nondeskript's page

Look at it this way, though. Balazar has a power that says:

When you defeat a monster and would banish it, you may add it to your hand instead.

If the monster has a power that prevents it from being banished, it doesn't still go into Balazar's hand, because you would not banish it. It can only replace the "banish" with "add it to your hand" if the banish was going to happen in the first place. In the case of Rez, if something prevents burying, you don't get to activate her power because you would not bury it. You can not replace "bury" with "discard"/"recharge" unless you could have buried it in the first place.

What makes this read as a trigger is you would, but "when". In order for "When you would do something" to apply, it has to be legal to do the something and in this case doing the something is not legal, so this is not a time when you would do it.

Triggers may not be explicitely called such in the game, but they definitely exist:

If a power says it may be used when something happens, you may use it every time that happens.

In this case, the power says it may be used when you would bury an armor for its power, which you cannot do since the bane says no.

The order of operations for this would be:

1. Bane is dealing damage
2. #1 allows you to play armor to negate that damage
3. If you are burying an armor in step 2, Rez's power triggers which allows you to discard/banish it instead.

Without going to bury an armor in #2, you never get to use Rez's power in #3. These are two completely seperate powers, unlike the Putrid Ooze thread where negating damage and changing the banish to a bury were all in the same power. And since the bane prevents you from using bury powers, it also prevents you from using Rez's power to not bury it after the fact.

I could be wrong, though. Maybe Rez's power that turns the bury into a discard/recharge happens before the monster's power that prevents you from burying, but it isn't as clear as it is in the Putrid Ooze thread where negating damage, banishing & burying are all in the same power on the same card, rather than two separate powers on two separate cards.

"When you would" sounds like a trigger to me. The trigger is burying. You can't bury, therefore no trigger, therefore no discard/recharge. The power on the armor card does not have a trigger to change the banish to a bury, so it isn't the same.

Oh I should mention that I'm often wrong and if Hawkmoon says something different, he's right 99.999% of the time.

In this case, though, I stand by my disagreement (for now). The difference with that Putrid Ooze thread is the "When you would bury an armor for its power". The Armor in question in the Putrid Ooze thread never says "When you would banish...", just "if you are proficient, you may bury instead". In this case, you never would bury because you explicitely aren't allowed to bury, therefore the move is still illegal.

I think no on three. My reasoning is that the Bane prevents you from burying/banishing armor. Raz's power allows you to take a card you were going to bury and discard/recharge it instead. But she was never going to bury an armor because it was not allowed by the Bane.

nondeskript wrote:

Unless cats are a common occurence at HPB, I used to go the same one. I loved that store.

Probably not as uncommon as one would think. Was it in Bryan, TX?

Hahaha, no, Houston area.

Yeah, we had one where I lived in Texas. With a cat. I miss that cat.

Unless cats are a common occurence at HPB, I used to go the same one. I loved that store.

There's a least one in Wrath. It's a late-adventure-deck monster that makes you bury any cards used to examine it.

Any Boons, so you wouldn't have to bury any cohorts that you used to scout it or your character/role card if you used a power on that to scout it.

It's a valid concern, but I would suspect that it is there to prevent Paizo from getting hit with an IP lawsuit if they independently come up with something substantially similar to a homebrew card.

Of course, if Paizo got purchased by some evil litigous billionaire, their original intent wouldn't prevent them from abusing the clause and either using your IP or suing you for using your IP. It's highly unlikely, but the chance of it happenng is greater than 0 (though low enough that I don't think most people would worry).

I'll throw out there that Balazar shouldn't have had a hand wipe unless you spent all of his cards helping others with their checks, since Abyssal Armies are barriers and don't deal any damage to my recollection.

We were lucky and scouted out two of them early on and spent the rest of the game getting our hands set to kill the two armies and heading over to the Sanctum with Leyrn with as many explores as possible. We got lucky and wrapped it up in one go. Only having to fight two armies and knowing where the villain was made that much easier, but armies are a bear and I won't miss them if they aren't there in the next set.

I'll just mention this because your wording could be misinterpreted:

You can't use a weapon for a Melee check unless the Weapon has a really unusual power. By default, Weapons are only used for Combat checks and most (all?) weapons do not have a Combat check to acquire.

Well, we agree on something at least :)

Related question:

If I play an ally that has the animal trait to explore, and that ally gives me a bonus on the check (Like Iconic Leryn), does that also get me the +2? I didn't actually play the ally on the check because I can still play another ally, so I don't think I get the +2, but just wanted to see if others feel differently.

Hmm. It's too late to play a card that adds to your check (that would have needed to be done earlier in the encounter), but playing this card for a different reason interacts with a location card that tells you to add 2 to your check. Nothing in the rules says that you cannot modify a check outside of the "Attempt the Roll" step. And even if it did, unless it said "Never", it would be overruled by the location telling you to add 2 to the check.

There isn't a Taking Damage step outside of the check. There is only "Take Damage, if necesary" which is explicitely part of "Attempt the check" and "Apply any effects that happen after you act" which is not part of the check.

According to Vic, cards played on "Take Damage" are played on the check. According to the location if you play an animal on the check you get +2. That resolves to a +2 being granted during the "Take Damage" step, which would logically reduce the damage taken by two.

Longshot11 wrote:

You take damage as a consequence of failing the check. While it may be argued that the Vulture adds (an irrelevant) +2 to the check, the checks has already resolved.Barring any effect that allows you to 'time travell', as Therion puts it, this bonus points don't retroactively change the result of the check.

That's the key. The check has already been resolved. And according to what Vic posted, you're in the next step. So the Vulture never is actually played on the check. It is played on the result of the check in the "Take Damage, If Necessary" step of the encounter.

According to what Vic said, the Vulture is definitely played on the check. And even if you can't retroactively succeed at the check, a +2 on the check would reduce the damage taken by 2. (possibly to 0)

I'll just mention that there are cards that explicitely let you retroactively change the results of a check (Luckstone & Greater Luckstone for example). I'm not 100% sure when those get played, whether it is in the "Attempt the roll" check or between that and the "Take damage" step.

Also, taking damage is not way past "resolving the check". It is immediately after attempting the roll, in the "Attempt the check" step of the encounter.

I could see an argument that you failed the check but take no damage, though that still leaves Schroedinger's Vulture out there simultaneously playable and unplayable.

All of this leaves me wanting to limit the ability to modify a check to the four steps of the check before you roll unless explicitly called out otherwise by the card (like the Luckstones or cards that explicitly give a re-roll with a bonus). I'd argue no +2 from the Parrot (or Vulture) at my table if asked, but it isn't that big of a deal so I'd probably let it slide if someone really wanted it.

What if I fail the check by 1 and then play a Vulture to mitigate the damage? Does that give a retroactive +2 and mean that I succeeded? Of course, then I couldn't have played the Vulutre to mitigate damage since there wouldn't have been any...

Brielle is one of my favorite examples of narrative being represented in mechanics. I love that she is bashing monsters with whatever items she has at hand. I love that after bashing a monster to death, the next monster flees in terror of this mad raging halfling.

Add in a melee character with a large hand and high deck cycling abilities... I think she may be the best melee character yet. It depends a little on her strength die, but if it is at least a d8, she's the best.

@Hawk: But do you have five of them?

Well played

True, but you can also play it outside of an encounter now this way.

Yeah, but that seems to be inferior in every way to playing it when you encounter a bane. Unless you're scouting you, generally, have no way of knowing if you will even need a cloud that turn before you encounter. And if your arcane caster has to fight something "at the start of your turn", no clouds for him in a single player game, and in a mp game he needs to be sure to cast it before the end of the previous players turn. Without the change from "end of this turn" to "end of your turn" the card would be fairly significantly nerfed, IMO.

I get why they made the change. The previous version made every encounter very cumbersome, especially in a pass & play form. But in an online MP form, I don't see how it would be much worse. Give players a few seconds to play a card or decline and then decline automatically.

Having said that, I am super excited for this and will be downloading it as soon as it releases and I hope the game is super successful and they get to support it for years with more APs and Class Deck characters. There are a lot of characters that I want to play around with in different APs, but I don't want to go through the hassle of setting up boxes just for that when I've already got a 3-player 6-character game going in WotR.

It's matched by a (sometimes) significant debuff. Since you no longer play it "When a character encounters a bane", you now have to play it either before the explore or during the encounter, meaning you can no longer use it in encounters that restrict you from playing cards with the Arcane or Attack traits. Unless you knew it was coming and played it before exploring, of course.

Oh and now you also can't play it if you are playing another spell on the check, at least according to RAW for the physical game.

Yeah, Balazar can do an infinite loop of spells, just like RotR Ezren. But, there is no Scry in WotR, so you can't really do too much with this loop without adding extra cards to your game. There is no Summoner deck yet, so you can't do this in OP (unless there is a reward I don't know about), and depending on the makeup of that deck, it could be of limited utility there as well. If you take Balazar to another set with Scry in it, you don't get a Mythic Path so some of your recharges stop being sure things (not that a d10 +6 isn't still pretty solid for a recharge). So I doubt this is a real issue that needs be addressed beyond telling a player who is sitting there recharging cards infinitely to stop being a jerk and wrap up their turn.

Also there are some banes in WotR who do things if you Examine them, so that can break the loop, but I don't recall if they are Henchman/Villain or regular Monster/Barrier cards. Probably the former.

Good review. We're about to start deck 5 but are already dreading the return of armies in deck 6 (had to temporarily drop down from 5 characters to 3 characters after failing one of the earlier army-based scenarios 3 or 4 times in a row). I will mention that, unless there is something odd about the scenario, Kyra is solid against both of those armies since her power is good against both Undead & Demons and they are both Demons. Thanks for the reviews!

It's matched by a (sometimes) significant debuff. Since you no longer play it "When a character encounters a bane", you now have to play it either before the explore or during the encounter, meaning you can no longer use it in encounters that restrict you from playing cards with the Arcane or Attack traits. Unless you knew it was coming and played it before exploring, of course.

Thanks, Vic! I figured it had just slipped through the cracks since it wasn't one of those issues that seemed to need careful deliberation :) Our Seelah will be disappointed, but I just won't tell her that I brought it back up.

Even though there are different printing of the rulebook for each adventure path, Paizo considers the "rules" one distinct thing. Which means that, other than the change in terminology from RotR to S&S, you should be able to take the latest rulebook and apply the rules to all previous adventure paths.

While that is the intent, it is not true in practice. I cannot take the current rulebook (from WotR) and use that to play S&S, since it does not have the rules for Ships & Loot in it. Those are only in the S&S rulebook, not the S&S adventure card (of course they wouldn't fit there). I'll be surprised if the rules for Mythic Paths & redeeming cards in the next set.

Having said that, I don't think this is a real issue. Yes, it is possible to miss this, but if you are missing this text on the card, you probably aren't going to look for it in the manual once you start deck 3. By that point you've finished 10-15 scenarios (or more if you've died/failed and replayed) and have a pretty good grasp on the rules.

Plus it's a good lesson to always read the cards. Otherwise, you might miss things on the Adventure Card like all locations being Abyssal at certain points in WotR or things on the Path card like Outsiders not being Outsiders at locations that have the Abyssal trait.

I was surprised to see that this card still hasn't been errataed to get the Slashing trait like Radiance. Will this get errataed?

It is what the resolution says.

Without the errata: You fail to defeat HoF and if the Grinder is not yet banished, the HoF goes there. The HoF did not care if you temp-closed it or not, as powers that trigger based on closed locations do not trigger on temp-closed locations (otherwise that scenario with the Harvester would have been nearly impossible).

Post-resolution: You fail to defeat HoF and if you temp-closed the Grinder, HoF escapes like normal instead of going to the Grinder. They modified the trigger so that the power now applies based on temp-closure.

If they wanted HoF to always go to the Grinder if undefeated, they didn't need to issue any errata.

Its kind of confusingly worded, but normally a power that said "If [LOCATION] is open" would ONLY apply if that location was not permanently closed. He's saying he wants the power on the card to apply if it is permanently closed (or banished in this case) or temporarily closed. In this case, the result of the power applying is that Heart of the Fane escapes rather than going straight to The Grinder.

Without the errata, temporarily closing The Grinder is completely pointless as Heart of the Fane would always just go straight there until you permanently close it.

Merisiel is basically impossible to kill (except for one RotR scenario), since she can just evade any encounter her hand isn't ready for. You won't win every scenario with that strategy, but you won't die.

I thought that the encounter always happened at the location the character that encountered the card is at, meaning if you encounter a monster at location A are moved from location A to location B, the encounter is now happening at location B. If that is the case, wouldn't it make the most sense to have the characters at location B be the ones who can take one of the checks?

Would this interpretation have any ramifications for characters like Harsk or Valeros that can give bonuses to characters combat checks based on whether they are or are not at the same location? I don't think it was, but looking at S&S Valeros, his sheet doesn't say whether he needs to be at the same location as the other character, the monster or the check.

Of course, more likely I'm just misremembering something... Maybe it was that the check always happens at your location and the encounter happens where you started? I don't know.

So there was a location in S&S "Whenever you fail a check against a monster, discard d4 cards from the blessings deck."

So if a person there encounters a monster with "Before you act, succeed at Wisdom 10 or you can't play attack spells", everyone has to do that check, right? Even if they don't want to play attack spells. So everyone who fails has to discard d4 cards from the blessings deck.

Would this also apply even if the other party members weren't at that location?

Actually, I don't think that would happen in this case. The wording is "before you act, do X or you may not play spells"

If that wording is accurate, you are given two options, succeed at the check or do not play spells. If you do not intend to play spells, I think you can just choose option two and not attempt the check. If, though, it said "Before you act, attempt X. If you fail you may not play spells." that would be a mandatory action. Are there cards with that wording?

I used the original insert for RotR and was quite happy with it. I got the newer insert for WotR and while I like the layout more, I did have issues with the dividers not staying in place in the far left lane (monsters/location/support cards/etc lane). After a bit of masking tape and shoving some folded up paper in the box, I'm quite happy with it. I think the box for WotR may be a millimeter or two larger than the one from RotR, but I haven't bothered to measure.

On the artist case insert, is there a place to buy a case that it fits into other than HL? Every time I see someone talking about it they say that you can get the case from HL, but I'd rather pick it up somewhere else.

I play anything with an "After [action, event, etc]" as if it has an implied "Immediately", meaning that there isn't time between the trigger and the effect to do anything else. This is only explicit in the rules for explore triggers, but I don't think it breaks anything and it makes the most sense. Otherwise, you could choose to resolve it 3 turns later as it is still "after" you reset your hand.

I don't think you can play a Merchant Lord and give away 0 cards. I certainly wouldn't allow that at my table.

I was ok with the original 3-month delay, but slowing down to one full set a year is even better. I love PACG, but my group needs to play other games every now and again to not get burned out. With 1.75 to 2 sets a year, I don't know if we would have time to play other games and keep up with the PACG release schedule since we only play 2-3 times a month, and I suspect we are fairly average in our pace.

Plus, I expect Apocrypha to eat up a nice chunk of my time as well.

I agree. The FAQ is not worded correctly for what they want, based on other things that they have said elsewhere. Staff of Minor healing is definitely supposed to be recharged before the card from your discard, for example.

Look at what the FAQ is addressing:

Revealing and displaying happen instantly. Every other action waits until you know what action it really is.

It is just intended to relate to times when there is ambiguity about how the card will be disposed of. The rules could definitely be more clear, but the FAQ should only apply when there is more than one possible disposition for the card.

I've always leaned towards the second since there is no ambiguity about what will happen with the card after it is played.

If another character was playing it, you would not set it aside. You would immediately banish the card and then process the results. If the card said "Recharge this card..." instead of "Banish this card..." you wouldn't set it aside, and Damiel effectively does a find/replace on Banish with Recharge.

You can look through your displayed, discarded, and buried cards at any time. You may not look through your character deck unless a card specifically allows it. Don’t shuffle any stack of cards unless you’re instructed to.

The card doesn't tell you to look through or shuffle your deck, so you don't get to look through or shuffle your deck. You can argue that the wording allows you to discard a card from the bottom or middle of the deck, but we all know it doesn't.

I assumed the organizer would need to light the card on fire. Very disappointed by this ruling.

/s

This isn't broken because it, at best, makes succeeded at a single check per round easy. This is not a game shattering thing. It doesn't help with cards with multiple checks or checks before you act, or the closing check once you defeat a henchman.

Oloch is a strong support character and, in my experience, a two character game with a strong support character is generally not very difficult. This is because the lack of pressure to explore from the blessing deck allows the support character to use all of her resources to make sure the other character never or nearly never fails. Oloch, Lem, Alahazra, Feiya are good examples of these types of characters. In fact, if you think Oloch makes a two character game easy, try it with Alahazra. With only 4 locations, you'll always know exactly what cards you're going to hit and never have to worry about any resources being wasted. This isn't a broken power, it's just a very good power.

I don't think the fact that a character with the right hand (all weapons and/or blessings) and power feats can sometimes make a single check per round a gimme is "completely broken". If you want to see completely broken, go look at pre-errata Radillo, who could take never-ending turns. Or pre-errata Damiel who could could recharge potions that he failed to acquire. This is just a useful power and is offset by requiring multiple checks during a single encounter.

During setup, my group used to sort all the locations by number of banes, so the most difficult locations were to one side and the easiest to the other. Looks like I'll be going back to doing that for at least one adventure. Makes keeping track of which locations have the most banes somewhat easier once the location cards get moved.

Yes, it can. In S&S the Riptide Grindylow was needed throughout the game if you were playing with promos (both Owlbeartross and Goblin Weidling needed it). You see much more reference of AD1 cards when it comes to locations though as opposed to henchmen.

I follow a system similar to nondeskript's where I purge out AD 2-5 as I'm done with them entirely (henchmen, villains, locations, and cohorts). Instead of keeping them in the slot though, I just shove them into the area where the empty boxes would normally go (same spot I put all of the removed from game cards). Since I sleeve all of my cards, this is the only way I can get everything to actually mostly fit in its appropriate slot in the stock insert (blessings are the #1 issue due to how infrequently they get RFGed, followed by loot).

I wasn't considering Promo's summoning things. That is fairly rare, though.

I'll also state that I haven't finished S&S, but I know for a fact that in RotR you never needed any Deck 1 Locations/Villains/Henchmen post-Adventure 1. The only exceptions that I can recall without going through the box is the Deck 1 Barrier that summons a Goblin Henchman and Gandethus (aka the best ally evar) summoning a Sandpoint Devil 1/12 times you play him (but soooo rarely... it will never happen... goooo fooor ittttt)

That would be a valid interpretation, but I don't think they interpret it that way. (Not trying to speak for LSG and Mike can tell me to shut up if I'm wrong :) ) Only B/C cards will be required in future adventures. That is one of the reasons Khorramzadeh is a B/C cards but isn't used until 1.

I did that in my first play through of RotR, but changed after I learned about the Afghanistan Rule. Now, I do a variation on that for all alphabetized cards (Location, Henchmen, Cohort, Villain).

Since I know that once I start deck 2 I won't need any deck 1 cards of these types anymore, I put them to the back. I then put the Deck 2 cards in the front alphabetized, since I will likely need all of these at some point over the next 5 scenarios. Then behind them go all the B/C Henchman, then the 1 Henchman. When we start deck 3, we move the deck 2 cards back behind the ones, so the box goes 3-B/C-1-2. Etc etc.

The only time I might need any of the cards from the back of the stack is for barriers or monsters that summon henchmen from the same deck. For that, the first time we a bane or location forces me to summon a card, I set it to the side so that we have it handy going forward. At the end of the adventure, I take those cards and put away the Servitor Demon and any cards that are from the deck we just finished that were only summoned by locations (I think Mongrel Traitor is an example of that, since it is only summoned by Mongrel Village) since we won't have to summon them in the next adventure.

It sounds way more complicated than "Put them in alphabetical order", but once you have 6 decks worth of Henchmen, Locations and Villains it helps you find the ones you need much faster, since you won't need any of the ones from decks 1 - 5.

If I were setting up a box for Guild play, though, I would just do standard alphabetization, since I don't think the Afghanistan Rule applies in that design space.

The problem with that is:

Each player may activate any power no more than once during each step, other than cards that can be used each time something particular happens.

All of that damage is happening in the "Resolve the Encounter" step, so you can only use the power once, even though you are taking multiple sets of damage. Compare to Oloch from S&S:

□ When another character at your location is dealt damage, you may reveal an armor to reduce that damage by 1; you may instead discard that armor to reduce the damage by 2 (□ 3) (□ 4)

Since that has a specific trigger (When another character at your location is dealt damage) you can do it every time that happens, even during a single step. Enora's power has an implicit trigger, but not an explicit trigger. Without an explicit trigger it can only be used once.

Enora might also be able to save the day here, depending on what power feats she's taken.

Discard a spell to reduce Cold or Fire (*Acid, Electricy, or Force) damage dealt to you (*or a character at your location) to 0.

If nothing else, she might be able to take the big hits so everyone can keep some cards instead of a complete handwipe.

Can she use that power multiple times during a check, though? The rules limit you to using a specific power once per check, with an exception for powers that say they may be used "when something happens", which this power does not say. If it were worded, "When you (□ or a character at your location) takes Cold or Fire (□ or Acid, Electricity, or Force) damage, discard a spell to reduce the damage to 0" it would work, but as worded you can only use it for one of the 4 damage rolls.

Winged Mounts in Wrath let Alain hit multiple locations in one turn. My memory of skull and shackles is that Ranzak tended to burn through single locations and before he needed to catch his breath.

That does require encountering and acquiring flying mounts, at least. It gets worse than that:

□ On your turn, discard a card that has the Mount trait (□ or put it on the top of your deck) to move to another location and examine the top card of that location deck. If it is a monster, you may encounter it.

So once he gets a second power feat on his role card, all mounts are flying mounts. That, I think, is what takes Alain from Ranzak/Imrijka explore monster into "Is this even fun anymore?" territory. But I do not speak from experience.