Wu Shen Death Whisperer

[Karlbarx]

Basically the question I have for the board is in what order do you pick your power feats?

In my group we just got to S&S 4A and I'm trying to figure out how to make use of my first few points to be an affective strength in group play.

We have a couple of very good characters with re-rolls and one or two characters who can help us transmogrify items into other items. It just doesn't seem like the group is really passing on items on purpose. Even a B boon can be picked up for a higher version of the same boon.

I can see all of her skills being useful individually but I can't figure out how they all work together or in a group. Poison / backstab / skip boons / finesse weapons... I just don't get it really. Please help me outline my progress :)

edit: I guess its worth noting that I have pretty much chosen hand size 5 and weapon proficiency as 1 and 2.

there's some sort of combo in my head involving an eagle, a helpful haversack, and defeating monsters to draw two cards

[Butch_Brune]

It's not everybody that need to be in a group to be useful to the group!!!

Wu Shen is a loner, the only power that can be directly useful for a group is: When you have fewer than 5 cards in your deck and you play a blessing, you may recharge the blessing instead of discarding it.

But being a loner can help you tremendously in certain scenario and Wu Shen as a lot of deck managing power, so she's able to care for her own.

[skizzerz]

Don't discount the boon passing power, I've found it to be amazingly useful:
- It lets you shuffle back in boons you have no hope of acquiring so a different party member can get a crack at it
- It lets you cycle cards from your hand that you don't care about and would have likely gotten rid of when resetting your hand anyway
- It gives you another shot at encountering a bane, most of which Wu Shen is very well suited to encounter (main exceptions being poison immunity).
- If the blessings deck is running low, it gives you a better shot at encountering the villain/henchman to close so you don't risk running out of time.

[Michael Klaus]

Didn't you take 3 power feats before earning your role card? From The Wreck of the Infernus, The toll of the bell and Shore leave at Port Peril; so you should have If you are the only character at your location, you may recharge a card to add 1d6+1 and the Poison trait to your combat check.

As the others said a Rogue is never much of a team player but more someone who can hold her own but I am also thinking about playing her in my next S&S group.

The 4 or more power would allow you to cycle faster through your deck, draw replacements for cards you added to the combat or exploration cards. I played Ezren and trying to draw a spell everytime you played a spell was nice. Zarlova is even more crazy since she not only puts her Attack spells on top of her Deck instead of recharching but can add the top (or bottom) card of her deck to her hand when acquiring a card with the Magic trait...
But Wu Shen plays Weapons and I'm not sure how that will work out (I guess that is why she can draw up to two cards to increase her chance to draw replacements) but it might add to you being more often able to play a ranged weapon on some else's check.

The blessing power seems to be meant to keep yourself alive when you discarded most of your cards. As before it helps with aiding others in combat.

The evade power does also help others as skizzers already pointed out but I'd like to specify boons as spells, non-Finesse Melee weapons, allies etc. If you encounter a fancy new spell and don't want to discard something to evade it you casters might refrain from healing you later on. (Yeah I always encounter the Divine spells with Feiya).

But if you really want to be a team player you might want to ask your group to let you change your role to Prey Stalker:
You can banish Basics and later Elite boons (and remove them from the game) without losing your exploration.
You can throw yourself at the most nasty villains.
You can also handle the most stupid barriers and/or push all your feats into this power to be the one who can succeed at checks to close locations more easily. If you group lacks one or two special skills this might come in really handy. Right now we play without a Strength based character and back in a two player run of Rise of the Runelords we faced AD5 with Seoni and Valeros. Wisdom d6 and d4... Do I need to say more?

[skizzerz]

In the Organized Play, you get your 3rd power feat alongside your role card, so you only are required to take 2 on your base card. For home play with the scenarios included in the box, you would indeed have 3 power feats on your base card.

For my (Organized Play) Wu Shen I took the Prey Stalker role instead of Death Whisperer as I liked the powers on that side better, but in general I've geared up more to help myself rather than the team. I think that's completely fine because Rogues in general are pretty much solo players due to the backstab mechanic that you can only get if you're the only one at your location.

Drawing additional cards is useful because you're recharging or discarding cards to fuel backstabs and evades. Factor in things like Daggers that you can discard in addition to your main weapon, and your hand shrinks fast during an encounter. If you can draw additional cards, you increase your ability to explore again and still do reasonably well with all of your powers that require you to lose cards because you'll still have cards to lose.