Thoughts on Flenta and OP


Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion

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I've been reading the class deck character sheets and while I really like Flenta from a flavor perspective and want to play her outside of OP I am thinking she'll have some serious issues in higher levels of OP. Maybe I'm wrong, but here is what I'm seeing:

Flenta's character sheet wrote:
After you play a spell that has the arcane trait for its power, draw a random spell from the box that does not have an adventure deck number and has the Arcane trait and recharge it.

Ok, I dig this. She's got an unlimited supply of scrolls but as you use them you'll get weaker ones. Plus:

Flenta's character sheet wrote:
For your combat check that has the Attack trait, you may use the skill Arcane: Intelligence +2

So, once you take that power, when she's casting acid arrow or whatever she's starting with a d8 +2, up to a +5 with skill feats. Still not Wizard power levels but totally usable. And if you go Arcane Pretender:

Flenta's character sheet wrote:
You may recharge a spell (...) to add 1 plus its adventure deck number, if any, to your combat (...) check

So without casting you can score a +1 - +7 just by recharging. Cool. But here is my problem with all this:

OP rules wrote:
After upgrading your deck, when rebuilding the rest of your character deck, choose extra cards, if needed, from your Class Deck. First, choose cards with the Basic trait and the B set indicator; then choose cards without the Basic trait with the B set indicator, if you don't have enough Basic cards.

And the only B spells in her deck are Call Weapon and Strength. So that is what you are starting with. And even if you get a better spell as a reward, if you ever cast it you're dropping back to those spells in the next adventure. Assuming Call Weapon isn't an Attack spell, this negated a lot of the usefulness of two of her powers, since you won't get the arcane die until you've burned off your starting spells and even then it's luck of the draw and since they don't have a deck number the Arcane Pretender power is just a +1 which rarely ever was enough in ROTR to matter.

In regular games, the wizard/sorcerer/bard/etc can pass better spells to her between adventures which makes her powers more useful. But once your in decks 5 and 6 of OP, I can't imagine these powers making any real difference...

On a related note, she can get up to 5 spells. Are there 5 B spells in her deck? I wouldn't think there are but I won't have the Class Decks till next month. There are no rules for what to do if there aren't enough B cards, but I assume we can just move up to the 1s or 2s, which improves her outlook slightly.

Looking forward to somebody telling me how I'm wrong here :-)

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She actually doesn't even have enough basic B spells to build her initial deck. There is a wizard character with a similar problem except with armor. At Gen Con we were told to go ahead and use "1" cards in those cases. I have no idea if that stopgap solution will become the official policy.

It does seem like there is something off about banishing a 5 or 6 card and having to rebuild with a B card even in later adventures. It's like they should convert the rule about building with 2 less than your highest adventure, or maybe allow extra "picks" of cards for characters that are below their deck size at the end.

Otherwise yes it seems like Flenta will be spending all her card upgrades on simply maintaining one good spell in her deck.


And since she is still a fighter it would make more sense a lot of the time to pick a better weapon or a blessing to boost her melee... I need to get my hands on this deck and play her to see if she can really work long term...


If you were to go Arcane Pretender and want to focus on the combat recharge power -- and probably non-combat recharge after it -- then I think that your best bet would be to fill all or most of your spell slots with high deck number spells solely for the purposes of recharging, and never cast them. I think this approach would give her plenty of survivability in the long term.

If you want to keep casting all of your spells instead, you'd probably be better off early on with the weapon/spell-for-weapon swap power and/or the item recharge and acquisition powers instead. You could always take the combat recharge power late-game and switch approaches somewhat if you find that you need the help with combat.

As for the Arcane: Intelligence +2 power, I've been playing Flenta solo through Runelords with her character sheet since I can't pick up a class deck yet, and I took that power first. Personally, I wouldn't take it again unless I really didn't want hand size 7 as early as adventure 3.


Insufficient X in the class deck was stated to be intentional in another thread. We are still waiting to find out if you rebuild your deck according to your history of acquired cards. Under that theory, even though you banished your only 3 Spell (acquired in a previous scenario) you will construct your deck using a 3 Spell of your choice for the next scenario. This would make Flenta designed for OP only. Also, you wouldn't want to banish new spells of high levels that you acquire.


mlvanbie wrote:
Insufficient X in the class deck was stated to be intentional in another thread. We are still waiting to find out if you rebuild your deck according to your history of acquired cards. Under that theory, even though you banished your only 3 Spell (acquired in a previous scenario) you will construct your deck using a 3 Spell of your choice for the next scenario. This would make Flenta designed for OP only. Also, you wouldn't want to banish new spells of high levels that you acquire.

If reconstructing your deck according to your card history does turn out to be the case, that'll certainly be a nice perk for Flenta in organized play -- especially for folks who just want to cast all of their available spells. I think that saying that that'd mean Flenta is designed for organized play only might be a little extreme, though.

If you're going to run her through a normal campaign, the assortment of B & C Arcane spells in the particular adventure path will certainly be a factor; but simply taking the Pretender role, the combat and non-combat check recharge powers, and devoting your spells solely to those powers should always make for a good build. +5, +6, or even +7 to a check isn't something I'd sneeze at, at least.


I don't see it as a big problem in standard play to be honest. She cycles through random base level spells and then when you get her arcane +2 for attack spells you get to keep them and still get free spells to add to your deck. It just means she is an attack specialist in the same way that they alchemist only keeps non attack spells.

My only complaint is that the Magus has a similar motif, but is much more powerful.


NjSoapdish wrote:
I don't see it as a big problem in standard play to be honest. She cycles through random base level spells and then when you get her arcane +2 for attack spells you get to keep them and still get free spells to add to your deck.

Unless I'm interpretting the power wrong, Flenta only gets the Arcane skill for the combat check. The skill will be gone by time the recharge check comes around, so she'll still banish any Attack spells she casts.

I do agree that Seltyiel's power pretty much crushes Flenta's as far as combat checks, but remember that his is only for combat checks and requires Attack spells in particular. Pretender Flenta's power works with any spell and you can upgrade it to boost non-combat checks as well.


Milo Windmoon wrote:
If you're going to run her through a normal campaign, the assortment of B & C Arcane spells in the particular adventure path will certainly be a factor; but simply taking the Pretender role, the combat and non-combat check recharge powers, and devoting your spells solely to those powers should always make for a good build. +5, +6, or even +7 to a check isn't something I'd sneeze at, at least.

If you devote all your spell cards to this, it is pretty weak compared to characters adding dX+C to all checks on a reveal or recharging anything (such as RotRL Lini, who was admittedly rather overpowered).

Use Disintegrate for +6 or Arcane+4d6 and really defeating anything other than a villain? Even one disintegration per scenario is pretty awesome, but if it means that you start the next scenario with Mending instead....


Milo Windmoon wrote:
NjSoapdish wrote:
I don't see it as a big problem in standard play to be honest. She cycles through random base level spells and then when you get her arcane +2 for attack spells you get to keep them and still get free spells to add to your deck.

Unless I'm interpretting the power wrong, Flenta only gets the Arcane skill for the combat check. The skill will be gone by time the recharge check comes around, so she'll still banish any Attack spells she casts.

I do agree that Seltyiel's power pretty much crushes Flenta's as far as combat checks, but remember that his is only for combat checks and requires Attack spells in particular. Pretender Flenta's power works with any spell and you can upgrade it to boost non-combat checks as well.

I'm sorry, you're right. I assumed it worked like Damiel where you get it for that step. Yeah that makes her pretty crappy actually. A good chunk of her card list is dedicated to random first level spells.

Honestly I hope Paizo keeps an eye on these boards because I'm going to skip the fighter deck now, which I was really tempted to get for her. If the Arcane +2 lasted for the step, she got random arcane spells of any level, or even if her Arcane pretender role allowed you to auto recharge spells as well as items she would be a lot of fun. Oh well, missed opportunity.


Yeah, in OP she will have weak spells or powerful spells that she generally shouldn't cast (as they will be banished and replaced with weak spells).

On top of that she only gets 3 blessings & 4 allies, which is the least combined (the rest of the CD fighters have 8 or 9 combined and start with 5 or 6 to her 4 combined). Since those are typically the method for extra explores it further limits her. Whether this matters will depend on how many players there are at the table. In a 1-4 player game it will be fine. In my experience in 6 player games, though, the blessing deck is the biggest threat so those extra explores can be critical.

Her biggest advantage is the fact that she only starts with 1 armor, though. I just don't think it is enough to overcome the fact that her powers are focused around something she doesn't do particularly well in OP.

Add in that her 4 base power feats are "+1 hand size", "+2 hand size", "Heavy Armors" or "Arcane: Intelligence +2 on Attack spells". The armor one is generally a waste for the first 5/6ths of the game (judging by my experience in ROTR). The Arcane: Intelligence +2 is generally useless as you won't be starting with Attack spells until you get Disintegrate (5). And if you ever cast that, welcome back to Strength/Call Weapon. So it will likely only be getting used for the +6 (which will still be nice). Of course that is predicated on your gaming group acquiring a deck 5 spell which will require a character who can actually cast high level magic and would likely want it for their own deck instead. In solo OP, you could run a group with Ezren, Seoni & Flenta and give her the better spells, but in group play, I'd have to be a jerk to make the magic users roll for a card that clearly is better suited for their decks than mine.

So Flenta is likely stuck with deck 0-3 spells for most of her OP life. And no attack spells (other than those drawn by random luck from the box). And wasting a feat on either improving her attack spell casting or heavy armor. Blech.

Now in standard play, put her on a team with an arcane caster and she's awesome. She takes the caster's hand me downs and suddenly she's got useful attack spells and higher level spells much sooner.

Having said all of that, I don't think she's BAD in OP. Just that the interaction between her powers and the deck building rules are painful. I see some really cool interactions that will work well in OP, such as:
Auto-succeed to recharge Magic items. And there are a Necklace of Fireballs & a Wand of Treasure Finding in her deck. And I'd bet that Sihedron Ring has a recharge, too. Nice.
Discard a weapon or spell to pull a weapon from your discard into your hand. I thought this was useless at first as she would always be recharging her weapons rather than discarding. But then I remembered how annoying it could be as Valeros to have a hand with 3 or 4 weapons in it. She can store the extra weapons in her discard pile and use a useless spell to pick them back up later. I like it.

Arcane Pretender really feels like the way to go here. Auto-recharge and using high level spells/items for flat +#s. The only thing that really kinda stinks on that side is the "blessings add d12 to INT", since she would generally be better off using a sword to actually attack rather than a spell. Even that could help with some closings or boons, though.

On Martial Adept, I like the "shuffle on weapon recharge" ability. And +2/+4 to recharge/acquire Magic boons is nice. Not quite as good as auto-recharge/acquire Magic Items, but it also works on magic weapons & armors making it more versatile. Oh and blessings on Strength add d12s, which is good because this version of Flenta can ONLY use Spells as Spells (no recharge/discard ability), so she is pretty much guaranteed to have B/1/2 spells only, so less reason to bless her INT.

Sorry, kinda rambling as I work through this character in my head and try to figure out how to play her. Hopefully the September shipments come out a little quicker than August has. I don't want to wait another month to throw her at some scenarios.

For the record, if I play a Fighter in OP, I'll likely go with Tontelizi. I love the idea of burning allies for extra dice to beat monsters that auto-recharge the allies. And loading her deck up with all the polearms for extra d8s. And burying her armor to acquire more allies. All in all a nice mix.


NjSoapdish wrote:
Honestly I hope Paizo keeps an eye on these boards because I'm going to skip the fighter deck now, which I was really tempted to get for her. If the Arcane +2 lasted for the step, she got random arcane spells of any level, or even if her Arcane pretender role allowed you to auto recharge spells as well as items she would be a lot of fun. Oh well, missed opportunity.

You do remember she's a fighter right?

The fact that she has the option to get Arcane at any point is a step up from what I (or anyone) should expect of any fighter. It would seem that she's not designed to be a full-fledged caster (again... fighter), but rather a fighter that dabbles in the Arcane and draws bonuses from having spells in hand by using them for bonuses to your checks. I'm not sure why you would expect anything else.

That said, not every character (or even class) is for every player. If you don't like 1 (or all 4) in the box, that's your prerogative.


Flat the Impaler wrote:
NjSoapdish wrote:
Honestly I hope Paizo keeps an eye on these boards because I'm going to skip the fighter deck now, which I was really tempted to get for her. If the Arcane +2 lasted for the step, she got random arcane spells of any level, or even if her Arcane pretender role allowed you to auto recharge spells as well as items she would be a lot of fun. Oh well, missed opportunity.

You do remember she's a fighter right?

The fact that she has the option to get Arcane at any point is a step up from what I (or anyone) should expect of any fighter. It would seem that she's not designed to be a full-fledged caster (again... fighter), but rather a fighter that dabbles in the Arcane and draws bonuses from having spells in hand by using them for bonuses to your checks. I'm not sure why you would expect anything else.

That said, not every character (or even class) is for every player. If you don't like 1 (or all 4) in the box, that's your prerogative.

This.

Flenta is dripping with flavor. Her abilities match that which one would expect from her NPC Codex entry honestly. If she doesn't feel optimized to you as a caster, its because she isn't supposed to. She isn't a caster. If she was, then she would be in the Wizard box that she so desires to be in.

I don't know... One of the things that I love about PACG is that all their characters have their own personalities that shine through. Flenta may not be the most optimized and powerful character (but how powerful and optimized should a fighter that spends her time pretending to be a mage be?), but she may be the best character design yet.

Flenta's obsession with magic is both an asset and a flaw... and that shows in her character abilities.


I love the flavor and want to play her in a standard game. I just suspect that with the much tighter restrictions on deck building and the higher difficulty of OP, she will have trouble scaling up compared to the other 5 fighters whose powers are focused on things they can do and cards they can get.

Her powers are built around cards she can't get easily in OP and I suspect that flaw will outweigh the very limited advantages in that environment.

But we'll know better once we get deeper into OP. I've seen quite a few people on the board naming her as the fighter they like best so they'll all be able to tell me what a dummy I am once they get awesome Flenta decks built that I thought wouldn't be possible :-)

It will also help once I have the Class Deck and can see the boons.


Flavor is great. I love flavor and that's what drew me to her in the first place, but that flavor could still be there while still making her effective. For instance if she got random cards of the current adventure level or lower she would have a chance to get great spells right away before she loses them. That's a lot of fun right there without making the ability useless. If she could recharge any spelling ever it would still have flavor and that first ability, even as it is now, would be very useful just for replenishing her deck. You can have flavor and be effective too. Yeah she is a fighter, but why can't she use higher level scrolls or have some limited natural talent?


NjSoapdish wrote:
Flavor is great. I love flavor and that's what drew me to her in the first place, but that flavor could still be there while still making her effective. For instance if she got random cards of the current adventure level or lower she would have a chance to get great spells right away before she loses them. That's a lot of fun right there without making the ability useless. If she could recharge any spelling ever it would still have flavor and that first ability, even as it is now, would be very useful just for replenishing her deck. You can have flavor and be effective too. Yeah she is a fighter, but why can't she use higher level scrolls or have some limited natural talent?

She doesn't have natural talent because she doesn't have any outside of use magical device.

I totally get where you are going with it, but if she was more effective then she would be a Magus, and she is not. She is a fighter that is obsessed with being something she isn't.


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NjSoapdish wrote:
Flavor is great. I love flavor and that's what drew me to her in the first place, but that flavor could still be there while still making her effective. For instance if she got random cards of the current adventure level or lower she would have a chance to get great spells right away before she loses them. That's a lot of fun right there without making the ability useless. If she could recharge any spelling ever it would still have flavor and that first ability, even as it is now, would be very useful just for replenishing her deck. You can have flavor and be effective too. Yeah she is a fighter, but why can't she use higher level scrolls or have some limited natural talent?

How can you judge a character's effectiveness at something you haven't tried yet?

I look at her powers and I don't see anything ineffective about her. She has powers that utilize spells that don't involve playing/banishing them. This doesn't make her ineffective, but you do have to think about spells in different terms than just "spell" vs "scroll".

I think you're so focused on the fact that she can't recharge spells that you're missing the bigger picture. For example, the fact that when you do play/banish certain spells, you immediately draw and recharge a new one from the box; in terms of replenishing her deck, this is better than having to roll because it is automatic (think of it as an auto-recharge of a random spell, as opposed to a potentially very hard chance to recharge that spell). And she does have a "limited natural talent": she can gain the Arcane skill when she uses her scrolls; a normal fighter would be rolling 1d4 for their Arcane, banishing it, and then being down a card.


nondeskript wrote:
And I'd bet that Sihedron Ring has a recharge, too.

Reveal to reduce damage by 2, may play another item.

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I have written a doowop theme for Tanis's favorite fighter.

Oh yes I'm the "archmage" Flenta
Pretending that I'm casting spells
Both my roles get me random scrolls
That I recharge before Ezren yells


Flat the Impaler wrote:


How can you judge a character's effectiveness at something you haven't tried yet?

I look at her powers and I don't see anything ineffective about her. She has powers that utilize spells that don't involve playing/banishing them. This doesn't make her ineffective, but you do have to think about spells in different terms than just "spell" vs "scroll".

I think you're so focused on the fact that she can't recharge spells that you're missing the bigger picture. For example, the fact that when you do play/banish certain spells, you immediately draw and recharge a new one from the box; in terms of replenishing her deck, this is better than having to roll because it is automatic (think of it as an auto-recharge of a random spell, as opposed to a potentially very hard chance to recharge that spell). And she does have a "limited natural talent": she can gain the Arcane skill when she uses her scrolls; a normal fighter would be rolling 1d4 for their Arcane, banishing it, and then being down a card.

Nice post Flat. In general, I find it far more useful to think about what a character does do than what they don't do.


Forgive me for providing constructive criticism about character design and balance. I love her concept, but I think she is very under powered when compared to the others like Kyra who can so more weapon damage and is also better at spells. I'm kind of feeling demonized here for analyzing the cards and providing a thoughtful opinion.


I admit that I don't have the Fighter Deck yet so I don't have access to the boon cards to see exactly what they are & do, but I do have access to the OP deck building rules and Flenta's character sheet which is enough for me to see potential problems with this character in OP.

If you play Flenta and you do not go Arcane Pretender and take the "Recharge a spell for a bonus" feat, all she can do with the spells in her deck are cast them (banish) and replace them with random B/C/P spells. So upgrading her deck with better spells makes no sense if you are playing with casters that could also use the spells and won't have to banish them.

Without upgrading her spells, she's stuck with 3-5 relatively weak spells clogging up her hand. The recharge as a heal is nice, but it doesn't change the fact that when you are on Deck 6 and draw Force Missile it will be useless. And at the end of the adventure, you're replacing it with Strength, which isn't really useful at that point either.

I'd like to point out that I have no problem with Flenta and don't want to make any changes to her card. I think it does an excellent job of expressing the character and want to play a few games as her (paired with an arcane caster). I just see a problem with the OP deck building rules and her banishing 20% of her cards all the time. In standard play where you can replenish those cards with any extra spells that your casters have acquired, she'll work great.

Also, I understand that once the season enters Deck 3, they could change the deck building rules and let you add anything 2 decks below the current scenario to your deck (similar to the rules for standard deck building when you are short cards). But that isn't in the rules we've been given and if I'm looking at the effectiveness of a character in OP today I can't assume that will happen.


NjSoapdish wrote:
Forgive me for providing constructive criticism about character design and balance. I love her concept, but I think she is very under powered when compared to the others like Kyra who can so more weapon damage and is also better at spells. I'm kind of feeling demonized here for analyzing the cards and providing a thoughtful opinion.

Kyra is an incredibly strong character who can accrue some of the best static bonuses on combat checks in the game. If that's your benchmark, almost every character out there is underpowered.

However, keep in mind that Kyra's superior bonuses rely on a) her spending multiple feats (she starts the game rolling a mediocre 1d10+1d8 with a sword) and Flenta not using her powers to recharge weapons. As long as Flenta uses her recharge power, she produces results results that are similar or superior to Kyra.

I think that Flenta can be perfectly viable in OP in her arcane pretender role (I am less convinced about Martial Adept, but we certainly have other characters where one role is significantly better than the other). I don't mean to make you feel demonized, but I do think that some of your assessments are incorrect


NjSoapdish wrote:
Forgive me for providing constructive criticism about character design and balance. I love her concept, but I think she is very under powered when compared to the others like Kyra who can so more weapon damage and is also better at spells. I'm kind of feeling demonized here for analyzing the cards and providing a thoughtful opinion.

Constructive criticism is generally given in the form of "I tried this and it didn't work" instead of "I don't like this; I'm going home" (see below).

NjSoapdish wrote:
Honestly I hope Paizo keeps an eye on these boards because I'm going to skip the fighter deck now, which I was really tempted to get for her.

Kyra is a cleric, which means she is a spell caster. Yes, she has a power that increases her sword damage, but (bigger picture) she's not (initially) proficient with weapons, which means when she uses a sword the difficulty of her combat check is increased by 4 compared to the +2 she gains. She is also more likely to use her weapon for only the reveal power (less damage), because if she discards it for the extra die roll she is going to be discarding it (not recharging it like Flenta would).

I'm sorry if you feel demonized; I'm just saying it seems like you're overlooking some very good points and not giving Flenta a chance based on some preconceived notion of what she should be.

Print off her sheet, play a few scenarios with her in Runelords (or S&S if you're lucky enough to have it), and form an opinion based on your experience; if you have time, do the same with Kyra for a benchmark. If you still feel Flenta is under-powered compared to Kyra (or any other character), that's fine. At least you tried it.

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Flat the Impaler wrote:


Kyra is a cleric, which means she is a spell caster....She is also more likely to use her weapon for only the reveal power (less damage), because if she discards it for the extra die roll she is going to be discarding it (not recharging it like Flenta would).

The ability to heal somewhat mitigates the discharge issue.


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I played Flenta 5 times at Gen Con and very much enjoyed it. I typically don't play a fighter but had a lot of fun with her and viewed the spell ability as a great bonus, some thing I could do when we really needed it, not something I focused on throughout the scenario.

Casting Strength at just the right time helped our group make sure we won both Scenarios 2 and 3. Again I treated the spells as something to pull out of my back pocket at a critical moment. I can't wait to play her again and beat scenario 4 (I had to replay 1&2 to beat them)


John Spalding wrote:
The ability to heal somewhat mitigates the discharge issue.

I was responding directly to the comparison of the damage output of Kyra vs. Flenta. Since her healing power in no way affects/increases her damage, this is not relevant to the conversation.

Don't take what I said as anything against Kyra; I love both her RotR and CD versions. I'm just pointing out one area where Flenta (and fighters in general) have an advantage over her.


Flat the Impaler wrote:
John Spalding wrote:
The ability to heal somewhat mitigates the discharge issue.

I was responding directly to the comparison of the damage output of Kyra vs. Flenta. Since her healing power in no way affects/increases her damage, this is not relevant to the conversation.

It is relevant. You wrote Kyra is not going to discard her weapon for an extra die,usually. John's comment indicates that discarding her weapon is not a bad option for Kyra, because she can heal it back into her deck. So she can get the extra die.


elcoderdude wrote:
It is relevant. You wrote Kyra is not going to discard her weapon for an extra die,usually. John's comment indicates that discarding her weapon is not a bad option for Kyra, because she can heal it back into her deck. So she can get the extra die.

Ah, I wasn't thinking about it in those terms. My bad.

EDIT: Actually, that also serves my point: Kyra can discard her weapon, then has to waste an explore (or Cure) healing to get a chance to get it back into her deck. If you're going to play/discard then heal, play/discard then heal, you're wasting a lot of turns to do what Flenta's (all fighters') power does automatically.

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ryric wrote:
She actually doesn't even have enough basic B spells to build her initial deck. There is a wizard character with a similar problem except with armor. At Gen Con we were told to go ahead and use "1" cards in those cases. I have no idea if that stopgap solution will become the official policy.

That's not quite correct. If a character does not have enough Basic B cards, after they use all the Basic Bs, they may use non-basic Bs, not 1s. That's stated in the PFSACG Guide to Org Play.

This is by design. The Class Decks do not necessarily have enough Basic B cards to build your deck, even for characters in the Class Deck box. They *do* have enough B cards if you use non-Basics, though. You may recognize that this represents a slight power increase, but in OP, we don't have any B scenarios—we jump right into Adventure 1. (You'll appreciate this later.)

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

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mlvanbie wrote:
We are still waiting to find out if you rebuild your deck according to your history of acquired cards. Under that theory, even though you banished your only 3 Spell (acquired in a previous scenario) you will construct your deck using a 3 Spell of your choice for the next scenario. This would make Flenta designed for OP only. Also, you wouldn't want to banish new spells of high levels that you acquire.

You do not rebuild with your history—you rebuild with the standard rules.


So if you give Fluenta the card feats that let her have 5 spells in deck... and she casts all of the higher level cards that then get banished and replaced with "B" cards... does the deck have 5 "B" cards that are either basic or non-basic in her deck? And if she does not is the choice of expanding her deck spell limit to five really just making her have a smaller overall deck if she ever casts any spells and cannot replace them?

I know it is season zero and many things are being figured out but this card is going to be very odd and make people either start off with a deck size of 15 or 16 when it should be 18 or 19 due to the rebuild rules as written. Players are going to have to clearly know the intention of this character is to never cast her higher level spells and they cannot and will not be replaced unless you get lucky and choose that as your draft reward for your last scenario. Choosing 5 spells for this character on the card feats is going to be a trap in my opinion.

Still the flavor of the character is cool, and I am very much looking to try things out in season zero so do not take this as a negative comment... just trying to understand the intent and how this is going to play out when you have a event going on with a player sitting down to an advanced scenario with a deck smaller then everyone else.


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Thazar wrote:


I know it is season zero and many things are being figured out but this card is going to be very odd and make people either start off with a deck size of 15 or 16 when it should be 18 or 19 due to the rebuild rules as written. Players are going to have to clearly know the intention of this character is to never cast her higher level spells and they cannot and will not be replaced unless you get lucky and choose that as your draft reward for your last scenario. Choosing 5 spells for this character on the card feats is going to be a trap in my opinion.

Still the flavor of the character is cool, and I am very much looking to try things out in season zero so do not take this as a negative comment... just trying to understand the intent and how this is going to play out when you have a event going on with a player sitting down to an advanced scenario with a deck smaller then everyone else.

Thazar: I can't see that happening. I expect the rule to be "If you don't have enough B cards to fill your deck, go 1 cards, and so forth." If it doesn't say that yet, I expect it will in time.

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OP still has adventures and adventure numbers, I expect it will be the same as standard play. After starting adventure 3, you can pull anything B/C/2 adventures lower

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

Vic Wertz wrote:
ryric wrote:
She actually doesn't even have enough basic B spells to build her initial deck. There is a wizard character with a similar problem except with armor. At Gen Con we were told to go ahead and use "1" cards in those cases. I have no idea if that stopgap solution will become the official policy.

That's not quite correct. If a character does not have enough Basic B cards, after they use all the Basic Bs, they may use non-basic Bs, not 1s. That's stated in the PFSACG Guide to Org Play.

This is by design. The Class Decks do not necessarily have enough Basic B cards to build your deck, even for characters in the Class Deck box. They *do* have enough B cards if you use non-Basics, though. You may recognize that this represents a slight power increase, but in OP, we don't have any B scenarios—we jump right into Adventure 1. (You'll appreciate this later.)

IIRC the fighter deck actually only has two B spells period, and she needs 3 to build her deck. I may be mistaken as I don't have the cards in in front of me right now.

I know for a fact that the necromancer wizard has two armor slots, and there is only one B armor is the wizard deck. Maybe I should go ahead and create a topic for FAQing.


Out of curiosity, has it ever actually been stated or confirmed somewhere that only one copy of any particular card is included in a Class Deck? The printable deck lists seem to show differing numbers of unique cards between the decks, so I would assume not, but I haven't kept up closely with this.


Well, based on the PDFs, here are the numbers of unique cards in each Class Deck, by my count:

Bard: 85
Cleric: 82
Fighter: 92
Ranger: 87
Rogue: 85
Sorcerer: 88
Wizard: 92

The class decks are said to have 109 cards. If you include the 4 characters' main card, two-sided role card, and token that leaves 97 cards for you deck. So there are definitely some doubles in there, but Fighter and Wizard have the highest number of unique cards, meaning they have the least room for multiples (just 5 cards). A good number of the multiples are likely to be for Blessing of the Gods cards and I don't know how likely it would be for the wizard and fighter to have multiples of B level cards in their least critical card type unless it was done on purpose to make sure Flenta and Darago have enough cards to make a legal deck.

Edit: Fixed to take character token cards into account.


4 characters, 4 tokens, 4 roles. So 97 is the max possible unique cards.


Oh yeah, forgot about the tokens. Thanks. So only 5 slots available for multiples in the Fighter and Wizard decks.


pluvia33 wrote:
Oh yeah, forgot about the tokens. Thanks. So only 5 slots available for multiples in the Fighter and Wizard decks.

Yeah. I'm glad you did that. I'm actually surprised they are all that high. Because they seem jam packed with unique cards. I know they said Tanis worked really hard to cram different cards in there, and I already thought she did a great job with these, but assuming those numbers are correct I've underestimated her apparently super-human level of efficiency. That is amazing.

Aren't their multiple BotGs in all of them? Anyone that has some want to count just the BotGs?


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Hawkmoon269 wrote:
Aren't their multiple BotGs in all of them? Anyone that has some want to count just the BotGs?

I only own the Bard class deck; there are 4 BoTGs in there, so Class Deck lem gets to start the game with Erastil. However, you should be able to look at the pregenerated decks for Valeros and infer a minimum BotG count for it. (Ezren would be no help with that one, i'm afraid).

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

I just verified over my lunch break that the fighter deck only contains two B spells yet Flenta needs 3 spells to build her starting deck.


Ah, good idea with the pregenerated characters. With that, here are the numbers of multiples known to be of blessings (assuming the pregens are correct and use the B card rule for starting decks):

Bard: 3 (all BotGs) - 9 multi-slots remaining
Cleric: 4 (2 BotGs, 2 Sarenrae) - 11 multi-slots remaining
Fighter: 2 (all BotGs) - 3 multi-slots remaining
Ranger: 5 (4 BotGs, 1 Erastil) - 5 multi-slots remaining
Rogue: 4 (3 BotGs, 1 Erastil) - 8 multi-slots remaining
Sorcerer: 3 (all BotGs) - 6 multi-slots remaining
Wizard: 0 - 5 multi-slots remaining

It is also interesting to note that other than Higher-Level Kyra who has two Scimitars (not necessarily a double since there is a B and 1 Scimitar on the Cleric deck list), none of the pregens have any multiples in their decks other than blessings.

Pathfinder ACG Designer

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ryric wrote:
I just verified over my lunch break that the fighter deck only contains two B spells yet Flenta needs 3 spells to build her starting deck.

Yup, I saw in ACGuild at Gen Con that Darago doesn't have enough armors and Flenta doesn't have enough spells in set B to build a starting deck. I'm amending the org play guide to address this. What I told people at the time is that your order of deck building should be:

Basic trait cards from Set B > Non-Basic trait cards from Set B > Basic trait cards from Set 1 > Non-Basic trait cards from Set 1 et cetera ad nauseam.

I call this "rely on common sense," but my sense, I am sometimes told, is not particularly common.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

I was just looking through the fighter deck spells and here's some more info about Flenta's situation, especially in light of Tanis' common sense clarification.

-Flenta can have up to 5 spell slots in her deck
-There are no duplicate spells in the fighter deck
-So an advanced Flenta with 5 slots has two B, two 1, and one 2 spell at the very least
-One of the 2 spells is quite awesome for a fighter(basically banish to add +10+adventure deck number to a combat check) Neither 2 spell is basic so you can choose this one if you need to fill all 5 slots.
-There is also a 3 spell that doesn't banish if you don't have the skill; this may be an oversight. It's a display spell that just says to discard or recharge when it expires. It targets a character and makes all their rolls with weapons have 1s count as 2s.


Interesting, that spell would cause you to get extra spells in your deck due to Flenta's power.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

Yeah, I wonder if that's a misprint. It's the only spell I've seen without the "banish if you lack skill" text. The spell has a lot of text so it may have been a space issue. Or it may be intentional.

The spell that adds +10 actually has no text to recharge - it's just "banish to add bonus."


Hmm...I think both those things make sense for her. (And if these spells are just in the Fighter deck where no one is recharging spells anyway, they can do things like this.)

The one that has to be banished is super powerful. It assures she can only use it once per scenario. But like you said, with her spell card feats maxed, she can always pick it back up again when she rebuilds her deck in OP.

The other that can't be banished is nice, but not overly powerful. She'll have to discard it it sounds like, so she'll need some other power to get to use it more than once a scenario.


Just to clarify, in OP when banishing a class deck card it is banished to your class deck box, not the game box, correct? So there is no chance to recover that card during a scenario.

During normal non-OP play, would it be banished back into the game box, and be able to come back into play through weird treasure effects that bring spells out of the box?


It gets banished to your class deck box. So not recoverable (at least unless a scenario rule tells you to draw from you class deck box during the scenario). But if she ends up short on spells from her class deck box and doesn't take a spell in the upgrade draw, then she can refill her spells in her deck with spells from her class deck, working from B spells up.

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