In the spirit of sharing and strategizing, I’d like to create a series of threads, one for each character. The idea would be to explain how you play that particular character and why. What cards do you feel you NEED to stock in your deck or try extra hard to acquire because they are central to your strategy of how you will play this character? What skill, power and card feats did you choose and why? If they are helpful enough, maybe Paizo will even sticky them. But that is up to them.
To be clear, this isn't about the belief that there is only one way to play a character. Because there is only one way to play a character: the way that makes it fun for YOU to play. This is more about sharing ideas that maybe someone else hasn't thought about before.
I decided to try this because there are more than a few forums asking for advice about a certain character. And I've personally (and other have as well I think) discovered I wasn't actually following the rules when I see things others have posted.
And I also thought about the fact that I've not felt interested in playing Seelah. But then I thought, maybe that is just because I don’t realize how to play her. So maybe there are others out there too that might discover through this that a character as experienced is not the same as the character as theory and realize they might like to try a new character they would have assumed they’d hate playing.
And it can also provide feedback to the design team. They’ll see the things we are doing with their characters. Maybe they’ll be benevolent and add more things to help the way we play. Or maybe they’ll be malevolent and add things to hinder the way we play. But either way they’ll have feedback.
When posting, please be so kind as to follow these guidelines:
- Specify the size of the group you play the character (or this version of the character) in and what other characters are in your group. That can effect your decision making for your character. You might want Seoni to carry Speed if she's with Sajan and Mersiel, but she might be better off with Glibness if its just her and Lem.
- Limit your posts to things that are central to your strategy. For example, Holy Candle is a great card and probably every group wants to have someone have it. But unless there is a reason your character has to have it for your strategy, please don’t mention it. In other words, “My version of Merisiel has Holy Candle because I cycle my cards pretty well,” might help thinking about whose deck to put Holy Candle in, but it isn't helpful about your strategy for playing Merisiel. But saying, “I give Sajan items like Holy Candle because he can get their full value of use and then bury them, which helps him cycle his blessings around faster,” is a part of your strategy for Sajan and something others might want to consider trying.
- For now, let’s limit it to discussing just what is on the standard class of each character and save the role cards for when Deck 4 gets released. But if you choose a card or a feat because you are working towards a certain role card, feel free to state that. If this is popular, we can make threads for the role cards later.
If this is not something anyone else would like, then I apologize for wasting your time reading the preceding paragraphs. You can hold out hope that it will be so unpopular that it will soon fall way down the list of threads, never to be seen again.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. In the next few minutes I’ll start a thread for each character with a similar name to this one. If you want to share please do so in a spirit of cooperation and kindness.
I play Valeros in a team of 5 with Lem (played by Calthaer of this forum), Merisiel, Harsk, and Lini as his traveling companions.
I feel his con is his small hand size. So I try to find ways to cycle his weapons more.
I take weapons that have a discard power to add more to the combat check since Valeros can recharge them. I avoid the ones that don't even if they offer me an option to re-roll if I fail. And I almost always recharge them even with out a second weapon in my hand. The exception would be if I'm facing a Villain solo at a location and need to make 2 combat checks. I also like to give him 1 or 2 longbows since even though they are dexterity, recharging them lets Valeros add his strength die. And by having them I can also recharge them on another players turn to add 1d4 to their combat check. I'll do that if I have a longbow and another weapon in my hand. It lets me cycle may hand more. I go all out to pick up Shock Longbow + 1. Harsk hasn't complained yet. I gave him a Ranger Ally I got, so I think he's happy for now. This keeps my deck from clogging up with weapons.
I also spend blessing early in the adventure path to pick up armors (or have a friend get them for me) that I can recharge when resetting my hand. It again keeps my deck from clogging up with armors.
I took strength as my skill check after Perils. This group is about to start Burnt Offerings, but I'm planing on Strength again and then taking the Power to increase my hand size. I'll take a blessing for my card check. I might be tempted to change for an ally though if a good one is available. I'm basically just looking for another exploration. Lem is in this group, so I'm specializing in strength, but I could see taking Charisma if he wasn't to help with acquiring allies. I'll probably continue to have him specialize in strength and add blessings/allies for a while.
In terms of team dynamics, I go to the locations with the most monsters. And I try to convince Lem to come with me. I'll give him 1d4 in his combat, he can use his power to give me a 1d4 on any check, which will probably be non-combat. But sometimes Lem wants to go to the Academy or Temple to pick up spells. Since there are no monsters there, we split up for the time being.
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I wonder sometimes what I have done by introducing you to this game.
You may change your mind on the "re-roll if fail" weapons when you get the Impaler of Thorns at the end of AD2. It's a nice weapon.
Also: Valeros' Charisma of d6 isn't all that great for acquiring allies, even with Diplomacy +2. He almost needs a blessing (or a Troubadour, or something) to help him get allies.
IT CAN'T BE UNDONE NOW!!!
Yeah. I know it isn't very good, but if I was in a group and no one else had a better shot of getting allies, I could be convinced to take a skill feat there.
I have Impaler of Thorns, but hadn't read it very closely since I'm not at the end of AD2 yet. But it wouldn't break my rule. It can be discarded to lower the check to defeat by 2. For Valeros that would be recharge to lower it by 2. So I'd do that.
I just mean that if a weapon just says "Reveal to roll" and "If you fail you may discard" but doesn't let me guarantee I can discard(recharge) then I don't want it for my Valeros. But Impaler of Thorns Valeros could always recharge to lower the check by 2. So I'd take that. But not Glaive or Icy Longspear +1. Of course, probably have 1 of those types of weapons wouldn't be horrible. I just want to make sure I'm not walking around with 2 or 3 weapons in my hand.
That is up through AD1 and part of AD2. Maybe later I'll have a reason to want to hang on to my weapons more.
I don't yet have multiple longbows. Just shock longbow +1. Harsk has an axe or two I think and and then some various size crossbows. Lem still just has a sling right now. But if I have an opportunity to get another longbow, I'll seize it. I think that is key to my strategy to cycle his cards, since I can recharge the longbow to add a combat check at another location. I've promised to chip in a blessing for Harsk to get deathbane crossbow if I have one and it comes up.
And, even though this group just finished Perils, Valeros played 7 scenarios to do so. He only took the scenario rewards once obviously, but he had ample opportunity to acquire some good gear.
Our party started out with Calthaer's Lem, my Valeros, and another guy's Harsk. At that point only Calthaer had played the game, and I don't think he'd played it very much. Anyway, it took us 2 hours to fail Bringandoom! We then convinced some others to join us a few weeks later. They became Lini and Merisiel. And we failed Bringadoom again. But we re-ran it again immediately the same night and succeeded. About a month later, everyone but Lini returned and completed Poison Pill and Black Fang's Dungeon. Later that week, Valeros met up with Lini and ran through Poison Pill and Black Fang's Dungeon again so everyone would be ready for Burnt Offerings. And actually Lini encountered the Shock Longbow +1 and Valeros asked nicely if Lini wouldn't mind turning into a bear and chipping in a blessing with Valeros for the best chance to acquire. I did say I'd go all out to get it. Fortunately our characters are all kind towards each other, especially around this time of year, so Lini agreed.
I was also thinking about taking dexterity, but I tend to emphasize the skill feats as being the factor for deciding who goes to which location for its closing check. We've got Merisiel for dexterity and only Lini has less than a d8 in dexterity and Lini obviously has multiple ways to deal with that. Harsk will be taking dexterity feats too to aid his combat. Lem has Charisma and will be putting some feats in it. Harsk obviously has constitution wrapped up and Lini has Wisdom. Our intelligence is pretty abysmal, which I know will be a problem later. So I figured I'd take the locations that require defeating monsters (or strength) to close. And in a big group you want to guarantee you can close a location, temporarily or permanently, so strength it was.
Like I said, I could see using one on charisma to help with the allies. Even more so if he takes an ally card feat.
And I know that 11 threads might have been overkill. Especially since 9 of them aren't getting any traction. Sorry. I was just hopping for more discussion. And I really want someone to convince me to try Seelah.
I used to play City of Heroes (may it rest in peace) and the official forum had sections about the different classes of characters and "builds" people had made and how they used those characters with others in regular teams, which I really enjoyed reading. And I loved discovering some combination of things that I thought made their play unique. I was hopping for something more like that, but alas it seems it shall not be.
Here's my 2c:
1) first two feats are hand size - Val needs more options.
2) get blessings then allies for card feats - he needs more explores!
3) I usually keep the glaive (re-roll), but Spiked Chain or Impaler would be good too. I then use that for all combat checks. It vastly reduces the impact of a single bad roll and means you can cut closer to the edge when adding to his combat checks, saving blessings and boons that others can then use later.
4) Armor is a bane by another name, so only take ones that you can recharge out of the way at the end of your turn (or just discard them to get them out of the way)
5) Skill feats were DEX, CHA, STR in that order. Although, now that I've read his role cards, I think I wouldn't have done DEX. Perhaps CHA, CON, STR instead and then relied on his MELEE for using ranged weapons.
6) Take at least one ranged weapon (longbow/crossbow), preferably two, so you have something to do on other people's turns.
7) He's going to be a weapon master. Once he gets that his arsenal will be more focused on ranged weapons (e.g. something like glaive/impaler, dog slicer + 1 and three bows).
8) You never want to waste time healing him, so play accordingly. Similarly, you aren't going to see his whole deck, so don't put mission critical items in there (e.g. Holy Candle). Items that let him find something to bash are useful though (e.g. Spyglass).
Note: I play Val in a 6-character group and priorities will change wildly if you are playing solo or in a small group
@h4ppy - Why constitution? Just to help get the rechargeable armors? I've never thought of that before.
CON is because some of the places that you send Val to fight have CON related closing requirements. And I hate it when Val fails a CON check. His STR is high enough already, but in Adventure 3 the baddies are getting tougher so he'll need to start working out more.
It also seems fitting for the character (he spends too much time drinking at the inn building up his alcohol tolerance instead of working out to boost his STR)!
The other hilarious thing is that I think Val, in 2.5 adventures so far, has not ONCE succeeded a roll to acquire a female ally. Almost *every* time, he has rolled a 1 or 2. I guess he's just tongue tied around them and the "Tome of Dating Tips to Help Hard Warriors Acquire Soft Bedmates" book he bought (+1 CHA) hasn't helped so far.
Ah. I hadn't paid attention to the concurrence of places that lots of monsters and CON closing requirements. I'll have to check that out. Thanks.
No. Not another team. Our team is a team of 5. But the first night, only 3 could get together. Those 3 failed Brigandoom! Then all 5 got together another night. We failed Brigandoom! again but fortunately learned how to play the game. We replayed Brigandoom! and won. Then another night 4 of us got together. We successfully completed Poison Pill and Black Fang's Dungeon.
So up to that point the replaying was only due to failure.
Then I got together with the 5th guy who hadn't done Poison Pill and Black Fang's Dungeon and we did those together. He doesn't own the game and we wanted to be able to start Burnt Offerings as a group of 5 the next time we got together. I followed this rule in the FAQ:
http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1gk#v5748eaic9r4h
So it was only one team, but they've had a hard time all being together.
Yeah, h4ppy does have some good suggestions. I still need to look over the locations and think more about where Valeros will be because of monsters and what he'll need to close those locations.
Looking ahead to the locations is cheating ;) I picked stats/powers/cards based on experiences to date not scrying the deck for what might be! The builds aren't 'optimised' (I think the game is easy enough without being too analytical) but they're targeted to being able to deal with whatever comes up, not running out of time and being able to give any henchmen/villains that show up a good hard kick.
Ha, ha. I won't cheat. I just want to go back and look at the ones I've already played and see if I missed that fact. I just started Skinsaw (though not with Valeros) and I found myself wishing I could hire someone to put the villains and henchmen in for me for the shock factor. (Though generally I found myself wishing I had the wealth to spend money on hiring someone to set up a card game for me, because then surely I would have a lot of wealth.)
I was also very curious about your constitution skill feat, because I've felt a little like constitution was the least useful skill I'd seen. But if it can help close the locations with the most monsters, then it will be useful to Valeros.
It is in some situations. If he has a weapon that is way better than the others than potentially shuffling it puts it closer to his hand. Likewise if he has a hand full of weapons to start the game and simply recharges all of them on 5 sequential combat check, he'll have a boat load of cards to get through before he gets a weapon again, so shuffling would be helpful.
Of course if he has just shuffled in his best weapon and on his next combat check has to decide whether to shuffle in that weapon, it might not be worth it as it could potentially move his best weapon away from his hand.
It might especially be more useful if we start seeing more standard monsters with two combat checks. But remember, if you take it, you don't always have to apply it, so think before you do.
I've been playing Valeros in a four character group (wife and I each using two characters) consisting of: Valeros, Seoni, Kyra and Merisiel.
So far, we've run through Perils and the first three scenarios of Burnt Offerings.
My basic approach to Valeros is that there is no such thing as "overkill," only "kill." I've put both skill advancements into his Strength. I put his Power advancement into a five hand size, which I'll be playing shortly in Approach. I'll be putting his card advancement into Blessing.
I've noted three things about Valeros:
1. He hits like a truck. I've been getting even more damage from him than Seoni. So, does he need the extra +2 to STR? On average, no. Let's look at his average attack: 1d10+3 for Melee and 1d8 for an average weapon. (Most of his current weapons are 1d8/1d6, though he just picked up a Bastard Sword last scenario.) That gives an average damage of 5.5+3+4.5 = 13. So, against almost anything, he has a bit better than even chance to win. Recycle the weapon, and it goes up to an average damage of 16.5, still better than average odds against anything I've seen so far (and we've run through the whole AP with a Seoni/Kyra pairing prior to this run through.) Adding a +2 to STR only ups those averages to 15 and 18.5. Not a huge deal, but it does give better odds. BUT . . . there's also Minimum Damage. His base minimum damage is 1+3+1 = 5, or 6 with a recycle. That's decent, but a bad roll could mean failure. With +2 to STR, he's sitting at 1+3+2+1 = 7 minimum, or 8 minimum with a weapon recharge. That's fairly huge if you look at the monster, henchmen and villain cards. Auto wins mean less time spent healing and less blessings being used to boost attacks, leaving more explorations for the group.
2. He's tough. That four hand size means he's great at running through what we lovingly call the Temple of Brain Damage or through monster-heavy locations. But . . .
3. He's SLOW. He tends go move through locations the slowest out of our group due to a low number of Blessing and Allies in his deck, and the small hand size. So, that's why he's getting the hand size bump and blessings bump on level up.
Overall, I've found him to be a solid, durable character who's become the go to guy for killing the villains in our runs.
One interesting thing about Valeros (my personal favorite) is that he actually might be better at dealing with the random situation than most other characters.
I made a little chart to look at all the characters (you can find it here on BGG). An interesting "discovery" was that typically a characters' median die was a d6. But Valeros has a "theoretical" d7 as his median die. So does Lini. And the highest median die belongs to Seelah with a d8.
You can see this for yourself. Lay all the skill dice out for a character in a row in order from smallest largest, look at the middle two and take their average. Or you can also count how many dice each character has above a d6. Valeros and Lini have 3. Seelah has 4. Everyone else just has 2.
So given that you don't know which skill will be required to deal with the cards you encounter in a location (though you can assume most monsters will require combat, which is Valero's strong suit), Valeros, Lini, and Seelah in this sense are at least more likely to encounter something they won't be horrible at dealing with. Which means if they find something your other character really want but it isn't their key skill, it is more likely than the others to still play some blessings to help acquire it, because they probable won't be rolling a 1d4.
That all assumes equal distribution of the skills to acquire in terms of boons, which I've not bothered to check and might not be true. And none of this is overly scientific. It was just a simple analysis I did.
Of course, since Lini can add a 1d4 to all her checks, she trumps the others all together.
But Valeros is still pretty good.