Given that a lot of the villains aren't mythic, that's only going to work if you manage to avoid encountering the villain more than once, otherwise you're burning mythic charges then having to limp on without them - given how hardcore a lot of the non-henchman, non-villain monsters are, that's a dangerous ploy.
Add immunities, "before you act" text, "then" combats and the like, and defeating the villain can still be tricky even if the final dice-roll is straightforward.
Hope so too... Thus far our rolls against villians have blown them into the middle of next week.. Some of their abilities are rather creative.. That's nice.. kudos to designers
You're using Alain, others on this forum have already shown that he scales so well, he's actually too good (in AD3+) actually. I'm not sure how you challenge him in combat without killing everyone else.
I never thought about 2 players both playing Mythic Champions on the same location. You're right, that could get ridiculous. Martial melee characters didn't exactly need a boost.
Martial melee characters didn't exactly need a boost.
Oh, the irony.
Actually this entire thread is ironic, Wrath has gone from "impossible" to "too easy".
Martial melee is powerful, I'm guessing that wasn't the opinion a year ago? I guess that's a discussion for another thread.
This isn't anything new. When defeating the villain means victory people always use all their cards in order to make the rolls a foregone conclusion.
Martial melee is powerful, I'm guessing that wasn't the opinion a year ago? I guess that's a discussion for another thread.
I expect that was more of a comment on class balance in 3e/Pathfinder tabletop, where full 9-level spellcasters are gods, hybrid casters are decent, and plain fighters/rangers/barbarians/rogues are completely outclassed. So, if 'dude with a horse and a lance' is at the top of the power heap, that's novel, at least :).
(Of course, there's more to a character's overall power than how high their combat check can get. See: Seltyiel easily hitting for a million, and being a bottom-tier character in S&S. I mean, Alain could have a power that reads 'you automatically win any combat check on your first exploration', and Adowyn would still probably be a more useful party member in WotR.)
At least there's a long history of spirited charge lance power attacks being big hitters in the RPG too :)
Possible.. flying demon nightmare + death Knight + dragon lance...
At least there's a long history of spirited charge lance power attacks being big hitters in the RPG too :)
Also a history of WotR getting much easier with some Mythic Tiers.
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Heh, I guess the difficulty of PACG Wrath is mimicking the same difficulty curve of the RPG Adventure Path.
It starts off very challenging, but around Adventure 3: The Demon's Heresy and Adventure 4: The Midnight Isles, the characters' Mythic Tiers break the game in ridiculous ways, and in a way that adding more HP to monsters and buffing them still doesn't matter.
Of course, there's more to a character's overall power than how high their combat check can get.
True, but combat is a very important part of this game, especially in Wrath. You don't die from failing to acquire a boon (not yet anyway).
Also, if combat is a gimme, even for one character, it makes the game kind of boring. As you can see, people are already complaining that Wrath is too easy based on Alain wiping everything out.
True, but combat is a very important part of this game, especially in Wrath. You don't die from failing to acquire a boon (not yet anyway).
Oh man, imagine how embarrassing it would be to be killed by a burglar.
If you've played Adventure 2 of Wrath with a 6-man group and think it's too easy, you're doing something wrong.
Some of the individual monsters may have fallen behind the power curve of the characters in terms of basic combat stats, but the overall set-up of this AP is still massively antagonistic for large groups.
I've been shy to say it, but my 6 character party romped through AD3
The Mythic paths have a lot to do with it, I'm pretty leery of spending the charges so I had a +3 on many important checks compared to a same level character in other adventure paths
Now that they have their role cards they are even more proficient
Be interesting to see how difficult AD4-6 are ( they did discuss this lull in the blog post by the way)
Personally, I'd prefer a flatter yet ever increasing difficulty. But your mileage may vary
Right now me and my friend, who are playing through S&S, just decided to play with all eight locations for AD6 in order to up the challenge. So far it's certainly been that; we failed Scenario 2 twice so on the third try had to discuss our strategy for beating it before we started. A nice bonus for this added difficulty is since we're playing with so many more locations, we have a greater chances to see (and acquire!) all of the cool AD6 boons, which makes it even more fun.
The next time I go through an AP with my friend we'll be playing with a custom hardmode where we add an additional location to each scenario starting with AD3, and increasing with each AD until we're playing with all eight locations for AD6 scenarios. I'm hoping the gradual increase in difficulty will make the game more fun.
I would love to see someone who is really good at statistics to sit down and figure out if adding more locations really ups the difficulty.
Which is greater: Increased deck power due to 25% increase in boons or increased challenge from 25% increased banes. I've always suspected that the increase in boons more than offsets the increase in banes...
I think adding a random bane to each location would be a better measure
I would love to see someone who is really good at statistics to sit down and figure out if adding more locations really ups the difficulty.
So far in our (limited) experience, it has [increased the difficulty]. With only two players to permanently close a minimum of 6 locations, as opposed to the normal 2, it puts a lot of pressure on getting as many explores as possible. At the same time, the consequences for failing to defeat a henchman - or worse, a villain - are greater because we just can't afford to have unproductive turns. These two factors create a constant balancing act between getting as many explores as possible and ensuring you have enough resources in your hand to defeat any difficult banes. Furthermore, we have to think carefully on which locations to explore and when, because we absolutely cannot afford to fail closing a location after defeating a henchmen - there're just not enough turns available.
From a mathematical perspective, think about it this way: A location will require n amount of explores before the henchman/villain is found and the location can be closed. To win, you'll need to permanently close x number of locations before the villain can be cornered and escape impossible. So in order to achieve victory you'll need a minimum of n*x explores. Since the default explore number is fixed at 30, a minimum number of explores per turn t will be needed to achieve victory. This is represented by the inequality 30t > nx. By adding locations, you're increasing the value of x, which then means you need to increase the value of t (because 30 is constant) in order to satisfy the equation.
I think it's fair to say that being required to devote more or your resources into additional explores makes the game more challenging because those are resources you can't then use to acquire boons and defeat banes.
Your inequality might be more complicated because when you increase x locations, you also add cards that help you explore more (principally blessings and allies). I suspect the net effect still makes it more difficult.
What I wonder is, with the increased rate of boon selection, do you find that the last scenario or two of an Adventure Deck are a bit flat, since you already got nearly all the cards you want at that level?
Your inequality might be more complicated because when you increase x locations, you also add cards that help you explore more (principally blessings and allies). I suspect the net effect still makes it more difficult.
Of course, the equation leaves out a bunch of factors, but even with additional exploration cards from added locations there are still more banes that need to be defeated. So the explores per turn requirement still increases.
What I wonder is, with the increased rate of boon selection, do you find that the last scenario or two of an Adventure Deck are a bit flat, since you already got nearly all the cards you want at that level?
We haven't played through an entire deck yet, so I don't know for sure; the Letter of Marque clouds the evaluation of that aspect. However the combination of additional boon selection and failing scenarios (and the LoM) means by the time we get to the last scenario we'll probably have the majority of the boons we're looking for. However from a fun standpoint, for us it's more enjoyable to find those boons earlier rather than later because we have more opportunity to actually use those boons.
One thing I will add is that even though we're more likely to encounter the new boons we're less likely to acquire them due to needing to use blessings for explores instead of helping on checks. Heggal lost out on the Adamantine Plate because we didn't have any Blessings to help my Feiya pick it up for him.
With these two powers Adain can go around to every location and fight all the monsters off the top of every location every turn.
You are losing a card from your hand for every location you scout out this way (either discarding or topdecking). I'm not convinced you will have enough cards in hand to do this to each location, especially in a high player-count game.
Sure, a well-equipped Alain should be able to defeat most villains, but you're not always exploring with Alain.
With the Glory Hound role, Alain can fight any challenging combat. With the Lancer role, he can explore more than any character. Either way, a lot of combats are going to him.
It's not like we're hearing stories of Seoni killing everything and making things too easy. It's always Alain.
Sure, a well-equipped Alain should be able to defeat most villains, but you're not always exploring with Alain.With the Glory Hound role, Alain can fight any challenging combat. With the Lancer role, he can explore more than any character. Either way, a lot of combats are going to him.
It's not like we're hearing stories of Seoni killing everything and making things too easy. It's always Alain.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure we don't have any actual *stories* of either Glory Hound or Lancer Alain being too powerful in WotR, since no one has had a chance to test the difficulty of AD4-AD6 where those will actually come into play :). Pre-role, Alain is great at combat, but he really is limited in how much of a party's combat he can pull off (and if the party is full-scouting with someone like Adowyn or Alhazra so that he *can* do all the tough fights, I'd argue that those characters should share the credit.)
You are losing a card from your hand for every location you scout out this way (either discarding or topdecking). I'm not convinced you will have enough cards in hand to do this to each location, especially in a high player-count game.
With these two powers Adain can go around to every location and fight all the monsters off the top of every location every turn.
The cards you are losing from you hand -- mounts -- you can recharge a a card to get back in your hand. All you need is one mount to perform this trick multiple times in one turn. In the end you recharge multiple cards and discard a single card (which you will regain next turn).
Alain doesn't have a big enough hand to do this at every location in a high-player-count game. But he could hit a number of locations.
Of course, there's more to a character's overall power than how high their combat check can get.True, but combat is a very important part of this game, especially in Wrath. You don't die from failing to acquire a boon (not yet anyway).
Also, if combat is a gimme, even for one character, it makes the game kind of boring. As you can see, people are already complaining that Wrath is too easy based on Alain wiping everything out.
That's not strictly true ;) I think Burglar makes you discard a card on failure to acquire, and the Tidepool Dragon damages everyone at your location on failure to acquire on a 1 as well.
Slappy, your math seems to assume that you explore every card in the scenario. In practice, you generally explore just over half that often, and the more players you have, the more chance you have that the game will be an "average" length.
Seems like only last week that people were complaining about how hard Wrath is...wait, it was. The good ol' days, eh?
I will back up Slappy's claim that 3-4, which is clearly the number of players the game is designed for, is the easiest player count.
3-4 also seems like that is where the environment of the scenario is fully fleshed out. As in, 1-2 players is limited to the scenario-specific locations, 5-6 players has locations that seem superfluous to the scenario's narrative, but 3-4 is where the main "journey" of the scenario is fully formed with all the important locations (aka plot points).