Pyrocat's page

The main complaint my roommate and I have with pre-2.0 armor is that it stays in your hand and effectively reduces your hand size. 2.0 armor largely addresses this by making them cards you display. So we came up with a house-rule idea for pre-2.0 armor:

Add the following text to the beginning of any armor that does not already have a Display power:

"You may recharge a card to display this armor."

and any "reveal to" effect on those cards changes to:

"While displayed draw this card, or reveal, to"

What this looks like in practice is a pretty huge boost to existing armor. There is a small cost of recharging one card in order to display old armors, but overall a lot more flexibility. It's a small nerf for reveal powers, in that you have to draw it into your hand to use it, and then (optionally) recharge another card to display it again, or you can just leave it in your hand and use the reveal powers.

Yes, it's a big boost, but armors have always been the black sheep of loot in our games. I've never seen anyone take an armor card feat, and people have passed on characters that have a lot of armor with small hand sizes because it just gets stuck in your hand, and doesn't feel fun to draw when you know you're probably just going to recharge it when you reset your hand. I love the 2.0 armors, but I don't want to just throw out all of the cool armors from the past versions. This turns armor into something you look forward to, something you can display for future flexibility.

Any thoughts on this rule? Any game-breaking issues we haven't thought of? Thoughts on how to balance it better?

Hey all, I love the new box, but one problem is that the cards tend to fall over and slide down to the bottom, which makes them nearly impossible to pick up. Additionally when you remove all of the cards from a section, it's hard to tell which divider is which since they're stuck together.

Has anyone come up with a solution for this? I was thinking of adding some sort of spacer between the dividers so they don't become stuck together, but I'm not sure what to use, and I'm also not sure how to prevent the card slippage. Any ideas?

Many allies and blessings allow you to do something and then explore. Can you do "something" on another players turn, but skip the explore part of that power (since you cannot explore on others turns)?

Discard this card to examine the top 3 cards of your location deck and put them back in any order. If any have the Animal or Planet trait, you may explore.

Can you discard to examine and re-order on another players turn?

Discard to draw 3 cards, then recharge 3 cards, then you may explore.

Can you draw/recharge on another players turn?

Discard to examine your location, then you may explore.

Can you examine on another players turn?

Banish to examine the top card of your location. If it is a Magic card, you may encounter it. ...

Can you encounter it on another players turn?

I am assuming yes to all 3 scenarios, but I wanted to double check. I thought Detect Magic used to specify something about on your turn only.

There are often times when a card instructs you to do something with a random location, or random open location. Do you include the base in these?

For things like shuffling in monsters, I assume no, since the base cannot ever contain any card except supporters. What about barriers that get displayed in front of a random location? Or, for example, CotCT 3a, which tells you to examine the top 1d4 cards of a random location?

I just bought the Oracle class deck and I was immediately excited to play Grazzle. In looking over his role cards I was trying to decide which of the two I liked better (his armor power on Bone Diviner was especially intriguing) so I looked ahead in the Core Set boons and came across Voidglass Armor.

Display. While displayed:

* [...]
* When you would discard cards from your deck or as mental damage, you may recharge to recharge them instead
* [...]

Hmmm, discard cards from my deck, where else have I see- AH!

At the start of your turn, you may discard any number of cards from the top of your deck. Each other character may shuffle random cards from his discard pile into his deck; the total number of cards shuffled must not exceed ([] 1 plus) twice the number of cards you discarded.

And that's without his role card. So I imagine the scenario going like this:

* Assume at some point Grazzle draws and displays his Voidglass armor.
* Grazzle starts his turn with Voidglass armor displayed. He has a hand size of 6, and let's assume AP3 so a deck size of 18 and no discarded cards. At this point: full hand of 6, 1 displayed armor, 11 cards in his deck.
* Grazzle discards all 11 cards from his deck to activate his healing power. This heals 22 cards collectively across the party, plus however many power feats he's invested into this power.
* Grazzle then activates his armor, which immediately is recharged (putting it on top of his deck) followed by recharging the 11 cards he just discarded from his deck.
* Grazzle then finishes his turn, doing whatever he wants, ideally recharging cards without shuffling his deck.
* Grazzle resets his hand, draws Voidglass armor, displays it, and waits patiently for his next turn when he can do it all over again.

This is extremely overpowered, and seems pretty cut and dry legal from a rules perspective. Not sure how to fix it, maybe change the Voidglass power to say "When you would be forced to discard cards from your deck..."? Or maybe add a limit to the number of recharged cards.

When you play a card that has a "during recovery" power on another player's turn, when do you attempt recovery for that card? Immediately? At the end of that player's turn? Or wait until the end of your turn? I'm leaning towards "At the end of that player's turn" but wanted to see if anyone else had a different interpretation.

Relevant quotes from the rulebook. Emphasis mine:

End Your Turn: [...] Then, if you have any cards in a recovery pile, do whatever they say to do during recovery. [...]

Banish: [...] However, if you would banish a card you played that has a during recovery power, instead set it aside in a recovery pile. At the end of the turn, you can attempt to recover some of these cards (see End Your Turn on page 6).

I looked through the example turns and didn't see anything about recovery on another player's turn.

In previous iterations of the game the rules have stated to only add boons and banes that are the level of the current adventure to the vault. And even in the new rulebook it specifies

Use the divider labeled Future Adventures for cards not in the vault whose level is higher than #"

At the start of the adventure path, the vault should contain all Core Set cards except for banes whose level is higher than 1. If you are playing with a character from a Class Deck or Adventure Path box, add all of the level 0 and 1 cards from that box.

Unless I somehow got my CotCT and DD cards mixed up, I believe that "all of the Core Set cards except for banes whose level is higher than 1" would also contain level 2 and level 3 boon cards. That seems like a pretty big change from past iterations, and also creates the (imo frustrating) situation where you come across a sweet boon, acquire it, and then have to throw it out after the scenario since you're not on a high enough level adventure yet.

Should I mix in all of the level 2 and 3 DD boons into my vault even though I'm on Adventure 1?

I'm just starting Mummy's Mask with a fairly balanced party of 4 right now. I'm playing CD Balazar and Nok-Nok. My roommate is playing WotR Seelah and Estra.

I know you can use WotR Padrig or CD Padrig with Balazar and I'm having a hard time choosing.

Display this card. While displayed, when you attempt a Strength check and do not play a weapon, you may put a card on top of your deck to add your Arcade skill plus the scenario's adventure deck number to that check. You may banish any number of monsters; for each monster banished, add 1d4 to the check, or 1d6 if you have a role card. If you are encountering a monster, add another 1d6 for each monster banished that shares a trait other than Basic or Elite with the monster you are encountering.

Display this card. While displayed, for your combat check, you may reveal a monster or spell to roll 2d10, or 2d12 if you have a role card. Add the card's adventure deck number and the Melee trait.

While displayed, you may recharge a card to use your Arcane skill instead of the normal skill on your Strength or Fortitude non-combat check.

CD Balazar also has an inherent ability that overlaps with WotR Padrig:

You may banish a monster from your hand to add 1d4 plus the monster's adventure deck number to a combat check by a character at your location.

So right from the start:

W-Padrig pros:
* Scales with arcane
* Gets a free +1d6 with matching traits
* Can banish multiple monsters for +1d4 each
* Always adds the Scenario AD# as opposed to relying on revealed Card AD#

CD-Padrig pros:
* Blessings add d10s instead of d4s
* Easy fortitude checks!
* Doesn't cost "put a card on top of your deck" to use

Any advice? Any power synergies or later game strategies I'm missing? I guess I can always change my mind and swap out later too.

I was looking through class decks boons the other night pondering if I wanted to add them to our newly started WotR campaign (I have a WotR game, MM game, and playing the RotR app right now). I initially decided against it since some of the cards I thought might be too overpowering if used with characters outside of their class decks, but then I did a little research and found that many of those boons are naturally occurring in earlier base sets anyway.

Some examples:

Unearthly Aim, Spell, AD2

Traits: Magic, Arcane

Banish this card to add 10 plus the scenario's adventure deck number to your combat check that has the Strength, Melee, or Ranged trait.

Now combine that with Damiel from the Alchemist Class deck:

When you would banish a card that has the Alchemical trait or a spell for its power, you may recharge it instead.

So for Ranged Combat checks (Damiel's speciality, he has a d12 Dex), he can recharge Unearthly Aim to add 10 + the adventure deck number, trivializing almost any combat check.

As CD Damiel cannot play spells that have the Attack trait, this could spell could be errata'd by giving it the Attack trait, but that might have unintended consequences.

Zetha from the Summoner Class deck has even more fun combos with older cards. With her shadow-self cohort Ahtez she can use her Stealth skill for combat checks (if you don't play a weapon/spell), and she can banish a monster from her hand to use Stealth in the place of any skill. Which means cards like these...

Hat of Glamour, Item, AD2

Traits: Accessory, Magic

Display this card. While displayed, add 2d6 to your non-combat Charisma or Stealth check. At the end of your turn, discard this card.

Cloak of Elvenkind, Item, AD2

Traits: Clothing, Magic

Reveal this card to add 1d6 to your Stealth check.

Recharge this card to succeed at your Stealth check.

Dwarf Caiman, Ally, AD0

Traits: Animal, Basic

Reveal this card to add 1d6 to your Stealth or Fortitude check

Discard this card to explore your location

...are a little overpowered. Not to mention Boots of Elvenkind, Snake, Burglar, Amulet of Fiery Fists .etc

At first blush she can recharge the Cloak / Boots of Elvenkind to succeed at her combat checks. Now, I seem to recall there being some rule where you can never auto-succeed at a combat check, but I can't find the reference right now. If I'm remembering correctly and she can't auto-succeed at combat, those cards are still very powerful for the reveals and her ability to use Stealth in the place of any other skill.

What do you all think? Game breaking, or just very useful?

What are some other combinations of Class Deck characters with cards from a base set that you've found to be overpowered?

I apologize if some of these are obvious / clearly stated in the rulebook, I'm just returning from a long break from the game and I seem to have forgotten some things.

Invoking traits
1) This is new to me, but it's probably just new terminology for an older concept. I see some cards that say "if a bane invokes X trait", this just means if the bane has that trait listed on their card, right? Is there any other way for a bane to invoke a trait?

2) I also see cards that say "if the check invokes X trait". This one seems a little more complex. Does the check invoke traits that are on both sides of the equation? E.g. you're going up against a monster with the Outsider trait by playing a weapon that has the Cold trait, does the check invoke Outsider and Cold traits?

Adding skills

Pard, Ally

Traits: Animal
Recharge this card to add your Charisma skill to your combat check.
(snip)

3) Assume you played a Basic Strength Melee weapon to initially determine the skill used in Combat, and you don't have the Melee skill. The check is still a Strength Melee Basic Combat check because all the traits on the card played to determine the skill are now the "types" of that check. You play Pard on this check. Given that your Charisma is d10+1, I'm assuming you add 1d10+1 to your Combat check. But does that check now invoke the Charisma and Animal traits? And is it now a Strength Melee Basic Animal Charisma Combat check, so could you play a card that affected "Charisma checks"?

Triggers, Examines, and Explorations

Aunty, Ally

Recharge this card to add your Wisdom skill to your check that invokes the Cold or Undead trait.

Discard this card to examine the top 3 cards of your location deck, then you may explore your location.

4) Ok, so you discard Aunty to examine the top 3 cards of your location. Now let’s say the first 2 of those 3 cards have triggers that say “When you examine this card, encounter it”. You encounter them in the order they were in the deck. Let’s say you handily acquire/defeat them, do you still get to use your exploration from playing Aunty?

5) What if one of those cards say something along the lines of “if defeated/acquired you may immediately explore your location” or you have some other character power that lets you explore after defeating/acquiring something? Do you get to use that even though you encountered the card via a trigger? Does Aunty's additional exploration still happen after your free explore?

I'm considering using some S&S characters in my Wrath run through. For character powers that refer to ships and plunder dies, are those useless? My initial guess is that you can still roll the plunder die in Wrath (ala Ranzak's "When you close a location, add a plunder card from the box to your hand.") but you cannot move via ships, or take structural damage, so Jirelle is less useful.

In our current game we're almost done with AP5 and my roomate and I were surprised to notice that we still had a fair amount of AP0 (B or C indicator) cards in our decks. We've had them since more or less the start of the game and just never dumped them because they were so useful. I'm curious if other people have kept similar cards, and what 'low level' cards people find suits their character well. I'm personally excluding cards like Old Salt and Black Spot because—while they are decent cards in AP5—their initial benefit from AP0 was minimal and we didn't pick them up until later. I'm also excluding Blessings, for obvious reasons.

Weapons
Icy Boarding Pike +1 +1d8+1 (+1d4 if you're on a ship) + cold trait is still pulling its weight against AP5 monsters. The discard to reroll helps.
Cat-O'-Nine-Tails +3d4 and optional discard to evade a bane if you fail? Yes please.
Fire Lance Damiel. +4d8 with no stat boosts is pretty slim in AP5, but I can always chuck grenades if needed.

Spells
Find Traps a likely recharge to add two dice to help anyone with their barrier, it's the perfect utility spell.
Augury is surprisingly a B in the wizard class deck.
Call Weapon another likely recharge to pick any weapon from your deck and add it to your hand, supremely useful on a character like Seltyiel or Oloch.

Items
Masterwork Tools recharge to defeat a barrier is incredibly powerful, and I'm only now starting to see barriers that exceed 14 difficulty.
Tot Flask Damiel. He carries two.
Potion of Healing Damiel.

Allies
Joseph "Jack" Scrimshaw ruggedly handsome and ensures Damiel rarely fails his craft checks (of which there are many).
Fox +1d4 to help anyone with their wis/int check has come in handy too many times to get rid of, especially in the hands of Lini.
Parrot it's always on Lini so there's no need to bury to reroll.
Surgeon for the party low on heals.

As soon as we finish our current Skulls & Shackles Adventure (currently on AP5), my roommate and I are planning to start new characters and play through the adventures and scenarios from organized play. However, we're not interested in going to a store to participate in official organized play. Although we do own several class decks that we've mixed in with the base set, we want to use some characters that don't have class decks (e.g. Ranzak). This means we can't really use the official rules / rewards word-for-word.

Has anyone else gone down this path, or does anyone have suggestions for alternate rules/rewards to accommodate for the lack of class decks? Apologies if this thread was better suited for the Homebrew forum.

I've always had a love/hate relationship with deckbuilding games. I love the strategies that the mechanics introduce, but their ephemeral nature always got on my nerves. Whether I was playing Dominion or Star Realms or Ascension, by the time I managed to get a halfway decent deck together, the game would already be over. This was especially true with Ascension. As soon as I would get some cards in my hand that synergized nicely, or as soon as I could afford the one card that would make my deck OP, someone would trigger the ending condition and my grand strategy would never come to fruition. Given those frustrations, please indulge me for a minute while I nerd out about this game.

The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game completely destroys the time limitation by allowing you to build your deck over multiple games, freely culling and selecting whichever cards you've gained between scenarios. It allows me to theorycraft strategies that I can actually put into play through the course of a scenario, or at least work towards getting the cards/feats to realize that strategy in a future scenario. The cooperative aspect means I'm no longer anxious about playing the game with veterans, which was always a concern when I played Dominion with the person who owned ALL the expansions and never needed to read the cards. It also means I don't feel like I need to keep buying booster packs in order to get the rare cards to be able to compete, which was why I never got into magic (also--because it would ruin* me). Add in the gorgeous art, the way the mechanics solidify the theme, the dice rolling for a little bit of randomness, and the RPG mechanics, and I have a hard time imagining a more perfect deckbuilding game.

So, thank you Paizo and everyone who had a hand in making this game (and the community that helps it grow), it's been a wonderful time so far.

* I have completionist tendencies which really become apparent with collectible card games. I easily spent $200 on the Pirate Constructible Card Game boosters without even having friends who were interested in playing it with me. That game was so good, but no one else wanted to take the time/money to invest in it =/

More questions that came up during our session last night.

1) On the between steps/any time parts of a turn, can you play multiple cards of the same type? For example, Lini has just closed a location, the next step is "end your turn" but there's an opportunity to play card(s) before that happens. So before she ends her turn can she play cure, opt to not attempt to recharge, play a toad (put a spell from your discard pile into your hand) to retrieve the cure, and play the cure again? Another example, after his move step but before his explore step, can Damiel play Augury, not find what he was looking for, recharge his Augury, and use a second Augury that was in his hand?

2) Can you use potion of flying/haste on a character that has just closed a location to allow them to move and explore? Does it matter if the location was closed via henchmen or via empty deck? If they use that explore to encounter and defeat a henchmen, are they allowed to attempt to close? If they use that explore to empty a location deck, are they allowed to attempt to close? edit: it looks like this type of situation is still open for debate in this thread

3) This one seems obvious but I want to double check. When you're told to add a given skill to your check, do you add just the number, or the associated die roll and the bonus? For example, Damiel plays Liquid Ice, which gives him Dex/Ranged (1d8+3) + 2d8 to his combat check, and he opts to additionally risk another card to add his craft skill. His Int is 1d10+2 and his craft is +3 and based on Int. Is his final roll 3d8+3 +1d10+5?

4) If you opt to get rid of loot you've acquired in a previous scenario, but later decide you want it back (maybe because you've added a card feat that allows you to carry it), how would you get it back? Replaying the original scenario? Or can you get it back at all, since replaying scenarios don't give you the rewards after your first time through?

We're currently in the middle of S&S AP2 and we have a friend who wants to join our game. He's only played once but he liked it a lot. He doesn't own the game and we only play twice a month, at a location that he has to commute to. So my question is: what's the best way to integrate him? We can have him do the normal character creation step, but I'm concerned that if he joins our game with zero card/power/skill feats and a bunch of basic cards he's going to be *severely* behind the curve.

It seems like the only official way to 'level him up' is for him to play the game solo, or have us run through the previous adventures with him. Both those seem like bad options due to the situation: not his copy of the game, time constraints, solo difficult for a new player, boring for the other 4 players especially considering how infrequently we play.

Is there another way to get him to relatively our power level? I'm guessing we'll have to do something other than the official rules, but I'm struggling with coming up with a way to do it fairly.

Apologies if I've misread something or missed a rule somewhere, I'm asking all of these based on a list of notes I wrote up during my last few games.

1) Can you intentionally pick a skill you don't have (d4) to try and fail an encounter? E.g. a card says check to defeat: dex disable, your dex is a d10 but you don't have disable, can you play a d4 on that check?

2) After you defeat the villain and there are no places for the villain to escape (thus fulfilling the ending scenario requirement in this hypothetical example) does the current player need to end their turn? I'm concerned about spending too many cards to defeat a villain and not being able to reset your hand after your turn ends, thus killing your character.

3) The spell Call Weapon doesn't seem to say anything about shuffling your deck after you've rifled through it looking for a weapon. Does this spell have the added benefit of knowing what cards are coming up next in your deck?

4) Unless otherwise stated (e.g. 'your'), do On Permanently Closed effects affect everyone at the current location, or just the person who closed the location?

5) I saw a rule about what cards you're allowed to play during encounters but I don't understand the limitations. I believe the rule was something along the lines of "during an encounter you may only play cards that affect that encounter". Does this affect only the current player, or everyone? Could someone else play a strength spell on you during the encounter? Could someone else play a cure spell on you during the encounter? Could you play a cure spell on yourself?

I noticed Skulls & Shackles came with a free 10-pack of transparent deck protector sleeves. These are very nice to touch and play with, but they have an annoying holographic logo near the bottom on one side. This sometimes gets in the way of valuable information, no matter which way you orient or face the card. Does anyone have a recommendation for a similar sleeve protector, minus any obscurities?

Many cards say something to the effect of "if this check has the swashbuckling trait, add 1d4". My questions is, does it matter which "side' has the trait? You can use a pistol, which has swashbuckling, and that would give you the 1d4. But what about fighting a monster that has the swashbuckling trait? Would you still be able to add 1d4 to your combat check?

Let's say you find a henchmen and defeat him, but fail the check required to close the location. Can the next player move to that location and attempt to close it, or do we have to wait until we've gone through every other card in that location?