Sorry, not revealing that. Playtest data is sacred.
s/sacred/divine (50)/
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When my group's number of dice plus modifiers is greater than or equal to the difficulty of the check, we don't bother rolling. We usually don't roll either... unless it's the villain, in which case, we usually want to see how small the left-over pieces are :D
Intriguing! You could rearrange the wording a bit if you really wanted to ("You may not play blessings on this check, unless you have the Divine skill and succeed at a Diving 20 check"). I'm sure there are other circumstances you could come up with that would re-introduce the tricky bit, though. But, I'm still glad to see what a "may not succeed check" could be talking about!
Ah, I was trying to sort this out myself... I would have guessed that a card like that (assuming it doesn't exist already, and I'm just forgetting) would have text like the recharge checks: "If you do not have the Divine skill, banish this card." But, I obviously have far less insight into what all possibilities have to be watched out for :)
There was one in S&S where you had to find several named henchmen before you could defeat the villain, which just made it a random toss-up as to whether you'd have vast numbers of blessings milled off the timer. I believe there was a clarification in the forums somewhere that you don't actually encounter the villain until the henchmen are gone? Thus, the blessings aren't at risk.
Sorry, was just catching up on this thread and following certain links... just had to call out "It puts the 'vortex' in 'flavortext'." :D
We did this twice in S&S when our 6-player party ran into scenarios we just couldn't handle; drastically lowered the difficulty. This is why our next run will only have 4 chars - less stress for us!
Having said that the ability to play a game by myself without all the shuffling...oh my that sounds worth a few $ That's actually something I find works counter-intuitively for me. If I have an electronic version of a game that'll handle all of the fiddly bits for me - which I admittedly find awesome - I'll always end up playing it like crazy for a few days, then get bored with it and drop it completely. I guess that taking the time to slow down and shuffle ends up giving me more time to appreciate the entire game (e.g. reading story elements, glance through for particularly interesting monsters, etc). Sure, I don't get to play as much at one time, but I also don't burn out. Dunno that that's a very common personality trait, though.
My main interest is in having a really nice way to play with friends an ocean away. If it doesn't have that, I won't be buying it (and even if it did have it, I'm *really* curious as to what the price model will be for those of us who have already purchased the entire RotR card game). That said, I don't blame them for wanting to go ahead and get something out there - sometimes the biggest part of getting something rolling is just to get something into customers' hands.
Even worse, the Owlbeartross can banish a henchman, making it harder to close the location.
Between augurying and spyglassing, you can substantially raise the probability that the people that can best acquire a particular boon will have the opportunity to move to the target location deck and acquire it. Also, Swipe is *awesome* for exactly this reason - our Ezren was often sent after the toughest weapons. Finally, with 6 players, there are often enough blessings in hands that, if a boon shows up that's really *that* valuable, you can pump up even d4s to a reasonable chance of success. (There are very few boons that we go after that much though, most decent ones land in the "take a shot; if we fail, it'll show up later" category.)
I still call shenanigans on that one. Any hat that is alive enough to not be an item can't be good Not even The Sorting Hat? (Harry Potter)
One thing I consider with off-stats is the size of the dice involved. Taking a look at the primary stat, say it's a d12. I'll probably have a blessing on any big check, and rolling 2d12 + 2 vs rolling 2d12 + 3 isn't too big of a relative change. I mainly put stat points here to increase my minimums, so I can auto-succeed more often. Of course, adding +1 to a d4 or a d6 roll really doesn't make a difference due to how much work it'd take to get somewhere reasonable. But how about 2d8 vs 2d8 + 1? 2d8:
On a DC 10 check, your odds of success go from 43.7% to 56.2% (56.2/43.7 = 1.29, 29% increase in success rate). On a DC 14 check, you go from 9.3% to 15.6% (68% increase in success rate, although it is admittedly still low). So, while I do spend most of my feats on my prime stats, I am quite willing to put +1 or so into a d8 stat (esp Con in S&S).
I think that herald is needed because there were too many incidents of people dying after their characters died in OP... :)
Should there be a trait, something like "area effect," that equates to "All characters at this location summon and encounter X"? The "Before you act, all other characters at this location summon and encounter X" clause triggers the mathematician's logic in me to say "and now their summoned card makes me summon another one for myself...". Which obviously isn't the intention, but still makes me twitch a little ;).
"Succeed at a Disable 6 check to open this location." I'd be very careful about what ideas I give the design team ;)
I will note that it was designed for use at playing-card size, so blowing it up to 8.5x11—greater than 9 times its intended size—is never going to look great. I've seen enough movies to know the trick - just keep clicking on the button that says "enhance". You can reconstruct an entire license plate from 4 pixels that way!
There can be only one!
I like the idea of "Advance the Blessing Deck and then start your turn," myself. My main objection to the current wording is that it's an extra little bit of end-game worry. After struggling to make something work out at the last minute, one more character (beyond what feels natural with a 30-turn game), has to check to see if they died. (And, this will be Damiel 95% of the time with our group, since we rarely tweak the blessings deck during the game.) But, in the end, I can't come up with any better objection beyond "it just feels *weird*," and I'm sure it's such an edge case that it will essentially never make a difference.
The mythbusters used ice and newspaper for their ship.
My first thought was: "This is organized play, son. If your ship burns, then you do too."
Using this unfun strategy you could do the scenario from set up to chronicle sheet in 30 minutes easily. Really? If you're dead set on not really playing the game, I think it should only take about 30 seconds to check off "scenario completed" on your character sheets...
More floating lions, ready to pounce down from the skies! :D
Paizo gift certificate?Amazing (or not), Hawkmoon is correct again! :-) Admittedly, I've gone the gift card route on occasion, but every time it comes up, I go straight to that comedian's routine (I don't recall who it was...): "Here is a gift that's money, but worse than money, since you can only spend it in one place."
Would it make sense to add a step to the "Encountering a Card" process, just before "Evade a Card" that is "Determine the Difficulties to Defeat"? That provides a single place where the increases/decreases can occur. It would potentially allow Ezren to use two magical items against a monster (Wand of Enervation(?) during the Difficulties step, then another Staff during the combat check...). Summon Monster could then say "When Determining the Difficulty to Defeat of the monster, treat all checks as failed". Also, you could have something along the lines of "While Determining the Difficulties to Defeat, the monster/barrier is unaffected by traits" (would this be necessary, though?). (Sorry, trying to think if there's a "Determine the Difficulty" step during the "Make a Check" process - my head's foggy, and I can't get to the rulebook right now.)
I'm definitely a numbers cruncher. That said, many times there are things you don't realize are important until you're sitting there with a couple of cards in your hand, and discovering that they synergize really well.
Awesome; thanks!!
Thanks; I'm very interested to see how the S&S + Class Decks game plays out as we proceed through the adventure path.
If you're doing something else, you are making your own house rules. I'm fine with accepting that the way our group is exiling cards means we're in houserule territory - after all, we're just affecting ourselves. But I would like to know how far outside of the design path we've strayed, in the event we want to go through with again with a strictly by-the-rules game. As other have commented, the game has been balanced incredibly well, and I've enjoyed playing almost every character I've tried (there's one that simply didn't fit my personal playstyle, which is a reflection of me and not the game). I greatly appreciate all of the hard work that must have gone into playtesting - thank you! My *assumption* has been that it would have been impractical to try to playtest the game with many various class decks added in (we've added in 5 ourselves; all of the ones we felt matched the characters we're playing). We want to play S&S, but we also want to play with the class decks we got, and we are simply very limited on time - so, perhaps we're combining more than we should. I'm really rambling now, and I should just cut to the chase: I'm really curious as to how the S&S Adventure Path and the Class Decks were approached. Was the combination a core design effort, or are the Class Decks focused primarily on Organized Play, but with an eye towards compatibility with the base game? (Noting that the Class Decks only get a couple of sentences in the main rulebook.) (My apologies if this comes across poorly; I'm simply unfamiliar with how design and testing operates on a game of this scope.) Thanks!
The bonus is to "the check", so only applies one time.
I believe the blessing deck is exactly what keeps the game challenging at 5-6 players. With that many players, you can cover practically any card you see... but getting it done before time runs out? I *really* like the aspect that the game presents different challenges depending on how many players you have.
The Amulet of Fortitude is a B card (I believe there's only one...)
I think our approaches to determining the answers to a hypothesis (e.g. "Seltyiel is not more effective in combat than other characters") differ greatly. How much is there really to determine, though? Seltyiel is winning pretty much every combat encounter we have in our sessions. Valeros won pretty much every combat encounter he had when we played him in RotR.
Wow... that's crazily dangerous! I wonder who in our group is going to get hit first! :)
I haven't spotted this card yet... for Man Overboard, does "every turn" mean every single turn, or every one of that character's turns?
The scenarios won't disappear... I was *just* wondering about this. We're planning to play these scenarios at some point, but we're behind and likely to stay behind the S&S release schedule. Is there *any* risk of the scenarios disappearing in, say, a year? Or are Paizo's releases of this sort permanent?
My hope is that, given the massive amount of potential content for this game, that some sets will intentionally be easier while others are harder, even going forward past S&S. Then players will be able to drift towards subsets that appeal more to them. (Much as some people will be more/less interested in pirates/demons.)
How about a blade barrier made from cutlasses?! :D
I was expecting all armors, myself...
While the image would be neat and helpful, I believe there are too many recharge and reshuffle effects in the card game to make it practical - you'd be constantly having to move the card to keep it current. Maybe something more suited for the computer version in development?
Here's another plea to jettison d20s, i'll take 2 d10's or a d12+4 over a d20 any day. They're not the same, but they're more reliable - this is a game that rewards getting steady results. Sure, the d20 has an average of 10.5, but the variance is huge. You have a 5% chance of getting a 20, but also a 5% chance of getting a 1. And, most likely, that 1 is going to hurt a lot more than the 20 would have helped you. But, I'd be quite shocked to see the d20 show up as a regular damage die, it's too big of a jump from the d12. I'm curious what's in store for it... :)
You airlifted an entire pride of lions with only inflatable d20-shaped balloons? Awesome! :DWHOA! Spoiler alert! I've got a mental image now of lions floating lazily over some city, roaring down at the populace from time to time, which are all running around screaming "The lions are coming! The lions are coming!" I should probably get more sleep...
You have no idea how happy this makes me - my wife is a zookeeper, and harassed me about that card whenever she saw it!
You airlifted an entire pride of lions with only inflatable d20-shaped balloons? Awesome! :D
Well, there are competing forces involved, so I don't think it's possible to get a perfectly synchronized system... Suppose there are 4 weapons that you really want, and adding in the class decks doubled the number of weapons without adding any more that you really wanted (but, you wanted the class decks for some other type of card or other character). Then, you've just halved the rate at which you'll get the things you're looking for. On the flip side, suppose there are 4 spells that you really want, and you cherry-pick 4 spells from class decks that you really want, and only add those in. Then you've doubled the rate at which you'll get the "good cards." I like the exiling option since it is roughly a middle ground between these two. It's definitely not as "good" as just picking the cards. But, different people like playing different ways, and I honestly can't predict how well it'll actually work for us until we give it a try.
My current thought is to add all the appropriate cards from the class decks in when the box is built - then, allow "exiling" class deck cards that would be banished and that we don't want to keep (i.e. like what you do with basics and elites at the appropriate points). That way, we aren't simply picking the best things to go into the box, and the ratios aren't affected *too* badly. There's still some extra chaff, but it'll gradually thin out as we play.
(Combining threads) I'm expecting there's an errata lurking here somewhere... it's a Potion of Flying, not a Potion of Landing. You move, encounter, then plummet to the ground and suffer insta-death!
I said "added". Yes, the class decks are designed to be played with the set. But you don't physically add them to the base set. I don't have the rule book with me, but I'm about 90% certain that the section "Building the Box" has, about 2/3 of the way through, a paragraph that says something to the effect of "If you have the class decks, you may add the appropriate cards from them into the box". It's right before or after the sentence that says the same thing about the Character Add-On Deck. As for house-ruling which cards go into the box, we may end up doing that, but I'd prefer to know if there was any particular intention on the part of the designers. With a game like this, a couple of poorly chosen house rules can take all of the fun out of it...
I'd be very interested in opinions on this as well... the wording makes it seem like it's an "all or nothing" approach (well, within the bounds of adding the proper level cards at the proper time). We're looking at starting up S&S shortly (we're still wrapping up RotR), and there are many interesting cards from the class decks we'd like to add in. But, I'm not sure picking and choosing is really fair, either...
The question is, can you fit enough cards in one of those 3 section boxes to play and still have room for the bottle of wine... Clearly, the real question is: Which characters pair best with a red wine? |