If you heroes aren't taking damage from time to time, it is time for radical change.....

[Gamer1066]

After writing a few posts, I've heard from several people that they are consistently not taking damage in their games. If this is the case for your group, I think the PACG gaming system is breaking down on you. Let me give you my two cents on why.

PACG is an incredibly innovative card game that tries to emulate certain aspects of hack and slash RPGs without a GM. I've been attempting something similar for a couple years and Mike's innovations are simply superb. One of his key innovations was using power cards that are discarded as a sort of hp counter. Fantastic....genius. It allows for this great trade off of powers/choices and consequences and hits/damage.

However, if you are in a game where you or other heroes don't/can't take damage, your games will quickly go out of balance. This is because not only will you not take hp damage, but you'll also have more power available than you should have under "normal" conditions. Since there is no GM, the game designers have to set things up to assume some "normal" damage (I.e. Card losses). They do this to keep the game from being too hard or too easy.

If you are not taking any card losses (which would be assumed in the design of the game) your game will feel broken. This effect becomes cumulative....the more you win, the harder it will be for you to lose. And the harder it is to lose, the more you'll think certain cards don't matter.

So what to do? Since there is no GM, you'll need to regulate your own games. I'd say you need to introduce radical rule changes to correct the balance (for example, between scenarios a mad man attacks your party and takes every heroes 2 favorite cards......!)

OR

Start over. The game is meant to be played over and over. Don't you want a game that is more challenging? I just played Ezren solo through scenario 1 last night.....I barely made it by the skin of my teeth....awesome! When you are weak, getting a healing potion is like the greatest thing ever!

If you want more incentive on how fun it is to barely win...watch the Crit hit review and the Grey elephant review of the game....you'll see they trying so hard to stay alive....truly perilous!

[csouth154]

Fergy, no one is saying they never take damage. Anyone that does is telling tales. This game is full of plenty of instances in which you take damage. When people say failing combat checks is rare, that doesn't mean they are rarely taking damage.

It goes without saying that it's your game and you should change the rules however you wish, but I suggest getting more play experience under your belt before jumping to conclusions.

[Gamer1066]

Ok Csouth, I'll call a truce. This is for you guys who have been playing a while.

I just want to play fun, challenging, thematically based card game. I'd like to play with the collective knowledge of the best rules from the very start. Since this game is cumulative, I'd hate to get 30 scenarios in and realize I've been playing with rules that are 1) too easy and/or 2) lose the thematic feel of the game (which some people are posting....)
For example, since the paladins favored card is armor.....seems like that should mean something in game play....
plus there are options to add armor proficiencies on several character cards, seems like those are worthless in the game from what people are saying.
I think it would be a shame to play in a fantasy game system where armor is "useless"....

[Nathaniel Gousset]

Currently in AP4.

We started to increase Armor cards up from "Useless" to "Nice to have but not worth adding more in the deck"... at least for the best ones.

The trick is the best armor is often hand management, wich isn't easy to do with armor.

Second trick is that in 95% of the situations a blessing is a better card to have in hand than an armor. This percentage is slowly going down with more and more mosnter with checkless pre-combat damage.

[Gamer1066]

Thanks for sharing your experiences. Just curious, if you play with the house rule "Only one of each type of boon may be played on a single check (replaces text in original rules)" do you think your heroes would take more damage more frequently?

If you did take damage more frequently, do you think this would make armor more important for your heroes?

[Fourpaws]

As someone who rarely play more than one blessing on a check (i just don't have enough in my 6 Character Soloplay), I don't feel my characters take a concerning amount of damage. I do take some extra hits on average Combat rolls, that could be prevented with extra blessings, but the groupsize absorbs them most of the time.
I still use double Daggers from time to time, but I donn't remember any other boons I double.

My main problem with armors is getting them in my Hand in time, without them taking up important space in my Deck or hand.
For armors I actually prefer aditional abilities over higher damage reduction, wich are a lot more common in later sets.
Still my playstyle and group didn't gave me the need to increase my number of armors so far. And with only 2 sets left to play I am somewhat sceptical this will change.