+1 to Longshot.
If Grazzle's Bog Medic power read:
At the start of your turn, you may discard any number of cards from the top of your deck to heal other characters for up to twice the number of cards you choose to discard. (□ If any of the cards you discard have the Divine trait, you may recharge them instead.)
then it would work like Seelah's power, and like blessings you can recharge when they match the top blessing on the blessings discard pile -- and, frankly, like a lot of other powers in the game.
But, in Grazzle's case, that would be much TOO powerful. So, Grazzle's power is deliberately worded differently from most powers in the game -- so that it will work differently from most powers in the game.
At the start of your turn, you may discard any number of cards from the top of your deck. (□ If any of those cards have the Divine trait, you may recharge them instead.) Each other character may shuffle random cards from his discard pile into his deck; the total number of cards shuffled must not exceed (□ 1 plus) (□ 2 plus) (□ 3 plus) twice the number of cards you discarded.
FIRST, you discard OR recharge cards.
THEN (a second action), other characters can heal cards; the number they can heal depends on the cards actually discarded.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It sounds like we should probably avoid mechanics worded like this one in the future.
Just to be extremely clear: It is neither written nor intended that Grazzle Bog Medic can discard his entire deck, recharging the 10 or so spells and blessings that are Divine, healing the party for 20-ish cards every turn, and incidentally learning the exact order of his cards. In addition to - and separate from - that being wrong, that is also too powerful. If it were written that way, I'd want that card errata-d already.
As always, though, please play the game as you best enjoy it.
I recently started playing this guy and our group also assumed it worked like Keith and Vic said.
He's still extremely powerful, though the limitations of the oracle class deck actually can curtail him at early levels and keep him a bit more reasonable (only one cure in there to patch myself back up and thus a huge danger if I discard it off the top of my deck by accident, but we had unlocked the special merchant boon from Season of the Mummy finale to help grab a second cure, much to the chagrin of my allies who were hoping I'd grab remove curse).
We also realized that our giant brutish half-orc is the most reasonable-looking PC in our party (goblin alchemist, lizard oracle, and him).
It sounds like we should probably avoid mechanics worded like this one in the future.
Probably for the best. I know when I first saw it in the character sheets I assumed it worked like every other similar power and didn't care about the eventual destination.
Just to be extremely clear: It is neither written nor intended that Grazzle Bog Medic can discard his entire deck, recharging the 10 or so spells and blessings that are Divine, healing the party for 20-ish cards every turn, and incidentally learning the exact order of his cards. In addition to - and separate from - that being wrong, that is also too powerful. If it were written that way, I'd want that card errata-d already.
To be *extra* extremely clear, that's an *official ruling*. Repeated from earlier in this very thread, actually. (Lone Shark Games are the designers of PACG, for those who don't know.)
I'm not understanding why posters are chiming in and saying that the ruling is in dispute, when it is not....
I purposefully qualify my statements, since Vic and Mike are the true rules arbiters.
Truthfully, there's only one true rules arbiter, and that's the one true Vic. I give him advice, but he makes the rulings.
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Sigh. Slightly contradicted by the Master of Puzzles....
One last try, rewriting the inestimatable Longshot : RotR Seeah's power is like many in the game:
You may discard the top card of your deck to add 1d6 (_+1) to your check. If the top card was a blessing (_ or spell), recharge it instead of discarding it.
When Seelah uses this power, and she chooses to recharge the card instead of discarding it, then she never discarded the card. Any location power, for example, that says 'When you discard a card, something happens', would NOT be triggered. This is consistent with the rulebook, FAQs, and official forum rulings.
However, the cost to add the d6 to Seelah's check *has* been paid, and the d6 *is* added. Effectively the power in this instance acts as if it read:
You may recharge the top card of your deck to add 1d6 (_+1) to your check, if that card is a blessing (_ or spell).
But, in contrast, look at Grazzle's Bog Medic power:
At the start of your turn, you may discard any number of cards from the top of your deck. (□ If any of those cards have the Divine trait, you may recharge them instead.) Each other character may shuffle random cards from his discard pile into his deck; the total number of cards shuffled must not exceed (□ 1 plus) (□ 2 plus) (□ 3 plus) twice the number of cards you discarded.
If Grazzle has the first power feat, and discards 3 cards from the top of his deck, but chooses to recharge all of those cards (because they have the Divine trait), then he did not discard the cards. As with Seelah's power, any location power that occurs when a card is discarded would not occur.*
Effectively, it is as if in this instance the Bog Medic power was as follows:
At the start of your turn, you may recharge any number of cards from the top of your deck, if those cards have the Divine trait. Each other character may shuffle random cards from his discard pile into his deck; the total number of cards shuffled must not exceed (□ 1 plus) (□ 2 plus) (□ 3 plus) twice the number of cards you discarded.
Just like a location power, the healing power cares about whether you actually discarded the cards. In other words, replacing "discard" with "recharge" in the first sentence does not change the last term of the power. That's because this isn't a "Do X to do Y" power. Instead it is a power that says "Do X. Now, for every Z, do Y." Y only happens if X=Z. (Um... my apologies for the algebraic explanation to any math-phobic readers). So, in my example, the number of cards healed by other characters would be zero.
The Bog Medic power was very deliberately written this way for game balance reasons. But: I concur with Keith. Obviously the language has created a lot of confusion. In the future, powers such as this need to be written more clearly.
* Not to open the can of worms whether discarding a card from the top of your deck, whereas cards are usually discarded from your hand, triggers location powers that regard discarding cards.
At the start of your turn, you may recharge any number of cards from the top of your deck, if those cards have the Divine trait. Each other character may shuffle random cards from his discard pile into his deck; the total number of cards shuffled must not exceed (□ 1 plus) (□ 2 plus) (□ 3 plus) twice the number of cards you discarded.
If the card said that it wouldn't make any sense at all, and that's making it hard for me to understand what you're trying to say.
Though I think your basic point is that even though the second part of Grazzle's power seems inconsistent with e.g. Seelah's power, it is actually consistent with how e.g. locations which trigger on discarded cards would interact with Seelah's power. So think of the second part of Grazzle's power as an entirely separate sentence (which indeed it is)?
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You heal for the number of cards actually discarded. If you recharged every card, then N is 0 so you heal 2*0 + 1 = 1 card total.
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No. Once you choose 8 you’re stuck with it, even if you recharge 2 of them. See this post on page 1.
You can't change your mind during discarding them. You call how many you'll discard and that's what you'll do.
ProTip:
As a house rule suggested by Vic, you might recharge cards face up during play, with the caveat that you put them face down again if you shuffle your deck. The idea is that you shouldn't have an advantage by memorizing the order of the cards recharged into your deck, so you might do this to keep track of which cards ends up where. THis way, you'll have a better idea what's on top of your deck when the next healing comes around, and it doesn't bypass the rule stated above.
Of course, this houserule isn't very fun when you play characters that shuffle often, or cure yourself all the time, since it becomes busy work; however, for characters that only recharge cards it's quite nice.
@ AbarabkA - It's not your fault. The wording on Grazzle's ability could be confusing given the standard of how similar abilities/mechanics worked. There was plenty of confusion with experienced players.