Hi all, my wife and I bought the Core Set so we could play together while stuck at home, since we are also in the middle of both Runelords and Skull & Shackles games with our kids and didn't want to re-sort decks all the time. The new card art and storybook is great, but overall we've been finding Core to be a lot harder than the earlier editions.
It seems like a lot more cards have +# or +## now, more before and after conditions, and more very specific conditions to play or defeat them. The specificity of blessings in particular, now combined with the rule I just saw clarified that only one blessing can be played for the whole party per check, makes defeating a 13+## monster in adventure path 2 quite punishing. I came here to check rules because it feels like we're missing something, but instead discovered that particular clarification which would actually make it even harder!
Anyway, the situation we got into that made me want to write here is that we were playing 2a, which says we both start at the Shrine, and neither of us can leave until it is closed. We failed the closing check when we encountered the henchman, (and had missed the extra rules for summoning the Wight to close), and ended up with a Troll as the only card in the location. The Troll is undefeated unless the check has Acid or Fire, and neither of us had any way to add those traits. We couldn't leave the location unless we closed the location, which we couldn't attempt again unless we beat the Troll. Being able to get into a no-win situation like this seems like a design flaw. Even though it might be difficult, there should always be a chance to win.
Reading some of the other posts here, it seems like it might just be us, I guess. Playing both old and new versions of PACG at the same time seems to show a marked increase in difficulty and decrease in fun to us. Are we missing something?
