All things considered, this feels like a smart move. I have to confess that I haven't even started WotR yet even though the final deck showed up on my doorstep this morning. I'm still running demo games of RotRL and while I'm making my way through SaS at home, we are still in the early stages of RotRL at our gaming group (my 3rd playthrough, their 1st). Plus this gives you even MORE time to figure out how to do Kingmaker ;)
While I love.. no, *love* this idea and I'm very happy that Paizo and DriveThru could find a way to make this happen, I'm not surprised at the stats Steve mentioned. Art is going to be a big sticking point here. Case in point, I have a card I'd love to submit right now - actually the custom character I used throughout Rise of the Runelords. The artist (Michele Chang who has previously worked with Paizo) very kindly gave me permission to use the art, and for that card to be placed in the public domain for non-profit purposes. However the current terms make it very difficult to re-publish that card via this system and make it available to everyone else.
Heh, I pre-ordered my base set from the Book Depository a few months ago (perhaps I should say.. pre-purchased) and now with their ETA of January 2015 and the weird contents of my subscription which still shows the base set even though it shouldn't, and shows no sign of the Bard Class Deck in my sidecart: Subscription wrote:
Sidecart wrote:
I have no idea what I'm going to receive or when. It's super exciting! :D
Since I tend to have phenomenally bad luck when it comes to acquiring good cards (mostly my bard waves at them as they pass her by) I have a lot of love for the basic Sage - or in my case a Book Imp, which is functionally identical. That extra d6 to Wisdom can help turn a humiliating defeat at the hands of a Siren into a very slim chance of success.. (even in AP 4..) and the extra bonus to Intelligence means I only fail my check to acquire by 1 instead of 3 or 4. ..which is something, I guess.
You are right in that it does lessen the dilemma of buff vs explore since you are probably going to waste 2-3 fewer blessings on combat checks in each scenario.. ..but considering how many checks I fail by 1 even when I *do* use a blessing, heh, I certainly wouldn't say it makes things like Luckstone redundant :D However, for those Combat:x THEN Combat:y encounters when you are playing a solo spell caster, I find it just influential enough that you can attempt it with two attack spells and one blessing in your hand if you have to, where as you might otherwise have to go in to it with two of each (or three of each against Breakbones. Grr)
WoodManZX wrote: ..After some browsing around on BGG, and talking with others who purchased the game, I found this organizer for sale, first linked in a BGG thread: http://www.thebrokentoken.com/pathfinder-adventure-card-game-box-organizer/ Oh, neat! Ever since my kids spilled some juice over a dozen of my cards (I've never mopped up a spillage so fast!) I've been thinking about sleeving my cards but I wanted to find a practical way to do so while keeping all the components inside the actual box. That product seems to fit the bill nicely although, as is often the way, shipping is as much as the organiser itself.. though still cheaper than having to buy another new RotR base set ;)
There's one house rule which I use for my solo games which makes things less frustrating when playing with only one character.. and that is to allow a blessing to be played *after* a roll is made, rather than requiring it to be played prior to the check. I don't see it as a huge advantage but it prevents you from 'wasting' a blessing which can help when you have to make two tough checks back to back and there is no second character to help you with that other check ;)
Barl Breakbones. On the Mountain Peak. Playing solo with my custom Bard with 1d4 Wisdom. Ouch. I had closed off the Shrine and Shimmerglens pretty quickly and as a result, I had plenty of boons in my discard pile so two cures later I had ~19 cards in my deck and ~14 cards left in the blessings deck. I had this. But my bard is no mountaineer so each time something shiny caught her eye, something fell out of her pack. By the time I found Barl I had buried 5 cards. But it was okay because I went into the encounter with my trusty Shock Longbow +1, Lightning Bolt, Blessing of Erastil and Blessing of Lamashtu. It was Malugus Kreeg all over again. The Shock Longbow + Erastil got me through the first check but then I had to discard a card and naturally it was my Lighting Bolt. With no other option (mm, useless allies and items) my bard used the bow again and then had to make a 'haha I was only kidding' gesture when it did nothing to him. The giant hit her back. So another turn, another card buried and I have a cure but nothing to fight with. So, licking her wounds, my bard retreats to a lower ledge, heals up, discards a few useless cards and does the same the next turn too. But now she has the Shock Longbow back plus a Blessing of the Gods (Erastil), Frost Ray and Blessing of Pharasma. You know what? Exactly the same thing happened. ..and then a few turns later, after a judicious use of a double Cure, I figured it couldn't possibly happen again. It absolutely did. She went in with two attack spells and was hit so hard that she forgot the second spell and only had a handful of trinkets and some harsh language to atemtempt the second check. She attacked him with the bard judo chop. It is not super effective. On my fourth and final attempt, she went in with two attack spells but only one blessing which I would need for the second check. But she couldn't loose the Eyes of the Eagle, oh no. Instead she uttered an oath which lost her the favour of the gods and without the blessing, her final Scorching Ray failed to leave much of a mark. When the blessing deck finally ran out I had 1 card left in my draw pile, nothing offensive in my hand (again!) and about 14 buried cards. I'm sooo glad of the two cure spells and the fact that I made all of my recharge checks.. but boy that was still some epic failure right there! Barl sure is a toughie!
Per the recommendation on this thread from Sara Marie, I would like to cancel my subscription to the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. If you can create a new subscription for me starting with the Skull and Shackles Character Add-On deck, please do so, otherwise I will attempt to do this manually.
Not that I'm aware of - which is good, because I've been designing exactly that for the last two years! .. although in a way, it makes me regret getting into P:ACG because it's such a solid implementation and I really don't want to tread on Mike's toes. Of course, unless I get made redundant and that comes with a decent payoff, I won't have the time or the funding to code it this side of 2015 :(
That's a tough one. Personally for my Tiefling, I looked at Seoni's ability for the Abyssal Sorcerer where it costs one point simply to get -1 to fire damage, and another point to extend that to three damage types. Assuming this is going to be one of the characters two "starting" powers, you might go for something like: Reduce Fire ([ ] and Cold and Electricity) damage dealt to you by 1 ..but this means that until your character get's their first power feat, they won't have full access to what should be an 'always on' racial ability. In the end I plumped for Reduce Fire damage dealt to you by 2 ([ ] 3) ..which is more representative of a theme for this character than racially accurate.
Yeah I've certainly had to adjust my custom character because what I thought was an advantage that represented the versatility of a bard (6 cards) turned out to be more of a burden.. one that nearly killed my character a few times while playing solo. I've dropped it down to 5 and it seems to play much better. But like you say it really depends on the character and the composition of the deck. Hmmm..
Okay so Michele Chang (over at http://deadred-art.blogspot.com) was kind enough to allow me to upload my Tiefling cards which use her "Annah" picture as the character art. The links below are to the token, character and role cards. I have some webspace on a server but it's down right now.. so I'll move the images off flickr once the server is back up.
So I just finished the cards for my custom character (but still saved in PSD format so I can make changes!) and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I've used some Tiefling art from the interwebz and I have asked the artist if I can upload an image of the completed card here. In the mean time, here it is in text form. I've based this character's stats on Lem's, with some variation according to the 'rule of 24' and with a few abilities borrowed (and in some cases, toned down) from Seoni, Lini and Merisiel. CARDS LIST: FAVORED CARD TYPE: YOU CHOOSE WEAPON 1 □2 □3
SKILLS: STRENGTH d6 □+1 □+2
POWERS: HAND SIZE 6
* Once per check, you may recharge a chard to add 1d4 (□+1)(□+2) to a check attempted by another character at your location.
Role 1 - Heart Breaker HAND SIZE 6 □7
* Once per check, you may recharge a chard to add 1d4 (□+1)(□+2)(□+3) to a check attempted by another character at your location.
"You can never resist the urge to involve yourself in the lives of others. While some might think you shallow and meddlesome, you never have difficulty making friends and friends soon become allies who are drawn to your cause like moths to the flame. As long as they are by your side, they know that you will inspire them to greatness, fortune and glory." Role 2 - Trouble Maker HAND SIZE 6 □7
* Once per check, you may recharge a chard to add 1d4 (□+1)(□+2)(□+3) to a check attempted by (□ you or) another character at your location.
"A glib tongue will only get you so far; Sometimes you must embrace your heritage to stay alive and take what you need by force. You shroud yourself with fire and fury and to hell with everybody else." Comments and feedback welcome :) Edit: I've also created a basic Book Imp ally to go with this character (Recharge to add 1d6 to your next noncombat Intelligence or Wisdom check / Discard this card to explore your location) but again, it uses card art from the internet so I won't post the card itself unless I get permission from the artist. 2nd Edit: Huh, turns out the Imp artwork I used was actually from the Pathfinder Society Scenario 15 anyway lol
So I've just finished creating my custom Tiefling Bard character and since I wanted her to be reasonably balanced, I based her character card on Lem's with just a few small adjustments. But when I started to compare the stats and abilities of the other characters, I noticed the 'rule' of 24 (ish). Assume the following: D4 = 1 point
(FYI Lem has 14 points worth of stats, everyone else has 15) Each point of skill bonus = 0.5 point*
Most of the characters end up with 24 +/- ~1 point in total, with Harsk and Sajan being the notable exceptions at 26.5 points and 21 points respectively. Of course this doesn't take into account the 'value' of a character's innate powers and as systems go, I'm sure what Paizo used is far more complex. But if you want to create a balanced custom character this seems like a good way to go about it.
Oh no, I was more referring to the green band that goes behind the name - on the official cards it stretches the full width of the token card (for example) where as in the MSE template it only covers half the width so the head of the character art would not overlap the green band. I wasn't sure if that was because of a limitation of the tool or not :)
WoodManZX wrote:
I'm not too familiar with the capabilities of MSE but it seems like it can support image masking to some degree. So would it be possible to extend the name bar (on the Token card, for example) all of the way across the card in the template? Too bad there's no z-ordering.. I can fix it myself in Photoshop after the fact, of course, but it seems like a better workflow if I can lay out my cards how I want them in MSE first :) |