Just played through the wrath base scenarios with my wife and man it was brutal!
I died twice and she died once. Me with the arcanist and her with Raz from the paladin class set.
I managed to find the carrion golem twice in a single adventure with the arcanist. Owing to two copies being in different locations.
She found the shadows barrier with an 11 wisdom check that spawns a monster that does automatic bury damage. Multiple times...
My point of all this though is that we're probably going to be running friends through this gauntlet in the future. ROTR was too easy, S&S is the perfect level of difficulty and challenge. The base set of wrath though is quite challenging.
So I'm trying to figure out what to do with it so it doesn't completely kill interest before things get easier in AP1
I've heard the suggestion of going through AP1 first, but I'm not attracted by that in the least. The rewards for scenarios in the base set will get boring and inconsequential especially if we've seen all there is to see by that point. Also the challenge will be a drop in the bucket by that point.
So I want to adjust the base set and go through it all in order. Any suggestions?
My only idea so far is to remove some of these inordinately challenging hurdles until AP1. Carrion golem especially has earned my ire, casters without any feats or card feats just shouldn't have the chance of running into that at the equivalent of level 1.
I'm not sure the base set is actually _easy_ after playing AP1, but based on forum reads I'd say the following banes earn the most ire for folks starting out:
Arboreal Blight, Carrion Golem, Demonic Horde
So all of those could wait for AP1, though if you're playing with a large group the barriers deck might get a bit stale.
In terms of the scenarios, I believe I've seen the most comments about Elven Entanglement (difficult locations plus Tangle Traps not having an attempt to close on them), then the Traitor's Lodge (Karsos needing magic to defeat makes a Maze trip quite likely), and finally Vengeance at Sundered Crag (locations, two villains to win).
Good luck tinkering with the set to find the right difficulty for your group, and have fun!
There are a number of things you can try without actually adjusting the scenarios themselves:
1. Mix in the AD1 banes and boons. This dilutes the bane pool making it less likely to see Carrion Golems, Demonic Hordes, and Arboreal Blights early on, so even though you theoretically mixed in "tougher" cards, you're actually making things a bit easier on yourself. The AD1 boons can help with getting the Magic trait against Karsos as well.
2. If you're playing with 4 or less players, take out the Character Add-On Deck (or at least, just the banes) -- they have extra copies of Arboreal Blight and Demonic Horde you probably don't want to have to deal with.
3. Loosen up initial deck construction:
3.1. If you're playing the suggested decks in the back of the book, give yourself 2 card "upgrades" by swapping cards out of those decks with other Basic cards. This still gives you a non-optimized deck so that you can feel like you're still getting good upgrade boons even if they're Basic in the course of playing through the Base adventure, if that's the sort of thing that interests you.
3.2. If you're building your own deck from scratch, allow one Elite card as well (so your deck would contain 14 Basic cards and 1 Elite card). Restricting that card to your favored card type gives flavor reasons for why one of your cards is more powerful than the others, because it's a family heirloom or something you inherited that helped you decide to play <insert class here> to begin with all those years ago.
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I've heard the suggestion of going through AP1 first, but I'm not attracted by that in the least. The rewards for scenarios in the base set will get boring and inconsequential especially if we've seen all there is to see by that point. Also the challenge will be a drop in the bucket by that point.
Don't just start put off the base scenarios, I would encourage you to not play them at all. I firmly believe that they aren't well designed and that your gaming experience will be better if you pretend that they don't exist entirely. That being said, you will still find them challenging if you insist on playing them after AP1.
If you're a seasoned group who have played all the APs up to this point, you could always follow our approach, and not read the cards carefully - that way when you encounter and defeat a Tangle Trap, you get to close the location, because everyone knows that's what happens when you defeat henchman, right?
On a more serious note, I'd definitely take out the extra copies of Demonic Horde, Arboreal Blight, and Carrion Golem from the add-on deck - in fact, I think when we weren't playing with a 6-character group, the only cards we added from the character add-on were the ones (banes or boons) which were new, rather than duplicates of cards in the base set.
I've also seen suggestions of house-ruling the summoning barriers so that only the person encountering the barrier has to defeat it for the barrier to go away - it's still a nasty big pile of direct damage from those trees, but hopefully you can avoid having to run in to it time after time.
I've also seen suggestions of house-ruling the summoning barriers so that only the person encountering the barrier has to defeat it for the barrier to go away - it's still a nasty big pile of direct damage from those trees, but hopefully you can avoid having to run in to it time after time.
Actually - Praise Iomedae! - that's exactly how the Arboreal Blight works.
Yup. It's the horde that needs everyone to defeat.. (not evade, must defeat..)
Thanks for the tips.
I suppose I'm still tempted by the Base adventure reward of a card feat. That is a very potent addition to any character.
The elite card idea sounds like fun roleplaying.
And yes we do have the character add on applied to the base set so that's where the multiple carrion golems came from. I'm considering removing them entirely anyways until AP1 but the prospect of skipping may grow on me.
I do like the flavor of Karsos and a location spawning. There were good elements at play but things seemed to combine into a trying situation at times with the bane difficulty.
When I contrast with runelords bandit who recharged you a card with an 8 to defeat
Or with the ruffian whose difficulty increased by twice the adventure deck there are some non henchman base banes that outstrip those henchman difficulties quite easily.
It is quite the step up.
Hi Ryan. Much has been written about the sheer brutality of the base set.
After failing a scenario about 8 times with a 6 character party, I added in the Ad1 cards. This made them all playable, while still very very tough