RemiBureau's page

You're right Flat, now Lini just has to find it...

No problem. When making a check, a skill is never required, you can always substitute it with a d4.

Some spells require a specific skill (arcane or divine) but they clearly state it. And even then, you can use the spell, but have to banish the card afterwards.

You're right you could force Valeros to come with you, but the extra d4 is his power, and you can't force him to use it :)

Also, if you need help choosing cards, post here the team you're prepping, and I'm sure you'll get a ton of suggestions

Before Burnt offerings, you "should" have a skill feat.
Also, as mentionned by Maus, any time you create a character, you can build your deck with any card that has the "basic" trait, respecting card limits. So with your experience, and knowing the different characters in the game, pick what fits best to optimize your cards, even if those cards are relatively weak.
The right combos can be very effective, even with basic cards.

Well, you can choose between the 4 skills, but the skill must be written on your character card to use it (not all characters have melee and divine). If you don't have a skill, you can make a check with a d4, and those "subskills" don't depend on any base skill for you. That is to say, a strength bonus can only help your melee check IF your character has the melee skill and it depends of Strength ( ie STR + 2)

I'll try to answer all your questions in order

1. You could use any of those 4 skills, difficulty of 7.
2. If you have both skills, test the one you want. If you don't have divine, you can either use you wisdom, or a d4 (untrained divine) for that check.
3. test either wisdom or divine difficulty 3 OR strength or melee difficulty 7. It's basically the same as your first exemple, but the number required is lower if you test wisdom or divine.
4. If you don't have Disable, roll a d4.
5. The multiple checks are separated by the keyword THEN. Look at Nualia (villain) for an exemple of this. You need to succeed two consecutive combat checks. (Remember that a second hero at the same location can make one of those checks).

Shuffling the henchmen and villain in the bottom 4 cards of the location is something we're looking into, but not always the last card, especially in a 5-6 players game.

And I guess I play in a group similar to TClifford's. We're 4, and it's fairly common to get one blessing from someone else on a check, but not more than one.

The only ridiculous "blessing checks" we get are from Sajan, and he's doing it by himself.

Seoni is very dependant on having combat spells. In our first game with her, using the suggested starting deck, she faced a lot of monsters and never had a combat spell in hand, so she kept discarding to use her 1d10 combat power, and failed some checks, and she eventually died.
That was in a 2 players game.
That being said, with some deck tweaks and a better understanding of the game, she's now very effective.
I had decided to switch Amiri for Kyra so I could heal her, and since then only did so twice.

Ezren's lack of blessings is though, especially in a small group.
The opposite is true of Sajan, he's much more effective in a 2-4 heroes group than 6.
Lini can take a while to master, and you must not be afraid to play a lot of cards every turn, but she's fun and can face almost anything.
I've never played Lem, but I think he might have trouble by himself. In a 3 heroes group he should be fine though.

To answer the OP, I think that the hardest thing is to find the best way to play each hero in each situation, but they're all great characters. I'm not sure there is ONE hardest hero.

I don't have the cards in front of me, but what you must be looking for is : do you need to encounter it, or defeat it.

If you need to encounter a monster before you can do something, then the outcome of the encounter is not important.

If you need to defeat a monster before you can do something, then if you fail to defeat, you can't do what you wanted to do.

It's also important to note that some monster are not defeated unless you beat a check AND a particular condition is met (ie have a certain trait). So in a case like that, you'd have to sucessfully defeat (with special conditions) the monster.

I think the mechanics work fine as it is. Having less turn per hero on a 6 heroes adventure forces you to team-play. You can't afford your partners to fail checks, so you help them out when needed, and you play blessings/allies to make the most out of your turns. Since you'll play a maximum of 5 turns, you can afford to do so.

On a solo adventure, you can't burn through your deck, and the game doesn't force you to.

As said before, it's one of the great thing about this game.

1-2 heroes : methodical, slow, wait for your best cards to face what's coming (when you can)
5-6 heroes : fast, head-on, teamwork
3-4 heroes : a mix of the 2, you can't play too slow or too fast, you may accept or ignore your partner's request for help, etc.

awesome

But Seelah can only use turn undead once she's evolved into a crusader, no?

And that doesn't happen before the end of AP 3!

Guidance and aid don't give their traits to the check since they don't define the check.

That being said, hopefully some new cards will...

To me they said that to differentiate from other cards that allow/force re-rolls.

This isn't a re-roll, you make a whole new check, using different cards (or the same if you wish/can)

Alsi, on a side note, I really think I should level-up Kyra for this one...

Well the new villain power does say "start the check over" , so I think they really intend a "infini-check" possibility.

As written, I think that you can start over even if you failed the check (on a 1 or 2), thematically, you missed your attack on a morror image... s#cks to be you.

Seelah is currently "stuck" with an arcane spell because Ezren found a bunch of those, and no divine spells, and she just got an additionnal spell card after Burnt Offerings.

We've decided that unless a spell was especially good for Ezren next game, we would not try to acquire any of them, and have Seelah cast the arcane spell so she banishes it after. If we manage to do it, she'll be able to pick a basic Divine spell... a lot of work to play by the rules!

Print On Demand

Basically, small print runs, printing only the "pre-purchased" quantities.

So far, I went with dex +2 and an extra blessing.

Next skill will probably be Constitution, and next card might be item if there's something interesting in AP 2. If there's nothing I want, I'll wait to keep the best chances possible to start with the amulet of mighty fists.

I plan on making him a drunken master after AP 3, so I'm staying away from weapons for now, might give him one later down the line, but I'll stay focused on items, allies and blessings for a while.

And it's not 100% reliable, Valeros doesn't have a Strength of 1d12

@Cheez you can keep your potions as long as you don't use them

I think that for heavy armor proficient characters, being able to ignore pre-combat damage is the most useful the armors are so far in my group. We win most of our combats so far, so actual combat damage is minimal, but the 1d4-1 acid damage from Black Fang or equivalent from Nualia can really mess-up your strategy if you roll a 4, and I guess things are only gonna get worst as we move up towards AP 6.

So heavy armor proficiency is a must for those who can have it. It allows you to cycle your deck if you have 2-3 heavy armors in there, and it allows you to ignore pre-combat damage without losing that magic plate mail!

Nope, you only get the bonus when you roll the said sub-skill

I wouldn't say she's good at everything, in fact, I don't think she's the best at one thing. But she's the most average character (in a good way...)
She's OK at everything, and I definitly wouldn't limit her (already limited) use of weapons.

What Fromper said

OK, I understand your point about Lini. Personally, I like starting with the suggested decks, so there is a bigger "deck improvement" feeling. That being said, in my Lini solo game... I still have to find a better spell! I'm midway in Burnt offerings, and still have her base spells, and I'm starting to wish I had grabbed at least one Inflict.

So far, I haven't found one divine spell in that game, aside from obe Sanctuary, but she already has one, and it's the first spell I'm getting rid of if I find Inflict or Holy light

Regarding Harsk, his ability to recharge to help out another hero is nice when you want to cycle your deck, but, in my head, will get used less and less as the game progress and you finally get the cards you're looking for.
And with the ranged weapon's "discard to add a d4" for another hero, unless it's a very important roll, that sounds like a waste to me. You're get ride of one of your weapon to give someone else a lowly d4?

Very good work Fromper

From my more limited experience, Lini is a lot more dependant on healing than Amiri. I play Lini solo, and I probably see every card 3 times in a game, that's a lot of healing.
Since she's alone, she doesn't have a weapon, and no attack spells, so she's discarding a card almost every turn to have a d10.
I even gave her 2 cards to get her cures back from the discard pile (toad and token of remembrance).
That being said, I really like her too, being dependant on healing doesn't make her bad.

I haven't tried Kyra, but she's next on the list. My friend playing Seelah in our main game is *kinda* hoping he'll die tonight so he can switch character and take Kyra (yes, I know he could switch right now...). Hopefully he'll like her more than you, but I think that having only 3 spells is her downfall.

Also, to add to Valeros awesomeness, when he gets heavy armors, it means he can cycle his deck even faster because he can recharge them to get ride of them instead of discarding them. So he can prettt much recharge half of his deck at that point.

I think Captain Bulldozer suggestion would be a good one for the location.

And I think h4ppy suggestion for taking damage when you had no cards in hand before the damage step is a good one too.

If the sub-skill is printed on your character card, yes.

If you an untrained sub-skill check(with 1d4), then you can't add die other than d4s, which means in that case that the sub-skill is not based on any of your base skills.

one small mistake that changes a lot of things....

I guess they could add character during the Rise of the runelords campaign, but I doubt it. To use them, you'd have to start over, and don't forget, there's no place to store that box in the included storage tray ;)

exactly

having heavy armor proficiency is useful against all damage, not just combat damage, so if I can keep an armor card in my hand, I'll usually try to, but having 2 at once, especially with a 4 card hand is too much, so being able to recharge one instead of discarding it is great.

usually, the problem we have with Amiri and Valeros, is having 1-2 armor and 2-3 weapons in hand... so you can't do much outside of combat.

Yeah, the second recharge power allows you to recharge it instead of discarding it when you want to get rid of it (for now). It's rather useful!

sleeves are more expensive than I thought, especially deck protectors, and considering I don't live in the States (I'm in Canada). For some reason, shipping sleeves is very expensive...

I think I'll go to my local store tomorrow!

All right, thanks, I was about to buy a bunch of soft ones this morning

Also, in their nature, what's the difference between soft sleeves and deck protectors, if any?

Thanks, I'll have a look at those and ultrapro deck protectors.

Any comments on ultrapro pro-fit sleeves?

After much consideration and weighing the pros and cons , I've decided to sleeve the cards, because to me, the card quality is the one let down of this game.
Now, I never sleeved before, si I'm confused by the choices, and I'd like to buy the right thing.
What's the difference between soft sleeves and deck protectors? Which is better for a game like this? Are some sleeves thinner so more cards will fit in the tray (postponing the problem of finding a new storage system)?

Thanks for your help!

We are playing only 2 characters, and her partner is Amiri, so no healing coming her way.
Seoni died in Brigandoom because she could only attack with her power, and discarded her deck fairly quickly

@h4ppy the wand is useful in our party for Seoni. She our only character that can defeat monsters that require Magic, and with only 3 spells so far, the wand allows her to have 2 offense and 1 defense spells in her deck.
So now she has 3 magic attack cards that automatically rechare, thanks to her brand new power feat!!!
Furthermore, this will allow her to carry a scouting spell once she gets a card feat.
So we do like the wand in our group.

Yeah, I don't have it in front of me, but almost sure it's a "for you combat check..." card

While I'd like for those cards to add Magic when I'm playing with Lini, I'm glad this is the final decision. Only cards that specify the check being made give their traits.

So, a scout is a character who can examine cards without encoutering them (mostly arcane spells?), or who can evade easily (Merisiel), while explorers are those who can usually encounter a bunch of cards per turn (Ezren, Sajan, ?)

I guess by that definition, Seelah is kind of a scout, but to me not that useful. Does anyone use her examine power on a regular basis?

Yeah, can you explain a bit more the difference between those 2?

Exactly my point, if you had faces the villain earlier, and you knew he could flee to another location, maybe you would have only use your weapon and item, and perhaps recharge any card for 1d6, so 1d12 + 1d8 + 1d6 + 1d4 + 1

It's still a big roll, for only a recharge... But not as impressive, and depending on the villain, there is still a chance of failure (albeit small).

I think that's why villains with multiple checks are a lot harder to defeat, you can't simply burn every card you got on one check. Can't wait for AP 6 villains...

Ranged combat isn't different from Melee combat, or "basic" combat. You use different skills for your check, but that's pretty much it. Some powers could allow you to do something special with ranged weapons, such as Harsk special power. But unless a card allows you to do something more than a combat check for your encounter, you can't do anything else.

As long as your TotG were actually BotG ;)

Yeah, I can't find anything wrong with that check.

Awesome check to make, but it did cost you 2 cards, plus you had to have the weapon and the item in your hand.

While I too hope for guidelines and tools (blank cards) to help create new characters, scenarios, locations, villains, etc. We have to keep in mind the game hasn't been available for 2 months yet, so, I think it's not surprising nothing has been made public yet.
Most companies would wait for all the expansions to be out first, and then release a fan tool kit. Hopefully we have something sooner, but it should be Mike's priority.

If you have the Perception skill, you'll see on what "base skill" it's based, and any bonus to that base skill will affect the sub-skill (perception)
But, if you don't have the Perception sub-skill, cards with bonus to wisdom won't help you, only cards that boost perception may be used