MightyJim's page

A final thought
Part of me wonders what the ultimate shelf-life of Pathfinder is. Pathfinder RPG can churn out AP after AP with basically the same mechanics, because the rules are there to facilitate a story. Pathfinder ACG leans so much more heavily on the mechanic that the similarities stand out that bit more. Even if it’s the start of a new AP, and I’m still making the point of reading the flavour text on each location before each game (this invariably fades as we re-play scenarios/encounter the same places again), it really doesn’t take long to get into “right, this location needs wisdom to close, so let’s send the cleric there” “this one’s full of monsters, let’s send the fighter” “this one seems fairly inoffensive, let’s send the support character who looked cool, but can’t handle combat until she has at least 3 feats” – ready, set, explore.

I don’t want to be all doom and gloom, but I wonder, if Mike, Vic et al. are trying to come up with a solution that will appeal to people who own 4 APs, appeal to people who own 1 or 2, AND draw in brand-new customers, I wonder whether there really is a solution that fits everyone.
I hope there is. I’d really like it if this game could re-capture my imagination, and I want to still be around for a Far-East-style AP (Jade Regent?) or when somebody finally figures out how to do the Russian AP that wanders off into the World War, but I think we probably need to be mindful that the best solution for Paizo may not be the best solution for the people on these boards.

And more from the mechanic-y side.

I’ll say it again – more story please If I think about one of the reasons I’m more likely to pick up Arkham LCG these days than Pathfinder, the quality of the narrative has a lot to do with it. As someone has already said, the version of the story we get is probably a nice reminder for people who’ve played the AP, but for anyone else, all it’ll really do is to spoil the twists.
Tide in to this, I’ve always found the flavour text on the Adventure cards a bit odd, as it feels like it ought to be read at the start of the Adventure, but sometimes contains spoilers for things that happen in the middle.

I think a scenario booklet is probably the way forward. Aside from allowing better immersion in the theme, it would mean that scenarios could be a bit more involved, without turning into walls of tiny text.

Secondary goals people have talked about this a lot, and it really seems like a good idea – I’m not sure how it would be best handled, but something that allows for variation on the standard “just keep exploring until you get the villain” structure, without feeling contrived, game-y, and dependant on sheer dumb luck like Bizarre Love Triangle or Toll of the Bell.
+1 to the comments people have made about encouraging greater levels of interaction. Unless you’re Lem or Valeros, it feels like everyone just ignores each other until they get damaged and start shouting for a healer. Things to alter that would be good.

Keep going with refinements to terminology. Yes, invokes feels a little odd after 3 APs without it, but is probably the best option – I’ve had players try to argue that an Enchanter can’t damage them after the encounter, because after the encounter the enchanter is gone. I know that’s not right, but having “after you act” instead of “after the encounter” just makes life easier.

Bit late to the party, but here goes.

bit of background: picked up RotR in Mar/Apr time 2014. loved it - played it a lot - had probably been all the way through Runelords 3 or 4 times by the end of the year, and was up to date with Skull & Shackles (don't have precise numbers).
2015 - played 265 games of Pathfinder: finished Skull &Shackles, re-played Runelords, did a complete Season of the Shackles, and took 2 groups through Wrath, although the 6-character group gave up without ever attempting Adv 6.
2016 - played 81 games of Pathfinder (includes the digital version). Haven't even thought about going back to Wrath, but played bits of Runelords and Skull again.
Up until the release of Mummy's Mask, we had every non-promo card made for the game. Only got Mummy's Mask belatedly, and are only an adventure or 2 in. (18 sessions so far in 2017). We plan on playing the whole thing eventually, and will doubtless have caught up by the time of AP5.
So, speaking as a big fan of the game and a heavily invested customer whose enthusiasm has been waning, I'd want to say...
[edit - this got very long, so i've tried to divide it into distribution and game-based thoughts.

1 - boxes
Story Yes! Please! more story! - something like the fan-made guides we've had up until now, but included in the box.

Generic cards It's so depressing to open a new box and discover i own 80-90% of what's in it. I don't need more daggers or short-swords. I get why they have to be included in every class deck, but a system that prevents that for the future is needed.

I'd love to see a Generic box that provided all those cards and could be combined with AP-specific boxes that provided the adventure guide booklet, the non-generic locations/henchmen/characters, and every needed just for that AP. It would be even better if you could make a guide for people who already own a few APs to assemble this base from their existing cards / a drive-thru pack to top up what they'd be missing, but I realise that this may be over-optimistic.

I can see why other people weren't fans, but I'd definitely be in favour of 8 "summon the Henchman" cards in the base box, and 1 copy of each actual henchman card in the AP box.

I liked the idea on an earlier page of a theme-y box - not needed to play an AP, but could be combined with base box+AP box to give a stronger feeler of a particular environment.

If the Afghanistan principle is an issue for this 2-box approach, they could always be bundled - Buy a core box with an AP box inside it (like how Adv 1 comes inside an AP), but also sold separately for people who don't need both. Based on exactly zero game-publishing experience, it feels like this would be doable with no change in card-contents and only minimal change in packaging [an AP box has the same packaging whether it's loose on a shelf, or inside a Core box, Core box just has a big green banner saying "requires an AP" or "AP inside" etc].

Linked to all of these - please, please re-design the box insert. I sleeve my cards, and the insert is worse than useless past about AP 3 or 4 - the spaces aren't big enough, and there's loads of other space wasted. Outside of North America, things like a broken token organiser aren't always options, and i no longer have the time to hand-make my own custom foam-board inserts.

I think folks will find Mummy's Mask is a great contrast to Wrath of the Righteous. They both have very different goals and stretch the system in very different directions. :)

Glad to hear this. Wrath virtually killed off Pathfinder in our house - we didn't bother with the optional scenario at the end of Ad6 for the group that did finish, and for our second group of characters (historically we've always run at least 2 groups through an AP when it comes out, because we got through Adventures so much quicker than they were released), we didn't even bother going back to play adventure 6.

We still get the class-decks to go through RotR and S&S now and again, and may pick up Season of the Runelords one day, but unless the pre-release articles gives us a good sense of Mummy's Mask being less brutal and better scaled, I don't know whether we'll bother.

Does a Myfly barrier require you to reveal a promo card or bury your hand?

Apologies for sounding like a grumpy old man. But its like: "Sorry, sir... the filet mignon won't be ready for a while. But in the meantime, you can always go to McDonalds."

I'd say that's pretty offensive to all the people working on Apocrypha.

why not ""Sorry, sir... the filet mignon won't be ready for a while. But in the meantime, you can always try the Châteaubriand"
(Or if you prefer, "We're out of Big Macs, but you can get a Whopper across the road.")

you might not want it, and there's no one forcing you to have it, but there's no need to pour contempt on the whole concept.

MightyJim wrote:

THAT is interesting - although it'd be Knowledge 7 for even a base-set blessing, and you probably want to put at least some points into her wisdom, so it's not a given.

Sure, but with a d8+2 from the start, you're looking at recharging (ALMOST) any blessing just under 50% of the time on average, and you can eventually have d8+5, meaning you'd only fail to recharge a B blessing on a 1. Pretty huge. If you combine it with a reveal-to-boost-Knowledge boon (I know there's at least one book in Wrath of the Righteous that does this, right?) then you're gonna recharge blessings ALL the time.

Good point - I'd forgotten about reveal boosts to knowledge checks. This does look good.

I know there has been a lot of talk recently about the difficulty of this game, both in general terms, and in relation to specific characters (i.e. Alain).

I wanted to take a bit of time to think about this, both in terms of the general issues, and in terms of how the different approaches to the game differ, and how people - both players and designers respond to that.

It ended up being somewhere over 4,000 words, so I've turned it into a Blog Post over at Fistful of Meeples but I'd really appreciate it if people had the time to read and share their thoughts - as I say in the article, not just a thought on whether X is too easy/powerful or not, but how this sort of thing cna best be dealt with?

Great timing - finished S&S with our 6-character group last night, can't wait to get some use out of the Hurricane Crown, looking forward to +6 against Aquatic, Pirate and Swashbuckling...

It's a co-op game. If you think something's too powerful, don't do it.

There's enough stupidly difficult stuff for characters to deal with, without people complaining every time we get some useful tools to fight it, and asking the devs to nerf it.

Goblin.

I know it isn't technically a class, but it still seems like an awesome idea. I'm hoping if we talk about it enough they'll make one.

Generally be good to have an easy way of using the classes that don't work outside of their AP- gunslinger, alchemist etc.

I'm guessing it involves lots of Promos and some extra PREMIUM components.

Hi all.

I've recently started up a new board and card-games blog, where I'm hoping to be devoting a fair amount of time to Pathfinder.

Here's one of my early attempts - a review of the Wrath base set.

Wrath Review

I'd appreciate people's thoughts. I'm planning on doing one of these for each box released from now on, as well as some other more general thoughts.

I remember this scenario - we ran into the villain as about the second card.

I find that effects like this leave a bad taste in the mouth- you fight the villain, and pass the checks, but because you haven't randomly run in to some other character yet, not only is the scenario ongoing, but you get all the punishment of "failing" such as the milled blessings.

As a general rule, I think this sort of situation would be much better handled with a "you cannot win the scenario unless you have defeated X, Y and Z"

perhaps there's an RPG reason why all these need to be defeated, but the game doesn't really translate that as anything more than an irritating mechanic. I might use drive-through to reprint the Henchmen as Conan and Harley Quinn though, I think that would make the chase more palatable...

Scaling for 6 people seems off when you get hit with Demonic Horde or Arboreal Blight + Locations like abattoir which give a +6 to any banes check to defeat. Way too many resources have to be expended to deal with those threats and the fact that the horde requires full defeats to banish is crazy.

Just wait until you fight the armies.

A level 5 fighter who suddenly decides to become a sorcerer wouldn't be a level 5 sorcerer, they'd be someone with no arcane skill, rolling d4 without bonuses - giving them access to a level 5 attack spell, which they would banish upon use, wouldn't change that.

During season of the shackles, Kyra finished adventure 6 with Longswords still in her deck, Tontelizi never managed to get a full set of pole arms, and Melindra's weapon choices were just plain dismal.
I'm not talking about giving characters the ability to take all the best features of 2 classes and none of the disadvantages, I'm talking about giving the sword-wielding cleric a non-basic sword, the rogue-like wizard a crossbow or two, and the pole arm guy a few more pole arms.

The idea of there being a cost to multi-classing (I.e. Having to actively give up something) seems a bit lame, as most of the need to multi-class comes from the original class decks being spread too thin and not properly covering some of the characters.

Melindra struggles enough to build a decent deck out of the wizard box without making her sacrifice a feat, or access to an already disappointing set of cards.

I think something like forfeiting a deck upgrade for a single scenario to unlock cards of one type from another class deck would be a reasonable cost - you could even limit cards from the multi-classed option to 1 below the current adventure (or similar) if you were really worried, but I doubt it'd be necessary.

MightyJim wrote:

These cards look interesting.

Too bad our 6-character party will never get to try them, being permanently stuck on the Siege of Drezen.

Why do you think they call it a siege? :p

Maybe that's the answer - we'll house rule that if we play it every day for a month, then the defenders will have run out of food and we can advance.

Wrath is making me farm by default good sir!!! I'm failing scenarios at an exponential level compared to earlier campaigns!

We're currently stuck on the with the non-demon army and the 6 linear locations. Yesterday with about 5 turns left, and still only on location 3 or 4, we ran into a nice looking boon, and decided to throw blessings at it, rather than pretend we were going to find and defeat multiple 6-check armies, a Brimorak and the actual villain on consequent ice turns.

Not sure whether that's farming or just realism...

MightyJim wrote:

Goblin class Deck!

(well, possibly that would be a race deck, but either way...)

The Goblin Class Deck should be entirely made up of miscut or misprinted cards from other decks. Each Goblin Class Deck would be totally random. Some copies wouldn't even be playable.

Random card distribution sounds like a bad idea - the forum would collapse under the weight of all the posts from people who decided they were a new form of promo and wanted a way to get all of them...

I think they could create a deck's worth of goblin-style boons though - high power with drawbacks, penalising you for trying to use it properly (horsechopper I'm looking at you) etc

Ranzak is wonderful, and Ekkie can do some super interesting things. Soooooo you know you want to let us play them in Organized Play, riiiiight? That Ranzak teaser in the guide nearly killed me.

Goblin class Deck!

(well, possibly that would be a race deck, but either way...)

Random card rewards are generally a disappointment.

If it's a weapon, there's a good chance you'll end up with the wrong one out of Dexterity/Strength based. Spells always seem to fall the wrong way on the Arcane/Divine split, and things like allies or items are just too random in general.

A single skill feat always felt like a good reward, fairly well balanced. I'm not sure that previously i would have been so excited about a card feat, but with the direct damage coming in Wrath, it feels absolutely vital.

downgrading the reward like this probably would make people less likely to play (not me, I like to get the full mileage out of any character I'm playing - i.e. 1 successful play-through of each scenario), but i think it would also make characters much more likely to die.

Would it count as trolling Myfly if I went and became a fan of Runelords and Skull & Shackles, but not Wrath?

Scientists may have calculated that the chances of encountering 3 consecutive Arboreal Blights are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.

Except Rallying Cry. :D When we encounter that barrier now we check to make sure it's even possible for me to get my card before my wife draws Kyra's.

Our group contains Harsk. He is not a fan of Rallying Cry

I love difficulty sliders, but they can cause their own problems as well. Among other things, it's tricky to playtest multiple at once and get good results

Genuine question (I have very limited experience of playtests) - how difficult would it be to play-test with +1/-1 location, and/or different numbers of blessings in the timer?

some people hate being classed into one set or another or resent the implications.

In RotR, there were at least a half-dozen threads discussing making the game more challenging. I'm not sure I saw one like that in S&S discussing reduced challenge.

Also, your point about difficulty sliders applies double to this. If a group resents the implication they're on 'easy mode,' how do you think they'll feel about the implication of 'I have to make this game even easier all by myself'?

I think this is a really important point - the more people talking about how a game is too easy, the more likely someone is to feel embarrassed about coming on and asking how to make it easier.

It really isn't difficult to add to the challenge - increase the number of locations, reduce the blessings in the blessings deck, add an extra barrier and/or monster into each location when building, make veteran banes double-veteran, the choices are vast, and the fact that they haven't been playtested isn't really a big issue for someone who finds the "as printed" version too easy.

Playtesters are always more likely to be people with lots of experience of the game (or else why would they have gotten involved in the play-test) - i think it's much more likely that the game fails to meet the needs of the novice player, who should be able to expect to buy a product that they can play and have fun with, without spending hours on the internet for strategy.

It seems much more sensible for all concerned to have the variations to make it harder, as this will be wanted by the hardcore gamers who already spend hours on here, Boardgamegeek etc, and will find out about the variations anyway.

I'll say, it[=variable difficulty?]'s something that a group already does when they select characters and feats.

Again, this concerns me. My wife and I will play the AP 2 or 3 times, so having to be selective with characters isn't the end of the world - we'll use them next time.

It does increasingly suggest though, that some characters are just bad, again penalising the novice player for not being able to spot the optimum route. In Runelords, we picked the characters, and the roles that looked the most FUN (I knew Drunken Master Saajan was useless, but I didn't care.) For S&S and beyond, we feel forced into picking the one which looks the most optimal.

Obviously, with everything, there needs to be a line. You can't design a game that will be manageable for a party of different Valeroses and nothing else, and expect it to still be interesting for everyone else, but it seems like the game has swung a long way towards optimisation required, and away from accessibility. Long-term, that can only be bad for the game, as it becomes impossible for new players to get into, meaning an ever-dwindling pool of players, and eventually a dead game, because it's no longer economically viable for Paizo to make.

Hurray - finally a character with Ranged AND a high enough strength dice to use Longbows effectively!

Longbows eh?

Looking in Wrath box for Longbows...

Bother

I would take those posts as saying "no it doesn't, but if we were writing it now it (probably) would"

On that basis, I plan to house-rule that it counts, outside of OP

We finally beat this last night - the extra skill feat helped, as did the Impossible Bottle.

Tontelizi ran into the Kraken final turn without a weapon - fortunately, Valeros' Tankard + a blessing of Sarenrae were enough to pass the constitution check, and with a few Blessings, including a Gorum, he managed to squeak through the combat check.

Try subbing a Farglass for something else in your deck (even the Spyglasses) - Farglass is pretty much strictly better than a Spyglass.

I had been doing this previously, then never having a pirate in hand, so had got out of the habit. Have swapped it back in now, although little effect this time round.

If you have the promo Mistmourn, use that as your ship and nope all the things that you can't handle.

We've gone back and forth between the Mistmourn for Evading, and the Wormwood to add D12 against the Barriers that are the wrong check-type for the character encountering it. This time round, we got lucky with who ran in to which barrier.

Have you tried bunching up people at a location? Does that help with the fighting?

We generally try to avoid bunching - It's hideous at the sharkskin reef, especially for Melindra and Arabundi. This time we had Tontelizi and Kyra together quite a bit- when he's with her, and she's got Brine's sting, she doesn't need to roll to defeat a shark.

Thanks everyone for all the tips.

When you encounter a villain, banish this card to roll a D20 (just cos)

On an even number, you defeat the villain, automatically passing all checks, and any checks before or after you act. This card overrides any immunities the villain may have, and overrides any text saying "if... this card is undefeated."

On an odd number, kill all characters participating in this game. The player who banished this card is also killed.

Goblin Keelhaulin was the card I most wanted to encounter. A not-so-tough check for 5-8 plunder cards all at once? Don't mind if I do!.

You know it's double-veteran right (or some kind of non-made-up term to mean the same thing.

Plus it's still plunder, so unless you win the scenario, you don't get the cards.

Who uses armour in Runelords?

MightyJim wrote:

So, if the Mythic path cards are going to be needed by any character playing this AP, and they've explicitly mentioned that they want it to be compatible with every character made for the game, it seems safe to assume that these cards won't be character-specific.

Does make me wonder how much mythic art we're actually going to see? - I'd really like it if the Character token cards had the mythic art (I've already got a couple of versions of most of them in normal version)

If the characters are interchangeable, then the character token cards are created as the older ones. No change.

But the token card doesn't really DO anything- just marks a space, so there's no reason why they couldn't use the flavour of this AP as an excuse to give us some cool new art - people who don't already own umpteen versions of these characters suffer no drawback, as they can still use a mythic-art token to play a different AP, and those who do get something new.

Not especially expecting to see it - I understand art is expensive, just saying it'd be nice.

Yeah, Tuesday on the Pacific coast invariably seems to be Wednesday in Europe (or at least late enough on Tuesday that I've stopped looking at the internet).

It'll appear when it appears. Posting threads demanding it, won't bring it any sooner...

Armor is for people who can't manage to roll high. But 2d4 (or 4d4) is better when 4s count as 6s. Other times, a +2 would be more welcome than a +d4. When the going gets tough, the tough keep adding dice and modifiers until they don't need to roll ... or if they do, roll triple what it takes to kill the villain.

I'm guessing you haven't met Druvalia Thrune yet...

Lots of players subscribe- that means you have to have it when it's released.

Even without subscribing, lots of players have a standing order from a FLGS

part of the incentive for both of these, is the Promo cards. If I pre-order an adventure from my FLGS I tend to get a promo. If i wander in a few months later and pick something up, he's going to have given them to other customers.

Also, lots of people are completists/slightly CDO. As long as we have everything, we'll keep buying. If we stop, we might have to consider how much money/shelf-space, we've already given to this game and give up on future APs.

I don't think I'm the only person who, if they skipped an AP for whatever reason, might well end up never buying an AP again...

I know the decision to move from bi-monthly to monthly releases came after a lot of noise from people who wanted more content, faster, and I can completely understand why Paizo made the change they did.

That said, I think it was a mistake.

With Rise of the Runelords as the only product available, there was one adventure path and 11 characters to play through it.

Add on Skull & Shackles, and you've now got 2 adventures paths and 22 characters (18 unique) - although there are a few who wouldn't be optimal outside of the path they came with (Swashbuckler, Gunslinger), most of the others can be used cross-set.

Add on promos and class decks, and you've got 51 characters, 40 unique, you've got 2 complete APs, and the option to add OP scenarios at comparatively low cost for additional replayability. We also repalyed RotR using the OP rules for deck upgrades.

I primarily play this game with my wife, and we can generally manage 5 games a week, but there are points where even we're struggling to keep up with the release schedule (haven't touched AP 6 yet, having just started playing through a different project the day before it arrived.)

On top of this, there are various comments we've seen about lack of story/theme. for Wrath and afterwards, I'd love to see some kind of booklet included in the Base set, which gives a fuller story (either like we get on OP scenarios, or like Autoduellist and Kittenhoarder have been making), with a map or two added on. Assuming there's not enough margin in the current pricing point to add this as a free extra, A bigger spread of time between sets would make the price rise a lot easier to stomach AND ensure that we actually have time to play all the content we've received.

MightyJim wrote:

Of course, historically, "you" was used for the plural and/or formal, with "thou" being the singular/familiar option.

So:
"If thou failest a check thou must bury a card" - only the player failing buries
"If thou failest a check, you must bury a card" - everyone buries.

Shakespeare's Skulls & Shackles. I love it!

Is this a Dagger +1 I see before me?

...you see posters for the new Sky TV drama "Fortitude" and think
"If only it was just 'constitution,' more of my characters would have a decent chance of passing that check..."

That awkward moment, when you think there is just one other person on the internet who got that Three Amigos reference.

The last two days have shown me that none of my friends have ever seen that film...

I think it's pretty rare to even want 3 - generally I get frustrated at having to take the 3rd one when i know that if i waited 2 scenarios i could take a far better one with a role card

it's particularly painful for characters with big hands getting closer to death.

Oh man. I would've loved for a Risk: Legacy approach to her second power.

"Rip this card in half to gain a skill feat."

I refuse to write on the cards to mark power/card/skill feats - I'm not about to start physically destroying cards.

On a semi-related note- It'd be really nice if WotR had a pad of disposable paper character powers cards, rather than (or as well as) the shiny card ones you can't actually use.

It's already a pain that in the new year we'll need to buy figures if we want all the cards, I really don't want to have to add comics to the list (Pathfinder comics are quite good actually, but I prefer to wait and get them collected and hardback)

If Hawkmoon IS a robot, perhaps he doesn't know

in which case, us telling him might trigger some inbuilt self-destruct mechanism and/or cause him to destroy all human life on earth...

The path generally seems a step up in difficulty from RotR. Also, there's only 1 feat for the introductory adventure - everything else is cards, which may or may not be any use to you...

That's what happened. I certainly don't begrudge people their opinions on the results. But let's not look for monsters where there are only allies.

That's easy for you to say, but some of us only have D4 charisma and a greatclub +3...