Custom Scenario and Objective - Escort

[Rand Cauthon]

Hi, I just started playing PACG when my brother brought over for Thanksgiving and I loved it! I’ve played 15+ scenarios since and gotten all my friends into it. I think the mechanics do a great job of recreating an RPG with the flexibility of a card game. However, I thought a little more diversity in the mission objective, besides ‘find and defeat the villain’ would add a lot. So I came up with this custom mission type that is based on a common RPG mission objective which is escorting an NPC. So this new mission type will add and change some of the gameplay mechanics and I’ll list those changes here then present my custom scenario to try this mission type out.

Objective - Escort an NPC through all of the locations to win. If the NPC dies you lose and the scenario is over.

Escorted Ally - (Note: Need to come up with a better name for this) Grab a human ally out of the box to represent the ‘Escorted Ally’. This card will be placed besides your character cards at locations. The escorted ally has a number of blessings stacked next to it that represent his health, the number of blessings in his/her deck is the number of locations plus two. The escorted ally takes half the damage any character takes rounded up, any character can volunteer to take all the damage meant for the escorted ally. Whenever the escorted ally takes damage discard the appropriate number of cards from their deck into their discard pile. The escorted ally counts as a character at your location, any monsters it encounters must be encountered by another character in addition to any other monsters that character encounters (for example the skeleton horde barrier). If the escorted ally is required to make a check (other than combat) treat the escorted ally as having all skills of 1d4. The escorted ally can be healed like any other character.

Game Play Changes - All the characters start at the first location and move to the next location in order. The characters cannot move locations until they close the location they are at, all characters move together (i.e. when a location is closed during any characters next move phase they can move the entire party to the next location if everyone is willing). If the blessings deck runs out summon and encounter “The Sandpoint Devil” as a group (i.e. if one evades the rest still have to encounter it without him) then finish the turn and reshuffle the blessings deck and start it over. The scenario does not end when the blessings deck runs out. It only ends when all locations are closed or when the escorted ally dies (runs out of cards in their deck). Every other part of the game remains the same.

This scenario is scaled to be played as a Burnt Offerings (adventure path 1) scenario.

Scenario - It’s a Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door.

Sandpoint is an unlucky town, there always seems to be a zombie horde, or a goblin raid, or an evil cult, or even a dragon threatening the town’s citizens. The area around Sandpoint is so riddled with monsters, bandits and ancient ruins with nasty traps that most citizens only travel in large groups or, if they are wealthy enough, hire skilled escorts to keep them safe when they are forced to move about this dangerous country. Lately several farmers and a merchant caravan have not returned from their travels. As renowned local heroes known to have saved the town from many of the before mentioned calamities you and your friends have been tasked by the sheriff to safely bring a Sandpoint citizen home from their journey abroad, and to discover if there is a great villain behind these disappearances.
As you and your friends start your journey you feel a creeping dread drawing stronger every moment, as if you were all being chased by something, something that you don’t want to catch you . . .

Setup - Setup is the same as a regular scenario except for the ‘Escorted Ally’ who is explained above.

Players: Location
1: Woods
1: Warrens
1: Nettlemaze
2: Mountain Peak
3: Catacombs of Wrath
4: Deeper Dungeons
5: The Old Light
6: Galssworks

Villain: None

Henchmen: Tangletooth, Lyrie Akenja, Bruthazmus, Orik Vancaskerkin, Tsuto Kaijitsu, Koruvus, Goblin Raider

During This Scenario: Escort scenario, escort an NPC through all of the locations to win. If the NPC dies you lose and the scenario is over. (Escort mission type rules are explained above.)

Reward: Each character chooses a type of boon other than loot, then draws a random card of that type from the box. If “The Sandpoint Devil” was encountered and defeated draw and second random card of that type.

*Note - if you have a larger group that wants a quicker scenario you can cut the number of locations in half as well as the blessings deck (ie you only have 15 turns until The Sandpoint Devil catches you), though don’t have less than 4 locations for a multi character group.

I've played through this a couple times now and found it very challenging, especially if I had the wrong skill to close a location. Feel free to make your own escort mission scenarios, I think there is a lot of possibility here for some good story telling as well. Any comments, critiques or questions are welcome!

[Rand Cauthon]

After playing through with my healer friend I realized that we need to have a way to end it quicker, otherwise Kyra can just sit and heal us as we pass turns.

A couple edits:

1. The Sandpoint Devil is not Banished after you encounter it, only if it's defeated.

2. After you run out of the blessings deck, it restacks with only half the blessings (15 then 7 then 4 then 2 then 1).

3. After you encounter the Sandpoint Devil you can abandon your escort ally to his/her fate, and lose the scenario, by banishing a card from your hand (each character must do this). (You are running away in fear and don't have time to grab all your stuff)

4. Any damage your character takes over the amount of cards in your hand is dealt to the escorted ally - for example if I roll a combat check of 14 against the Sandpoint Devil, but I only have 3 cards in my hand I lose those three, my escorted ally takes the remaining three damage plus half of mine (rounded up) for a total of 5 damage to him/her.

[Rand Cauthon]

Oh forgot to put in that Harsk can use his ability on characters at his location as well for this scenario. Otherwise his power would be useless since it forces everyone to be in the same location and that was not my intention.

[Hawkmoon269]

This sounds interesting. I was thinking though, what about a version where you have to first find the ally. So..

Setup 1: Designate a certain "named" ally. When encountered, this ally will be automatically acquired.

Setup 2: Each location gets a named henchmen.

Setup 3: Each location also randomly gets either the named the ally or a generic BotG.

***Since the BotG are automatically acquired (and so is the named ally), the additional cards wouldn't really increase the number of cards needed to be gone through before the timer runs out.

Rule 1: When the named ally is found (encountered or examined via a spell, a power or in any other way has his card turned over), he is automatically acquired and displayed in front of the character that acquired him. He may not be given to another character.

Rule 2: The character displaying the named ally may not evade an encounter (the ally isn't good at sneaking around, so he'd give you away if you were trying to sneak by).

Rule 3: The character displaying the named ally may make 1 free extra exploration on their turn.

Rule 4: If the character displaying the named ally fails a check to defeat a bane or acquire a boon, the named ally is shuffled into a random location along with blessings from the box into the other open locations (sort of like the villain fleeing). Also discard 1 card from the blessing timer.

Rule 5: When any location is closed, search the location deck for the named ally. If he is there, the player that closed the location acquires him.

Rule 6: To win the scenario, have the named ally displayed and all locations closed before the blessings timer runs out.

I haven't actually tried this. Its just something I thought of after reading your post. The difficulty is that you can't close locations temporarily to trap the villain and therefore shorten the game, so maybe removing 1 location from the normal setup guidelines would be needed. But I tried to take care of that with the extra exploration and the automatically acquired BotG that can be picked up. You could also add a rule that if after defeating a henchman, you fail to close the location, you may shuffle the henchman back into the location deck.

Again, I haven't tried it, but it sounds fun.

[Bidmaron]

Wow, that is a cool concept.

[Rand Cauthon]

That's a cool idea Hawkmoon, and with alot fewer rule changes you get a similar type mission. It's as if your ally is reluctant to go with you, he could be a wanted bandit you are bringing in, or a wayward nobles son, or just a scared kid, which is why you have to go find him and as soon as you are distracted, by getting knocked around by a monster, he bolts. I will definitely have to try it.

[Hawkmoon269]

Well, it started from your idea. I don't think I would have thought of anything like it with out reading your post.

[Hawkmoon269]

So I tried the scenario I outlined above with a friend today. I was Valeros, he was Lini. Both characters had just completed Perils of the Lost Cost, though I let Lini pretend he had a power feat because I had Burnt Offerings and Skinsaw already mixed into the box and didn't feel like trying to set the locations up with only B&C level cards.

I decided to choose locations I hadn't seen because of not playing in a 6 player group yet and I went with the appropriate number of 4. So I went with Garrison, Guard Tower, Mountain Peak, and ,because Lini wanted to acquire some spells even though we weren't keeping what we acquired when we started Burnt Offerings, I through in the Academy. But some more though could be given to the locations.

Henchmen were 2 from Skinsaw and 2 from Burnt Offerings. We allowed ourselves the rule of considering the henchmen undefeated if we failed to close the location, but never used it because the only one we failed after defeating a henchmen was at the academy and only 3 cards remained (all boons of course).

I have to say it played fairly well, and actually easier than I thought it would. We used Mayor Kendra as the ally we had to rescue. Lini found her. He never lost her. The interesting thing was that the check to acquire some boons were actually more scary than the checks to defeat some banes. Any thin that took intelligence checks was daunting. But it was really fun. And definitely different. I'm curious how it would work with a larger group.

Some more thought should be given to specify the locations, and if you actually made a "captive" card to use in place of the villain card, you could even drop the rule about adding extra BotGs. Just have 1 location with no henchmen. It will be where the ally is and you'll have to go through every card to get to close it. And Rules 1, 2, 3 and 4 could all go on the captive card. Rule 5 could be "understood" to exist by wording rule 4 correctly and the normal directions for when a location is closed. And rule 6 would be on the scenario card along with the rule about henchmen being undefeated if you fail to close the location.

It was only 1 play test, so I wouldn't by any means consider it typical of what would happen, but thought I would share it in case anyone else was interested.

If anyone else tries it out, let me know what you think. Thanks.