The set team members are: Lini and Valeros.
Where I am having issues is with my dex and caster characters. I’m fine with Harsk or Meriesel (heck, maybe even Sajan.) For my caster I am stuck between Seoni and Ezren. Any help or advice or experience would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Grabnar
P..S.
Once I’m finished with my dining room table, I’ll be switching g to the paper format and only running 3 characters. Any recommendations?
Is really personal preference. Senoni is a bit fragile at the beginning, but her auto recharge ability is amazing. Once she gets a few more spells added to her deck, she is a powerhouse. Plus her ability to turn any card into a fireball dress up her deck for more utility spells.
Ezren is unique, being one of the only characters without blessings. However, with his explore power, he can clear locations like crazy. With so many spell slots, he often has room for some of the weirder or special case spells.
They are both fun, and both have lots of potential either as independent beasts or support characters.
Ezren is unique...with his explore power, he can clear locations like crazy.
This comment puzzles me. In the early going, I'd say Ezren can clear a very limited subset of locations quickly (it's not usual for Ezren to close the Academy in 1 turn). In higher ADs, when he hits more Magic Items, and given 1 or 2 Swipes, sure, Ezren can explore some locations quickly; but in the early ADs, he's very often a slow explorer (given that he has 3 or 4 allies and no blessings).
(We're discussing RotR Ezren, who has the power:
If you acquire a card with the Magic trait during an exploration, you may immediately explore again.
)
Yes it's particular locations. Put him at the academy and it's rare it will take more than a turn. In later adventures, after there are more magic weapons and items available, his best locations open up.
Anyways, elcoderdude, do you have a preferred arcane caster to suggest for OP?
Ezren's going to have a tough time acquiring later AD weapons, except when he has Swipe.
I should explain myself: M.Grabnar is cross-posting from BGG. He and I have already had an extensive conversation there.
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I was going to say...what box set is this? I figured from the characters he's asking about that it's Runelords, but...
I myself have always been partial to Lem, but that's largely because he's the first character I played in PACG. He and Valeros at a location can really clean house, as they can both help each other out.
But given the options you're putting out here, I would say Ezren. Seoni's OK and all, but Ezren just has way more cool magic, and recharging his spells isn't an issue as you get further along in the adventure path.
Runelords really is a pretty easy set - it's casual, fun. Better too easy than too hard, though...like some sets I can mention (and that I loathe).
Seoni's OK and all, but Ezren just has way more cool magic...
Hmm.
It's just the thread for me being puzzled, I guess.At first I thought you said that Ezren's magic is "way more cool" than Seoni's -- which is senseless, since they use the same spells, except Seoni also has a nearly-always-available all-purpose Fire (or, later, Acid) blast. But probably you mean Ezren has "way more" of the spells.
He does, but Seoni has a fair number of blessings and a heap of allies. With good healing, Seoni gets a lot more done than Ezren does. But, to each their own.
I'll add my two cents; the Loot options throughout Rise of the Runelords are significantly more impactful to Ezren than any other character, in my opinion. By AD5/AD6, he'll soon be auto-recharging almost all of his spells with the numerous Intelligence boosts and other spell-based benefits that RotR loot provides.
OK, I'm not going to say it...
But: RotR Seoni always auto-recharges all of her spells. And she's an Arcane user like Ezren is. (Although, it's true Intelligence-based boons don't benefit her.)
My a team has Ezren for Arcane and Merisiel for Dexterity.
Ezren is auto recharging most spells by AD3 due to skill bumps and Meriesiel's evade absolutely wins games. Particularly against summoned monsters
Disclaimers: 1) whatever you have fun with is the right answer; 2) there's no wrong answer; and 3) I'm biased towards sorcerers, as they're my favorite PACG class (in part from my experiences trying them all out in the RotR app).
I'd suggest Seoni. She never gets caught flatfooted without a spell in hand. As a result, she can more confidently make extra explorations and diversify her spell selection.
Morever, she can be a better team player in a party of 4, since she gets blessings whereas Ezren doesn't.
However, that's not to say that Ezren isn't fun as well. (And as someone else mentioned, Lem can be too, especially when he partners with Valeros.) So regardless of who you do choose, if you're going to be doing a 3-player party next, I'd suggest trying out the other one then!
I don't have as strong opinions on DEX-characters, but note there's a tension between Valeros wanting to be at the same location and Harsk/Merisiel wanting to be at a different location. So that might be a point in Sajan's favor?
Seoni vs Ezren: They're both good, I love the arcane characters generally. I personally find Ezren is both stronger and easier to play though.
The problem I find with Seoni is that early game she's hard to keep alive. Between a large hand size, discarding (with no recharge check) to use her combat ability, and having blessings that you can't help wanting to use, she's always the one running out of cards. Having Lini as your only healer exacerbates this, since Lini also chews through a lot of cards and needs to either run combat spells (reducing space for heals) or heal herself a lot (in fact generally both).
Both characters turn into absolute powerhouses in the late game, but the late game is the easy part. Even so, I also find Ezren more of a powerhouse. Seoni's combat ability falls behind the power level of combat spells, and is eventually only used as an emergency backup. Meanwhile, Ezren's explore-again power just keeps getting better, as the proportion of items, weapons and armours that are magical approaches 100%. With spells always magic, and allies and blessings giving explores (mostly) anyway, that's all the boons covered. Yes he has trouble with the checks-to-acquire on the weapons and armours, but there's always Swipe. Plus, if your teammates really want the card then they'll help you get it with blessings anyway, and getting an explore out of it means they can do that without feeling like they're wasting resources. The Haste spell also stacks multiplicatively in terms of how many explores per turn you get - i.e. Seoni only ever gets one extra explore from haste, whereas Ezren gets (on average) twice as many explores in a turn if he has haste.
The only thing to watch out for with Ezren is the classic no-combat-spell monster encounter. Just put a lot more combat spells in Ezren's deck than e.g. the recommended starting deck does, and only reduce the proportion when you feel on top of it.
For the dex characters, I find Harsk to be the best addition to any party of size 4+.
The whole temp-closing mechanic, plus the importance of being able to comfortably pass closing checks, as well as just having a lot of locations generally, means most characters are at different locations most of the time. This makes Harsk's combat bonus power significantly more useful than Valeros's (not that you're choosing between those two but just as a comparison point).
Sajan always feels to me like a fragile, one-trick pony. But for your party particularly, if you take Sajan, you've now got 3/4 characters who don't get/use weapons, meaning more boons no-one wants and making it harder to pass weapons to Lini early game (before she can take a weapon card feat herself).
Merisiel is fine, she's the most reliable and safest character in the game, never a liability. She just doesn't power up the rest of the party the way Harsk does.
