Riff Conner's page

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.

I agree. Perhaps a draw 3/pick 1?

I've been solo-playing Adowyn and Balazar (well, played through the B scenarios, I've been too distracted by other things to continue yet), and can confirm that they are an excellent duo. The Wrath difficulty increase felt like going over a speed bump.

Plus you get you get to play with two cohorts -- what's not to love?

(Well, pulling all those melee weapons that neither of them want is not to love, but other than that...)

Very interesting. Will there be 3-character v.2 editions of the previous decks e.g. Rogue?

Mogloth wrote:

So, since no Paizo employee debunked it, I take it that later on in the AP, even if Balazar defeats a 'basic' monster he won't be able to take it into his hand?

Stay tuned.

Was this ever resolved? Remain tuned?

Wow! That's goblin-level WIS, thinking they could put em on eBay without you guys finding out...

Huh. Sounds like a case of decks got mis-shelved by the pack-in team, or something.

I really enjoyed my solo game with Selty and Jirelle. Never got around to finishing the campaign, but they seemed to work well together for as far as I got.

Well, that's annoying. House rules to the rescue once again, I suppose.

I wonder how it would interact with Balthazar's power? I would presume that he couldn't keep it because it would still escape even if you ruled that he could put in his hand.

Yeah, Bal's power only works on monsters that would otherwise be banished, which the fly never is so long as there's another open location for it to escape to.

Yeah, Balazar is a powerhouse. Despite Wrath's difficulty, I've been taking down scenarios with Balazar + Adowyn with only occasional stress.

I think the way I would play it (and I don't know how close this line of thought hews to official rulings) is that "defeating the villain" functions as an alternate equivalent to whatever the location's "when closing" requirement is, which fires at a different time from when the player could attempt that task voluntarily.

So: Rift is open side up. You beat the villain. "When Closing" activates, but the requirement (bury a blessing) is paid for by the villain's defeat instead. So the card is flipped, and the villain is trapped.

Rift is closed side up: You beat the villain. "When Closing" activates, and defines the location as already closed. The villain is trapped.

The "flip the location card over" instruction from the rulebook is ignored, because that's a general instruction that doesn't take into account the Rift's weird double-sided nature, and via the Golden Rule the Rift's specific weirdness overrides it. As worded there's really no contradiction between them, but it seems like a contradiction of intent.

However, there's no contradiction with "Examine the location deck; if there are no additional villains in it, banish all of the cards." (because that's predicated on a villain being defeated there, not on the location being closed), so the location deck does get emptied.

Blessing of Baphomet says "Discard this card to add 2 dice to any check attempted during the first exploration of a turn" (as opposed to "your turn") so it would apply no matter who was making the check, as long as it was during the first exploration. So if someone encountered Crazed Cultists during their first exploration, Blessing of Baphomet is adding 2 to everyone's check to defeat their Cultist.

Wow! That seems unintended :D

Huh! That is interesting. And you've got me on that "always open". Hmmm.

We do have a definite instruction to flip the card over, though. (Which could itself be terrible if it was already on the closed side...)

Riff Conner wrote:

hmm Surely though, if they encounter and defeat the villain at the Rift, and all other locations are closed, "there are no other open locations for the villain to escape to". It doesn't matter if the Rift is closed or not; the villain can't escape to where he already is, right?

That is exactly what the villain does when he is undefeated and there are no other open locations. Because the rules don't say "other" locations.

WotR Rulebook p17 wrote:

Check to See Whether the Villain Escapes. If any locations are not closed, the villain escapes... (Note that if you did not defeat the villain, there is always at least one open location: the one in which it was just encountered.)

I think a similar thing is happening here, just that you get to banish the cards at the Rift. Maybe. I'm not totally sure about the banishing part.

It does say 'other' though -- I copied that line from the previous bit of Pg. 17 you quoted. "If any villains remain in the deck , banish everything except the remaining villains and shuffle the deck; the loca tion is not permanently closed, but if there are no other open locations for the villain to escape to, banish the villain."

So that's precedent for it not being necessary for a location to be permanently closed to banish the villain, if the villain is defeated there. And while a villain can 'return' to his current location if he's undefeated, in this case he has been defeated, and that should certainly make a difference.

In any case, I think all this is trumped by "If You Defeat the Villain, Close the Villain’s Location", which is unambiguous; even if the Rift would reopen itself at the end of the turn, it would be closed at the moment of defeat, and therefore the villain is trapped.

hmm Surely though, if they encounter and defeat the villain at the Rift, and all other locations are closed, "there are no other open locations for the villain to escape to". It doesn't matter if the Rift is closed or not; the villain can't escape to where he already is, right?

So, if you are going to make a house rule with this, I'd encourage you to also stipulate that you will only get back cohorts associated with a character and also only if you had no way to avoid and no control over them getting banished (i.e. Donahan was the top card of your deck and something banished the top card of your deck).

If you play with a cohort that you want to keep, you've got to take steps to protect them.

Yeah, I basically agree. It was fun to have the various scenario cohorts from Adventure B all show up again for the last scenario, but that bit of continuity wouldn't have been as meaningful if I hadn't had to be careful with them in their original appearances. But I can't imagine continuing to play Adowyn after losing Dogmeat. I mean Leryn. That would definitely invoke my "load the saved game" house rule.

...now I have to wonder where we'll use Carnivorous Stump as a regular henchman; it has the "may close" text, but that would never be relevant if the henchman is only ever summoned.

It doesn't have Veteran, either, so it won't scale up later.

I'm under the impression that a lot of the special-use cards just get standard wording like that in case people want to use them for homebrew scenarios.

Ahh, I missed the 'never'. Good eye.

Cards have precedence over the rulebook. So a location telling you to acquire a card overrules the rule to return the card to the box, and Balazar telling you to put the monster in your hand does likewise.

edit: interestingly, locations have higher precedence than characters, so if for some reason a condition to close was worded as "summon and encounter a monster, and then return it to the box", Balazar couldn't have it.

Also, character perma-death is not a fun way to increase a game's difficulty. We might have to implement a house rule where characters can be resurrected after each scenario given how it sounds like character death has become increasingly common with this set.

My general rule is to assume a "save point" before each scenario. If the scenario goes badly, you have the option of loading the save, undoing any deaths but also resetting everyone's decks to the cards they had before the scenario.

Because yeah, if I get midway through the adventure path and lose a character, I'm /not/ starting over from the beginning. No way. And in a set as rough as this one? You'd be crazy.

I'm glad someone else on here thinks of things in math terms. This is certainly a game that makes you assess risk and probabilities.

The other night I was actually researching multi-dice probability curves, to learn how to better estimate my chances of hitting a target.

(What I think I sussed out: add together the max values of your dice, cut that in half, and add .5 per die. You have a little better than a 50% chance of rolling that or higher.)

useful site: http://anydice.com/

Just wait until you get into adventure 1, the second scenario of which forces you to bury 1d4+1 cards from the top of your deck at the beginning. That would be nasty enough with five card feats... but you will have earned only one (or perhaps not, as it's from clearing the B adventure.)

1d4+1 removed from a 16 card deck means that Enora and Seoni are both subject to possible one-hit kills from Carrion Golem.

6 in hand, 5-8 in deck, 2-5 buried: 16.
Carrion Golem tosses 3 from deck if undefeated, leaving 2-5. Good night sweet princess.

You think that's bad, check out Bilious Bottle. A barrier that, once drawn, sits next to the location deck -- this cannot be prevented -- and does d4+1 damage (not combat damage, so armor won't help) 50% of the time you explore there. And you can't do anything to make it go away except hope someone rolls a natural 4 on d4.

This isn't "difficult", it's just a kick in the teeth. A 100% random game-ruiner that you can't do anything about. No skill check, no blessing, no die bonuses.

This is definitely a scenario where you need to a) IIRC, hope for an animal ally or monster (can't remember if there are any of the latter in the base set?) to show up so that you can substitute that Stump henchman (and close the location that way),

Summoned henchmen don't permit location closing. (rules pg. 15, end of the second paragraph)

or b) chase the villain from location deck to location deck to auto-close,

This was how I went about it. Got astonishingly lucky, actually -- dude floated to the top of every deck he was in, won in something like 8 or 10 turns. Not much opportunity for looting upgrades, but it beats getting stomped.

Necessarily, because you could have a party entirely of characters that come with their own cohorts, and the scenario cohorts have to be able to go somewhere. (I'm having good luck so far with a Balazar/Adowyn teamup.)

btw Unless there's something I'm missing, I don't recommend Enchanted Fang. It gives +d4, but only that, whereas discarding it for a random monster gives you d4 at first, later d6, and potentially an extra d6 on top. So if you're discarding it anyway, you're better off having something more broadly useful, like one of the +3 skill check spells.

Maybe take one on the off-chance you run into a monster that requires the Magic attribute to defeat, but not more than one.

Oh snap, I've been forgetting that Strength d6.

Either of you. Whichever character would find her more useful. Or if you can't easily decide, you could flip a coin etc.

I'm more worried about the possibility of more frequent and random damages we are bound to receive in this AP than diluting the decks 'power,' so I personally wouldn't mind recharging trash cards you acquire.

Yeah this is my gut-feeling too. Cards going back in the deck = healing, even if they're not great cards. Maybe this'll change for me as the path goes on and I acquire some individually-important cards, a +3 bow or whatever, but for the moment, in Adventure B, the chosen Basics in my deck are only one step better than random pulls.

I'm certainly not ignoring the third power, I've used it to great effect. A free combat d8+ once per turn seems absurdly powerful all on its own. But if you don't end up needing it on a given turn, you're left with free reign to cycle the deck.

It's pretty awesome, but it seems OP. None of the other characters struck me as having any tricks that powerful, not without a lot of checkmarks.

Anyway, I'm not arguing for it to be removed, just checking to make sure I'm not missing something.

Adowyn's cohort Leryn has these two powers: "Display this card to examine the top card of your location deck" and "While displayed, recharge another card to put this card in your hand."

Since powers can be used without limit inbetween steps, it appears that this allows Adowyn to recharge up to her entire hand by popping Leryn in and out of the hand repeatedly. So not only can she cycle through her deck very quickly, she also doesn't suffer the standard problem of having to discard if she acquires some cards without spending any, as she can push extra cards into her deck instead.

Is this intended? It seems very powerful.

Playing cards are quantum. Any card in the deck is every card in the deck, until the face is observed..

Speaking of registering characters, there doesn't appear to be any way to register a Rogue Jirelle at the moment. I left the name field empty, and she appears to have registered fine as "Rogue: [blank]", but whoever's in charge of the webforms will need to add that eventually...

least introduce a official colour code.... This is not interfering with anything..

It's interfering with thise of us who pick dice according to the colors WE like. I'm not switching my favorite dice for some clown-college rainbow set for extremely dubious mechanical purposes. This whole 'official colors' thing is frankly very silly.

Yeah, for reals. She can't not explore, though, as the turns can't be spared. Does she just pick the location with the fewest monsters, and pray?

Maybe I'm just too risk-adverse, but jeez that sounds terrible.

I feel like there must be some kind of trick I'm missing, because Siwar simply doesn't look like a viable character. With no weapons, no armor, and no evasion (unless/until you get the Manipulator role), she's going to just get shredded the first time she runs into a monster with no attack spell available -- and with only 3 spells and no way to keep them in her hand, that's going to be pretty likely.

Do any of you play her? How?

Excellent. Thank you for the headsup.

Actually, you wouldn't get the +1, because in the card game there are no subskills, and there are no assumed relationships between any two skill.

Jirelle has a Wisdom skill of d8 plus any modifiers. Her Wisdom die is d8. Jirelle does not have Perception. So her Wisdom does not relate to her Perception in anyway. So, if Jirelle put a +1 skill feat into her Wisdom, her Wisdom skill is now d8+1. Her Perception skill would remain d4. She would not get the Wisdom modifier if making a Perception check.

Jirelle can get Diplomacy (and Craft) with a Power feat, at Charisma +3. If I subsequently use a Skill feat to give her +1 to Charisma, does that boost trickle down to Diplomacy/Craft? Or is it only based on what her Charisma was at the time of purchase?

Is the reward for this scenario (choose two players to use the Adv Deck 1 loot cards) granted only to the specific character you beat the scenario with, or is it an ability granted to the player, similar to the Adv. 1 reward of being able to play Jirelle?

I initially assumed the former, but I've just noticed that whereas all the character rewards mention the character directly ("Each character gains X"), this one does not, and only references players ("For the rest of the Adventure Path, when setting up the scenario, you may choose 1 player to replace 1 item in her deck with...")

Huh. I wasn't aware that other characters at the location could take over for the additional checks, but there it is in the rulebook, so I learned something new today.

I'm no expert, but I think your temptation is correct -- Ezren is "taking over" the encounter, and should be subject to the bane's various powers despite not being the initial drawer of the card. It's not merely a "Before the encounter:" event that happens separately from the combat, it's a condition while the combat is taking place. "While fighting this card, you cannot cast attack spells unless you've passed an Arcane or Divine check." would be a way to rephrase it.

So, either Ezren makes his own Arcane check, or Valeros's Arcane check failure counts for Ezren as well. I am kind of waffling back and forth on which of those options I think would be more correct. Probably the former.

That's my armchair two cents anyway.

Hawkmoon269 wrote:

I'd say that for my group, we've preferred the Shackles Pirate Ship. ...

Hehe nothing compares to the Goblin ship... You can do SO MUCH reorganizing of decks with it.

Playing solo Merisiel, I haven't gotten much use out of that power, but the Goblin ship's Strength 4 repair check compared to the others' Craft checks (which Meri is useless at) has been an absolute life-saver. "Salvage Operations" would've been nigh-impossible without it.

Additional Clarification:

Scenario rewards are in addition to the standard deck upgrade you always get. A deck upgrade involves replacing one card for another (presumably a better one). The cards gained from scenario rewards are a net gain. Is this correct?

My understanding: If the scenario reward is a card, it's basically an offer of a second deck upgrade, swapping in the specified card to replace an old one of the same type. Your deck will still be the same usual size afterward.

Yeah, I figured that would probably be the rule, but I thought I'd cross my fingers and ask just in case.

Oh well, guess I'd better get a second deck in before Merisiel runs into something she can't handle alone.

2. There is no such exception for organized play. There is a provision to allow you to play two characters solo if one character would be problematic.

What exactly are the rules regarding this? Would I need to buy a second character deck, or can I build a standard box set character? Since only my "main" can be registered anyway, it seems like a box character should be okay, but if so, can I keep him and upgrade him? Using which rules?

I am certainly looking forward to having it to shore up a solo Jirelle, I can tell you matey.

When table space permits, I play with my deck slightly fanned instead of square, for just this reason.

Character sheet? Folded? EEEEWWWWWW

Perhaps more like this: imgur

coriolis wrote:

Logically, instant death effects can't exist because the designers can't be certain a particular group will have access to the needed remedy.

Not a safe assumption, I'm afraid.

I do not like what this implies for solo play.

EDIT: to expand on that thought a little:

A scenario that includes instant death on the presumption that Raise Dead will be available for casting puts the nail in the coffin (har) of single-character play. Even were I planning on playing a cleric instead of a rogue, a dead cleric can't cast.

Now, granted, the rules provide for making substitutions for impossible solo situations, but I try to avoid doing that as much as possible, because being able to select my own challenges feels like cheating. How am I to judge what an appropriately equal challenge is?

If OP scenarios are going to include instant death, then I (and other soloers as well, I'd imagine) would appreciate it if the rules include text on the order of "if you are playing this scenario solo, treat monster A's instant death power as having effects xyz instead."