huskyskins's page

It makes sense that the combat check would need the magic trait, since she is a ghost. It doesn't make sense that the diplomacy check would require the magic trait since you are...

That's how I played it, anyway.

I would suggest not letting "perfect" be the enemy of "better". Sure, the Adventure Path, Adventure, Scenario or Location card may not apply to every turn, but what's the harm in reading and reminding yourself of what they do say at the beginning of your turn? Like Pixel Hunter, I'm quite positive I neglected to add a few points to goblin checks to defeat and ally checks to acquire, on those specific scenarios. I play mainly solitaire, with two or three characters, so there is no one to remind me of the things I missed. Often, at the end of a scenario, I pick up the scenario card to see my reward and wonder how many times I missed applying the scenario effect.

I also find it interesting, that when I watch playthroughs online, I catch every time those effects are forgotten, but I miss them when I'm the one in the heat of battle. And, I don't have the distraction of knowing I have a camera over my shoulder.

So Hawkmoon269, thank you for the tool kit. I use a lot of it, and I think Pixel Hunter's suggestion to the rulebook (and your "rule" card) would be a helpful addition.

With the whole exploit dependent on having the two Restorations and the Staff in your hand/deck, it is pretty ballsy to chance missing the recharge roll, and possibly losing it to your discard pile where there is no guarantee you will get it back with a Cure or the Staff.

I will concede that there may come a time when this combination will be OP. For now, it is highly dependent on multiple instances of luck, and only viable for a 1 or 2 character game.

huskyskins wrote:

If you draw those three cards in your initial hand, you can only discard two cards per turn. It will take 7 turns to discard down to 0 cards left in your deck where you can begin the exploit.

Hmm, if there only some sort of card that could draw through your deck faster, then recharge to the bottom. Perhaps some sort of card that you are already playing in your deck. Some sort of restoration like card.

Also you don't just have to be sitting there the whole game discarding your hand and doing nothing to get to the combo. You could actually be using all those cards to explore and give blessings and whatnot like normal. The fact that restoration is a great card on it's own is what makes this problematic. You can build a great deck, that when it gets low, also says "I beat an entire location every turn".

You can't recharge it with nothing else in your hand. The auto-recharge requires 5+ cards for Lini, so no, it wouldn't be safe to use it before you could exploit it.

I don't have it in front of me, but does "Sandpoint Under Seige" have a Power feat reward? If not, Lini can only get up to d4+3 on her animal ally reveal power by then. She also only has a 5 card hand limit. If you want to make that 6 after AP3, she's down to d4+2 on her reveal.

The major flaw in this, considering you somehow managed to acquire the three cards to pull this off, is in discarding your draw deck down. Every one of those five cards you listed has to stay in your hand until your draw deck is depleted. Also, each one of those cards takes up a spot for you to draw to make the deck smaller. At the least, you need the two Restorations and Staff of Minor Healing in your hand. That frees up two slots to draw and discard every turn to deplete your deck. Even then, you're literally "rolling the dice" when you start the exploit to recharge the Restorations using a d10+5. Long odds. Add in an animal ally, you get a d10+d4+7. More manageable, but not a sure thing, and now you're only cycling one card per turn when you get to your last animal ally.

There just aren't enough turns, except in a 1 or 2 character game to make this effective yet. A couple more power feats dumped into hand size and animal ally, along with the last Skill feat in Wisdom might make it viable at 3 or 4 character games.

-Edited after some more thought-

"Or" is used to connect alternatives, but does not imply those alternatives are necessarily mutually exclusive. However, without context, it can be very difficult to distinguish the exclusivity of the alternatives.

When your host asks you "Cream or sugar?" the context is that one does not preclude having the other and is implied to be followed with "or both."

If you are reading a menu at a restaurant, "mashed potatoes or french fries" comes with the context that the phrase is preceeded by "either," because only one side comes with your cheeseburger.

Lem's power is accompanied by very little context. It states: "At the start or end of your turn, you may exchange 1 card in your hand with 1 card of the same type in your discard pile." This sentence would greatly benefit from adding "or both" to clearly state that the alternatives are not mutually exclusive. And in other instances where the alternatives are intended to be mutually exclusive, the phrase should be preceeded by "either."

huskyskins wrote:

Why? You'll agree that you can evade the Zombie Horde card, yet it specifically instructs you to summon and encounter a Zombie Minion henchman. All cards have instructions on them. Very few of these instructions override evading the card. You're reading "cannot be evaded" into what I wrote when it is clearly not there. If it could not be evaded it would say "When encountered..." or "...may not be evaded".

Nope, I do not agree. I think the moment you encounter the Zombie Horde, its power immediately activates. It should probably be prefaced with "When you encounter Zombie Horde..." to be clearer, but my interpretation is that you cannot evade the effect.

Basically, I don't see evading as an action that lets you ignore powers on encountered cards. I see it as an action that lets you skip certain steps of the encounter sequence and nothing more.

Umm...then you're doing it wrong.

In this thread Mike explains quite clearly that unless there is text that specifically blocks an evade, you can choose to evade a card. Other than Blessing of the Gods, there are only about 8 cards through AP3 that can't be evaded if you are Merisiel, or have the proper spell or item that allows evasion. And most of those have a "When encountering..." statement that makes you roll a die to determine if the card may not be evaded.

Then why even list the "if you don't have a skill, roll a d4"? Can someone show me a card that says that the only way to defeat it is say Disable and not Dexterity or Disable. So far in the base set I haven't run across a card like that once and I've sleeved every card so I've looked at them all. Is there one in an adventure in RotRL that is only Disable (or any other skill)?

Shrine to Lamashtu requires a Divine 6 check or banishing a blessing to close.

Ripnugget and Stickfoot requires a Stealth 9 check before the encounter.

Black Magga requires an Arcane or Divine 14 check to play attack spells.

...just to name a few.

Character Name: (Harsk)
Role Card: (Sniper)
Skill Feats: (DEX)+(4)
Power Feats: +(1) hand size; Add 1d4+2 to combat check at another location; when you play a weapon with ranged trait, you may recharge it
Card Feats: (Spell)+(1), (Ally)+(1), (Blessing)+(1)
Weapons: (Dagger+1), (Deathbane Light Crossbow+1), (Returning Throwing Axe+1), (Heavy Crossbow), (Shock Longbow+1)
Spells: (Cure)
Armors: (Snakeskin Tunic)
Items: (Masterwork Tools), (Sihedron Medallion), (Sihedron Medallion)
Allies: (Shalelu Andosana), (Black Arrow Ranger)
Blessings: (Erastil), (Erastil), (Irori), (Norgorbor), (Iomedae), (Seranrae)

Character Name: (Lini)
Role Card: (Wild Warden)
Skill Feats: (WIS)+(4)
Power Feats: +(1) hand size; Reveal animal ally for 1d4+2 to check; Weapon Proficiency
Card Feats: (Weapon)+(1), (Ally)+(1), (Blessing)+(1)
Weapons: (Impaler of Thorns)
Spells: (Cure), (2 x Inflict), (2 x Holy Light), (Scrying)
Armors: (None)
Items: (Wand of Enervation), (Wand of Scorching Ray)
Allies: (Crow), (2 x Toad), (Sabretooth Tiger)
Blessings: (2 x Pharasma), (Gorum), (Irori), (Torag)

huskyskins wrote:

I'm not suggesting the removal of "When encountered...", only the removal of "Before the encounter..." Just that one phrase. It serves no purpose that I can see, since it prefaces a condition that can be evaded, the same as the rest of the card text that isn't prefaced by "when encountered", or with the suffix "...may not be evaded". It can easily be replaced by "then attempt the check(s)" at the end of the sentence, or simply deleted entirely if there is no check on the card.

My understanding is that evading doesn't allow you to ignore *any* powers of an encountered card, because the rulebook never says anything about ignoring powers when you evade. Evading allows you to bypass certain steps of an encounter, so you can *effectively* ignore any effects associated with those particular steps when you do evade. But for all intents and purposes, all powers of an encounter are "recognized" the moment it is revealed, whether you choose to evade it or not.

So to me, when you suggest something like "Recharge 2 cards of your choice from your hand, then attempt the check", I see that as almost an unavoidable instruction that must be done the moment the card is encountered. It potentially suggests that you have no opportunity to evade.

Why? You'll agree that you can evade the Zombie Horde card, yet it specifically instructs you to summon and encounter a Zombie Minion henchman. All cards have instructions on them. Very few of these instructions override evading the card. You're reading "cannot be evaded" into what I wrote when it is clearly not there. If it could not be evaded it would say "When encountered..." or "...may not be evaded".

huskyskins wrote:

Everything happens before the check, when there is a check, unless it says "after the encounter..." No need to change that text, unless to change it to "at the end of the encounter..."

If there is no check, it happens in the order it is written.

"When encountered" effects happen the moment you reveal a card, before you can even choose to evade it. "Before the encounter" effects happen after you choose not to evade but before you make any checks.

Both kinds of effects happen before any checks are made, but they have distinct timing. There needs to be a way to distinguish between these two timings.

I'm not suggesting the removal of "When encountered...", only the removal of "Before the encounter..." Just that one phrase. It serves no purpose that I can see, since it prefaces a condition that can be evaded, the same as the rest of the card text that isn't prefaced by "when encountered", or with the suffix "...may not be evaded". It can easily be replaced by "then attempt the check(s)" at the end of the sentence, or simply deleted entirely if there is no check on the card.

For example:
Jubrayl Vhiski

Currently reads, "Before the encounter, recharge 2 cards of your choice from your hand."

Change to, "Recharge 2 cards of your choice from your hand, then attempt the check."

This satisfies Vic's requirement of not taking any more lines on the card, it doesn't add new terminology, it doesn't limit creativity, and it makes temporal sense of sequencing with evasion.

huskyskins wrote:

No one has yet given a cogent reason why "before the encounter" cannot just be deleted from the card.

How would you know when to resolve those effects?

Everything happens before the check, when there is a check, unless it says "after the encounter..." No need to change that text, unless to change it to "at the end of the encounter..."

If there is no check, it happens in the order it is written.

No one has yet given a cogent reason why "before the encounter" cannot just be deleted from the card.

huskyskins wrote:

I've mentioned before that the words "before the encounter" can easily be removed from all of the currently released cards without affecting game play, since when you decide not to evade a card, you read the "powers" section of the card and proceed accordingly.

You need to read the powers section of the card before evading. For example, it is supposed to be impossible to evade Blessings of the Gods before you acquire it and there is a card where you need to roll a die and one of the effects prevents you from evading it.

I don't understand your premise, and how it fits into the discussion. None of those cards are affected by changing the "before the encounter" wording, which is what this thread had been focused on. There are a lot of great ideas about changing the words to "before the check", or "before the engagement", etc. My thought was that instead of adding something new to the rules, just remove the wording that is causing the illogical sequencing that "before the encounter" is responsible for. We already read the card once we turn it over (encounter the card). If the card or something else says you can't evade, do what the card says. If not, choose whether to evade. If not, do what the card says. This has to be the least restrictive path to future development, which seems to be Vic's overarching driver. Somebody please punch some holes in this, and tell me what I'm missing here.

Since those specific "before the encounter/check/engagement" effects are only on specific cards you could just tailor the phrase to the card. If the card doesn't have a check then you wouldn't say "before the check"

But if it does have a check you could say before the check, if it has two checks and you want the "before the encounter" phrase to be before both checks just say "before the checks" or "before the combat(s)" or something like that.

As mentioned above, it sounds like you're looking for one phrase you can just errata every "before the encounter" phrase into and because of differences in different cards that seems unlikely.

I would avoid "before the checks", because the first time I read that, I asked: "before each check, or before the first check?" If the intent is for it to only apply once, I would use "before the first check."

Isn't English fun?

I've mentioned before that the words "before the encounter" can easily be removed from all of the currently released cards without affecting game play, since when you decide not to evade a card, you read the "powers" section of the card and proceed accordingly.

The Enchanter's powers section could easily read:
The Enchanter deals 1 Force Damage to you.
After the encounter, the Enchanter Deals 1 Fire damage to you.

Or, for S&S, it could read:
The Enchanter deals 1 Force Damage to you; attempt the check; the Enchanter Deals 1 Fire damage to you.

Just my two cents.

Vic Wertz wrote:

Many of you have asked about the possibility of getting fixes for cards that have been changed via resolutions from the FAQ; it's something I've been looking into for a while.

How about a sticker sheet. Peel the stickers off and stick them to the affected cards.

That's a brilliant idea. Many games use sticker labels for their foreign language conversions. Having all these fit on an Avery label template that you could pick up at your local office store and print yourself would be fairly inexpensive.

Unfortunately, a lot of the answers given on this forum are written in the theoretical instead of real-world. So, here's an example of Harsk drawing his initial hand.

Harsk begins the game with 15 cards in his character deck. His favored card is weapon, and he has five of them in his deck. His hand size is five cards. Harsk draws five cards from his deck and none of them are weapons. He discards those five cards. There are now 10 cards left in the deck, and five cards in the discard pile. Harsk draws another five cards. By chance, he did not draw a weapon. Harsk discards those five cards. Now there are only five cards left in his deck, and 10 cards in the discard pile. Harsk draws the last five cards - all weapons. This is his starting hand. The 10 cards in the discard pile are now shuffled into the draw deck of zero cards and make up the new draw deck.

If you were to reshuffle the discard pile into the draw deck before redrawing your hand, you could end up not drawing your favored card over and over. This is more likely when you have fewer favored cards in your deck. Fore example, Lini only has three allies in her initial fifteen card deck. By discarding, you guarantee that eventually you will draw your favored card.

I want to customize my character's deck for my first play through but am wondering if there are any rules to govern what kind of cards s/he can start with (besides being basic). i.e. Would Valeros have a magic item or a holy water which he wouldn't have the skills to otherwise acquire if it was a boon?

A character can start his deck with any card that has "Basic" written in the upper left hand corner, whether he'd be likely to acquire it during exploration, or not. Of course, you must honor the card number restrictions from the character card. You'll find the "Basic" cards are fairly mundane/non-magical.

I am using Harsk for a combat check do you use dexterity or does it have to say on the card what kind of check to use if it says on the card or can you just choose like harsk has dextrity of d8 and then ranged dex : +3 its confusing but fun to learn

If you are using a card (weapon, item, spell, etc.) for the check, it will say "for your combat check...". That sets what dice you are using (Dex, Ranged, Str, etc.). If you choose not to use a card that specifies what combat dice to use, you will use your Str. or Melee dice.

I have to agree with ryric. The benefits of the BOG are the ability to match the top card of the blessings discard pile when you play one from your hand, and a free explore when encountered at a location deck. The former hardly ever happens, so the benefit is totally negligible. And, as soon as you swap out all the BoG's from your character deck, it never happens. The latter becomes increasingly negligible as more blessings are added to the box with each adventure pack, diluting the probablility that a BoG shows up in a location. Also, the increased ability to acquire the named blessings that replace them, since the check to acquire doesn't scale with the adventure.

On the other hand, the main drawback of the BoG, is that it has a negative impact on the Blessings timer deck. It takes up the space of a blessing that may match the one a character wants to play, and be able to recharge instead of discard.

By AP 3 any character with the Divine skill is almost an automatic to pick up any of the blessings. Also, in some goups, you're more likely to get someone to play a blessing on your check if they can recharge it instead of discarding.

Am I missing some other benefit of the BoG?

If you just delete the three words "Before the encounter" everything to date works and makes sense. The encounter starts when the explored/summoned card is flipped over, then the player may evade. If it is not evaded, read the card.

"Before the encounter..." might be the biggest blunder made by the game designers. Sure there are a few little errors and confusing items, and there are a few cracks for rules lawyers to try and squeeze through, but as far as a huge palm to forehead - this is it. You can't try to hide this by calling it ambiguous language. As soon as the designers ruled that a card is encountered as soon as it is flipped over, and when you evade, you ignore the "before the encounter..." wording, it became illogical. Any time before the encounter would be before you could evade. But, you do evade it.

I don't know why the "Before the encounter..." wording is even necessary. There are several cards that just have a list of instructions, sometimes separated by paragraphs, others by semicolons (e.g. Shalelu).

The Enchantress could read:
The Enchantress deals one point of force damage; resolve the Check; the Enchantress deals one point of fire damage.

Now, I obviously haven't seen every card in the set, or all the mechanics that have yet to be introduced, but I think something that was probably added for clarity has become the biggest cause for confusion in the game.

Now that I think about it more, there's probably a Twig of Canceling card that is written to specifically cancel any "Before the encounter..." effects making this whole post moot anyway. Until then, I'm just going to ignore those three words.

Unfortunately, the tiny bit of text on the adventure/scenario cards is more of a teaser than a story. So, it is difficult to submerse yourself into it like you would an RPG. The story, which you can find in the RPG Adventure Path of the same name, is quite good. Reading through it you get an actual feel for some of the choices for checks and abilities in the game of the monsters. Like why you can't play animal allies against Gogmurt, why the haunts hinder you in Foxglove Manor, or why there's a bunyip in the core set. Who is Vin Vender or Shelelu? Etc.

Since the game designers have made the decision to follow the story arc with the adventures/scenarios as opposed to just throwing cards together a la MtG, it really adds to the card game to have access to at least the Adventure Path Book. If I were to have one suggestion, it would be to add a little more of the story into the card game. Whether it be through the use of multiple scenario cards for each scenario like Lord of the Rings LCG or a story insert into the expansion box that summarizes each scenario with a bit more info than two sentences on the back of a card.

My team of Lini and Harsk are halfway through Skinsaw Murders, so I definitely have a feel for some of Lini's quirks in a small group. I don't own Hook Mountain Massacre yet, so the Monkey, Cat, and Giant Badger might blow this whole thing up.

Allies: Obviously all of her allies should be animals, because the d4, and later d4+1 and d4+2, on every check is invauluable. The drawbacks are, you have to keep one in your hand, which hampers cycling to get to the spells you need. It also means that when you draw a second ally into your hand, it needs to be immediately useful to recharge for something, like an explore. Unfortunately, the animal allies to date aren't up to par with the named two-legged variety. I have tried to keep my allies varied, so when I do end up with two in my hand, hopefully one will be pertinent to the next encounter (Crow vs. boon, Sabretooth Tiger vs. bane). Invariably though, I'll have the Tiger as the only ally in my hand when I am facing a particularly tough monster.

Spells: Healer, helper, attacker, the great balancing act. There just aren't enough Divine combat spells early on to be a viable Divine combat caster. Two basic Inflict spells and Two Holy Light spells in AP1, if you're luck enough to encounter them. Therefore, you're stuck using Lini's Wild Shape ability which requires a discard to get a d10, and typically an additional discard of a blessing if you want any expectation of defeating a monster. That discarding adds up. Now Lini tends to vacuum up quite a few boons while adventuring, so there's not a lot of worry about running out of cards. You will run out of blessings, though. So, you need to tote around a couple Cure spells. The drawback is you end up recycling a bunch of garbage boons you picked up and discarded back into your draw pile, possibly burying your needed offensive spells deeper. Other spells of note are Aid, Strength, and Detect Magic. It would be nice to lessen the number of times Wild Shape is required by seeing more Divine combat spells. Paizo, where is Magic Stone, Produce Flame, Summon Nature's Ally, Flame Blade, Flaming Sphere, and Summon Swarm?

Items: Amulet of Mighty Fists (AoMF) seems like a natural fit, but it comes with the same drawback as the ally - it is stuck in your hand. Now, two of your five cards are stuck there, not cycling. At least the ally is providing a boost to every check. The AoMF just sits there taking up space 80% of the time. Unfortunately, this is the case for most of the items you would choose to supplement Lini's stats (Thieve's/Masterwork Tools, Crown of Charisma, Sihedron Medallion, etc.). What you need are items that can be recharged or buried easily like Holy Candle, Wand of Force Missles, Token of Remembrance, Spyglass, Luckstone, and Staff of Minor Healing. Or even Basic banish items like Caltrops and Blast Stone

Blessings: Pharasma and Lamashtu work well. Later Erastil can help with ranged weapon attacks.

Skill Feats: Wisdom boosts combat casting and recharging spells. After that, you should look at pumping up Dexterity, as you will want to take Weapon Proficiency Power Feat and a Weapon Card Feat and find a bow or crossbow.

Power Feats: Bumping up your hand size could offset being stuck carrying your animal ally, but it is not an option for Lini. The +X boost to your ally is the natural priority. After that is maxed, grab the weapon proficiency to help offset the lack of offensive spells.

Card Feats: Blessings are universally helpful, especially since they are nearly required when using Wild Shape. The Weapon Card Feat helps once you start to pump up the Dexterity Skill. I can see adding more Allies if the new ones are as useful as the Tiger.

The wooden shield can be recharged to reduce combat damage by 2. And before the encounter, Blank Fang deals 1d4-1 acid damage (if I fail the check). Can I use the wooden shield to reduce this damage, i.e. is this damage considered to be combat damage?

Thanks in advance
Mararkell

It is my understanding that damage taken before the combat check is not necessarily combat damage. Unless the card says it is. So, no, the shield cannot help you there.

Well, I have seen another thread complaining about a similar issue:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qehn?Odds-of-encountering-a-current-scenario-c ards

and the most recent post in that thread asked for a solution. I think this thread right here is the solution, so I'm going to push a little harder on this subject. So, two counter-points to make

Counter- Point 1: To the people who think that it would complicate things (Dave Riley said:

It would also add more complication for scenarios with named henchman. You would need a card that said "On your third henchman encounter, draw a skeleton. On your fourth encounter draw Ratfink the Ratman, on your fifth encounter...")

What you put forward there is complicated, but that's not what most of us are picturing. All that would have to be done is something like this.

Step A: In the rulebook, add a line about how the LAST henchman on the scenario card is the "Generic Henchman", "Abundant Henchman", "Bottom of the Totem Pole henchman", "Minion henchman" or whatever they want to call it.

Step B: In the part of the rulebook that details setting up the game, make it clear that the one copy of the scenarios "Minion Henchman" card (Goblin raider, for example) is placed next to the scenario card, and however many copies of the card titled "Minion henchman" are added to the pile that contains the Villain and any non-minion henchman in order to make the pile the proper size.

Step C: Add a tiny line about how when you draw the "Minion henchman" card, refer to the scenarios Minion Henchman.

Side note: This could help SOLVE the confusion that people have when barriers that refer to henchman cards make people think that they can close the location. You could take that text OFF of the Goblin Raider card, and add it to the "Minion henchman" card that would go into the location decks. Therefore, when a barrier refers people to the henchman, they wouldn't see text about attempting to close a location, and they wouldn't get confused by it.

So to...

I'm all for this. I'm sorry, but I can't believe it is any more complicated than handling a ___ Horde card for even a beginner. It is such a waste to allocate resources to cards that you see once, and some that will never be used, as I have about 0% chance of playing a 6 character game.