Most people seem to think Seelah is the worst (hardest) character but I still find her alright. Her powers are useful but it can be a problem you if you overuse them. Lini can also be a bit unconventional and hard to grasp at first but once you get the hang of it, she very versatile. I don't much like Sajan, but that's because I find him pretty boring rather then bad.
Merisiel involves a lot of risk/reward assessment when deciding to evade, and which cards to recharge or discard during combat.
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It depends a lot on what you mean by "hardest," and whether you're playing with more (5-6) players or less (2-3) players. Some characters may not die very quickly in a 5-6 player game, but they might hold the party back if the player isn't skilled at using the character. Does "hardest" mean "hard to keep alive," or "more difficult to win scenarios using x character?" Sometimes those two might be the same, but not always.
Ezren is the poster child example for this. His three allies mean that getting the "extra exploration" per turn that is more or less required of each player in a 5-6 player game can be very difficult without careful planning to use his power (explore again after acquiring "magic" card) or other factors (a location deck filled with spells and Detect Magic) to enhance his ability to explore. If a player isn't using Ezren skillfully, the character won't necessarily die, but the party may still lose. In a 2-3 player game, though, a deck full of combat spells and arcane armor / mirror image might make Ezren fairly difficult to kill.
Ezren and Lem. Or Harsk.
The hardest party would be, like....Lem, Ezren, Lini. Nobody who can fight without spells and everyone fighting over them.
Oooh, by hardest I thought you meant requires most amount if game mastery to play effectively. I take back my nomination for Merisiel. She can win almost ant adventure pretty handily if played effectively.
Lini can fight without spells, but it's going to be pretty awful unless she finds a weapon.
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Lini can fight without spells, but it's going to be pretty awful unless she finds a weapon.
She can do just fine discarding for the 1d10 strength, adding 1d4 from an animal, playing a blessing for an extra 1d10, then making sure she has at least 3 or 4 Cure spells in her deck so she can keep getting all those discards back.
I'd say Ezren's the hardest.
I can't believe someone suggested Harsk. He's a weapon heavy hitter, and great at assisting his allies in combat. He's terrible at acquiring allies, but he has survival as a skill, which is useful.
That's fair. Though if you're comfortable with the idea of 2 discards for one combat, I'd think you'd be a much bigger fan of Seelah than you are. Hers is even off the top of the deck.
Harsk is easy to play, but hard to make super effective. He's a weapon heavy hitter, yes, but if that were enough, we'd see a lot more Amiri love. Instead we have a guy who is bad at allies, not very good at blessings, might kinda sorta pass at perception, and is awesome at, uh, armor? Valeros has a fairly comparable ability, which is more limited, but costs zero cards. Maybe it's just my disfavor of him talking, who knows.
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That's fair. Though if you're comfortable with the idea of 2 discards for one combat, I'd think you'd be a much bigger fan of Seelah than you are. Hers is even off the top of the deck.
That's why I said Lini needs 3 or 4 Cure spells in her deck if you play her this way (instead of using blast spells, which is how I usually play her). Seelah can't heal her discards the way Lini can, because she only has one spell.
I'd say Ezren is probably the hardest also. This is not to say he's the worst character, but his larger starting hand, lack of blessings and spell based combat make him a bit tough to build for. More than half his deck is spells, but those have to fulfill a variety of rolls, especially if you want to play solo with him (its very doable, but slower than most other characters).
In his 8 spells you will probably want a mixture of combat, scouting and damage reduction spells. The real problem with him, at least initially, is that he sucks with just about any weapon and has to recharge his spells frequently or have his health drained away. Once he's built up a bit, this is much less of a problem, but you still need to stock fairly heavily on attack spells to make him useful (say 5-6 out of 8) which often doesn't leave much room for other useful spells. Where Ezren tends to shine in combat, though, is late in the game... after he's taken some decent damage and has very little besides combat spells left in his deck. At that point he can cycle through his deck like crazy, making him especially useful against bosses with multiple combat checks.
Besides Ezren, I actually find Sajan to be pretty bad. He's great at a single round of combat per turn... but anything more and he's at a loss.
I've played Harsk and Merisiel. Harsk was a scoach more complicated. Both were fun; not mentally taxing. Merisiel's evade makes her "safe" to play. She'll never die unless you play wrecklessly.
Watched a friend churning cards with Lem. Pretty neat to watch. He figured out how to maximize the value of "Cures" quickly. Definately requires more finesse.
Ezren looks like a chore to play, but I have first hand experience there.
My general feeling on this is that the hardest character to play is the one that least suits your play style.
I would award this comment triple XP if I could; personal preference of play style is tremendously important, for fun and for success. Both the personal and the group's preferences can have a big impact, and I really recommend people who feel the fun quotient dropping try another character, even if you like the character you're currently playing in other circumstances (or just to try something else).
Thanks for playing!
I'd say Valeros is the hardest to have fun with. As I said on another thread:
Problem with Valeros is your turn often looks like this:
Hand contains two-three weapons and something that's not a blessing (e.g. armor/item)
You explore...
...and find a boon that you're not very good at acquiring (e.g. a blessing).
Your turn is over.
You didn't manage to play any cards, use any powers or do anything of much interest. You don't have any cards that can interact with other people's turns. You wait for five people to have their turns and then you go again... not much fun!
I'm surprised about all the people hating on Ezren. I can see the point about higher number of player games, where you have 30 total turns to close 6 or 7 locations. But in that scenario you make sure you have augury, detect magic, spyglass, etc to manipulate your draws.
In solo play, I still do the above, but I have 30 turns to close 3 locations. That's probably enough time to win without double exploring a single time. Use spells and items to manipulate your explorations, grab thieves tools until you can hopefully pick up mwork ones for barriers, and grab the sage journal or whatever that gives 1d4 vs henchmen and villains. As long as you have 4-5 attack spells in your deck, my boy Ez can roll thru any fights pretty easily
h4ppy, that's an interesting statement. My youngest, 12, is playing Valeros and feels he needs to do all the "heavy lifting" for the party. He loves saying something like "just find that villian and I'll take care of him/her."
When we get to a point where we've run out of scenarios, I'll have to have him run a non-fighter type and see how that feels.
Maus
It's rare that anybody in our party encounters a monster (even a villain) without having a fairly good chance of beating it. Sometimes we manage to scout out the villain so know where to send Valeros to do some bashing but it's not every game...
The problem with Valeros, in my limited experience, is that the ONLY thing he can out of the box is bash things. And he does that pretty slowly.