philosorapt0r's page

Nope, this is one of a number of ways in which you can break the game if you maneuver your remaining deck composition into the right state for 'draw a card' powers (or in this case, combination of two powers) to always give you the right card type to trigger it again.

It seems like the design philosophy (reasonably) is that if an OP loop isn't going to come up through natural/ordinary play, then they would rather minimize errata for regular players, and let the rest of us decide for ourselves that these things aren't fun and we should stop (or: that they are fun, in which case it's not really a problem).

See also: Ezren with only auto-recharge spells (infinite spells), Sword of Iomedae with Hand size 7+ and a thinned out (probably via Miracle/Time Stop/Merchant Lord tricks) 6+ Blessings of Ascension deck (infinite mythic charges + explores), draw-on-craft-check Damiel with only auto-recharge Tot Flasks + 1 potion of flying (infinite explores for anyone).

It's fair enough; once you turn on god mode, the game becomes unfun, so people won't generally keep going through the extensive maneuvers to turn it on (unless *getting there* is what they enjoy). One scenario of infinite-power Sword of Iomedae was enough for me, for instance :).

It's typically only if people stumble too easily into unbalancing their games (see: pre-errata Radillo, Alain for many folks) that things get changed to avoid it.

We get Miracle but not Wish? Explicit confirmation that Paizo hates Arcane casters! ;)

@Frencois: You already have Permanency and Contingency due to having Miracle; neither of those are above level 7 after all! That said, I disagree with your opinion that Time Stop is better than Wish, I'd take the latter all day every day. Time Stop is incredibly limited as to what you can actually accomplish in those 2-5 rounds, whereas Wish does whatever you want it to do (within reason). I'd even say you'd be able to Wish a Time Stop, but be careful with how you word it lest time gets stopped for you as opposed to everyone else...

Nothing beats the rounds of buffing / delayed-spell-casting during a maximized Time Stop.

Note to self: never play epic 3e again.

I feel that it is not normal or fun when one of the characters is much better than others and so he does multiple explores each turn while others mostly explore once a turn and keep playing blessings and cures on that character. Even if such a strategy would be more beneficial to the group as a whole, it is not fun.
...

Each player should feel that he is actively contributing to victory, not just support others. Yes, some characters are more support-oriented, I did Lem and Oloch myself, but it is not normal or nice to exclusively limit some player to supporting others. It is not good if one player says "Guys, I'm better than you, so I'll use my blessing to explore and you will play yours to support me".

This is entirely a player style question. Some players (myself included) enjoy playing 4e d&d warlords, mmo healers, moba supports, and are perfectly happy to 'actively contribute to victory' through means other than exploration (buffing, scouting, healing, card passing, movement powers, etc.). Others don't, and prefer parties with everyone played mid-range. The fact that the game has characters (or builds of characters) that are good at being self-sufficient (Merisiel), characters/builds that are good at supporting, and those acting as fast exploring and/or bane-destroying 'carries' given adequate support (see: Imrijka/Ranzak/Alain) is a *feature*, not a problem. Playing Damiel as a hyper-support for someone else's Ranzak, feeding him Potions of Heroism, Flying, and Speed spells to help the party steamroll is a fun play-style for some of us. There is nothing 'abnormal' about it, it's just a matter of taste, just as some people enjoy playing lazy warlords (who fight by granting attacks to other characters), and others loathe them.

That being said, you're entirely right that no one should feel obligated to simply maximize party efficiency if doing so requires playing in a way they find un-fun. But the only problem is the player who says "you have to do [x] for me", not the fact that characters exist for whom optimal (in terms of party success) play is a style you find un-fun. Since (as your experience shows) it is perfectly possible to win with your preferred playstyle, there's no problem with the game supporting more role-specialization as an option as well.

(As an aside on character power-level---in looking at how explorer/destroyer characters synergize with more support-minded characters enabling them, it's simply incorrect to say that the heavy-exploring character is necessarily *better*. In many cases, it is the character with the healing/scouting/buffing that is the more essential one (the cleric can keep curing any random character's blessings/allies back to achieve fast enough party exploration to win, but Ranzak can only carry with the right comrades backing him up).

He is correct. You earn your role card and power feat at the end of Adventure 4.

This seems like a gratuitously unfun way to balance things. Only getting to specialize with a role for half the campaign is a long enough wait as it is--having the coolest part of many characters be usable for less of OP than a regular path seems unnecessary, when there are so many other ways to ensure an appropriate difficulty-to-character-power ratio.

Why?

I feel like there must be some kind of trick I'm missing, because Siwar simply doesn't look like a viable character. With no weapons, no armor, and no evasion (unless/until you get the Manipulator role), she's going to just get shredded the first time she runs into a monster with no attack spell available -- and with only 3 spells and no way to keep them in her hand, that's going to be pretty likely.

Do any of you play her? How?

Playing her through the first few OP scenarios:

*Starting with two attack spells is helpful. If other party members have weapon-heavy decks, see if they'll pass off a simple dex weapon to you if they have one to spare.

*Failing having the above in hand, *aggressively* use your bard power to empty your hand before your turn. Then go to a monster-light location and explore with 0-1 cards in hand, accepting that hitting a monster = wasting an exploration.

*When possible, encourage your party to scout things out for you ahead of time.

Basically, since the thing you're bad at will empty your hand, do as much as possible to help others on their turns, and then count on others to help you through checks on yours (in order to mitigate the downside of losing combat). The Shark-Island scenario actually turned out ok for Siwar, an empty hand doesn't care about extra shark attacks.

Since the variety of available characters is (IMO) the best thing about the class decks, I'd rather other avenues be used to address this. For instance, it would be simple enough to add a scenario reward like "You may swap a [weapon/spell/etc] for an equivalent card from another class deck." Probably as one option among several, so that people playing from a single box would still have a usable reward. You could even make the same-box reward generally better, as the issue some characters run into isn't that they don't have good upgrades, but that there aren't *enough* of the cards they want.

So, here's hoping we eventually see something like:
Reward: Choose one of:
(A) Add a card of your choice from your class deck, up to the current adventure#.
(B) Add a card of your choice from another class deck, up to the current adventure# - 2.

If that's too broad, then add a bunch of restrictions (ranger can choose a rogue card; rogue can choose a bard card, bard can choose a monk card, etc.) that will help the particular characters who need this most.