Alahazra ;)
In all seriousness, I share your problem. My deck looks like this
Weapon: Falcata, Falcata +1, Brine’s Sting, Cat-O-Nine-Tails
Spell: Frost Bite x2, Sphere of Fire, Illuminate
Armor: Magic Chain Shirt
Item: Masterwork Thieves’ Tools, Besmara’s Tricorne
Allies: Chanty Singer [got stuck with this after card upgrade], Crimson Cogword
Blessings: Gorum x3, Sivanah
Get Aqueous Orb. It's not until AD2, but it's an awesome spell for Seltyiel, with an amazing 6d6 base, with his power.
Because Seltyiel's big problem is that he doesn't roll enough dice in combat..
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Because Seltyiel's big problem is that he doesn't roll enough dice in combat..
No, apparently, his big problem is this:
He is exceedingly narrow in focus, and isn't significantly better at the combat than other combat characters.
You're probably right; rolling a lot of dice (at a relatively low resource cost) doesn't make a character better at combat in this game.
Because Seltyiel's big problem is that he doesn't roll enough dice in combat..No, apparently, his big problem is this:
He is exceedingly narrow in focus, and isn't significantly better at the combat than other combat characters.You're probably right; rolling a lot of dice (at a relatively low resource cost) doesn't make a character better at combat in this game.
Yes, I would add Aqueous Orb to my Seltyiel. It would be an upgrade, although a minor one. It does nothing to broaden his focus, which is his weakness.
Let me ask this another way. What is your win percentage in combat rolls with a character like Valeros? Do find Seltyiel winning a significantly higher percentage of fights than Valeros?
Edit: Your play experience may be different than mine, but I would consider a recharge and a discard a relatively high resource cost. And if you aren't doing both, Aqueous Orb isn't a particularly strong card compared to Seltyiel's other options.
Aqueous orb suffers, in part, because Seltyiel's melee option is so strong.
Melee: he can roll 1d8+2d4+2d6+4+str upgrades [average roll of 21 with a keen falcata +1] with only a recharge of spell, allowing him and hold own to his weapon.
Aqueous Orb: The base power of aqueous orb (1d8+3d6+3+int upgrades [average roll of 18)is actually inferior to his melee power, so its only worth doing if you have a lot of melee weapons clogging your hand or have gone all-in on int upgrades. The discard power is strong (1d8+5d6+3+ int upgrades [average roll of 25]), but it doesn't have a significantly higher average given the cost of having to discard a card.
In general, I would rather use a reliable and reusable weapon and not have to discard. Keep in mind, if the weapon attack includes discard (probably a blessing) it will actually produce a higher average than than the orb. So, yeah, the orb's an okay card. But its not that great because a) it doesn't address the weaknesses of the character and b) isn't demonstrably better than his melee option.
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Once you have the numbers from a statistically significant number of sessions and groups to substantiate your opinions (and that's what they are, although you are phrasing them as definitive statements of truth) about this or that card or character (in this case, Seltyiel and Aqueous Orb), I will be absolutely convinced and will agree with you.
Pathfinder RPG seems to like characters that are broad and overinvesting in a single aspect seems to produce diminishing returns, like our poor friend Seltyiel here.
Once you have the numbers from a statistically significant number of sessions and groups to substantiate your opinions (and that's what they are, although you are phrasing them as definitive statements of truth) about this or that card or character (in this case, Seltyiel and Aqueous Orb), I will be absolutely convinced and will agree with you.
I would think anyone who plays through an entire AP has a statistically significant number of combat encounters. How many combat encounters do you think one would need to be statistically significant?
But I'm actually curious about your experiences. How often do you find yourself losing combats with other combat-focused characters?
Why do you think Aqueous Orb is such an amazing spells for Seltyiel? What makes it better than his already prodigious melee capabilities? Are their errors in my numbers or assumptions about the card? Is there something I am missing?
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I would think anyone who plays through an entire AP has a statistically significant number of combat encounters. How many combat encounters do you think one would need to be statistically significant?
One group's play-through of one adventure path...I see. I think our approaches to determining the answers to a hypothesis (e.g. "Seltyiel is not more effective in combat than other characters") differ greatly.
I think our approaches to determining the answers to a hypothesis (e.g. "Seltyiel is not more effective in combat than other characters") differ greatly.
How much is there really to determine, though? Seltyiel is winning pretty much every combat encounter we have in our sessions. Valeros won pretty much every combat encounter he had when we played him in RotR.
I would think anyone who plays through an entire AP has a statistically significant number of combat encounters. How many combat encounters do you think one would need to be statistically significant?One group's play-through of one adventure path...I see. I think our approaches to determining the answers to a hypothesis (e.g. "Seltyiel is not more effective in combat than other characters") differ greatly.
If you are testing results in combat checks, each check is one sample, not each campaign. For what its worth I have played through RotR three times, and played two parties through the first 15 scenarios in S&S. How many combats do you think you need to resolve to be statistically significant?
More importantly,I really want to hear your answer to the question of how often do you find yourself losing combats with other combat-focused characters?
I would think anyone who plays through an entire AP has a statistically significant number of combat encounters. How many combat encounters do you think one would need to be statistically significant?One group's play-through of one adventure path...I see. I think our approaches to determining the answers to a hypothesis (e.g. "Seltyiel is not more effective in combat than other characters") differ greatly.If you are testing results in combat checks, each check is one sample, not each campaign. For what its worth I have played through RotR three times, and played two parties through the first 15 scenarios in S&S. How many combats do you think you need to resolve to be statistically significant?
More importantly,I really want to hear your answer to the question of how often do you find yourself losing combats with other combat-focused characters? [edit: Maybe my experience is anomalous; I would welcome feedback from other groups.]
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Statistical significance is based on what the hypothesis is and what the desired margin of error is going to be...in addition, the sampling technique is important, because various players have various preferences and strategies for winning that they prefer...and, potentially, similar mistakes or alterations to the game that mean the data can't be generalized to the population.
Does the data compare the ratio of combats won to resource cost? What about not the combats actually won, but the potential win-probability vs. encountered banes regardless of outcome (as some players likely prefer greater certainty of outcome, so there's a play-style choice involved, and some players likely spend more resources than necessary to win the scenario), given a particular resource outlay? How does one measure the value of a resource outlay? Display, recharge, discard, and buried cards are probably on an ordinal scale of more to less desirable resource outlays, and because it's not interval / ratio data, you can't directly compare (e.g., is it more "expensive" to recharge two cards or discard one?). If these things were decided, then it would be possible to construct an evaluation engine that would return the optimal card-plays, given particular hand-sizes for the party and a particular desired win-probability vs. resource cost.
No one has done this sort of analysis, nor has anyone (outside of perhaps the designers) created a set of assumptions around which to make evaluations, so what we're left with is loose opinions about characters and cards, not facts or even "using this model of evaluation, this character is more desirable than this other character." That's fine, so long as we're honest about it. Unfortunately, it also doesn't make the discussions all that interesting.