Gold Dragon

motrax's page

Organized Play Member. 84 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 3 Organized Play characters. 1 alias.




Not too big of a deal or anything, I guess it's just natural with the amount of traffic paizo has and all. I'm betting because the subforums are so similarly named that is a contributing factor. Just a curiosity.

What I do love, however, is whenever someone mistakenly posts in PACG forums, Hawkmoon proffers that etiquette suggests that they now give PACG a try. I do hope that someone takes that advice and discovers what we all have, that PACG is awesome!

IM-patiently awaiting adventure deck 5!
Motrax


I realize this is probably a bit of short notice for something like this, but for any of you out there going to Kansas City's Planet ComiCon this weekend, I'm going to be there this weekend with my copy of Pathfinder Adventure Card Game.

I'm going to try and get a marathon-session going in the game room to run a group through the currently released Adventure packs. Or as far through as any relatively consistent number of players can in the time-frame. After reading about Mike & Co. at BGGCon, I think it is do-able for just 4 adventure packs.

So if any of you happen to be there this weekend, I welcome you to join me, even for just a scenario. I imagine the marathon-session will have people rotating in and out, but anybody that has the desire to run the whole to-this-point-released campaign is more than welcome!

One final note: Wil Wheaton will be in attendance at this Con, it is a rather large collection of Trekkies this weekend. As one of my fellow message board commenters pointed out to me, Wil Wheaton playtested this game! See his name in the playtest credits! It is my hope to make a sign and inquire/plead/beg/grovel with Mr. Wheaton to join us in playing a scenario! I'm sure his schedule is booked solid with appearances, photo's, autograph's, the StarTrek-tacular event... but Wil is a Gamer at heart... perhaps if a large enough group of us cheer for it... he could spare an hour of his weekend to join us for a game?

Here's to hoping!
Motrax


The wife and I are playing a 4 character team of Ezren, Lini (wifes), Sajan, and Kyra (last two mine). I thought I would share a little bit about our experience with the final scenario of Adventure 4, which as you can tell by the title... we failed.

The first scenario with some lucky early closings, we managed to finish in just 11 turns. With a 4 blessing Holy Candle, it made it seem only 7 turns had passed. That was a fast game, time and card wise. But we barely gained any loot. Sajan did tame a Dragon though!

2nd scenario was slightly more difficult, but I don't recall any major failures, beat up on the henchmen and I think had closed down to 2 remaining locations when we found the villain. I do believe I got the Giant club +3 in that one for Kyra which was pretty nice.

3rd scenario which supposedly hands out spells like CANDY... (not really) Ezren actually ran into the Monk villain early, failed to beat and handwiped, and had a small discard pile buried as a result. He regrouped with the others and even found a MASS HEAL which the others blessed him up to make sure he could acquire. He then came to visit Kyra and passed off the Knowledge of the Gods. Kyra returned the favor a couple of times with Heals keeping his deck stocked. Saw and amulet of fiery fists get banished from a closed location. Kyra took the emerald codex after the win and handed her Staff of minor healing to Lini. This group is somewhat starved for item slots, only 2 spots apiece for Kyra and Lini, and Ezren is just loaded up with loot items. (Wand of enervation, sihedron medallion, he's got the snakeskin armor too cuz Kyra wears heavy armor and gets no value out of the dex bonus)

4th scenario was a doozy via the timer. Essentially having to beat 3 villains... that chewed up the clock! Never failed on a check vs. the Lamias...but just hunting them down and they were both in lower portions of a deck, the timer ran ALL THE WAY DOWN to the final turn in which we squeaked out with the win! Lini finds headband of Inspired Wisdom... now nearly all her recharges are auto-success.

And now, after a few days of not playing I setup the final scenario to play tonight... got a late start and also Daylight Savings and all.

Lini and Ezren start off in Thass Dungeon and slowly move to Thass Library. Their search for Spells slows them down especially because of the auto-end turn at library if you get a spell. Lini does find the 2nd MASS CURE!

Sajan starts at Prison while Kyra starts at Treacherous Cave. She's plenty Wise enough to move away if need be. As the wife's characters thin out the Dungeon, Sajan jumps down to help them finish off a henchmen card (the final, bottommost card) He's gone ZEN archer route and has both the Deathbane Crossbow +1, and a light Crossbow +1. Since the henchmen are undead he can dispatch them fairly easily.

Kyra eventually draws Codex and uses... gets Cure, Major Heal, and Detect Magic. Not bad... Look at my hand with another Major Heal in it... thinking NO ONE DIES this game. :) We aggressively explore and I use the Major Heals and the Detect Magic, get decent rolls on heals.

Problem is, he doesn't do quite so well closing the locations. 1 Giant is re-healed TWICE due to his inability to make the Charisma throw at the Prison. Plus hitting the darn WIZARD LOCK barrier with anyone other than Ezren is problematic. Wasted turns. The first time he had GLIBNESS cast on him, has a +1 skill boost in Charisma, so just needs to avoid NUMERO UNO to close...which of course rears its ugly head.

Over half way through the timer and only the THass Dungeon is closed. When Lini FAILS an ambush check, which we think is ok, but UH OH! IT'S MOCKMURIAN. Not at all ready, still 2 locations unoccupied. We temp close those that we can. Re-read ambush, and it says -1 on all dice for CHECKS on the encountered monster. Whelp... that INCLUDES the CON check too! So Kyra uses one of her valuable RECHARGEABLE Saranrae's to help guarantee the CON check. OK, done... wife tosses 1 card for the success instead of 1d6 for fail. First combat check... 20, She transforms STR which has +2, uses her animal 1d4+2, uses Impaler of Thorns... I think we blessed one time, so its final is (2d10+2) +(1d4+2) +(1d8+2) -5 for ambush... should be easy, right? Ok it was... I think she blew it away 30-ish. Now 2nd roll, same setup but need 24, transform, we use 1 blessing (last one, we figured we needed 1 on each check) Impaler of Thorns, etc. Final result =23! WAIT! REROLL for Impaler... whew that was close, almost forgot that. OK reroll is.... 23! AGAIN! ARG! After the transforms, bury the card at beginning, and 1 pt. damage... she is left with her CAT in hand. Ah well as least an animal... draw up, end turn. Lose 2 timer turns because of open locations and not beating him.

Finally get Prison closed, after 3rd attempt, but turns are running down. Haven't even touched Giant Cave, barely Deeper Dungeons. Nice Augury sends two monsters to bottom at Deeper Dungeons, and in exploring it we hit a blessing. Deductive reasoning kicks in and we know he's NOT here since this location normally has no blessings. We move on and around. Holy candle finally shows up... alright lets get some TURNS back! And..... 2. ah well at least we got the two turns we lost earlier back.

Kept Consecration from the last quest after we nearly ran out of time, so I'm eyeing the remaining turns and our explores keep fizzing out. Lini runs into Mockmurian, surives the CON check but then uses Holy light for one check, and then the (healed back) IMP of thorns +Poison cloud from Ezren and maybe 1 blessing. Horrible first roll and then re-roll falls short by 1 AGAIN! Sajan was unable to temp-close the Strength 10 Giant Lair with just 1 blessing, so we lost 1 timer turn again and didn't know where he was between the LAIR or the TREACHEROUS CAVE. Kyra has to stay at Deep Dungeons for temp-close but she consecrates for 3 turns. Final turn will now be Sajans.

I see Brodert QUINT in Ezren's hand and suggest wife use it just for information. She spies bottom of CAVE and THERE HE IS, she puts him as the topmost card, leaving 3 above it. Sajan goes there to thin it out, finds a SPYGLASS, and acquires. USES it, and next two cards are both boons. Hmm, ok... Ezren had just acquire MAESTER GRUMP, who lets you pull the next bane to the TOP! Which is going to be the VILLAIN! YES! WE can still WIN!

So Lini takes her turn and sets up at Giant Lair. With her animal ally 1d4+2 and STR+2 bonus she has best shot at making the Melee/Str 10 check. So now Ezren comes up to the CAVE... but sucks at CON so is going to auto-fail that. Well that's ok because the 1d6 bury cards also resets hand so might draw new spells. Already had a lightning bolt, and rolled low enough to be able to keep it, and an incendiary cloud although don't want to use it because of die penalty for fire trait. Well... she resets hand and draws very little offense, only another Incendiary cloud, but at least he only subtracts 1 per die no matter how many fire traits there are.

SO, we move to the temp-close checks. Kyra makes her Fortitude check guaranteed with a SARANRAE. Now Lini just has to roll ok... she transforms to get a d10, and tosses her animal d4... SNAKE EYES! 1+2+1+2= NOT ENOUGH the villain can escape. With only 1 turn left Sajan MIGHT just be able to explore enough to possibly find him if he runs to cave.

Ezren does his lightning bolt first, hoping to draw another attack spell. Turns on one Incendiary cloud. Plenty. Now 2nd check, adds another Incendiary cloud, but now has to fight melee. Everyone who can blesses... but it is for naught. Her slightly impressive mass of dice are just too small overall to add up to 24 very quickly, and after subtracting the fire penalty she results in a handwipe. After recharging the spells she still has enough to survive... BUT, the final turn is now stolen away by the villain as he flees.

Sajan puts his fist into the wall in frustration. "I didn't even get a final CHANCE!"

Mockmurian says "SSHHHHHHHH!!! This is a library!" as he kicks us out! Kyra shakes her head and starts chuckling as we go back to town... "We just can't take you ANYWHERE!!!"

Also, never even ran into Headless Lord or Forgefiend. Other than Ezren's final handwipe, no one really approached death. Time was just wasted in some spots and not used wisely in others. Wife was a little irritated at the length of this game due to having to work in morning, but I couldn't be happier with a failed scenario. No one died, but it proves to me this game is still no cakewalk and you will have some bad luck or bad decisions sometimes.

Hope you all enjoyed my recap... I gotta get to bed, I get one less hour of sleep tonight!

Motrax


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I invite any and all to help me create what I hope will be a simple and fair scoring method for any adventure regardless of the amount of players or the characters chosen.

While the game scenarios are cooperative play within your own group, I can see at least a little bit of a competitive nature of "this group" vs. "that group" or even "this party (Valeros, Lem, Kyra, Merisiel)" vs. "that party (Harsk, Seelah, Sajan, Seoni) and wanting to compare how they did vs. the same scenarios/adventures. I also see a potential for "organized play" tournaments based upon marathon sessions of several adventures put together by many different "parties" competing for a prize!

Ok lets gather some different pieces of info that could be used for scoring criteria. I'll start with the most essential at the top, least nearer the bottom. [x] will be the starting suggestion for scoring for this category

Did you WIN?: Yes = Set Bonus [+10]. No = Zero.

Blessing Timer turns left: This is core mechanic of the game, and the more turns left = the better you did. Faster game is usually a more successful game. But a two-player game is quite different from 6-player game, how do we make scoring system fair based upon party size? Answer may come in follow up items. [+1 per remaining blessing]

Number of closed locations: Perm Close > Temp Close, but Temp Close will happen with more players and save Timer blessings. So this can be balanced via number of players. [+3 per permanently closed location]

Boons acquired: This is easy enough to compute, and can scale to the number of players. Count your final card count (hand, draw, discard) and subtract your starting deck size. This number is how many cards your entire party gained. Divide this by number of party members, that gives you your Average Boons Gained. Note that buried cards end up counting against you, so character deaths will really be penalized here.
[+1 per Average Boon Gained]

Banes defeated: This one is harder since they go back to the box, but you can keep a tally or something. Again, divide by number of characters to get the average. I think you should get more for defeating banes than acquiring boons, as it is generally a little harder and less banes as well. Evaded summons will not count since they aren't defeated. Sorry Merisiel. +2 per Average Bane defeated]

Henchmen defeated: Perhaps overkill, but sometimes you beat the henchmen but then don't quite close the location. You should still get something for having dealt with the henchmen. [+1 per defeated location henchmen (not summoned henchmen)]

Character deaths: Not that there isn't enough of a penalty, but added incentive to run away and fight another day. [-3 per character death]

Ok, so lets see how this might score out. Just making up some numbers. 4 man party beats villain with 10 turns left. Beat 15 banes, 4 were henchmen, acquired 16 net boons. No char deaths. Closed 4/6 locations (the villain location counts as closed, so two were temp closed)

Win - 10pts.
Turns left - 10 pts.
Closed locations - 12 pts.
Boons gained (avg) - 4 pts.
Banes defeated (avg) - 7.5 pts.
Henchmen bonus - 4 pts.

Total: 47.5 points

Further thought for failed scenarios: You get your score above until you complete it with a Win, but lose 5 points for every retry.

Whew, this took longer than I thought... but what does everyone think? I want to go to some gaming CON's in the next few months and try and run some marathon sessions. Then I could score the different parties against one another. Be interesting to see how different party/character distributions affect the scoring. Luck will always be a major part though, that's just fine!

Motrax


Ok, dogslicer and dogslicer +1 can be displayed for its regular bonus, and it turns 1's into 3's and forces you to discard if that happens.

What about when you choose to discard it for the extra damage? Now that its not in your hand, that means it no longer turns 1's to 3's right?

That's how I'm playing for now, but I just relooked at one of the newer magic weapons that have a similar upgrade ability. I think heavy pick for instance, turns 6's to 7's. If I follow the same logic like the dogslicer, if i discard it for the extra dice power, does it lose the upgrade power since I don't have it out... or does it retain that ability since it doesn't say you have to discard it if it happens.

And if the latter is true... then why wouldn't the dogslicer turn 1's into 3's no matter whether you discard it or not? I mean, I know you can't discard it if you already have... but maybe thats just a redundancy?

Looking forward to everyone's thoughts!
Motrax