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Ok, with AD4 under her belt, Imrijka is here to give an update on how the Wandering Judge is the most powerful tool in the game for trivializing the blessing clock.

Now, you might be thinking, "Imrijka? You mean the second-best ranged-divine hybrid in WotR? The half-orc who can fight a dozen monsters in a row in theory, but whose base combat stats are low enough that part of you thinks it'd be safer just letting Alain lance them one by one? I guess she has the second most exciting hat in WotR, after that summoner guy."
Bear with me.

Even pre-role, Imrijka is highly skilled at burning through dangerous locations before the clock can become a factor. While her base values are just OK, once you tack on her extra d4 (which works against all those nasty pre-combat checks, don't forget!), charges from a mythic path, Flames of the Faithful on some turns(more scaling!), and ideally a Steal Soul (DON'T LISTEN TO THE WIZARD YOU NEED IT MORE TO HUNT EEVVIILLL), and/or some assistance from a succubus, she can cut a mean swath through a long list of monsters, often without needing to roll. Don't forget that you can use melee weapons almost as well as ranged, so don't be afraid to grab your share of the swords and polearms. Every monster you kill is a chance at a free explore, so make your big turns count, and be sure to cycle away your vast armory of weapons so they don't slow you down. Remember, you are the Ranzak of killing. In a good way.

Then comes Wandering Judge, and things get interesting.
(Disclaimer: Cold Iron Warden is a more-than-solid role with a lot of good options---putting barriers on the bottom of locations, recharging blessings, even more effective evil-hunting---but it basically plays fair, and I didn't take it, so I'll be ignoring it after this.)

Specifically, then comes this power:
"[] When you play a blessing that matches the top card of the blessings discard pile, you may shuffle the top card of the blessings discard pile into the blessings deck."

Now, if you're remembering the built-in power of most non-basic blessings to recharge when they match the current blessing, you're probably thinking "oh, that's nice, that should maybe come up a few times a game, I'll grab that after I drop three feats into being a Harsk copycat."

Now realize that this works with Blessings of Ascension. Which are half the blessings in the deck as of AD4 [they would be slightly less, but you should make sure your fellow party members stock up on other kinds, which brings it back up again. In a larger game, the ratio only gets better the more blessings are pulled out of the pool]. If you max Imrijka's blessing slots, carry 3+ Blessings of Ascension, and carry singletons of blessings that others in your party don't carry (preferably the corrupt ones like Shax & Abraxas that you can play whenever [no Deskari for this plan], since they have more copies[6] in the base set than the random non-corrupt ones).

Remember how great the Holy Candle was in RotR? Imrijka is made of Holy Candles.
Running through AD4 my Wandering Judge matched her way to this many extra turns for the party ... (all 3p. More players gives you a better ratio of favorable matches, but fewer chances to refill your hand.)
4-1: 6 extra turns, scenario ended with 11 blessings in the discard.
4-2: 7 extra turns (again, around half the blessings left)
4-3: 12 extra turns (intentionally using nearly the full clock to shop at the marketplace/have time to hit the villain multiple times)
4-4: only 3 extra turns, as scenario finished in no time with 4 in the discard (good henchmen luck)
4-5: 8 extra turns (about half blessings remaining)

In short, if you want a blessing deck that's reliably over 40 deep, Imrijka is the answer.

*How this works:
1) Build a deck that becomes streamlined in play: the more non-blessing cards you draw, the fewer extra turns you'll get. Cards that display, bury, or otherwise don't end up back in your deck are what you want (Steal Soul, Banner of Valor, Mysterious Disk, Javelin of Lightning, etc.). Bring a Mastiff along, and use it to draw cards like you have a problem.

2) If you draw/acquire cards that don't cycle, pitch 'em! Use your base power to cycle away excess ranged weapons if they don't have built in recharge options. If you keep resetting with more non-blessings than a weapon and an armor sitting in your hand, discard more.

3) Proper feats: Max your blessing slots. Max your hand-size. (Take enough spells to support your monster-killing side, but you have enough weapons already.) If other party members can assist (bonus card-draw from Arue's heal; an extra blessing or two handed off on occasion), that's nice, but isn't essential.

4) Hold your Blessings of Ascension until a match comes up whenever possible.

5) Have heavy healing in the party. When your discard pile builds up 3-4 blessings, you need those to be shuffled back in ASAP. Imrijka can carry at least 1 heal herself, but someone like Arueshalae (Redeemed), Oloch, various versions of Kyra/Seelah, or just anyone with a pile of Cures can keep you going. Don't stress about giving up explorations to heal (like with Pillar of Life), as you should have more time to spare than you're used to.

*Why you might want to do this:
1) Security: Avoid losing to the clock running out, and equally avoid losing/dying because you had to run into a dangerous spot not fully prepared. Use extra turns to heal/set up hands more than usual, and reap the rewards.

2) Time for scouting: Any party with an Adowyn, a Lancer Alain (using his move-around-power), an Alahazra, or any form of Mythic Archmage can turn time into knowledge. That 5-charge 'scout a location' becomes much more appealing for frequent use if the party can afford to take off several rounds for recovering charges with Blessings of Ascension and party healing resources.

3) Endless farming: If you hit a henchman while a location is still full of loot, don't worry about closing it now, as you've got plenty of time! Even better are locations with closing requirements involving acquiring a boon (Armory/Marketplace), as you can choose to fail them repeatedly (just one turn each time!) to keep drawing at it until you find something you want.

4) Revenge! Do you remember running out of time during Best Served Cold, Bizarre Love Triangle, or the Toll of the Bell? Never again will the game designers challenge you in that particular way! Not While Imrijka still draws breath(or at least, draws blessings)!

TL;DR: Match Blessings of Ascension with Wandering Judge Imrijka. Laugh. Then laugh some more.

One concern people have raised over a character that explores very fast (like Lancer Alain) is that this leads to 'trivializing the blessing deck'.

Now, in my current S&S playthrough, I have a party that has achieved a very high rate of exploration (through a heavy-healing WotR Kyra using piles of cure/holy feast to put tons of allies back into people's hands). As a result, I haven't had to worry at all about losing scenarios due to lack of time. This hasn't made the blessing deck irrelevant, though, because Skull & Shackles has the ship mechanic to turn extra blessing turns into valuable resources, either as additional dice, or (what I've been going with most recently) additional shots at more/better loot (specifically, using the Come What May to get rid of basic/elite plunder while digging for the good stuff, but in earlier ADs I used the Merchantman to fish for whatever card type had the most important upgrades). I'm still encouraged to burn through location decks as quickly as possible, because having turns left over is rewarded.

In other sets, the same situation occurs whenever there is a location that can be farmed, like the armory in WotR, where you can leave it empty, and then spend turns looking at new cards to potentially acquire with its closing method, until you find something suitable (or run too low on turns).

So, 'blessing deck is trivialized' can be avoided as a problem for fun whenever there is something that uses the blessing deck as a resource. Should we hope for new characters/boons that have 'discard the top/top x card(s) from the blessing deck to ____', so that parties that can explore too fast still have a reason to care about the blessing deck?

WotR Kyra has a power that applies when she plays healing boons, that first puts healed armors (/allies) into the healed character's hand, and has an upgrade for 'then you may recharge the boon'.

Timing-wise, how does this interact with healing boons that say to banish/bury them to heal someone (potion of healing, crystal of healing hands)? Does it mean Kyra gets to recharge them instead of burying/banishing, or are they buried/banished first, and so no longer around for her to recharge them (unlike, say, a spell with a recharge check, which waits on that check before discarding)?

[Just need to know before deciding how to compose a Siwar-Kyra-X 'repeatedly play the bury/banish allies as many times as possible' gimmick party, aka 'save us Belthis Loumis, you're our only hope!'.]

Two related questions (and a more general query):

1) If a card (or other effect) like Sacred Prism allows you to reshuffle (x) cards from your discards, without specifying that they are random (the way cure does), does that mean you get to choose which cards?

2) If a card like Blood of Eustoyriax lets you bury (x) cards from your deck, without specifying that they are the top cards (the way something like Carrion Golem does), does that mean you get to choose which cards?

More broadly, if some feature (cards being chosen randomly, or off the top of your deck, etc.) is called out on certain cards, should we assume that things only work that way when it is specifically called out, or are there default assumptions for how to interact with each game area (hand/discards/displayed/deck/box) that are sometimes spelled out for clarity, but will sometimes left off for space/formatting reasons?

One possible suggestion for increased clarity: if something is reminder-text, rather than necessary rules text, you could use slightly different formatting (italics, parentheses) the way MtG does to make that clear.

Hello,
I'd like to cancel my Adventure Card Game subscription for the time being (need to finish S&S before starting the next path).

Thanks!

Discussion of Tontelizi, who has some ally related powers, but has a low cap on how many allies he can hold in his deck (an issue that can be mitigated if other party members are willing to had off some of their allies every game), raises a few questions:

1) To what extent do you like to play in ways that help other characters or improve overall chances at victory, but weaken or reduce the game presence of your own character in the process--- e.g. giving away cards, constructing one's deck to include cards specifically to enable other characters (like Call Weapon on weaponless casters), using all your cures on Ranzak so he ends up exploring vastly more than you, carrying extra potions in your deck just to give to to Damiel every game, etc.?

2) What degree of cooperation should the designers balance the game around? A perfect party hydra of selfless coordination, as will mostly arise in solo play (where it doesn't matter to anyone's fun if Oloch never explores, only heals and gives Ranzak boosts every round), more natural social play where each player wants a reasonable share of the game time to involve their character *doing stuff*, or something in between?

For my part, I lean toward the party hydra model, but I also play a decent proportion of my games with characters who benefit from that as solo games. I wouldn't mind if their were some elegant official methods of raising or lowering difficulty to compensate for stronger/weaker parties (and help address the shifting difficulty from the snowball effect of strong parties having an easier time getting stronger, while weaker parties have to focus more on winning, and have less slack to try for extra loot).

With Goblin Pegleg forcing you to reroll any successful combat check with it, a previously-cornercase question now is more relevant (as it could come up every combat for Jirelle):

If a power allows you to reroll 1-2 dice, and then you must use the second result (Jirelle's power), does a card (a monster such as Crab Swarm, or a weapon like Goblin Pegleg) that usually requires a reroll on success still trigger a reroll if you have already rerolled on that check? Or does 'must use the second result' preclude all further rerolls (barring things higher up the Golden-Rule chain)?

(Previous thread on rerolling: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rfpo?Rerolling)

So, seeing that our OP characters are going to have to survive an entire scenario at Shark Island, now seems like a good time to brainstorm about which characters seem like good bets for the OP environment (slower but customizable upgrades from the fixed class deck pool, possibly-random party members, occasional murder vats of sharks), and which characters look better suited for regular play (RotR, S&S, or even Wrath of the Righteous for the odd angel-hunter).

Thoughts on a few characters:
*Zarlova, as a Wisdom-based pure caster, is great in S&S. Not only is a high wisdom valuable for fighting ships, but Besmara's Tricorne is just amazing on her.

*Siwar, starting with a d4 strength and 0 weapons, really wants a party that can work with her to team up, hopefully pass off a spare dex weapon (in early scenarios), and be able to handle extra encounters (if you want to grab the Ranzak power post-role). Bringing her to store-based OP, where you may get a team with characters who want to work solo (Wu Shen, Merisiel) and may or may not have ways to mitigate your weaknesses seems dicey. Also, sharks.

*Casters don't have to compete with other casters for specific spells anymore. Now, anyone who has access to Divine and a few spell slots (Arabundi, Lesath/Harsk eventually) may be a bit better off than in regular play, because they have their own personal supply of Cures/whatever.
This also opens the door up to planned OP parties with super-heavy healing capabilities (do any strategies open up if everyone in the party is packing some number of Cures? How much is too much?).

*Characters who improve party loot (Transmog Ezren, Radillo) seem a little more exciting outside OP, as the upgrade rules mean that you get less upside from scenarios where you get more good loot than #characters.

*Characters who care about the adventure deck# of their cards (Arcane Pretener Flenta, Tactician Valeros, Puppet Master Radillo, Feiya though she's not OP-legal at the moment) have a much higher cap in non-OP play, where a cooperative party can quickly funnel as many upgrades as they can find to that character. OTOH, in OP, you're guaranteed that the high-deck# cards are suitable to your class to begin with.

With ship movement mechanics in S&S making it easier to start your turn at the same location as another character, I'm curious which characters people think benefit the most from the addition (or subtraction!) of particular cards or card types (or just more/fewer cards period).

A collection of random thoughts:

*Slow-cycling, low-hand-size characters (Oloch, Valeros, etc) don't really care if their deck is a few cards smaller than usual---they aren't really worried about dying. Passing off general-purpose cards (like allies) to high-hand-size squishies (Damiel, Feiya, etc) gives them a buffer for more aggressive play without being close to death.
*In particular, shifting an armor from such a deck with too many (Val) to someone with none and a big enough hand size to hold it more comfortably (like Alhazra) seems like a net improvement. This might be a reason for Alhazra to pick up armor proficiency even if it isn't worth spending a card feat on keeping any herself. (Note that the question of 'is armor a good card type' is irrelevant---all that matters is 'what is the best distribution of the armor this party already has?')

*Handing off a weapon, especially on turn one, can greatly assist characters who start off with too few (or zero, in the case of someone like Meliski) weapons and none in hand. Depending on the level of group support, some weaponless casters might do ok using a consistent loaner weapon in lieu of packing (as many) attack spells----Feiya in a team-up group with some combo of Valeros/Damiel/Lem, for instance.
*If this is your plan, Call Weapon might be worth a spot in your deck, to more consistently dig your preferred weapon out of a buddy's deck.

*Anyone with a 'look at the [top/bottom] card of your deck, if it is an [x], put it in you hand/recharge it/etc' type power benefits significantly from receiving more of those cards, and purging their deck of everything else.
*Since a single off-type card blocks the cycling whenever it ends up on top, the benefit increases the closer you can get your deck to fully-tuned. Are the benefits of a smooth-flowing tuned-Dominion-deck worth running things like Phantasmal Minion to set up?
*This is also a good reason to spec into Alhazra's power to let someone recharge the top card on their character deck.

*Is Smuggler-Merisiel's power to let other characters give her any number of cards from their hand a holy grail (or Chapel-equivalent) for this sort of strategy? If turn order is A, B, Merisiel, then A & B can stick together and have A sail with B to Merisiel's spot whenever B has cards to give away (and then B can immediately after giving cards away sail back away to let Merisiel be alone at her preferred location in peace).

*A related question: what's the best way to *safely* make use of a crazy-cycling, large-hand-size, small-deck-size character? Melindra seems like a good choice (just evade anything that might kill you). Shield of Gorum Oloch might work as an escort who can prevent damage/heal as needed. Depending on how many achievable-craft-check-requiring items there are, a Grenadier-Damiel with his draw-on-craft-check power might be able to draw a lot of extra cards while having enough sources of healing to not worry about dying (Tot flask in particular becomes a ridiculous tutor+draw with a near-full-item deck).

For Radillo's power to put a spell from the bottom of her deck to the top of her deck (or her hand) after playing an Arcane spell, does this happen before or after she attempts to recharge the spell she is playing?

That is, is the recharge check part of 'playing an arcane spell', or is it something else that occurs only after things triggered by playing the spell (such as Radillo's power) are resolved?