Yeah, that is why I've called her the "Swiss Army Knife" of PACG. She can fill in the gaps your team lacks. Just don't take her to the Farmhouse.
Hmmm... regard Lini at the Farmhouse... are you saying that she would end up losing her animals there? I thought since she auto-recharged them, that she was NOT in fact discarding them, therefore making her animals at least safe there.
I could be playing her wrong, then. I posted my mid-point characters in the sticky, and my wife plays Lini. If there is one weakness I found with her, it is that SOMETIMES she over-transforms. And multiple combats in a turn still require multiple transforms, since each check is its own thing. She is definitely a BEAST though... quite literally!
Motrax
She does get the recharge her animal allies instead of discarding them, but the Farmhouse makes her bury them instead of discarding them. The Farmhouse is a location so it trumps her character card via the Golden Rule.
Rules: The Golden Rule
If a card and this rulebook are ever in conflict, the card should be considered correct. If cards conflict with one another, then Adventure Path cards overrule adventures, adventures overrule scenarios, scenarios overrule locations, locations overrule characters, and characters overrule other card types.
Though it was never an official ruling:
http://boardgamegeek.com/article/13344458#13344458http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qau6?Farmhouse-At-this-location-effect
It isn't likely you've actually done that at the Farmhouse enough to have any significant impact on the outcome of the game. So I wouldn't worry about it. We've all made mistakes.
The mistake I made with Lini the few times I played her was I recharged an animal ally when I discarded it to increase her strength or dexterity. That shouldn't happen because she has to play the animal ally to get to recharge it, and if she sacrifices it for her increased strength or dexterity she hasn't played the ally because she didn't activate the ally's powers.
Yes. She is replacing the die, but it is still her strength skill, so she still gets her strength feat bonuses. Same for dexterity.
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That is a really long thread, so let me summarize. Here is the attempt a check sequence.
Determine which die you’re using.
Determine the difficulty.
Play cards and use powers that affect the check (optional).
Assemble your dice.
Attempt the roll.
Take damage if you fail a check to defeat a monster.
Here is how Lini goes through it, if she's just going to use strength for a combat 8 check and plans to discard a card. We'll also pretend a fellow adventurer will play a BotG to help her. Lets pretend she has a +1 as a strength feat.
Determine which die you’re using.
She is going to use strength. It doesn't matter what the size of the die is yet.
Determine the difficulty.
Its 8.
Play cards and use powers that affect the check (optional).
Lini discards a card to activate her "strength of a bear" power. Lets pretend we still don't what size the die is yet, because it still doesn't matter at this point. Someone plays a BotG.
Assemble your dice.
Now Lini looks down and sees that, because of the power she used, she has a d10 for strength now. So she picks up a d10. And someone played that BotG, so she grabs a second d10 because that is her strength.
Attempt the roll.
She rolls the 2d10 and gets a 7. She also now has to "add any modifiers that apply to the check." Well, she has a strength feat modifier of +1, so she adds that and get an 8. Yay!
Take damage if you fail a check to defeat a monster.
She doesn't need to take damage because she did not fail.
So you don't need to know the size of the die until you assemble your dice. And you add modifiers that apply after you roll. That is the basic version of that insanely long thread.
I see... I was using the replace discard with recharge logic. But I can see it both ways. I think I'll adopt the harsher penalty as it makes the Farmhouse have a bit more bite. I don't think I'd played it quite correctly before.
In regards to csouth154's latest question, each power feat is a separate entity, so I don't think you can discard an animal to transform and then choose to recharge it. It's one or the other.
Edit: Oops I think I replaced the SKILL with FEAT in my head. My wife's Lini has +2 Strength and she full takes advantage of the skill boost whether she transforms or not. Although a newly transformed BEAR poking you with the IMPALER OF THORNS, PROFICIENTLY, while being flanked by a SABRETOOTH TIGER... is pretty damn intimidating!
Motrax
Yeah. I like that some locations have consequences to curtail the benefits normally had by specific characters. Lini has the Farmhouse. The "melee" characters have the Waterfront. Merisiel has The Shrine to Lamashtu.
One combo that doesn't work, unfortunately, is shapeshift plus Snake. Snake works on melee and Lini doesn't actually have that skill so she ends up with 3d4 using the default melee.
Going through The Hook Mountain Massacre solo (using 6 locations, except for Here Comes the Flood, which would have been easier that way) I found that Lini was collecting so many blessings that that they got in the way of drawing spells and weapons. More than once:
Major Cure, okay now I've got three blessings and an animal. Explore anyway, getting into a fight. Discard a useless blessing, play Blessing of Gorum, use 3d10 + d4 + 2 for somewhere in the 6 to 36 range of attack.
Near the end of the last scenario I performed a Consecration with six blessings in my discard pile after the villain had ejected the wrong card from my hand. It was one of the spells I got from a Mystic Inscription, most of which just slowed down my deck.
I used shapeshift enough to make Shapeshifter seem like a reasonable role card, but I think that a 6-card hand would remove the issues. Wild Warden seems a lot better. High multiple checks are hard to deal with on your own with only 5 cards, especially if there is time pressure.
You have enough time to close 6 locations playing solo? I'm impressed...and a little doubtful. Don't get me wrong, when I play solo (one character, I'm assuming by your post) I have extra time, I'm just surprised you have enough extra time to close double the locations.
If you look at the list of midpoint characters, Vrog Skyweaver is doing Lini with 8 locations (as if for six players). The thing about Lini is that you can make all of her animals rechargeable to explore and with maxed-out Divine and 1d4+2 from an animal ally, most blessings and allies are automatic successes to acquire. I constantly (Major) Cure so that Augury, Scry, Holy Light and animals aren't on the bottom of my deck, which also mixes in the blessings that I collect. I just posted her.
With 6 locations the blessings deck can be tight, increasing the need for strategy (how many turns can I afford to tweak my hand before confronting the villain versus how long I will need to recover if I fail, can I go after the Major Cure that I saw while Scrying, etc.).
I used shapeshift enough to make Shapeshifter seem like a reasonable role card, but I think that a 6-card hand would remove the issues. Wild Warden seems a lot better. High multiple checks are hard to deal with on your own with only 5 cards, especially if there is time pressure.
I didn't correctly remember the role cards. Both roles let you get the all-important sixth card, so they should be playable solo against future villains. I thought that shapeshifting got +2/+4/with-fire instead of +1/+2/hot-hot-hot and forgot that Wild Warden had +2/+4 on Divine checks (including recharge, according to errata). Since animal allies go up to +4 with Wild Warden, I can't really see Shapeshifter being better at anything other than setting things on fire. Why does Fire Sneeze always stay in the box?
I only had a problem when there were multiple checks and special damage. The Ring of Protection might actually be better than the Medallion (which I keep discarding for shapeshifting, anyway ... defensive cards will make more sense with a larger hand); unfortunately I assumed it was 'recharge' rather than 'reveal' when I had the chance to acquire one.
Ya, I've found Lini to be a bit....OP. she basically has (after even 2 power feats) +2 to every skill; revealing an animal (which, btw, does not discard at the farmhouse, since it's a reveal, not a discard or recharge) means that I can roll 1d10+1d4+2 on 3 of my 6 attributes, meaning that I average 10 on any check for str, dex, or wis. I play my solo Lini as a caster, using a combo of swipe and holy light to decimate most things that get in my way (going into part 4 I'll be doing 1d10 +2d6/12 +1d4 +8 with holy light, although my preferred combat spell is swipe, which lowers the check by 3 and lets you use your divine/arcane die +1d8).
I might start another Lini after I finish Seelah (I'm almost to part 2 with her) that focuses on melee (taking weapon training, adding weapons) and see how she plays that way.
Apologies, I misread context of the above posts. ignore that part and feel free to peruse the rest of my post at your leisure.
Yes. Her power to recharge animals says "When you play an ally with the Animal trait, you may recharge it instead of discarding it."
Yes. Her power to recharge animals says "When you play an ally with the Animal trait, you may recharge it instead of discarding it."Gotcha. Couldn't quite remember. :)
Happy to help my friend.
Lini is so good that she's really too good. As a result, expect for her version in the next AP to be a little more balanced!
Really? I've been playing Lini solo and it has been really hard work. Even with discarding a card, revealing an animal and playing a blessing, she's only got 2d10 + 1d4 as a combat check, which can easily lose even against lowly 8-strength goblins.
What did you put your power feats into? I know that she has weapon and armor boxes, but it seems hard to me to justify taking one of them over her +1 or +2 to the 1d4 from animal reveal. Even if you hadn't taken either the +1 or +2, 2d10+1d4 averages out to 13.5, which should be more then enough to deal with goblins.
Some of the villains have been really hard to defeat - such as Nualia (1d4 damage before combat and then two combat checks). Earlier today I lost three combats in a row against Jaagrath Kreeg (combat 15 then combat 21). And I've really struggled at Guard Power pocations (encounter a bandit henchmn at the start of each turn).
Yes, she's good, but I've also seen her lose her hand to a bad combat result far more often than any other character I've played.
I know that there are certain villains that I've had problems with, and Nualia is definitely one of them. I think with a bit of adding a combat spell or two to your deck you'd probably see your combats swing dramatically in the other way.
Lini may not always have an easy time with combat, sure. The point is that she has an extremely easy time with just about anything else, AND is quite decent at combat as well. If you build her as a divine caster and throw in a crossbow or two, she's close to unstoppable.
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My wife plays Lini in our main party, and she is awesome. But I'll add this to the discussion: Her nemesis isn't a boss... it's the TRAITOR... for obvious reasons. Sure, she can still usually beat it without an ally (backstabbing DOG!) but now her ally is gone. Unless she holds onto a spare animal, hard to justify... this monster always sneaks up and knocks the rug out from under her.
Anyone else agree?
Lini is probably the least combat effective character in the party of six I am running, However as has been noted she is incredibly competent in almost every other task (Except arcane)
Having said that, many is the time a Monster has slapped her down. The lack of Armor shows in such situations.
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Lini is the Swiss Army Knife of the party. Everyone gets some sort of conditional bonus. Hers is "As long as you have an ally in hand, get an extra d4 (which should be increased before any weapon proficiency or "wild shape" increases). A flat +3 (minimum) on EVERY check? Sure Seoni is nuking things for 40 damage, but Lini is around for everything else.
Having played some Lini I don't think she's nearly as easy as advertised here but there are people who claim to play her solo with adding extra locations (one guy claims to solo Lini with the full 8 locations and still be able to win) so I dunno. I'd really like to watch one of those people play.
One thing I will comment upon however is - "What did you put your power feats into? I know that she has weapon and armor boxes, but it seems hard to me to justify taking one of them over her +1 or +2 to the 1d4 from animal reveal. Even if you hadn't taken either the +1 or +2, 2d10+1d4 averages out to 13.5, which should be more then enough to deal with goblins."
I've heard a lot of comments both on here and by people I play PACG with that go something like - your average roll for this check is X which is more than you need so this is enough dice.
Sure, if you want a 50/50 or a 60/40 chance to either win or lose a bunch of cards, that's fine. But in the example above, let's say you roll 3 2's on those dice (and I'll add the +2 since everyone puts power feats in that bonus) - that's an 8. Yep, that defeats a goblin, but no it does not defeat a number of other creatures and probably would cause Lini to lose a bunch of cards (and keep in mind she already discarded at least one card to get that roll) against anything decently tough.
(Also as a side note - that 2d10 means for the second d10 she must have a heavy crossbow as that's the only non proficiency weapon that gives that die to roll. That's a pretty specific card to acquire... much more likely that a random Lini will be stuck with something that only gives a d8 for the combat roll)
And then you realize that she has no armor. While I think armor is one of the weaker card types in PACG, it's still useful to keep one around in case of a bad roll, before encounter damage, etc... Before she can get her hands on an amulet of life / sihedron medallion etc.. she has no way to block that damage. And even then, chances are she has one card in her deck for "armor" which may or may not come up before she needs it.
So yeah she can get a decent combat roll that gives her a 50/50 or slightly better chance against most things but when she rolls poorly, which will happen, she's practically guaranteed to lose a good portion of whatever's in her hand.
Also as to the suggestion to build her as a divine caster - I've seen her played that way but I don't think there's enough offensive divine spells to really make a big difference in her combat ability. Holy Light is good, but that's once again a really specific draw - and the most you could even have would be 2? of the 4-5 spells she has, beyond that there isn't much else.
In terms of her ability to add 1d4+? to anything, yes it's a really good power - but it doesn't make every roll trivial. Sure, the difficulty 6 closing rolls become almost trivial, but let's say you're rolling vs a diff 10 check with a d6 + that bonus. That's still 3+2+2=7 on "average", not really good enough. Sure you *could* make it, but it's not terribly likely. So there's still plenty she can't roll very well without the same kind of help that other players would need.
In the end, don't get me wrong, I think she's a very good character. But do I think she's broken to the point of needing to be re-balanced, not really. Personally I think Valeros' constant full use of weapons for free is much more "overpowered" if you're really looking at "balancing" the characters.
Valeros' ability to recharge weapons is great... for combat. Other than combat he doesn't have that much going for him really... It's just hard to notice that because so much of the early parts of RotR revolve around combat.
Lini's extra 1d4 by itself is good, but where it shines is in adding flat modifiers instead of dice rolls. Having an extra 1d4+2 to any check is numerically about the same as having an extra 1d8 (I would argue its better in fact) in terms of expected values. When she's using that in combination with other modifiers, it really gets up there. Lini with an animal in hand, light crossbow and a DEX feat rolls 1d6+1d8+1d4+3 for an expected value of 13.5, which is actually better than Harsk using a light crossbow and having one DEX feat (his roll there would be 2d8+4, for an expected value of 13). Lini also has the option of discarding a card there to make it 1d10+1d8+1d4+3, which has an expected value of 15.5, and can still have blessings added to the check to boost it up, whereas poor Harsk has to use something like a Blessing. More than that, if Lini takes a few Wisdom feats, she basically will never fail a recharge check for a spell like cure, inflict, or others. The other casters have a little more trouble with that generally (though not much more).
Also, its worth noting the follow probability observation: The expected roll always has at least a 50% chance of being rolled, but the probability can get higher with more dice. For example, with 2d6, the expected roll is a 7, but your probability of rolling a 7 or better is 21/36 (a little over 58%). Lini uses at least 2 dice almost always, making her statistically better quite often. Combined with her ability to easily heal herself (something many of the others struggle with) the lack of armor really doesn't do much to hamper her early on. In fact, she doesn't have to take up cards in her deck that are so situational as armor in the early game.
Valeros' ability to recharge weapons is great... for combat. Other than combat he doesn't have that much going for him really... It's just hard to notice that because so much of the early parts of RotR revolve around combat.
That's sort of my point. Valeros is amazing at combat and pretty bad at other stuff. Lini is very good to amazing at other stuff and mediocre at combat. It's easy to look at that and say she has an advantage but what you're not taking into account is that every combat roll matters. But not every non-combat roll. Some, like closing rolls and rolls to defeat barriers are pretty much always important, but most random rolls to acquire boons and such are not really that important/don't matter *nearly* as much if don't have the best roll. You're not going to take damage if you fail to acquire a light crossbow (which you may or may not even need anyway) but if you mess up vs the Werewolf, it's a real problem, particularly for someone with no armor.
With regards to closing rolls, in a decently sized party, there's almost always someone who's good at making a particular roll. So once again barring an occasional situation where there isn't a person to make roll X or a game with a small amount of characters, it's not really that overpowered that she's good at making those. Sure you can send her to whatever location you want to close, but chances are she's only going to be making a couple of closing rolls over an entire scenario compared to many combat rolls that could all be problematic if failed.
Also it's easy to say that you should just give her a weapon for the combat bonuses described but unlike Lem, who can choose to start with his weapon or other characters with many weapons who have a better chance to draw one - she is very hit or miss on having one in her hand.
I'm not sure what you mean by "early parts of RotR" with regards to combat being important. Maybe AP4-6 will change into large amounts of ally hunting, in which case I definitely would agree with you but from what I've seen so far, other than an occasional mission that's more ally oriented, most scenarios involve combat just as much as they did at the start. Sometimes more.
I completely agree about the modifiers being more important than the die but I don't think it's changing anything. I also don't think comparing her to Harsk is really valid. You threw a bunch of math at me there but what's the math for Harsk's look ahead power? That's a ridiculously good power that I'm not sure can be broken down into a value. How many games are won single-handedly from him finding the villain early and just leaving it there until just enough locations are closed to temp close everything else - send best combat character to the villain and easy win (and that's just one specific use).
* Spells: two Cure spells and two Inflict spells (or three!). Other good offensive spells are Holy Light, Fire Sneeze and Swipe.
* Power feats: increase the power of animals for the first two (there are other choices once you get the Wild Warden role card)
* Skill feats: Wisdom every time
At the end of Hook Mountain she will have d10+d4+7 Divine, so she almost never fails recharge checks. Attack spells add somewhere between d6 and 2d12; she never rolls less than a 10 with any of them. Inflict has an 82% chance of hitting at least 15, which is enough for almost everything except villains.
Lini can bless herself a lot because she can use Cure to get the blessings back in her deck. This gives a 98% chance of hitting 15+ and a 78% chance of 20+. Using Blessing of Pharasma on Holy Light? 91% chance of a 25+. Curing also shuffles the recharged spells in and exploring animals back into the middle of the deck. The faster you discard blessings and recharge animals and weak spells, the faster you get the good stuff back.
What about weapons? I favour a pole arm to deal with swinginess of rolls (longspear, glaive with proficiency) or something with lots of guaranteed damage (discarding an evil trident). The Basic Longspear has 79% chance of hitting 20+ (98% of 15+) if I shapechange and bless it. (Gorum is 81% chance of 25+.) I might not even need to discard the weapon. It sounds bad that I've discarded 2-3 cards for these weapons, but that just means that I'm closer to drawing a good attack spell and Cure; if I had a good attack spell I would have used it instead. I also only need this rolls for henchman and villains, so I probably just closed a location.
I also avoid a lot of fights through Augury and Scrying. Or try to gain spells with them.
The biggest problem I have is that I acquire too much stuff. I take blessings because they will give me another explore and next thing I know they are clogging up my hand, forcing me to shapechange and bless myself.
Armor has been a real waste, I just keep discarding it to shapechange. However, if I had proficiency with it I could at least recharge it so that it doesn't get in the way of Cure. Seems better to just ignore it.
Playing solo I will move locations a fair bit to adjust to my hand contents. I'm also aggressive on the explores so that I'll have more turns to get a perfect hand for the villain, who is often sitting on top of a deck.
My items (Medallion and Wand of Scorching Ray) tend to clog up my hand. I used to have a Staff of Minor Healing to improve cycling but I needed a one-card solution for high fire damage.
Yep she's a really good character, I'm just saying I don't think it's to the point of re-balancing. You've got a bunch of high end stuff there and you're talking about stats at the end of Hook Mountain. Those stats are only really relevant towards monsters coming after that point which we obviously haven't seen yet. Also, Fire Sneeze is a promo card so I wouldn't use that in an argument as many people, including myself, don't have the card.
How do we know that the game won't have monsters or an entire scenario ability or something that say, disables allies in some way? That would be a huge hit to her abilities.
I think Lini appears overly strong because in a small group she's stronger than in a large group. With several other characters, it doesn't matter as much whether she's pretty good at making most closing rolls because there's no way she will have the time to go to that many locations - other characters need to contribute on their turns or those turns will waste precious cards off of the blessings deck. And even then she's still not amazing in say, the Nettlemaze, or somewhere with a large amount of monsters. In a solo game, sure, Lini is amazing because she can pretty much go anywhere(although I'd still like to see the 8 location game being played - because I really question her ability to fight alot of monsters), but that's one specific game type.
On the other hand, Valeros gets stronger as you add more people. At that point, it doesn't matter that he has bad rolls for non-combat stuff because you can just send him to a location or two that are all about the monsters and he can just destroy everything while others handle the non-combat locations.
And as mentioned in my post, other characters such as Harsk and Merisiel have abilities that can't be calculated as easily as combat rolls and are clearly very strong (looking ahead and evasion).
Anyway, moving on. I respect that others have their opinion, even though it's clear that nobody shares mine.
When I play her in a large group, we still find that she is the best person to do the checks to close most of the locations.
I look forward to seeing a new version of her. Riding a dolphin.
I own two copies of Fire Sneeze, one of which is in my box. And has never come out, due to bad luck. It isn't as strong an attack as Holy Light.
While I do think Wild Warden is stronger than Shapeshifter mostly due to the ability to take your animal bonus to +4, I'm not as psyched about the hand size part. Personally I think that 6 hand size is about perfect, 7+ is just asking to lose a lot of life if something goes bad. This is especially true for a character like Lini who doesn't start with armor, so all she's probably got in an emergency is one of those loot Medallions to protect her hand from damage. I might change my mind on that later depending on how the rest of the adventures go but at least for now the only character I've taken above 6 hand size (or intend to) was Ezren because you basically have no choice with him.
*However*, I quite like the possibility of the +1d8/magic to animals. It could end up being useless or very useful depending on what we see in further adventures.
It's kind of interesting in that the Shapeshifter role gets +2 possible added to her boosted Str/Dex (and +fire) die but 1 less on the animal bonus. Since the animal bonus adds to those rolls as well as anything else, Shapeshifter seems pretty inferior. I mean even if you go Shapeshifter with +3 animal, then +2 str/dex that would give you a +1 better str/dex but -1 worse than Wild Warden on every other roll you make. It's really hard to justify going that direction in my mind. Maybe if +fire ends up being really strong going forward... Otherwise, just don't see it.
I also went melee Lini (split my skill points between wisdom and strength). I'm not as excited by most of the divine attack spells as others and I quite like utility spells such as Sanctuary/Augury/etc which as a bonus don't really require having much Wisdom since it's only used for the recharge rolls.
I received the 4th Adventure pack last night, and this morning over coffee I set up the first scenario for play. On shuffling and dealing Lini her hand she received none of her 4 Allies.
I put those 6 cards aside and drew another six. Still no allies!
With disbelief I then looked at the remaining six to find the 4 allies all nestled together.
The way I shuffle splits like cards first then shuffles some more after that to get a true random distribution. Seems I out did myself on that front.
Lini and her Menagerie look forward to starting the adventure tonight :)
She's not Lem and can't just pull a Cure out every round. If most of your spells are Cures then I'd question what else your Lini is capable of doing except healing herself. Certainly, Cure is a good spell. But if you've got a couple of Cures somewhere in your deck and you take 5-7 points of damage, that's alot for Cure to handle.
While Cure is good - it's only useful as an after the effect play - meaning you've already taken that damage, and THEN you Cure. You can't play it reactively to damage taken, you have to survive the damage and then have the Cure left in your hand or draw it afterwards. So while I agree that armor is fairly weak, it has the advantage of being able to be used to protect your hand so that you can keep the cards that you want vs losing a bunch of those cards and having to start back over with random draws.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6, Contributor
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Cure's an awesome battle buff for Lini, because it means she can drop blessings, combat spells, and weapon discards like there's no tomorrow, since she just brings them back into her deck. An animal means she always recharges.
I give Lini two Cures.
Similar tactics work with Seelah. I see Cure as a way to burn through my deck without fear, not a way to mitigate damage from blown checks.