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In chapter 2, Iesha Foxglove can appear as a villain. She cannot be beat with a Combat check, instead requiring Wisdom, Diplomacy or Divine to beat. This would be fine, except you need the Magic trait to beat her. Beyond Kyras ability, is there any way to get the magic trait on one of the above non-combat checks?
Uhhhh...guidance? Aid?
I don't have the Skinsaw Murders yet but, based on her appearance on the Adventure Path, are you really supposed to defeat her to win the scenario?
Holy water?
Since I haven't gotten the new set in the mail yet, I can only speculate I'm afraid...
Kyra and Seelah the Crusader are the only characters so far that have the "turn undead" ability that works on Iesha.
You don't have to beat Iesha to win. She will make it harder to beat The Skinsaw Man, though.
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Very definitely. Got up to this one tonight, only the second scenario so far we've ever lost (that includes playing through the three-scenario mini-adventure and Burnt Offerings with two different 4-player groups). She's pretty ridiculous.
Check of 13 to beat, can only use Wisdom, Divine, or Diplomacy. Our one group (Ezren, Kyra, Lem, Sajan) only has a shot with Kyra or Lem, so both Sajan and Ezren just get to suck a ton of damage each time (especially with the Haunts making the check harder). Our other group (Valeros, Amiri, Seoni, and Lini) is even more screwed. :S
Strategy on this one seems to be: pray to the gods that you close two locations down first, spread out your guys, then have someone ready to tank the Skinsaw Man, *if* you know where he is.
I went from thinking "this scenario doesn't sound too bad" to "this may be the hardest scenario".
Curious. You say she "can" appear as a Villian. What are the choices are there, and how is it determined?
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Not sure if this is necessary, but "SPOILERS"
This is an interesting scenario, and I was actually fairly fond of the setup at first. It covers the "Misgivings", when the characters go to investigate the hauntings at the Foxglove Manor. One of my favorite bits from the original AP.
Anyways, the ultimate villain of this is the Skinsaw Man, a somewhat difficult fight of Combat 12 then 15 (or 13 then 16? I don't have the card handy, but the numbers are around there). I believe one allowed an optional Divine check too. Difficult, but not too much more than other villains, so nothing real special there.
The real problem comes with the Haunts and Iesha. The Haunts by themselves are not to bad. They are the only Henchmen, so with a 4 player group, there's 5 of them lurking around. There is no check to beat them, you automatically win and get a chance to close the location. That part is great. Their downside is that they immediately 'attach' to the character that finds them. For each Haunt you have on a character, all of that character's checks are increased in difficulty by 1.
By themselves, that's not too bad. The checks get harder (including the Villain), but you don't have to fight them and can automatically try to close the location. The only way to get rid of them (that I remember) is if you had found Aldern Foxglove before and kept him around. You can reveal him at one of the locations to banish all the current Haunts. Unfortunately, neither of our groups kept him.
The problem comes in with Iesha. She's a villain that you may or may not ever see. Everytime you find a Haunt, you roll 1d6+X (X = number of Haunts currently on characters). If you roll a 5+, then that character has to fight Iesha. As I mentioned above, unless you are one or two specific characters, then she's fairly impossible without a lot of Blessings wasted. If you get unlucky to encounter her often, it can prove detrimental, without even ever having faced the boss.
In our game, we rolled high enough to find her on the first Haunt and the third. Kyra took her first, and barely overcame her. Ezren took her next and got devastated. His only option was Wisdom, and even with a couple Blessings to boost that to 3d8, still failed by a ton. We chose to abandon the scenario at that point (instead of killing Ezren, which would require us to rebuild him/restart him through the scenarios... a mechanic that we all kind of dislike anyhow) and quit out. We talked about the strategy for a while, but it seems like it comes down to luck. You have to really hope that no one comes across Iesha, which can be difficult unless you know where each and every Haunt is.
Hmm, interesting scenario indeed.
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I should mention that the best strategy for this scenario is to have each character keep some way to evade or to mitigate a LOT of damage around. Sanctuary, Invisibility, etc. for casters... lots of armor for non-. In our game, Sajan was the most vulnerable as he had no real way to avoid damage, the best he could hope for was lots of Blessings to buff his Wisdom, but without modifiers you're still leaving the rolls up to chance.
Ezren can use a variety of means (Invisibility, Mirror Image, etc.) though in our game he hadn't been lucky enough to draw those before the first Haunt/Iesha encounter.
Lem has Sanctuary in our game, so long as he keeps that around then he's fine... I think. I don't remember the exact card text, not sure what you do when you Sanctuary a card that doesn't come from a location (since Sanctuary says you just put the card back on top of the deck).
Kyra and Seelah obviously have it easiest with the "Turn Undead" mechanic, but they're really the only ones.
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If that's the case, then it seems like Kyra is the only character who has a decent chance at beating Iesha, haha. I don't actually know, neither of our groups uses Seelah (we found her character a bit lackluster), so I cannot confirm.
If I recall... that does sound correct. I remember she had an ability to discard a card off the top of her deck for an extra 1d6 on a combat check (recharging it if it's a blessing) and another ability to stick boons on the bottom her location deck. Not sure if she had a turn undead ability by 2.
Yeah her other ability lets you scout the top card of the deck, and if its a boon put it at the bottom. So if you spot a Haunt, you could plan for it.
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Ok, I'm a little confused about your descritpion of Iesha. Also jealous because my sub hasn't even shipped yet.
So she requires Wis/Diplo/Div with the Magic trait? What happens if you don't have Magic? Most monsters at least go away (shuffle back in)if you can beat their target numbers when they require magic.
Based on your descriptions, we have three possible situations:
Defeat her with Magic: she goes away until called again
Fail to defeat her: take damage, she goes away until called again
Defeat her without magic :?
Doesn't a Potion of Glibness let you autosuccess a Diplo check? I can't remember if the potion is magic.
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From what I recall (I don't have the card in front of me), she requires Wis/Diplo/Div 13 to beat her. And if the check to beat her doesn't have the Magic trait, you don't beat her.
The Magic trait isn't as important as I made it out to be initially, really. Beating her in full lets you examine another location deck, and if you find the Skinsaw Man, you can put him at the top or bottom. If you don't have the Magic trait, you technically don't beat her, but she still goes away. You just don't get to search through a deck.
So, the problem isn't having the magic trait, it's that only certain characters have a good shot at actually hitting 13 (the Divine based ones) while most will be stuck with trying to hit a 13 off of Wisdom. Since everyone can come across her, and the difficulty goes up with the Haunts, this can end up being difficult. :)
It's not *impossible* by any means, it just threw us for a loop. We'll be going back again soon, now that we know how dangerous she is, I imagine we'll be better prepared. It's just funny that this is the first time a 'wandering' villain is more dangerous than the Boss.
Having close to unbeatable foes certainly makes the game more interesting! Looks like the Sandpoint Devil will have a new friend ;)
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Ok, now I understand. Seems to me that getting the benefit from beating the card is mostly only doable with Kyra, unless magic items that influence diplomacy make it a magic check.
Several characters seem to have a decent basic dice pool(not counting skill feats):
Kyra: d12+d8+2 divine
Seoni: d12+2 diplo
Lini: d10+d4+1 divine
Does Lem have diplo? He at least has a decent divine.
A single blessing puts all these characters in the running to drive off Iesha. It's likely all of them will have an additional +1-3 from feat choices.
Merisiel can just choose to evade her.
Ezren seems to be worst. No armor, can lose 6 cards, no diplo or divine so just straight Wis, which he is unlikely to have developed. Does Charm Person work here? I bet Iesha's immune to mental cards. Evasion spells seem to be the way to go for Ezren.
I guess we should stock up on the blessing that gives extra dice for wisdom/charisma checks, eh? ;)
Or, grab your blessings of Lamashtu while you can!
Looks like Harsk is in trouble. With 1d4 as his dice for all 3 of those checks he needs a lot of blessings to have a chance :-).
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So back to the initial question...even though a player can roll Charisma or Diplomacy, you're saying that there's no way to make those "magic," and therefore those two check-types could never defeat the bane. So...why are they listed? Does the card say anything to the effect that the Divine check has to be magic to defeat it, but the Charisma / Diplomacy doesn't? E.g., you either have to sweet-talk the bane or blast it, and if you blast it, it has to be magic?
Otherwise, why even include Charisma / Diplomacy on the card at all? Just to allow you to avoid damage...so the Charisma / Diplomacy is really just like a check-based evade?
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Honestly, I feel like those are only included to 'mitigate' the bane. Since she doesn't come out of a deck or get shuffled back in, your options are:
1. Fail the check by a certain number, take damage, don't get free search.
2. Succeed on the check, don't use magic, doesn't count as a victory, don't get free search.
3. Succeed on the check, use magic, counts as a victory, get free search.
Best I can tell, most characters are going to have to hope for #2, though I imagine a lot will end up seeing #1. So yeah. Check-based evade is a good way to put it.
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Sure, if you lose the check. In this case, it's possible to beat the check, but not have the magic trait, and thus not win the battle. You don't take damage (since you only take damage for each point you fail the check by), but you also don't win.
This is the same outcome as if you fought a Spectre with a non-magical weapon, but won. The spectre would not do any damage to you, just get shuffled back in the location deck. In this case, Iesha wouldn't do damage to you, but nor would she provide the bonus of hunting the Skinsaw Man.
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She's not really invulnerable. Just very difficult.
She's "Charisma/Diplomacy/Divine 13" to beat. No Combat check. If you beat her, you get to search a location deck. If you find the Skinsaw Man, you can put him at the top or bottom.
However, being a Ghost/Haunt, you can only beat her with the Magic trait. Which most Charisma/Diplomacy checks won't have, and most Divine checks won't unless you're Kyra.
Thankfully, you don't need to *fully* beat her. You just need to beat the 13 (which is still difficult). You won't get to search for the Skinsaw Man, but you'll still get rid of her for the moment.
It basically goes like this:
A: Find a Haunt. Auto-beat it, gain the Haunt to your character.
B: Roll a D6+X, where X is the number of Haunts already on characters.
C: If 4 or less, move on.
D: If 5 or more, fight Iesha.
IESHA
Attempt a Charisma/Diplomacy/Divine 13 check.
1. Fail the check by a certain number, take damage, no free search, done.
2. Succeed on the check, don't use magic, doesn't count as a victory, don't get free search.
3. Succeed on the check, use magic, counts as a victory, get free search.
Whatever the result, Iesha goes back away, and will pop out again based on the above criteria (if you roll 5+ on the "Haunt" check).
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I did check some items last night. The Crown of Diplomacy does have the magic descriptor so that should be a way to get magic into a diplo check. Didn't think to check whether it had the mental descriptor. I think for most characters using the crown to autosucceed would be the best plan.
The potion of Glibness does not have the magic descriptor, it's alchemical instead. Still could be used for an "autoevade."
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What would be really cool would be if a hero from the next adventure path had some way of adding magic to a Charisma / Diplomacy check (a la Regis the Halfling's magic gem) and beating this check in a different way than Kyra would, were one to play through the Runelords adventure path with that hero.
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ryric,
You would play the Crown of Charisma during the "Play cards and use powers that affect the check" action, and you don't add traits from cards played during that action. (You only add traits from cards played during the "Determine which die you’re using" action.)
Ah. So you could use the crown to "win" but basically only Kyra can actually trigger the true win result. Unless there are new cards in the Skinsaw set that can make a normally noncombat check magical.
More reasons why Merisiel is the best character. My wife and I played this last night. I, playing Merisiel, encountered Iesha twice, and promptly evaded. Ain't no thing. My wife, Graz, playing Kyra, encountered her once I think. I think we beat her without using a blessing, but we already knew where the Skinsaw Man was, due to me having encountered/evaded him in the Warrens, which only had two cards in the deck, so we didn't even bother with the power.
Had a funny bit of confusion during our game, and may have shirked the rules a bit to evade (pun intended) some pretty tragic irony. At the time it felt legit, but thinking back on it I'm pretty sure I'm wrong.
So, we don't read the cards in the expansions until we encounter them. It's nice to be surprised! So at first we weren't sure who 'Aldern Foxglove' was. But I thought I'd remembered encountering him before, so I scanned the left-over allies in the box and, not finding him, assumed he was in play at a location (or wasn't an ally? but we weren't sure what other card he could be).
Some time later I pick up a Grizzled Mercenary from a location and burned him for an extra explore, only to turn over...
Aldern Foxglove!
Well the burned mercenary says if you encounter a boon, you banish it. Pretty big downside, but our characters are about as kitted out as they're going to be (barring whatever surprises AP2 has waiting), so we don't worry too much about grabbing boons.
I thought "well, if I'm evading it, I'm not encountering, surely?" And Graz agreed. But in retrospect, the wording on cards like Skeleton Raid say "summon and encounter," so I think the encounter is made "official," so to speak, before it can be evaded. Where in my thought process last night, I thought you evaded BEFORE you officially encountered. However, that would functionally make Merisiel a slightly-weaker, but permanent, Shalelu Andosana. And since we know she's the best ally in the universe -- aside from Poog, who is 50% better in style, and 10% better in units of player enjoyment produced when you say his name out loud ["I Poog him" is our term for adding 3 fire points to the check] -- that hardly seems fair (even though Merisiel is the best character in the world).
So it ended up skewing the game slightly in our favor (I removed 1 Haunt from myself, 2 from Graz), but I guess the slightly reduced difficulty just mitigated the challenge of us playing with 2 characters, but setting up the board as if we had 4 (3 was starting to get too easy). As it is, we killed the Skinsaw Man (who required checks of 17 and 20 to defeat, after Haunts and rolls) on the last turn, with a fusillade of blessings (she had a Lamashtau for the first check, I had a Gorom of the second), and a literal fusillade of arrows, as I have a Deathbane Crossbow in my deck, and had opened a Large Chest that put no less than 3 different bows in my hand the turn before.
Loved this adventure, by the way! We were surprised, but happy, to turn over the cards and learn about the Iesha mechanic. Even more surprised when we encountered our first Haunt and realized we didn't have to fight them. We've been hoping for more unique scenarios, since almost everything in the first AP was close-deck-kill-villain, which this scenario was too, but with enough of a twist to make it interesting.
Guess this only ended up being moderately about Iesha Foxglove...
I'm pretty sure it has been ruled that "summon and encounter" still means you can evade. Encountering a card happens before the choice to evade, should you have it. (please correct me if I'm wrong!)
I know the former, which is what led me to conclude that latter (and therefore, that we should've banished Aldern, even though I had the ability to evade him).
Yes, I agree. The merc's text would have taken priority, before you had the option of evading.
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Also, does anyone know what kind of damage she deals? And don't say diplomacy damage. That sounds like it involve lawyers.
All non-specified monster damage is combat damage.
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ryric,
You would play the Crown of Charisma during the "Play cards and use powers that affect the check" action, and you don't add traits from cards played during that action. (You only add traits from cards played during the "Determine which die you’re using" action.)
But what about using the Crown's discard ability to automatically succeed at a diplomacy check? Shouldn't that have the magic trait that comes with the Crown?
In the rulebook, the golden rule says that characters override other card types, so it doesn't matter what the Crown says, Iesha's rules supercede it.
Also, Items/Weapons/etc don't give the Magic trait to a check unless they modify the base check - see http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1gk#v5748eaic9ram , "Determine which die you're using".
Since Kyra's "Turn Undead" ability is applied to a check though (it doesn't specify which type), using the Crown + Kyra's Turn Undead ability_does_ work to defeat Iesha, since the check will then have the Magic trait, even if you're using Diplomacy for it.
Dave, it seems that evading a summoned monster is not an encounter, even if the cards say "summon and encounter". There's a FAQ on this too: http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1gk#v5748eaic9r4f
Also see http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1gk#v5748eaic9ral about the steps taken when encountering. It should still apply for any summoned monsters, except the monster is always banished afterward. The timing for it is
-Evade the card (optional)
-Apply any effects that happen before the encounter, if needed.
-(etc)
So even though it says "encounter", you should be able to evade it, and avoid any "before the encounter" effects.
Dave, it seems that evading a summoned monster is not an encounter, even if the cards say "summon and encounter". There's a FAQ on this too: http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1gk#v5748eaic9r4f
If you evade, it does still count as an encounter. The option to evade is a part of the encounter; the fact that you get to ignore the "before the encounter" doesn't change this, it is just an added perk of evading. It's neither defeated nor undefeated, but it is still encountered.
I have only faced her as Kyra and I rocked her socks off thanks to blessings and an awesome roll.
I will let you know if I think of anything not mentioned above when I face her as a different character.