The best use of armor in my games has been for before encounter damage. There have been a few times when this damage would have wiped out my hand making attempting the check impossible. I have found the armors more useful them the shields since they can usually be buried or discarded to reduce all damage.
I have also found them useful with Kyra and Seelah, since there melee rolls sometimes lose a combat check, so the armors and shields that can be revealed/recharged save a few cards occasionally.
I don't mind armors, i think they have there place in the game and will become more useful, and I suspect that many monsters in the future will deal damage before the encounter.
The non-basic armors/shields are by far superior to the basic, and I like that many of them allow you to recharge them when reseting your hand.
Not many damage before encounter are counterable by armour. That is a true problem.
Really?
It seems like many armors can be banished or buried to reduce all damage, so they work great for countering before encounter damage.
Am I missing something?
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Not many damage before encounter are counterable by armour. That is a true problem.Really?
It seems like many armors can be banished or buried to reduce all damage, so they work great for countering before encounter damage.
Am I missing something?
You're correct, there's no restriction on damage type when burying armor to reduce all damage.
I don't think there's anything wrong with armor cards in general, I just think that Seelah having them as a favored card is horrible without changing her around a bit. Check out my suggested Revised Seelah to see what I've done to try to make her more viable: Revised Seelah
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I have to agree that armor kinda sucks. The saying "The best defense is a good offense" definitely applies to this game, so you're better off with weapons and blessings in your hand to win a fight than an armor card. And the fact that the characters who have armor also have small hand sizes doesn't help. The fact that he starts with 3 armors is probably the biggest weakness of Valeros, and as mentioned, armor being Seelah's favored card is one of several reasons to consider taking scissors to the Seelah card.
I like the idea of displaying armor as a rules change. If they were changing the game, I'd say make it so you can display one suit of armor and one shield. Then, if you need to use them, they work exactly like they do now, but instead of being recharged/discarded/buried from hand, they stop being displayed to do those things.
Folks, isn't it a bit early to be judging worthiness of card types? There's a lot of game we've not seen yet. Mike stated in a thread that his perspective of the cards is different as he has the whole set in mind. Armor may be more important as the game evolves.
I also agree that armor is nice to have for the non combat situations (bury to prevent all damage) like before encounter and barriers. And I still like the paladin! Don't cut her up!
The shield bash ability Cartmanback proposed is great! I'd rather it be general card ability than replace an ability though.
Though you have played several games, dozens perhaps, it is early days indeed. There are over 500 cards to be added yet.
Is it a bit early to be judging the worth of card types? Not as far as I can tell. I mean, sure, the first set isn't done yet, but...I'm pretty sure I paid some good money, played a whole lot of games, and people are even writing reviews about the game, which is only one sixth done, and reviews tend to affect sales instead of merely my game strategy. So, yeah. The meta might change as more cards are added, but if it's late enough to be playing, it's late enough to be judging cards.
Armor really needs some help. That may change, but as it stands armor is strictly a "lose less" card type that some characters are forced to play, and others are not. And it's not even "always lose less" it's "lose less unless it's not Combat, or unreducable damage".
Don't get me wrong. I think Seelah is sickly underrated. But her favorite card being armor is a real hindrance.
I'd certainly trade Seelah's favored to weapons! Don't get me wrong; armor needs some help. My point is that, like any CCG/LCG, this game will evolve and armor will likely become more functional.
All of RotRL is sitting in warehouses already printed. If balancing armor wasn't a consideration for adventure 1, I don't see why it'd be a consideration later on. It's too late for reactive fixes.
Hopefully it's just an oversight in the first box, but I don't have a whole lot to say whether it is or isn't.
I guess that with armor as the favoured card for Seelah you can afford to take the risk of playing a bigger hand, perhaps even need to.
I'm not getting my point across, but that's okay. We can agree that armor needs help.
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The way I see it, the base ability of the armor to just take a couple points of damage really isn't that useful. But the all or nothing ability is very useful when you really fail that roll you thought was going to be easy.
Also, we have already seen some changes with the magical armor that is in the Burnt Offerings deck. You can recharge them during reset if you don't like it in your hand.
Also I should point out there are 3 more armors each in The Skinsaw Murders and The Hook Mountain Massacre that we haven't seen yet. So who knows what they can do. Though I suspect that the Hide Armor of Fire Resistance might give you some help against Fire damage.
But because I have armor in hand I may take the extra card for hand size feat ASAP as Seelah and to a lesser extent the fighter. A risk I may not consider with the monk or other character. Now it's protecting 4 (5 if it recharges) cards of 15.
I have to agree here... Armor is my least favourite card type by far (closely followed by potions, but that's just me hating to banish cards to get use out of them).
In most cases I'd gladly trade 2-3 armors for one extra weapon in my starting deck.
Especially in 6-character games - you just don't have time to be messing around and a chance to actually *defeat* the bane you're facing instead of losing less badly to it would be handy!
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I think armor is Seelah's favorite card so that every boon type is the favored card for at least one character.
I know I'm overthinking this, but it occurred to me to wonder if Lem can pick "Loot" as his favored card type once he has one (or more) in his deck. What if he has the medallion in his deck, and chooses item. Does it count? Given that it's favored card type, not favored boon type, I'm thinking that it should be treated separately from items.
I would say this belongs in its own thread, but this whole train of thought is inane enough to deserve to be ignored, not discussed further.
Let's pretend we have some kind of really awesome reveal armor that was reveal to reduce damage by some arbitrary amount. This armor actually provides card economy compared to a blessing, but only if you really play the odds. Here's how: Ordinarily, losing a combat check provides both the disadvantage that you wasted an explore and the added penalty of damage, which can be potentially devastating or lethal. Consider not having the reveal armor in hand and instead having an extra blessing. Now you come across a series of monsters that all have a combat DC equal to your unbuffed attack dice average. Each time, then, you would have around 55-60% chance of winning the combat without using a blessing, or you (or an ally) can toss a blessing for an extra dice and up that to say 85%. You will probably toss those blessings to both win the encounter and ablate the damage. So because of the potential for damage, each blessing is giving you about 25% of an expected explore (upping 60 to 85). With a powerful reveal armor in hand, you can just not buff your combat ever and take the 40% chance of losing the fight for no damage. Now each blessing can be an extra exploration (albeit one with a 60% chance of winning), so you got 60% of an expected explore per blessing. So as you can see, this holy grail reveal armor is really generating massive advantage from each blessing. However, as Chad said in the thread about Seelah, it's all about playstyle. We as people are wired to like certainty and to not like losing. If we don't run the math, we're more likely to want to shore up a certain victory on the first try than to suck up a reasonably high chance of failure with fewer resources spent (it's the same reason that most people would rather take a certain $100 than a 10% chance to win $2,000, despite the expected value). And if that's your style, armor is going to be all but worthless.
Your mighty calculation look cold.
So the armor let you with no damage... But with an undefeated encounter back to the pile. What is the benefit ?
What good will your armor provide to your teammates ?
Will you keep it at reset or recharge it in the hope of finding something more usefull ?
What good with this armor provide If the encounter is not one that damage but one you need to roll to acquire or Disarm ?
Your shiny armor will let you starve to death in a blocked passage while the blessing could have you get through.
Frankly, given the choice of a blessing or an armor piece in hand, who, in his right mind, would choose the very circumstancial and limitated armor ?
Armor are deadweight that pollute already thin hands. They are not a Boon for the fighter that draw them.
This is the comparison of, say for example, Weapon + Blessing + Blessing + UberArmor vs Weapon + Blessing + Blessing + Blessing versus a series of combats.
The first hand explores three times, expects 1.8/3 victories, and burns up two blessings. The second hand you use the blessings to boost your attack and explore twice (with a higher win-rate) for expected 1.6/3 victories, burning up three blessings. As turns go by, the first hand will get more and more explores due to being able to accept more losses.
I think Rogue Eidolon has a good strategy here. You only win about half your combats but you explore more. You take no damage. It is like scouting the deck and culling about half the monsters along the way. I know I prefer to use Blessings to explore, but spend a lot of them on combat buffs (particularly playing Lem with no offensive spells).
I think Rogue Eidolon has a good strategy here. You only win about half your combats but you explore more. You take no damage. It is like scouting the deck and culling about half the monsters along the way. I know I prefer to use Blessings to explore, but spend a lot of them on combat buffs (particularly playing Lem with no offensive spells).
Needless to say, the fact that my example was against an endless string of monsters is because the armored explore works best against monsters. You'd want to send this character into monster-heavy territory or, if it's Seelah, use the scouting ability that sends boons to the bottom (you can always refuse to close the location and send someone else to shovel up the boons if it looks like you have time to do that).
Now, all that said, in actual game play, I can't be as logical as here on the boards, so I also don't like using armored characters, but I'm aware that it can lead to a powerful strategy.
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It's a good point that Rogue Eidolon raises. Monsters can be as high as 70% of the deck (two locations have 6 monsters + henchman/villain) and in later packs some might even go higher. This tactic naturally favours locations like that so in scenarios like Local Heroes it won't work as well.
I'll have to give it a try with Seelah in the 6 player group. There is usually at least one monster heavy location in the 8.
Another advantage that occurred to me is that if the hand with the extra blessing loses a fight on its first explore, it might have to discard its remaining two blessings, so will do even worse. The upside is that if you hit a boon, then an extra blessing is better since armour is useless there.
In my own experience, I don't mind a few armour in the character decks, but I am a lot happier after I can upgrade them to magic armour so they can be recharged if I ever have more than one in hand. I haven't used a card feat on them, since I think that 2-3 is enough.
Going forward though, as hand sizes start to increase later in the game, we might find that armour becomes more powerful. Certainly, if you increase Seelah's hand to 7, then discarding the lot because of a bad dice roll is going to hurt.
I am interested to see whether everyone's assessment of cards has changed in a few months time once we have a couple more adventure packs out. Who knows, we might all be complaining that armour is OP :-).
Ok...
But what if you first 2 explore where not damage dealing...
Or even not the 3 explore.
You are stuck with a useless uber armor in your hand. Your justification of the usefullness of the armor is that you will encouter a damage dealing AND you will fail it.
The trick is that monsters can be as high as half and as low as 10% of any location deck. This make the armour too much random and the calculation of her real efficiency awkward because you have to divide your numbers by 2 to take into account the fact you could simply not need it at all.
Yes, obviously this is highly ineffective in a 1 player game. In a game with several players, you can send the armor build somewhere monster-heavy.
Armor is like insurance: rarely does anyone really like to carry it, but it's great to have if the situation turns ugly.
Personally, I will gladly hold onto a shield or an armor if I can convert a multi-card discard into a refresh or a bury of a single card, especially if it keeps my magical uber-weapon in my hand. I have appreciated having one in my hand on more than a few occasions, and in very few of these would replacing it with a blessing or weapon have helped. I will say that I dislike having multiple armor cards in my hand, but that's easily remedied.
I agree that as hand sizes increase the need to protect your hand will be greater. Along with this, the cost of carrying armor as insurance will become less (consider Valeros: 1/4 vs 1/7 or 1/8 of his hand size).
Bear in mind too that some monsters deal before and/or after encounter damage; even the armor we have available today offers protection against such pot-shots. It also protects you from damage from certain Barriers, against which your weapons and blessings offer little protection.
That said, if you hate armor so much, declare a house rule "drop" that lets you can bury any cards from your hand during the refresh stage, or from your deck at the start of the game.
However, just because armor doesn't match your particular style of play doesn't mean the entire type/system is broken.
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barriers
magic armor can be reset at the end of your turn or to reduce all damage. (of course cannot rules trump this)
we have not encountered instant death effects or and increased difficulty rules. (that i know of)
losing your weapon really hurts if you are not the fighter. Most weapons are discarded not recharged unless you are Val.
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Sorry TClifford but when you really fail your roll it doesn't matter more. Simply because they guys that have armor are the ones that have 4 cards in theird deck.
Protecting a couple or protecting everything is not really something they can see the difference.
Armor would be more usefull for the 6 cards deck, but thoses cant have one.
And if the good thing about magical armor is that you can recharge them... then I rest my case because it is the proof that armor is just a hand clutter.
So you are saying that discarding 1 card to save 3 more means nothing to you? That if you get hit by a bane that does Acid or Fire damage [i.e. Black Fang] that normally can't be reduced, but you could with a simple discard is nothing? Fine next time your Valaros attacks Black Fang and you get hit by 4 Acid damage before you even make a roll, and I bet you would want 1 piece of armor to discard instead.
Also, your comment about the armor being more helpful for 6 hand PCs may be mechanically correct, but it isn't role playing correct. There is a reason why there are people with 4 card hands and 6 card hands. It is related to their relative hit points as reflected in the RPG. Wizards are called squishy because they have typically 1/2 to a 1/3 of the hit points of say a Fighter or Barbarian. Since everyone starts out with the same 'hit points' the only way to reflect this is to give them larger/riskier hands. That is why Armor isn't given to them because they need to be brittle.
Also, armor in my mind is only 'hand clutter' when you have more then one + a shield in your hand. At that point, I want to put it back into my deck.
I'm not saying that Armor is perfect, but guess what, there are other cards in the game that aren't perfect. If you get a chance look at the differences between Light Crossbow and Shortbow. Other than the easier acquire check, the LC > SB. But that is where the role playing comes into the game.
Let's face it.
What is your best hand with Valerius, Seelah, Kyrah ?
Your second best ?
A decent one ?Did you mention an armor card yet ?
Now, what is your worst hand ?
There you DO mention it.
Maybe I'm playing "wrong", but my current Paladin build ( finished the first 3 quests) would have the magic armor I found in my best starting hand:
+1 long sword
Magic armor ( don't recall which one)
Cure
Blessing
While I agreed armors aren't the greatest cards in the game, I feel like they have more uses then just avoiding damage dealt before the encounter. Like someone said, it's like insurance. They allow you to make riskier (i.e. less card costly) combat rolls, especially for those you don't absolutely need to make. The first roll against Bruthazmus or combat with summoned henchmen that you don't need to defeat (skeleton horde, goblin raid, or the sinspawn Erylium summons)are all examples of these. That way, you can save the blessings for more important rolls.
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While I agreed armors aren't the greatest cards in the game, I feel like they have more uses then just avoiding damage dealt before the encounter. Like someone said, it's like insurance. They allow you to make riskier (i.e. less card costly) combat rolls, especially for those you don't absolutely need to make. The first roll against Bruthazmus or combat with summoned henchmen that you don't need to defeat (skeleton horde, goblin raid, or the sinspawn Erylium summons)are all examples of these. That way, you can save the blessings for more important rolls.
Good point. I hadn't thought of it that way. People complain that there really isn't a way to alter a roll after it has been done...other than the Luck Stone. Well in essence Armor cards allow you to do that for Combat checks. You failed the combat check...fine, discard your armor and nothing bad happens.
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I never said armor was useless. Just that it's less useful than many other cards. Especially for Valeros. He recharges a weapon almost every fight for an extra die, which lets him win them all. He'd rather have more weapons in his deck to draw new ones after doing that, rather than block up his small hand with armor cards.
I never said armor was useless. Just that it's less useful than many other cards. Especially for Valeros. He recharges a weapon almost every fight for an extra die, which lets him win them all. He'd rather have more weapons in his deck to draw new ones after doing that, rather than block up his small hand with armor cards.
Definitely agreed that armor is not very useful for Valeros. It would be most useful for characters who don't have a cheap way to win via recharge, like Seelah, Amiri, and especially Harsk (who doesn't have any sort of special to increase his own rolls, though admittedly he can sometimes scout and run somewhere else against hard fights). Heck, since Sajan has to throw his blessings under the deck and become weaker and weaker against long strings of battles, it could be useful for him if he actually had the choice once his size goes up.
You could always give one of your armours to one of the squishy casters at the start of a scenario. Perhaps trade it for an Ally or Blessing to be mercantile rather than altruistic.
Interestingly half-plate is a good option for this, "Recharge this card to reduce Combat damage dealt to you by 3.” I know my Lem would be happy with this card.
Elven breastplate and Magic Shield are probably better for characters that don't cycle through their decks, 'Reveal for 2'.
I played a couple games last night with Kyra, Seelah, and Ezren. Interestingly enough, the only person to acquire/use any armor was Ezren, whom was holding onto a Half Plate until he could pass it to Seelah, when he happened to encounter a Werewolf (13 plus its Blessing of the Gods difficulty boost of 3) with no blessings (in the entire group) to help him out. Let's just say that he didn't quite make it (7 short), so that armor made itself quite useful.
Offense may be the best defense, but a good defense saved the day.
I played two games today, one where Valeros gave a shield to Lem, one where he didn't. Lem did use the shield, but it also felt like it cluttered his had - there are just too many things you want to have in play; thieves tools, cure, botg, crossbow, force missile...