This is a complaint I am hearing from a member of my play group. We are playing Zarlova, WotR Kyra, Flenta and CD Merisiel. We completed 1-5D tonight.
1-5C looked hard on paper, but we waltzed through it. I struggled with 1-5D when I soloed it with CD Kyra, Radillo and CD Harsk, but our play group succeeded without much trouble. (It's true the Guardpost is an easier location for Merisiel than for others, although at this point a 19 combat isn't much of a challenge for most characters. We were lucky that the villain didn't end up in the Guardpost, since we gave Merisiel Queen Galfrey and by game's end we had added 10 monsters to the location deck.)
One aspect bothering my friend is the final boss fights are afterthoughts. Tonight Flenta rolled 104 against Alulasavi's 40 check. When you have mythic charges to burn, the villain's no problem.
We'll see if he feels differently after 1-5E, when a single character may have to take both of Khorramzadeh's 50 checks. Adventure 6 looks more challenging, and I'm not too confident about our chances for 1-P.
I'd be interested in hearing others' experiences.
IME how much you have left to throw at the villain depends a lot on whether you've suffered any attrition on the way to it. If you can avoid losing mythic charges and blessings to the other banes, henchmen, and any extra villain encounters, you pretty much do blow them away.
That's pretty much my experience in other sets too, though with a smaller number but similar magnitude. Ie, a 60 in RotR vs a 24 is pretty similar to a 104 against a 40 here.
If you're finding it too easy, that's good to know. I've a few times been given the impression that things are too difficult or at least difficult enough, while I've secretly worried the opposite :)
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I only played into Adventure 3 of SotR, but I found that a lot of the difficulty of scenarios was dependent on the random other cards that came up in the mix. The same scenario could be easy or horrific depending on the number of arboral blights, demonic hordes, and bilious bottles that found their wily way into location decks. It may be that by AD 5, these banes are less painful.
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Getting ready to start up Adventure 5 with my group. I like the difficulty curve of Righteous because while it's not completely impossible, it's a good challenge. You have to think tactically minded on where you're located at, how many explores you do and what's in your hand.
That said, I agree with Eliandra. It really is the bane mixture that is randomly drawn that makes or breaks the scenario. If your banes come out as all temptations, it's a fantastic scenario. If you get the banes that Eliandra pointed out, then just curl up in a ball and cry. I'd also throw in Mythic Glyph and Telekinesis Trap into the mix of banes that make us sigh in displeasure when they're flipped.
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I can see elcoderdude's point a bit. I played the entirety of the Season with a solo Merisiel, except for one scenario in adventure 2 at Gen Con, which was played with a group of 3. I only had to repeat one scenario in adventure 6, everything else I finished in one go - although 1-P was very close; I only lived due to die bumps. (I've described that experience in another thread)
I think a lot of the challenge is in fact in keeping your mythic charges for the end battle - especially if you're going to be fighting a multiple check villain alone, you need to portion out those d20s. But as the AP goes on, you meet more mythic foes which are effectively free charges. Yes, you can't store above the current AD#, but most mythic foes come with "go ahead and spend a charge to beat me, you'll get it back." Also the sheer magnitude of the static bonuses means you don't need to use blessings nearly as much because there are fewer tight spots. For example, my AD6 Crack Shot Merisiel could easily roll 2d12+1d6+19 (average 35.5) with the Firebow and recharging one card - by recharging a blessing I could make it 4d12. Even purging Basics and Elites there were still many combats in the teens that made rolling superfluous.
Actually my biggest concern was that the cards in the class decks are not scaled the same way that the Wrath box cards - but honestly you get so much Loot that your actual deck doesn't matter so much. Which is kind of good because absent the plunder mechanic I often only got a deck upgrade about 2 or 3 times out of 5 scenarios. Many times my only "treasure" would be a single B card or some such.
Don't get me wrong - the season was very fun and I'll probably replay it here with my wife once the DriveThruCards set comes out for it so we don't have to proxy.
Well, if there are any points of feedback learned from SotR that would apply to SotRu (so, less to do with mythic charges and big rolls for bosses), please get them in ASAP. Like really really ASAP.
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While I get elcoderdude's point, I've experienced tables where people take multiple tries to get through scenarios in SotR Adventure 1. I don't think we should set the challenge level to people who can get through 1 round of the PACG Open.
People who are regulars on this forum know all the tricks to optimize their characters/paths.
I also agree with Eliandra about the difficulty curve being thrown off by one-off hard monsters, though most of the time we are able to scout them away/evade them.
I only played into Adventure 3 of SotR, but I found that a lot of the difficulty of scenarios was dependent on the random other cards that came up in the mix. The same scenario could be easy or horrific depending on the number of arboreal blights, demonic hordes, and bilious bottles that found their wily way into location decks. It may be that by AD 5, these banes are less painful.
^^^^ THIS.
If it's a bunch of temptations and rallying cries it's no problem, but throw in all those blights and hordes and it's terrifying. Oh, and the Death of Righteousness, let's not forget about that. RIP Raz (and Darago and Sajan).
I'm only in Adventure 4 in OP, but I remember Adventure 4 being rather tough (in non-OP), and then Adventure 5 and 6 being almost a walk in the park, because, as you said, you'd get mythic charges back when beating up monsters.
I think it's really the BYA and AYA damage that does it. Although now that I have a redeemed Black Robes that's not an issue.
My only suggestion is to proxy less. I just don't like doing it. I've put my two home games of SotR on hold until the DriveThru cards are out, because they're just so darned much proxying going on.
We have heard this feedback. :)
My only suggestion is to proxy less. I just don't like doing it. I've put my two home games of SotR on hold until the DriveThru cards are out, because they're just so darned much proxying going on.We have heard this feedback. :)
I cast a vote in favor of proxying. RotR is a very familiar adventure path -- I've played through it three times; I expect many of us have played it multiple times -- I am looking forward to facing new henchmen and villains in the SotRunelords.
My group didn't mind proxying for SotS and SotR.
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Would people be happier with proxying cards if there were standard proxy cards to shuffle into decks?
7x Proxy Henchman H
3x Proxy Henchman G
1x Proxy Villain V
1x Proxy Villain W
4x Generic Proxy X
4x Generic Proxy Y
(or maybe Generic Proxy A through F, doubling up on A and B)
Most scenarios would work with these 20 cards and nobody would forget to make the proxy substitution. Scenario rules could specify both a proxy letter and normal card. Seemed to work fine in Apocrypha.
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I have to vote anti-proxying. I get why they want to have different villains and henchmen, but it was just too many moving parts with loot and cohorts and scenario rules. I did eventually adapt the rule of putting something ridiculous like Khorramzadeh in for all the proxies, because we KNEW we didn't have to fight him. (For higher levels we'd put in Faxon, cuz we couldn't get that lucky.)
I was actually really disappointed when I saw that they used proxy cards for all the villains and henchmen in Apocrypha, because it's so annoying in organized play.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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I also dislike proxying.
Fortunately for us we didn't start playing Season of the Shackles until almost the end of 2014 (and we elected to re-start when the group composition changed), so by the time the extra card deck was available at Drive Thru Cards we were only about half way through the adventure.
Playing the remainder of the scenarios with the real cards, rather than proxies, was a much smoother experience.
I suppose if you sleeve your cards you can just put a traveller with the actual card details in the sleeve in front of any regular card, but until PACG OP gets more popular around here we probably won't sleeve the decks; we only have one regular playgroup (and occasional games at conventions).
Hmm... What I read is that we need card for procies as soon as possible!
I like new cards, but waiting is pain...
You see those old so often as it has been said above.
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I'm actually much more likely to forget a fiddly scenario rule that alters a card than I am to forget I'm looking at a proxy - several times it will be like 3 turns later when I realize I should have recharged an extra card when I took that damage or whatever.
I don't think just putting cards for "proxy 1-20" in the box is a good idea because then the box would have fewer "actual" cards...and if they come out on DTC then not everyone playing the season will have them.
Honestly in SotR it was mostly proxy cohorts that were bothersome - it's okay to me to have to refer to a separate sheet for banes, but it's bothersome when it's a card in hand that I have to consider as part of my strategy from turn to turn.
I have to vote anti-proxying. I get why they want to have different villains and henchmen, but it was just too many moving parts with loot and cohorts and scenario rules.
I wonder how big the impact of each of those parts. Because giving up proxying is a huge limiter, and I suspect means that the scenario rules become more complex. So there's a little give and take there, and scenario rules tend to be more easily forgotten.
We won't have to worry about cohorts, so that'll help.
Does Loot actually cause a problem? I had actually hoped to leverage the loot system more for some non-loot (how we gave access to a couple blessings in AD4). It'd be easy to give out less if it's causing problems though.
Scenario Rules - did you find that proxies were more of a problem in certain scenarios that were themselves complex? How complex we can make scenarios is definitely something that's been of interest. There are a couple scenarios (like in AD4) where we pushed the envelope under the excuse of chaos and abyssal insanity, to figure out the comfort zone.
You mention gaining benefit from using Khorramzadeh to make it easier; so the problem was less with looking up what the new card was, and more that people would try to play the card as written for a bit before figuring out to swap?
Because the explicit proxy cards that are used for nothing else do ensure that never happens. You know right away you have to look it up, and can leave the stats faceup on the table so people can glance at it off turn to keep the rules in their mind if that's a thing they like to do. (My anecdotal observation is that proxied cards tend to actually be followed (slightly) better, because more people have looked at them / are looking at them rather than just the person holding the card)
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When do we have proxy loot? I just use the actual loot cards form the box.
Keith, the only issue I've had with non-loot scenario rewards is how they interact with the upgrade system - we go from just pool all the cards with the set logo in the corner to pick from, to having to remove this or that because it wasn't found in the scenario, it was started with. Not too big a deal with 1-2 cards, but if it becomes more common - especially if there is player choice about which ones to take - notes will be needed just to separate out starting cards from upgrades.
Unless we're meant to count those cards in the upgrade pool - in which case it's pretty easy to get AD5 blessings in SotR using the AD5 corrupted blessings.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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Giving up proxying is a huge limiter, and I suspect means that the scenario rules become more complex. So there's a little give and take there, and scenario rules tend to be more easily forgotten.
It's not the proxying per se that's a big problem - it's the fact that the only way to get the physical proxy cards is to wait months until the complete deck is available from Drive Thru.
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Okay, I will try to be clearer about my feelings on the various mechanics.
So, this may just be me, but I would have a hard time keeping all the things I needed to remember in my head. Usually of proxies, scenario rules, and cohorts, one of these things would get lost/forgotten in the shuffle. And we got through handling all of that, sometimes my players weren't interested in even looking at loot. The loot interest DID vary by table. Some of the more active players would have particular pieces of loot that they wanted. For proxies I did try to put in ridiculous proxies like Khoramzadah and Abyssal Armies to help us remember to look back.
It's occurred to me that I think a big factor in this issue is table space. At the stores we play at, we often don't get to pick the size of our play space. And where I was playing, it was a squeeze to get the big playmat, four character playmats, hands, and statprintouts, and the scenario on the table. (The box usually got relegated to a chair next to me.) I actually think having the proxies on a different page from the scenario made a huge difference in this regard. In Season of the Shackles, there was usually one proxy at a time on the same page as the scenario, so I only had to make room for one sheet. In Season of the Righteous, proxies had their own separate page, so I needed the scenario rules and the proxy page visible.
I think scenario rules and setup getting complicated also created some issues. I feel like there were a lot more scenarios in SotR than SotS where we had to read on the forums to figure out how to play them correctly. I think proxies would be less of a problem if scenario rules are simpler. (As an aside, one of the players hypothesized that the dev team members call each other at 2am when they think of horrible things they can do to us players. I believe this was the day Lesath had to repeatedly pummel the Defiled One with his fists to avoid losing 2x 5 players' worth of blessings from the blessings deck.)
So tl;dr, things that would help: Proxies on the same page as scenarios, simpler scenario rules, ridiculous proxies.
Eliandra, I feel you on table space. Even though I have stores that have large tables, I feel like even as a 4-player group we take up a 6-player table just because PACG in general takes up so much space.
However, I think generic proxy cards would be a big help towards that. I considered creating a proxy set myself to use for OP (generic villain A, B, C, etc) but never got around to it.
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Since we're moving over to what works and what doesn't, here's some of my SotR feedback from my players:
When we were using proxy cards, it did get a little confusing sometimes if the typical proxy card was a brimorak, who sometimes we actually have to fight, and now we have to substitute it for something else. There has been many disappointed moments where we forget the henchman is much harder than the actual card. Villians weren't as bad because we could generally remember that Faxon or Kormezaddah was just sitting in for the actual villain. I actually ordered custom cards from Drive Thru RPG that someone made that has the PACG logo and text that explains to proxy the card and that really helped this week.
As for loot, I've been keeping a pretty good list of cards that are available for swapping out. My players haven't used the corrupted blessing option in SotR, but we have all chosen a few select loot cards that always gets passed to the same person each time. Fiendslicer, Blancher, Transmogrify, etc.
On that same note, I do enjoy getting the option to proxy in corrupted blessings into the class deck, so I would like to see that option expanded. Maybe allow characters to sub in a type of card of Adventure Deck X or lower could be a reward at some point, that way the players can use specific cards from the box that aren't in the class deck. Shackles is a perfect example because there aren't many, if any, swashbuckling cards in the class decks, so if we come across something that requires swashbuckling, it feels like the game is taunting us. We're supposed to be pirates and such, why can't we swashbuckle?
Just some thoughts for you.
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I really like proxying, but I think that the implementation could've been done a bit better. I really disliked when the henchmen were on the same page as the villains, since I would often need to print out 7 copies of the henchmen but didn't need all those extra villains.
But then again, it looks like I am in the minority - I have a fully-sleeved set and would just put the cutouts in front of dummy cards. (Mostly errata'd cards from Rise of the Runelords)
I'm one (or was one) of the lucky few I guess where table space isn't an issue. Back when I had an OP group our FLGS had nice, long tables; they were horizontal so we did an alternate layout for locations than is specified in the rulebook, but at the same token it greatly compresses the amount of table space PACG takes up when you lay it out linearly. I'd also print one copy of the scenario per player so everyone could refer to it -- helps with not forgetting things (although that still happens).
As for proxy cards, just whip some up yourself on the drivethru card creator, then on the scenario write which proxy corresponds to which card (e.g. Henchman A is this guy, Henchman B-F are these guys, etc.). I don't think proxies need to be provided in the base set for that reason.
In terms of feedback applicable to SotRu (is that the official acronym now?), my 2 cents is to expand the scenario PDFs. The page with proxies could include multiple copies of a given card so that printing out the one page provides you with enough copies to cut out and include in decks (for people that do that sort of thing). A glossary page could be added that helps explain any wonky scenario powers by including relevant quotes from the rulebook or guide to organized play. Maybe each glossary section can also include some random "tip" that delves into basic strategy (e.g. "Tip: If a scenario's When Closing requirement is too hard, chase the villain there. Beating the villain automatically closes its location."). These extra pages can be printed out by those who would find them helpful, while those that don't can opt to not print them -- best of both worlds.
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Alert: I've just ordered the physical proofs of the SotRighteous decks, so if they pass muster you'll have the opportunity to order them soon.
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Example henchman proxy card on DriveThruCards. I would have made the art be the letter A.
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Proxying doesn't bother me much. Took a bit to make the connection that I wasn't facing Faxon over and over, but once I did, it wasn't a big deal.
Using card sleeves sure makes it easier, since you can put the paper-printed card in the sleeve with the proxied card. (This also helps in AP Scenarios where you have to remember stuff like "Allies may try to kill you"... I actually was able to slip wee scraps of paper in each ally sleeve without lookin' at 'em before I shuffled them into location decks so I'd remember that something special was supposed to happen.)
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The new cards for Season of the Shackles/Righteous were wonderful, and the total number of new cards was just perfect - besides the great scenarios themselves this was my No. 1-reason for buying the PDFs. I am very happy that Rise of the Runelords finally also gets another campaign.
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This is a complaint I am hearing from a member of my play group. We are playing Zarlova, WotR Kyra, Flenta and CD Merisiel. We completed 1-5D tonight.
1-5C looked hard on paper, but we waltzed through it. I struggled with 1-5D when I soloed it with CD Kyra, Radillo and CD Harsk, but our play group succeeded without much trouble. (It's true the Guardpost is an easier location for Merisiel than for others, although at this point a 19 combat isn't much of a challenge for most characters. We were lucky that the villain didn't end up in the Guardpost, since we gave Merisiel Queen Galfrey and by game's end we had added 10 monsters to the location deck.)
One aspect bothering my friend is the final boss fights are afterthoughts. Tonight Flenta rolled 104 against Alulasavi's 40 check. When you have mythic charges to burn, the villain's no problem.
We'll see if he feels differently after 1-5E, when a single character may have to take both of Khorramzadeh's 50 checks. Adventure 6 looks more challenging, and I'm not too confident about our chances for 1-P.
I'd be interested in hearing others' experiences.
I recently completed the Season of the Righteous with just one other player. The party was Olenjack (Spider) the Archmage and class deck Kyra (Fireflower) the Hierophant. At higher levels, we were both capable of doing massive nova damage, evading, auto-acquiring boons, and even auto-beating some barriers. Kyra did 109 points of damage to the final boss on a single check with Time Stop and Transmogrify, and Olenjack got 89 with a mythic weapon, and 86 with Form of the Dragon.
The most maniacally difficult encounters (for various reasons) in my opinion were: 1-4A: In Another Dimension, 1-5C: Plura's Fall, 1-5D: Gods Save the Queen, 1-6A: Champions of the Horn, 1-6C: Fate Hangs in the Balance, and 1-6D: Apocalypse Worldwound.
In short, the organized play scenarios were challenging and fun, but not what I would call overly difficult. I hope that the card game team at least considers ramping up the difficulty of future OP scenarios.
I also really appreciated the tie in to one of the RPG specials in one of the later adventures, and I hope that this happens at least once per season if possible.
2p isn't really an accurate representation of the hardest difficulty in SotR (that would be 5-6p)
We just got through Pulura's Fall tonight. I didn't feel much danger although part of it was that we didn't see any major barriers - the scenario just doesn't have a lot of them. Other than that, we were able to scout 1 of the villains in time before we encountered it, but we still had to beat the villain twice - once because I randomly ran into 1 and the other because Harsk rolled 1,2,7,8 on 4d20 and I couldn't use Blessing of the Starsong to help him with a reroll. Luckily that was when we locked down the locations and only 1 other open location was left (Cemetery, which we temp closed every time).
For Season of the Righteous (like the base Wrath of the Righteous AP), difficulty is exponential with the number of players, notably due to the barriers Demonic Horde, Arboreal Blight, and Armies. A 2 player group will therefore have a significantly easier time than a 6 player group. 4 is probably the sweet spot for not too easy and not too challenging. If you find OP too easy, try getting more people in your group to ramp up the challenge.
Hmm, it shouldn't be exponential (unless you mean like 1.05^# of players, but people don't tend to) or even linear, but it certainly can increase with number of players. Honestly the biggest kick happens at 6. I don't find 4 much different from 3, and 1 and 2 is easier or harder depending on the encounter/scenario. 6 is particularly tough in WotR; while the jump from 3 to 4 or 4 to 5 is fairly minor, 5 to 6 can be startling.
SotR also took some steps to try and smooth out some of the wrinkles there; I believe there is no Siege of Drezen equivalent in SotR. Many of the later scenarios only use some armies, not all armies, or feature armies that are more group friendly (ex: Pazuzu's Host).
As always, I'd suggest a group of 2-5 works best.
Hmm, it shouldn't be exponential (unless you mean like 1.05^# of players, but people don't tend to) or even linear, but it certainly can increase with number of players. Honestly the biggest kick happens at 6. I don't find 4 much different from 3, and 1 and 2 is easier or harder depending on the encounter/scenario. 6 is particularly tough in WotR; while the jump from 3 to 4 or 4 to 5 is fairly minor, 5 to 6 can be startling.
SotR also took some steps to try and smooth out some of the wrinkles there; I believe there is no Siege of Drezen equivalent in SotR. Many of the later scenarios only use some armies, not all armies, or feature armies that are more group friendly (ex: Pazuzu's Host).
As always, I'd suggest a group of 2-5 works best.
I did mean exponential, in particular to regards of the banes I listed (the "everyone must defeat this" banes).
Let's say the average chance of any character defeating the bane solo is B. Due to the extra resources and synergy, the average chance of any character defeating the bane in a group of size n is B + E_n, where E_n is some modifier to the solo base chance that is likely an increase over B, however no assumptions are made about it (E_1 is defined as 0, to account for our initial assumption that B is the base chance).
However, in order to defeat the bane, all n players must defeat it. Since each is an independent event, to get the total probability we simply raise that probably to the nth power. In other words, the probability that all players in a group of size n defeat the bane is (B + E_n)^n.
While it is certainly possible for E_n at each given n to offset the exponentiation, it seems unlikely to me that is the case. Either way, that doesn't discount the fact that the probability equation is exponential with respect to such banes. I'd love to actually figure out the values of those symbols at some point in time, but I don't have that kind of time to crunch those numbers at this moment (nor do I really know what numbers I'd need to crunch) :)
Ah, sorry; I was thinking in terms of winning a scenario, not in terms of defeating a single instance of Demonic Horde.
I'd definitely agree that Demonic Horde's difficulty is exponential. I'd probably agree that Siege of Drezen's difficulty is exponential.
The average SotR scenario? Not even close.
I realize I'm a bit late to this discussion but I figured I'd toss out a few comments for an additional perspective.
1. Difficulty in card games is by nature super swingy. M:tG is pretty much a perfect example. Some number of times out of 10 you're not even going to play a real game because of mana screw/flood. In the same way PFACG can be super hard or super easy depending on what cards flip, when, and what cards are in people's hands. The worst banes by the way are the ones where they say things like "each character randomly chooses a character to summon and defeat". Multiple times a card like that has come up and after making the random selections we've just chosen to punt because we managed to pick a caster with one combat spell in hand 3, 4, or 5 times.
Relatedly, the quantity of AoE damage has a pretty significant impact on available resources and ease or difficulty. I wish AoE damage came in smaller chunks. A lot of it seems to be 0 or 2 or 1d4 up to 1d4+2. 1 fixed damage seems very solid for making players expend resources and make interesting decisions, and 1d2 or 1d3 seems far more palatable for a player without DR (armor or other). The flip side of this is that mist horn was a freaking all star in our play throughs. There were, I'd guess, 3-5 scenarios where we probably would have lost and had to replay without that card because of the quantity of AoE damage that was in the neighborhood of 3-6. This was in spite of one of our members playing the armor focused paladin and us generally trying to stay grouped due to pally/bard/Shardra.
2. I'm in favor of new villains and henchmen. Proxying is a by-product of that opinion, and the core desire for new additional content is greater than any opinion I may have of proxies.
3. There were a lot of really cool cards in WotR that wouldn't have seen any play if I hadn't been playing Shardra and just using cards from the box. Easily my favorite moment for my character was Miracle -> Time Stop -> bless Pally 3 times -> pally uses all his mythic charges...
For #3, if you are not using the class deck in an OP setting, the official recommendation is to simply mix in that class deck along with all the other cards in the box. Don't substitute, just add. That gets unwieldy if you want to mix in more than 1 deck, though, so in that case it may be better if you just pick and choose the cards you know your character would want/need and don't bother mixing in the rest. In either case, I highly recommend against remove cards from the box itself.
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Example henchman proxy card on DriveThruCards. I would have made the art be the letter A.
Woohoo, those are the cards I designed for SotW! :)
Glad someone else liked them, too.
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The whole point of mythic power is to break/unbalance the game. I've heard similar complaints about the WOTR RPG Adventure Path. To that, I respond:
"Why don't you just enjoy being ridiculous?"
I can see that argument a little more in the pen and paper version, where a lot of the fun comes from the socialization aspect.
But when me and my wife play PACG, we're here to play a game, not experience a deep, rich story or build lasting memories of our improv skills--because PACG doesn't really support these things. So when the game borderline stops challenging you a couple APs in, that kinda sucks. When you have so many plusses to your combat check that you often don't even need to roll against the whatever monster you drew from the box, because you're starting at like a d12+d8+14, that's kinda just boring? To say nothing of how generally easy it is to conserve mythic charges to add several d20s against the villain, which tends to make the last rolls of the scenario a foregone conclusion, and foregone conclusions make games really blah!
I know this is the OP forum, and we haven't touched OP yet, but the post being about "mythic power" generally, we found it DID unbalance the game, to an absurd degree, and made it so in our 2 character playthroughs I can't think of more than one or two scenarios we thought we MIGHT lose, let alone actually did, after the first AP. In AP6, when we're sorting out the post-game clean-up in our heads while we're still in the middle of the final encounter, that kinda sucks. :/
In general, when testing SotR, my hope was that there would be a perception of hazard and at least occasional difficulty, but that the success rate would be high. I feel pretty good about how that went - every test felt like it had its share of clutch rolls that could go wrong, or its point where a demonic horde might wreck everything, but there is a lot that also has to do with the party makeup and level of teamwork. I personally didn't test with a very heavy scry party, for instance. I'd imagine that a party that is never surprised by a villain, Demonic Horde, Arboreal Blight, or Umbral Dragon would find it quite a bit easier.
I also hope that we varied things up enough that while some scenarios are easy peasy for certain groups, other scenarios catch them up. And if not, this is always a process we can improve upon and we're happy to listen to feedback.
Though, feedback about the OP scenarios is more what I'd hope from this thread. There's still time to change some of the later ADs of SotRu.
I know this is the OP forum, and we haven't touched OP yet, but the post being about "mythic power" generally, we found it DID unbalance the game, to an absurd degree, and made it so in our 2 character playthroughs I can't think of more than one or two scenarios we thought we MIGHT lose
In my experience, this is generally how it goes with 2-char games in RotR and S&S as well. So, I doubt the Mythic roles are as much to blame.
Definitely, I just thought the numbers were most out of whack in Wrath. Every run of this game we play, we run into a certain amount of "oh, I don't even have to roll for this," but you're not usually closing static bonuses of +20 on demand. Being powerful was fun after the grueling time we had with the final scenario of AP1. It quickly wore off as the combos felt too good. Admittedly, we're playing a combo of two of the most obviously powerful characters in the game, Kyra and Adowyn. Adowny's scouting is berserk, and Kyra trivializes a lot of the harder armies/villains by being like, I'm going to roll my d12+3d8+14 on this Difficulty 24 """Stealth""" check, or whatever. We've been upping the difficulty by adding two extra locations since RotR, here we sometimes felt like we should've added 3. Often games were over before we'd gone through 10 blessings, just because we had so many explores/healing on hand that we could burn through a location (or more!) every turn, and combat checks were generally so easy that we didn't have to spend resources on them, and what resources we DID have to spend were very, very good (Immolation Cloak is just crazy).
But I won't clog up this thread any further! We're still interested in playing OP, wish I could give feedback on that proper, but we're waiting on the DriveThru pack before we start it.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area South & West
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Well, I haven't played more than a handful of scenarios of WotR/SotR.
I have, however, played more than a full season of SotS, and the first two thirds of RotRu.
I think the trivializing of encounters comes as you gain experience in how to play the game. The first couple of adventures decks we played we were still learning how to play, and quite often failed a scenario (multiple times, in some cases!). But once our table came to understand what we were doing, failure became rare. Recognizing the importance of reconnaissance meant we made sure we had things like spyglasses or divination spells (or a character who could evade encounters), so we could reduce the number of times we ran into something we weren't ready to handle. We also tried to always keep a few blessings available around the table, just in case. That, and a good strategy for the endgame once you know where the villain is, means that we routinely ended up with the final roll of the game getting more than twice the required number!
But in order to be able to implement any strategy you need to understand from the outset what you are trying for, and to choose your feats appropriately (card feats in particular). That comes from experience.
In general, when testing SotR, my hope was that there would be a perception of hazard and at least occasional difficulty, but that the success rate would be high. I feel pretty good about how that went - every test felt like it had its share of clutch rolls that could go wrong, or its point where a demonic horde might wreck everything, but there is a lot that also has to do with the party makeup and level of teamwork. I personally didn't test with a very heavy scry party, for instance. I'd imagine that a party that is never surprised by a villain, Demonic Horde, Arboreal Blight, or Umbral Dragon would find it quite a bit easier.
I also hope that we varied things up enough that while some scenarios are easy peasy for certain groups, other scenarios catch them up. And if not, this is always a process we can improve upon and we're happy to listen to feedback.
Though, feedback about the OP scenarios is more what I'd hope from this thread. There's still time to change some of the later ADs of SotRu.
We finished the second-last scenario in SotR. We had a "full-scry" team with me, Zarlova with multiple Scrys and Blessings of Nethys, RoyalCoat, who had a Vanguard Harsk with all the scouting powers, Merisiel with an Eagle, and support CD Kyra (who also had Augury).
Throughout SotR, we were probably surprised only a handful of times. We played a bit more conservatively too because we knew we could get away with scrying stuff.
1-6E as I understand it isn't as hard (hopefully).