I'm referring to the rule which says that after you've started the Hook Mountain Massacre adventure, you can pick up any Base Game cards, as well as those from adventures numbered at least two lower than the current one. (So when playing Hook Mountain Massacre - the third adventure - you can also pick up cards from adventure pack one.)
Now, as you may have already realised, ending up with a lower number of cards than allowed by your deck after a scenario is very simple: you only need to *give* some of your cards to another player during the game. (You only need two or more players.)
So there is nothing keeping you from picking out Ilsoari Gandethus, for example, and giving him to Merisiel, who can always just evade the Sandpoint Devil in case he is summoned.
In fact you can simply pick up all of the good boons from the box, like the Holy Candle for example.
This concerns me regarding Kyra in particular, who will at some point with her role be able to recharge Blessings of Saranrae (or place them on top of her deck) instead of discarding them. Given the method outlined above, there is really nothing stopping you from simply putting all four (or five) of these blessings into Kyra's deck.
I think we are going to house rule this, so that all "given" cards have to be returned to the original owner after the scenario. But there are still plenty of locations in the game which are closed upon banishing a card. So with Kyra in a group the goal should certainly be to banish blessings and replace them with Blessings Of Saranrae after you started the Hook Mountain Massacre.
We never take cards from the box unless the total number of cards of one type is less than the total number of cards of that type required by the characters.
Practically, when we're building decks, everyone places leftover cards in a common pool, so when all decks are trimmed and you still miss a card - you're only allowed to take it from the box if it's not in the common pool. In this case it's not very often you pick cards from the box.
Yes, I am aware there a plenty of ways to counter this. (You could simply ban some of the most powerful cards from the game.)
What I'm wondering about is if this increase in character power is going to be compensated by increased difficulty of the scenarios. I.e. is it going to be necessary to have access to all the good boons from the Base Game?
I think you've misunderstood the rules...
If you can’t construct a valid deck from the cards your group has available because you don’t have enough of certain card types, choose the extra cards you need from the box, choosing only cards with the Basic trait.
At the end of the scenario the WHOLE PARTY pools all of its cards. Then all characters rebuild their decks to match their card requirements. If there are not enough cards of a certain type then (and only then) can you go back to the box to pick a card (and initially your choice is only from the basic cards).
E.g. if we consider allies. Harsk can have one ally. Merisiel can have two. When they finish a scenario if Merisiel has three allies and Harsk has none then they CANNOT go back to the box for a card. The party as a whole has three alllies, so that's enough to provide two to Merisiel and one to Harsk.
On the other hand, if they finish the scenario and Merisiel has one ally and Harsk has one ally then the PARTY picks an ally from the box (to bring them up to the required minimum of three allies) and then they decide who keeps which ally.
In my experience it's pretty rare to be able to go back to the box unless you have a lot of banishable cards and do very little exploration. Then again, I tend to play with six characters so it might be different with fewer.
I hope that helps!
OK, thanks. Well, that is embarrasing. :)
We don't actually pool all of our cards, but we don't exactly pull from the box willy nilly either. (I know it's not exactly the correct rule, but still...)
We do something slightly different:
1) If a character doesn't have enough cards before they pool, they pull cards from the box.
2) Then we pool.
This prevents weirdness like "Oh Seoni got an extra spell so Kyra has to take it even though she has no business using it" scenarios (99% of the time anyway).
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The way we do it is all players build their deck using the cards from their hands, discard pile, deck and buried locations first.
If they have too many of any cards they toss them into the middle of the table for the group. If they have too few cards they pick from the middle of the table after everyone has built their own decks as best they can.
Then if anyone is still short a card and that card is not an option in the middle of the table... they can go to the box to complete their deck.
That being said... selecting a card from the deck that is at least two sets behind the curve is not going to break the game. And I think that rule was mostly targeted at getting a new player into an existing campaign due to character death or just a new player anyway.
@Thazar - you're effectively doing it right. It's just that your characters are more possessive of 'their' stuff than they need to be :)
Don't be afraid to swap cards amongst your party (e.g. if Merisiel has a weapon that Harsk wants and vice-versa then you can legally swap them).
To me, this is the party gathering around a camp fire and sharing the spoils, figuring out who's going to carry what back to town (in their limited pack space).
@ZerothHour - I think you're missing part of the point. If Seoni got an extra spell, then Kyra is *meant* to have to muddle through with it. I think that's where some of the game's adventure, difficulty and problem-solving/excitement is designed to come from. If you don't like what's been found already then you should explore more to try to find stuff you do want. It leads to decisions like: we have 6 turns left and the villain just turned up... do we let him escape so we get some more explores (to try to find a better spell) or finish him off now and muddle through the next scenario with a dodgy spell in Kyra's deck.
I'm not sure being forced to play with dodgy spells is the intention of that rule. First of all, unless you're playing some particularly bad strategy, why would Kyra be down a spell? I admit I haven't played Adventure 2 yet, but nothing I've seen so far makes me think that it'll be commonplace for monster to start banishing pieces of your deck. Rust monsters, eventually, maybe...but I'm getting ahead of myself. If you're having to pick a spell, it means either a) you played with a "wrong" flavor spell in the first place, resulting in it getting banished, which any experienced player will know not to do or b) you just leveled, and so any spell is better than an empty slot. If you're able to finish an adventure that gives a card feat with a good card you'll be able to include right away, that's just gravy.
As for the box, well, there are definitely good cards you can get out of it, but I should think only the foolhardiest of players would say "okay guys, this adventure everyone who gets a spell has to give it to someone who'll banish it to use it, so that way I can pick up my 5th Cure from the box". I'd much rather have a safe win.
@Jaunt - some locations require Banishing a card to close the location. If all you're left with is a Spell, that's the card that you're going to choose or miss a chance at closing a location.
Fair point. When I closed that location, I made sure I had some trash card I acquired during that adventure. Heck, I even had my girlfriend's Lini come close it for me (prior to encountering the henchman, obvs). But yeah, that's another way you can be down a card.
I suppose if you wanted a challenge you could randomly pick your initial deck build too, sort of like rolling it.
Ooh... I like this... :)
Would probably need *some* parameters on it, though (e.g. Lini needs animals, characters without proficiency probably want weapons they can wield without penalty) but it should stop people complaining about the game being too easy!
Like h4ppy, I like this too and would probably play that in my solo plays (not in my group plays probably) if I ever stop being lazy and just scanned the set into Card Warden.
What about a "pool" of initial equipment picked at random - and possibly even a set number of points you can "spend" (based on the check to acquire values) for each character?
Break your group into into halves. Trade characters. Assemble the worst possible legal deck (following basic rules, etc). Trade back. Now play the same scenario. The winners are either whoever beats the scenario the fastest, or more likely, whoever loses after the most successful explorations. Or if you're more objective based, whoever closed the most locations before losing.