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So you get a skill feat when you complete the three scenarios in Perils of the Lost Coast, a skill feat for the first scenario in Runelords, a power feat for completing the third Runelords scenario, and a card feat for completing all the scenarios in the set. What are your choices to take by character?
My group of four is Sajan, Valeros, Lini, and Lem. So far, we've earned two skill feats and a power feat.
Sajan is easy for the skill feats: Dexterity all the way. Combat is pretty much all he does anyway, and that gives him +2 in all his fights. During play, he's frequently had situations where he had too many items in hand, and not enough blessings. And he likes to get allies, since he keeps discarding them for extra explorations. So increasing his hand size to 5 with his power feat was an obvious choice. But he did have to give up making his fist attacks magical in order to do that, so I hope that doesn't come back to haunt him with lots of enemies in next month's deck that require magic to hurt them. For his card feat, I'm assuming he'll just grab an extra blessing.
Lini's power feat is a stupidly easy choice. She took the extra +1 to the aid she gets from her animal companions. Her skill feats were a tougher decision. I put the first one in wisdom to boost her divine rolls, but then I put the second in strength. Even though her strength is only 1d4 normally, her bear shape makes it 1d10, and that's her backup plan in combat if she's ever caught fighting without an Inflict spell in hand. Her choice of card feat is also obvious - she needs all the animal allies she can get.
Valeros was a tough call all the way around. He's picked up some good weapons along the way, so he's already a combat monster. So he really doesn't need more strength. Since he has +2 diplomacy on top of his 1d6 charisma, that was a tempting choice for a skill boost. So he split his skill feats in strength and charisma, then did great picking up allies in the Heroes scenario that revolves around that. For his power feat, like Sajan, he has sometimes suffered from not being able to get the cards he wants into his hand fast enough, so he went with the increased hand size of 5 cards, too. Not sure what his card feat will be. Probably weapons, but I'll see when we get there.
Lem's skill feats both went to charisma, though putting one in dex for his crossbow was tempting. Believe it or not, the power feat was a tough call. Adding +1 to that 1d4 he gives other characters when helping them out seems like an easy choice, except that the party splits up so often that he really doesn't use that very often. So weapon proficiency, to be able to discard his heavy crossbow to help someone at a different location, was tempting. But he went with the +1 after all. His card feat will almost definitely go into spells. Four just isn't enough for a character who can theoretically use any of them.
I've tried almost all of the other characters, but these are the ones I've played the most, so I'm not sure what feats would be best for the others. What have those of you who have gotten that far chosen?
I personally think that Merisiel and Kyra both benefit greatly from weapon proficiency with a power feat.
All of my casters get the skill feats to the casting stat as that not only helps with any damage spells but with the recharge too. Plus random skill checks or close location rolls benefit nicely.
Hand size for anyone with a 4 is a good choice as well.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I'm playing Harsk, and I ended up putting both my Skill feats into Wisdom. That might seem a bit counterintuitive, since Harsk is really a dex-based character. However, I found that I was making a lot of WIS checks to do things like close locations or acquire boons. Add to that the fact that WIS helps his Survival and Perception, and it's (I think) a solid choice.
Also, when I finish the third box, I plan to take the power feat that lets Harsk get Divine as a skill, so I can start playing with some Divine spells. Having a healer besides just Lem will be important when we get that far, I think.
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I'd like to take this chance to note that I'm very reluctant about Power feats for hand size. After the intro adventure I feel like I have my deck built in a way that gives me what I need from turn 1 even with 4 cards in hand, but even though higher hand sizes means more options it also feels like it has more downsides than benefits.
1) If your deck is effectively your HP, having a low hand size is effectively DR. If Valeros takes 6 damage he's going to discard (thus drawing) 4 cards, meanwhile the wizard will be discarding 6 cards from the same hit. You also have less motivation to be versatile because having more card types and a large hands can eat through a deck fast.
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I think the hand size depends on which character you're playing, and the size of your group. Remember, the more characters you have in your group, the more times per turn you have to explore, so getting blessings and allies in your hand to allow more explorations is essential.
Playing solo, Sajan or Valeros are probably fine exploring only once per turn, so they don't need as many cards in their hand at once. But in our four person group, we're facing 6 locations at once, which is up to 60 cards to explore with only 30 cards in the blessings deck. So everybody needs to average 2 explorations per turn to get through them all.
Valeros frequently doesn't have an ally or blessing in hand to explore a second time on his turn. Sajan has the blessings to explore a second time, but he needs to save at least one for any combat that might come up. So that hand size expansion to 5 cards will be very useful for the two of them. Besides, Valeros never loses fights and has good armor, so I'm not worried about damage for him.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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The conclusion I've reached is that your levelling process depends very much on the size of your group - groups of 4-6 profit more by getting better at their specialties and group bonuses, while solo/2 character groups probably wnat to shore up their weaknesses.
I've finished RotR with a solo Merisiel, and I took a Wisdom bump(helps with perception), a Dex bump, weapon proficiency, and an extra ally.
I agree that hand size might be a trap in this early stage - I think it's better to wait until deck size has gone up a bit. But, with more players, there is more healing so a larger hand size may be more defensible. My experience is mostly with 1-2 characters.
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Playing solo, Sajan or Valeros are probably fine exploring only once per turn, so they don't need as many cards in their hand at once. But in our four person group, we're facing 6 locations at once, which is up to 60 cards to explore with only 30 cards in the blessings deck. So everybody needs to average 2 explorations per turn to get through them all.
Whilst this is correct, let's not get too worried about having to explore every card in every location. Half the time the henchman or villain will be in the top half of the location deck. Even when it is in the bottom half it is very unlikely to be the bottom card. The odds of all the henchmen and villains being the bottom of each location is very, very, small. So small that I'd be willing to put money on the fact that none of you ever see it happen.
We've been playing with four players and Valeros almost never makes more than one exploration. We finish fine.
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Playing solo, Sajan or Valeros are probably fine exploring only once per turn, so they don't need as many cards in their hand at once. But in our four person group, we're facing 6 locations at once, which is up to 60 cards to explore with only 30 cards in the blessings deck. So everybody needs to average 2 explorations per turn to get through them all.
Whilst this is correct, let's not get too worried about having to explore every card in every location. Half the time the henchman or villain will be in the top half of the location deck. Even when it is in the bottom half it is very unlikely to be the bottom card. The odds of all the henchmen and villains being the bottom of each location is very, very, small. So small that I'd be willing to put money on the fact that none of you ever see it happen.
We've been playing with four players and Valeros almost never makes more than one exploration. We finish fine.
I was just pointing out worst case scenario. With a four player group, the goal is two explorations per turn, but we've finished fine every game, despite not every character being able to consistently meet that goal.
But it is annoying to have our strongest combat character (Valeros) as the one who is least able to find two monsters to fight every turn. He doesn't have that many allies and blessings, so having a bigger hand size would help him get them into hand for more chances to explore again.
In the mean time, Lem sometimes explores 2-3 times in a turn, and if he has the cards to spend exploring that way, it means he probably only has one combat spell in hand. In fact, in our last game, Lem managed to explore four times, find a henchman, beat him, and close the location, all on the first turn of the game. But sometimes, he'll use his only combat spell when he finds his first monster, then he's afraid to explore again until he can draw more combat cards, even if he has the blessing and/or ally to spend on exploring.
Given that the later adventures seem to have more locations with larger number of monsters and less boons, we just need to get our combat monsters (Valeros and Sajan) exploring more often.
Yes, we have the same problem with Valeros, and my 10 yo daughter is very reluctant to discard during restring her hand so that she might turn up an ally or blessing. I think Valeros is probably best played with another player, such as Lem who can use Detect Magic or Augury to help figure out who should face the next card or two.
I teach high school mathematics and spen a lot of time correcting misconceptions about probability. I'm prone to ranting whenever I see probabilities referred to.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6, Contributor
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Here's what I wound up taking:
Amiri - Dexterity, Charisma, move a character, blessing
Ezren - Intelligence, Intelligence, +1 recharge, spell
Harsk - Dexterity, Wisdom, +1 combat assist, ally
Kyra - Wisdom, Wisdom, weapons, spell
Lem - Charisma, Charisma, +1 check assist, spell
Lini - Strength, Wisdom, +1 animal assist, ally
Merisiel - Strength, Dexterity, weapons, spell
Sajan - Dexterity, Dexterity, hand size, item
Seoni - Wisdom, Intelligence, item recharge, spell
Seelah - Strength, Wisdom, hand size, spell
Valeros - Strength, Charisma, hand size, blessing
I seem to have a strong preference for spells :) And hand size is an easy but not automatic pick for 4-card characters.
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I'm playing Harsk, and I ended up putting both my Skill feats into Wisdom. That might seem a bit counterintuitive, since Harsk is really a dex-based character. However, I found that I was making a lot of WIS checks to do things like close locations or acquire boons. Add to that the fact that WIS helps his Survival and Perception, and it's (I think) a solid choice.
Also, when I finish the third box, I plan to take the power feat that lets Harsk get Divine as a skill, so I can start playing with some Divine spells. Having a healer besides just Lem will be important when we get that far, I think.
I did the exact same thing with Harsk. His 1d6 is too small for all the Wisdom Checks he makes. Power Feat was hand size, since he often keeps his cards in his hand unless others need help.
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It really depends on how you play your characters. Although there may be one "optimal" way to play the game, I'm sure most people are having fun just making themselves better at the checks they want to successfully overcome.
In a two-player game, I was Valeros and my wife was Lini. I usually gave her one of my weapons, and kept one around so that she wouldn't constantly have to discard cards. She found it more useful and fun to add a weapon card feat rather than an ally, since she really liked having a weapon in her hand.
I'm sure a lot of this discussion also hinges on whether you're playing in a smaller group vs. a larger group, and what other characters are in the group. If Lem and Seoni are together, it doesn't necessarily make sense for them both to pump up charisma. Maybe one of them would want to up their dexterity, especially if Sajan and Merisiel aren't in the party.
I'd like to take this chance to note that I'm very reluctant about Power feats for hand size. After the intro adventure I feel like I have my deck built in a way that gives me what I need from turn 1 even with 4 cards in hand, but even though higher hand sizes means more options it also feels like it has more downsides than benefits.
1) If your deck is effectively your HP, having a low hand size is effectively DR. If Valeros takes 6 damage he's going to discard (thus drawing) 4 cards, meanwhile the wizard will be discarding 6 cards from the same hit. You also have less motivation to be versatile because having more card types and a large hands can eat through a deck fast.
That is a really excellent point! I had never thought about the downside of a larger hand size. You are absolutely right about that -- maybe better to save that upgrade until later in the adventure path when your deck is bigger.