Merisiel: Thief or Acrobat

[Erloth the Dagger]

Finally finished Hook Mointain Massacre solo. I have no idea which role to choose. What are the strengths of each? Is one better for solo play? Thanks.

[Calthaer]

The Thief role is a bit better at acquiring items and using magic items. The Thief can also add up to +4 to the "sneak attack" ability, but the Acrobat can only go up to +3.

The Acrobat has a power that lets Merisiel's evade turn into an evade that doesn't shuffle the deck (useful if used in conjunction with Augury to bury enemies and leave them at the bottom), and defeat barriers.

It all depends on how you want to play it. I personally might go with the Acrobat role for solo (to defeat barriers), but I can see advantages to the Thief role, too.

[csouth154]

The awesomeness of the Acrobat ability to evade and leave the card on top instead of shuffling cannot be overstated. If you solo, go with thief, but in a party it's hard to make an argument for not choosing Acrobat.

[Ironvein]

I also believe that the circumstances around the time of the role upgrade can be a deciding factor as well.

In our group, by the time we got to the role change our team overall was still carrying a lot of weak cards; so our Meisel became a Thief to improve our chances to get better loot down the line. We also had Lini and with her nearly maxed out check with an animal, closing wasn't as big an issue. Depends greatly on what has happened up to that point and what were your challenges thus far.

As with all character powers and roles, the choices you make seem to stem from three main points:

1) Team Composition (The characters specifically)
2) Team Tactics (soloing, single group, mix)
3) The cards you've collected to that point. Some powers depend on another card; if you have few cards that apply at that moment, that power will not be as effective.

[kysmartman]

The Acrobat gives you the chance to add 2 to close a location (very helpful in AP5&6, especially if your party is low on wisdom). You get to go from 2 to 4 in getting Items (though the Thief gives you +2 to armor, weapons, and items but you have to go from 2 to 3 to 4). Plus, you only have a 6-card hand with a Thief vs 7 with Acrobat. Doesn't sound like much, but remember, Weapon isn't her favorite card type with only 4 max in the deck.

Really, the +3 or +4 to her combat power isn't that big of a deal. I think I reached +2 on each of them because you're going to dump most of the later power feats into those specialist powers.

So as Ironvein put it, which role really depends on what your party needs.