I am wondering about who people are using in there solo games.
Post here with the character you are using playing solo, even if you use multiple characters, and let people know how well you are going.
I have started this post because I have seen on many sites people asking who the best solo characters are, and I am hoping this post will help people decide who to use.
Feel free to add any strategies you have discovered that work well with your character(s).
I tried and failed with Valeros, Merisiel and Kyra. I eventually managed to finish the adventure (barely) with Amiri.
Being able to recharge cards and being able to heal was very, very useful. With only 2 players you have a lot of cards to get through so you'll want to be doing those extra explores.
That's interesting - I've only played with one character (and hardly ever spent cards to explore unless I was looking like having to discard something). I'd assumed, without really thinking about it, that the more characters you had the more you'd have to explore.
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I've finished Brigadoom! with each character. I had to go twice with Ezren, Lini and Seoni because they died. So spellcasters seem to be more defficult to play solo. I had to play Valeros twice because I went through the Blessings deck (I was greedy and didn't close the first location after finding the henchman early, to get more stuff).
I've almost gone through the Poison Pill with each character (4 to go). It's a lot easier than Brigadoom!. So far only Harsk died through really bad luck.
My favorite so far is Lem. I use his power to get cure back over and over by exchanging with another spell. Almost went through the whole Blessings deck on the first scenario, but it was really fun.
I rarely use card to explore again, except if my choice is to discard a card when I reset my deck.
These are my groups of characters for the campaign. All of them have completed all 8 scenarios. I don't have each group built at the same time. I break down the characters so each group will have access to the same gear.
Merisiel is my only solo character. The loner. I think she is great on her own. Her powers make her the best option for solo.
Lem and Valeros are best buds and like to be at the same location together. Since they can each help each one another on the others turn. Pretty good combo.
Seoni and Kyra work well. Kyra helps keep Seoni alive. But Seoni also got lucky and has Poog and Father Zanthus to heal if need be. Good balance here.
Amiri and Ezeren are my unlucky couple, but i kind of like having the most intelligent character in the game paired with the least. They pretty much do there own things. The hardest scenario they faced was local heroes it took them 3 times to get through it. That's the one where you try to gather your allies. It was perfect, no one wanted to join a Barbarian and an unblessed wizard.
Sajan and Seelah are my match made in heaven. They breezed through the scenarios. There stats and distribution of gear balance each other out real nice. Seelah's ability to move a boon to the bottom of the deck work good wit Sajan, because he was not to concerned about losing boons either.
Harsk and Lini are my last team. They struggle a bit more. I really rely on Harsk's Ability to peak at the location card at the end of his turn. Then Lini has the choice of whether she can handle it or not. I've got to be careful how many times she turns into a bear. She has three attack spells to use also, and I started her with three cure. Oh yeah, Harsk got the Deathbane light crossbow from the temple. It works great on things that should be dead.
It's incredible how different each character plays, and really cool to see how all the equipment shapes there development. Really looking forward to seeing what they will end up like. If any die along the way i might forge an alliance with another group. We'll see who makes it to the end. Hopefully they all do, we'll see.
I tried once solo with three characters, It worked well, but it bit more keeping track of what character had and where able to do in any situation. Maybe now that I am thoroughly familiar with the game I might try it again, but will probably wait until i have all expansions in hand.
Obviously, there is plenty of replayability in this game for me, and i never found a single game boring. Now, my wife and I have the next month or so to play through the scenarios before the next adventure deck arrives. Oh, and how did i do all this, her and the kid have been out of town for the past week and a half. Plenty of late nights, uh, got to go they just pulled into the drive way.......
Got some good combo's of characters and some good strategies here already. Keep the post's coming and make this the thread to look at for deciding characters
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I've been having good success with Merisiel. Get her a couple ranged weapons(light crossbows) to start, and most combats she can be rolling d12+d8+d6, which is a solid set. Almost all the "thief help" cards and weapons give some benefit on just a reveal or a recharge so it keeps your deck from running down, and she's good at handling pesky traps. I gave her the Sage and Troubador allies to help with checks with her weaker skills.
Ralsar, I would think in solo play you'd almost never want to use a blessing for an extra explore - you have 30 turns to get through up to 30 location cards, so 1/turn. As you add more characters you have to cover a lot more each turn - 6 players need to average 2.67 explores per turn to maintain the same pace. Extra explores are more important with more players.
I might have to group some characters together on my next play through, right now I am playing Merisiel solo, though I do like Tracker1's idea of doing duos. That could make it more interesting then playing every character solo since some are just not built well for solo.
I have had success with Sajan his combat blessing skill is nice letting you recharge instead of discard, use any number of blessings for combat checks and combined with the fact he has 8 blessings in his deck. Also using a d10 dex die in place of his str makes him hit hard. So in solo when you don't need to burn as many blessings off for exploring you can just keep recharging them for combat. It does start to hurt when you lose blessings to achieve non combat checks but he has so many in his deck it's not terrible.
I played Sajan once solo, i felt like all I was doing was recharging his blessings, and felt like i was missing out on getting spell, armor, and weapon boons. I had more fun when i paired him with seelah, since she uses all of those things.
Part of my reasons for playing two characters was to have access to a variety of boons of different types.
I agree with all of the Sajan comments and I am going to start pairing him up to make better use of all gear drops. I just felt he was really strong on his own but indeed narrow in scope. I am going to try out either Seelah or Harsk who I have had limited solo success with but think his ranged ability better suits having other characters at other locations.
My Seelah, Sajan team was one of my strongest. I think they really work good together.
So far I have played with Amiri & Kyra.
Amiri powered through everything until she encountered a shoadow with no magic weapon and was killed through attrition.
Kyra had no problems although I am not sure if she is allowed to heal herself.
Sweet! Thanks for the reply! This means I really did finish Bringadoom! All for the glory of Sarenrae!!!
I've had very good luck so far with Seoni and Lini paired together. The only thing thus far that has been difficult is that I don't keep any of the weapon and armor drops.
I tried the first scenario (Brigandoom) solo with Seoni and Lini. Both times I was badly defeated. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that there are no spells or blessings available at the locations.
As someone who plays this game....probably far more that I should, I have played solo with the following characters:
Lini (played through all 5 parts so far with 8 locations and no deaths, although I haven't played her "melee" build through part 5 yet). Animals are your friends. Never discard your last animal, unless you have no choice.
Seelah (played through the first 4 parts solo): spells are your friend. they let you live. love your spells. Never let them go.
Lem: surprisingly enough, Lem does just fine at almost anything you wanna do, except melee combat. get him a couple of ranged weapons, some offensive spells, and some heals, and you don't even need a party!
I also like to create my own characters, so I could give you the breakdown on them, but I'd also have to post their stats.
I have been playing Lini solo and have nearly finished Burnt Offerings, one more bit to go. I have found I am using guidance and cure an awful lot. Guidance adds an extra d10 when you discard to boost her dex or strength and running 3 cures allows constant recursion.
Any particular reason for using Guidance? Or is it just that you don't feel bad about discarding it? Or are you saying that its handy to have when you need to do something other than strength or dexterity?
Unless I am missing something guidance is basically a rechargeable blessing of the gods with a really low recharge value. I find it really useful for any check especially combat after using the discard to set to d10. It works well with blessing of pharasma as well.
I think you may be missing that Guidance only adds +1, not 1 die.
I have completed Adventures 1 & 2 solo with Merisiel. Haven't had too many times I've had to bail out. I've given her heavy crossbows and this makes most combat less challenging. She has problems with wisdom and intelligence checks to close locations. I've picked items and allies that help with those kind of checks.
Unless I am missing something guidance is basically a rechargeable blessing of the gods with a really low recharge value. I find it really useful for any check especially combat after using the discard to set to d10. It works well with blessing of pharasma as well.I think you may be missing that Guidance only adds +1, not 1 die.Doh, well that rather changes things!
Don't worry about it too much. Not noticing something like that is sort of a rite of passage for PACG. It makes you a real member of the community. (I originally thought Lini could recharge her animal allies if she discarded them for her d10 power. Talk about over powered!)
You should try to get your hands on Find Traps. It is basically a spell version of Blessing of Abadar, adding two dice to a check to defeat a barrier. I'm not sure it gets enough credit, though I don't personally play a Divine character very often, so maybe that is why I think that.
I have answered questions like this in another post, but in my opinion, Lini and Lem are the best characters to run solo. I would give the runner up award to Kyra and Merisiel, though. Here is my reasoning:
1. Divine casting - Notice that the characters that I have mentioned all have Divine. This is pretty important, because you have access to healing. While healing isn't necessary, it certainly does help if you throw a terrible roll once.
2. Ability to add dice - Both Lem and Lini can just add dice to their checks. Lini can change her dice if she needs Dex or Str, and can additionally get 1d4+X to all of her rolls. Lem gets the same after getting his role card.
3. Versatility - Both of these characters can use all the types of boons, which makes them extremely versatile, and customizable as you collect boons, which is easier if you are adding dice to all of your checks.
The runner-ups are mentioned for these above reasons, and Merisiel, because she can defeat any monster in the game, and also does not trip over barriers and other banes.
I haven't played with Lini yet, but I would have to rate Merisel above Lem in terms of soloing ability. Here's why i think so:
1) Merisel has access to healing once she gets her first card feat and selects Spell. Just select 'Cure' as her starting spell. During the game, you cure yourself and banish the spell. So long as you don't pick up any other spells (and you can decline to aquire ones you encounter), when you are making your deck again you can just grab Cure, since it's basic.
2) Sure, once Lem becomes a Virtuoso he can add d4s to his checks. But that's halfway through the Adventure Path (and more than halfway through your gaming, given the intro adventure). In the meanwhile, you'll need to be putting Power Feats into boosting something that does absolutely nothing for you until you get that first Virtuoso power.
Meanwhile, Merisel can add to her combat checks, because she's always alone. She's already the best character at defeating most barriers, so really the ability to add dice to arbitrary checks will affect boons and location closings.
3) Mersiel can also use all the boons (again, no arcane or divine limits spells, but the occasional Cure should be enough). She needs to spend a Card feat for spells, but then again Lem needed to spend a card feat for Armor (which you would do at the very least to pick up the Snakeskin Tunic).
4) Evade, Evade, Evade. In a solo game you aren't tight on time, so if you find something you're not prepared to deal with, put it back in the deck.
I should try Lem solo at some point (as I play him in a two-player game), but my feeling is he loses a lot in the early game without a friendly character to inspire.
I think that Merisiel is great, and may be a little higher on the chart than Lem, but for me, the slog of the early game is worth it once you have his role card. I always forget about Meri being able to pick up a spell, though. It is really hard for her to even think about taking that unless you are playing her solo, though, since she can't keep the spell if she uses one.
All in all, I think the characters that I mentioned are just plain the strongest characters at the moment, because they are the most versatile. They can really adapt to any situation. I would have to play them all again to really get a good idea of the order, but to me, Lini is easily the best character in the game, whether in solo or a group of 6.
