Very nice detailed feedback. A general comment about not liking the weapons, spells, or other cards in the set, I think a lot of that has to do with the style of this set. Personally, I would highly recommend getting class decks so you can have some more of the cards you'd like to see. Want awesome melee weapons and heavy duty armor? Mix in the Fighter Deck. Are you playing with an arcane spellcaster or two and really want Augury and Scrying back? Mix in the Wizard Deck. I actually just use my class decks for organized play, but they can be a really nice tool for home games. This can be the case not only for Skull & Shackles, but also if Wrath of the Righteous or future sets down the line are missing specific types of cards that you wish were there or don't properly support a class that you love.
Ship powers: Other than damage reduction, the powers of ships were largely forgotten. The scenario was either too hard where we needed the extra turns or so easy than those powers were not necessary.
Yeah, I think the discard powers for ships are much more useful when you have a smaller party. They can be absolute lifesavers for a solo game.
Allies and Swashbuckling for Non-Combat: I don't think I've ever encountered a non-combat check where a Swashbuckling trait was important. Seems like a effect that wasn't thought all the way through.
The primary way that this can come into play is with Jirelle. She can reroll when a check has the Swashbuckling trait. Also, if you play Lem and go Freebooter, there's a power he can learn that adds d12s when he plays blessings on Swashbuckling checks. That might be it though. I'm assuming you weren't playing with Jirelle? And if Lem was in the game he probably went Sea Singer because d4s are amazing.
Implications of the ‘Make Good’ Scenario: .... The Reward should be better though(probably a skill, power, and/or card feet).
I definitely didn't expect them to put a feat as a reward for an insert scenario. That could potentially throw off your character's power level, especially if they start making more insert scenarios. But I was disappointed by the reward that was included since I really didn't care to have more ships added to my fleet beyond what I already had. Personally, I was really hoping for a cool, unique Loot reward for the scenario.
When I do get Class decks, I'd add them only if one of the character's were of that class as to not break the theme too much.
That is mostly a good rule to have, something that I think may have been recommended by the developers at some point. However, there are not a lot of Class Decks out yet. There are only seven, with an eighth coming out around July. As such, there are currently only two arcane casters with a Class Decks: sorcerer and wizard. If you're playing an arcane caster that doesn't have a deck yet (such as the magus, witch, and the upcoming arcanist for Wrath) and you feel that they can use more spell support, adding the sorcerer or wizard deck would be perfectly reasonable. But I would say only add up to one Class Deck per character that's playing in the game, or otherwise you'll really start to delude the pool of boon cards.
Overall, I largely agree. However, I have to disagree on your weapon point. Specifically, you talk about how more and smaller dice make it less likely to get the maximum on the die. The upshot of that is that more and smaller dice have a higher average (1d12 averaged 6.5, 2d6 averages 7, and 3d4 averages 7.5). Essentially, with smaller dice, you're trading potential for reliability, which does make sense for the lower-power setting this seems intended to demonstrate.
The barrier to add a location is certainly interesting, but I think they made a good call not using it at this point. It's new technology, and sometimes good to explore the more basic features before really digging into the crazy potential. The other consideration is how an additional location could potentially change the difficulty much more substantially depending on the size of the party. It's an interesting concept, but one that probably needs a lot of testing.
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I just wanted to chime in on the weapon front and add to Isaic's point. The weapons in S&S are incredibly powerful because they use smaller dice. PACG rewards reliability, consistently avoiding low rolls leads to better outcomes than occasionally getting high rolls. The math of this game is all about avoiding variances. I can see why the smaller dice would make the weapons "less exciting" for you but I wouldn't confuse that with less powerful.
Also regarding the blessings deck, scenarios can indeed abruptly end in the middle of a turn if the deck is empty, specifically if you would need to remove cards from it while it is empty (see pg 8 of S&S rulebook). I'm not entirely sure what your issue with this is besides that you may not like the mechanic.
Ah, I misinterpreted your post then. It does seem like such a check is not needed since you'll lose at the beginning of the next turn anyway due to being unable to advance the blessings deck. I like it when scenarios mess around with the blessings deck, but if the intent was to give less turns it'd be much clearer to say "Only shuffle 29 blessings into the blessings deck instead of the usual 30" as a scenario power or something to that effect.
Chief Technical Officer
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Shuffle an Enemy Ship henchman into each location deck. If you defeat an Enemy Ship, put it on top of its location deck.
After your move step, you may examine the top card of your location deck; you may shuffle that deck. If the blessings deck is empty, examine the top card of each location deck. You win the scenario only if each is an Enemy Ship.
This is a race, and the action in the scenario is about beating the other ships. The last round, though, is about crossing the finish line after you're already pulled ahead of the other ships. Also, after you advance the blessings deck for the last time, before you move, you could possibly affect the top card of a location deck with cards such as Spyglass. So it's potentially a very useful turn.
And if you don't win, you actually *do* get to explore, because you don't *lose* until you can't advance the blessings deck at the start of the next turn, as usual.
Shuffle the villain Brinebones into the blessings deck.
When you discard Brinebones from the blessings deck, a random character summons and encounters it; then advance the blessings deck and shuffle Brinebones into the blessings deck. If there are no blessings in the blessings deck, you lose the scenario.
The last turn of the blessings deck (assuming the scenario lasts that long) is definitely going to have action—somebody will be encountering Brinebones. And that's the most important thing that could happen on the last turn of the game. And you'll all know that it's win or lose, which I think is at *least* as exciting as many other situations where you're on the last turn of the game and you're not sure where the villain is, and your only chance of winning is to turn the villain over... but usually you don't, so you instead have an exploration where the best likely outcome is maybe you pick up an extra boon for the party. I know which one I think is more fun....
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Chief Technical Officer
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I'm just saying that the wording for these scenarios are vague and confusing on when exactly play ends and if we have 30 turns to do something, then win conditions should be checked at the end of the turn so that all the party's efforts are meaningful toward finishing the scenario.
When you *lose* a scenario on turns, it happens when you advance the blessing deck at the beginning of a turn. Why should winning be in a different place?
Also, you seem to be really tied to the idea that 30 complete turns is some sort of magic number, but in the case of Inside Lucrehold, we're not replacing a blessing with Brinebones, we're adding him in, so you'll get your 30 turns.
Also, you seem to be really tied to the idea that 30 complete turns is some sort of magic number…
For any player count other than 4, it is a magic number. Without any further manipulation of the blessings deck, it gives each player an equal number of turns.
For the 29-turn scenarios (the two mentioned above, and Here Comes The Flood from RotR), the last player in turn order is shorted a turn, seemingly not because it's an essential part of the scenario design, but because of an accident in the wording.
True, but there are already lots of things that will mean you can't count on their being 30 turns in a game. Things can make you discard cards from the blessing deck, whether by your own volition (ships) or as punishment (banes).
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Here's one detail I haven't seen mention that really annoys me in this AP: Charisma/Diplomacy everywhere. I'm only on Deck 4, but so far, I'm only counting 8 different allies that don't require a Charisma/Diplomacy check (aside from animals who have a similar issue with Wisdom/Survival). In Rise of the Runelords, even if your party wasn't the charming type, you could still gain the majority of allies by impressing them with a different (often slightly harder) check; they were very much the exception and they had thematic reasons why they wouldn't join someone who couldn't charm them, they were bards and nobles and merchants. In Skulls and Shackles, you have to sweet talk every body. If you're not playing Lem or Alahazra, you might as well ignore locations with a high number of allies, because they're basically dead explorations
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Chief Technical Officer
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When you *lose* a scenario on turns, it happens when you advance the blessing deck at the beginning of a turn. Why should winning be in a different place?
Except with Inside Lucrehold, you have an additional lose condition.
Shuffle the villain Brinebones into the blessings deck.
When you discard Brinebones from the blessings deck, a random character summons and encounters it; then advance the blessings deck and shuffle Brinebones into the blessings deck. If there are no blessings in the blessings deck, you lose the scenario.The cards are read as a paragraph being a set of instructions that must be followed to completion before doing anything else. So let's examine the case of the blessing deck with BrineBones on top and 1 Blessing underneath.
1) BrineBones is discarded
2) Random character encounters BrineBones
3) Last Blessing is advanced and BrineBones returns to the blessing deck
4) Because of the last sentence, a check is now made for no blessings in the blessing deck; there is none (only BrineBones) so you lose. That's how it reads.I blame the English language for this kinda thing. It (English) is broken.
You are completely correct. My point is that the turn you just described is turn 30. And no, you don't get to explore on that turn, but the party gets to take the last chance to defeat the villain in an all-or-nothing battle, and I think that's pretty exciting, and better than actually exploring.
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Overall, I largely agree. However, I have to disagree on your weapon point. Specifically, you talk about how more and smaller dice make it less likely to get the maximum on the die. The upshot of that is that more and smaller dice have a higher average (1d12 averaged 6.5, 2d6 averages 7, and 3d4 averages 7.5). Essentially, with smaller dice, you're trading potential for reliability, which does make sense for the lower-power setting this seems intended to demonstrate.
The barrier to add a location is certainly interesting, but I think they made a good call not using it at this point. It's new technology, and sometimes good to explore the more basic features before really digging into the crazy potential. The other consideration is how an additional location could potentially change the difficulty much more substantially depending on the size of the party. It's an interesting concept, but one that probably needs a lot of testing.
let's not forget also that more dice mean higher minimum values, e.g.
min(1d12) = 1
min(2d6) = 2
min(3d4) = 3
From the wording of Vic's post, I thought maybe he misremembered the scenario--Brinebones isn't the villain you have to kill to win. Since the turn ends immediately, you don't have to draw your hand up, it'd take a fringe case for him even TO kill you. If that happened to us, I doubt we'd even bother fighting him the last time.
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Chief Technical Officer
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From the wording of Vic's post, I thought maybe he misremembered the scenario--Brinebones isn't the villain you have to kill to win. Since the turn ends immediately, you don't have to draw your hand up, it'd take a fringe case for him even TO kill you. If that happened to us, I doubt we'd even bother fighting him the last time.
Sorry—you're correct!
Overall, I largely agree. However, I have to disagree on your weapon point. Specifically, you talk about how more and smaller dice make it less likely to get the maximum on the die. The upshot of that is that more and smaller dice have a higher average (1d12 averaged 6.5, 2d6 averages 7, and 3d4 averages 7.5). Essentially, with smaller dice, you're trading potential for reliability, which does make sense for the lower-power setting this seems intended to demonstrate.
The barrier to add a location is certainly interesting, but I think they made a good call not using it at this point. It's new technology, and sometimes good to explore the more basic features before really digging into the crazy potential. The other consideration is how an additional location could potentially change the difficulty much more substantially depending on the size of the party. It's an interesting concept, but one that probably needs a lot of testing.
let's not forget also that more dice mean higher minimum values, e.g.
min(1d12) = 1
min(2d6) = 2
min(3d4) = 3
And a better bell-curve. Lots of smaller dice are more consistent, and, as I've heard here many times, the PACG doesn't reward you for rolling high, it punishes you for rolling low.
This is my opinion in general, but especially in the PACG - give me 2d4 over 1d8 ANY day of the week.
1 d8 is a bit better than 2 d4 if I know my friend will use a Blessing to give me one or two more. Not a lot better.
1 d8 is a bit better than 2 d4 if I know my friend will use a Blessing to give me one or two more. Not a lot better.
Well, base 1d8 + 0 is better than base 1d4 + an additional 1d4 in the PACG. But if my skill was somehow 2d4 (and therefore blessings added another 2d4) my point would stand. No one is arguing that d8 strength is worse than d4 strength. Just that 2d4 is better/worse than 1d8.
And a better bell-curve. Lots of smaller dice are more consistent, and, as I've heard here many times, the PACG doesn't reward you for rolling high, it punishes you for rolling low.
This is my opinion in general, but especially in the PACG - give me 2d4 over 1d8 ANY day of the week.
I agree with you. In my Bard class deck overview (in progress), this is what I say:
"...but PACG is a game of chances; if you don’t specialize, you’ll find yourself losing all the checks instead of just some of them."
It doesn't matter (other than personal satisfaction) that you roll 60 on a villain check, because you don't get any extra benefit, but it does matter if you lose even by 1.
This is my opinion in general, but especially in the PACG - give me 2d4 over 1d8 ANY day of the week.
Even in the Death Zone? What if you need to roll an 8 no matter what? Or have a pole arm? One nice thing about PACG is that the variety of situations means that the answer isn't always the same.
"...but PACG is a game of chances; if you don’t specialize, you’ll find yourself losing all the checks instead of just some of them."
I'm sure I'll comment on your Bard class deck overview when you show it to us, but I'd just make the point that the amount of specialization you need to do is quite dependent on the rest your party, as well as the general themes of your Adventure Path.
I'm playing an OP game with myself as CD Lem alongside a Flenta and an Amarylis. It's rather amusing that our Fighter is the Int specialist and our Sorcerer is the Con/Fort specialist; that breakdown somewhat drives what Skill feats the players are going with.
This is my opinion in general, but especially in the PACG - give me 2d4 over 1d8 ANY day of the week.Even in the Death Zone? What if you need to roll an 8 no matter what? Or have a pole arm? One nice thing about PACG is that the variety of situations means that the answer isn't always the same.
I would like to add to the Death Zone example by saying that there are a number of cards that have an effect like a failed Ambush which will cause you to have 1 subtracted from each die rolled for your check. In cases like that, you may be better off rolling 1d8 instead of 2d4 or 1d12 instead of 2d6.
Armor is for people who can't manage to roll high. But 2d4 (or 4d4) is better when 4s count as 6s. Other times, a +2 would be more welcome than a +d4. When the going gets tough, the tough keep adding dice and modifiers until they don't need to roll ... or if they do, roll triple what it takes to kill the villain.
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Armor is for people who can't manage to roll high. But 2d4 (or 4d4) is better when 4s count as 6s. Other times, a +2 would be more welcome than a +d4. When the going gets tough, the tough keep adding dice and modifiers until they don't need to roll ... or if they do, roll triple what it takes to kill the villain.
I'm guessing you haven't met Druvalia Thrune yet...