My friend and I just started playing Skull and Shackles and had a couple of questions that we couldn't figure out with the rule book. The first one involves "summoning" henchmen. Some locations like, Shark Island, require you to summon a henchman from the box which has me wondering: if you defeat a summoned henchman AND the henchmen allows you to close the location can you make the attempt? Or can you only attempt to close a location by drawing the henchman from the location deck and summoned henchmen don't count for the purposes of closing a location. We assumed that defeating any henchman that allowed you to close a location, even a summoned henchman, gave you a chance to close the location but it seemed a little easy to close locations early when it came to summoned Buccaneers since every player summons one when they're encountered and they're fairly easy to defeat. Or does defeating the summoned Buccaneer only let you attempt to close the location where the buccaneer came from? Can a location only be closed by a character at that location?
Another question I had is regarding traits and checks. So for example the "Shackles Pirate" card says:
"If the check to defeat has Swashbuckling trait, add 1d4 to it".
Does this mean that if I use a rapier card for my combat check, which has the swashbuckling trait, then the combat check will be 8 + 1d4?Or do I get to add the 1d4 to MY roll? This is confusing because the manual doesn't explain how traits affect rolls very clearly and has confusing wording.
Finally the villain Nefti Unwesha requires a Charisma or Diplomacy check of 13 to defeat. My friend had a Potion of Glibness, which let's players succeed at a Diplomacy check if he banished the card. It seemed like a pretty cheesy way to defeat a villain. Was that cool? Or did we miss something in the rules?
We might have more questions as we continue playing but these were the first issues we ran into. Thanks.
Some locations like, Shark Island, require you to summon a henchman from the box which has me wondering: if you defeat a summoned henchman AND the henchmen allows you to close the location can you make the attempt? Or can you only attempt to close a location by drawing the henchman from the location deck and summoned henchmen don't count for the purposes of closing a location
The second one. Henchmen say something like "you may close the location deck this henchman came from" but summoned cards come from the box, not the location. So you are going to have to dig through Shark Island until you find the "real" henchman.
Another question I had is regarding traits and checks. So for example the "Shackles Pirate" card says:
"If the check to defeat has Swashbuckling trait, add 1d4 to it".
Does this mean that if I use a rapier card for my combat check, which has the swashbuckling trait, then the combat check will be 8 + 1d4?Or do I get to add the 1d4 to MY roll? This is confusing because the manual doesn't explain how traits affect rolls very clearly and has confusing wording.
You add the 1d4 to your roll. The terminology for making something harder would be "If your check has the swashbuckling check, the difficulty is increased by 1d4". The check is the dice you roll, while the difficulty is your target number.
Finally the villain Nefti Unwesha requires a Charisma or Diplomacy check of 13 to defeat. My friend had a Potion of Glibness, which let's players succeed at a Diplomacy check if he banished the card. It seemed like a pretty cheesy way to defeat a villain. Was that cool? Or did we miss something in the rules?
That is cool. The rules say (page 11 of the WotR rulebook) "You can never automatically succeed at a Combat check". However, Nefti isn't a combat check, she is a Charisma/Diplomacy check, and using the potion of Glibness on her is cool. Of course you have to banish the potion when you use it, so unless you have closed all of the other locations (permanently or temporarily), you'd have to defeat her again without the potion.
You may only attempt to close the location that the henchman came from. Summoned henchmen come from the box, so defeating them doesn't let you try to close the location you're at.
If you use the Rapier card to determine what skill you will use, then it automatically adds all its traits to the check. Other cards you might use to influence the check don't add their traits. So you would add a d4 to your check. Adding to the check makes it easier (when you assemble your dice, add a d4). Some cards make checks more difficult by saying "add to the difficulty."
In the latest adventure path, Wrath of the Righteous, a rule was added to make it impossible to automatically defeat a villain (I think). Probably someone will explain that shortly.
edit: ninja'd!
Thanks so much guys, that really cleared up A LOT for us; especially the difference between a "Check" and "Difficulty". It seems like we may have fudged a little bit but since we only got through the first 3 scenarios of the base set I don't think it will be that big of a deal in the long run. While I bought the Wrath of the Righteous base set we started with S&S since we're big into pirates and they're fairly underutilized in tabletop gaming these days.
One more quick question: there's 3 different kinds of "Feat Rewards"? Card Feat, Skill Feat and Power Feat? And when we're rewarded one, such as after all 5 of the Base Scenarios "Each character gains a skill feat". I assume we can only check a box in the skill area of a the characters card, which are all basically adding +1 to one of the skills for the first reward. Is this correct?
Again thanks a lot for clearing this up; much appreciated.
Thanks so much guys, that really cleared up A LOT for us; especially the difference between a "Check" and "Difficulty". It seems like we may have fudged a little bit but since we only got through the first 3 scenarios of the base set I don't think it will be that big of a deal in the long run. While I bought the Wrath of the Righteous base set we started with S&S since we're big into pirates and they're fairly underutilized in tabletop gaming these days.
One more quick question: there's 3 different kinds of "Feat Rewards"? Card Feat, Skill Feat and Power Feat? And when we're rewarded one, such as after all 5 of the Base Scenarios "Each character gains a skill feat". I assume we can only check a box in the skill area of a the characters card, which are all basically adding +1 to one of the skills for the first reward. Is this correct?
Again thanks a lot for clearing this up; much appreciated.
*edit*
One more thing; are you sure that rule about "You can never automatically succeed at a Combat check" is on page 11 of the WotR rule book? Because I don't see it anywhere on that page.
Thanks so much guys, that really cleared up A LOT for us; especially the difference between a "Check" and "Difficulty". It seems like we may have fudged a little bit but since we only got through the first 3 scenarios of the base set I don't think it will be that big of a deal in the long run. While I bought the Wrath of the Righteous base set we started with S&S since we're big into pirates and they're fairly underutilized in tabletop gaming these days.
One more quick question: there's 3 different kinds of "Feat Rewards"? Card Feat, Skill Feat and Power Feat? And when we're rewarded one, such as after all 5 of the Base Scenarios "Each character gains a skill feat". I assume we can only check a box in the skill area of a the characters card, which are all basically adding +1 to one of the skills for the first reward. Is this correct?
Again thanks a lot for clearing this up; much appreciated.
*edit*
One more thing; are you sure that rule about "You can never automatically succeed at a Combat check" is on page 11 of the WotR rule book? Because I don't see it anywhere on that page.
It is on p11 of the pdf download (pdf edition 1.0), which has some errata not present in the printed rulebook. I'm not sure why it isn't listed in the FAQ.
The three types of feat awards correspond to the three sections on the character card. Skill feats are for the top set of boxes labeled "Skills". Power feats for "Powers" and card feats for the card listing on the reverse side of the character card.
Thanks so much guys, that really cleared up A LOT for us; especially the difference between a "Check" and "Difficulty". It seems like we may have fudged a little bit but since we only got through the first 3 scenarios of the base set I don't think it will be that big of a deal in the long run. While I bought the Wrath of the Righteous base set we started with S&S since we're big into pirates and they're fairly underutilized in tabletop gaming these days.
One more quick question: there's 3 different kinds of "Feat Rewards"? Card Feat, Skill Feat and Power Feat? And when we're rewarded one, such as after all 5 of the Base Scenarios "Each character gains a skill feat". I assume we can only check a box in the skill area of a the characters card, which are all basically adding +1 to one of the skills for the first reward. Is this correct?
Again thanks a lot for clearing this up; much appreciated.
*edit*
One more thing; are you sure that rule about "You can never automatically succeed at a Combat check" is on page 11 of the WotR rule book? Because I don't see it anywhere on that page.
It is on p11 of the pdf download (pdf edition 1.0), which has some errata not present in the printed rulebook. I'm not sure why it isn't listed in the FAQ.
The three types of feat awards correspond to the three sections on the character card. Skill feats are for the top set of boxes labeled "Skills". Power feats for "Powers" and card feats for the card listing on the reverse side of the character card.
Thanks but I just downloaded the PDF version of the WotR rule book about 15 minutes ago and I still don't see that rule anywhere in the book. While I don't think it's liable to come up very often I'd like to have it referenced somewhere and I'm just not seeing it.
Page 11 of the WotR rulebook pdf, 2nd paragraph of the "Attempting a Check" heading: "Each boon card has a section called Check to Acquire. This section indicates the skills that can be used in checks to acquire the boon and the difficulty of the checks. If you succeed in acquiring the card, put it into your hand. If you fail, banish it. You can never automatically succeed at a combat check."
Note this only applies to combat checks, you can still automatically succeed at non-combat checks (even against villains).
Page 11 of the WotR rulebook pdf, 2nd paragraph of the "Attempting a Check" heading: "Each boon card has a section called Check to Acquire. This section indicates the skills that can be used in checks to acquire the boon and the difficulty of the checks. If you succeed in acquiring the card, put it into your hand. If you fail, banish it. You can never automatically succeed at a combat check."
Note this only applies to combat checks, you can still automatically succeed at non-combat checks (even against villains).
.
Again I'd like to thank you for pointing this out. It's pretty late here so maybe that might have something to do with my blindness. It'd be really nice if that was highlighted in a "New Rules" box. What a great community. I'm really glad I picked this game up. My friend and I really had a blast and are looking forward to getting deeper into it.