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.
We just finished the scenario in AP3 that grants a card feat. Though I feel extremely weird in doing so, I gave Merisiel a Spell card.
My logic was this: I want more allies, but Merisiel can only have three, and because my play-style with her is super aggressive with discards (to keep her deck moving), Father Zantus took up an ally spot for survivability's sake. But Father Zantus is no fun! Basically, like with the Holy Candle, he's just a card I bury as soon as he shows up and then he's gone for the rest of the game. Compared to Shalelu (maintaining her spot as BEST CARD IN THE GAME EVER THAT ISN'T POOG) and my recently-acquired Black Arrow Ranger, Zantus was a real bummer. So I took a spell, grabbed a Cure, and decided I'll deal with having to take leftover spells when it comes to that. Merisiel plays with Kyra, so Cures are never that far away if Merisiel has to suffer through a scenario with one of Kyra's leftover spells. And besides, what's not to love about a magic-healing Rogue?
Other card feats just didn't have the appeal. Blessings seem like the logical choice, but blessings don't have a lot of flavor to them. Armor might work too, but only in the sense that it'd let me keep an Elven Chain Shirt to burn for damage and protect my Snakeskin tunic -- which I seriously think is maybe OP, guys? Because I've looked everywhere, but I see no reason why having it in hand doesn't let her roll 2d12 for combat checks out of the gate. Its only downfall is that (I think) you can't use armor to defray damage after you've used Snakeskin tunic for your weapon check. But there's been few times I've had to worry about damage when I'm rolling 2d12 + d8 + d6 before skill bonuses (+4, usually!) and blessings are factored in.
I didn't even bother considering a Weapon feat, even though she has two of them. With the lightning pace of Merisiel's deck cycling (especially since she's got two Staves of Healing to speed it up) having -two- weapons in my deck often seems like too much.
Instead, Merisiel's card feats are now Ally, Spell, and Item. She's sitting on a Troubador she picked up in the adventure until she finds something more fun, but her brand new belt of dexterity more than makes up for silly, boring Basic allies. If I can find a Ring of Protection anytime soon, my life will be complete.
Barring any more surprise items AP3 has in store, that is! :D I'm loving this expansion; it feels like the best one yet. the Black Ranger is a kick-ass ally, that Poison dagger seemed really cool (Kyra didn't manage to acquire it), and I'm totally in love with all the weird and myriad mechanics of the villains and henchmen so far. I felt like a total boss when we turned over a new henchman and discovered Merisiel had to do a pre-encounter Acrobatics 10 check to avoid damage. If I didn't already know all the APs were created at the same time, I'd say Paizo was really ramping up their game.
^ And it's come to my attention that the Snakeskin tunic is only +1, not +1 die. Whoops! :D I'm posting this just so my previous post doesn't mislead anyone else.