If you would encounter a card that has the Animal trait, summon and encounter the henchman Carnivorous Stump instead.
These questions came out of this other thread.
1. Does defeating the Carnivorous Stump allow you to attempt to close the location? It is summoned, so that seems like it would be no, but it also has that "if...instead" combo.
2. What happens to the card with the animal trait you would have encountered? Is it banished? Shuffled back into the location deck? Does it depend on how things go with the Carnivorous Stump?
3. Is that squirrel on the stump the true source of evil for this monster? I'm not try to prejudge all squirrels here, but there was this one where I went to college, its tail was missing most of its fur and it would attack the other squirrels all the time. I'm pretty sure it was evil. I can see that squirrel taking up the study of the Arcane and animating dead tree stumps to bring destruction to the world purely for its own pleasure.
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The squirrel is not the source of evil; it is an innocent victim. I believe the artist intended for us to imagine that squirrel blithely alighting upon the stump, innocently seeking nuts. This squirrel will then be suddenly consumed in a swift action, almost invisible to the eye, where the tree gulps it up...the last thing we see is a fluffy tail dangling out of the stump's mouth, and getting slowly slurped up.
Kind of like the Mordles from "Rocks and Bugs and Things."
The squirrel is very real. And very, very dead.
A flashback to the MM2 for AD&D. :)
Paizo expanded on it in Misfit Monsters Redeemed.
If I were to play it right now, for # 2, I'd put the animal card back in the box and start the encounter with the Carnivorous Stump. I wouldn't call it "banished" exactly, in case that matter, but I would put it back in the box.
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I agree with your group - if the Stump doesn't let you close (which I think is likely the "playbook rules" way), there's way too much luck for this scenario.
This scenario makes me think it's probable that I won't play Wrath with any group of more than two people. If there are too many scenarios where numerous replays are going to be required simply to get the cards in the "right" order to be lucky enough to win...I'm just not going to waste everyone else's time with that. S&S and Runelords, one can argue, are games where skillful play results in conditions where a win is likely (better than 50/50), which the group finds enjoyable. My primary group goes slowly enough that the next AP will probably be here by the time we're done with S&S, so we'll see.
If there are too many scenarios where numerous replays are going to be required simply to get the cards in the "right" order to be lucky enough to win...
Don't Toll of the Bell and Bizarre Love Triangle have this aspect in S&S?
Tried this one tonight, with a group of four. Kept forgetting to summon the carnivorous stump. We failed, although we had closed two locations- Kyra and Seelah burned through the cemetery, then Kyra got the swarm henchman at... um, don't recall. Place where you get your pick of two cards.
We lost, running out of blessings. Might have done better if we'd focused on the villain- once we found the trap, defeat that, then move on to another location.
Would be nice if the carnivorous stump let you close location. We would have paid more attention to the scenario power affecting animal traits if the stump could have allowed a chance to close the location.
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Don't Toll of the Bell and Bizarre Love Triangle have this aspect in S&S?
IMO hammering players with random crap in Adventures 2 or 3 is a lot different from hammering them with random crap in Scenario 2 or 3, especially in a set with particularly punishing banes. Not only will characters have worked out some sort of survival strategy by the second Adventure (and have better cards, feats, and powers to support that strategy), but players will be invested in the game and want to see it through.
I would say most of the people I play with are more casual players, and won't get over the hump when the game shuts them down in the first or second (or third, fourth, fifth, tenth, or however long Elven Entanglement takes to get lucky with the villain / Vescavor placement) play session. They are releasing enough content that these groups won't be able to play every Adventure Path, and it makes sense that some of these paths are more "hard-core" and difficult for those who have already mastered the challenges of the others. I'll enjoy these on my own, but probably won't put more casual groups through them.
Wrath is certainly intended to be scarier than some of the previous adventures, though the intent is that cohorts and mythic paths make up for some of it. Each group has its own desires for how easy or hard a challenge they want. Much like in the RPG, I'd suggest tweaking the level of difficulty to match your group's optimal fun level.
If you've got a group that wants an easier experience, there are a few options available. These are the first few I'd try for Wrath on such a group:
1) Have everyone start with a mythic path.
2) Increase the blessings deck by a moderate # of cards
3) Give everyone a couple AD1 boons
4) Remove some or all of a couple key banes (probably temporarily) - Carrion Golem, Arboreal Blight, Demonic Horde off the top of my head, but there may be others that offend; one of my players would probably say the Poison Spiked Pit Trap since he always finds them and can't cope.
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These are good suggestions, but don't really address the issue of an early scenario where only two locations seem to have a method of closing them (unless "summon...instead," which by the rules disallows using the Stump to close, really means "substitute"). Some of these - like increasing the blessings deck - are more severe abrogations of the rules that don't just put players ahead without "level-grinding" but circumvent mechanics.
By "casual" players I don't mean people who don't want a challenge. I mean players who, if they fail, want to know what they might be able to do differently to succeed next time. One of these groups failed the first scenario in S&S, and the immediate question was: "What could we have done differently to succeed?" We adjusted our strategy and pulled out a win; that's satisfying.
The answer to the Elven Entanglement of "what can we do differently?" just doesn't lend itself well to many answers other than "hope you get lucky...or cheat." The group I'm thinking of would prefer to find a winning strategy..."try as many times as it takes to get lucky," especially on the second scenario when they're not invested, will probably prompt the question of what other games we could be playing with our limited play-time.
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Fair enough. I don't want to weigh in on the scenario itself / rules question because it predates my joining the team so I don't know what's intended.
It sounds like you're coping with the challenge but need to beat the blessing deck.
Consider the following strategy - as soon as you run into a tangle trap in a location, stop exploring that location. Once you locate Fihralaz, use him to close each location in turn by trying to follow his retreat, temporary closing as much as possible to retain control. At a minimum, you'll encounter more blessings.
Other than that, use as many means of scouting and maximizing explores as possible; for example, focusing cures on anyone who has a few allies or blessings in their discard pile, even if they don't need a cure yet.
The Dark Forest is definitely where I'd focus my initial searches for the scouting benefits.
My take on this
1. No, the key word here is summon, and a summoned henchmen does not allow you to close the location no matter how it is worded, unless those words specifically say otherwise.
2. It is as though the card with the animal trait was never there (just bait to pull you in). You never encountered it and all it served was a place holder for the Carnivorous Stump.
Fair enough. I don't want to weigh in on the scenario itself / rules question because it predates my joining the team so I don't know what's intended.
It sounds like you're coping with the challenge but need to beat the blessing deck.
Consider the following strategy - as soon as you run into a tangle trap in a location, stop exploring that location. Once you locate Fihralaz, use him to close each location in turn by trying to follow his retreat, temporary closing as much as possible to retain control. At a minimum, you'll encounter more blessings.
Other than that, use as many means of scouting and maximizing explores as possible; for example, focusing cures on anyone who has a few allies or blessings in their discard pile, even if they don't need a cure yet.
The Dark Forest is definitely where I'd focus my initial searches for the scouting benefits.
This sounds about like my partner and I came up with, after the fact. Might try again today and see how it goes. I think we just got stuck in the mindset of treating it like a regular scenario, and once we'd found the tangletrap, we just decided, "oh, might as well finish closing out the location."
If you would encounter a card that has the Animal trait, summon and encounter the henchman Carnivorous Stump instead.2. What happens to the card with the animal trait you would have encountered? Is it banished? Shuffled back into the location deck? Does it depend on how things go with the Carnivorous Stump?
This came up with us, and we had to house rule it. We shuffled an undefeated monster back into the deck and banished a boon as a failure to acquire. An official rule clarification would have been nice.
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For beating the scenario, we ran down one location, encountered the villain in the Dark Forest and opted for the other card to leave him in a friendly and easily accessible location, and then closed one more location by running it out. We then chose the villain slayer and had everyone else go and run down the deck.
Two separate people had to choose between the villain and Arboreal Blight. Both people chose to fight the villain and intentionally lose and discarded their hands, which was oddly more appealing than encountering the blight x_X.
We kept track of the blessings deck to make sure we don't do this for too long.
Finally, when the deck was down to 3 cards, we got everyone into position to temporarily close, cull their hands for blessings and bows, and had our designated villain slayer go in with some obscene number of die.
Even though we ran it down to the last blessing card, there wasn't a point where the outcome was less than 99% determined.
Props to Paizo for making a challenging PACG that requires cooperation and strategy :D.
If you would encounter a card that has the Animal trait, summon and encounter the henchman Carnivorous Stump instead.2. What happens to the card with the animal trait you would have encountered? Is it banished? Shuffled back into the location deck? Does it depend on how things go with the Carnivorous Stump?
This came up with us, and we had to house rule it. We shuffled an undefeated monster back into the deck and banished a boon as a failure to acquire. An official rule clarification would have been nice.
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For beating the scenario, we ran down one location, encountered the villain in the Dark Forest and opted for the other card to leave him in a friendly and easily accessible location, and then closed one more location by running it out. We then chose the villain slayer and had everyone else go and run down the deck.
Two separate people had to choose between the villain and Arboreal Blight. Both people chose to fight the villain and intentionally lose and discarded their hands, which was oddly more appealing than encountering the blight x_X.
We kept track of the blessings deck to make sure we don't do this for too long.
Finally, when the deck was down to 3 cards, we got everyone into position to temporarily close, cull their hands for blessings and bows, and had our designated villain slayer go in with some obscene number of die.
Even though we ran it down to the last blessing card, there wasn't a point where the outcome was less than 99% determined.
Props to Paizo for making a challenging PACG that requires cooperation and strategy :D.
THAT sounds amazingly fun! Nice strat!
What happens to the card with the animal trait you would have encountered? Is it banished? Shuffled back into the location deck? Does it depend on how things go with the Carnivorous Stump?
We had a discussion about this today at Paizocon and will get you an answer real soon now.
Seems like if it's indeed a wolfy in sheepy clothing it should share the fate of the Stump. I. e:
- Stump evaded > as if animal evaded => shuffled back in location
- Stump undefeated > as if animal undefeated => shuffled back in location
- Stump defeated > as if animal defeated => banished
But then usually Mike comes up with something totally unrelated and amazingly fun... so I'm just holding one more thought
Seems like if it's indeed a wolfy in sheepy clothing it should share the fate of the Stump. I. e:
- Stump evaded > as if animal evaded => shuffled back in location
- Stump undefeated > as if animal undefeated => shuffled back in location
- Stump defeated > as if animal defeated => banishedBut then usually Mike comes up with something totally unrelated and amazingly fun... so I'm just holding one more thought
I was thinking along the same lines, but note that the Animal card you encounter might be a boon. Not so obvious what to do with it if you defeat/don't defeat the Stump.
I must admit, I'm pretty disappointed that these kind of issues are still turning up in the game (not to mention all the typos that have been mentioned elsewhere). Isn't playtesting supposed to find these problems?
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There was a similar case in S&S, where Buccaneer henchmen had you summon and encounter a ship. In that case, it was explicit that the henchman was resolved (defeated, undefeated, other) based on your outcome with the ship.
Thematically, the animal card should always be banished. It's actually dead, and the Stump is just using it as a puppet / bait.
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If there are too many scenarios where numerous replays are going to be required simply to get the cards in the "right" order to be lucky enough to win...Don't Toll of the Bell and Bizarre Love Triangle have this aspect in S&S?
I'd actually argue the opposite for Toll of the Bell —because of the way the scenario is set up, you have to work your way through every card to win. That means it's not really possible for luck to go your way; you simply have to make it through all the cards (40 for 4 characters) before the blessings deck runs out.
On the other hand, after losing one attempt at Best Served Cold by running out of time (one more location than normal; villain eats blessings off the deck) it's just about killed my interest in S&S. I expect I'll get back to it eventually but for now I'm having so much fun taking another six characters through RotR that I don't feel the need to spend two hours hopelessly watching the blessings deck run out.
If there are too many scenarios where numerous replays are going to be required simply to get the cards in the "right" order to be lucky enough to win...Don't Toll of the Bell and Bizarre Love Triangle have this aspect in S&S?I'd actually argue the opposite for Toll of the Bell —because of the way the scenario is set up, you have to work your way through every card to win. That means it's not really possible for luck to go your way; you simply have to make it through all the cards (40 for 4 characters) before the blessings deck runs out.
On the other hand, after losing one attempt at Best Served Cold by running out of time (one more location than normal; villain eats blessings off the deck) it's just about killed my interest in S&S. I expect I'll get back to it eventually but for now I'm having so much fun taking another six characters through RotR that I don't feel the need to spend two hours hopelessly watching the blessings deck run out.
The luck issue people refer to in Toll of the Bell is that you have to keep shuffling the Villain back into the locations. Since you can't temp close, and he's undefeated if the deck isn't empty, he could keep shuffling himself to the top and you will lose through no fault of your own.
Is there still an open issue of if/how locations can be permanently closed in this scenario? I know the question of where the animal goes is still being looked into, but Mike and Vic's responses in a few threads aren't clear on whether the closing question is being debated here, or whether it's just RAW (i.e., no way to perm close other than defeat the villain.
I'm planning on getting started this weekend, and as Toll of the Bell was the scenario that nearly caused my group to give up PACG entirely (we tried it six times with no successes, then house ruled to skip it to avoid a full-on rage quit of the game), I'm hoping Wrath isn't going for that "luck of the shuffle" based victory condition right out of the gate.
...now I have to wonder where we'll use Carnivorous Stump as a regular henchman; it has the "may close" text, but that would never be relevant if the henchman is only ever summoned.
It doesn't have Veteran, either, so it won't scale up later.
I want to add my voice to the request for clarification
In a six player game, of the 8 locations only two will have a villain or henchman that could be used to close it upon defeat. The carnivorous stump is not necessarily going to show up, but if it does it would be very useful in closing a location.
I've played the scenario once and managed to close 3 locations. Never saw the Villian.
80 cards is a lot to dig through :/
Banish the Animal before you summon the Carnivorous Stump. FAQ entry will come next week.
Banish the Animal before you summon the Carnivorous Stump. FAQ entry will come next week.
Just to clarify, does this mean that if the Carnivorous Stump is undefeated it is banished (as per normal summon). I have been playing as:
"Set aside the card with the animal trait, then summon and encounter Carnivorous Stump. If it is defeated, banish the card with the animal trait, otherwise, shuffle it back into the location deck."
Nope. Banish the Animal before you even deal with the Carnivorous Stump.
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3. Is that squirrel on the stump the true source of evil for this monster? I'm not try to prejudge all squirrels here, but there was this one where I went to college, its tail was missing most of its fur and it would attack the other squirrels all the time. I'm pretty sure it was evil. I can see that squirrel taking up the study of the Arcane and animating dead tree stumps to bring destruction to the world purely for its own pleasure.
In university I was attacked by a squirrel while I was riding a bike. Fortunately, it bounced off the front fork.
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For what its worth, I think thank the tangle traps should allow characters to attempt to close locations if defeated. Its the second intro scenario, it shouldn't make permanently closing locations so difficult.
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I'm in agreement with Joshua. It feels weird that scenario 2 out of 35 would be so difficult and outside the norm of what most scenarios play like. I would think that the idea would be to give players a few scenarios to get used to their characters and the various game mechanics before throwing in such a curve ball.
I'm hoping that the Carnivorous Stump is intended to allow players to attempt to close locations.
My group encountered a strange interaction with this scenario earlier and I wanted to get some opinions. A player encountered the barrier Rallying Cry which summoned Mastiff as one of the allies since its second check specifies Diplomacy.
Should the Mastiff then be substituted with the Stump?
If so, would that mean that we would fail to defeat the barrier immediately since we weren't even allowed to attempt to acquire the ally?
No, because you aren't encountering the allies; you're drawing them from the box and trying to acquire them. The scenario power only cares about encountered animals.
I was wondering about all those swarms.....
At the time we were too, but they come up in greater #s in AP2.
The correct interpretation is the first one, you have one Villain, one Swarm, and 2-6 Tangle Traps depending on number of locations/players. Each location deck should have 10 cards in it after you're done.
Yes, this makes for a very rough scenario, however you don't necessarily need to burn through every location. If you want to play it as-written, it's best to go scouting for the villain to figure out where he is (but don't encounter him just yet), and then permanently close just a couple of the other locations. The goal is that you'll have one person at each open location by the time you encounter the villain so you can temporarily close them all before bashing the villain into tiny bits.
If you don't want to play it out as-written, the easiest thing to do in my opinion would be to houserule that Tangle Traps allow you to attempt to close the location after defeating them. This will greatly reduce the time crunch of the scenario and make it much more friendly for new players.
Alternatively, you could also house rule that the Carnivorous Stump would allow you to attempt to close the location. This is kind of a happy medium between the way it's written and turning it into a more vanilla scenario.
Alternatively, you could use just add that rule to the Traps. That would make the scenario go from Hard to Pretty Doable.
With regards to the Carni Stum allowing locatio closing -
Even if that was desired, it can't possibly fit on the card!
This is... actually a non-answer, and I was unable to find anywhere on the forums a straight answer to this. And one of the things that may be tripping people off is that optional encounter with Fiendish Tree that wins you the Vinst cohort, whose greatest power is to close a location automatically.
So
1. Can we get a straight answer on the Stump closing?
2. If answer to 1. is "No" - I'm wondering, what was the design intent for the scenario power that makes you fight and win Vinst?
The stump is summoned. The rulebook says defeating a summoned henchmen doesn't allow you to attempt close a location.
After you empty a location of cards, then you can attempt to close it. That's the point of Vinst. (Also, one location will have a Vescavor Swarm.)
After you empty a location of cards, then you can attempt to close it. That's the point of Vinst. (Also, one location will have a Vescavor Swarm.)
I get that's what you CAN do with him; however, since emptying all locations is almost certainly the wrong way to play this scenario (unless you play, I dunno, a 1-2 player game?), that seems to me highly unlikely to be what he's MEANT to do.