tech_biscuit's page

While I agree that not everything needs to be better, most cards that come out later are at least roughly equivalent in terms of usefulness of earlier cards that are similar. I understand why the 'special' character allies like Shalelu and Poog would still be some of the most powerful.

It just feels like the stats on the Black Arrow Ranger and Elven Sharpshooter should have been swapped. Sure, AP 3 having an ally that added magic probably would have been welcome. AP 5? *yawn* Alternatively, I expect the Black Arrow Ranger to still be very useful in the last scenario.

The solitary thing you mentioned; That's done pretty well with other allies, where to use their power you have to banish them. They're generally more powerful than allies you keep consistently, adding a unique ability.

Looking through the rest of the cards in the deck, now that bolstering armor was clarified, I understood the point of them. And I do feel that most of them are more powerful than similar cards in previous AP's. I feel all of them brought something to the table, however subtle, even if they weren't more powerful number wise.

There are a number of cards that I know I probably won't personally want to use with my character setup/playstyle. But I'm not disappointed in them, just know that they're not there for me. There are also cards that I didn't notice the subtleties that made them useful at first. It seems like adding magic to the attack is the main draw of this card, and it feels like it falls flat. This card is the only one that stuck out as being genuinely disappointing to me.

I welcome the discussion and hopefully it didn't come across as a rant. My initial post was just to make sure I wasn't missing a key point of the card, like I did when I didn't notice the change between 'your' and 'a' location on Scrying!

ugh, I'm rambling again. Would that I could actually make concise points (apologies!)

I'm trying to figure out why I'd take this card over the black arrow ranger.

Sharpshooter adds 1d6+1 to ranged combat and adds magic. Of course, this late in the game all ranged weapons I have are magic so that's kind of pointless.

The black arrow ranger adds 1d6+1 to ranged... Not ranged combat, I assume that is any ranged check, like rolling to acquire a ranged weapon. On top of that, the ranger adds the same amount to dexterity and perception.

Both cards abilities are recharge, as well as a discard to explore.

So, this late in the game, the ranger essentially does everything the sharpshooter does and more, since the add magic to ranged combat check seems to be not useful.

Just wanted to make sure I'm not missing anything. I hope I am, but I feel like something is missing.

Unless I read something wrong, the armors in A5 were all disappointing, and have strictly better counterparts in earlier scenarios.

The armors in this deck I'm remembering (off the top of my head) are:

I think Bolstering Armor is the only one that I would call disappointing at the moment.

I actually came on to ask about this. It seems like there's a paragraph missing on the card.

There's a couple cards that make me think a paragraph might have been omitted. They seem a little under powered for this late in the game.

For some reason I thought I remembered seeing something like 'You cannot play two cards with the same name on a single check.' Maybe that was just a community member post on the issue.

Along the same lines, I believe shields say 'You may play another armor on this check'. Last night we ran into the first time we could actually make use of two shields in a hand, and we didn't recall anything in the rules that would not allow us to use an infinite number of shields, and I didn't find anything with a quick search of the faq/forums. Is this correct as well?

I used the free Inkscape (similar to Illustrator) application to build some character cards for myself. Might be a bit of a learning curve, but it works well. I have card, power, and skill feats on the front as well as favored card, scenario check boxes on the back. Minimal artwork, just a mugshot on the front.

Not the prettiest thing, but I like all the information to be right there. Sometimes I forget just how many blessings I have in a character's deck at times, so I like the card feat available to me as well.

I only have a first draft of a few of the characters done (just our current running group), so not quite enough to post a package on BGG.

I only have a monochrome printer, so I print them out and put the front and back on either side of a cheap standard playing card and put it in a clear sleeve. Haven't worked out exact positioning to be able to do duplex printing yet. The text size is comparable to the card provided in game, but with less artwork all the information fits.

Since I do the two sheets of paper sandwiching a playing card, I just write in my gear on the back of one of them at the end of the session. Makes it nice to have all of my information contained in a single sleeve! You are forced to print out a card for each role as well, but I don't like having multiple roles on the same sheet anyways. Role cards have even smaller artwork and no flavor text unfortunately.

Ah, I hadn't looked at the FAQ for this card. So it no longer reduces damage from any source, only from monsters?

@Vic: Thanks for the clarification!

@Brainwave: Technically correct from the card wording, but from Mike's post and Vic stating '...it involves changing the power to tell you it includes recharging' the power should read like this:
Add 2 ([]4) to Divine checks when playing or recharging a spell.

I believe Vic was just responding to my post clarifying the rule technicalities of playing a spell.

So, it sounds like the duration of 'playing a spell' starts when you cast the spell and ends after you banish/bury/discard/recharge step of playing the spell.

Since Pharasma works in a unique way, I should ask:
I assume that the +2 only ever applies to checks pertaining to the spell you're casting. Meaning that if you encounter a blessing and cast Aid, you only get 1d6 added to the Divine check for the blessing, rather than 1d6 + 2?

For that matter, if you:
Encounter an Ally
Cast Glibness
Acquire Ally
Discard Ally to explore
Encounter Blessing

Technically, Glibness is still being played until you resolve the banish/discard/recharge related to playing it, correct? As with the above Aid example, I'm assuming that the +2 will not be added to the check to acquire the Blessing.

I think the rules do a good job of describing how to treat evade with respect to 'before encounter' and 'after encounter' effects. I agree that the before/after encounter effect wording conflicts with instances like The Warrens. If you do something that prevents 'before encounter' effects, one would assume that you never actually encounter it.

Yet, The Warrens uses the technicality that you 'encountered the card' according to the rules, but you only performed the first step of the process. Careful reading and interpretation of the rules will probably lead you to the right conclusion, but lay understanding based on reading the cards reaches a different one.

A one-liner in evasion step in the rules saying something like: 'Evaded cards still count as encountered, but do not apply before or after encounter effects.' might help to clear things up.

I was hoping that would be the case! Thanks for the quick response!

Lepley,
Sounds like you may need to take a look through the Death portion of the rules again. You die if:
You need to reset your hand up to your hand size at the end of your turn, but you don't have enough cards in your discard to do so.

It sounds like in your example that you have no cards in your discard, and one card in your hand. If you cast the spell, recharge it, end your turn, you only have 1 card in your deck to draw, and you need 6 - you die.

Aha, so it does! Figured it was something like that. We were probably reaching the bottom of the wine by the time I looked at the card.

'a location' is kind of murky, 'any location' would have been a little more clear!

Thanks!

Just looking for a bit of clarification on Lem's ability.

The exchange w/ discard feat box says '([] or end)'. I assume this is a "cards don't do what they don't say" instance: that it's only to be used once per turn, so you can only get 1 card from the discard a turn, but you get to choose whether it's at the beginning or the end of the turn. Is this assumption correct?

If that's true my concern is that when I get to the end of my turn I'll forget whether I took one at the start, and accidentally make a second trade. Could flip something over as a marker, but I'd forget to flip it back over I'm sure!

Thanks!

I figured someone would have posted here by now!

I started Lem solo to give him a spin, now play in 2 character group with Sajan.

I wasn't quite sure how well cycling the Cures would work, so I took two. After a scenario or two I dropped a Cure in favor of another utility spell. It turned out that I rarely encounted the second Cure, and if I did, I really didn't need it much. If I had to Cure more than just Sajan, I'd look into having another one, since Cure will inevitably fail to recharge at the worst possible time.

Augury is a great spell to have, since Lem's combat can be unreliable. If you know some big baddie is in the future, you can tuck it under the cards you'd rather encounter.

An attack spell has also come in handy for an extra punch, also to combat magic-only monsters. I boosted my DEX early for some more reliable crossbow damage, but the spell is still better.

Extra spells will always come in handy. Not only for more utility, but more chances to grab a much needed cure spell from the discard. If I were in a larger group that could do with some more utility, I'd definitely grab spells over items.

I prefer to use Crossbows as weapons, since they don't have a discard/recharge to add their full damage. Later I'll probably grab another weapon, and take daggers since I can recharge them to add to my own combat. With a Crossbow out all the time, the dagger would be a nice extra punch every now and then. Daggers give another chance to recharge a card to make my self-cures more effective at getting key cards back. Also, to keep a backup weapon in my deck in case my crossbow lands in the discard.

I really wish that I had more items. Our little group means we're more independent, so I could do with some more powerful self-help. Amulet of Life works great in place of armor, but with only two items it's hard to get back if you fail to recharge. Also looking forward to the Sihedron Medallion later on. Three would be more comfortable, four would be great.

I think I may just add items instead of armor for card feats. The Reduce all damage to 0 on the armor could be a lifesaver, but the fact that multiple items works well with Lem's hand/discard trade power would probably be more useful. Not to mention the Amulet/Medallion reducing 'damage', rather than just 'Combat damage' as on most armors. I'd probably rethink this if I had more casters in my group who'd also be fighting over these items. The Snakeskin Tunic with its Dex +1 reveal is tempting, but it's actual usefulness compared to the constant slot in my hand might not be worth it. At least until I get a bigger hand size.

I don't know that I'll add any more blessings until maybe further down the Adventure Path. Since Lem can trade out blessings in his discard, he already has great flexibility, and his cure helps bring them back for more explores.

I'd warrant taking allies a little more than Blessings. Their abilities vary more, so it's more useful to have a smattering of them. Lem does well with the non-exploration Allies as well, since he can trade those out for Allies in the discard that do have explorations.

Well, long post, but that's kind of my mindset when it comes to Lem for me, in a 2-man group. I think a fair amount would carry over, but being jack-of-all-trades the strategy will definitely change depending on group makeup.

The spell Scrying (I believe, no cards in front of me) seems to be exactly the same as Augury, except harder to acquire/recharge. IIRC, the wording is the same except for one little part that doesn't make a difference to it's functionality.

My friend and I can't tell what about the card makes it better than Augury to warrant the increased cost of the spell. Generally spells that are more difficult have some kind of increased power.

So: Are we missing something? Or is the card just more difficult so that we don't have people looking through the decks over and over?

She'd be rolling 2d12 + 4d4 + 3, since BoPharasma adds 2 dice when playing a spell, which she did by plyaing Glibness, her power makes those d12 instead of the d4 from WoFM, and Glibness add 3 to the check.

My understanding was that you need to use Pharasma to boost the die roll of the spell. I'll search around, but do you know of a thread that talks about using Pharasma that way? It seems like when casting a spell is a self contained step inside of the adding bonuses to a roll. Which would mean you could use Pharasma when casting of the spell itself, but not after the spell has been cast.

Glad I checked before I posted; was about to say essentially the same thing. Just to note, I believe I remember daggers can be used if you've already played another weapon so while it's an exception still won't be usable in this situation.

As far as it being useless; It's definitely not for everyone. I run with a Seoni that keeps one around because she can just recharge it at will, and since it's another attack she has a little more wiggle room in terms of spell diversity. When she can't discard for her power, or is fighting something relatively weak and/or can increase the damage with other cards, she'll use it.

Early Lem it would be pretty much as powerful as a Lightning Touch. Early Seoni/Ezran, it's only a little less powerful. If you're buffing an attack roll actual spells will scale better, but there are times where this would be useful.

I've read through a couple threads, but I haven't really seen anything that gives a solid answer to a question:

The Hook Mountain Massacre adventure card mentions removal of Basic cards in AP3, and Elite in AP5, I believe? There are a bunch of cards that are not basic or elite. We're currently assuming that these cards are supposed to stay in the deck for the entirety of the adventure path. The alternative being that these non-basic/non-elite cards start getting removed based on their adventure pack number somewhere along the line, maybe?

We assumed they stay in since we don't see anything that actually tells us to take them out, as it's probably to dilute the really nice cards with some less useful ones. Figured I'd try and get clarification just to be sure.

Thanks!
(hopefully I'm not just missing text on a card somewhere again!)

I was thinking that he might show up in a future adventure pack. In any case, it was a super fun scenario! Despite being a pretty bad one for me (Harsk w/ low CHA), felt good to take a break from the normal flow of the game. Looking forward to more special scenarios like this in the future.

Hopefully I'll have learned my lesson by that time, and actually read the entire card >.<

*ahem*

I should probably read the entire card. Disregard this post; looking for an edit/delete button.

If someone happens to come with the same question:
The scenario card reward says to keep all allies placed under the card.

We had a question about the 'Here Comes the Flood' scenario:

When we acquire allies that are placed under the scenario card, do we keep these cards if we win the scenario? The card doesn't seem to mention either way.

Pretty much. Looks like you'd balance the extra minimum roll you get from the sub skill against the increased maximum roll. From what I can tell, in the case of the blessings at least, the only unbalancing situation would be a d6 base skill with a +3 (maybe +2) sub skill, like Lini's Knowledge skill. The 2d6+3 to 3d6+3 rolls would noticeably change the difficulty over the base skill 3d6 roll for certain encounters (in the 9-15ish check range, probably). Sub skills on a d8 seem like a very slight bonus, and anything above that is just a drop in a bucket.

We've house-ruled it that anything that can affect a base skill in the context will also affect the sub skills. This doesn't seem to be an issue that really comes up enough to worry about it. So if it is unbalancing in certain situations, then more power power to the skilled characters. While I'd like the gameplay to be mostly balanced, I'm more worried about teaching new players than a slight balance issue. I don't have a dedicated group, so having the game too complicated and unintuitive might turn off prospective players instead of hooking them.

From my understanding of Nathaniel's wording
Pure skill check: Base skill (Dexterity)
Skill based check: Skill that modifies a base skill (e.g. Ranged)

Here I had also assumed that Calistria would affect Dexterity based checks, apparently along with everyone posting but Nathaniel and the Paizo guys. I actually misunderstood Mike's post; I thought he was saying that cards that affect base skills also affect sub skills. It would make this aspect of the game simpler. Not to mention if you make skills useless in certain circumstances, it removes some satisfaction of having them.

I know it's not the RPG so not everything will really make sense, but... Would allowing for the extra 1-3 from a sub skill break some semblance of balance? I see it as being perfectly reasonable that a thief with a +2 Disable skill could make use of extra Dexterity to be better at it. I assume it's to ensure that barriers continue to be a challenge. In the end, I don't know how much it'll really matter.

On the other hand, making it so that any card affecting a base skill also affect sub skills would go a long ways to making the game easier to learn and remember. Not only is it not intuitive, it's (in my mind) a finnicky set of rules based on slight word differences. Cards which restrict usage, i.e. Calistria not affecting combat, is clear and easy to understand. Whether something affecting a Dexterity check or Dexterity based check... is not so much. They're both at their root using your Dexterity, right?

First post on the forums! Sorry it's a longer one.