The "instead" is implied per the golden rules. The rulebook says that defeated banes are banished. The scenario card says to reload it on the location. This is conflicting information (the rulebook says do one thing, the card says do something else). Per the golden rules, the card overrides the rulebook. It does not need to use the word "instead" because the conflict can be resolved without it and the PACG designers have typically not used extra words when unnecessary.

So, the ship is reloaded as part of being defeated; this happens during the encounter (in the "Resolve the Encounter" step of the encounter). Then you get to the part where you may attempt to close. If you choose to do so, the ship is still part of the location deck and thus would be banished by being closed. Attempting to permanently close locations happens during the encounter as well, timing-wise.

Edit: You can certainly interpret it the other way (as not a conflict that the golden rules resolve, but rather an instruction of "fetch the banished Enemy Ship and reload it on the location" -- since the bane would be banished simply by being defeated in such a case). However, I feel the intent behind this scenario is that you are supposed to keep all of them open (the final scenario in each adventure tends to be a difficulty spike, and many of the other henchmen shuffle into other open locations if undefeated), so anything that allows you to close while keeping a ship around feels unintentional.

If multiple things happen "immediately" then you choose the order you resolve them in.

That said, if the game doesn’t specify an order for things, you decide the order.

Note that any effects that grant an additional exploration must be taken "immediately" and implicitly have that timing.

If a card grants you an additional exploration, after you finish what you are doing, you must immediately use that exploration or forfeit it.

For Brother Tyler's aside, the rule is the opposite: you can never (attempt to) close a location that you are not in.

You can never attempt to close a location that is temporarily or permanently closed, or that your character isn’t at.

They did not forget the errata because the card is worded as intended. Just because something applied in RotR doesn't mean that's the only way it can be applied moving forwards; later sets introduced additional mechanics and additional things that can spread around the party.

Blood Hag hurts everyone if defeated and goes after the party's allies first. This happens outside of the check (indeed a card is never "defeated" or "undefeated" during a check, because determining its defeated status is a later step of the encounter).

Not a contradiction, but some unfortunately ambiguous wording. "Set them aside while you process their effects" really means "Don't start doing anything until you fully read the card and any other powers elsewhere that trigger when you play the card."

As an example where this is relevant, consider Potion of Healing alongside Damiel:

Banish this card to allow a character at your location to shuffle 1d4 random cards from his discard pile into his deck.

When you play a card that has the Alchemical trait and would banish it, you may recharge it instead.

The "set aside" rule exists so that you fully read all of the powers in effect right now and realize that instead of banishing the potion, you could choose to recharge it instead. Once you make that choice, you then proceed to follow the instructions on the potion in the order they are written (banish/recharge first, then heal someone).

For Staff of Minor Healing, it works largely the same way. First see if there are any other powers that trigger or modify playing the Staff (or healing someone) in any way. Then once you've got that mentally sorted out, start following the instructions on the Staff in the order they are written. The full sequence (assuming there are no other powers in play modifying the Staff of Minor Healing) are as follows:

1. Set aside Staff of Minor Healing
2. Double-check that nothing messes with you playing it (assuming for this example that there is indeed nothing else)
3. Recharge Staff of Minor Healing
4. Choose a local character
5. That chosen character recharges a random card from their discard pile

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That all sounds very annoying and I would probably rule that people can play The Desert, Lady of Mysteries, Djinn, etc,

during an encounter anyway if that character would have reasonably thought to have used it before the encounter because of how bogged down the game can get with power upkeep (sometimes we start our turn before the previous player has finished EoT/Recovery/Reset because of how long some sessions can drag on for) which isn't necessarily a flaw with the game but because I am not playing with hyperefficient rules-minded players who don't always remember every situation their cards can and can't be used in. But it's good to know in general how the RAW is supposed to work, and that's cool how scourge healing interacts with the check like that.

It's a reasonable house rule to speed up gameplay, but I would suggest that if you use that house rule, that you play it exactly as you worded the reasoning: make those plays retroactively take place before the encounter instead of during it. If someone draws a card that provides local-only support and you're like "well shoot if I knew that before I explored I would've played The Desert to bring you over here" then retroactively say that you played The Desert before exploring to move them. Said play wouldn't count as your blessing during the encounter step or check, and any powers that interact with cards being played during an encounter or check wouldn't interact with you playing The Desert (because it was played "before").

That way you can have the flow/speed you desire without introducing mind-bending corner cases. There are some very good reasons why moving during an encounter is generally not allowed, particularly if the character doing the encounter is the one moving. Other cards, if allowed to be played during encounters when they are not meant to be, may cause interactions with characters to allow for game-breaking things like infinite free additional explorations or examining every card in every location.

The other reason to not allow free play during encounters themselves is the ability to "cheese" damage by playing a bunch of unrelated cards to empty your hand, knowing that they will be potentially recharged instead of discarded (e.g. recovery checks) if you come across something you're pretty sure you won't win against.

If you want a good "rule of thumb" for whether you can play a card during a check, here it is:

If I play this card and then immediately roll the dice, have my chances of success changed? If yes, you can play the card, if no, you cannot.

The rule of thumb above covers 99% of things you'll actually care about doing during a check (the other 1% is very esoteric: you're allowed to add/remove traits from a check even if there are no abilities that care about the traits you are adding/removing. I think in all of the years I've played this game I've exploited this a grand total of twice and it was very much for "cheese" to empty my hand faster to avoid end-of-turn discards from wildcards/scourges)

The "rule of thumb" for whether you can play a card during an encounter step (but outside of a check) is a bit different, and easier. The cards you can play outside of a check but still during an encounter need to directly relate to that step somehow, which should be obvious just by looking at the card. For example, you can play armor to reduce damage if you're suffering damage, or you can play a card that lets you evade if you're in the evasion step, or you can play a card that lets you ignore before/after acting effects if the bane has any such effects.

The card you play must directly impact the check itself, either by adding/removing traits, adding/removing dice or modifiers, adjusting the check’s difficulty, or automatically succeeding at the check. Those are the only* 4 things that count as affecting the check (* I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything). If the card requires a follow-up action to do one of those things (whether by you or someone else), or the card is unrelated to any of those things, then it cannot be played on a check.

RULES: AFFECTING THE SITUATION

In some situations, you are limited to playing cards or using powers
that affect or otherwise relate to the current situation. In these
cases, the things you do cannot require anyone to do something
else for your action to be meaningful—the things you do must
directly affect the situation. For example, let’s say that a character
is attempting a check using a power that adds 1 to her check for
each blessing in her hand, and a second character has a power that
allows him to give the first character a card. He could give her a
blessing, because that doesn’t require any other action to affect the
check. But he could not give her a card that can be played to draw
a blessing from the vault, because she would have to do something
else—in this case, play the card he gave her—to affect the check.

To go over the examples:

There are some exceptions. For example, the location Trail has the power “The difficulty of checks to defeat is increased by the number of distant characters.” If you are at the Trail, making a check to defeat a bane, and at least one other character is distant, then you can play The Desert to move a distant character to the Trail since the act of moving itself will cause the difficulty of the check to change with no further follow-up actions needed.

Cards can be played:
1. Without limitation in between steps of a turn as long as it directly affects the situation
2. During an encounter, check, or when suffering damage: whenever it directly affects the situation and no more than one card of each type is played (not counting those played “freely”). Whipstitch raises a salient point of you being allowed to display and immediately use an armor card due to that only counting as playing it once.
3. During a step of a turn but outside of an encounter/check/damage only when the card has explicit timing allowing you to play it at that time.

Cards can never be played:
1. Between turns
2. Between steps of an encounter

Remember that cards can only ever be played if they affect the situation. So even if you’re between steps of a turn you can’t play a card that wouldn’t do anything. For example, no playing Cure on yourself when you have no cards in your discards and no scourges that can be removed in place of healing.

Yup. With Core rules you gotta recharge a card for Vampire for each character power used, since using a character power now counts as playing your character card.

I think there may have been a post about this but was probably buried in a thread about Core rule changes or about a scenario in which Vampire appears rather than a thread about Vampire itself. In any case it’s in another spot now so should be hopefully easier to search ;)

skizzerz wrote:

The wording on the Ring “You may play another Item on this check” is irrelevant and does not apply because you aren’t making a check at the time—you’re taking damage.

That said, see this post. When taking multiple instances of damage, your “played cards” are effectively reset for each of those instances, so you can reveal the same ring for both of them to reduce each instance by 2.

I don't believe that would apply here, as the damage is "and" not "then" - so the 1 Combat and 1 Cold are simultaneous, not one after the other. Having said that, the Sihedron ring reduces all damage by 2 so it would cover the whole thing.

I’d be willing to chalk that up more to a wording difference that was cleaned up since RotR than anything intentional, and therefore still apply the ruling from the linked post. If the intent is for suffering damage to absolve you of per-step limits for each damage effect, then making it such that certain damage effects are “combined” while others are not runs counter to that intent. RotR furthermore had very unrefined templating due to being the very first set.

Revealed isn’t a state. You show it to the other players to prove you have the card, then immediately put it back in your hand. Therefore it’s still in your hand for any powers that care about what cards may be in your hand. So, yes, you can shuffle the Robes into your deck or discard it to fetch another Item if you’d like.

The wording on the Ring “You may play another Item on this check” is irrelevant and does not apply because you aren’t making a check at the time—you’re taking damage.

That said, see this post. When taking multiple instances of damage, your “played cards” are effectively reset for each of those instances, so you can reveal the same ring for both of them to reduce each instance by 2.

For example, if my deck needs 6 items but I only have 5 (banished 1 during the scenario and didn't acquire any new items) - then I'm allowed to take an item directly from the box (with some restrictions).

Not quite. If you have banished a card and nobody has acquired excess cards of that type (or earned excess cards of that type as rewards), then you can fetch one from the box. In your example, if someone else has an extra Item beyond what they need for their own deck, you are required to take that one instead of fetching something you like from the box.

If you still have holes in your deck after that, then you fetch from the box. Location decks aren’t put away yet by the time you rebuild, so those cards are indeed not part of the box yet. But also it’s such a minor thing that I don’t think anyone would mind if you played it the other way.

“Next, rebuild your character deck (see Between Games below). Finally, put any remaining cards back in the box.” (MM rulebook p19)

“Then put all non-boons back in the vault. Next, rebuild your deck (see Rebuilding on page 17). Finally, put any remaining cards back in the vault.” (Core rulebook p16)

Whoa, ninja'd by Skizzerz, and with an opposite answer. ymmv apparently.

Seems that this changed as part of Core. So if you're playing with the old rulebook (the one I quoted), it's after temp closes. If you're playing with Core rules, it's before guarding. I was quoting pre-Core rules since this was about RotR and mapping all of the old cards to Core requires a fair amount of mental effort that some people may find reduces their enjoyment of the game.

So, we're both right, depending on circumstance :)

Same end result, so why does the ordering matter? Technically you would need to play Sihedron Ring first though.

(In Core, with the introduction of "freely", the order of play no longer matters. If you're playing an older set with Core rules the ring would be mapped to say "freely" instead and the ordering wouldn't matter)

They are returned to the box. You do not rebuild your decks using any cards remaining in locations at the end of the game -- only cards you've acquired during the course of play.

Do yourself a favor and grab the PDF of the Mummy's Mask rulebook. There's some irrelevant stuff if you're playing RotR but the core rules are the same and it's the most refined version of them. I'll be quoting the villain encounter ordering from that:

1. Attempt to Temporarily Close Open Locations.
2. Encounter the Villain.
3. If You Defeat the Villain, Close the Villain’s Location.
4. Check to See Whether the Villain Escapes.
5. If the Villain Has Nowhere to Escape to, You Win!

Incendiary Cloud (if you're trying to use it against the villain) would be played in step 2, after all attempts to temporarily close locations have been resolved.

I interpreted your choice A as "you only get to banish the bane if you also banish the allies", which is false because you banish the bane while keeping the allies should you defeat it (and there is no choice in the matter there, the bane is always banished if defeated). Hence why I said what I did.

Anyway, glad it finally made sense to you :). You'll find similar text on any other banes with the Cache trait, e.g. treasure chests. If you beat them, you get some goodies, but if you don't you may be able to try again at the cost of burning more explores. And if you don't care about the treasure, you can ignore it and move on (aka banish it). They still count as undefeated even in that case, though, and some scenario or location powers may care when banes are "undefeated" or "not defeated" (two subtly different things because of evasion).

For grammar asides, you should pretty much always interpret the cards in the imperative sense. If the game offers a choice, it will always explicitly say that (via words like "choose", "may", or "or"). If it's not explicit that a choice is involved, there isn't a choice and you need to follow exactly what is written on the card. There will likely be grammatical ambiguities on other cards as well (somewhat unavoidable given English as a language combined with very limited space for additional words on a physical card and the choice the PACG designers made in omitting iconography), but that advice should help you figure out the correct interpretation.

New here. First post. I know this thread is old. Just starting Pathfinder of any kind (WOTR). Son & I ran into this card during our starter scenario. I'm stuck on the same thing as the OP and his Con-mates. It's as if RC assuming I know something that I just don't yet.

Welcome to the game! I'll walk through the logic of the card to hopefully help you better understand it. None of your choices A-D are correct.

First, let's quote the card:

Each character draws from the box a random ally that lists Diplomacy in its check to acquire and attempts to acquire it. If all characters succeed, this barrier is defeated. If any character fails, this barrier is undefeated; banish all the allies, and you may banish this barrier.

Now, let's step through the actions it's asking us to take:

1. "Each character draws from the box a random ally that lists Diplomacy in its check to acquire and attempts to acquire it." This is slightly unusual wording; the words "summon and acquire" would normally be used here, but this means the same thing for all practical purposes. Each character grabs such an ally from the box and begins a new encounter with it. Resolve all of these encounters before moving on with Rallying Cry. If a character succeeds at all checks/requirements to acquire the ally, they add it to their hand. Otherwise, that ally is banished (just like a normal boon encounter).

2. "If all characters succeed, this barrier is defeated." If every character succeeded at acquiring their ally, Rallying Cry is defeated and banished (because you banish defeated banes). You keep all of the allies, and the encounter is over.

3. "If any character fails, this barrier is undefeated; banish all the allies, and you may banish this barrier." If at least one character failed to acquire their ally, every ally drawn by Rallying Cry is banished (so people who succeeded need to get rid of theirs as well). AKA nobody keeps any allies if at least one person failed. Rallying Cry itself is undefeated. Normally, undefeated banes are shuffled back into the location. However, you have the option of banishing the undefeated Rallying Cry instead of shuffling it back in. This gives you a choice between potentially finding Rallying Cry again and getting another shot at winning some allies or getting rid of it to move on with your life.

So, you either win, keep the allies, and banish Rallying Cry. Or you lose, don't keep any allies, and have the option of getting rid of Rallying Cry or getting a potential future shot at a rematch.

I broke out the text the way I did because punctuation matters a lot in this game. The phrase "banish all the allies, and you may banish this barrier" is attached to the phrase "If any character fails, this barrier is undefeated" via a semicolon. That means they are both part of the same instruction and it only comes into effect if someone failed at acquiring their ally. Each complete sentence (ending with a period/full stop depending on which side of the pond you're on) is a single instruction.

1. Yes. Rulebook p4 (plus FAQ): “Treat a proxy as if it’s also the card it’s proxying.”

2. The number printed on the card. CotCT Storybook p3: “treat encountered banes’ levels as higher by that same #” only applies to things you’re encountering. Once it’s in your hand, you’re no longer encountering it, so it reverts back to the printed level.

Can't help with the organization component (I agree it is very subpar and needs an overhaul) but I can help with your specific cases.

- Player Companions are always 1st edition; that product line doesn't exist in 2nd edition.
- Adventure Paths #145 and up are 2nd edition.
- All of my 1e rulebooks are categorized under "Paizo Inc.: First Edition"
- All of the Pathfinder products I have categorized under "Paizo Inc.: Rulebooks", "Paizo Inc.: Second Edition Rulebooks", and "Paizo Inc.: Special Editions" are 2nd edition. I don't notice too much logic in terms of what got put into which category.

To give a point of data, my experience was that I had the order email on 10/27 and received the shipping notice on 11/8. After a week of the tracking number not working I emailed CS on 11/15 (day before Cosmo’s post). The tracking finally started working on 11/17 and showing movement so it was actually shipped that day. On 11/20 I got a response from CS.

So they are actively shipping out subscriptions still it seems, and expect like 4-5 days for CS to get back to you if your experience is anything like mine.

There is no concept/separation of cost and effect in PACG. Everything in a power’s text is part of that power.

Discarding a card for its power means that two things must be true:
1. You used a power printed on that same card
2. In the course of using that power, the card is discarded

For point 2, it is not relevant why the card is discarded. It could’ve been an instruction on the card itself, on your location, or in the storybook. As long as both points are true, the card was discarded for its power.

So in the Fire Gecko case where you fail the roll, it does indeed count as discarding it for its power. For Zova (with the Weretouched power feat that lets you recharge Animal allies discarded for their powers), the sequencing would be as follows:

1. Reveal Fire Gecko for its power
2. Recharge Fire Gecko for Zova’s power to add Survival
(Other cards are played here, check is made and it fails)
3. Fetch Fire Gecko out of your deck and recharge it instead of discarding it per Zova’s Weretouched power.

Note that step 3 is only relevant if you’ve recharged other cards or shuffled your deck since recharging Fire Gecko in step 2

Jenceslav wrote:

3) Gem of Physical Prowess (or Topaz of Strength) replaces just the die you are rolling. The check remains the same, but instead of let's say 1d6 you can roll your Str/Dex/Con die. You do not add the modifier; if your Strength is 1d12+4, you just replace the die you would roll with 1d12 and that's it. It does not gain the traits, so it is not a Strength check now. Also, you can use it on a skill you do not have, such as e.g. non-combat Arcane - in this case, your Arcane is 1d4 (no skill trait added); playing the gem would make it a plain "1d12 die" Arcane check.

Okay but if you had the skill that the roll is using and you are just replacing the die (Amiri has a +1 to her Fortitude rolls) does it work like other D20 systems where you still keep that +1 modifier but it's just based on a different core skill?

e.g. if Seoni did a Diplomacy check with the Gem of Physical Prowess would it be a 1d4+2 roll because of Seoni's bonus to Diplomacy - only the die is being replaced?

What other systems do is irrelevant, you need to look at the rules for PACG in isolation rather than making judgement calls on how any particular TTRPG works.

If the instruction tells you to replace the die, that's all you do--replace the die. Everything else remains the same. So if you originally had 1d6 Charisma and the skill "Diplomacy: Charisma +1" and used a card that lets you use your 1d10 Strength die instead, you would be rolling 1d10+1. The check is still a Charisma check and a Diplomacy check, it does not become a Strength check. Because all the power let you do was replace the die, it didn't tell you to change anything else about the check.

I made this post ages ago. The wording of the cards has changed since that time with Core, but the base rules are still largely the same (one of the main differences is that in Core, you also add all of the traits on your character card to the check, which is not reflected in that link). You may find it helpful.

To be clear, for pre-Core sets (such as Rise of the Runelords), the instructions on when and how to remove cards from the box appear on the Adventure Path card, rather than in the rulebook. In Core, the instructions are in the storybook (again rather than in the rulebook).

I would echo Whipstitch and suggest to remove all Basic/Elite cards in advance when beginning their respective adventures rather than removing them one-at-a-time when you banish them. It makes you far more likely to come across higher-level boons when you cull all of the Basics out at once, as well as interesting banes instead of ones that you just automatically defeat by sneezing in their general direction.

Everything Parody is accurate, and I'll note that you can play through the Core set's adventure (The Dragon's Demand) with up to 6 players if you mix in the Curse of the Crimson Throne expansion cards alongside the Core set cards.

If you decide to make use of the older cards, there are conversion details towards the back of the Core rulebook and additional details at https://paizo.com/pacg/conversion.

While no more new products are being produced for the Core set, there are a number of Pathfinder Adventure Card Society scenarios that were created for Core and Curse to add additional story content / replayability to those sets. You can find them on the webstore here in PDF form.

Alright so essentially the rules from CORE are supposed to be retroactive to all previous sets?

Then the question becomes was that interaction as silly as I think it was using the rules on the cards as presented when they were printed.

EDIT:Just checked that link, mentions only for mixing older cards with CORE, not playing old sets, or even 90% of the Oganized Play adventures.

Bit of a late reply, but even pre-core, no it is not broken. You missed the crucial wording of the power: When you play a spell that has the Arcane trait during an encounter. No looping Locate Object, Detect Magic, and the like because you don't play those during encounters. Pre-core, you can certainly play one, get it back by playing a combat spell in an encounter, and then play it a second time. But no looping.

(Post-core, you cannot because they all go into Recovery)

skizzerz wrote:

1. No.

Rulebook p7 wrote:

If a character power applies when a specific thing happens, you may use it each time that happens; otherwise, you may use each power no more than once per check or step.

That power on Zetha's card is not a power that applies when a specific thing happens (such powers always begin with the word "When"), so you can only use it once per check or step.

Jenceslav essentially lays out why they feel the rule (One card per check or step) would allow using her power to both determine the skill used for the check and then to modify the check. You quote the same rule but give no rationale why Jenceslav's reasoning is unsound.

It didn’t need explanation — the question was “can I use the same power twice in a single check” and the rule is very explicit that the answer is “no.”

For an example of something that requires a more nuanced answer: There are two types of steps in the game: steps of a turn and steps of an encounter. Encounters can happen during a step of a turn (but aren’t required to), and checks can happen during a step of an encounter (but again aren’t required to). When inside of multiples of these, the only sensible reading is that the play restrictions apply only to the innermost “check or step” that you are dealing with. This “innermost” rule, despite never being explicitly mentioned in the rulebook, is why you are able to play a weapon power during the first check of a multi-check bane (e.g. Combat 12 THEN Combat 14), and then play the same weapon power again during the second check while exploring, even though both checks happen during the same step of the turn.

1. No.

If a character power applies when a specific thing happens, you may use it each time that happens; otherwise, you may use each power no more than once per check or step.

That power on Zetha's card is not a power that applies when a specific thing happens (such powers always begin with the word "When"), so you can only use it once per check or step.

2. No, for the same reason as above. (Note that a Cohort power is not a "character power," so powers on Cohorts or other cards are always restricted to once per check or step -- aka they will never qualify for that special case in the above-quoted rule)

skizzerz wrote:

Treat that header exactly as you would treat the “Powers” header on a bane card—that is, there is no timing implicit in it.

That was the general understanding of it, but then we found the quoted text from the rulebook: "This power is triggered as soon as you

encounter a ship; this occurs before you have the opportunity to evade it" - which is pretty explicit about timing, so that brought up some degree of uncertainty to it.

Thanks again.

EDIT: To clarify, the major argument was that maybe the "Before you act" wording on the ships' powers was in error and not what was intended.

I forgot about that rule :)

In that case allow me to amend my stance thusly: absent explicit timing specified within the power, it occurs during the “apply when encountered effects” step of the encounter. This ship explicitly specified otherwise by mentioning Before Acting, so go with that explicit timing instead (in other words the general rule is that it’s a When Encountered power but specific individual powers may override that)

“When you encounter this ship” isn’t rules/timing text, it’s the Powers box relevant to encountering the ship rather than commanding it. Treat that header exactly as you would treat the “Powers” header on a bane card—that is, there is no timing implicit in it.

The power in question says Before you act, so it happens in that step of the encounter (which is after you apply any evasion effects).

I would play it as option 2 based on the rule that summoned cards cannot cause other cards to be summoned (page 14 of the S&S and Core Set rulebooks). I know that the intent of the FAQ appears to cover sequential summoning, but it just seems cleaner to play it that way.

That is no longer the rule—it is now “a summoned card can’t cause you to summon a copy of itself or of the card that summoned it.” Neither of those cases apply here. Even when that FAQ was in effect, it would mean option 3: henchman is banished and nothing is summoned to replace it, so you’re SOL and can’t close the location that way.

skizzerz wrote:

I play it as option 1: replace the summoned henchmen with ships, and defeating the ship indicates a successful close (or guard).

I also ignore the scenario power to replace henchmen with ships when Mark of Yunnarius instructs you to summon and encounter a Pirate Shade Haunt (aka I rule you encounter the Haunt as normal instead of replacing it with a 2nd ship)

Thanks for the answer. Actually, we just encountered Yunnarius and since we reasoned they probably wouldn't put a power on it that wouldn't see play except in homebrew scenarios (although such text on some cards does exist I believe) - we took that as confirmation that the intent must've been Option 2.

I'm curious as to your rationale though - why do you think you should replace location summons, but then just ignore it for the Yunnarius' Haunt??

Based on this thread where option 1 was presented and not refuted by Tanis. So I viewed that plus her later comment on it being a ship demo derby as being implicit approval for option 1. Ignoring it for the Haunt is because that’s just an obvious oversight in the wording

I play it as option 1: replace the summoned henchmen with ships, and defeating the ship indicates a successful close (or guard).

I also ignore the scenario power to replace henchmen with ships when Mark of Yunnarius instructs you to summon and encounter a Pirate Shade Haunt (aka I rule you encounter the Haunt as normal instead of replacing it with a 2nd ship)

I've noticed that the CS forum disappeared but Website Feedback stayed up. I hope this continues, as I too find the Website Feedback forum valuable for peer interaction with other forum members. This will be echoing a lot of what people said earlier, but I particularly like:

1. Seeing whether or not other people are experiencing the same technical issues I am. Unlike most matters that go to CS, there isn't much in the way of private details to accidentally share here.

2. Offering help to and receiving help from peers for workarounds or alternative solutions to issues. For example, directing someone to the Paizo Campaign Tools browser extension if they have some feature request covered in PCT so that they don't need to wait on the tech team to (maybe) do it officially. Or, assisting someone in clearing their cookies if that fixes some weird lingering issue with the site.

3. Using the "favorite" button on feature requests that I feel are important to me, to provide a low-noise signal of indicating I would like this feature without cluttering or crowding the tech team's inbox.

Random aside: It'd probably be good if the Announcements subforum was moved to the top of the Paizo category instead of the bottom, so that it's the first thing you see when scrolling through the forum list. Right now the position makes it easy to overlook.

When I ran this scenario in play-by-post, I ruled that you only lost plunder at the end of your turn. The alternative is needlessly punitive and makes the scenario extremely un-fun.

I will be away most of December, can you please suspend any shipments to me until January?

WotR is a very difficult set, and the difficulty is exponential with number of characters as you’d noticed due to banes like Arboreal Blight and Demonic Horde (and have yet to notice due to the Armies starting in AD2). My recommendation would be to run with 2 characters for now instead of 4.

Alaine, Adowyn, and Balazar are likely the 3 most powerful characters in the set and it seems like most were in your original party. Any mix of 2 characters with complementary skills and some healing options should suffice imo. I would restart where you left off (first adventure of 2) after rebuilding them with the correct number of feats and decks that contain a handful of B/C and 1 upgrades.

Have to say I'm disappointed that the styling on the spine changed as well; a large part of me ordering the special editions was so that it would look visually appealing on my bookshelf when all the books were lined up next to each other.

Can you go into the reasoning why this change was made?

I've brought this up a year ago but absolutely nothing seems to have happened with this. I'd like to get some addons on roll20 but it isn't being discounted properly on their end because while I own the PDFs here they are apparently for the special edition rather than the regular edition (despite having identical content).

Since it seems neither Paizo nor roll20 seems interested in correcting the syncing issues to check for both regular and special editions, would it be possible for me to be granted the regular edition PDFs in my account so the discount will show properly on roll20's end? At this time, I'd need the GMG, APG, and Bestiaries 2 and 3.

To me, this seems a lot more ambiguous than that? I am not sure that the rules were written to support that degree of parsing. (Especially parsing Core rules/rulebook regarding wording on a pre-Core OA2 card.) I mean, couldn't you reach the opposite conclusion from drawing inferences from p19?

Rulebook, p19 wrote:

Skill Feats: These provide a modifier for a particular skill; you add the modifier to any check you attempt using that skill.

Here, the rulebook's wording of "using that skill" has to encompass the skills both before and after the colon. Because obviously a character who makes a Divine: CHA check gets to add their CHA skill feat bonus.

I feel like the actual answer to Erasmus's power is "it's not clear". And to get an understanding of how the card should be played, absent clarity in the rules, perhaps it would be better to try to untangle from another angle, like intention or balance or fun?

Covered by the sidebar in p11 of the rulebook which directly defines a modifier for a skill to include skill feats of any skill it references.

I am 100% confident that "using a skill" only refers to the skill you're actually rolling for a check. "Melee: Strength" isn't a skill. Melee is a skill, and Strength is also a skill. If "Melee: Strength" was a skill then we'd add a "Melee: Strength" trait to the check instead of a "Melee" trait and a "Strength" trait. Basically, a lot of things in the game break down if you try to define "Melee: Strength" as separate to "Melee: Dexterity"

Going to necro this for posterity since the topic came up in the PACS discord and I wanted to contradict my earlier post with updated understanding.

The skill you chose from the list, the skill you’re using, and any skill referenced by that skill, are all added as traits to the check.

First up, we see that the rulebook makes a distinction between the skill you're using and any skill referenced by the skill you're using. For sake of example, if you have Melee: Strength and are using that for a check, the skill you are using is Melee and the skill referenced by that skill is Strength.

There are two powers that are interesting here, emphasis mine:

While displayed, you gain each marked skill and add 1d4 plus the scenario's adventure deck number to your checks using marked skills.

☐ Add 1d4 to another character at your location's checks that use any skill marked on the cohort Spirit Relatives.

Both of these powers solely reference the skill you are using. To use the earlier example, if you are using Melee (regardless of if it is Melee: Strength, Melee: Constitution, or just a plain 1d4 Melee because your character lacks the skill entirely), you will get the bonus 1d4 when Nissa is marked (as Nissa provides the Melee skill).

So my updated answer for the 2018 question by Yewstance is that as long as Erasmus is using Divine and has "Divine: Wisdom" as a marked skill on Spirit Relatives, the bonus 1d4 will apply even if he's using "Divine: Charisma" somehow. In both cases (Divine: Wisdom and Divine: Charisma) the skill being used is Divine. The difference only lies with the traits added based on the skill reference, which is irrelevant for the power on Erasmus and Spirit Relatives.

skizzerz wrote:

...snip...

I believe the first two projects are going to be continuing the Season 7 storyline for adventures 4-6 and making a “Core 2” to extend Core with additional cards to form a stronger base to build future community APs.

...snip...

Oh, finishing up Season 7 would be wonderful! My group was so sad when we learned it was just...ended. We haven't played since we 'finished' it. Would be great to have a proper ending to it.

Just as a fair warning, nothing we're doing is going to be officially sanctioned. So the characters you use in the Season 7 continuation won't be official PACS characters afterwards.

I would love to see updates/finished products posted both here and at the BGG for those of us that aren't on Discord.

We will definitely share the results as widely as possible. Discord lets us collaborate on the design at a much more rapid pace compared to a forum and lowers the barrier for participation (the Paizo forums are terrible for collaboration efforts for a number of reasons; lots of people struggle with formatting, can’t edit posts after an hour, can’t embed images, big posts might just get eaten if you take too long and forget to save the post to your clipboard, …)

I believe the first two projects are going to be continuing the Season 7 storyline for adventures 4-6 and making a “Core 2” to extend Core with additional cards to form a stronger base to build future community APs.

Physical cards will be available on DriveThru; we’ve gotten an ok from both Paizo and DriveThru to create sets of cards on there with the standard PACG card back so you can purchase the entire card bundle for e.g. “Core 2.”

In terms of community help, everyone is welcome even if all you feel qualified to give are suggestions and ideas :)

I applied a voucher to this order and part of it was put into my sidecart. I just wanted to confirm/verify that the remainder of the voucher would apply to the sidecarted item since I know the system can be a bit wonky sometimes...

If your character has the skill Diplomacy: Charisma +X, then all of your Diplomacy checks are also Charisma checks. This means things that impact Charisma checks can also impact Diplomacy checks.

If your character does not have that skill, then Diplomacy checks are not also Charisma checks so the above would not work.

You can show the people at Staples this link where Paizo explicitly grants written permission to print their PDFs.

skizzerz wrote:

The first (reveal) power is used before you roll. The second (recharge) power is used after you roll and can adjust the total. Remember that you can only play one card of each type on a check, so if you use it or another ally beforehand, you can't use this afterwards.

Which means the wording is simply off. Powers that work in the way you mention usually begin with "After your roll..."

It would be nice to get an official ruling on this one since there are a few similar new wordings on cards. I'm thinking of the Warehouse/Canny Jackal problem.

Your check can’t have a result until you’ve finished rolling it so there’s nothing wrong that I can see here. Please give an argument for why you believe this power to work differently. If you can’t, then no wording adjustments or official rulings are needed because there’s always only one way that power can be interpreted (the one I gave 4 years ago).

Paizo is definitely aware of using image extraction utilities on their PDFs and while the link I gave doesn't explicitly give permission to do it, it's solid evidence that Paizo thinks it's ok to do it for the purpose you posited (uploading the images for a VTT). I don't see anything in the community guidelines that would explicitly forbid sharing such a tool on these forums. However, I flagged this to be moved to Website Feedback so Paizo staff can chime in if they wish.

The words “that location” depends on you having executed the first part of the power successfully. If there was no other location to shuffle Boggart into, then “that location” is undefined, and therefore the second half of the power is also impossible to follow. So, yes, you skip ending your turn as well.