Warden of Runes cheap?


Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion


More of a ruling question, this one; the text on Warden of Runes reads:

"Before the encounter, each character at this location must succeed at a Con of Fort 14 check or be dealt 1 Electricity damage.

Damage dealt by the Warden of Runes is dealt to each creature at this location."

The way I read this is, a character for example fails their Con check, takes 1 Electric damage, then every other character there takes 1 Electric damage. Then the next character could fail their check, and everybody else takes 1 damage. Then the next character could fail their check, and the chain reaction starts to get brutal until everyone has done their checks.

Is this a correct ruling for the Warden? Or is it supposed to imply that the Warden is not the one dealing the damage on the Fort check, and thereby doesn't chain react the damage to everyone present?

It sounds cheap, because so few characters have godly Fort skills, and by the time you get there, I imagine most groups will either have banished all the Fort potions from the box or would need to burn through one or more Blessings on every check just to keep the damage from going nuclear on them, which effectively has the same result of burning through their hands.

This seems especially punitive for Into the Eye, in which a six character group could theoretically nuke very nearly (or completely) their entire hands if everyone were to fail their checks; that, or nobody would have Blessings left for the combats, which could make the combat checks mathematically impossible.

Seems like the strategy would then be to purposefully decline to explore every turn, discard through everyone's decks, and build up a hand of 4/5 Blessings and one or two attack weapons or spells and rushdown a single minion on one character's turn; then, have the Cleric heal ad nauseum and repeat the process just to be sure of success at the Con checks, which could theoretically destruct everyone's hands.


I had a similar question about some giants a while back. I'd apply the same logic here and say the before the encounter damage is just dealt to the character that fails the check, at least until we are told otherwise.


From that thread, it indeed sounds like they didn't quite word it clearly enough; I suppose the ruling, then, is that damage dealt before the encounter is considered separate from other damage and unaffected by modifying powers elsewhere on the bane's card.

I would probably word it as: "Combat damage dealt by [the bane]..."

One word changes the entire power, then, and keeps it from going nuclear, while keeping the bane as the source of the pre-encounter damage.


The best way to word it would have been "any damage from failing a check to defeat is dealt to all characters at this location".

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Developer

KL Sanchez wrote:

This seems especially punitive for Into the Eye...

Seems like the strategy would then be to purposefully decline to explore every turn, discard through everyone's decks, and build up a hand of 4/5 Blessings and one or two attack weapons or spells and rushdown a single minion on one character's turn; then, have the Cleric heal ad nauseum and repeat the process just to be sure of success at the Con checks, which could theoretically destruct everyone's hands.

You're going to find that tricky to pull off when you're burying a card every turn. Good luck!

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