Shuffling your deck after a recharging for a reroll can help you get a recharged Cure faster, although that's less of a concern if you are playing all your Cures on yourself.
I'm currently playing Meliski in RotR and we're currently on deck 5. I went with Brawler and the Amulet of Fists is very handy (get it?) especially with tougher monsters, and I'm actually playing him as more of a spellcaster.
For the third power, I went with being able to shuffle your character deck, mostly because I landed Brodert Quink early on, which works very well with his exploration power. I prefer knowing what's in the location deck where, so I can plan my turn better, rather than shuffling the deck and going in blind.
I am playing him in an official game. Originally, I took a weapon card as his first card feat because in OP, you didn't get a role power until the end of adventure 4. Even after they changed it, I was glad I made that decision since weapons can get WAY higher than the d6+2 that you mentioned.
However, having progressed into adventure 4, I rather regret that decision because I am finding I play the character more support and it works much better that way than I expected. I have 3 healing cards- 2 Cures and a Holy Feast, 2 debuffs- Black Spot and a Swipe, and 1 Lightning Bolt. I am realizing if I had gone unarmed, I could have focused entirely on spellcasting and blessing, and have all 6 of my cards been devoted to support while I could still punch things.
Overall, I feel like Meliski is a very odd character than can be played in many different ways, even more than RotR Lem, but that none of them are terribly powerful when it comes to exploring yourself. Focusing entirely on support has been the key, as my companions can blast through their decks (and reroll things if I am there), only to have me heal them up (sometimes all of them at once with Holy Feast) so they can keep going. The result has been far more astounding than I expected, as we are much more successful than ever before.
If I had it to do all over again, I would play him as a full spellcaster, taking only spell and blessing card feats, pushing his Charisma, and using attack spells to get through the game. At the end of Adventure 3, I would take brawler and the unarmed attack power. Then, I would push Strength (only takes 2 skill feats, which you theoretically get after the first scenario of adventure 4). Then I would shift my spells from attacks (and 2 cures, I always run 2 cures) to buffs/support and augment my unarmed attack (and other characters) with those spells and blessings.
He then becomes incredibly dynamic and his "extras" could be used on an as-needed basis. For example, if there is a location that needs to bury an ally and you are playing in a game with very ally-poor characters, call Ally as your favored card type, and have a chance to close that location. You can shift your gameplay as the game progresses to take on whatever challenges happen to come up.
My group in OP has a Meliski. He built him as a support bard, with lots of reroll happiness. He gets attack spells like Lightning Bolt and because he's the main healer he got 2 Cures (waiting on a 4 spell so he can get Major Cure).
He did grab a weapon card feat. I think the other slots went to Ally and Spell but I forget. He grabbed Dexterity instead of Strength because of his Disable check, and the fact is that even with a Longspear he's terrible at fighting regular monsters, since he doesn't get a Melee bonus.
In OP, Meliski can only use Strength on the Keen Rapier +3, Trident +2 and the Longspear, which doesn't help. He needs to concentrate on fighting to be good at it (Brawler role - use 2 blessings and recharge them is decently powerful though not as powerful as Sajan's version), and we already had two good fighters on the team.
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Was looking for a Meliski thread, so resurrected this old one! Currently playing Meliski in WOTR, and he's a lot of fun. We're not using any class deck cards. The other players are Adowyn, Seelah, Kyra.
He works especially great in WOTR because the choice of mythic paths are biased towards STR-based characters, and mythic marshal benefits both his CHA and STR. Everyone also gets a free +1 to all but one stat early on. So in pack 4 he was already +6 STR, +7 CHA (and +8 arcane/divine/diplomacy).
He's not a great fighter, but he's passable. d8+d6+6 for fist fighting as a baseline is better than I first thought. He also carries 4 blessings of Shax for 2 more dice when needed. I usually hang out with Seelah (also mythic marshal) and can we trade a charge back and forth for the d20 -- the reroll power is very strong when d20s are involved. Seelah can provide another d6+x for anything if needed, and Kyra has endless blessings to hand out (and laments us not needing them much these days).
Having rerolls available lets you be so much more efficient with resources. Even if you're rolling just 1 die and don't want to roll 1-2 on a d10, your 20% chance of failure becomes 4% with rerolls. With multiple dies rolled on a check, it's even better, as you keep the good rolls and reroll the bad ones.
Meliski has a nice bag of tricks for getting cards out of his hand. After failing a check you probably couldn't win anyway (or intentionally, even rolling against a sub-skill check you don't have, so it's a d4), you can still reroll to try again, recharging a card out of your hand. Great for cycling through your deck faster, or saving cards from damage.
The feat to optionally shuffle the location deck if you choose to explore the bottom card as your first explore, is very handy. Works great if you have any sort of scrying and know there's something you'd rather not fight on top; why waste time fighting a monster or barrier when you have a chance at something else and can shuffle after to try again. My Meliski uses the very-OP Fortune Teller to scry/explore, or sometimes Adowyn has used wolfy to reveal a nasty top 2 cards somewhere and I'm invited to come over to explore the bottom+shuffle. I have Ring of Climbing to let me examine the top card of the deck after shuffling.
I went all spells, then all items, now finishing off blessings. He's mainly utility spells (Cure x2, Refuge, Ghost Wolf, Cape of Wasps, plus one spell nuke) for moving around and helping others. Refuge attaches to another player and lets him optionally move to them when they encounter a card, which is great for avoiding start-of-turn effects on himself, or helping them out with rerolls if they encounter something bad. Cape of Wasps/Ghost Wolf also help with movement and damage.
Having the arcane skill feels like somewhat of a waste in this set, as 90% of the spells in the game are both arcane and divine, so Kyra and I end up splitting those.
While Meliski doesn't feel as strong a character as Adowyn (or even Seelah), he has so many options available at any moment, he's really fun to play. Probably more fun than characters that don't even need to roll on most combats to succeed.
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I loved playing Meliski. If I ever play an OP game I would choose him as my character. I will have to try him out in Wrath.
So if Meliski takes the power feats that let him play 2 blessings and then recharge them, but he only has one blessing in hand, can he play it and recharge it?
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So if Meliski takes the power feats that let him play 2 blessings and then recharge them, but he only has one blessing in hand, can he play it and recharge it?
In both roles, the wording is specific "You may play 2 blessings on your combat check." It is not "up to 2" so I'd say no. If you only have 1 blessing in your hand, you cannot use this power.
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I don't think that's the case at all. The "may" is simply allowing Meliski to break the normal rule of a single blessing coming from his own hand. Now you can choose to play two with that feat, but the blessings still get recharged whether it was one or two played.
As a player, I'd prefer the 1 blessing interpretation, but it would turn him into a pretty constant blessing engine, at least as far as combat goes.
Having to have 2 in hand would give him infrequent bursts of incredible luck, which fits his flavor more.
I'm kind of torn.
The character power is:
You may play 2 blessings on your combat check (□ and recharge them instead of discarding them).
If Paizo wanted to clearly indicate Meliski could recharge a single blessing, I'm not sure how they could have done that tersely. My best is "and recharge any blessings you play instead of discarding them", which is too verbose.
I think "You may play up to 2 blessings" is too verbose as well.
On the other hand, the clearest way to say you can only use the recharge with 2 blessings is the text as written. I'd say we need a FAQ if that's not the intent.
Chief Technical Officer
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I don't think that's the case at all. The "may" is simply allowing Meliski to break the normal rule of a single blessing coming from his own hand. Now you can choose to play two with that feat, but the blessings still get recharged whether it was one or two played.
That's the intent. Added to FAQ.