My FLGS - also in the UK - has received Hook, and had heard nothing about any official release date. He asked if I wanted a copy, and I had to say that, as a subscriber, I was already guaranteed to get a copy in about three weeks time.
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I think I could go for a variant which said to shuffle the villain/henchman into the bottom 7 cards of each location deck, to guarantee that it is neither the 1st nor 2nd card you hit in that location - IF you are really finding the game too easy. But I'm *still* not finding the game too easy. Or even very easy at all (mostly playing with 5 or 6, but sometimes with 4) - which is pretty much spot-on IMO. Occasionally (like last night - AP3, Sc3 or 4) we get a session where the villains/henchmen are the first or second cards in several locations, but for every game like that we have two where time runs out *long* before we had any real chance of winning. And even in last night's game - where the villain was facing something like 5d10 for each of the two combat checks - my character (Lem) was a single draw from death and had to stop participating in the explores (after an unlucky early roll wiped out both weapons, and with no other offence in the deck; now rectified, I hope). Either there's some powerful approach to this game that after 4 months and 30+ games we're still not finding, or we're not all playing the same game. It's not just down to player count or character choices - we've tried all of the characters and pretty much all of the player numbers.
I wasn't paying attention to *what* Merisiel was up to, but there came a point when all of her remaining cards were in her hand, and not in her deck. Partly as a result of some poor decisions being made by the player(s) who had built the character over previous sessions, and the player who was using her this week not asking for healing when they needed it. Which was pretty much how Kyra bought the farm, too - the player using the character just didn't heal herself until far too late in the day. Whereas my Lem is pretty much always running around on max health; burn through blessings and extra explore cards, then heal them all back. None of which actually helps against Iyesha Foxglove much.
Legendary is an interesting game to compare the suggestion to. On the one hand, part of me prefers the idea of using a placeholder card for the henchmen (and maybe the villain too), and having the specific henchman *for that scenario* set aside. As has been noted, it frees up a lot of space in each AP, and we're accumulating a LOT of different henchmen cards - most of which are needed for just one scenario, and all of which are provided in large numbers *in case* you play a 6-player game (we do, quite often, but it *still* grates). So I have lots of Bandits and Ancient Skeletons which I think are likely to stay in the box now - unlike all the other banes and boons, which might come out again and again, the henchmen are pretty much a one-time thing. So the generic hench card makes sense, although dealing with scenarios with more than one hench-type gets a little clumsy, and as Vic & Mike have both said, setting aside the card you encountered to refer to a different card that you had set aside at the start of the game breaks the flow of the turn. But that *is* the solution chosen in Legendary, for both the "scheme twist" cards (which are seeded through the bad guy deck, and mean different things in different scenarios) and the "master strike" cards (which are also seeded through the bad guy deck, and mean different things when playing different master villains). And it *is* a bit of a pain in Legendary to cross-refer, and it *is* less immersive as a result. I think that on balance I prefer the PACG way of doing things, but part of me thinks that having so many henchmen in the box which get used exactly once is a bit of a waste of space and materiel.
Whereas we got hammered, almost losing Merisiel in the process. Though I suspect that the fact that we were a full table of 6 characters, had lost Kyra (perma-death) the week before and hadn't planned for the necessary number of evasions won't have helped. I'm thinking that my team might need to go back a scenario or two (if only to let some of the participating characters "fill in the blanks") and use this as a way to stock up on the necessaries. And maybe work on getting a new Kyra into the party, too.
Can I be a dissenting voice and say that distributing PDF files by means of a zip archive is evil? Zipping an already compressed PDF makes little or no saving of bytes, it introduces an extra step that the user has to perform (unzipping) and some of us use devices (such as iPads) which don't natively support zip files (requiring the use of third party apps and introducing even more steps to perform).
Not every character class is going to get stuff from every AP. Judging by the way things have gone in our games so far, Lini is one of the more capable and rounded heroes anyway, so isn't as much in need of buffs as some of the others right now.
My pack must have taken the scenic route, but it's here in the UK now. Which was reasonably good timing, as it happens - we finally finished Burnt Offerings on Wednesday with characters #7-#11 (so we have all 11 to choose from to make a "super party" at the start of Skinsaw), and we spent the rest of Weds playing Caverna. Felt a bit odd to be playing a normal board game at board game night, after so many weeks of Pathfinder!
Oh, a successful game - like the winner of the Game Of The Year in Germany - can shift 300,000 units. But most niche or hobby games? A tiny fraction of that. IIRC, Games Workshop "only" printed 10,000 copies of Space Hulk when it was reissued - despite the game's reputation, despite their large chain of dedicated shops and huge marketing department, 10,000 was all that they made. 6,000 copies sounds realistic to me, based upon what was known of the game back in May/June.
I get how my pack, coming all the way from the US to the UK, is going to take a little time. What I don't get is why the dozen copies now in my local games shop, also in the UK, have turned up already (especially as they had to arrive at the distributor's first, then be sent out to the shops), and potentially weeks ahead of my subscriber copy that is supposed to have a shorter journey (no distributor involved). I haven't checked to see if the store got the promos (it did with the Base Set), because that would only make me really unhappy. I'm going to leave my subscription in place; I have plenty of other games to play while waiting. But I'll not subscribe again, as I now know that I can get just as good a deal locally - with the added advantages of being able to see the product before I pay for it (rather than paying for it even before the postman sees it) and that it will be faster that way. Certainly not fraud. Probably not incompetence. But not good customer service. And definitely not clever.
I didn't really expect my FLGS to get the Adventure Packs - or if they did, for them to take weeks to arrive (I'm in the UK). Yet they were putting their copies of AP2 on the shelves within a day or two of my getting the shipping notification - which in turn tells me that delivery will take 10-36 business days! Potentially, as a subscriber I'm going to get AP2 almost two months after anyone picking it up from the store. Whilst I don't need to be the first to get something, it is a bit disappointing to find out that by subscribing, I'm now guaranteed to get it *last*.
The THIN Mayday sleeves (100 to a pack) are perfect, size-wise. But I'm forever plagued with those thin sleeves sticking together. The THICK Mayday sleeves (50 to a pack) are listed as being the same size, but are a bit wider and a bit shorter - making them about 0.5mm too short.
I am - like h4ppy, I believe - on the wrong continent for one of Paizo's conventions. I'm off to the world's largest games convention next week (three times bigger than Gencon in terms of visitor numbers), but I don't think that there will be any way to pick up a Fire Sneeze even from there :(
Looking at my subscription cart just makes my head hurt. Th's no sign of any promo cards, the order for Adventure Decks have been "split into two" (whatever that is supposed to mean), and Skinsaw was sitting there awaiting some unspecified future event before it would be charged and shipped. I'm just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope that everything works out in the end.
That's one of the reasons why my Sajan will probably go down the Drunken Master route - oft-seen & easily acquired, they're free hit points for the scenario, and very occasionally they turn out to be useful. Who needs *another* ranged combat character???
That's exactly how we felt the rules worked - so a character in full plate (who would not have taken any combat damage, but remains vulnerable to - say - fire damage) nonetheless took one point of Ranged damage when she was shot outside of combat by a goblin. She was quite distressed by it.
If a monster does "ranged" damage (as opposed to ranged combat damage), may that damage be prevented by revealing an armour card? Why should that be different to Fire or Acid damage (where revealing armour does not work)??
The thin Mayday sleeves (100 to a pack, #7041 IIRC) are a perfect fit size-wise. Unfortunately, just a small amount of contact with anything oily (sweaty hands, table snacks etc ) and they all stick together like glue. I threw 1,000 of them away after the first session they were used for, after two player decks just became solid blocks of cards! The thick Mayday sleeves of the same size (7077s) don't have the same problem. Unfortunately, although they are sold as being exactly the same size (63.5mm by 88mm) they are in fact 2mm wider and 0.5mm shorter - making them slightly too wide to be a perfect fit, and slightly too short.
As a key playtester for a great game that turned out to me very, very broken (something that players discovered in just a few months which hadn't been found in playtesting which had taken the best part of a year), I know how difficult it is for playtesting to iron out the wrinkles in a game. There are just so many competing objectives, and managing the interplay between a large number of different cards is a nightmare. IN addition, you often spend so much time engaged in what is really development work that by the time you're actually playtesting, you're too familiar with the game to actually encounter the same difficulties that new players discover. And playtesting is pretty hopeless at ironing out the wrinkles in a rule book, unless it's done in a very particular way (you need fresh players to sit down with the game and rules, learning to play only from the rules, but with someone on hand who knows the rule book well enough to pick up on their difficulties and confusion who can suggest re-writes of that rule book).
I was pretty determined *not* to go. Not least because I'm going broke faster than an Icelandic bank. But a weekend spent at the UK Games Expo demoing for Tony Boydell showed me that it's entirely possible to spend a whole weekend surrounded by new games and not buy a single one, and that I simply cannot stay away from such things. So I'll be at Essen, and probably on the Treefrog stand three days out of four. I expect other people to do the playing and scouting for me this year, and want them to tell me which three new games are so outstanding I simply have to buy them. Pathfinder doesn't count, of course, because I'm already hooked on that.
Might they have any copies of the Fire Sneeze promo? I'd hate to make a nuisance of myself at their stand for no reason :)
He is recharging a card - which is an instruction on the Bandit, to recharge a card before the fight.
Thanks. I thought that was the case.
"Before the encounter, choose a character at your location to summon and encounter a wrathfusinspawn." "If undefeated, succeed at a Wisdom or Divine 8 check or move to a random location." Undefeated Sinspawn, or undefeated Erylium? It wouldn't have occurred to me to ask, except I've just failed the Sinspawn check by 1. My guess is that it's Erylium being undefeated that causes the move - because it's her card that has the power on it. But I'm not really seeing the point, as the character can just move at the start of their next turn. Whereas being moved if you fail to defeat the Sinspawn means that Erylium is likely to "evade" the combat. But if that's right, does she just get shuffled back into the location deck she came from?
Absolutely. Then at the end of the scenario, when reconfiguring your deck you have the choice of keeping those new cards or putting them back in the box. BOTG in particular is now seen as a "take another go" cantrip, rather than anything useful - because it'll usually take you over your hand limit, so you discard it and explore again, but at the end of the scenario it's back in the box 99 times out of 100.
Either tough it out; or run more than one character; or let the timer deck run out (ie just stop playing), reset the scenario and have another crack at it. With a single character playing solitaire you are likely to hit insurmountable problems from time to time. Though FWIW I wondered if (thematically speaking) Locked Passageway ought to have been one of those barriers that stay on top if undefeated.
Imagine a situation where I say of the game (perhaps even in a review) "Some of the rules/cards seem a little tricky to understand, so mostly we just make it up as we go along, but we're having a blast playing it". Is there anything wrong with such a statement? Especially as regards a co-op game (where arguably the taking part is much more important than the winning)? Because if there is, I'm not seeing it. Sure, there might be cards that were *mean't* to be played in a different way; maybe I'm not playing quite as the designer intended. But where's the harm? Back in the day, I remember reading rule books that said "if you have two conflicting interpretations, throw a dice to choose between them", and others which said "play this game any way you want to - you bought it, after all."
And you're not "playing a card" (which can be done at any time), but "paying a cost" (which can only be done by the active player I believe).
I rarely have three blessings in hand. WHen I do, the other party members demand that I spend some of them helping them pass those tricky non-combat checks that they're not very good at (having pumped themselves up to be combat monsters).
Actually, I would argue forcefully that the restriction - that the active player must be the one who banishes a blessing - makes it *more* co-op than less. Because the players as a team have to decide ahead of time who should be at the Catherdral, ready to close it, rather than just have someone, somewhere toss a blessing at the relevant time.
In our party (usually 5 players) an ally is almost always picked - and used - because of the extra explore. We've passed over a number of "better" allies who won't help with explores, as we're more likely to lose a scenario due to time than we are to fail a vital check.
I would say that the player attempting to close the location is the one that has to banish the blessing. Which probably also means that it will be the player who has just beaten a henchman. I would say that it *is* just like a check, and is another of those instances which carries an implied "you" in the wording. I can't think of any other instance in which a non-active player is the one that is allowed to permanently close a location.
Our party's Harsk s equally ridiculous - except that he normally uses the +1 Deathbane crossbow rather than his +1 Shockbow - yes, he's been very lucky with the pickups so far. I wish my character (Sajan) had a similar opportunity to upgrade his basic attacks, but with three-way competition for the Blessings of Erastil (with Harsk, Merisiel and myself all wanting them) I've managed to add just two of them, and have yet to see an ally which adds to "combat" rather than "melee" (again, other characters take them first).
Could we add Ambush to the list of cards where the wording change is important? And I'm ambivalent; as a sleever, the difference in size won't be noticed. But as a sleever, a corrected PDF works just fine too (it's what I have done with other games pending/instead of corrected cards).
Off topic alert! I bought lots more dice in different colours so each player could have a set. But it was a big mistake. You must have missed my post on BGG. My "pimped" PACG box (half the size of the original) contains stand-up character pieces, sleeved cards and four dice of each shape, with each shape in a different bold colour. Because like you, I purchased three extra polyhedral dice sets in different colours, realised that they worked very poorly, and took them back to swap them for dice where I could match colour to shape. Which works so much better. Need a d4 - grab red. Need a d12 - those are black.
It's the Internet. People say things which they wouldn't normally say (and often do so anonymously), sometimes forgetting that it is broadcast far and wide. And things are frequently misinterpreted, with meanings ascribed to the comments that weren't (perhaps) intended. Again, a problem when you move from face-to-face communication, to written communication that takes time and money to promulgate, to a world where everything is done instantaneously and at arms' length. I suspect that if (watermarked) scans of the cards requiring amendment were posted somewhere officially, with a pointer as to they required typeface, the fan base would upload "corrected" cards within 48 hours. If Paizo could just give the nod to such scans being made available on the Internet, I dare say that the task would scarcely take any longer. One thing that some businesses are now realising (and others have yet to switch on to) is just how much free work (publicity and marketing, brand awareness and product support) they can get out of folk who like their products. I imagine we can all think of examples where the official product support is slow/poor/non-existent, but "the community" of enthusiastic users provide a wealth of actual support and assistance to other users.
Power 1 - recharge the card from your hand to the bottom of your deck to prevent one point of Combat damage (and only combat damage). Power 2 - Banish the card to reduce damage (of any type) to 0; bury the card instead of banishing it if proficient with that type of armour. Power 3 (and I didn't get that it was a completely different power at first look) - when resetting your hand at the end of your turn, you can always discard cards (effectively burning life force/hit points for a better hand of cards for next turn). But if proficient with this type of armour, instead of either holding it or discarding it at the end of your turn, you can recharge it at the bottom of your deck; it's no longer in your hand available for use, but it hasn't cost you one card of "life force" either, and you might get the chance to draw it again later in the scenario. Worth doing if you have a second armour card in hand already, or think that taking damage next turn is unlikely.
That's what I understood to be the case generally. The suggestion that playing Sanctuary to evade changes the rules and puts the summoned monster on top of that location deck would be, well, odd IMO.
I'm deeply uneasy about any situation in which cards need to "remember" what they were - summoned monsters or deck monsters. There are also going to be problems if you happen to have one henchman in the location deck, then summon - and shuffle in - another henchman of the same type. Which one allows you to attempt to close the location when it is defeated? Are you expected to be able to remember that one was summoned (so no closing) and one was not? Should you treat them both as normal henchmen - thereby doubling the chances of encountering one, allowing the location to be closed more easily (or a second attempt made if the first closing was unsuccessful and the second henchman is encountered later)? Summon it, evade it, send it back to the box afterwards. Occam's razor is the best tool that games designers can wield IMO.
For my part, I don't need all the errata'd cards replaced; a lot of the errata is clarifying something caused by unclear wording, and I can remember how the card is supposed to be used now that I've been told. But a small number of the cards are outright wrong - chief amongst which is Detect Magic. There, remembering how it ought to be worded isn't a solution. As a sleever I would be satisfied with downloadable PDFs of the cards requiring correction. Some I'll print out and use, others (where I understand how the card is to be used, like Throwing Axe) and others I won't. Much cheaper, simpler and faster than trying to arrange and distribute reprinted cards.
I do wonder what I'm supposed to do with the armload of short swords and wooden shields we encounter, though - they're straight back in the box, rather than being carted off to a merchant for a few coppers as they would be in a pen&paper RPG.
Five games in and most of our characters have replaced about half of their original deck. Some of those changes have been swapping out basic items for their magic or improved versions; some have been to tweak thinks so that items and allies better rit with what we regard as our strengths and weaknesses. I expect that as a group we'll still encounter at least one card per character in each scenario that represents an improvement over what we have at present.
It's actually a Strength check or Melee Combat Check (not a Strength Combat Check). Melee as opposed to Ranged. Apparantly not. An attack only counts as "melee" if it has acquired the melee trait - from a skill, form a weapon, from another card. Sajan's dex-based combat isn't labelled as melee, so it isn't melee. Time for us monks to throw away our allied soldiers :(
Call me stupid but I'd rather presumed (there being little in the manual to help with this, like a glossary) that there are two types of combat - melee (where you hit things up close) and ranged (where you're not so close). Melee combat might be from using a melee skill or trait, or simply strength (in the absence of a melee skill). And in Sajan's case, hitting people with his dextrous fists. If Sajan isn't in melee, and he surely isn't fighting with the ranged trait, then his combat is Some Other Type (also not in the glossary - or my dictionary, for that matter). FWIW, I have no idea what unintended consequences there might be for saying that Sajan's combat is - or is not - melee, but I bet there are a few.
My take - leave 'em with the starting decks; they'll soon see that upgrading a quarterstaff to a mace is a good idea. But the first two scenarios aren't so dangerous that they *need* to run with upgraded decks.
Another example of why having a library of cards in front of me would help. Without knowing the text on the soldier card, I'm not sure why he wouldn't help Sajan much. Unless he states "+1d4 to a STR based combat check". But if the ruling is Sajan can't benefit from adds to melee (because he uses Dex, not melee), then that would be a Big Thing. Presumably Sajan couldn't benefit from Valeros either (though I can't remember quite how Val's add is worded). So what allies would help - ranged adds won't help either, of course. Darn being at work with no access to the source materials.
Banished items are not gone for good; they might show up again in the very next scenario you play. And if they are Basic cards, and your party doesn't have enough of that type of card to allow a character to make a legal deck at the end of the scenario, you're allowed to go back to the box and choose them without having to encounter and acquire the card in-game.
That would be a violation of copyright. And that's the one huge drawback of Card Warden. It looks like a great way to play card games on an iPad, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to share art files. And there mustn't be an easy way to share aret files, or it becomes an exercise in wholesale copying of other people's games. Which means that users have to scan everything in themselves, for each game that they want to play. Too much trouble for me. I can think of ways that game publishers might use Crd Warden to provide customers with the necessary card scans, but why would they? Extra work for no return, and the risk that the artwork gets out "into the wild" at some point. But for the industrious types, it's one way to take Pathfinder with you to play when out and about.
At the end of Perils, everyone gets an item; at the end of Burnt, one person gets a loot card. It might have been better to have the loot added to items=(players-1), shuffle them together, and give each character one card.
Magic armour allows you to recharge it when resetting your hand. Can you recharge it if it's already been buried (I'd have thought not, but you never know)? Because otherwise this ability simply allows you to "dump" the card back in the bottom of your deck, to hopefully draw something more useful!
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