Hello,
I have a few questions about using Rivani.
1. Her ability lets you use the Knowledge skill instead of Ranged. How does this work if you used a Range weapon or want to use a Ranged weapon? She has 1 weapon in her deck to start, I just do not see how it would do any good, unless it somehow plays well with this ability.
2. If you use this same skill to use Knowledge instead of Perception, does that mean you can still use a card that adds to a Perception roll? or will only cards that add to a knowledge roll work now that it is a different skill?
3. In the pathfinder society Adventure card scenarios, do you use both Occult decks for Rivani's "box", or just the one she came from?
thanks!
You've ended up wading into something that's been brought up in a long debate that's kind of still lacking a truly official, publicized 'ruling'... but it does have official statements that give an answer, of a sort.
1. Her ability lets you use the Knowledge skill instead of Ranged. How does this work if you used a Range weapon or want to use a Ranged weapon? She has 1 weapon in her deck to start, I just do not see how it would do any good, unless it somehow plays well with this ability.
That's the intent. You use a ranged weapon, like a Hand Crossbow (Ranged+1d8), then you can recharge a card from your hand to use Rivani's power to replace "Ranged" with "Knowledge", so it'll be 1d12+2+1d8 rather than 1d4+1d8 for untrained Ranged.
A few elements about this particular element were raised by officials in a [urlhttp://paizo.com/threads/rzs2tru0?Skill-Replacement-Powers-and-Check-Types]very long winded thread that touched on the matter[/url].
Note 1: According to the official source, Vic, this will make the check both a Knowledge check and a Ranged check. If you have a card that says "add 1d6 to your Knowledge" check (or Intelligence, since Rivani's Knowledge is based on Intellignece) and you have a card that says "add 1d6 to your Ranged check", they both work.
Note 2: However, note that... the rulebook doesn't actually support this. The linked forum above basically states, towards the end, "Yes Rivani is meant to be able to use her Knowledge skill to fire bows and stuff" but "no the rulebook doesn't allow you to use two different effects to define what skill you're using for a check" (so using a weapon to use Ranged, then a character power to use Knowledge shouldn't be allowed in terms of the rules, but officials want you to be able to do that specifically for Rivani).
2. If you use this same skill to use Knowledge instead of Perception, does that mean you can still use a card that adds to a Perception roll? or will only cards that add to a knowledge roll work now that it is a different skill?
Answered in Note 1. The linked forum, specifically this post, clarifies that it would be considered both a Perception AND a Knowledge check.
If it helps; think about just revealing a sword for combat on any character. That adds the Strength and Melee traits (assuming your character card lists "Melee: Strength +2" or something like that). Now you could use an effect that said "For your combat check, add 1d6", as well as effects that said "For your Strength check, add 1d6" and "For your Melee check, add 1d6".
In Rivani's case, if she fired a bow with her mind, it'd be "Combat", "Ranged", "Knowledge" & "Intelligence" as relevant check 'types'. If she used Knowledge for a Perception check, it'd be "Knowledge", "Perception" & "Intelligence".
3. In the pathfinder society Adventure card scenarios, do you use both Occult decks for Rivani's "box", or just the one she came from?
Only the one she comes from. The Occult Adventures Character Deck 1 and the Occult Adventures Character Deck 2 are completely separate boxes with no meaningful relation in terms of organised play; they just happen to share a similar theme. Same with Goblins Burn vs Goblins Fight, and Hell's Vengeance 1 vs Hell's Vengeance 2.
However, it has been expressly confirmed that Rivani is supposed to be able to shoot bows with her Knowledge skill, no matter what the rules may technically say on the matter.
Thanks Yewstance! This was all great information. I have only played the game for a few months on and off and have really been getting into it lately. The more I get into it, the more I see how loose some rules are and it makes me second guess a lot of what I do. Every time I do something that seems too easy, I have to spend time thinking it over to make sure I did not cheat on accident. Thanks again for the help!
I empathize. Fortunately, the set due to be released next year intends to clear up a lot of misunderstandings and do a lot to streamline and improve the game. :)
Rivani's ability is a particular black spot on the rules, for the time being, but at least the intent has been clarified.
The post from Vic starts with "Here's what we want:"
They have not fleshed out the correct wording but until they do, everyone I know is playing it as is. Meaning all the Characters mentioned in those threads can still use their ability. Even Varril, while in the future he might lose his ability to do that, he still has the same wording as everyone else. Also, we didn't want to punish people that started playing him before this came out.
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The post from Vic starts with "Here's what we want:"
They have not fleshed out the correct wording but until they do, everyone I know is playing it as is. Meaning all the Characters mentioned in those threads can still use their ability. Even Varril, while in the future he might lose his ability to do that, he still has the same wording as everyone else. Also, we didn't want to punish people that started playing him before this came out.
Good, my Varril that I just started didn't get hosed.
The thing is, there are two obvious answers to this, and I'm not sure why they are hemming and hawing so much. It seems to me that the answers can be:
1)Errata everyone's ability to instead be worded like Mavaro's ability. You gain the X skill equal to your Y skill. Thus, when you make the check, your skill is STILL an X check. So bonuses to your Y check do not apply.
2)Errata the rules to say something like "When you replace a skill, such as X with Y, it becomes a check for the new skill, not the old skill. So if Varril turns a melee check into a divine check, bonuses to his melee checks no longer apply (though it is still a combat check.) (BTW, this is how I run Varril. It's how his deck is set up.)
Note that 1 and 2 have the opposite answers (one turns your checks into the former check, one turns your checks into the latter check), but they both solve the core issue of "Two types of check boosts affect this one check" while still letting their players have essentially the same ability.
The thing is, there are two obvious answers to this, and I'm not sure why they are hemming and hawing so much. It seems to me that the answers can be:
1)Errata everyone's ability to instead be worded like Mavaro's ability. You gain the X skill equal to your Y skill. Thus, when you make the check, your skill is STILL an X check. So bonuses to your Y check do not apply.
Whilst this would have its own issues, I'd generally be in favor of this. In particular, it prevents the developer-mandated desire to not be able to 'chain together' skill replacements, like "For your Diplomacy check, use your Strength or Melee skill" (Menacing Backsword) and then "For your non-combat Strength check, recharge a card to use your Arcane skill" (Class Deck Padrig).
The biggest issue is that you're sapping a character's ability to use effects relating to the 'core' skill. If Rivani gains Perception, Ranged, Acrobatics, Craft or Disable "Equal" to her Knowledge check, then the conversion looks a bit like this.
Rivani has Knowledge:Intelligence +2, and has 3 Intelligence Skill feats. Her Knowledge skill works out to be 1d12+5, and when making a Knowledge check she is making an Intelligence check.
->
Rivani uses her power to gain the Ranged skill equal to her Knowledge skill.
->
Rivani has Ranged:1d12+5. She's not making an Intelligence check, nor a Dexterity or anything else.
Mostly, this impacts the use of a lot of the 'typical' blessings from all base sets, which care closely about whether you're making Strength/Dexterity/Constitution/Intelligence/etc checks, where you get to never make any of them with a Mavaro-like power, for the most part. It would also really weaken a few boons in the Class Deck which are clearly intended to be used with Rivani, such as the Ring of Psychic Mastery, which supports your Knowledge checks.
2)Errata the rules to say something like "When you replace a skill, such as X with Y, it becomes a check for the new skill, not the old skill. So if Varril turns a melee check into a divine check, bonuses to his melee checks no longer apply (though it is still a combat check.) (BTW, this is how I run Varril. It's how his deck is set up.)
I'd like that, and honestly until the whole Varril thing came about I 100% thought those were the rules... but that leads to the awkward grey zone of "what is a Combat check". As you mention, you'd need to explicitly list as an exception. Unless players start thinking that it's no longer a combat check once they use a weapon.
But it still doesn't quite clarify that do you still want there to be only 1 replacement-per-check? Is using a weapon and then using his power two replacements or one? As written, it's two.
It's an awkward situation; there are some solutions out there but currently none have been formally communicated, so it's still this grey area in the rules where the playerbase has been waiting for clarification for a very long time. And we may be waiting for another very long time; I suspect it'll be finally cleared up with the Core Set release.
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The thing is, I always assumed a combat check was 'any check that involves combat,' not a specific check. Because Combat checks can be strength, melee, or ranged checks, I assumed that they were just . . . like . . . a classification of checks, not a specific check. Let's see if I can explain it better.
So you have skill checks, which is a type of check, then you have a subset of skill checks called combat checks, then you have individual skill checks. I guess it would be like a trait. Yeah, think of combat checks as checks that have the combat trait instead of a specific type of check and you are fine.
The thing is, I always assumed a combat check was 'any check that involves combat,' not a specific check. Because Combat checks can be strength, melee, or ranged checks, I assumed that they were just . . . like . . . a classification of checks, not a specific check. Let's see if I can explain it better.
So you have skill checks, which is a type of check, then you have a subset of skill checks called combat checks, then you have individual skill checks. I guess it would be like a trait. Yeah, think of combat checks as checks that have the combat trait instead of a specific type of check and you are fine.
That doesn't quite answer my question as to whether we such a solution would keep the "one replacement power per check" rule or not, but I assume we still keep that. Instead, this hypothetical solution would rule that using a weapon or spell for a combat check does not count as a skill replacement (because we're treating combat as a 'special case' rather than a 'type' of check) then that means Varril can use weapons with his Divine skill and, in fact, all of the 'problematic' characters work again (Except for Weapon Master Valeros, I think).
I still think it's misleading, though.
"For your combat check, use Ranged." -> "For your Ranged check, use your Knowledge skill instead." == Legal situation with your hypothetical rule.
"For your check to acquire an ally, use Ranged." -> "For your Ranged check, use your Knowledge skill instead" == Illegal situation, despite sharing identical wording besides that they care about a slightly different condition of a check.
Unless we remove the whole "One replacement per check rule" entirely, in which case there may be more issues in the future.
I think I'm slightly more in favour of errata'ing all of the five problematic characters (Mother Myrtle, RotR Valeros, Varril, Rivani, Zelhara) to clarify things. Perhaps when the RotR core set is released, one of the new keywords will be helpful for errata reasons like this? Like the "Freely" keyword that was floated in the playtest, perhaps you could "Freely" replace a check type, therefore not running afoul of the one-replacement-per-check?
I'd be interested in how the Errata plays out for Varril in particular, because he feels a bit too good to me if he can use his Divine skill with any weapon (Compare to Zelhara in powers and recall he can use his Divine skill for anything). But on the other hand, if he can't use his Divine skill with weapons, then he is an absolute pain for virtually anyone playing him if they don't own an Ultimate Add-On deck, due to the virtually complete lack of attack spells in the Inquisitor class deck. Without an Add-On deck, his combat skills are about equal to Aric, who was intentionally designed to be extremely weak at combat.
It feels like he was intended to be used with weapons (the boon variety of the Inquisitor class deck and his own Card List all but confirms that), but he rather overshadows both of the remaining inquisitors if he can do so, trading away slightly weaker combat checks and requiring more card usage in order to gain stronger support, stronger exploration potential, stronger boon acquisition, stronger closing checks, stronger spellcasting and stronger checks against barriers.