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Solo play is obviously different, but I've played with anywhere from 1 to 4 characters. My regular 4 character group got through all 8 scenarios, plus a couple of fan scenarios, all relatively easily. My 3 character group is having a harder time. Though we've succeeded in every scenario we've played so far, we've come close to some character deaths a few times, due to lack of healing. I realized that it's mostly because of party make up, which got me thinking about party balance and the different roles for characters within a group.
Here are the primary roles, as I see them. To keep this list short, I'll leave discussion for how to carry out these roles, and which characters are good at each role, for future posts.
1. Scout - Believe it or not, I consider this the most important role in a 4+ character group (maybe also 3, but I'm on the fence there). Knowing where the villain is can define your entire strategy and allow your team to win. Just exploring randomly will lead to the blessings deck running out before you can finish.
2. Healer - Discards happen. Getting those cards back into your hand and/or character deck is a good idea, and sometimes essential for survival. Certain characters need to work with a healer more than others, so this may or may not be an essential role, depending on party makeup.
3. Explorer - Sure, everyone usually explores once per turn. But every big group needs at least a third of the team to routinely knock 2-3 cards out of a location deck every single turn, even if they're not successfully acquiring the boons. Otherwise, how will you clear all those location decks before the blessings deck runs out?
4. Safe cracker - With enough Thieves Tools and Masterwork Tools, this doesn't have to be just a single character. But some barriers are tough enough that having a barrier breaking specialist isn't a bad thing. This isn't necessarily just the disable skill, either, but all skills that routinely come up when dealing with barriers.
5. Combat - Is it a role if everyone needs to be ready for it? Like exploring, everyone does this, but it's good to know who your team's heaviest hitters are. Once your scout finds the villain, everyone else spreads out and prepares to temporarily close locations, while the team's combat monster goes in for the kill.
6. Survivalist - I know it seems odd to single out this one skill for inclusion on the "must have" list, but Survival seems to be the one oddball skill that comes up the most for closing locations. If you don't have a character on your team trained in it, you'll need to save blessings, or Guide allies, for tackling those locations.
7. Collector - While it's nice for each person to be good at acquiring boons that their character will use, I don't consider this an important general role. I include it on this list merely to rule it out as a needed role in a big party.
This list is roughly sorted from most to least important, though some of those choices could change, depending on various factors. Anyone have any additional roles to add, or anything to say about my list so far?
Your Scout and Explorer roles seem to serve the same function to me.
Are there mechanics for finding the villain without exploring?
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The explorer is there to remove as many cards as possible from the location decks as quickly as possible, just to get them out of the way. This includes using Ezren's power to explore again after acquiring a magic item, or anyone who has spare ally or blessing cards to burn for extra explores per turn.
The scout's purpose is to look at cards before exploring, mostly to find out which location the villain is in before encountering it. Once you know where the villain is, you can position your team to temporarily close the other locations while your heaviest hitter faces him. If you're just exploring at random, you'll have to fight the villain early when your team might not be ready to close the other locations yet. That means an extra tough fight, as well having to search the other locations at random to find him again once he escapes. This why I consider scouting to be the most important role for a big group.
There are actually quite a few cards in the game that allow you to look at cards in a location deck without encountering them.
Anything that allows evading an encounter (Merisiel's power, Caltrops, Holy Water, Sleep, Invisibility, Sanctuary, etc) lets you explore to see that a card is in a particular deck without encountering it. However, that uses up an exploration opportunity, and usually involves shuffling the location deck afterward, so it's the worst form of scouting.
Other ways to look at the cards of a location deck without encountering them include Seelah's power, Harsk's power, the Spyglass item, the Mayor and Shalelu ally cards, and the spells Detect Magic, Detect Evil, and Augury. I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting at least one or two.
This is why I consider Detect Magic the most important spell in the game. It turns any spellcaster into a scout, works as an extra exploration per turn if you happen to run into something magical, all with a card that recharges on a 4, which is nearly automatic, even for starting spellcasters.
I can see the difference in those two roles.
It seems to me that with a large group, you would want to have people both exploring and scouting, otherwise you run the risk of losing to the clock.
So although scouting the villain is the optimal way to discover him, it seems unlikely that the explorers can safely sit and wait for the scouts to finish searching all the locations.
In this case it seems equally likely that an explorer will encounter the villain.
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Yup - everyone needs to be active. You can't just sit back and wait for the scouts.
As I said, the problem with the explorer running into the villain before the scout is that you might not be ready to corner him yet. So best case scenario is that you fight him and win, closing the location and sending him to another location deck. This adds cards to all the remaining location decks, and you once again don't know where the villain is.
Given the choice, I'll usually evade the villain the first time I encounter him, even if I could beat him. That way, we know what location deck he's in, and we can plan strategy for the final battle based on that.
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The roles are definitely mixed. Seelah can scout some, and also has allies and blessings as more than half her deck, so she can discard to explore extra times, and even cast Cure to get those discarded cards back. So she serves all of those roles, but doesn't do any of them nearly as well as other characters who specialize more.
I'd say the best scouting comes from non-basic cards, so you have to be lucky to get them. This includes Augury, Spyglass, and Shalelu. But as I said, Detect Magic is my favorite for a basic card.
My group is putting together a new 4 character party after finishing Burnt Offerings with our earlier 4 characters. We've got Seoni and Kyra, who plan to travel together most of the time, so Seoni can just burn through her deck quickly, while Kyra heals her constantly. Even though they only get 3 spells each, and there are no other spellcasters in the group, we'll probably use all 3 Detect Magic cards in our starting decks.
The villain escaping really isn't that bad, unless he's really a resource drain. Pretty much the only villain I'd be scared of is the one at the end of adventure 1, everything else died rather easily. The other cards you shuffle in are blessings, which when you find it, just pick it up and explore again. Unless it's underneath the henchmen or villain, in which case you haven't lengthened the effective deck at all.
So yeah, if you bumble into the villain early, just consider him to be a henchman who gives you MORE information about the villain than usual, in addition to closing his location. Unless you're traveling as a group, even having your hand wiped out in a loss against the villain is usually a better deal than beating a normal henchman, if you can close a couple locations temporarily (and even better if a few are closed permanently already). You lose X-1 turns from the blessing deck, but compare that against how many turns it'd take to fully explore the locations you temporarily close.
For that reason, I don't think scouting is that important unless it also helps you stack the cards. Like literally stack them.
I've found Scouting to be very effective with four players, particularly Augury. As Seoni I cast it as often as possible, looking for monsters. I then stick the monsters on the bottom so that I don't have to face them. That saves a lot of turns and resources.