I’ve really enjoyed these strategy guides, particularly for the characters I’ve never played.
Thanks! Always great to hear they're of use!
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I've just been reminded that I was writing strategy articles before I moved at the start of the year, so I'm hoping to knock out Valeros and maybe the next-one this weekend.
Wow. It's been a crazy few months. I moved out to Hawaii at the start of the year, and then of course COVID-19 hit. Your comments are always welcome, and I just realized that I should be writing about Valeros!
From the perspective of Lini how do you feel about the number of animal (not to be confused with vermin) allies in The Curse of the Crimson Throne? At the moment, I'm writing these articles solely from the point-of-view of the Core Set, so that if someone has just the Core Set, it'll be entirely applicable. I'll obviously expand out to Curse when I talk about the four Curse characters, and afterward ... I dunno, maybe there's a way to do a few articles talking about using the original characters in Curse. I actually have barely looked at Curse, except to gawk over all the beautiful Harrow blessings. We're hoping to start it in November.
I'll certainly admit to not having played Curse yet. We're hoping to finish Core Set on Monday, then start up with Curse in November. I will note one other reason that the extra-blessing Power Feat is good: not all three blessings have to come from Sajan. He gets to play one (or two) freely, but the other one can come from another party member. So he doesn't need three blessings in his own hand. Anywho, it's nice to be back, and thanks for the kind words and disagreements over strategy alike. There are certainly other ways to go with any of the characters!
Thanks for the kind words, folks; it's been a pleasure writing these.
I got done with this article and thought, "Man, I wonder if I was too general, and that'll keep them from being able to pick images for this post!"
I'd been wondering if Rogue is where I should go for knives. And thanks for the advice on Magus. That sounds like a definite (and another $20 for my FLGS).
Thanks for the very kind words, folks. I *do* know what the next articles would be: they'd be specific strategy articles on characters, starting with the 11 from Rise of the Runelords. I have notes and ideas for all of them. It's just a question of time. I wrote the first 10 articles in this series in a very tight bout of creativity, and that's been hard to replicate, so the more recent five have all eaten up a lot more writing time.
I always like to mix in a few class decks, to improve the variability of the cards you can find and offer more paths to upgrade characters. So, I wanted to know if anyone had suggestions for class decks that would work well for Mummy's Mask. We've got four characters. For Mavaro and Yoon I've ordered "Occult Adventures Deck Two", which I figure will have good cards since there are Mavaro and Yoon alts. But I need some character decks for Ahmotep (something with staves?) and Simoun (something with knives?). Any suggestions of best choices for that and/or for melding with the themes of Mummy's Mask.
We did this start to end, Rise 1-6 then Wrath 4-6. The latter parts of Wrath felt like a bit of a grind. The problem is that you don't get Mythic Paths (since you start with 4), and so never get those double-level bonuses from mythic charges, nor the option to throw d20s. We almost always succeeded (with the exception of one scenario that we had to do three times), but we really had to work at every high-value roll, which required talking and putting in resources. This took time and elongated the scenarios. We were also a bit burned out on the same characters after ~3 years of play. In retrospective, I would have just played Wrath on its own and enjoyed its uniqueness. Here's our final characters. For Cards: R = Runelords, W = Wrath LEM (VIRTUOSO)
Weapons: Chellan Sword of Greed [R6], Skirmishing Spear [W3], Master's Lash [W6] Spells: Cure [WB], Divine Blaze [W4], Death's Touch [W5], Breath of Life [W5], Form of the Dragon [W6], Sign of Wrath [W6] Armor: Decemvirate Helm [W4] Items: Wand of Enervation [R3], Nahyndrian Elixir [W2], Boomcrown [W4], Evocation Staff [W5] Allies: Old Salt [BardB], Demon Hunter [WB], Mendevian Crusader [WB], Apprentice [WB], Druid of the Flame [W1] Blessings: Abadar [WB], Abraxas [WB], Ascension [WB], Noticula [W4], Pharasma x2 [RB, RC] MERISIEL (Rogue Deck: Crack Shot)
Weapons: Firebow [W4], Stalker's Crossbow [W4], Traitor's Blade [W5], Deskari's Tooth [W6] Spells: Miracle [W6] Armor: Celestial Armor [W3], Stole of the Inheritor [W5] Items: Emerald of Dexterity [RogueB], Belt of Physical Might [Rogue6], Sihedron Medallion [R2], Emerald Codex [R4], Revelation Quill [R5], Boots of Teleportation [R6], Fasciculus Labyrinthum [W4], Talisman of True Faith [W4] Allies: Old Salt [RogueB], Wayfarer [BardB], Jesker Helton [W3], Celestial Unicorn [W4], Waxberry [W5] Blessings: Erastil x2 [RB, RB], Gozreh [Bard2], Inheritor [W6, W6] KYRA (FIREFLOWER)
Weapons: Dawnflower's Kiss [W5], Infinite Rod [W6], Sunsword [W6], Vorpal Blade [W6] Spells: Scrying [Bard3], Aid [RB], Major Cure [R3], Divine Blaze [W4], Transmorgify [W4] Armor: Black Dragonhide Breastplate [W4], Ebon Thorn [W4], Helm of the Serpent King [W5], Demon Armor [W5] Items: Silver Flute [Lem], Spellbottle [W3] Allies: Unfettered Imp x2 [W3] Blessings: Dawnflower [Kyra]. Lamashtu [R1], Nocticula [W4], Sarenrae x3 [RB, RB, WB], Starsong [W3], 1 missing (probably a Nocticula that got used up) AMIRI (JUGGERNAUT)
Weapons: Frost Giant's Sword +1 [Amiri], Impaler of Thorns [R2], Dancing Scimitar +2 [R5], Karzoug's Burning Glaive [R6], Blackaxe [W4], Blancher [W4], Spellbreaker [W5], Mournful Razor [W6] Armor: Magic Full Plate [R4], Commander's Field Plate [W2], Spiked Plate [W3] Items: Greater Luckstone [R4] Horn of Battle Clarity [WB], Belt of Charging [W4], Climber's Gloves [W4], Chalice of Ozem [W5] Allies: Wolverine [W1], Kamilo Dann [W2, Pit Gladiator [W4] Blessings: Deskari [W1], Gorum x2 [Fighter1, RB], Gozreh [Rogue2, R4], Iomedae [WB] EZREN (TRANSMORGIFIER)
Weapons: Force Sling +3 x2 [Wizard5, W6] Spells: Charm Person [BardB], Disintegrate [Fighter5], Augury [RB], Detect Magic [RB], Frost Ray [R1], Lightning Bolt [R2], Distintegrate [R5], Charm Person [W2], Fire Shield [W3], Ice Strike [W3], Meteor Swarm [W6] Armor: Magic Studded Leather Armor [R3] Items: Arcane Robes [Ezren], Sapphire of Intelligence [Wizard1], Headband of Vast Intelligence [R3], Robe of Runes [R4], Robes of Xin-Shalast [R6], Sihedron Tome [R6] Allies: Crow [RC], Charmed Red Dragon [R4], Druid of the Storm [W2], Minotaur Mercenary [W2], Pegasus [W3], Celestial Unicorn [W4] (that's one extra, which probably means: cut the crow) REDEEMED ITEMS: Blackaxe, Book of the Damned, Fasciculus Labyrinthum, Helm of the Serpent King, Nahynidiran Elixir, Skinstitcher's Manual, Stalker's Crossbow, Traitor's Blade, Unholy Asparagus +3 CHAMPIONS OF MENDEV: Spirit, Agility, Command, Valor, and Vigor — but not Clarity
Abandon characters? But by the rules, you have to grind the characters to level them up! Obviously an early abandonment, before the end of the preliminary arc, can work under any circumstances. I didn't want to go beyond that in a semi-official strategy posting, but personally, we don't require characters to play missing scenarios. Over in the roleplaying world, one of the concepts that really opened my eyes in the early '90s grew out of the RuneQuest community: it was the idea of MGF. Maximum Game Fun. Given that Fun is the purpose of entertainment, you do what you can to maximize it, at least in a way that doesn't defeat the competitive core of the game. So adapting that to PACG, we just let anyone accrue any checkboxes that their character had missed. Everyone else was still happy because they had better cards thanks to their play, and the previously absentee players were happy because they had the otherwise unobtainable thing and stayed at par with the rest of the group. Obviously, personal house rule: YGWV (to use another term that grew out of that same gaming community).
Thanks, Dal Selpher. We're drawing near the end, but Mike's got one more in the queue, and I think I'm going to write two more on improving characters. (Any other topics that have been noticeably missing?)
LINI. I had a feeling that claiming Lini was a weak fighter would cause controversy, because she's so good out-of-combat and thus well-loved. But Irgy did a great job of detailing the thinking behind this: yes, she can become OK, but she has to jump through a lot of hoops, from getting weapon hand-offs to burning cards. ALTERNATES. I agree that Support and Scout are great alternate ideas for an important third class. OTHERS. There was some mention of other criteria for selecting party members, such as covering all the closing skills, and I simply say: watch for the next two articles.
Amusingly, sometimes my group thinks to read the villain and has a little extra prep, and sometimes we just forget, shuffle them in, say "So what does this villain do?", and then shrug our shoulders!
Some great additional notes, Frencois!
The strategy only works if you follow some of my earlier suggestions and are pushing your cards aggressively back into your deck with Cures or other healing. But, if you are, there's a good chance you'll see the blessing again, which is what I mention. So you could easily be giving up an explore for 30/16th of an explore. Or maybe just 22/16th of an explore. Of course, your individual play strategy will tell you more about the odds of seeing that card again. (As well as where you are in the game.)
It probably depends where you are in the game. Hit points are certainly much more important early on and much less later on.
Addressing the question of what dice-counting methods we actually use: My table tends to count dice with method #2 (half the number of sides), but then if it's important we try to throw in an extra dice or two past when the expected value matches the target. It's an easy to count ad-hoc method. For the important stuff, we try to get close to method #3 (count each die as a "2"), though on one our recent games I was throwing seven or eight dice ... and missed with that method. Doh! Our villain did _not_ get beat on that encounter as a result.
I've found that the few times we got greedy and opted not to close a location due to juicy boons, it cost us the game (or nearly so). As some folks have said, there's certainly a difference between an easy-to-kill villain and a hard one, and that should be taken into account. My advice here mainly revolves around a hard-to-kill villain, where you don't want to fight him again and again (and again).
Yep, I've done that on occasion and it's a good point to have (probably in the discussion of initial choices). Personally, I just prefer to have Amiri deal with those, though.
"Move to a location based on whether you can close it" would have been a good title of paragraph too IMHO. That was covered in article #4, which was about initially choosing locations, rather than deciding to move because of something that's happened since.
This was the introduction to locations. I talk more about closing locations in part six, and the first two sections are "visit the hard-to-close locations first" and "save the impossible-to-close locations for last", which sounds uncannily like what Brother Tyler said. And Frencois' comments on beneficial and harmful location is quite a good addition. Something I should add if I ever take these to a full book.
@elcoderdude: Great point on banishing to improve a deck late in the game! @Dave Riley: I'm a big fan of Seelah too. Especially since you can insure that her best cards (blessings & spells) get recycled and you can also build her deck up to be mostly that. The only time I don't like Seelah's power is at the start of the game, when you can accidentally lose your Cure. So, first power feat goes into recharging those spells on the DFTOD power!
The definition of absolutely necessary changes based on the situation and is largely dependant on how "permanent" the removal of that card is going to be. I'll use a recharge power without much thought but a power that requires banishing is always the last resort. I will recharge redundant armors but always keep one in hand unless a character desperately needs to get some card drawing going. My feeling is that absent a strong knowledge of what's going to come up on a near future round, any card is just as likely to be "absolutely necessary" as any other card. So, if it's not going to be useful immediately, you cycle it. Or, you use the poor man's cycle of discard + heal. Some of the strategies I suggest definitely require healing, but as I said in my first article, I think it's one of the important resources in the game.
HARSK: Yep, I agree, great at recharging. I must have been thinking of one of the others when I wrote. REVEAL: I think the +1s and even the +2s just clog your hand, but when you get better than that, you start to have a strong argument. If you're someone like Lem or Harsk who can recharge those cards as necessary, then that's a lot better. I talk more about some of the Reveal cards that I like in the next article.
There are some more specifics in future sections, but I also plan to give Mike some articles on the 11 initial characters. It might be a while in the future though, depending on how fast he runs through the 10k words of strategy (!) I gave him.
Lisa and Paizo are actually in the '00s. Though you can actually find Lisa's origins in the industry threaded through Lion Rampant (in the '80s), then White Wolf and Wizards of the Coast (in the '90s). And Lisa was actually instrumental in getting me thinking about writing a whole book in the first place! Or four books, as it turned out.
It'd be nice to get the exact content listings of these anthologies, so we can see what stories they contain. |