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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.
Playing Lini in a Lini/Valeros duo that is 1 adventure into the Skinsaw Murders.
I find her play interesting because while Valeros can obviously take on monsters much better, I can usually make up for that by making non-strength closing rolls, keeping him healed, and using Spyglass and Sanctuary to lockdown a henchman or possibly the villain for him to take care of on his turn, as examples.
A few key things that have helped us make it this far -
1) If paired with a weapon user, see if you can get them to hand off a weapon to you like a mace, longspear, or crossbow that doesn't require weapon proficiency. There's nothing stopping Lini from *using* a weapon initially, she just can't carry it between adventures.
2) Amulet of the Mighty Fists as mentioned above is pretty good on her - yes it does take up a slot but unless she gets a weapon during the adventure she can really use this bonus. Plus, it's magic damage - so she can actually be used to take out those annoying undead that require the magic trait to banish.
3) Don't keep Cures in your hand. I found out very early that saving a Cure because you only have 2 cards in your discard means that if you happen to end up discarding it due to a bad encounter that you suddenly lost out on those cards *and* the Cure spell is sitting your discard now. This is especially true if you have several Cures in your deck (I carry 3 at the moment) or if you have multiple in your hand at once.
4) That animal bonus. It works on everything. Closing checks, recharge rolls, combat, etc... 1d4 may not seem like much but when you see you've got a location that requires an int 7 roll to close and you and Valeros both only have a 1d6 int, you'll be glad you get that bonus.
5) Discarding for her strength/dex boost is really situational. You have to be careful about doing it too often but if it's for an important check, do what you have to do. Keep in mind that it doesn't say combat only so you can use it for a strength roll to break open a chest or a dex roll to close a location as well.
So it seems like I've gone down a slightly different path than husky did, I've actually gone +1 strength and +1 wisdom and plan to put my 3rd skill point into strength to max it out at +2.
I went back and forth on that between strength and dex but eventually decided on strength for 2 reasons. First, even if you get your hands on a good dex weapon, that dex bonus is useless until/unless you've got that weapon out. Before then, or if you lose the weapon somehow, you're relying on strength or spells. Also, it's my understanding that we will get 3 power feats *before* we get the additional role card. What that tells me is that I'm basically forced into taking weapon proficiency for the 3rd feat and while there are some dex weapons that might benefit from that, I think the most obvious way to go once I have weapon proficiency is to try to get something like a greataxe that'll give me a +d12 in every combat, and that's a strength weapon. Now it's true her base dex die is slightly better than her strength (d6 vs d4) but I just felt like strength was overall more useful all of the time and if the combat really matters I'm boosting whichever of those to a d10 anyway.
So in terms of power feats I obviously have gone +2 into the animal bonus, I really think it's a no-brainer with her. I really wish going to hand size 6 was an option on her main card, I believe it becomes an option later once you get her role card but initially your only other choices are weapon prof and light armor prof. Since she doesn't initially carry any armor or any weapons, getting anything out of either those obviously requires more effort than just taking that power feat.
I did take weapon as my first card feat so that makes weapon proficiency more useful to me and considering I haven't really had any luck getting useful spells so far, I didn't really have much of a choice here, at least right now I feel like I have to focus on getting a decent weapon to stay viable in combat. Unfortunate side note, on the adventure in which I gained the weapon card slot, Valeros decided to pick up a spiked chain (requires proficiency or +4 to checks) during the adventure and then once it was over "gifted" it to me as my new weapon because he changed his mind on it even though he could have given me the deathbane crossbow - serious lack of teamwork moment. So long story short I am currently stuck with a semi-useless weapon until we find something different.
In terms of spells I started with 3 Cures, Sanctuary, and 2 Strengths. Fairly early on I found a Find Traps and swapped it for a Strength. That's it. I've noticed that the Academy which appears to be the big spell location isn't really in 2 player games much, and otherwise have been pretty unlucky on spell draws. I'd probably drop a Cure and the Find Traps and maybe even the Strength (although I really like how the +3 lasts the whole turn for multiple fights in a row) if I could find some Holy Light or maybe an Augury or even another Sanctuary. We've had a couple good Sanctuary casts when I've found the Villain early and basically cast Sanctuary, left him there, and set up for the big fight at our leisure. Quite a good spell but I would definitely like a little more going on with my spell selection.
For items I was carrying the Amulet of the Mighty Fists and the Crown of Charisma for the longest time but I never seemed to have the Crown out when needed so I eventually ditched it for a Spyglass. And haven't regretted it at all. Spyglass on someone who can Cure to bring back cards is a great combo. And then I just recently dropped the Amulet for the Sihedron Medallion. I'd prefer to have something I could recharge more often to cycle my deck but realistically some of the villains/henchmen at the end of AP1 were a huge problem for me because they did 1d4 or 1d4-1 damage before the fight. Assuming this trend continues and I don't know why it wouldn't, I need an item to deal with this damage and the Medallion should work for that.
In terms of allies, I've got a sabertooth tiger, a crow, and a toad. I rarely actually use them for their actual abilities - perhaps one day if I have a couple more in my deck I might be able to cycle more but unless I have more than one animal in my hand at a time, I really do not like losing that 1d4+2 bonus for even a short time.
Final note - even though with Valeros in a 2 player game it might be very tempting to stick with him for his additional 1d4 bonus in combat, I've found that to not always be the best move. Early on we stuck together alot but once we ran into more monster heavy locations, we've gotten more into the habit of Valeros taking on the 4+ monster location that requires fighting an additional monster to close, while I go to the 2-3 monster location that requires a wisdom/charisma/dex/etc roll to close. That also has the additional bonuses of - if you run into a trap that hits everyone at the location it doesn't hit both (i'm talking to you, blade trap!) and we can try to temp close locations to block the villain by doing this when needed.
So anyway, good times. Great game, having fun with this character and looking forward to trying out the others more thoroughly as well.
Two Cures is enough for self-sufficiency, although I also have a Staff of Minor Healing (with small numbers of players I want to go through my deck quickly). If you have a Cure in hand, you can blow through all your good cards or have someone else use all their Blessings. I will also cast it after drawing to make sure that I don't lose it.
I also have Augury (looking forward to Scrying), Holy Light and two Inflicts (Seelah has the other Holy Light).
Animals are great for extra explores when you get a second one, saving blessings for extra dice. Toad gets recharged as soon as possible since he is the emergency back-up Cure.
I maxed out the Wisdom and animal skills so that I do more damage and don't fail recharges. Ideally, I only have Blessings in my discard pile.
I hope to take a weapon for my next card feat (I've got four animals).
Future animals include the Velociraptor, which is every bit as cool as it sounds. There are several animals that provide both an explore and a bonus at the same time.
my experience playing lini solo is a bit different than above. I built her specifically to be a caster, so my lini has +4 to wisdom, holy lights and swipes (amazing adv. 3 spell, imho), and major cures and cures. I balanced attack and healing, sacrificing aid (which is my all-time favorite party support spell). Having +4 to wisdom means that you can pretty much autoget blessings too, which extend out your exploration abilities.
That pretty similar to me. I just didn't get to replace one of my Inflicts with Holy Light because my Lini started her solo career in the Hool Mountains by leaving some slowpokes behind, one of whom had the other Holy Light. At the start of January I hadn't started the deck that would get my Major Cure (x2) and Swipe (x1 so far).
In a large party I tried to go all in on Aid (x2) but people kept saying that they didn't want it, and you can't combine it with your own spells....
I think that aid can still have it's place, but you would wanna save it for non-combat checks, like dealing with barriers or grabbing stuff.
Two Cures is enough for self-sufficiency, although I also have a Staff of Minor Healing (with small numbers of players I want to go through my deck quickly). If you have a Cure in hand, you can blow through all your good cards or have someone else use all their Blessings. I will also cast it after drawing to make sure that I don't lose it.
Note that if you look at the new living rules there is no opening to play cards after you reset and draw your hand.
In no iteration of the rules has it ever been allowed to play Cure once the reset phase begins.Note that if you look at the new living rules there is no opening to play cards after you reset and draw your hand.Two Cures is enough for self-sufficiency, although I also have a Staff of Minor Healing (with small numbers of players I want to go through my deck quickly). If you have a Cure in hand, you can blow through all your good cards or have someone else use all their Blessings. I will also cast it after drawing to make sure that I don't lose it.
That may well be, but the new version makes this quite obvious. Whereas before that, I and obviously others were unclear on the timing issue.
Note that if you look at the new living rules there is no opening to play cards after you reset and draw your hand.Two Cures is enough for self-sufficiency, although I also have a Staff of Minor Healing (with small numbers of players I want to go through my deck quickly). If you have a Cure in hand, you can blow through all your good cards or have someone else use all their Blessings. I will also cast it after drawing to make sure that I don't lose it.
Instead of casting Cure between the reset/draw phase, what I do is cast it before the explore phase. There's still very little chance to lose the Cure before then.
As for Lini, I've been playing her with Ezren and Merisiel, and I typically have everyone solo their own locations. Interestingly enough, Ezren is the only person who has trouble soloing.
My brief summary with her so far (currently in AP3): starts the game great at handling everything except combat. By the end, after tweaks, a solid solo player. One thing you will only notice after playing her is that the discard power isn't so bad, because Lini will grab pretty much every boon (barring some really sucktastic rolls). So even if you don't want that potion of glibness, pick it up anyway, and use it as a power-up for her.
As the other posters have noted, she rarely cycles through her cards. Because of her low combat ability, my first priority was to get her the weapons specialization first and then the weapon slot. Her second power was the 1d4+1. Once she has a weapon, I felt much safer, and noticed I didn't need to burn as many blessings or discard for beast mode. Just the animal was enough. So, unlike everyone else, I made her more offense oriented.
She has 2 holy lights, 1 inflict, 2 cures, 1 augury, with the weapon slot and extra ally slot. Once she gets the cat, I think she will definitely be uber. She has +1str (in case she has to go hand-to-hand), +2wis. Her next skill point I think will go into dex. And her pride and joy is "Lil Vera", the Deathbane x-bow.
Just my 2 cents.
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Note that if you look at the new living rules there is no opening to play cards after you reset and draw your hand.
I have never heard the term "living rules," but I really like it. I see Blood Bowl used it. That's cool.
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Note that if you look at the new living rules there is no opening to play cards after you reset and draw your hand.Two Cures is enough for self-sufficiency, although I also have a Staff of Minor Healing (with small numbers of players I want to go through my deck quickly). If you have a Cure in hand, you can blow through all your good cards or have someone else use all their Blessings. I will also cast it after drawing to make sure that I don't lose it.
True, I am doing it on the next turn after the blessing flops. This difference is only interesting if there is a start of turn fight effect on a location.
If I also have Augury/Scrying, I may want to play that before the Cure so it shuffles in. All done before the move step.
Note that if you look at the new living rules there is no opening to play cards after you reset and draw your hand.I have never heard the term "living rules," but I really like it. I see Blood Bowl used it. That's cool.
With More complex game systems (which a card game of this size by its nature becomes, no matter the simplicity of the core mechanics) A living document is certainly the way to go.