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've only played Amiri a bit, but what most intrigues me about her is her ability to become a trading post, which seems very helpful in a group of 5 or 6.
After her turn, she moves to another location and lets another player give her a card on their turn. She can either than move to another players location on her next turn and give it to them on the turn after that, have an Arcane caster move her before her next turn starts, or just take the power feat to move someone with her in the first place. It seems that in a large group this kind of coordination would be really helpful.
She also seems like she might pair well with Merisiel since her power would still let Merisiel be alone at the location on Merisiel's turn.
And with her power to take another player, she could also coordinate the villain's demise. If you've found where the villain is and know what turn you'll make your attempt to defeat him, Amiri could move Valeros or Lem there to help out if they won't have the opportunity to move before the final showdown.
But I've got little experience with that yet. I added Amiri to my six hand solitaire game, but it takes so long to set up that I don't get to play it very much.
I main Amiri.
Her base Strength die is awesome, even though her Melee skill is about the same as Valeros.
There's a few big uses for the EoT move power:
-move to a "start of turn benefit" location
-avoid a "start of turn detriment" location
-move to someone else so they can give you stuff on their turn
-move away from Merisiel so she can use the solo fight benefit.
-move away from Harsk so he can help add to checks
-move to Lem so he can help add to checks
All of these get compounded when she can take someone else with her.
I have never used the rage power. It may be useful later on when monster difficulty starts scaling higher and we get more cards to play with.
Other than that, not having heavy armor proficiency kind of sucks. But you get 3 power feats before you get the role card anyway, so you'll likely have heavy armor for her anyway.
Even with only 2 Armors, she doesn't really need Armors; if she needs to tank more than 2 damage on a check, she might as well rage. I'd take Items, Blessings and Allies (I think in that order too, it's kind of tough) before I'd like the extra Armor.
One of my two favourite characters. I mostly play her in 6 character solitaire. I don't think she would be as good in smaller games.
Her end of turn movement is great, and the first power feat I took was the one allowing you to move someone else as well. This means you can trade really easily. I also use it to move both Amiri and someone else away from Merisiel.
In addition to the uses that zeroth_hour pointed out, I also use the movement power to have someone at a location in case it needs to be temporarily closed, which can be surprisingly handy in a big game.
Haven't found the need for extra armour for her, but I did try and get magic armour so I can recharge if I end up with both.
Card feats are blessings first, then allies. She needs some extra help with exploration in large games. This is probably less important in a smaller one.
I also use her rage a lot. In addition to making easier checks safe (closing strength/con based locations, acquiring weapons, etc) I also use it in combat a lot, even when she would probably win, just as a way of cycling through her deck.
The other power feat I took was hand size, just to give her more options. Third one will probably be improved rage. Don't think the heavy armour is needed too much for her, and Seelah gets first dibs on any good ones that come up anyway.
She is also my go to person if I locate the villain and I want to defeat them.