Growing Pains.... or getting #ed into the ground.

[Ironvein]

So my group has a team who finished Dragon's Demand and took those characters into Curse of the Crimson Throne. We decided to use Curse's rules to increase # by 3 (Level at the end of DD) and add 3 modifiers (wildcards, bane #, more/larger locations, etc) to continue being able to advance our characters (Deck 1 effectively Level 4 and so on.)

For a while, things seemed to be fine. Challenge is keeping up with the team, so things weren't too easy and we still felt like we could take on the world.... until deck 5 (actually deck 5, not virtual 5). With Deck 5's enforcement of 4 Wildcards on its own, we pretty much had to go another route than using wilds as the modifiers (could you imagine trying deck 5 with seven wildcards... yeesh). So we tried putting it all in bane # increase... making # at that point eleven. (Deck 5 + 3 (coming from DD) + 3 (addition modifier to balance the first 3)). This made nearly every veteran monster combat check in the 30s and we only had a chance at by throwing everything we could at it... and that was just for random encounters.

Long story short, I think PACG now has the opposite problem than it did in the beginning with veteran only adding # once. Now # is scaling up too quickly or rather, banes can currently scale up indefinitely, while characters do not (max of +4). Hard to feel heroic when monsters beat your score 4-5 times over (## at 8 is 16 and we were attempting it at 11).

And before you say it, yes I know the game wasn't really designed to go past 6 and when # was 6, it felt fine. However, when you make it an option; you need to make sure it is viable to the extremes.

So suggestions on how to balance this:

1) Cap the veteran power: rather than an unchecked #, limit how high that check can go.
Something along the lines of check can't be more than double the base number for example (I mean how can a Red Mantis Initiate have a 30+ combat check and STILL be an initiate, right?)

2) Make Hero Points do more than just re-roll as that just isn't enough at that high of a check. Maybe something akin to Wrath of the Righteous and Mystic Charges. Upgrading dice and/or adding # to the check. (More things with Hero Points should be another discussion because right now, they are kinda lame).

Anyone else experiencing this too? How far have you been able to push # before the game stops feeling like you have a chance?

Sorry, this came out kinda ranty. We've had to replay 5D in Curse for so many times now that we are kinda just about ready to quit due to the ## being nearly insurmountable.

[skizzerz]

3. Don’t shove it all into increasing #. There are other options too.

That seems like the easy solution here. Since you’re allowed to pick the wildcards, you can easily pick a handful that won’t do much for the scenario. Some of the wildcards are even arguably beneficial. You can also do larger locations or other options as well.

This post seems very much like “If I’m walking barefoot over hot ground it hurts my feet. I came up with some ideas to make the ground less hot.” — try wearing shoes instead. In other words, the game doesn’t need massive overhauls to “fix” a self-inflicted problem.

[Ironvein]

skizzerz wrote:

3. Don’t shove it all into increasing #. There are other options too.

That seems like the easy solution here. Since you’re allowed to pick the wildcards, you can easily pick a handful that won’t do much for the scenario. Some of the wildcards are even arguably beneficial. You can also do larger locations or other options as well.

This post seems very much like “If I’m walking barefoot over hot ground it hurts my feet. I came up with some ideas to make the ground less hot.” — try wearing shoes instead. In other words, the game doesn’t need massive overhauls to “fix” a self-inflicted problem.

We've tried that too though unless you even include the initial 3 that carried over from DD (did not think of that), but that would also mean adding a total of 6 other things to scale the difficulty and most of those end up adding more cards to slog through.

And what wildcards are 'beneficial'? At best there are some that are 'one and done' where you make a change at setup and then you don't have to remember it after that.
Our current run has Monstrous, Perious, and Withering with # of 8 (since only 5D is left, there is also Deadly) and we are still having trouble making headway, not dying, just stuck.

[skizzerz]

The one where you draw 3 cards then bury 3 cards at the start of the scenario (Impoverished) is often beneficial because a stronger opening hand preps you for the scenario much better.

If you have a lot of party support and aren’t reliant on blessings to pass most checks, Unhallowed isn’t all that bad either.

For the Harrows: Crowns, Keys, and Shields are pretty easy to play around and avoid them ever triggering more than once or twice. Just don’t combine Crowns with Besieged.

If you aren’t experiencing time pressure usually, then Wearisome won’t impact things much either. 2 explores per turn should get you through most scenarios with time to spare (barring terrible luck with where henchmen are situated in locations).

At AD5, I’d avoid the ones that shuffle extra banes into locations. Some banes are very nasty at that level.

[Jenceslav]

So far, the 5D scenario is the only one I have been forced to replay (adventure in the order 5ABDC) in 3-heroes game because the nasty Villain was hiding as the last card in the last location and the heroes ran out of time. But I have to agree, the 5th adventure is cruel. Besieged and Deadly = 2 damage when you close the location to anyone present? Ugh. Most wildcards are less terrible than that (don't forget you can take Dragon's Demand Wildcards as well).
Fortunately, Unhallowed does not trigger when discarding blessings to explore, otherwise the party would never have found the Villain in the second game of 5D.
Compared to that, 6A felt much easier...

[Yewstance]

Ironvein wrote:

And what wildcards are 'beneficial'? At best there are some that are 'one and done' where you make a change at setup and then you don't have to remember it after that.

Impoverished is easily the Wildcard that can most frequently be beneficial, as it gives you more control over your starting hand and lets you 'cut' 3 of the weaker/weakest cards in your deck, leaving you able to cycle/heal only your best cards. The only limiting factor is the "Cards == Health" in PACG, so you're basically gaining efficiency at the cost of risk of character death (or having to limit your discards/buries), but really it depends on your character and party as to whether it's a negative or not.

But certain other Wildcards can be beneficial in specific party compositions or scenarios too, though they're usually very corner cases. As examples...

The Hazardous Wildcard adds barriers, and there's a couple of Core scenarios that reward or even require you to find and defeat barriers for bonuses (including to close locations). Similarly, some scenarios require you to fight monsters or reward you for beating them, making Monstrous a potential positive.

The Ablaze barrier causes Fire damage, but the character Radovan (from the Pathfinder Tales Character Deck) gets to both ignore Fire damage and even get benefits for suffering it, so it makes him more powerful.

Unhallowed, Harrow of Keys and Harrow of Shields can both help the character Talitha (from the Magus Class Deck) bury blessings in situations she otherwise wouldn't (like when playing them for recharge powers or after discarding them to explore), and Talitha actually wants to bury as many blessings as possible as she can recharge from from her buried pile to gain additional bonuses.

Confusing does effectively decrease your hand size, but it also forces you to shuffle your deck each and every turn. Some characters who are highly reliant on recharging cards might actually like this, as it helps them redraw the cards they've recharged fast and frequently. This can help you re-use Cure spells frequently, or even cards that can be recharged to draw extra cards, like Bound Imp, and so it can potentially be more upside than downside for certain deck compositions and characters.

Harrow of Hammers and Harrow of Keys can cause you to discard cards from your deck. For some characters and playstyles, it's preferable to have cards in your discards than your deck, because there's a variety of cards that let you draw from your discards or get more powerful when you have more cards in your discards. A simple example is Hakon (from Curse of the Crimson Throne) who has a very small hand size (making him unlikely to face death in any given scenario) but the ability to draw any card from his discards at the start of his turn by exchanging it with a card of the same type from his hand. Hakon can more precisely gain the right card at the right time if he fills his discards earlier, allowing him to cast a Cure spell every turn quite easily, for example.

I would like to stress that, obviously, most Wildcards are bad in almost all circumstances, by design, unless you're playing such specific characters. But even in the relatively small number of Heroic/Legendary adventures I've played I've noticed surprising upsides from things like Impoverished and Confusing more than once, and Impoverished in particular I usually find myself considering a net positive - at least for the characters I've been playing.

[Jenceslav]

Just to add some more fuel - actually, for some characters, even the scourge Poisoned may be beneficial. For example spellcasters often have several spells at hand and recharging at the end of turn one random card gets them to draw the already cast-and-recharged spells on the bottom of their deck sooner. Characters with hand size 5, though, are not going to be as happy. :)
And the wildcard Confusing is exactly the same thing.

[eddiephlash]

Being poisoned (especially towards the end of a scenario once you've already discarded several cards) actually helps to improve your survivability a bit.