Wrath Deck 5 Barrier *SPOILER*


Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion


The Magic Ray Fusillade has the following checks to defeat:

Check wrote:

ARCANE

ACROBATICS
STEALTH
18

and the following powers:

Powers wrote:
If undefeated, a random character at your location is dealt 1d4-1 Fire damage, then 1d4-1 Cold damage, then 1d4-1 Fire damage, then 1d4-1 Force damage, then 1d4-1 Fire damage.

What do people think of this barrier?

For a large number of characters in the game, this is going to wipe someone's hand, nearly guaranteed. Eighteen is a huge check to make with d4s. You could throw two Abadars and a Find Traps at this thing and still need a better than average roll.

This rivals the Carrion Golem for severity. I enjoy a challenging game, but I think this is too much.


Yes it is tough. If you get hit by it you might roll low or have armors which could block the damage. If not it is a hand wipe. I don't mind really hard banes every now and then.


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Characters in WotR who do not have the Arcane, Acrobatics, or Stealth skills by default:

  • Alain
  • Arueshalae
  • Crowe
  • Imrijka
  • Kyra
  • Seelah
  • Shardra

Ways for those characters to mitigate it:

Temptations and Monkey's Paw can be used to add to your check, with downsides attached. Armor can be used to help soak damage; discard cards normally whenever you roll a 2 and save armors for if you roll a 3 or a 4 (or its the last roll and you can recharge to reduce). Remember that all of the damage is being dealt in a single step of the encounter, meaning that you can normally only play one armor total on this unless your armors say "You may play another armor on this check" (and even with that, you cannot play the same armor twice even on two different damage instances). It's far better to save your armor for when you roll a 3 or 4 rather than using it early and regretting it later.

Alain: Nothing extra; since Alain has at least 3 armors the chance of an armor being in his hand to help mitigate some of the damage seems likely. Go for armors that allow you to reveal or recharge to reduce all damage or Fire damage (since 3/5 damage rolls are Fire).

Arueshalae: She just evades the encounter and lets a better-equipped character handle it. If all characters are ill-equipped to handle it, she's probably the best bet then because her innate DR negates the Fire side of things entirely, meaning she only needs to worry about the Cold and Force damage on failure. An armor will help with mitigating that, even if it's buried to use.

Crowe: Check the power feat "You gain the skill Arcane: Charisma +3" (available on the base card) and then move on with your life. If for some reason you haven't yet obtained this power feat, see if you can grab a Manual of War for that purpose.

Imrijka: A Cold Iron Warden Imrijka can just outright evade it with the requisite power feat. Bonus points if you can shove it to the bottom of the deck to move on and banish it as part of closing due to beating the henchman/villain there. Wandering Judge Imrijka has no such luck and is not in a great spot for this. Hopefully she has an armor, but either way it'll be rough.

Kyra: Kyra doesn't have much to offer, either, but an Everlight's Grace Kyra can discard her armors to reduce high damage amounts instead of burying them (although ideally you'd have an armor that can be revealed/recharged instead). Her strong suit would be healing up afterwards to lessen the impact by playing a non-Corrupted Blessing on the check (hopefully one that also recharges).

Seelah: She can discard the top card of her deck to add an extra d6 (plus 1-3 if she dumped feats into it), which can help boost the average roll high enough to win a fair amount of the time. Inheritor's Blade can spend 3-4 power feats to help mitigate the damage by letting her take 1 Combat damage to reduce damage of the elemental damage types. This is a lot of feats, so a Manual of War is recommended to lessen the load. Even if she was taking 1 Combat damage to reduce the elemental damage by 1, that allows for doing things like revealing Shields to soak the combat damage and still play additional armors to help with the remaining damage.

Shardra: If there are enough dice to make it beatable, she can reroll it and hope for a better result. Visionary Shardra can use Knowledge with application of a single power feat. Spirit Guide Shardra gains Arcane with a single power feat as well, so both her roles can be equipped to much more easily handle this.

So, of the 7 characters who lack the skills, only 3 aren't equipped to deal with the barrier at all (Alain, Kyra, Seelah; bump it to 3.5 with Wandering Judge Imrijka). While it's unfortunate if that's your entire party composition, chances are you'll have someone at the table who can at least do something about it. It'll surprise you once with a possible hand wipe, but once you know it's there you can plan and play around it.


What I found much worse was the Lady of Valor in my two character group of Tyrannomancer Balazar and Elemental Master Seoni (I admit we could have chosen characters that complement each other a little better). Since the Lady is a villain and has to be defeated and has a difficulty of 40 we decided to house rule that we could use Knowledge to defeat her.


Just close locations buddy. All those extra dice should make it (relatively) easy(er).

Oh there's a wonderful staff that allows you to automatically pass acrobatics checks. Just wonderful. :)


Also, this is Adventure Deck 5 in WoTR, you have 5 charges of mythic powers to be able to use. It is with those intentions that they create barriers like this.


Those charges don't help at all if you do not have the relevant skills. If I just don't have a specific skill I'm rolling d4s without a bonus or mythic charges to use.

As to closing a location: would if I could but with just a few d4 plus maybe a d20 for a Iomedae card I haven't even been able to defeat the Rites of Heraldry, so there was never an empty location I could close. Plus you would need 10 d4 to even have a theoretical chance against the Lady...


In Wrath, as always, scouting is key. If you want to mitigate 'random' death from barriers, use powers to make chance encounters a non-issue.


Oh dear. apologies van. Didnt realize that combo of tyrannomancer & element master totally lacks the skills to defeat lady. ouch...

Pathfinder ACG Developer

It _really_ helps to have an Iomedae card or two to recharge against her. Getting up to ~5d4+2d20 starts looking viable.


Skizzerz, this is super detailed and highly respectable post. Thank you for your analysis.

skizzerz wrote:

Characters in WotR who do not have the Arcane, Acrobatics, or Stealth skills by default:

  • Alain
  • Arueshalae
  • Crowe
  • Imrijka
  • Kyra
  • Seelah
  • Shardra

Ways for those characters to mitigate it:

Temptations and Monkey's Paw can be used to add to your check, with downsides attached. Armor can be used to help soak damage; discard cards normally whenever you roll a 2 and save armors for if you roll a 3 or a 4 (or its the last roll and you can recharge to reduce). Remember that all of the damage is being dealt in a single step of the encounter, meaning that you can normally only play one armor total on this unless your armors say "You may play another armor on this check" (and even with that, you cannot play the same armor twice even on two different damage instances). It's far better to save your armor for when you roll a 3 or 4 rather than using it early and regretting it later.

Alain: Nothing extra; since Alain has at least 3 armors the chance of an armor being in his hand to help mitigate some of the damage seems likely. Go for armors that allow you to reveal or recharge to reduce all damage or Fire damage (since 3/5 damage rolls are Fire).

Arueshalae: She just evades the encounter and lets a better-equipped character handle it. If all characters are ill-equipped to handle it, she's probably the best bet then because her innate DR negates the Fire side of things entirely, meaning she only needs to worry about the Cold and Force damage on failure. An armor will help with mitigating that, even if it's buried to use.

Crowe: Check the power feat "You gain the skill Arcane: Charisma +3" (available on the base card) and then move on with your life. If for some reason you haven't yet obtained this power feat, see if you can grab a Manual of War for that purpose.

Imrijka: A Cold Iron Warden Imrijka can just outright evade it with the requisite power feat. Bonus points if you can shove it to the bottom of the deck to move on and banish it as part of closing due to...


Yes, Skizzerz, thanks for your post. The situation isn't as bleak for Wrath characters as I imagined.

I'm playing OP, so that's what concerns me. We have Councilor's Rings and stat stones (some of us), so that gives us a way out; but still many characters could be hammered by this.


Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Lost Omens, PF Special Edition, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Ah, yeah, OP is an entirely different story. There's just a ton more OP characters and doing that sort of analysis on them will probably take a couple hours to write up, hence why I didn't :P

I might do so later tonight, but no guarantees. A mitigating factor for OP is the availability of Augury and Scrying; you can use these to scout for Barriers and at least partially know what may be coming.


Enora might also be able to save the day here, depending on what power feats she's taken.

Discard a spell to reduce Cold or Fire (*Acid, Electricy, or Force) damage dealt to you (*or a character at your location) to 0.

If nothing else, she might be able to take the big hits so everyone can keep some cards instead of a complete handwipe.

Sovereign Court

It would hurt her pretty bad to use that though. Each damage is it's own instance, so preventing the whole thing (granted probably not needed, rolling 5d4 with no 1s isn't likely) would take up to 5 cards. Only 4 preventable without a feat, and can't prevent it at all without a different feat unless she is lucky (unlucky? I don't know) enough to get targeted randomly.

Plus, she has to discard spells, not just any card. She'd be beating herself up pretty bad to stop the barrier from doing it to someone (maybe her, maybe not).


elcoderdude wrote:

The Magic Ray Fusillade has the following checks to defeat:

Check wrote:

ARCANE

ACROBATICS
STEALTH
18

and the following powers:

Powers wrote:
If undefeated, a random character at your location is dealt 1d4-1 Fire damage, then 1d4-1 Cold damage, then 1d4-1 Fire damage, then 1d4-1 Force damage, then 1d4-1 Fire damage.
What do people think of this barrier?

Black Robes and Stole of Iomedae :D


Andrew L Klein wrote:

It would hurt her pretty bad to use that though. Each damage is it's own instance, so preventing the whole thing (granted probably not needed, rolling 5d4 with no 1s isn't likely) would take up to 5 cards. Only 4 preventable without a feat, and can't prevent it at all without a different feat unless she is lucky (unlucky? I don't know) enough to get targeted randomly.

Plus, she has to discard spells, not just any card. She'd be beating herself up pretty bad to stop the barrier from doing it to someone (maybe her, maybe not).

Yeah, probably best used as a mitigation on extremely bad d4 rolls so that she could pitch a couple but still maintain some of her hand while someone else takes the lesser damage via armor or straight damage.

Mostly it's just an option to consider, the nice thing about Enora is that all she has to do is cast a spell to get those discarded spells back. Assuming you've built her with a lot of utility vs straight damage, those spells shouldn't stay in her discard for long before getting put back into her deck.

But yeah, would definitely hurt.


Rhynn Davrie wrote:

Enora might also be able to save the day here, depending on what power feats she's taken.

Discard a spell to reduce Cold or Fire (*Acid, Electricy, or Force) damage dealt to you (*or a character at your location) to 0.

If nothing else, she might be able to take the big hits so everyone can keep some cards instead of a complete handwipe.

Can she use that power multiple times during a check, though? The rules limit you to using a specific power once per check, with an exception for powers that say they may be used "when something happens", which this power does not say. If it were worded, "When you (□ or a character at your location) takes Cold or Fire (□ or Acid, Electricity, or Force) damage, discard a spell to reduce the damage to 0" it would work, but as worded you can only use it for one of the 4 damage rolls.

Sovereign Court

nondeskript wrote:
Rhynn Davrie wrote:

Enora might also be able to save the day here, depending on what power feats she's taken.

Discard a spell to reduce Cold or Fire (*Acid, Electricy, or Force) damage dealt to you (*or a character at your location) to 0.

If nothing else, she might be able to take the big hits so everyone can keep some cards instead of a complete handwipe.

Can she use that power multiple times during a check, though? The rules limit you to using a specific power once per check, with an exception for powers that say they may be used "when something happens", which this power does not say. If it were worded, "When you (□ or a character at your location) takes Cold or Fire (□ or Acid, Electricity, or Force) damage, discard a spell to reduce the damage to 0" it would work, but as worded you can only use it for one of the 4 damage rolls.

Point.

Yea, unless you have a character with a bunch of shields in hand (and that kind of character likely has a tiny hand size with nothing else), this barrier will hurt. Period.

Also, finish one thing before doing another. You decide how to reduce the damage before the next roll is made, so you don't roll them all and say "Oh I'm going to prevent the 4 I rolled". You can prevent a 3 on the second, but you better hope you don't get a 4 later it would be better suited for.

Pathfinder ACG Developer

I have seen it only deal 2 cards of damage, with a shield to block the one bigger hit, and a couple 1s that turned to 0.

But yeah, it's a very real chance of hand-wipe.


Andrew L Klein wrote:
nondeskript wrote:
Rhynn Davrie wrote:

Enora might also be able to save the day here, depending on what power feats she's taken.

Discard a spell to reduce Cold or Fire (*Acid, Electricy, or Force) damage dealt to you (*or a character at your location) to 0.

If nothing else, she might be able to take the big hits so everyone can keep some cards instead of a complete handwipe.

Can she use that power multiple times during a check, though? The rules limit you to using a specific power once per check, with an exception for powers that say they may be used "when something happens", which this power does not say. If it were worded, "When you (□ or a character at your location) takes Cold or Fire (□ or Acid, Electricity, or Force) damage, discard a spell to reduce the damage to 0" it would work, but as worded you can only use it for one of the 4 damage rolls.

Point.

Yea, unless you have a character with a bunch of shields in hand (and that kind of character likely has a tiny hand size with nothing else), this barrier will hurt. Period.

Also, finish one thing before doing another. You decide how to reduce the damage before the next roll is made, so you don't roll them all and say "Oh I'm going to prevent the 4 I rolled". You can prevent a 3 on the second, but you better hope you don't get a 4 later it would be better suited for.

I'm not so certain on that. I'd say each time you take damage you would resolve it as per Taking Damage p13 which says you and other players can use cards/powers that reduce or affect the specific damage being dealt. Since this is 5 separate instances of damage, I'd say you could resolve it via those rules each of the 5 times. Of course you would absolutely need to deal with each individually before moving on.


The problem with that is:

WotR Rulebook, Page 10 wrote:
Each player may activate any power no more than once during each step, other than cards that can be used each time something particular happens.

All of that damage is happening in the "Resolve the Encounter" step, so you can only use the power once, even though you are taking multiple sets of damage. Compare to Oloch from S&S:

Oloch, Shield of Gorum wrote:
□ When another character at your location is dealt damage, you may reveal an armor to reduce that damage by 1; you may instead discard that armor to reduce the damage by 2 (□ 3) (□ 4)

Since that has a specific trigger (When another character at your location is dealt damage) you can do it every time that happens, even during a single step. Enora's power has an implicit trigger, but not an explicit trigger. Without an explicit trigger it can only be used once.

Sovereign Court

Rhynn, already discussed in the blog for this adventure

Quote:

So if you have a relevant shield and armor, and roll 4,3,2,1,2, you'd be taking 3,2,1,0,1 - so perhaps Enora discards a spell to reduce the 3 to 0, you reveal/recharge the shield and armor for the 2 and a 1, and then discard a card for the final 1.

Or, y'know, you just end up discarding your hand, cause high level traps hurt!


Hi folks. Sorry for the lesser raise dead on this thread but we recently noticed the text on this card : dismissal

Says "for your check to defeat a bane that has the outsider trait, use your arcane or divine skill + 2d8 + the scenarios adventure deck number"

Suddenly we realized it would work as a one off for tyrannomancer when encountering lady of valor for the AD5-1 scenario?? There's no specific requirement that this be a combat check. Instead of a hopeless pile of d4 he should be able to use his arcane which is a charisma d10.


Zenarius wrote:

Hi folks. Sorry for the lesser raise dead on this thread but we recently noticed the text on this card : dismissal

Says "for your check to defeat a bane that has the outsider trait, use your arcane or divine skill + 2d8 + the scenarios adventure deck number"

Suddenly we realized it would work as a one off for tyrannomancer when encountering lady of valor for the AD5-1 scenario?? There's no specific requirement that this be a combat check. Instead of a hopeless pile of d4 he should be able to use his arcane which is a charisma d10.

Just for the fun of it, I would argue that if you encounter the Lady of Valor when at the Heaven location, I bet she doesn't have the outsider trait at that time :-)

And I wouldn't dare offend her by asking.
So just the glimpse of the idea of wondering to dismiss her should make you immediately lose the scenario, the adventure, the adventure past, and the character for at least twice forever.

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