guess the former because it's not a separate paragraph).

First the good news: you're not missing those cards. Also, you didn't add an expansion.

The "B" cards are the "B"ase set - that's what you need to start playing the Perils of the Lost Coast adventure. That's kind of a prolog to the main adventure, Rise of the Runelords.

The "1" cards are first deck of the adventure proper. You should take all these out and stick them back in the Burnt Offerings deck box until you've finished Perils.

As for those two cards you're wondering about: Loot B was a misprint. It should have been Loot 1. Stick it in the box with the other "1" cards.

There's only one Adventure Path card, it comes in the Base set and tells you how the 6 adventures fit together to form the adventure path (adventure 1 is packaged like an expansion but is included in the big box, adventures 2-6 are sold separately).

Ammunition looks pretty cool. I hope there are exploding rounds because now I'm really looking forward to saying "High Ex" just before I use them to blow something to pieces.

I'd love to see a 110 card monster/barrier expansion pack. I've lost count of the times I've replayed Rise of the Runelords, and on most runs I mix in a class deck or two which gives some new boons every time (current run is Druid & Barbarian class decks). But the banes are always the same!

On one run I did select a few banes from S&S to mix in - pretty much anything that wasn't already in RotR and wasn't reliant on ships, structural damage etc. It added some good variety but a ready-made bane expansion would be great.

I'd add Alchemical to the grouping traits.

Most Magic armor lets you recharge it when you reset your hand, if proficient with the right type.

At risk of stating the obvious, Arcane spells can usually be recharged with an Arcane check, and are banished if you do not have the Arcane skill. Ditto for Divine.

A Shield generally cannot be played on the same check as a 2-handed weapon.

Animal allies usually (but not always) have a Wisdom/Survival check to acquire.

I've been playing a solo Athnul through Rise of the Runelords and I gave her d4 Int a +1 feat, mainly to boost her chances of acquiring potions and other items with an Int 4 check to acquire. In that case it pushes a 25% chance of success up to 50%. It helps with those Int 6 or 7 checks to close too.

This is really a case of rounding out a solo character. With a group of two or more, I'd concentrate feats on characters' better skills. Also, RotR is relatively easy so I sometimes go for feat choices that are fun or interesting rather than optimally powerful.

I think I've also put a feat on Lini's d4 strength in the past, but I wouldn't really count that because it turns into a d10 or d12 (depending on which version) when you need it.

I puzzled over this power for a while, until I realised that you don't have to retrieve the allies on the same turn you displayed them. So over the course of several turns you can build up a bank of allies in addition to your normal hand size.

Now, if it becomes "any listed skill", then I suppose Crowe could, for a combat check against a lock/obstacle barrier, cast Force Missile and then use the Mattock to change his Arcane skill into his Melee skill. Which seems weird, but hey, PACG uses abstractions at times and I don't think this breaks anything.

There is a rule that you can only play one card or power that determines your skill for a check. It rarely comes up but I believe you've illustrated why it exists: it means you can't play a chain of abilities like this to turn Combat into Arcane into Melee.

Varril loks like a young/sexy version of Steve Buscemi.... now try to get That out of your mind :D

Yeah, he is kinda funny lookin'.

we gave rogues Meliski and Wu Shen some new Poison cards

Think you might mean Olenjack there (though I can see how one awesome dwarf is easily confused with another).

I never shuffle when I banish. Instead, I shuffle whenever I need to draw a card or cards from the box during the scenario. So I'll shuffle the armors when I defeat a Trapped Locker, etc.

This. When I banish cards I put them upside down and facing me, then I can see which types of card need shuffling. When I need to draw cards, I flip the wrong-facing ones over and shuffle.

There's a similar question for Tontelizi (Fighter class deck). He has a power to recharge a polearm weapon instead of discarding it, and a power feat to add 1 die to the check when he does so. Most polearms have a discard power that allows you to reroll the dice. So does he get +1 die when he recharges a polearm to reroll?

I am guite sure that some one asked this and there was different ansver.. Have to find it again... Sigh...

I think you may be confusing this with the similar but different question: are you required to attempt a check? And the related question, can you choose to fail a check?

If a power or a game rules tells you to make a check, in general you must attempt it, although you certainly don't have to try your hardest (you can pick your worst skill, not play cards to help, etc.)

Having said that, some checks are specifically called out as optional:

• Attempting to acquire a boon that you encounter is optional, as noted above.
• Attempting to temporarily close a location (which is often a check) is optional.
• Attempting to recharge a spell is optional (this was a rule in RotR when the "Recharge box" was a thing; now it's covered by the wording of each spell's power).

A few cards had a mandatory check where players thought that an option to auto-fail would make sense (the ally Slip from S&S comes to mind). I think that's what spawned a lot of the discussion.

And if we ever have a trait that has an effect attached to it, it should be in the rulebook. For example, Basic with deck building. Other than that one instance, we have no traits like that, including Basic and Elite.

Just because I love pointing out trivia, I'll mention that there is one other trait with rules attached that aren't on the cards: Mythic. (When you defeat a bane that has the Mythic trait, gain a mythic charge.)

I do NOT understand Gronk's first ability. You may discard a card to roll a d10 instead of your Strength or Constitution die for any check.

So, if I am rolling a Divine check (which is included in *ANY* check) how do I use this? I can just use d10s or d12s for anything I want?

Or is it supposed to say "instead of your normal die for any Strength or Constitution check"?

The power replaces Gronk's Strength or Constitution die with a d10; if the check isn't using one of those dice, the power doesn't do anything.

The reason it doesn't specify "Strength or Constitution check" is that there are a few edge cases where some other check uses those dice. The only example I can think of is if Gronk uses a Longbow, and rolls Dexterity skill + Strength die. It's a Dex check but he can replace his Strength die with a d10.

"Display this card to add 1d6 to your combat checks" is pretty lax wording in my opinion. It would be much clearer (and in keeping with other cards like Glibness) if it had been "Display this card [at a certain time]. While displayed, add 1d6 to your combat checks. ..."

I entirely agree with skizzerz on how to actually use the card.

... and add the sentence "To win the scenario, defeat Ghlorofaex."

I'm guessing that should be "corner and defeat Ghlorofaex."

If you fail to defeat a bane, the rule is to shuffle it back into the location deck unless some power tells you otherwise.

Always option 1) for me, with no more than 2 class decks at a time, and they match the class of one of the characters used (not necessarily a CD character). I like the extra variety the decks give, although the downside is that with all the extra cards I'm still regularly encountering basic boons right up to the end of the adventure.

In my latest solo game, I've recently started playing Shield of Rannick with Darago, Ranzak and Koren, and the Paladin class deck mixed in.

I had planned to play Season of the Shackles using OP rules but I haven't finished S&S yet...

Vellexia seems really mean, and not in a fun way. Unless you get lucky and scout her out or she ends up in the last location deck, she'll basically make you discard you hand every time you see her, and burn a bunch of blessings from the blessing deck as she escapes to a random location :/

You do get to temp close locations before her BYA power checks for open locations, so it's not as terrible as it may seem. Just make sure you have every location covered so that she's properly cornered. And if you can beat her once and she evades, you now know which location she's in.

She's mostly a problem early on when you have more open locations than characters.

Troymk1, I think you have it back to front. The AD4 box opens from the top, the cards are taller and darker in colour — this all indicates a 1st printing AD4 and a 2nd printing of everything else. This is probably good news because it will be easier to get 2nd printings of the remaining decks.

DangerFord: buying direct from Paizo will definitely get you 2nd printings; in an LGS you'll need to check for the taller hanging tab, side opening, and "Printed in the USA" on the back.

I recently backed a kickstarter for solid two-tone dice (where 1/2 of the die is one color and 1/2 is another) that look pretty sweet, looking forward to getting those in to supplement my collection.

Halfsies! I backed those too. Hopefully with six sets of those I won't feel the need to buy more dice any time soon...

True, but combat is a very important part of this game, especially in Wrath. You don't die from failing to acquire a boon (not yet anyway).

Oh man, imagine how embarrassing it would be to be killed by a burglar.

After much examination (Mike evaluated every single card with "or" on it) and much discussion, we have a pretty good concept that we think clearly identifies the intent on every existing card:

"If a card requires you to attempt a check, you must do so; if you fail, you must do whatever the card then tells you to do. If a card presents you with 2 or more options, none of which requires a check, you may choose any of those options."

Don't worry so much about the wording right now—worry about the concept, which boils down to this: If it's not a check, it's a choice.

Going back to our example, this makes "discard a blessing or bury any card" definitively "choose X or choose Y."

Thoughts?

The first card that springs to mind for me is the location in Runelords where the "When closing" text is "Succeed at a Divine 6 check or banish a blessing" (Shrine to Lamashtu?). I can think of at least three ways to interpret this:

1. Choose one of (Succeed at a Divine 6 check) and (banish a blessing). If you do it, close the location. Ignore the one you didn't choose. This is how I've been playing it - the "Choose X or choose Y" interpretation.

2. Attempt a Divine 6 check. If you succeed, close the location; if you fail, banish a blessing (and the location is not closed).

3. Attempt a Divine 6 check. If you succeed, close the location; if you fail, you may banish a blessing to close the location.

Your proposed rule points me towards option 2 or 3. Probably 2, if only because 3 seems a bit generous.

I should add that I think I've leapt straight to one of the hardest examples, because the extra context of "When closing" muddies the issue. As a general rule applied to powers on monsters, "At this location", etc, it should work well.

I once forgot to shuffle the location decks. When the third location in a row had a henchman as the top card, we got suspicious.

Happens at my weekly games club occasionally, when everyone thinks someone else has shuffled the deck (especially if some fool has tidied up a deck without shuffling it). Unfortunately, we deal out the villain + henchmen first...

Near the end of one frantic session, I was exploring the Blessing deck instead of my location.

This has to be made into a scenario rule sometime: "You may move to the blessings deck".

So having seen the preview blog for this... they all got the chop! None of the characters pictured in the mock-up image is featured in the final product. And that post that Hawkmoon269 linked to about having two male paladins turned out not to be true either.

Just in case anyone thinks I'm complaining: I am definitely looking forward to playing these!

So when you have to chose cards just do it, and when you have to select some at random, flip the discard deck face down, shuffle, draw the needed cards, then put back the discard deck face up.

That is the official way to select cards at random:

Whenever you’re instructed to randomly choose cards, shuffle the cards you’re drawing from and draw from the top.

See also the comment in this FAQ entry: "Yes, this can indeed have major effects on the deck." So taking random cards from your discard pile will affect which cards are on top for the Apothecary; taking random blessings from the blessings discard pile using Holy Candle will probably change what the top blessing is.

Balazar's power say 'when you defeat a monster and WOULD banish it' though, which circumvents the Golden Rule. "Would" means the banishing never actually happens in the first place, so the scenario rule never comes into play (until he banishes them from his hand, anyway).

I get what you're saying but that logic didn't work for Lini at the Farmhouse.

If you defeat a bane that has the Mythic trait, you gain a mythic charge.

I only happened to notice this when looking at the back page reference sheet to see if anything had changed. I might have read it before in the Mythic Path card rules but if so, I'd forgotten — I read that online about two weeks before getting the game. It's quite unusual for a trait to be directly referred to by the rules (Basic is possibly the only other such trait).

It's also stated in "Resolve the encounter" under the encountering rules, but I expect 99% of returning players aren't going to read that.

I agree that it's immediately after displaying the spell; displaying a card is one way of playing it.

This gets me thinking: this FAQ entry about Sphere of Fire would seem to indicate that you can trigger Enora's power each time she uses the Sphere for her combat check (which is possibly only relevant if you play Enora in S&S).

Thinking about this some more: there are of course a few barriers with a combat check to defeat, and several ways to automatically (succeed at a check to) defeat a barrier: Thieves'/Masterwork Tools, Staff of Heaven and Earth. But every such barrier I can think of has an alternative check that you could be automatically succeeding at instead, e.g. the big stone heads from Sins of the Saviors were, IIRC, Combat or Disable.

If there are any barriers with only a Combat check to defeat, this rule would preclude using cards like Masterwork Tools to defeat them.

As I understand the rules, you can't choose to fail a check or decline to make it(*) so you are stuck doing the check. As First World Bard pointed out, your plain Intelligence is going to be lower than your Knowledge so you can use that to have a chance of failing.

(*): Pre-emptive response to cover the usual exceptions: the rules say you may attempt to acquire a boon you encounter, so you can choose not to. Cards with a recharge check say you may attempt to recharge them. In both of these cases, the rules/cards make the check optional. Slip's check is not optional.

I've found Slip to be a good ally for Seltyiel; he has strong Intelligence and no Knowledge, so I can choose the Knowledge check and fail it with a d4 if I want the top card to go away.

As an aside, while looking in the rulebook for a specific statement about choosing not to make a check, I didn't find one but I did find this that I haven't seen before: “You can never automatically succeed at a combat check.”

There doesn't appear to be an AD4 blessing on the card list. Maybe Pharasma is the deck 4 blessing and it's an error in the list?

I also played Kyra solo in RotR. Although she starts strong, I later found that her d6 strength was limiting — you want more than 2d6 from a Blessing of Gorum. Eventually she suffered a critical constitution failure in AD4 and died at the hands of Mokmurian. If I tried again, I might hang on to a Holy Light as an alternative for combat.

Thanks for you guys thoughts. Right now I think I'm gonna do 4 characters. I like the idea of Flenta and Zarlova.

Funny how there's always the temptation to add one more character. I was going to take this group of Kyra (class deck version), Feiya and Arabundi through RotR, but at the last minute decided there was a Dex-and-Cha-shaped hole and dropped in Valendron.

More recently, I've just finished playing 6 characters solo (I had to try it once): Damiel, Tontelizi, Tarlin, Siwar, Amaryllis, Harsk (CD). Damiel and Siwar proved to be strong characters, in spite of the limited potions and almost total lack of Task and Skirmish barriers for them to get their teeth into. If anything it was Tarlin who was the weak link.

If the close attempt was triggered by an empty deck... I don't know if that even counts as an exploration.

Attempting to close your empty location is a separate step of the turn, after the exploration step(s). I can see how a summoned henchman might be your first encounter of the turn but there's no way it would count as an exploration.

Worth noting that the Ranzak promo pack included a plunder table and instructions on how to use it, because he was released before S&S and you could play him in RotR. I agree with Hawk about not being able to stash plunder, and without Swashbuckling or Ships Jirelle starts with virtually no powers.

My own fish-out-of-water story: Siwar the bard has proven to be quite a capable character in RotR, despite the fact that her power to use Diplomacy against a barrier with the Task or Skirmish trait has never once been used (I think the only barrier she can use it on is Ambush, and somehow she has never been ambushed).

Calthaer wrote:

If there are too many scenarios where numerous replays are going to be required simply to get the cards in the "right" order to be lucky enough to win...

Don't Toll of the Bell and Bizarre Love Triangle have this aspect in S&S?

I'd actually argue the opposite for Toll of the Bell —because of the way the scenario is set up, you have to work your way through every card to win. That means it's not really possible for luck to go your way; you simply have to make it through all the cards (40 for 4 characters) before the blessings deck runs out.

On the other hand, after losing one attempt at Best Served Cold by running out of time (one more location than normal; villain eats blessings off the deck) it's just about killed my interest in S&S. I expect I'll get back to it eventually but for now I'm having so much fun taking another six characters through RotR that I don't feel the need to spend two hours hopelessly watching the blessings deck run out.

Seems like if it's indeed a wolfy in sheepy clothing it should share the fate of the Stump. I. e:

- Stump evaded > as if animal evaded => shuffled back in location
- Stump undefeated > as if animal undefeated => shuffled back in location
- Stump defeated > as if animal defeated => banished

But then usually Mike comes up with something totally unrelated and amazingly fun... so I'm just holding one more thought

I was thinking along the same lines, but note that the Animal card you encounter might be a boon. Not so obvious what to do with it if you defeat/don't defeat the Stump.

I must admit, I'm pretty disappointed that these kind of issues are still turning up in the game (not to mention all the typos that have been mentioned elsewhere). Isn't playtesting supposed to find these problems?

It gets even crazier though. Imagine a Demon trait monster had an Acrobatics check to defeat and Kyra used her power. Would it still count as an Acrobatics check?

I doubt it. Kyra's power seems to replace the skill used in the same way that a Mattock does. If a barrier has a Dexterity check and I use a Mattock to replace it with a Strength check (I just looked in the rulebook and it does say that some powers replace the skill), I don't think it's a Dexterity check any more. Likewise, Kyra's check would become Divine instead of Acrobatics.

Combat checks seem to be unique in that (i) "Combat" is not a skill, and (ii) the Combat-ness of a check stays the same if you (re-)define the skill. But it would be nice to have some rules backing for that view.

I get all that, I just wanted to point out the hole in Vic's case — a life of maths does that to a person. Hopefully we've all learned that when skimming cards for the Basic and Elite traits, you now have to watch out for owners too.

The rules on the AP card care only about cards with the Basic and Elite traits, and no Wrath cohort has either.

But some cohorts have owners, and owners get to treat their cards as having the Basic trait.

But, seriously, strength check AND int check? Who has both stats?

You have to ask? Flenta has!

Me, I'm hoping there aren't any falling bells in the worldwound.

When do you get to roll TEN D FREAKING TWENTY

I'm guessing somewhere around the final boss of AD5.