Okie dokie, here it is! Random thoughts to follow in the second post.
Please forgive my vague descriptions, there was a lot of drinking involved so my memory is spotty. We were at a festival, held in honor of Cayden Cailean’s drunken ascension (of course). We had twenty minutes to recruit our first batch of compatriots, which goes by a lot quicker than you’d think. It took us two extra minutes to find some volunteers. The four of us were Feiya (Rob), Balazar (Matthew), Skizza (me), and some odd Warpriest guy with a d8+3 Divine (Iceman). The goal was to close all ten (!) locations, so when there was a Chad turn in the first round (in which someone closed a location on their first turn at a location), there was much celebrating! Closing locations gave us trivia questions, which we had one round to answer (and got bonus points for). I was most proud of knowing how to spell Hirgenzosk correctly (spelling wasn’t important but I was still proud) and knowing which characters were on the Swabbing the Decks barrier (why do I know that?), and was utterly embarrassed that we couldn’t remember the name of Adventure B from Runelords. The beginning was very very rough with lots of 1s and 2s on the dice, hence our team name (Team One!). Our goal was to close as many locations as possible, so we decided early on to push the (three!) villains around and let them close locations for us. When we ran out of time, we had two or three locations left, and some very tipsy characters.
After recruiting our second batch of compatriots (a lady warpriest, lady summoner (with a phantom-like eidolon), Angban (Rob), and Raheli (me) walk into a bar...), we headed out! This one was one location after another, like a siege of sorts. Like a siege (of sorts), there was an army at the end of each location. Before we encountered the army, we had to play a round of Codeword. We had to match the word exactly, plurals didn’t count. When we matched, we got to add 2 to our result on the check against the army (2 if you matched, 2 per person if you were the one who gave out the clue). The lowest result on each army check was added to our total at the end. Our first check resulted in 11 points (our summoner barely made her arcane check with a 1, 1, and 2 on 3d10) but our later ones were in the mid to upper 40s (without mythic paths, remember). Our group somehow smashed our way through five (!) armies (including the Abyssal one!) with thirty minutes to spare, and four characters eagerly volunteered to be in our final group. We used those thirty minutes to fine tune their abilities and feats, just in case we made it through to round 3.
Our sacrifices volunteers for round three were a summoner (with a wolf-like eidolon), Lirianne, Oloch, and Kasmir. We decided to start at the Shrine of Norgorber to get it over with, and it still took a few turns to close that. We ran into a Death of Righteousness, and I don’t think Rob or Iceman noticed my gasp of horror (RIP Raz). Kasmir was there, so it was no problem (recharge a spell to add my Survival skill to a character (at my location)’s check to defeat a barrier? I knew there was a reason I chose the Compy! Have a d8+5, everyone!). We were way too wasted to keep track of our stuff or ourselves so if we failed to acquire a boon or tried to move somewhere, we had to recharge and draw a bunch of cards and then make a con/fort check, or move to a random location. Until our summoner and Kasmir got Shape Change out and displayed, they were just stumbling all over the place. Oloch had no problem holding his liquor, and Lirianne mostly ended up where she wanted to go anyway. The villain made you summon and encounter the “Most Horrifying Monster Ever” BYA. Each character’s highest result against the monster would be added to our final result and there was a penalty for open locations, so we spent a bunch of time shuffling the villain around. We actually let him run away undefeated a few times so that everyone would run into the “Most Horrifying Monster Ever.” Oloch ran into him first, and we each had to choose a number higher than 30. If Oloch’s result against the MHME was within 10 of our guess, we could shuffle any number of cards from our discard pile into our deck (needless to say, we didn’t need Kasmir’s healing ability). I think Kasmir ran into the villain next, but was unprepared for two combat checks, so he completely smashed the "Most Horrifying Monster Ever" and then discarded a card to give the villain to Oloch, who was then able to beat him and send him somewhere else for someone else to handle. Kasmir ran into the Hurricane Crown, said “Yes please!” and ACTUALLY GOT TO USE IT (this is a big deal for me)! Our lady summoner ran into the MHME early in the scenario but she had a low result that we knew we needed to replace if we wanted to win, so we managed to make it so that the final person to handle the MHME was our summoner, who ended up with a static +30 and rolled a 39, for a total of 69 points added to our final score! Our final result ended up being ~210 points, with more than half of that being our "Most Horrifying Monster Ever" check results.
No, I will not tell you what the Most Horrifying Monster Ever was. Use your imagination. I will tell you it was not a custom printed card. :)
Random notes:
Playing for points is entirely different from playing to beat the scenario or get upgrades. Holy crap a 6 weapon?! Doesn’t matter, we have all of the 6 weapons we want. He only needs an 11 (and has +7)? His result gets added to our final score so throw a bunch of blessings on it. Should we temp close locations? Absolutely not, only two people have run into the MHME so far.
Rob and I switched character decks for round 2, since I had already played as Raheli and knew how she worked, so I wouldn’t have to think about it that much. I think it helped a lot. We figured having three players with new characters was better than having four players with new characters. Then I played as Kasmir for round 3.
I love building witches because they care about adventure deck numbers. Raheli was just like “I need high items! What does this staff do? It gives me plus 6 is what it does!”
Building a Tier 7 character all at once is so different from building the character up over time. Even though we built them all at once, I still didn’t min-max my characters. I gave Skizza +1 to wisdom, Raheli’s were split 3/3 across dexterity and intelligence, and Kasmir’s were split 3/3 across intelligence and wisdom. I believe everyone else maxed their character’s main stats though. We never knew what our characters would encounter, so we didn’t know what to pump power feats into. Obviously if we had known of the healing in round 3, I would have skipped all of Kasmir’s healing feats and pumped him up as a fighter. If we had known round 2 took place at one location, Rob’s gunslinger probably wouldn’t’ve taken the Eagle. There was a funny moment in round 3 when Rob had to banish a card from his hand when there was one location left and he basically chucked the Eagle off the table. :D
Card feats were very simple for me. All my characters took as many blessings as they could carry, and then grabbed as many of their preferred card as possible (I believe Skizza took 1 or 2 more guns and then grabbed allies). SO MANY BLESSINGS. Speaking of blessings, the Warpriest deck has some AMAZING blessings. If you played this blessing on your strength based combat check, you may recharge it? Yes please! There were some awesome spells in the Summoner deck, too, that (surprise) let you summon monsters from the box! And there’s a few allies that have this at the bottom: “While this ally is in your hand, you may treat it as though it were a monster” (or something like that). I’m really looking forward to playing a Summoner. Except now I have to decide which one… (and fight my fiancé for it; he loves Balazar)
I only played as the Gunslinger for one round (and it was the first one), so I can’t comment on the new characters right now. Since people have asked, once we won, Tanis came over with a duffle bag and said “I hope you liked playing with those characters, because that’s what you’re getting!” and we each got a set of the four character decks! I promptly gave our extra Summoner, Warpriest, and Gunslinger decks to Eliandra, whose face did this: O_O.
Maybe I'll do a write-up for the special. Maybe not.
Awesome to see the writeup. Glad you had fun :)
The Open definitely tests your knowledge of the game and ability to adapt. I wish I'd realized who you were at the time; but that's on me for not being extroverted enough to introduce more properly.
Since I'm not sure how much was conveyed at the table, the three different rounds of event were modeled to emphasize certain traits. They were the Test of Speed, Balance, and Excess. Each had a little drinking game along with the normal Pathfindering and, yes, the final round simulated you having to down a shot whenever you tried to move or failed to acquire a boon, so much drunken wandering was had.
I dunno, Alahazra's giant hat basically fills up half of the Swabbing the Decks barrier so it's hard not to notice
Also, TMHME not being custom printed doesn't preclude it being modified by other rules ;)
Nice summary! I'll add some thoughts and what-not.
We all joked before the opening round about whether we should pick what we thought was the best or the worst of the character options. Help insure advancement or save the best for later?
Well, I went more with my gut and picked Uliah first. Strong divine, so-so melee. Very good ally-booster, if at the same location. Naturally, then, we had ten locations to cover. I immediately regretted not packing all of the 'mount' allies into my deck, so I could jump around, but managed to stick with one or two of the other characters for the whole game anyway (we weren't concerned about cornering villains, after all). I know I helped with some of the trivia (Harrigan!), but alas could not remember the cohort Cecilla's name.
And apparently, Uliah had been 'toasting' all of his companions and competitors since the contest had been announced - he struggled to roll well on any non-divine check until Feiya shared with him an extra copy of Shape Change. Quite sobering, that spell. ;)
The siege was awesome - all of us at one location, with an Army sitting there face-up, waiting for us to finish the location and come play. Then on to the next location and its army.
Again, my gut said to go with Amli, and she was definitely the right choice - her ability to swap a card in hand for a card in discard worked really well with Divine Fortune and those Armies.
And to be fair, it was I who rolled pathetic against the first army - only a success because I got the Codeword right. Sigh, again with the drinking problems.
Final round, my first real look at Oloch and I think, "he's not as strong as S&S Oloch - he can't boost other characters, just himself. Hope this works out." Hah. Silly first impressions.
For one, he can boost others with a d4 to their combat checks, by recharging certain things or revealing an Armor. Check. For another, his friends can discard a card to evade an enemy they failed to defeat and he'll fight it. More on that in a minute, but check. And lastly, he can reset his hand at the start of his turn. Did I say "not as strong" earlier? :)
As noted, we hit the Shrine. I start and pick up Blessing of Norgorber. Great, I can close the location... eventually. Rob goes, finds another such blessing, but still no henchman. Rebel Song bumps into it instead. But she has no blessings. No problem - she rolls her melee skill, fails horribly, and then discards one card to evade. Oloch smacks the henchman into tomorrow, buries the Blessing to close the location, and reveals the villain hiding out there. Witch is done, Summoner is unhappy with his combat options and passes, turn comes back around to me and it's time to find out who the MHME is (tho I want to say it being the Most Appropriate Monster Ever, rather than Horrifying - it was still worth a giggle). Those warpriest blessings RS mentioned above are really nice - two dice to a strength check, recharge if its your own. Needless to say, the summoned critter is decimated and the villain defeated. Goodbye, Shrine.
From there, it's a game of whack-a-mole. We leap about the board, trying to find where the villain fled so we can hit his pet on the head again. Oloch never rolls poorly (including on the drunk-checks!) and did get to knock the villain around a second time.
Oh, and I think our 210ish score was the sum of the MHME checks alone (3 players were in the high 30s to high 40s, 1 was that 69). Both teams got the other 100 for cornering and defeating the villain.
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Building the high level characters was definitely a challenge, especially with no clues about what boxes were being used to build the locations. Let alone any info on the scenario itself.
Do I choose the Outsider-focused role or the Dragon-focused one? Do I need Hallowed to help restore some cards to the Blessing deck or do we have unlimited turns? Are we together or spread out?
Card feats were somewhat easy - maximize blessings and spells, then grab extra stuff in support of certain abilities (Oloch can reveal Armor for something, take an extra of that; Uliah utilizes allies; etc), then grab weapons.
Skill feats were super simple - +3 strength, +3 Wisdom.
Power feats were all about what would be consistent -> don't take the auto-recharge Saranrae blessings when only 3 of your 7 could even have the trait. Do take 'reveal' over 'recharge', anything that adds additional trigger points (the typical "and at the start of your turn" box), and anything that includes other targets (mostly "any character at location" instead of "you"). Plus, increase hand size at least once, if not twice. Figure one of the feats is a total gamble on whether it'll help.
Cards themselves - well, start at level 6 and work down. :)
I think I got pickiest about weapons and armor, going for ones with secondary abilities or specific damage focuses. Spells were easy - Breath of Life, Righteousness, Divine Fortune, Major Cure, Augury, Renewal, in that order.
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I think the middle scenario suffered a little for not following the location card list - each one only had six cards iirc and varied whether they were all boons or a mix of boons and banes.
A minor complaint, to be sure, as you have no option but to dig the deck and can easily tell it isn't a normal ten cards. But I could see where it might throw someone a bit.
I really enjoyed the way each scenario was different from the others. I liked the challenge they presented without feeling impossible or being frustrating.
I especially liked the side-game aspects - not only the trivia and such, but the bonus points and the mechanics for how you got them.
So kudos to everyone involved, cheers to everyone that played, a toast to my companions, and an eager eye to next year.
-Vic
Vic, I intially had "Most Appropriate Monster Ever" in my write-up, but I sent it to Keith for review and he said it was "Horrifying." Either one is fine with me!
I am not surprised at all that I misremembered things.
Mmm, yes, reset your hand at the start of your turn. Oloch is SO ready for those off-turn fights.
It is entirely possible that it was changed to "Appropriate" after it left my hands :)
Unlike the first year, where we both designed and ran the tables, we couldn't run the tables this time, so I'm getting to observe it as much through your memories as anything else.
Were you allowed to reuse cards from prior characters? Or did you lose access to those as well as the characters themselves?
You had access to the entire deck each time. Only the characters were restricted.
Since I'm not sure how much was conveyed at the table, the three different rounds of event were modeled to emphasize certain traits. They were the Test of Speed, Balance, and Excess.
How much were we supposed to know before building our first character? IIRC, we weren't told anything before making our first round characters, then our GM read the description that included the Test of Speed bit. For the second round our GM just gave us the entire sheet with the introduction on it before we built our characters.
Given the vagueness involved I don't think it would have made much of a difference, but in the other thread you said that it didn't go quite as you wanted so I'm just wondering what was intended.
Anyway: Our team's first round went OK. We didn't find any of the villains until the very end, so we weren't able to use them to close locations. To help get through locations we paired up which seemed to work well. I got two of the trivia questions and half of a third for the team. Overall this was a pretty straightforward game.
Our second round finished in extended time, as you were allowed to complete the turn you were executing when time expired. We were just able to defeat the final army. Unfortunately, we weren't able to push the numbers that high as we always had a lowest result in the teens or low twenties.
It'll be interesting to see what you come up with for next year. :)
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I had a thought: I wonder if we can get forum tags for winners of the Open. Like, under Rebel Song a tag that said "2016 PACG Open Champion". And same for the other 3 on her team and a 2015 version for last year's winning team. I'm going to make the suggestion in the website feedback section.