I was thinking of starting a project where the characters from the class decks are rated on ease of play for new players. E.G. John Smith
Medium
I'm thinking of the mechanics of the character and how well some play with other characters. Primarily it's a rating system for new players.
But alas i have yet to play every character, I really would love community input. I'm trying to get this ready for GenCon as well for a neat binder I'm creating.
Definition
Easy: simple to play, abilities are simple overall good for all most scenarios.
Medium: requires some forthought on play, abilities might require some light strategy.
Hard: challenge to play requires great understanding of menchiacs and requires quite a bit of Strategy.
All feedback is appreciated!
I could definitely contribute to this, and it sounds like it would be one element of my in-progress Character Reviews, but their current format only includes Base Set characters and goes into far more depth than that.
If there's enough interest, I could do a side-project which just lists every character and solely refers to their complexity of play.
That would certainly be of help to me and the other three players that I play with...
WaterScorpion, Are you asking for the feedback rating of characters now, or are you asking for suggestions with the rating scale or anything else before doing the character ratings?
If it is the latter, I'd probably suggest setting up a Google Sheet with the class decks listed and then if someone wants to help rate they could take a column and rate on a scale of 1-3 for any characters they feel comfortable rating. You could then look at the averages for any given row to give you an idea of the general consensus for a particular character.
I could definitely contribute to this, and it sounds like it would be one element of my in-progress Character Reviews, but their current format only includes Base Set characters and goes into far more depth than that.
If there's enough interest, I could do a side-project which just lists every character and solely refers to their complexity of play.
Hey! This reminds me I never got back to you on that. I was on vacation and it spaced my mind.
I agree that it would tie in pretty well with something like this. I don't know if i would go SUPER-in-depth because I think the biggest "customers" are going to be those new players or someone who wants to add some variety to their collection. So i picture something like the following being the most helpful:
1. List each class/character/Ultimate Deck and give a general overview of what they can do. By this I mean like a simple intro paragraph that tries to capture the essence of the deck. It would be pretty easy to explain a fighter deck, for example, but someone new to PFS may not know what Magus is so I think easy-to-swallow descriptions may help get players make a good guess of what they do. Longer than the actual product descriptions which are generally just 1-2 sentences of actual description. The description would just be normal paragraph length making it easy to digest.
2. Individual character ease-of-playing rating.
3. Perhaps a short bit of info for each character. I mostly suggest this since character decks have a bit more variety than class decks so it would be harder to summarize. I do like what you've done with the in-progress character ratings for boxed sets, though as you mentioned this gets complicated for class decks if you haven't played those characters or own those decks. So Unsure how that could fit into this unless there were contributions from the community.
4. Maybe a link to the preview blog post about the character/class/ultimate deck for more info
5. I probably wouldn't recommend ultimate decks to pair with class/character decks. Again, because I'd like to see something aimed towards new-players and I don't think we should be pushing 2 decks onto someone who is just starting out.
Anyway, that's just some brainstorming. I still really like what you're doing with your character reviews. If we're talking about Class decks I'm more or less just trying to picture what people really are interested in if they were brand new to PFS or it's their first time doing Organized Play. I don't think it needs to be super in-depth. Just enough to help them decide "Okay, this is the first class deck I want!" and not intimidate them by information overload.
Hey! This reminds me I never got back to you on that. I was on vacation and it spaced my mind.
No worries; I'm not sure how much time, if any, I'll be spending on a future project for the time being, since I've filled my plate with play-by-post gameplay and running, which I'm very content with.
5. I probably wouldn't recommend ultimate decks to pair with class/character decks. Again, because I'd like to see something aimed towards new-players and I don't think we should be pushing 2 decks onto someone who is just starting out.
I certainly do want to talk about Ultimate Deck and Character pairings, because I find it a fascinating rabbit hole with a lot of potential decision making and not-immediately-obvious synergies and options. Admittedly, it also opens it up to combinations that are sufficiently powerful that they would lead to you overriding the rest of the team, such as Skizza (Gunslinger) and Ultimate Equipment to exploit his ludicrous synergy with Alchemist's Kit.
I find it a great deal of fun finding very specific boons and powers that work together in perhaps unforeseen ways, or improve the merit of previously underwhelming powers or characters. I'd prefer the particularly powerful ones get nerfed or managed in a FAQ, but that's outside of my control of course - I don't feel bad indicating what is possible in PACG, its the type of mechanical theorycrafting I love to do in any game.
However, you're right in that it's not a very good at being aimed to new players... honestly, if I were to contribute time and effort into a 'Character Deck ratings' document like is being suggested here, I'd keep the Ultimate Decks out of it, but I would still plan to talk about Ultimate Deck + Character suggestions at another time, in another document.
I don't think it needs to be super in-depth. Just enough to help them decide "Okay, this is the first class deck I want!" and not intimidate them by information overload.
Unfortunately, I'm really really bad at that, as a general rule of thumb. I can try my best, but the issue is that I've been playing card games of some description for almost as old as I am in years; I live and breathe them and as a result I have a weaker than usual grasp of what may or may not be intuitive to newcomers. Exarcerbating that, I have a tendency to over-explain myself or get caught on tangents unless I provide very strict limits on myself (like the '1-page-per-character' limit I set myself on my Character Reviews).
Basically, I can write something up; but it would really need a good editor before it's useful to newcomers.
I'm working on a demo page and should have something ready by tomorrow night to give a better idea of what I'm doing.
The goal is simple and geared to new players, ultimate decks I'm leaving out as I have yet to see them or play them and typically I don't expect those decks to be picked by new players.
Alright, alright. I've finally developed my fledgling "Character Deck Ratings", based on the suggestions and requests made in this thread. Specifically, I've made two versions.
The first version was designed to be short, and ended up with about a paragraph-and-a-half description of each class and character deck that I own (including Ultimate Add-Ons), with a generalised 'difficulty' of each deck and each playable character in those decks. It worked out as 2 class decks per page, though most of that 'page' is just the headings and formatting.
The second was even shorter, cutting out some of the formatting and shrinking it down to a short paragraph describing each class deck, some as short as two sentences. That resulted in 3 class decks covered per page, though by shrinking/meddling with the margins and headings you could easily squeeze 4 or more class decks per page.
Both versions feature links to the 'preview' blog posts for a Character/Class deck, whenever one exists.
Please let me know what you think. I'm still interested in doing a more full-fledged review of various class decks, including a detailed look at each character, their role options and how they can be used with Ultimate Add-Ons, as well as which Base Set characters work well with them, but that will all be left for another time.
Alright, alright. I've finally developed my fledgling "Character Deck Ratings", based on the suggestions and requests made in this thread. Specifically, I've made two versions
Wow!! These are really great! Awesome resources like the RPG class build guides and I think should be stickied.
Appreciate your effort!
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I have the ranger deck, and though I’ve never played them, but they seem fairly straightforward. Arabundi may be *slightly* more difficult because he is spells and and melee? And Agna’s weird off hand thing can throw people for a loop I suppose. The big problem with the deck is that the weapons are split evenly between ranged and melee, and there are no switch hitters in the deck, so people will be hurting for weapons no matter what. Agnes can benifit from Ultimate Intrigue as there are several off-hand weapons i there, and there are a fair number of ranged weapons for Harsk. I don’t have it, but I suspect ultimate combat would be good for Agnes and Wrathack. Ultimate magic even works well for Abrundi if you want to go more caster focused, as the spell selection isn’t great in the ranger deck.
I don't know the Ranger deck cards very well, but it seems likely that Ultimate Wilderness will do most to help out, since it will certainly be an Animal-and-Divine-Magic themed deck. The Ranger Class Deck was one of the "original" class decks that came with 4 characters, and are widely considered to not have an adequate selection of boons to support all of those characters equally. This was a big push for the Ultimate Add-On decks in the first place. (To be fair, the original Class Decks were more designed to be injected into Base Sets so you could play, say, a Ranger in Skulls and Shackles or something)
It's also worth noting that by playing through Season of the Righteous, you earn the ability to play with any Ranger (Base Set or Class Deck) with the Hunter Class Deck (instead of the Ranger Class Deck) in Organised Play. I strongly believe that this is anticipated to be a strict upgrade; the Ranger deck (at a glance) has a lot of low-impact cards, spells and forgettable boons, whilst the Hunter deck is chock full of very high quality ones.
You may have problems utilizing Off-Hand cards, though, and there's not many Attack spells to choose from in the Hunter Deck, but the general boon quality is much higher.
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Also, my friends and I have been going through Season 4 recently IRL, and one of my friends is running Raz, the Gnome Paladin. I don't personally have the Paladin deck, but I'd rate them as easy-medium. Raz in particular seems particularly adept at using lances, as she wants nothing but mounts in her deck.
Deciding when it is optimal to activate powers (like the discard from top of deck for bonus, or examine-if boon, place on bottom of deck) is the real sticking point of playing those characters. However, if you just run them as beatsticks, they seem pretty capable. Raz maybe a little harder because the introduces the concept of replacing checks to acquire with her diplomacy skill . . . but not by much.
The other friend is running Zarlova
I'd rate the cleric deck at medium, ish? Zarlova does a bunch of stuff that messes with recharges (like putting attack spells on top of her deck), and everyone else has built-in cure healing. I know my friend with Zarlova is planning on going into mystic thurge, so the ultimate magic deck is a must-have for her. Others, like Tarlin would probably benefit from ultimate combat.
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Excellent work here. Thank you so much guys!
We just started playing Skull & Shackles. We've got Zarlova in our party and she seems pretty fun. I'm playing the S&S Seltyiel. Does anyone know if it would be worth it to get the Magus deck. Currently the only add-ons we have are the S&S Add-on and the Cleric CD.
@Yewstance
Are the other classes not included because you do not have them?
@Yewstance
Are the other classes not included because you do not have them?
Correct.