We shuffled the sihedron medallion from the blessing deck into a location when we lost to a villian...
What now?
We shuffled the sihedron medallion from the blessing deck into a location when we lost to a villian...
What now?
I would probably swap out the next blessing from the blessing deck for the Sihedron medallion, shuffling it back in. Thinking that's the intent.
Thanks Ron
How would you rate the difficulty of Shield of Rannick in comparison to RotR?
A little harder but great... up to 6A.
6A is, for a 6 players game, even worse than the terrible AD0 scenarios in WotR.Get me right: Ron's job is awesome. The idea for this scenario is awesome just like the rest... it's just VERY difficult. Or to put it differently, you need to be very lucky.
You start playing with a hand of 2 cards. As soon as a character encounters an henchman, pretty much everyone else only has 1 card left and a hand size back to 2. So out of your 30 turns, you can count half of them lost minimum. Closing everything in 15 turns (2 or 3 per player) takes a hell of luck and may be frustrating (restarting many times the game just to play a couple of turns...).
May be the only scenario needing a fix.
Hi Ron. Working on it. We'll try to give you an efficient proposition that doesn't change a lot your great starting idea of everybody in Prison.
Issues (in our humble opinion) are a combination of:
A) getting out of prison for the first time:
- with 2 cards to start with, some characters (e. g. Kyra, Merisiel, Lini, Seelah...) won't have in their starting hand anything to fight for (they don't have weapons or spells as a favorite card). And the Henchman needs combat 23 to be defeated. So, with only 2 cards, the majority of the characters must keep one blessing (in case someone else encounters tha Henchman) plus a weapon or spell (in case the character encounters the Hench itself). Meaning unless you are lucky enough to draw that combination of 2 cards immediately or at the end of your first turn, the game is pretty much already lost in our experience. Because with only 2 cards and the necessity to hold your blessings, you just cannot reexplore so if the Hench in the Prison is far from the top of the location deck, you may already lose 8 turns before your first chance to get out.
- with only 2 cards and the need to keep a blessing to help with the combat against the Hench, when someone else encounters it you face before the fight a Fortitude 14 check or lose one card. No way anyone can ensure that check without playing one card so either way, your first card is lost before the fight, your blessing second card is lost for the fight, so even if whoever is fighting wins, the next 5 players will start their turn with 0 cards. Starting with 0 cards usually means you will get rid of 0 (if you encounter a bane) or 1 (if a boon) card in locations Decks. Worse: you could encounter an henchman elsewhere right out of Prison, removing again 1 card from everyone's hand, and with no chance to win the fight.
So the "best strtagy" is to take no risk on your first turn after Prison (do nothing and rebuild full hand). Works well on a 1-3 players party. Can't do (no time to) with 6.
B) Back to prison. Here too, great idea but an issue on a large group. You have a medallion once every 10 turns or so. Which is less than 2 turns per player. As said already, may not even be enough to rebuild a full hand. So dexterity 10 check will be failed by maybe half the party (our experience)... much more than if you play 3 characters that will have time to store relevant cards to avoid the back in Prison without the $20.000.
That half of the party will have again to face maybe 4 monsters (with a hand of 2) before having a chance to escape. And since not everyone can easily aquire AD6 allies, the allies in Prison will delay even more). By the time you get out, the next Medallion send you back there. So the game has to be won by the 3 characters or so that can avoid Prison during the 3 or 4 turns they have each out of Prison. 10 turns, 70 cards to get rid of... won't do.
The first obvious fix we thought of was that the reduced hand size in Prison should be only when the Prison is open. And maybe when someone closes the Prison, everyone in it should be allowed to rebuild her hand in order to start the next turn with full capability.
But that may not be enough. We are looking at something like: if anyone defeats a hench, it closes the Prison (i. e. You can help an escape from the outside). The interest of both those ideas is that it helps big groups without really changing a lot for small ones.
But you may have other nice ideas.
Hey Ron, first and foremost, thanks for your APs, we've been enjoying Shield of Rannick greatly!
I was unsure about contacting you, but since you're reading this thread currently, might as well act now:
While we enjoyed the campaign a great bunch, we were a bit dissappointed in the absent 'Development' part that the Seasons are featuring on their scenarios (you know, the short summaries at the end of the scenario to explain what happened).
Have you ever considered adding them?
Most of the time, they are implicitly present in the introduction of the following scenario, but it often lead to a disconnect for us when we played the last scenario of a game night and stopped the exposition (and, ultimatily, when we finished the last adventure, since the lack of any epilogue really diminished the sense of accomplishment we had).
While this is a minor nitpick compared to the lack of exposition in the actual adventure paths (without the exposition guide from BGG at least), I think this is the only thing that is holding your campaigns back from standing on equal ground with the official seasons.
I fear I'm coming of too negative, so let me stress again that we really appreciate the huge amount of work you put into it. And I know I'm asking a lot from you if you were to actually update the campaigns. I'd just like to know what you think about this.
Yes, the whole layout is great
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I'm a fan of the layout. I like the half page; I think it's just the right amount of text. Sometimes the whole page layout is a bit too much.
I like the pictures, but sometimes I get confused when the picture doesn't match the cards at all. Are we supposed to assume the picture on the adventure sheet replaces the picture on the card?
Thanks for the response, Ron!
It's great that you consider adding a closing sentence or two, I think it will be the icing on the cake. Adding a couple of lines as a short epilogue would be awesome, too.
Regarding the layout, I also think it works well. While I was confused at the difference between the pictures and the cards in the beginning, I just assumed the pictures were how you interpreted the NPCs to look like in your campaign (I actually think it makes sense to associate them with a different picture, since it's a different story you are telling after all).
I wonder if it was worth the effort to print a copy of the corresponding cards where the picture was exchanged for the ones you used, to make it thematically fit again. Would probably work well in a home game, but I guess it would not be legally allowed to distribute those cards to the public.
By the way, it is especially great that you put up a printer friendly version as well, although I realized that too late.
Are there any homebrew characters you made that you would consider putting on your page as well?
Found a mistake in 6C : in the version I have, location The Old Light is used twice.
Hi Ron. Working on it. We'll try to give you an efficient proposition that doesn't change a lot your great starting idea of everybody in Prison.
Issues (in our humble opinion) are a combination of:
A) getting out of prison for the first time:
- with 2 cards to start with, some characters (e. g. Kyra, Merisiel, Lini, Seelah...) won't have in their starting hand anything to fight for (they don't have weapons or spells as a favorite card). And the Henchman needs combat 23 to be defeated. So, with only 2 cards, the majority of the characters must keep one blessing (in case someone else encounters tha Henchman) plus a weapon or spell (in case the character encounters the Hench itself). Meaning unless you are lucky enough to draw that combination of 2 cards immediately or at the end of your first turn, the game is pretty much already lost in our experience. Because with only 2 cards and the necessity to hold your blessings, you just cannot reexplore so if the Hench in the Prison is far from the top of the location deck, you may already lose 8 turns before your first chance to get out.
- with only 2 cards and the need to keep a blessing to help with the combat against the Hench, when someone else encounters it you face before the fight a Fortitude 14 check or lose one card. No way anyone can ensure that check without playing one card so either way, your first card is lost before the fight, your blessing second card is lost for the fight, so even if whoever is fighting wins, the next 5 players will start their turn with 0 cards. Starting with 0 cards usually means you will get rid of 0 (if you encounter a bane) or 1 (if a boon) card in locations Decks. Worse: you could encounter an henchman elsewhere right out of Prison, removing again 1 card from everyone's hand, and with no chance to win the fight.
So the "best strtagy" is to take no risk on your first turn after Prison (do nothing and rebuild full hand). Works well on a 1-3 players party. Can't do (no time to) with 6.B) Back to prison. Here too, great...
6A
I cant beat this scenario, What did y'all do to address it other than just play it over and over again hoping a ridiculous amount of luck?
It would help if you gave as a bit of context about your party.
I don't remember any problems playing with 3 players back then (it's been 2 years already!). Party was RotR Ezren, CD Tarlin and CD Wu Shen; Wu-Shen probably rushed through the Prison and annihilated the Warden, and continued to rush through the remaining decks afterwards, saving a lot of time in the process.
Im playing 4 players: Haruspex Ramexes, Gorum's Champion Oloch, Channeler Mavaro, Gold-Scaled Destroyer Varanog (from the "We are Dragons" Blog homebrew characters).
Primary the issue is only having 2 cards. There are 3 monsters and 2 barriers and the henchman in the deck. Two of my three tries end with high end traps. Necromantic Deathtrap wiped my entire groups hand on the first game. Due to the difficulty of the monster, I cant win without cards. So that was 4 turns burned only to run into it again.
My second attempt I ran into Avalanche, no one can defeat this without serious resources. Just scrapped the game and started over.
Third attempt Oloch ran into the Henchman, was able to defeat but he cant close the location. I did have a blessing used it hopping for some luck 2d4 = 6. Didn't get it. Tried to power though but limited to two cards and with everyone losing cards to the henchman this took too long.
Just due to pride I dont want to hand-wave it.
I think this scenario is quite doable for some parties and nearly impossible for others, and also scales badly with the number of players.
Since Ron was willing to make a revision but somehow forgot about it, you shouldn't feel bad to take matters into your own hand. My suggestion on how to make it doable without hand-waving it would be to use a handsize of 3 instead of 2 and see how that goes.
What do y'all think of that?
Sounds good and thematic enough, though I can't give it a proper test right now.
What I can say *without* test - consider the "Fun factor" for 6-p, where each player will pretty much have to spend 1 of their 5 turns (or about 20% percent of their useful character time!) on hand rebuild. On these grounds, if you're going to take only 1 of Frencois's suggestions - I'd really recommend the other one - something along the lines of "When the location Prison is closed, each character at that location may reset her hand."
Sixth time's a charm.
I beat it. If you get lucky enough to break out of the prison with time for everyone to take one turn, this allows them to reset their hand. At which point, I wasnt overly worried. I just had some time to make up. I do think it's also brutal to have 3 Sihedrons in the blessings deck to punt you back. Poor Varanog didn't get to leave/reset his hand before being shunted back.
My advice for others attempting this scenario: Since there is no villain, you dont need to rebuild all the decks if you sop play at or before closing the prison. So if you succeed in a reasonable time continue playing or just rebuild the prison and start over. This would assumes you don't touch any of the other locations. Since henchmen get bounced you need to decide this upon closing the prison for the first time.
As for changes, I feel like allowing everyone to reset their hand upon closing of the prison would have been helpful. This would have allowed me to try more attempts that went to long. Also, the additional AE damage by the Henchman was dirty due to being at 1 card and forcing everyone together. I would been more about removing the BYA at the prison and then upon closing everyone draws 2 cards. You know, kind of like finding your gear.
Just for a difficulty comparison: Starting in Adventure 3, I added an extra location to increase the difficulty. I felt this gave it the correct difficulty. With this increase I only failed one scenario and had to replay it until I got to this one.
After my first 2 tries, I dropped back to the correct number of locations. Not that it helped. This scenario was exponentially harder than the rest.
I still think you should allow a 3rd card initially or allow for auto close of the location. I feel like the henchman is going to get 90% of peoples 2nd card and everyone has one card for the henchman. He isnt easy so you will need a blessing or some help for a reasonable chance to beat him. This leaves no cards for the close.
I think drawing some cards upon closing would really address the issue.
Just for Feedback:
I wanted to tell you that I loved the blessings deck and Sihedron medallion mechanic. I started playing much closer attention to the rounds. In 2A when the poison hit me was devastating. Completely changed my mentality. It became "ok, this is Oloch's second turn. So 6 blessings down." I did like the nail biting worry about when it was going to hit. And while I think that poison damage was brutal, in retrospect, i'm happy it was the first scenario as a wake up call.
Hello. I am playing scenario 6A now. If I defeat a Warden of runes and close the location, I shuffle it in a random open location deck. I also banish all cards that were in the just closed location. If there are another Wardens of runes among this, do I take it out of the game or do I shuffle it in another open location?
As written, "When you would banish..." , it means you shuffle any henchmen you find while banishing the cards in the closed location.
so I could find a last open location with 4 wardens of runes inside, is that right?
Thanks
Yes. Basically, each next location has a growing chance of finding a henchman and being able to close sooner.(So it could be wise, depending on your ability to meet closing requirements, to focus-fire on the "random location" where you now know there is more than one henchman to find, etc..)