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So the snake gives a bonus on melee combat checks. Since Lini doesn't have the melee skill, it doesn't work for her, even when she's fighting in bear form. The fact that there's an animal that doesn't work well with Lini is kinda sad.
Luckily, the crows, toad, tiger, and dog are better for her. Heck, the crows and tiger are good for any character, and the toad's good for any spellcaster. I could totally see Ezrin walking around with a toad familiar.
Looking at the list of upcoming cards, I'm looking forward to seeing what powers the other animal allies will have, and if they'll work better for Lini than the ones she already has. The upcoming list includes cat, lizard, monkey, eagle, bear, and velociraptor! Seriously, she can get a dinosaur companion in the 5th set. I think its name is Clever Girl.
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Being an animal, the snake work just fine for Lini. She can use it with any of her abilities. She just does not get to stack its bonus to melee with the d10 strength ability. She could still perform a strength attack at 1d4, reveal the snake for an extra d4 and if she likes discard another card to boost the first d4 to a d10.
Some animals may be better but I do not think she would be sad to have the snake.
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You've misread Lini's power. You may discard a card to roll d10 instead of your Strength or Dexterity die for any check. Nothing on there says it has to be for a Melee...or in the case of Dexterity, a Ranged combat check.
So there is nothing wrong with Revealing the Snake to get 1d4, discarding a card to increase STR to 1d10, giving you a base 1d10 + 1d4 strength combat check. Then if she plays a melee weapon on this, she would be able to use the Snake ability to add to a Melee check.
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The problem is that Lini's usually not a weapon fighter, so the snake's melee ability doesn't usually help her. TClifford is right that it can happen, but it's just not that common, unless someone intentionally builds up the character that way (takes weapon as her first card feat and gets a melee weapon).
The way I play melee, most of her combat strength comes from blasting spells like Inflict and Holy Light.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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You've misread Lini's power. You may discard a card to roll d10 instead of your Strength or Dexterity die for any check. Nothing on there says it has to be for a Melee...or in the case of Dexterity, a Ranged combat check.
So there is nothing wrong with Revealing the Snake to get 1d4, discarding a card to increase STR to 1d10, giving you a base 1d10 + 1d4 strength combat check. Then if she plays a melee weapon on this, she would be able to use the Snake ability to add to a Melee check.
I think TClifford has it right here. It's worded in such a way that you can substitute a d10 for ANY check that uses either your Strength die or your Dexterity die. A Melee check uses your Strength die by default, so you can substitute it in.
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The problem is that Lini's usually not a weapon fighter, so the snake's melee ability doesn't usually help her. TClifford is right that it can happen, but it's just not that common, unless someone intentionally builds up the character that way (takes weapon as her first card feat and gets a melee weapon).
The way I play melee, most of her combat strength comes from blasting spells like Inflict and Holy Light.
I always run Lini with someone like Amiri so she can get a weapon card early.
Using a melee weapon would add the melee trait, but wouldn't give her the melee skill.
If she uses a melee weapon she gets the Melee trait, and therefor she can use the snakes power to get an additional d4.
So, let say she has a longspear. She discards a card to get a d10 for the check, she revals the snake for a d4 using her power, and then discards the snake for another d4. The Snake will actually be recharged because of her other power.
So she rolls. 1d10 + 1d8 + 2d4
If she does not have a weapon to give her the melee trait she can use untrained melee skill. If she reveals and discards/recharges the snake.
She will roll 3d4
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The weapon itself has melee as a trait, so it adds that trait to the check. So a check using the weapon counts as a melee check, even if the character doesn't have the melee skill.
Thus, Lini can benefit from the snake's melee power and her wildshape d10 at the same time while using a weapon.
But as I said earlier, the issue is that she's not usually a weapon wielder, so the snake's power is wasted on her.
I completely agree with you that the weapon card would give the check the melee trait, and the card says you can use Strength or Melee, so I agree you can make a melee check, and therefore use the snake's power.
What I'm saying is, having the melee trait on the check doesn't allow you to use your Strength to make a Melee check. If you choose to make a Melee check, you'd use the untrainned die (1d4).
Unless Mike, Vic or Chad say I'm wrong...
Basically, yes the weapon give the check the melee trait but does not give you the melee skill.
Similarly, what would happen if Lini used Force Missle? The check would be 3d4 because she does not have the arcane skill, even though the check would have the arcane trait.
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I don't want to keep that debate running all day, so I'll stop after this one.
I completely agree with you that the weapon card would give the check the melee trait, and the card says you can use Strength or Melee, so I agree you can make a melee check, and therefore use the snake's power.
What I'm saying is, having the melee trait on the check doesn't allow you to use your Strength to make a Melee check. If you choose to make a Melee check, you'd use the untrainned die (1d4).
Unless Mike, Vic or Chad say I'm wrong...
I still disagree.
Lini uses a weapon with the melee trait.
The weapon says for your combat check roll your strength or melee die. She choses strength and discards a card to get a d10.
The weapon has the melee trait and that is part of the check, so now the snake can be used to contribute 1d4 by discarding it.
Cards give there traits to checks.
This is the same story with lem, the crossbow and the archer ally. Lem uses dex while using the the crossbow. The crossbow has the ranged trait, so now he can use the Archer.
That has been confirmed as working, i don't see any difference with the Lini example.
After reading the crossbow/archer combo, I guess you're right. My main point was, you can't make a melee check with a d10 with Lini, as was initially stated.
To me, needing melee with the snake is weird in the first place. Why could a warrior use it in hand-to-hand, but not Lini?
I'm happy we figured it out, as for the reasons why? Not sure i have always felt like the snake card was a missed opportunity for Lini, it could have easily been a d4 for strength, but maybe that would have made lini to overpowered or something, but i don't think it would have.
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To me, needing melee with the snake is weird in the first place. Why could a warrior use it in hand-to-hand, but not Lini?
I agree; this is indeed weird. As everyone knows, one should hold a snake in one's hand, whisper "SEEK..." to it, straighten it out into an arrow shape, and then fire it from a bow to strike and poison the thieving barbarians that just ran away with your kidnapped princess.
To me, needing melee with the snake is weird in the first place. Why could a warrior use it in hand-to-hand, but not Lini?I agree; this is indeed weird. As everyone knows, one should hold a snake in one's hand, whisper "SEEK..." to it, straighten it out into an arrow shape, and then fire it from a bow to strike and poison the thieving barbarians that just ran away with your kidnapped princess.
One of my favorite movies of all time.
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After re-thinking what the normal combat check is... Since the default check is STR or Melee, I say such a roll is always a Melee combat check, even if you roll STR. I know it's not what waa said by the developpers, but it makes no sense that hand-to-hand is melee for the warrior but not for Lini, or Harsk.
If the check allows for STR or Melee, then to me that means you have the melee trait by default, unless you play a card to change the skill used for the check.All this to say, I think the Snake's power works with Lini's no weapon's combat check.
Well that would be your opinion, but as you stated the developers have said otherwise. If you want to run it that way in your games, that is your choice, but it would be a variant on the actual rules.
I would point out that there is a big difference with the melee combat abilities of a Fighter and say a Druid in the RPG. That is why there is a reason that Valeros has Melee as a Skill but Lini doesn't.
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I'll give you guys the philosophy behind the card. Hopefully, it will help.
I think some folks here are making an argument based on flavor rather than rules. People want the Snake to work with Lini not because all Melee-enhancing powers should work with Lini (Soldier doesn't either, for example), but because it's an Animal. After all, she's a druid, and druids in theory should get benefits from any card with the Animal trait.
But she doesn't. That's not how the card works. We didn't enable all these powers for Lini because Lini is already pretty monstrous in combat. And it requires you to spend a card feat on Lini to get a weapon, then get the weapon and Snake together, to make the super-monstrous combo of shapechange-weapon-Snake to work. When you do, it'll be spectacular.
Making it available for Lini at the start loses some of that questing appeal. There's a combo built into the game that you might want to strive for. There are lots of others too.
I hope that helps.
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I never said I thought it worked with Lini, or thought there should be a rules change to make it work. I just started this thread to point out that there's an animal that doesn't synergize perfectly with her, so Lini is sad that the snake doesn't want to help her.
This really was intended to be a lighter thread, but I once again underestimated the ability of the internet to turn anything into a hard core debate.
And now, my blatantly obvious attempt to change the subject. Since the card lists on the character sheet show upcoming animal allies of cat, lizard, monkey, eagle, bear, and velociraptor, what powers does everyone think these critters will bestow? Which will work best with Lini? Let the rampant, unsubstantiated speculation begin!
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And now, my blatantly obvious attempt to change the subject. Since the card lists on the character sheet show upcoming animal allies of cat, lizard, monkey, eagle, bear, and velociraptor, what powers does everyone think these critters will bestow? Which will work best with Lini? Let the rampant, unsubstantiated speculation begin!
Ok, now I've got myself actually thinking about this, which is probably dangerous.
Velociraptor: Has to be a combat bonus like the saber tooth tiger, but bigger. It's a pet dinosaur!!! How could it be anything other than a combat bonus? I'll guess 2d8 or 3d6, because it has to be totally badass.
Eagle: In the Pathfinder RPG, eagle familiars help with perception, IIRC. I'm going with that as my guess, even though it would be kinda redundant. But if the Night Watch and Dog get phased out for being basic, this could be a replacement, possibly at a slightly better power level (2d6 or 2d8 instead of 1d10?)
Bear: Depends on what Lini's doing at the time. If she's in bear form, the Bear ally will be too distracted trying to make little bears to help her.
Cat: Acrobatics? Penalty to diplomacy? Bonus to defeat monsters that are allergic to hairballs?
Monkey: Just how would throwing poo be represented mechanically in the game?
Lizard: ... Ok, I'm just out of ideas for this one.