zeroth_hour's page

It's a scenario reward, not an adventure reward.

Some more ideas:

Powerful Mental spells to swap out for if there's an Undead heavy scenario (eg Dominate). Poison too but I don't think there are Poison effects nearly as powerful

Things like Sagacity/Strength if your group isn't stable in terms of members for support

Utility weapons for low monster scenarios (rare)

Things like Net of Snaring (evade a monster of X difficulty or lower) as a villain scout in certain scenarios

Soothing Word/other scourge removers for scourge heavy scenarios

Wild/Urban specific stuff

It’ll be faster than play by post and more what you’re used to. However, play by post is sanctioned for organized play and other means of running remotely are not, so if your group plays officially reported PACS games that will impact your decision.

Hm, this is a problem. My group is currently trying to find a solution that doesn't involve PbP but is still online - the issue with PbP from one of my players is that it's completely disconnected and they value the actually connection F2F provides. If the social distancing goes on for an extended period of time I need a solution that reasonably works in this case.

Kiya's actually tried play by Skype for an extended period of time; she tells me that they always do their setups with a box at all ends (BR has a normal box, and the other players have alphabetized boxes for reference). I think this is because the BR has to keep the state zoomed out so there's no way to zoom in on particular cards that need to be read.

Hi James!

Are you going to be involved in the non-PFRPG parts of organized play at all (eg Starfinder and the Card Game), or is it just limited to crossovers?

When you talk about Japanese music, do you mean the traditional folk type of Japanese music or are you interested more in the modern styles (JPop/JRock etc)?

Kenneth Fisher wrote:

Awesome to see you have multiple tables a night! Does every table play the same scenario each night?

I'm from a different area, but we typically have 2 tables running. Usually each adventure is 4-5 scenarios long and our group is within the same adventure. One table might be a scenario or two ahead, and then we go back and make sure everyone is caught up before moving onto the next adventure. Unlike the RPG, in the ACG there is no rule against replays so we're able to help out our teammates if they missed a week or failed a scenario to make sure they advance and we can stick together.

What Race said; making sure that everyone is at roughly the same place adventure-wise is the best way of having happy players. There are a few exceptions with regards to long trips (one of my players tends to take month-long trips) but even there I make sure he gets caught up.

It took a while for me to get above 1 table. I was at 1 table from 2014 to 2017, and bumped up to 1.5-2 (6ish players) during Season of Plundered Tombs. I got a regular 2 tables during SoFAC. It takes a certain amount of patience to get the players - a lot of players have regular playgroups and will play during conventions when there's a new set, but not at other times.

It's unclear if you're interested in the card society because you want to eventually play with other people at a convention or online, or because you want to play the card society scenarios.

If you're interested in playing the card society scenarios to experience them and you're only ever playing solo at home, you don't need the card society rules. Just play the card society scenarios with the core rules and you should be fine 99% of the time.

The main reason you need a class deck to play Society is so you can transport the character from game to game. This wouldn't be possible if you built the character out of the cards in the Core/Curse boxes. (What if another person also did this and you both need the same set of cards?)

Watch out - I printed these out and the default size on them is the storybook size, which is smaller than 8.5x11". You need to print them with "Fit" in Adobe.

So I got a bunch of pages with a very large white border.

Quote:

You will need at least two books (more if you want an unmarred copy) to cut out all of the cards: the three story banes and the cohort are printed back to back, but not lined up. The banes shouldn't be a problem as they are never in play together, but the cohort will need to be displayed by the druid deck during play.

:( I'll be doing a photocopy, then. That's not ideal.

The book itself is printed on a very thin paper stock (I thought it would be printed on the same stock that the RPG free RPG day books would be on and I expected them to be thicker) and even if you cut them out you'd probably have to paste them on a thicker board for it to work. Sad, but I'll probably just photocopy and sleeve them.

You don't really need to have card-sized objects for the story banes or the cohort.

I know you don't need to have the card-sized objects, it's just that the card-sized objects make it less awkward since you don't have to pass the book around.

I wonder if DTRPG or someone could actually release a POD package we can buy. I'd probably get a bunch and distribute them.

Minor: p.10 says "If you gain your third power feat, first, you are rewarded with a role."

This reads as being able to put the third power feat on the role, but "first" could easily be missed and the wording is such that someone could easily misinterpret it as the power feat having to be on the character card. I'd like to see it be more explicit that it can be used on the role.

As it turns out, the substitution policy won't work (I think) on a few cards that are almost the same name:

-Keen Rapier in the Bard etc class deck is a +3 enchantment, while the Keen Rapier in the Core Set is a +1 enchantment.
-Seeking Shortbow in the Inquisitor etc class deck is a +2 enchantment, while the Seeking Shortbow in the Core Set is a +1 enchantment.
-Frost Longbow in the Ranger etc class deck is a +1 enchantment, while it's unclear what the Frost Longbow in the Core Set is. Is it a valid substitution?
-Shock Glaive in the Fighter etc class deck has a similar problem to the above.

In addition, I assume that the old level of the card will be used for determining things like whether it's eligible to be put into your deck or be taken as an upgrade. This will be a tad confusing though.

I also assume things like Deathbane Light Crossbow +1 (old sets) and Deathbane Light Crossbow are equivalent. It's not immediately obvious so we should make that clear.

Also, there's a new rule we'd like you to test in the coming weeks. If it goes well, we'll codify it in a future Guide update.

• If your Class Deck contains a boon that has the same name as a boon in the Core Set or in Curse of the Crimson Throne, you may replace the copy in your deck with the new version. Do not take cards from the vault for this—you must bring your own copies. (Short Sword and Shortsword count as the same name for this purpose.)

This rule is legal for PACS play until further notice.

Do we use the level of the Core/Curse boon when we replace it? I assume yes. This matters for a few characters (eg Feiya)

If I have 2 copies of a card in my deck (eg Wizard class deck has 2 Force Missiles), do I need 2 extra Core sets to replace both? If I have 2 extra Core Sets, can I do this?

I was the GM in question for your game. I'm sorry that you had a negative play experience and I thank you for your candor. I don't necessarily have complete control for everything that has transpired, but I will own up to the parts I flubbed and strive to do better next year. I will also give my perspective on what happened, not for the purposes of blame, but because I believe in continual improvement and the only way to do that is to look at what had happened and correct it.

So, the rule that wasn't introduced - I had actually missed it due to the chaos. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done at that point. I was careful to apply it to every group when I figured that out, so no group had an unfair advantage. While I may take competitiveness less seriously, I do value fairness at a premium. I've run the scenario before, but my memory of it was old, and I didn't have a copy of the scenario beforehand, so I had maybe 15 minutes to prep it.

The fact that the scenario sheet was supposed to be handed to the players was actually new to me. I don't remember if we had done this during GenCon last year - I'll talk to Jen about this.

With regards to the actual running of the Open:
-There's no department head running ACG at PaizoCon, which means there isn't really anyone specifically responsible for the ACG area. This causes problems, as you have noticed, since there isn't a central authority to ask questions to, nor is there anyone to be responsible for relaying things like the fact that you were allowed to be in the banquet hall.
-The Open isn't described very well in the online game descriptions, and even I had gotten wind of the format change to the Open at PaizoCon on Friday.
-Groups 3 and 4 were in a "phantom" time slot. They weren't supposed to be there, but it was too late to correct that by the time PaizoCon had started.
-You weren't eliminated. What actually happened was that because of the phantom time slot, there wasn't a person assigned to it. This meant that the GM that was running the midslot on Saturday and Sunday and I had to run 2 tables in the mid slot at the same time. I had given instructions to the GM during that time slot to expect you and texted him prior to the slot and again at 3pm, but somehow you missed each other.

Thing we can do to improve (I will relay these in the After Action report, which means they will be seen by the OP coordinator):
-Have better relaying between ACG organization between PaizoCon and GenCon. Continuity is good. We have a better way of doing this now, so I'll keep an open line of communication with Jen.
-Have a better description on how the Open format is run. The number of threads that ask about how the Open is run has convinced me this is necessary (right now, we describe what we did last year, rather than what we should be doing). In tournament card games there's a concept of floor rules that governs the rules of interaction that isn't part of the game ruleset. This is a bit of a heavy handed solution to a problem that occurs once a year, but at the very least it would allow us to prep.
-Have the scenario distributed to the GMs who will run it beforehand. If operational security of the scenario is a problem, only distribute it to the head who can relay information as necessary.
-Allow groups to form before the groups start to allow for pickup groups to form easily. The main reason you were alone was that a lot of people signed up for the slot and dropped out, so I'm making them make a commitment by anyone who signed up come to the initial slot and assign slots that way. That way we can work out schedule conflicts.
-Have a separate box for the Open prepped beforehand, with scoring and character sheets as necessary. This would require having someone being responsible for that being able to access stuff before the convention starts.

Again, I truly apologize for the negative play experience and strive to do better, even though I have limited power to affect things. I want this game to be played more, and I want it to be played at PaizoCon.

I suspect the "choose not to take the reward" thing was a very old holdover from Season 0 rules, because the rewards were random boons, and it would be annoying if you could decline the boon, replay the scenario and reroll for something you liked more.

I also suspect that the 5-P1 thing was to encourage playing through the same adventure rather than jumping around (which I'm not super fond of, since this forces continuous groups that can't drop out for extended amounts of time).

It does feel like a penalty for playing a scenario though, which kind of sucks.

I is a sad penguin

Bob is looking for someone who can run 7+ slots at GenCon.

If you're considering going, and you play ACG a lot, consider running! We're a great crew! And there are incentives :)

@Bob: cross posting into the ACG Guild forum since the people who would be interested may not be looking at this post.

Guide 6.0 Draft wrote:

Building the Vault for Older Scenarios

Starting with Season 6, each adventure includes rules for building the vault. In earlier seasons, each adventure lists the products that adventure requires. To build the vault for a scenario in one of those adventures, start by adding all of the cards from the listed products to the vault, then remove all Basic and Elite non-blessing cards whose level is at least three lower than the # of the adventure. (If you don’t have time to remove those cards in advance, you can remove them as you find them—when you come across one, just replace it with another card of the same type from the vault.) Ignore any instructions on the Adventure Path card related to banishing Basic and Elite cards.

I'd like Sunburst Market to remain useful after AD2 in Season 3 and 4 (it is often used to fill out Cures for characters who only have 1, or for Basic Armors, or for characters who desperately need an extra explore somehow). How do we achieve that, since I assume that traders will pull from the vault?

Yeahhhhh!!!

Congrats all the 5-stars and Coin owners!

@Tonya: Does your text mean that there isn't Card Game being offered at PAX Unplugged? I just wanted to clarify.

Also, I think GeekGirlCon is missing in the convention list, so I'll go ping the organizer about it.

MidnightLich, I didn't see your game, but from what I've heard you guys played a really smooth game. Congratulations, you definitely earned the win.

With regards to resetting the decks after each round, I know I tried to do that, though there was very little time between rounds. I'll make a note to leave a set of instructions to this effect when I run it during PaizoCon 2019. I did request most teams to at least separate out the cards by expansion so that it made that easier. That is also something I'll note for the PaizoCon run.

"Jen" is Jen McTeague, iammars on the forums. We had a blast running the Open. (I was "the other" BR at the event)

I am considering running the Open at PaizoCon 2019; but PaizoCon's shorter so it's much harder to do all 3 rounds (we usually have 2). I have some tweaks that'll make it interesting I think...

Just out of curiosity, which teams were you on so I have context?

I would say a big shoutout goes to Rigby actually, they were also ACG HQ and did a lot of the behind the scenes work to muster, organize paperwork, etc.

By the way, for context, B and 1 decks only for the base class decks was something we didn't intend - we intended B-3 decks for all base classes, but the class decks we used were the ones that were created for PaizoCon 2015 and those only had Bs and 1s. We will try to correct that during PaizoCon 2019.

We had a few last week. We're playing SotS to wait for Ultimates to come out before working on SoFF (or really, half my regular players are doing that while the other half are playing other coop games in the time slot)

Talitha wanted to get the allies in 0-2A but she kept encountering Animal allies all night instead. Celeste, played by her husband, was like, I don't see any problem, I can pick up Animals or humanoids no problem.

I meanwhile played Ukuja and the three of us (the 4th person was playing Salim) ran into a Pirate Entertainments. Talitha resigned herself to failing and meanwhile I was like, I'll probably pass this but I'm giving myself a blessing to pass it. She barely fails while I... get a 22 on the check (2d10 + 2 Ranged). It's the equivalent of shooting an apple off my White Tiger through the crowd of pirates while the Tiger is jumping through a hoop, is how the Celeste player described it.

We saved up a ton for the last henchman, so we rolled an 80 (ah yes the wonderful Pharasma x3 + Magic Weapon combo)

We found a lot of 2s... and we kept closing the locations with 2s in them. Even the seaside warehouse - we were like, maybe we should explore that last card in there before closing, and Salim was like nah, and we were like nah, and we rolled just because, and we closed it... and there was a 2 weapon in there. Whoops.

We still got 3 AD2 boons out of the deal.

That still doesn't compare to my player's SotS roll; the player likes Bards so he played Meliski.

It was one of the 4 scenarios against a Crawling Hands, so bad consequences if he fails. We were like "okay we should bless him then".

He rolls 6 1s and a 2 on 7d6. He also had a reputation for rolling low as well.

As for a non dice-roll story, last year's PaizoCon had the players playing 3-3X (the library scenario, I forget which one). The Enora player wanted the scrolls in that scenario, since she's a bibliophile, but some other character actually got all of them. The Enora roleplayed being so pissed off at it.

The talk about Red Carriage exposed something in the Guild Guide that didn't ever seem to be intended.

PFSACG Guide 4.2 says this on p.14:
"After successfully completing your fourth (scenario within a tier), you gain 1 card feat. When you gain a card feat, add a card of that type to your deck using the Hierarchy in the sidebar on page 7."

This wording not only breaks the normal deckbuilding process, but doesn't seem to be intended - it has only gone through minor revision since 1.0 of the guide, and Tanis had intended banished cards go through a similar replacement process as box play (aka AD#-2 once you're past AD3). But currently Card Feats RAW actually force you to take a Basic card which is against the spirit of the banished card ruling.

Guild Guide 4.2, p.10:
"After upgrading your deck, if your deck doesn’t have enough of certain card types to meet the Cards List requirement on your character card, and your character is Tier 2 or lower, choose the extra cards you need from your Class Deck using the Hierarchy in the sidebar on page 7. If your character is Tier 3 or higher, you may instead choose appropriate cards that have an adventure deck number at least 2 lower than your tier."

I don't think that's correct. "When you encounter a card" is the instruction, "you may evade it and move to this location" is the result. It's true that you can't "move to this location" when you are at the Vomit Twin's location, but Vic's mentioned the Golden Rule applies when you try to do more than 1 thing and one of them is impossible, and you do the thing you can't and ignore the one you can't.

Because if that was the case, I'd be railing against all the "move and explore" cards already out there.

I know the PFSACG scenario 3-P had been reportable for a while, but I am not able to report it anymore.

In addition, 4-2P and 4-3 are also currently not reportable.

So, Bladewind Simoun has this power:

□ When you encounter a card, before you act, you may recharge a card to draw a random weapon that has the Knife and Ranged (□ and Magic) traits from the box. After you act, banish that weapon.

All well and good. But the Python cohort from the new Hunter class deck has this power:

"While displayed, you may put this card on top of your deck to ignore a power that happens after you act, or before you act if you have a role card."

Now, this requires a cooperative non-Adowyn Hunter, but let's say you have one. You can get free Knives out of the deal. If Elites are banished, they're also AD3+ (and all quite good).

I searched, and the Python cohort power is the only one that ignores non-bane powers, sadly. Still interesting.

Incidentally, across the search I came across the Shrine to Baphomet:

At this Location: Ignore the Magic trait on all boons.

So, what happens if the Magic trait box is ticked, and only Magic boons are left? You don't draw anything? Does "ignore the Magic trait" mean even on powers like this one?

I'm of two minds wrt Varril not being able to use a weapon with his power, having played him:

-He's got very few spells in his deck compared to most other casters, so it's hard for him to spellcaster main - he has to use a weapon with a d6 DEX up to +3 (probably do that over a d6 +1 STR).
-On the other hand, rolling d8+2d4+15/+17 combat checks with only a single recharge was a little ridiculous. (AD6 Melted Blade + Divine/Wisdom +7 + Invoke power +2/+4 - that being said, you do give up a lot for being that good at combat)
-Contrast Zadim who gets 2d8+2d4+18/+20 on the same weapon (with his recharge power, +20 is with the Executioner role) - except that Zadim isn't also good at every other skill check. (Of course, the extra d8 on the combat makes things a lot more reliable)

If Varril doesn't get errata'd (and I'm leaning towards no as well), it wouldn't be the end of the world - he'd be a little costly in terms of requiring blessing support and less effective combat wise, but he does take care of barriers fairly well.

Congrats, our new online Venture Officers!

I ran the other qualifier at PaizoCon and the final.

I would say no, you shouldn't be playing in multiple qualifiers; "qualifiers" in this sense are just one round of the tournament and aren't like qualifiers in some of the other senses of the word.

It's not meant to be a tournament like the WBC Puerto Rico tournament, for example where you're straight up playing the game and figuring out who the best/most practiced at it is. Knowing the game well does help a lot, but it's less about preparation and more about adaptability.

Leg o' Lamb wrote:

SirRogue wrote:

I have a similar, but slightly different question:

Is it worth attending for someone who is primarily only interested in playing ACG? I play the RPG, but mostly only in home games and don't have much interest in RPG OP/Society games. But I lerrrrve me some Adventure Card Game. Will there be enough going on in that corner to make it worth coming for all four days? Or at all? Would love feedback from both previous attendees and event scheduling coordinators.

Thanks!

Yes. Yes, it is.

You will have the opportunity to play all weekend in both sanctioned events as well as pick up games. Also, you will have the chance to talk with the fine folks who make the game.I know of at least one person who has gone to Paizo Con and all he plays is the card game.

Another bonus is the chance to play "in development" scenarios or other games before they are released to the general public.

I noticed your lack of interest in OP RPG Pathfinder. Are you aware of the OP for the Adventure Card Game? You may want to give this a try if you decide to attend the con. The OP card game has a very dedicated group of folks who play. I had the chance to get to know a few at GenCon this past summer. Their excitement and love for the game was evident. Give it a try.

Thanks for the advice. We are very aware of the Card Guild, we play weekly. :) We just wanted to make sure there would be enough ACG content and activities to be worth coming. Sounds like it will be fun, thanks!

Oh yeah, if you play the Card Guild, playing in convention games allows you to pick up boons, bonuses you can use for your characters in your Card Guild games no matter where you play them. Last year's were based on the Thassalonians Runelords from Rise of the Runelords, and were kind of fun - you get a big benefit but also a big drawback.

The Guide to Organized Play for PFSACG (as of 3.0) doesn't have rules concerning the use of boon Chronicle sheets obtained at a convention. The PFSRPG guide has an Appendix talking about boons rewarded during conventions, but the PFSACG guide doesn't have this wording - I'll go ahead and ask to add that wording to the guide.

AFAIK you can assign them to whichever character you wish before the start of the session.

There's no rules governing a maximum number of rewards a character can receive. The PFSRPG guild guide does have wording saying that you cannot assign more than 1 of the same boon to a character, but I honestly don't know if the PFSACG should have the same rule. I'd err on the side of caution and not assign the same boon more than once to a character until that is cleared up.

I keep forgetting to use mine :P. We just finished Season of the Runelords, I should probably think of using some.

http://dragonflight.org/

I apologize for the super late notice, but I'm running some PFSACG at Dragonflight. It's at the Bellevue Hilton. Season of the Runelords, Righteous and Goblins will be included and I will bring my class decks so people who don't have them can still play :)

Also, this is the page to look up your Regional Venture-Captain for your region and Venture-Captain for your area if you have one.

What would a Game Day look like in the context of a PACG only/mixed PFS/PFSACG event? AFAIK there still aren't any regular season PFSACG boons, either player boons or GM boons.

Also, the region coordinators link is broken - it's at http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety/about/regionalCoordinators

Really excited about (in no particular order)
-more 5 star GMs
-Venture Agent promotions
-Season of the Runelords

Yay, more Card Guild rewards!

It's an honor. Congrats to everyone who made it!

We have a Hierophant CD Kyra in my group. She does okay even in AD5 but she spends a decent number of blessings.

That being said, those big CHA/Diplomacy alternative boss checks were a-okay :)

What Keith said (I played this scenario last week). It's not a condition, even with the odd wording.

zeroth_hour wrote:

Heals and Explores do need to reliably come up in combat though, and given CD Lini's lack of a "permanent" attack (her power requires her to bury, discard or recharge her Animal) this may pose an issue.

I like the direction they're taking these; RotR Lini is still available in OP if you really want her available (and not in OP if you own RotR).

Well, to put it a different way, she's like a caster with a full extra set of slots for attack spells, with a recursion ability to recover them sometimes, and the option of discarding them to explore if she draws too many, rather than clogging the way casters with a pile of attack spells sometimes do if they go a couple turns without enough fights. She'll sometimes have to stop exploring because she's out of animals for the turn, but she's in a better position than most attack spell based characters in terms of having the right number of attack cards each turn, due to her powers to turn other cards into more attacks via recursion AND her ability to turn excess attacks into explores/etc.

Depends on how many Ally slots she gets. I'm hoping at least 4 initially, since it seems that she won't get weapon card feats at all this incarnation. I always find Divine casters tend to want Attack, Healing _and_ Support which strains their spell slots.

If you can limit the number of Attack spell slots for her to 1 (for bosses) then that's great. I'm not currently convinced that the 1d6 by itself can do that yet - Inflict is kind of weak, even though it is at a +1 compared to the Divine spells.

A luckstone isn't used for "Determine Which Skill You're Using" (because it only modifies a check, it isn't used as a skill check replacement which the sword does). A Luckstone is played during the "Play Cards and Use Powers that Affect the Check" step.

A Luckstone is very different from a Sword in that regard. Just like Aid is very different from Force Missile in that regard.

Heals and Explores do need to reliably come up in combat though, and given CD Lini's lack of a "permanent" attack (her power requires her to bury, discard or recharge her Animal) this may pose an issue.

I like the direction they're taking these; RotR Lini is still available in OP if you really want her available (and not in OP if you own RotR).

Farmhouse makes Lini bury animals because the wording on Farmhouse is a replacement effect and replacements cause the other action to not exist. So if Lini discards an ally at the Farmhouse, she instead buries it and her power never triggers.

Vika's character power is the same way - she replaces the discard with a recharge, and for her role power she replaces the bury with a discard (and she can order the two such that she replaces the bury with a recharge). It's just that for the base power the card has to be discarded or buried as part of its power. (The bury power has no such limitation).

Actually, those powers are just inconsistently worded in general. I'm bothered because there is a gameplay difference because of the wording.
eg:
RotR Harsk Sniper role - When you play a weapon with the Ranged trait, you may recharge it instead of discarding it.
RotR Valeros base role - When you play a weapon, you may recharge it instead of discarding it.
CD Valeros base role - When you would discard a weapon for its power, you may recharge it (□ or shuffle it into your deck) instead.
WotR Harsk base role - When you would bury or discard a weapon that has the Ranged trait for its power, you may recharge it instead.
WotR Imrijka Cold Iron Warden role - When you play a blessing that has the Basic trait on any check to defeat a bane, you may recharge it (□ or put it on top of your deck) instead of discarding it.
WotR Kyra Dawnflower's Flare role - When you play a blessing on your check to defeat a bane that has the Demon or Undead trait, you may recharge that blessing.

If you only have RotR, there are several healers: Kyra, Lini and Lem (Harsk can provide support in a pinch after he gets a role). Whether you want to use Lini for healing depends on your party composition and other things, but she is decent at the role, because her 1d10 + 1d4 + 1 base Divine check outclasses everyone else, so she's very good at recharging cards. And at most other Divine spellcasting in general.

She is less good at fighting without spells, though she's okay if like Dave says someone hands her a weapon at the beginning of the scenario.

In addition, keep in mind some player counts are easier than the others. 5-6 player tends to be easier to lose because there is a lot more time pressure.

cosined:
1) Paizo explicitly turns off forum crawling I think.
2) Forum content is owned by Paizo so they can control it/remove it if they believe it's a concern (BGG is a different story)
3) We are already playing by forum; mostly going by the honor system here in terms of "everyone should have a copy of the game" which is similar to the rules that FFG has; but since the people that are playing right now are such forum regulars that they almost all the PACG stuff anyway.