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So at this point, I’ve played all 11 characters at least once in a solo game, mostly in pairs, but a couple with just the one character. And I’ve been in larger groups (3-4) with each of them through at least 5 scenarios. I still haven't played with 5 or 6, which I understand is a different enough experience to be worth trying out.
There are some characters that are my favorites, a few that I still don't have a firm enough grasp of, a couple that I just don’t want to ever play again, and one that I didn’t think I’d like that ended up being among the favorites.
In evaluating each character, I've come up with some things that I've found as common preferences regardless of which character I'm playing. I'll put this and the details about each character in spoilers, just to cut down on the "wall of text" factor, because this post is going to be pretty huge.
1. I've come to highly value the ability to cycle through your deck to get the cards you need for a specific situation. This means I tend to prefer characters that recharge a lot of cards, allowing them to draw regularly and change their cards in hand to suit the situation. Characters that don't recharge many cards often get stuck with whatever they happened to draw first, and have to discard for no purpose than to get those cards out of the way to draw more, which is effectively taking voluntary damage just to try and draw better cards.
2. At this point in the game, I'd say a 5 card hand is ideal. I've found that characters with only 4 in hand sometimes have a tough time getting the cards they want into their hand when they need them. Those with 6 are more susceptible to damage, and may get into trouble having to draw up after discarding a lot. I think 5 is the Goldilocks zone, at least at this point in the game. Once character decks get larger at later stages in the adventure path, it wouldn't surprise me if that changed.
3. When evaluating characters, usefulness is obviously a top priority. But they're all useful, just in different ways. Some are the best at combat, but not as good at other things. Others are great at acquiring boons, or healing, or scouting, or whatever else, but not as good at combat. So it's a balancing act. When comparing the usefulness of two characters, it's best to compare similar characters doing similar things, rather than completely different characters. Complaining that Lini isn't as good in a fight as Valeros is kinda meaningless, because Lini is much better at other things, and less combat focused. But comparing the healing ability of Kyra and another divine caster (Lini, Lem), and then branching out to comparing other aspects of the characters in question, can be a useful way of looking at things.
4. One other thing to consider is that armor just isn't that useful overall. Yes, I can see keeping one or two damage reduction cards in a deck, but three or more is just overkill, and gets in the way of more frequently useful cards. Needless to say, this hurts the evaluation of characters that start with too much armor.
So here's my thoughts on each character, roughly in order from most to least favorite, though the exact order is subject to change on a whim.
Spells are cool, and Lini gets a lot of them. With a couple of starting Inflicts, she's good at combat. With a couple of starting Cures, she's a pretty good healer. With a couple of starting Detect Magics, she's a decent scout. She's not the best character at any of these things, but with two of each of those as her starting spells, she can serve all three of those roles in any party. Or go with different spells to specialize more, or on different areas, depending on what you need.
She has animal companions that give her a pretty much permanent +1d4 on everything. This allows her to succeed on a lot of random checks where her normal skill wouldn't normally give her much chance, such as using her 1d6 dex or intelligence to try and roll a 5 through 7 for something. This makes her the best character in the game at acquiring random treasure or closing locations without necessarily having the perfect skill for it. And since Survival is a common skill to close many locations, she's already great for that one.
She can recharge her animals when others would be discarding them, which helps with cycling through her deck faster. Recharging spells is also good for cycling through her deck, and she has more spells even than most spellcasters. And unlike most characters, she actually doesn't need specific cards in hand to engage in battle - discard anything and she turns into a combat animal... literally. If she happens to have the Amulet of Mighty Fists (basic card, but usually best suited for Sajan, so Lini only gets dibs when he's not around), then she's even better at unarmed fighting. But again, that relies on getting the card into hand.
Her biggest down side is that she doesn't begin with a weapon in her deck. Using a weapon and boosting her strength by wild shaping is one possible strategy for how to play her in combat, but it relies on either borrowing a weapon from an ally, or else waiting until you can eventually get a weapon using a card feat.
So Lini is probably my favorite character overall, due to a combination of flexibility, effectiveness, and the fact that she's such a cute little gnome with lots of cool animals. Yes, she gets bonus points for fluff!
Speaking of combat animals, Valeros is the ultimate weapon master. He starts with 5 weapons, and it's his favorite card type, so he always starts with one in hand. I always make sure he only keeps melee weapons that have the "discard for an extra die" clause in their power. He recharges them when he discards that way, which is a great way to make sure he doesn't get stuck with too many weapons in hand and no way to cycle through his deck. When I play him, I pretty much recharge a weapon on every fight, unless it's the last one in hand.
His other character power to aid allies in combat at his location is a nice little bonus, particularly since there's no cost, unlike the card recharge costs to use similar powers for some other characters. So not only is he great in a fight, he makes his allies better in a fight for free. Between the extra die from discarding his weapon in every fight, and the ability to boost his allies, I'd say he's probably the best raw combat character in the game.
Besides combat, he has a d8 dexterity, which is useful for some barriers and other things, and 1d6+2 diplomacy, so he's better than average at making new friends.
For downsides, he has 3 armors in his deck, and he doesn't lose fights often enough to need them. Also, his three starting blessings is less than any other character besides the atheist Ezren. Combined with only having two allies to start, he doesn't have the cards necessary to get extra explorations as often as many other characters.
But for raw combat power, I'll choose to play Valeros and cycle through weapons every time.
Like Lini, the key here is flexibility. He only gets four spells to start, but he's the only spellcasters that uses both arcane and divine, so neither goes to waste.
With his ability to trade a card in hand for a card of the same type in his discard pile, he can fail his recharge check when casting Cure, and just keep grabbing it back. This makes him just about as good a healer as Kyra, even with only one Cure spell in his deck.
Give him a decent ranged weapon and use his flexible favored class bonus to always start with it in hand, and he should be able to handle himself in a fight, even without an attack spell. Maybe give him attack spells for extra firepower.
His other power lets him aid allies at his location, while also cycling through his deck to find what he wants. He starts with 3 allies and 5 blessings, and he can acquire new allies easily, so he's good at getting extra explorations or boosts on die rolls.
Downside? His d4 strength makes him very dependent on ranged weapon or attack spell cards to survive a fight. I'm not sure if he's got the combat power necessary to survive solo, unless you really load him up with attack spells.
All in all, as an RPG player, I've always liked both halflings and bards, and this one doesn't disappoint.
You know how I said there was a character I didn't expect to like that ended up being a favorite? Well, it's Harsk. As a Pathfinder RPG player, I've known about this character for a while and didn't like him much as a pregenerated character to use in Pathfinder Society. I just wasn't enthusiastic to try him in PACG. But now that I played in a group with him, I realize he's a great character to have around.
The irony of this gruff loner dwarf is that he works best with a large group. He's got lots of ranged weapons and a nice +3 starting bonus to his Ranged skill that makes him quite effective in a fight, even though it's only based on a d8 dexterity. But his real combat strength shows when the characters at other locations get into a fight. He recharges any card from his hand to give them an extra d4, which helps their fight and lets him cycle through his deck nicely. But because he runs around with crossbows, most of his weapons also have a "discard to help an ally at another location" ability on top of that. So he can easily give his allies 2d4 in the toughest fights, just as long as they leave him alone at his locations.
On top of that, his ability to peek at the top of a location deck at the end of his turn is great for scouting. If need be, he can scout one location, then move to scout a different one every turn. He's got a couple of useful skills (+2 Survival and Perception) and 5 starting blessings, which are always nice to have.
As for downsides, his charisma is terrible, so don't expect to pick up any non-animal allies. And the fact that his most useful features are based on aiding allies at a distance means that he's probably a lot less useful when playing solo.
That's the end of the 4 characters that I'm sure I like. Now we're up to a group that I'm still not entirely sure about. These are characters that I think have potential, and I want to like. But I either haven't played them enough to be really comfortable with their strengths and weaknesses, or else I know enough about their weaknesses to consider them less optimal than some of the best group, above.
The elven thief is a character who theoretically revolves around her items. This is good for acquiring boons, defeating barriers, closing locations, or whatever other skill checks come up that she can use items to help out with. Combine all her skill boosting items with good skills in Acrobatics, Stealth, pretty good Perception, and especially Disable, since that one comes up the most, and she's any group's "go to" character against barriers.
But in a game that revolves around combat much of the time, does she have enough combat power to go with all this non-combat ability? Yeah, actually, she does. She may not be Valeros, but she can handle herself ok when things turn violent.
She starts with only 2 weapons, and doesn't get one in hand automatically. With her d12 dexterity, these should be ranged weapons, but she has the d8 strength to use a melee weapon if she happens to find one. As long as she's alone, she can recharge a card for an extra d6 in combat, or discard it for another d6 on top of that, though I wouldn't recommend using that discard... ever. Ok, maybe if it's the final villain fight of the game, but that's about it. The recharge power is not only good for combat, but again, it's a deck cycling method. If she or another character can boost her fighting power with a blessing, she can handle easier combats even if she doesn't have a weapon in hand.
Or if she doesn't want to get into a fight, she can evade anything that comes her way. And remember, that evasion isn't just against monsters. She can evade any encounter. Let's say she flips the top card of a location deck and finds a great spell that she thinks Ezren would want, but she doesn't have the Intelligence or Arcane to pick it up. Evade it, and you'll know it's still at that location for Ezren to come and get later!
Downsides? Mostly just her reliance on weapons, and no easy way to get one in hand. Also, her 2 allies and 4 blessings might not give her enough extra explorations in a large group. So she might be the best character to play solo, decent in a mid-size group (2-4), but not the best in a large group.
Overall, I like Merisiel. I just haven't played her enough to be really comfortable with her, which is why she's not in my top favorites. But I think she's likely to join them once I've played her more.
With the most average stats (no d4 or d12), no weapons, no armor, and no spells, Sajan is pretty much a blessing-based life form. He's got 8 blessings to start, and he knows how to use them. With a blessing or two in hand, he's a combat beast that cannot lose.
The problem? His 8 starting blessings might look like a lot, but since those are the only cards he ever uses, they actually aren't enough. He's got 4 items and 3 allies to start, but he'd rather have more blessings. He discards the allies and occasionally blessings for more explorations. But the items are often unnecessary, other than the Amulet of Mighty Fists and maybe a Thieves Tools, later upgraded to Masterwork Tools, to deal with barriers. So why exactly is item his favored card, when those are frequently the least useful cards in his deck?
And with a hand size of only 4 cards, he sometimes just can't get enough blessings in his hand to be useful. Any time you have to beat a henchman, then summon another monster or henchman to close the location, he's at risk of not having enough blessings in hand for both fights. His first power feat should definitely go into boosting his hand size to 5. And he's the one character I'd seriously consider upgrading from a 5 to 6 card hand.
His other downside is that he may be great at combat, but he's incredibly average at everything else. Remember that his recharging blessing trick only works on combat checks. Non-dexterity checks to acquire most items, close locations, or overcome barriers will be at d6, or d8 if it's a wisdom check, and spending a blessing for an extra die is a discard, just like for anyone else, but it hurts his combat power more than most others. Since he needs the blessings for combat, and only has a 4 card hand, he's unlikely to use them for acquiring stuff, so a lot of good boons will go to waste when he encounters them.
Sajan is a character I really wanted to like, and he's great in a fight, but his downsides make him just barely annoying enough to keep him off my "favorites" list. I like him, just not quite as much as the top 5, above. Still, he's probably great if you just want to play a solo game based on killing everything, without worrying about picking up boons along the way.
As mentioned earlier, spells are cool, and Ezren gets 8 of them. With his high arcane skill, he should be recharging them most of the time, and he can frequently draw another spell from his deck when he casts one. So deck cycling should be pretty easy for him.
He's also good at exploring locations with lots of magic present. If necessary, he has a d6 strength and dexterity, with a weapon in his starting deck, so he can fall back on beating people with a stick if he runs out of offensive spells.
I haven't played Ezren enough to be really comfortable with him yet. It was actually a tough call for me whether to rank him above or below Seoni - both primary arcane casters are pretty good, but have at least one major weakness. In this case, that would be his lack of blessings. With only 3 allies, and nothing special in charisma to pick up more, he's not going to explore many times per turn. So he's probably good in smaller groups, where exploring only once per turn every time is acceptable.
The fact that she's refered to as a sorcerer, instead of the feminine sorceress, has always bugged me.
Like Ezren, Seoni is a primary arcane caster with lots of spellcasting, and one major weakness. Seoni only gets 3 spell cards, but she's got a fire blast she can use any time she wants, so she's one of the few characters that can get away with going into battle without an offensive card in hand. The downside is obviously the discard cost of using that blast.
With 5 blessings, 4 allies, and a good charisma, she's also one of the best characters at getting extra explores per turn, which is great for a large group. Unfortunately, those are discarded, as well.
And that's really her weakness - not just that her blast spell relies on discarding, but so does everything else she does. Her 3 spell cards are just about the only thing rechargeable cards she has. Of all the characters in the game, she's the most reliant on healing. I think this is why I ranked her below Ezren, though it was a tough call.
Kyra's a great healer, at the cost of a divine card. She's great against undead, and she's got the fortitude to pick up better armor easily. Unfortunately, that's about all she's got going for her.
Like Seoni, I kinda wish Kyra had more than 3 spells. She has 2 weapons, and possible attack spells, but her favored card type is blessings, so she may start without any offense in hand.
And while she's the clearly the best healer in the game, the fact is that Lini and Lem can be almost as good at healing, and much more useful in other regards, because they don't have to give up exploring to heal. Any of them could use Cure spells for healing instead of Kyra's power, but she's got the least spells of the healing characters, so she has the least flexibility in other spells if she does rely on Cure spells
Maybe it's because I played Kyra in a 4 character group, but she spent all her time healing, and rarely got to do any actual exploring. Maybe in a smaller group, that wouldn't be such a problem. As is, I'm just more likely to pick Lini or Lem as the healer for any 3+ character group, because they're better at other things, too. I'm tempted to try her solo (or duo), just to see if she works out better that way.
Remember how I mentioned two characters that I don't want to ever play again? Well here they are:
I really want to like Seelah. I'm actually a fan of paladins in the classic D&D/Pathfinder RPG. There are a ton of threads here on the Paizo forums about people hating paladins, because they have to play noble, lawful good personalities, and I'm constantly standing up on the side of the paladins. I'm not all noble and honorable in RL, but in a role playing game, it's fun to play that type of character once in a while. As long as they're useful, which they definitely are in the RPG. But here in the card game, she's just not that great.
With 1d8 +2 starting Melee, she's pretty good with weapons, though not quite as good as Valeros or Amiri. But she only starts with 3 weapon cards, and they aren't her favored card type. Armor as a favored card type? Really??? Could you start a character with a more useless card, especially in a 4 card hand? So just getting a weapon in hand doesn't always happen right away, and she doesn't have an easy way to cycle through her deck to find what she wants.
Speaking of lack of deck cycling, she gets one spell in her starting deck, which rarely actually gets into her hand and played. I think in our group she actually got to cast her Cure spell once in 5 sessions.
She's got a decent wisdom and pretty good charisma, though no bonus on diplomacy, so she can still roll a 1 or 2 on the d10.
As for her character powers, scouting the location deck before diving in is nice, though driving away any boons means that she frequently still won't know what monster she's about to face before doing so. And recharging a blessing for an extra d6 on any check would be a sweet deal, if she didn't risk discarding other cards when she used it. But those powers are sometimes pretty good, which is why she isn't dead last on this list, despite my having no desire to ever play her again.
So Amiri is great at pounding on things with her 5 starting weapons, just like Valeros. And she has decent survival skill, along with the ability to move at the end of her turn, which can be handy. And that's it.
Unlike Valeros, she has no way to cycle through her deck, because she lacks his power to recharge weapons when using their discard power. Her second character power lets her bury a card for extra combat power - the one thing she really doesn't need. Has anyone actually seen her use this power when it ever mattered? In our group, she'd use it during the final villain fight, when we knew she was going to win anyway, and the buried card was irelevant, because the game was over.
Yes, she's great in a fight. But so are a lot of other characters who have other things to contribute to the group. Kinda like how Kyra's the best healer, but doesn't contribute enough in other ways, so I'd rather play one of the other healer characters. If I want a melee weapon beast, I'll take Valeros over Amiri or Seelah every time.
Thanks Fromper.
I found this very interesting. However, I haven't played enough of all the characters to make much comment. For those I have played I can agree with your evaluation overall.
I really appreciate that you seem to have made your comparisons based on the basic character. Much better than saying that Seoni is the number one character WHEN you have added a spell via a Card Feat.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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So at this point, I’ve played all 11 characters at least once in a solo game, mostly in pairs, but a couple with just the one character. And I’ve been in larger groups (3-4) with each of them through at least 5 scenarios. I still haven't played with 5 or 6, which I understand is a different enough experience to be worth trying out.
There are some characters that are my favorites, a few that I still don't have a firm enough grasp of, a couple that I just don’t want to ever play again, and one that I didn’t think I’d like that ended up being among the favorites.
In evaluating each character, I've come up with some things that I've found as common preferences regardless of which character I'm playing. I'll put this and the details about each character in spoilers, just to cut down on the "wall of text" factor, because this post is going to be pretty huge.
** spoiler omitted **...
You know, Fromper, I had never even considered that Merisiel can evade BOON encounters! That's a great point, and makes me like her even more than I did before!
Your general order of liking the characters also matches mine, except for Harsk. I tried him in a group of three players and despised him, but I can definitely see him being better in a larger group than that. While his scouting ability is excellent, I just can't get over the d12 Constitution that almost never comes up as useful.
As far as Sajan goes, I think Items are his favored card specifically because of the Amulet of Mighty Fists. I think once we hit the higher adventure decks and you acquire the Amulet of Fiery Fists for him, and then have two of those in the deck, having Item as his favored card will make a lot more sense.
I agree with your assessment on Ezren, if he only had a way to explore more often he would be the king of Arcane casters. I probably rate him just below Seoni instead of the other way around, because Seoni's ability to just discard to cast a fire ray is excellent and comes in very handy when her three spell cards are all at the bottom of your character deck after being recharged.
The only reason they refer to Seoni as a Sorcerer instead of Sorceress is because the official name of the class in Pathfinder is Sorcerer. It's sorta the same thing with Witch, most people have trouble thinking of a male as a Witch, and would prefer to use Warlock, but the official name of the class is Witch (and in 3.5 Warlock was a completely different class, in fact).
I disagree with you, though, that she's the most reliant on healing in the game. Even though she does need to discard a lot of cards, there is an upside to that... her three spells get recharged, so you know you're going to get them when your deck is getting low. I've actually found that starting her at a location with a lot of spells will make her almost invincible, because each spell she acquires during the scenario is another one that is almost constantly recharged, keeping her deck in decent shape. I'd say the character MOST reliant on healing is Amiri, because at some point you've buried too many cards to keep filling your deck without being healed every other turn.
I've found that Kyra is definitely better at exploring in a larger group, and if you build her out correctly she can actually be a Melee beast. Last night when we played a 3-person game, my friend had her built out with the +1 Fiery Mace and the +1 Icy Longspear, and had two Cures and an Aid for spells. When he came up against most monsters, he was using d6 + d8 + 4 (Strength + weapon + melee boost + 1 from skill feat) and normally discarding a blessing of some type for an extra d6, which was usually enough to defeat the monster. Against undead, of course, the extra d12 just ripped them apart. I think the most important thing to make an effective Kyra is to build her more for melee than for offensive spells, putting most of your skill feats in Strength with a few in Wisdom just for recharge checks.
I would actually put Seelah dead last, as her favored card of armor makes her incredibly useless in my opinion. She's the character that I have enjoyed playing the very least.
I've only played Amiri in a "solo" game where I'm running two characters, and that other character is Lem the bard. I've found that with those two characters working together, I can defeat pretty much any check in the game, thanks to Amiri being good at Melee and Survival, and Lem taking care of pretty much everything else. While Amiri isn't very versatile, I do like her MUCH better than Seelah because she fits in better with other characters (especially Lem, as I said).
Kyra and Harsk are my two favorites.
As cartmanbeck mentioned, Kyra is a good melee fighter. I soloed both the initial adventures with her without a hitch (couple of close calls but she recovers nicely) and she is a key member to a large group. Sure there can be other healers, but she's great at it and can hold her own in a melee. Plus if a scout uncovers an undead mob... well, she's better than Bill Murray at busting ghosts.
Harsk I like for all the reasons Fromper mentioned. He does well enough solo but really shines in 6 player games.
I haven't been able to bring myself to play Seelah. I think armor is nearly useless as well and the fact that she chucks boons out the window is a good reason not to have her in a group. However, I might try her solo just to see what happens.
I agree with most of what you said regarding the characters. I do think you undervalue Kyra, especially in a group play (or in scenarios that may be heavy on undead foes). I concur with cartmanbeck's build of Kyra using the fiery mace and longspear+1 (or even the basic versions of these weapons). You've also made me take a second look at Lini: a character I had passed off as somewhat useless. I guess I hadn't noticed her strength with divine spells, so now I'm excited to try her out. My group so far has played almost entirely with Kyra, Seelah, Harsk, Merisiel, Ezren and Sajan, so the others haven't gotten as much attention. We did have someone start out with Valeros, but he was eaten by Black Fang. Seelah, Sajan and Ezren have all been deemed "less good" than the others in our group though. (I still Ezren is really good, but I wish he could explore a bit more, the other two are hit-or-miss)
I think I'll try going through the first two adventures with Lini and Valeros together; they seem like they would make for a good team.
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I'll probably give Kyra another chance. Like I said, I just haven't quite played her enough to wrap my head around her that much. And there's the fact that I like Lini so much, and Kyra's a competing divine caster. Maybe I'll try Kyra in a solo game, either alone or as part of a duo.
Remi, bear in mind that I don't usually use the recommended starting decks. With me, Lini always starts with two Inflict spells, so discarding for the d10 strength isn't her primary offense. And she may be a little dependent on healing because of the occasional discards, but at least she can heal herself, unlike some other characters who need it badly.
Agreed on Valeros and cycling armors. That applies to magic and elven armors, though, not necessarily heavy. But being able to cycle them is good for any armor wearing character, if they can find the magic stuff.
As for Harsk, I agree that he almost never uses the discard power of the crossbows to add d4 to someone else's combat check. But his recharge power to help others while cycling his deck is pretty constant. There's really almost never a time when he has exactly the 5 cards he wants in his hand, so there's always something he's willing to recharge. Actually, our group was torn between giving him a +1 to that power or increasing his hand size to 6 when he got his first power feat, because the extra card in hand would let him cycle his deck more effectively.
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Some characters really are kinda handicapped by their starting decks. While Valeros or Amiri can survive with their, because they have plenty of strength to go with their weapons, Lini and Ezren just don't have enough combat power with the recommended spells. Now that I know what I'm doing, I always customize, right from the start.
Great post! I started out solo with Merisiel and Seelah thinking they'd be a powerful 2-character team (and they're not awful), but that was before I'd actually played enough.
I'm going to stick with them since we've already been through so much together, but if I were to start again I'd definitely give Valeros and Lini a shot. :)
We have Seelah in a game with Harsk and Ezren - and three scenarios in we are still trying to figure out Seelah's strong point, other than holding a few Blessing to share with Ezren.
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I dunno, I just can't see any usefulness for Seelah. She's not THAT good at melee, she only has one spell (Cure, obviously), and she doesn't have many good skills for gaining boons either. If you want an all-around type character, Lini is just SO MUCH better. Perhaps I'll try to come up with a new version of Seelah that is less useless (in my opinion, obviously).
I dunno, I just can't see any usefulness for Seelah. She's not THAT good at melee, she only has one spell (Cure, obviously), and she doesn't have many good skills for gaining boons either. If you want an all-around type character, Lini is just SO MUCH better. Perhaps I'll try to come up with a new version of Seelah that is less useless (in my opinion, obviously).
In the RPG the paladin is good in combat particularly with Smite. I guess that is what the Discard power is about, like Merisiel's sneak attack recharge or discard power.
The Paladin seems like a fighter who has spent all their feats on healing abilities, Seelah here doesn't feel like a fighter with healing...
She iconically wears plate, so that is why she has armour as Favoured card type.
Perhaps we need to change how we play her. Perhaps we need to rely on that armour as a means to explore her location. Explore, do the best possible, toss in a blessing to explore again. If you fail a combat that's okay because your armour soaks it up. That's okay because you now know what monsters are in there, not that that is your focus. You're ignoring the monstes to ferret out the villain. Seelah often starts with 3 blessing and 1 armour. That gives her 4 explores that turn. For combat she can discard from her deck to roll 1d8 + 1d6 +2 which isn't bad. Even better is to start with 1 armour, 1 weapon and two blessing for three explores each turn. With her discard ability that instead recharges blessings...
No, you're right. She is a dud. She will run out of blessings after three or four turns. Perhaps she is only good in a six player party where you only get about 5 turns.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I dunno, I just can't see any usefulness for Seelah. She's not THAT good at melee, she only has one spell (Cure, obviously), and she doesn't have many good skills for gaining boons either. If you want an all-around type character, Lini is just SO MUCH better. Perhaps I'll try to come up with a new version of Seelah that is less useless (in my opinion, obviously).In the RPG the paladin is good in combat particularly with Smite. I guess that is what the Discard power is about, like Merisiel's sneak attack recharge or discard power.
The Paladin seems like a fighter who has spent all their feats on healing abilities, Seelah here doesn't feel like a fighter with healing...
She iconically wears plate, so that is why she has armour as Favoured card type.
Perhaps we need to change how we play her. Perhaps we need to rely on that armour as a means to explore her location. Explore, do the best possible, toss in a blessing to explore again. If you fail a combat that's okay because your armour soaks it up. That's okay because you now know what monsters are in there, not that that is your focus. You're ignoring the monstes to ferret out the villain. Seelah often starts with 3 blessing and 1 armour. That gives her 4 explores that turn. For combat she can discard from her deck to roll 1d8 + 1d6 +2 which isn't bad. Even better is to start with 1 armour, 1 weapon and two blessing for three explores each turn. With her discard ability that instead recharges blessings...
No, you're right. She is a dud. She will run out of blessings after three or four turns. Perhaps she is only good in a six player party where you only get about 5 turns.
Yeah, my problem with her is that you're discarding stuff from you deck, and she just doesn't have enough blessings in that deck to make the power worth it. What if you discard the top card of your deck to kill a powerful monster, and it's your Cure spell? And you roll badly and STILL fail the combat? Then you've lost 4-5 cards for nothing.
I'm thinking I'll test her out with the possibility of getting her Cure spell back somehow, or perhaps giving her a Lay on Hands ability where she can heal someone at her location for a set amount (recharge one card per turn or something, maybe?) And obviously the Armor as favored card type just has to go. I understand that the creators wanted to have at least one character with each favored card type, but Armors are just not good enough to warrant a character being based on them.
Ooh... what if she had a way to discard an armor in her hand to deal extra damage instead? Hmmm....
Along the idea the Seelah is trying to ferret out evil, perhaps she is better of with Augury. She can look for henchmen, face them and close the location more quickly and effectively than then does with Cure in her hand.
Some interesting points here. I will comment though that as some one who largely plays 6 player my favourites are a bit different.
Specifically, I like characters such as Amiri, Seoni and even Seelah (sort of) quite a lot more than how you rate them.
In 6 player we basically only use blessings for extra explorations or really critical rolls. Also, because each player only gets 5 turns, you can be very aggressive about discarding for special abilities on these characters since the likelihood you will exhaust your deck is pretty small.
I find that Amiri is really good when you send her to a location where there are lots of weapons / armor where she can bury a card to pretty much auto acquire it. She also works well when sent to a location that has a str / con roll to close since she can all but guarantee a close without spending a blessing. Finally, since we usually try and stack her up with weapons that allow rerolls on failure, she tends to outperform Valeros in combat, since she can bury a card for the extra d10 and still reroll if she fails.
Seoni is great for picking up allies and then using them for extra explorations, as well as killing stuff. She can basically spend all her blessings / allies exploring and then discard other cards for the combat damage. We usually send her to the Waterfront or similar and let her go nuts. She can often clear it in 2-3 turns.
Seelah, like Lini is good to pass checks that no one else is easily able to pass since the extra +d6 is usually enough to give her a decent shot. We just tend to avoid the locations with dex or int based closing checks. Her exploration power is really useful when you need to dig through looking for henchmen / villains too which is a pretty big thing in 6 player games. I totally agree about her being severely hamstrung if she doesn't have a weapon in her starting hand though. We usually have to pass one across in this case. I think she could be made better, but haven't been totally disappointed so far.
The main character that I don't rate is Sajan. He needs to keep his blessings to have any hope in combat which means he can't afford to discard them to explore which really limits his usefulness. He also suffers any time there are multiple fights in a turn, which gets more frequent in later scenarios and in 6 players when you want to explore at least twice a turn.
Valeros suffers from this a bit too since with only 3 blessings he can't explore often and he doesn't have any other mechanism for improving his non-combat checks to do things like close locations (as per Amiri) so often needs to save a blessing or two for them as well. In a smaller group though I agree he is awesome.
As for armor, my biggest issue is that the characters who would really benefit aren't the ones that get any. When you only have 4 cards in hand, then worst cases scenario for damage isn't that bad anyway so all armor does is let you protect certain cards but at a pretty steep cost. I think it will become more useful as hand sizes get larger to 6 or even 7. The only other point worth mentioning is that once decks improve and you have magic armor, you can recharge it when you reset your hand, which is what we tend to do a lot (keep one, recharge any others) which lets you cycle through the deck a bit. I don't think it makes it quite as useful as other cards but it does reduce the problem a bit.
TLDR - I agree with most of your points, but it is a mark of how deep this game is that the worth of many of the characters can change significantly with the number of players.
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As mentioned elsewhere, I tried out Ezren and Kyra together playing solo last night in the first two scenarios. I'm starting to understand why Ezren gets such a bad rap. The lack of blessings really does suck.
Jury's still out on Kyra. I might try her truly solo, or paired with another character besides Ezren, just to see how she does. I seem to keep pairing her with the arcane casters (previously teamed her up with Seoni), so maybe I'll pair her with an easier character like Valeros or Harsk next, just to see how that goes. I'm just not that big a fan of playing solo with just one character - the game loses too much that way.
This was a great character review, and the bit about Miseriel evading anything was eye-opening.
I agree with most of this, but I think there's a lot to be said about individual play style, not just number of characters.
I play mostly solo with multiple (2-3) characters, and I have yet to play a game without Kyra; I find her to be that essential. I tend to aggressively discard my blessings/allies with my other character(s), so they are often in need of healing. I'd say 50% of the time Kyra is healing the others, but considering the extra mileage I'm getting out of the others, that's OK. When she's not healing, I can usually trust her to old her own in combat and pick up a few boons along the way.
The thing I probably like most about her is her ability to treat 2/3 of her deck as cure spells, which opens up a lot of opportunity for double (or even triple+) heals: first play a Cure spell, then reveal a blessing/spell/item to activate her cure-like power; that's 2d4+2 (up to 10) cards of healing in 1 turn. (The order is not critical, but If I'm healing myself this way it gives me a chance to heal myself of the Cure spell I've probably somehow failed to recharge.) This makes those discard powers (Seoni, Miseriel, etc) much more affordable.
I haven't played with all characters yet, but so far Valeros/Kyra and Kyra/Seoni/Miseriel are my favorite combinations, using the above tactics. I had decent success with Kyra/Ezren/Lem, but I wasn't playing Ezren or Lem to their full potential, on hindsight (kept forgetting to use their powers).
I've only played a bit with Amiri and Seelah, but so far I tend to agree that they are less useful (or at least not my favorites to play). I've been putting off trying Lini and Harsk, but based on everyone's rave reviews, I may have to give them a shot sooner rather than later.
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While healing is nice, Kyra isn't the only healer. Lini and Lem can be almost as good at healing, and without giving up their explorations to do it.
It's interesting how many of you didn't notice that Merisiel can evade things other than monsters. That seems to be the most common comment in this thread.
One of the things I really liked about playtesting feedback was the very large number of characters for whom we got the following feedback:
Person A: Character X is way too good!
Person B: Character X is way too bad!
Why did I like that? Because it suggests that there's good variety in what people want AND what people get out of the various characters.
I bring this up not to say that anyone is `wrong' about any of the characters, but rather the opposite: figure out what you like, and don't like, and play the stuff that you like! We don't expect that everyone will like all of the characters equally, but we do hope that you like some of the characters a bunch, and we like to hear about it when you do.
Telling us what you don't like about a character is a bit more fraught, not because it's not useful, but because we might want to keep those things you don't like for the other people who do like them. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't give us your feedback! It does mean, though, that we often won't share your view that these things are all problems that need to be fixed.
I hope that helps. Thanks for playing!
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Thanks for posting, Chad. Always nice to get feedback from the developers.
As I mentioned at the start of the thread, this is all opinion.
I ranked Amiri dead last because I don't like her, not because I don't think she's useful. She's great in a fight. I just prefer characters who cycle through their deck faster to find the specific cards they want for a given situation, and have more useful character powers. Her power to bury a card for more combat power is almost always unnecessary, so it's kind of a waste of a power. Though re-reading it, I just noticed that it works on non-combat strength and constitution checks, which could be useful against some barriers, and make the crowbar unnecessary. And if you think about it, other characters have powers that occasionally go to waste, too, like Valeros or Lem if they're not at a location with another character. But if I'm going to play a melee weapon combat focused character, I'll stick with Valeros over Amiri or Seelah any day.
Also as mentioned in the first post, these opinions are subject to change on a whim. Since writing the initial post, I've grown to like Merisiel more and Ezren much less. I've been trying out Kyra more, too, and she's starting to grow on me, too, though I still think I'd prefer Lem and/or Lini as the healer in a larger group.
Jury's still out on Kyra. I might try her truly solo, or paired with another character besides Ezren, just to see how she does. I seem to keep pairing her with the arcane casters (previously teamed her up with Seoni), so maybe I'll pair her with an easier character like Valeros or Harsk next, just to see how that goes.
As a followup to this, I played Valeros through Brigandoom and Poison Pill last night to catch him up to Kyra. I couldn't believe how easy it was. I'm not sure if it's just how good Valeros is, that I'm not used to playing solo with just one character, or both, but it was very quick and easy to get through both scenarios. Including time to create his character deck, and setup time for both scenarios, I think the whole thing only took about 45 minutes.
So I had time to follow up by playing Valeros and Kyra together, hunting for Black Fang. The low point of that one was Kyra finding a battle axe that Valeros really wanted and being unable to acquire it. For some reason, I ended up with good items for him (masterwork tools and spyglass), but I can't seem to find upgraded weapons to give him this time around. When our group of 4 played with him all the way through Burnt Offerings, I think he had at least one magic weapon by the time we finished Black Fang, and all his weapons were better than basics when we finished Burnt Offerings. This time, his only weapon upgrade through 3 scenarios is a bastard sword. On the other hand, the spyglass and Kyra's augury spell were great at the Shrine to Lamashtu, though Kyra still had to volunteer for some damage for finding blessings, since Black Fang ended up hiding in the bottom half of that deck in the end.
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Since initially writing this, my opinions have changed a lot on the characters. I'm thinking of doing a whole new version, rather than just putting little updates in this thread. It might take me a couple of days to get to it, though.
The first thing I want to add is a category in the evaluation criteria for "re-explorability". This is how often they'll get extra explores, mostly based on quantity of allies and blessings in their starting deck. Valeros is going to drop from 2nd place because of this factor. I still like him more than Seelah and Amiri for a heavy armor wearing melee weapon fighter, but he just doesn't get extra explores often enough to be that great in a large group.
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Meh, I just don't understand why anyone who is going to spend the time going through the entire 8 scenarios with the goal being the entire Adventure Path can't spend all of 5 minutes it takes to build their own decks. Sure, if you're doing a quick one-off game, you might go with the listed decks, but they're probably not going to be reading this anyway.
Now, does this keep me from liking many of those non-exploring allies as much as I probably should? You bet your bottom dollar it does, but that can't be used to judge a character.
I'm not sure I understand. Who is this comment aimed at?
I definitely make custom starting decks, and all of my evaluations are based on that. In my last post, when I talked about judging character "re-explorability" based on allies and blessings in their starting deck, I'm assuming custom starting decks, where all the allies have the "discard to explore" power.
This is an extremely useful thread. Care to do a follow-up?
