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My daughter and I are about to complete our Rise of the Runelords campaign, so we are about to move "onwards and upwards" to Skull & Shackles. In RotR, she plays Amiri and I play Lem. She chose Amiri because she liked the idea of a big strong woman beating down on monsters with oversized weapons. I chose Lem because I wanted to be able to help her often and because he was the only character able to use all spell types. This meant that between the two of us, we would always have the option of keeping any card we discovered. No dead boons has been something we have both liked, and she and I have engaged in some pretty fun conversations about which cards to keep. This has worked in RotR because the campaign is so combat oriented.
In the vein of wanting to be the toughest female character in the set, my daughter has selected Jirelle. Since the swashbuckler does not have any spells, and because we have enjoyed our style of play, I initially gravitated toward Lem again. But, then I noticed the changes brought about by S&S. First, it appears that Lem will be in constant competition for the same types of weapon cards as Jirelle due to his new Finesse power. Second, Skills other than combat are now much more important, and Jirelle has a d8 or better in every skill Lem has a d8 or better in. So, I think Lem is likely not the best choice this time around. Besides, it will likely be nice to give another character a whirl.
Who works best with Jirelle in a two character game? Am I making much ado about nothing? I am really open to suggested characters that have more opportunities to support from a distance, because in RotR Lem always followed Amiri around. As a result, we have never temporarily closed a location when confronting a villain.
(P.S. I noticed Damiel can use both types of support spells, but I think I would rather avoid him because it is important to me that Jirelle still remain the clearly superior combat character.)
Alahazra is a pretty dreamy support character in that set.
Jirelle is one of the best solo characters, and the one with the skills most suited to the game, so she doesn't necessarily even need a lot of support.
Her two main weaknesses are:
* Healing. In our party she's constantly in danger of actually dying. Admittedly we're 6 players and quite aggressive with the additional explores, but 2 players generally need more healing than 6 in the first place.
* Combat. She's competent, but not spectacular in any way. I think you're setting yourself up for failure demanding to be worse at combat.
Overall I'd recommend Oloch. Oloch is generally considered a little overpowered in 2-player in the first place, and his two abilities are exactly what you want as well - healing, and helping other players. Helping even from a distance, and including in combat. Only downside is d4s for intelligence for both of you, but honestly intelligence is the least necessary skill in S&S.
But really you could pick any character you wanted and it would work pretty well. The other four that stand out to me; Damiel would be really good. His ability helps her combats as well as his if he sticks with her and then his utility potions can help her as well. He has high burst-effectiveness in combat but low reliability so that complements her well. Lem is quite good other than the things you said. Alhazra is also a good healer and a strong small-party character. Lini is another strong solo character who can heal.
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I was about to say Alahazra as well. But let's break it down:
2 players rarely will have the full 6 base skills down; as long as you don't have d4s for both, you should be okay.
Jirelle is good at Dexterity, Wisdom and Charisma. Your daughter did well in picking her; she's a very good character. She is bad at Intelligence, but luckily, Intelligence is rarely encountered in S&S. She is good at fighting barriers, ships and decent at monster bashing.
She actually doesn't have a lot of weaknesses at least in S&S. Her average-ish Fortitude will give her problems when she's not on a ship and can't use Besmara's Tricorne; but most characters have that problem.
Alahazra can examine everywhere (except a few places), so you can avoid bad locations and play to your strengths. Your raw strength and intelligence, as a group are pretty bad with this setup, but you may be able to get through. She also has a power similar to RotR Lem's to discard a card that has the Divine trait to add a card that has the Divine trait to her hand. Hint: you don't have to attempt the check to recharge your Cures; you can just let them go to the discard pile, just like Lem.
Feiya has a power that reduces the difficulty of a check to defeat a monster or barrier (once you get a power feat) by 1 plus the adventure deck number of the recharged card. At first, this power doesn't look great. But once you get to AD3 or so, you'll like this power. She also has Intelligence up the wazoo, though you may worry about overshadowing because she can roll huge dice for Attack spells.
Oloch can heal with any armor or blessing, and he can display weapons and blessings to enhance other people's checks. He also has great strength and constitution, but his Intelligence is just as bad as Jirelle's, so anything Intelligence-based is going to be a problem. Just because there isn't a lot of Intelligence-based stuff doesn't mean there isn't any.
Three support characters with 3 different ways to support.
I agree with zeroth_hour2. Alahazra, Feiya and Oloch are all solid choices. Personally, I'd pick Oloch, since you can specialize him into giving massive boosts to everything your daughter does, including any intelligence checks, so the 1d4 is not a problem if managed properly.
The main problem with SnS is the randomness of the banes you will encounter - you'll never know which kind of checks come up, so there are only two ways to go about them: either scouting or having massive generally applicable boni to throw around. Alahazra gives you the former, while Oloch and Feiya give you the latter. I think it's hard to setup Alahazra without outshining other players though, since she is just very good overall, while Oloch can be skilled completely for support without becoming too strong himself at the same time. Oloch eventually turns into a machine of granting a total of 4-14 boni distributed on all the checks of your daughter each turn, completely without cost. We used him in WotR and he may very well be a reason why we coped so well with the set.
I played Alahazra and Jirelle in the same campaign. Alahazra was amazing, but when Jirelle was swashbuckling she was great at the miscellaneous checks that were always coming up. Jirelle was fragile until she got the Ring of Regeneration, but with only two characters Alahazra will keep her healed.
