Hi everyone,
I have been playing PACG for a while now (mostly solo on the normal game and in a large group for OP). To cut to the chase, I love the game, but I feel OP could do with a few tweaks to make it a lot more fun. Here is one of my idea that I have shared with my group and would like to get a bit more feedback from the community:
Instead of simply modifying decks at the end of a scenario, I was thinking it would be good to "acquire" cards through loot and scenario rewards. That would allow players to do build their decks just before hoping into the fray. Here is how I see it working:
- New character would select 15 cards for their decks the normal way and would also mark these cards as unlocked on the back of the character sheet
- Identical cards would need to be unlocked for each occurrences e.g. Valeros unlocks 1 blessing of Cayden Cailenon during character creation. He then unlocks a second one as loot during a scenario and can now use 2 in remaining scenarios.
- When a player needs to banish a card, he also "dis-acquire" it and will need to acquire it again if he wants to add it to his deck again
- Before playing a scenario players would be allowed to build their deck based on their acquired cards (which kinds of have an roleplay justification e.g. the collection of weapon that Valeros acquired or the spells copied in Ezren spellbook)
- Scenario rewards that requires you to random pick card would be only on non-acquired cards. Which would prevent the frustration of picking up a basic card when you are playing a high level scenario (assuming you unlocked every basic cards). Alternatively, the reward could be to choose which card gets unlocked. Not sure here.
What I like about this system, is that it would make PACG OP a lot more about deck building. It would allow players to fine tune their decks to the scenario they are going to play. I understand that some people will say that it makes it easier to beat a scenario. And I do tend to agree with that, however this could be balanced by having harder scenarios where people actually need to spend time thinking about what they are going to take with them.
It would also go nicely with a proposition of a friend about booster packs (weapon, spell...). You could potentially build really interesting and unique decks.
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I don't see a reason to completely change the way you build your deck just for OP. It makes more sense to keep it the same as the base game (and this definitely would not work in the base game).
That being said, I do prefer the current way, so don't think this is just a "I don't like change" kind of thing.
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Yeah, while I can see this as a home-rule sort of thing for the base game where you acquire cards as part of a character's pool of cards, I'd have to say that this doesn't work for me in organized play either.
OP was designed to be harder than the standard Adventure Path. Being able to "tune" your deck prior to scenarios is too much like a Magic player tuning his deck based on his opponent's deck. We don't have sideboards for this in either the Adventure Path nor Organized Play. And while I understand the desire, I don't seeing it making the game better. I just see it making it easier.
If you're going to go back to the roleplaying example, your fighter is carrying around a glaive, a longsword+1, another longsword and a mace already. But in his cart that he's dragging along is also a crossbow, a longbow, and a few baubles just in case he might need them.
If this concept existed in the standard game then maybe I'd think about it but you aren't able to select your deck from a pool of acquired cards there either.
Fair enough, but as I said, difficulty can be tweaked and this taken into account. It could potentially allow for even harder scenarios.
Comparing OP to the base game is not that straightforward though, the mechanism for acquiring cards is slightly different in both. The main reason being that the pool of cards in one class deck is much lower than in a base set and its extensions. I find myself not really being excited about loot or scenario rewards because I have pretty much everything already. Or even worse, as a warrior I find some B weapons are better than some 3 e.g. great club VS longsword +2 (let's not even start talking about spells in that deck, it's another topic on its own).
I know I seem to complain a lot, but I do like this game, I think the mechanics are great, I just find that choices and character customization could be improved.
I just mean various mini packs, so like a sword cleric pack about 10-15 swords, of various levels,
This!
Bards need more items, Rangers need more Ranged Weapons, some Spellcasters need a wider range of spells and so on. Those minipacks would not be required to play in OP but for those of us who really like playing with the class decks not only in OP would really appreciate more deck building choices.
I can't agree with this either for the same reason Theryon does - you're not really supposed to know what you're facing beforehand, and you can't just "tweak the difficulty to adjust for this" - it smacks of metagaming if I'm allowed to take out all my Electricity spells before I have to face something immune to Electricity. How would I know before the scenario?