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Like I said over there, I think Sajan is probably a good pairing for Ezren. You've got the characters with the most and least blessings, which is nice. And in a situation with a low number of characters, Ezren's inability to discard blessings to explore isn't as big an issue as it would be with 6 players.
I would definitely change his starting deck, though. His recommended spell list is just silly.
They recommend only 3 combat spells, but 2 spells to evade fights. Doesn't it make more sense to win those fights than evade them? Go with 5 combat spells and skip the evasions. A single Arcane Armor probably isn't a bad idea. Detect Magic is always nice to have along. Levitate is probably more useful in a larger group, so trade it out.
The recommendations for other card types could probably be improved slightly, too, but those aren't nearly as major.
I tried sajan and ezren for a few games. I thought it would be a good pair, because one has lots of blessings and the other has none. It actually did not work out well at all. When I play Sajan I really don't want to lose blessings since that's what makes him tick, so I was always reluctant to help Ezren out since it would mean losing a blessing and starting Sajan's turn with one less card, down a blessing no less.
That was my experience, but give it a try to se what you think.
If you do use ezren, I gave him six basic attack spells, and the amulet of life. I don't remember the other cards, but i always had to try qnd make sure he had one attqck spell in hand.
I actually paired him with Amiri, simce i liked having the strongest and most intelligent characters together. They did pretty good,.
I paired Sajan with Seelah, and they cruised through all the scenarios. Probably since they both have a lot of blessings to work with.
I would give him a light crossbow over the quaterstaff.
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I tried sajan and ezren for a few games. I thought it would be a good pair, because one has lots of blessings and the other has none. It actually did not work out well at all. When I play Sajan I really don't want to lose blessings since that's what makes him tick, so I was always reluctant to help Ezren out since it would mean losing a blessing and starting Sajan's turn with one less card, down a blessing no less.
That was my experience, but give it a try to se what you think.
If you do use ezren, I gave him six basic attack spells, and the amulet of life. I don't remember the other cards, but i always had to try qnd make sure he had one attqck spell in hand.
I actually paired him with Amiri, simce i liked having the strongest and most intelligent characters together. They did pretty good,.
I paired Sajan with Seelah, and they cruised through all the scenarios. Probably since they both have a lot of blessings to work with.
I guess I can see that. 6 offensive spells might be overkill - I'd probably go with 5. But overkill isn't necessarily a bad thing, either. Also, trade out the quarterstaff for a mace. And maybe trade out the night watch ally for a troubador.
Ezren might pair well with Kyra. She gets a lot of blessings, and doesn't need them as badly as Sajan, so she can afford to spend them to occasionally help him out.
Ezren can be a good scout with Levitate. Explore and take on whatever is there, then cast Detect Magic, or better yet Augury, then Levitate to move to a different location when the scouting doesn't bode well.
I've found that Ezren is a great blaster - let me know where a monster is so I can blast it and cycle through my deck some more. I always ended up acquiring a card or two but with no way to play them out at the end of the he turn. Detect Magic and Levitate help with that a lot, as does giving a card at the start of the turn.
Guard makes a great ally for defence.
Levitate is quite useful, as is Amiri's overlooked ability to move.
So far, I've only found Levitate to be useful
a) to move somebody to a healer's location so they could heal up before their turn, or
b) to move from a closed location to an open one to cover off a villain's escape
Are there other uses I've missed?
When Ezren's Detect Magic turns up the Vorpal Longsword of Terminal Death +7 but he has no chance of acquiring it. He can either move himself to a new location or move Seelah to this one so she can acquire the sword. When working with Harsk and his scouting and Seoni with her Augury, Levitate can really help the right people make the right checks at the right time.
But, since Seelah can move at the start of her turn anyway the only thing you gain is the chance for her to give an item to Ezren...?
You can also use it to move to a safe area. In one of our games Ezren was very low on life and the villain caused AOE damage. He found and evaded the monster and then levitated away to a closed location so the rest of the party could search for him.
Almost all of the locations but one were already closed and he did not have spells to try that fight at that moment. This spell is currently very week in my opinion but if you have it at the right time it can be very useful. In this case it was found and picked up in play and not part of the normal deck... but he was glad he had it at the time.
The main use for levitate that I have found is getting two characters to the same location and still allowing them to move and explore where they need to during their turns. Useful for trading cards or using cure spells.
It is most useful for characters like Ezren who really want to explore spell heavy locations like the Academy and are often wasted elsewhere (especially in large games). So he can levitate elsewhere for a cure, then move back to the Academy on his turn.
I think I also used it once to ensure that Seelah could use her power to view the top card of the location deck at the start of a turn after she had closed a location on the previous one, but that is starting to get pretty corner case.
Having said that, in a two player game, when paired with Sajan, I probably wouldn't bother keeping it.
Along similar lines, it could be very good with Merisiel, who comes across a hill giant, and evades. Ezren is next, he explores etc, then moves Valeros to the hill giant. Next up is Kyra who moves to the hill giant as well, taking advantage of Valeros' aid in combat. Valeros is up and moves back to the Rusty Dragon for an ale.
Valeros has become a mobile combat bonus.
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Ezren might pair well with Kyra. She gets a lot of blessings, and doesn't need them as badly as Sajan, so she can afford to spend them to occasionally help him out.
So I tried this pairing last night, playing solo through the first two scenarios of Perils of the Lost Coast. I gave Ezren 5 attack spells, 2 Detect Magics, and an Arcane Armor. Kyra had Cure, Detect Magic, and Strength as her starting spells, along with a longspear and mace.
They didn't do so well in battle. Kyra sometimes had trouble getting weapons in hand, and a couple of rolls didn't go well for both of them. Even when they did have the weapons/spells they needed for combat, they didn't have very good odds against tougher monsters like the ogre, and I flubbed more than one roll against monsters that only needed an 8 or 9 to beat. I'm thinking Kyra could have used either an Inflict spell or two, or more Strength spells to help when fighting with a weapon.
In fact, I thought I was going to lose the second scenario, and possibly even have a character death, after a bad roll against the villain early in the game caused Ezren to discard 4 cards and lose 3 cards from the blessings deck. Kyra ended up spending way too much time healing both of them. Oddly, I still ended up winning due to the luck of a henchman and villain both being near the top of their locations later in the scenario, and casting scouting spells (Ezren upgraded one of his Detect Magics to an Augury along the way) to spot the villain being meeting him again.
All in all, Kyra spent more blessings helping Ezren pass checks (to close locations, bypass barriers, etc) than on combat or exploring again. She wasn't that great in combat herself, but she proved that she's a good support character. I'm thinking that with 2 skill ranks in strength to boost her melee, and maybe starting her with two Strength spells, she could actually be a melee monster.
But I'm starting to see why Ezren is so unpopular. In a larger group, the fact that other people need to spend blessings helping him will slow down exploration, which you can't afford in a group of 4+. And he really doesn't work well solo, because he needs that extra help. As much as I want to like him as the guy with the most spells, I'm starting to understand why Seoni is the more popular pure arcane caster.
I found Seoni to be greatly improved with Augury - declare monsters and shove them on the bottom. Now exploring is much safer.
I suspect the same for Ezren though with the monsters on the bottom the location deck is that much shorter (in terms of finding the Henchmen/Villain) and he doesn't have the urgency to explore.
Without Augury you might need 4 attacks and 3 detects. For solo play go with all Guard allies, Thieve's Tools and a Potion of Healing or Two.
Both Arcane and Divine - I just checked the card to be sure.