Hi Everyone-
I am pretty new to this forum so hopefully this is a good place to post this. I recently have been doing a run through Mummy's Mask with my son, and I decided to bring along Balazar from WOTR. I had figured I would spend most of the adventure using my standard Strength + Arcane Skill + AD# Padrig attack given that attack spells and weapons really aren't options.
Then I stumbled upon this guy: Neferkhu. All of a sudden I had an Ally that is essentially a melee weapon without technically being one, so now I was rolling a d8 as well, and monsters were becoming much easier to defeat. and THEN I acquired this: Ring of the Grasping Grave. which i believe synergizes perfectly with Neferekhu since now all of my combat checks were invoking the undead trait.
So now, on adventure deck 6, when I have those two cards in my hand I am rolling d6(str) + d8(ally) + d4(ring) + d10(arcane die) plus a static bonus of + 18 (+4 Cha, +2 Arcane, +6 ad# padrig and +6 ad# from the ring).
Honestly, when I have this combo in hand even the hardest villain is kind of a joke, and so I am wondering if I am doing something terribly wrong or if I just lucked into a VERY useful combo of cards for Balazar.
I appreciate anyone who took the time to read this. I'd be curious to see if people think I'm doing the mechanics correctly at least, and any other thoughts are welcome.
thanks!
Seems legit. Nice one. Indeed seems a bit broken just reading it.
I think your grasp of the mechanics here is fine.
I do think there is quite a bit of brokenness inside of Mummy's Mask itself even without bringing characters from other APs into it, which throws the balance off more because the other AP characters are designed for other APs, which means they aren't designed for this one.
The problem seems to stem from Neferkhu (though it has much worse problems than the fact it isn't played as a weapon). I do wonder if that power should have "this counts as playing a weapon" though - it currently doesn't.
This is the RPG inspiration for the ally.
Sentinel Part does count as playing a weapon and it seems to be fairly improvised as well, so I'm actually wondering why Neferkhu doesn't have "this counts as playing a weapon" now.
I think your grasp of the mechanics here is fine.
I do think there is quite a bit of brokenness inside of Mummy's Mask itself even without bringing characters from other APs into it, which throws the balance off more because the other AP characters are designed for other APs, which means they aren't designed for this one.
The problem seems to stem from Neferkhu (though it has much worse problems than the fact it isn't played as a weapon). I do wonder if that power should have "this counts as playing a weapon" though - it currently doesn't.
This is the RPG inspiration for the ally.
Sentinel Part does count as playing a weapon and it seems to be fairly improvised as well, so I'm actually wondering why Neferkhu doesn't have "this counts as playing a weapon" now.
Right. Swinging a head in a cage around at my enemies certainly feels like I'm playing a weapon. I wonder if they'd ever add that text, though I realize this synergy with the ring and balazar is a very edge case.
When I first acquired Neferekhu I actually read the powers before the card type and assumed it WAS a weapon and was preparing to sell it off to the trader. When I saw "Card Type: Ally" my eyes got very big and it felt like I had stumbled on some awesome cheat code (specific to balazar), The trouble is, after a couple of scenarios with that and the ring combined I was barely needing to roll on combat checks, and barely using previously defeated monsters in my fights. I essentially turned Balazar into something different. Stuff being too easy just isn't that fun,
I appreciate the responses here. It sounds like I am indeed playing it correctly and have simply found a powerful loophole for this character to exploit. Honestly now that the novelty of that has worn off I kind of wish i hadn't found it, since combat has become quite dull.
There's quite a number of characters that can take advantage of the fact that Neferekhu is not a weapon. Radovan, Athnul and Zova are at least three other examples.
Both versions of Estra can also make exceptional use of Neferekhu. MM Estra (Ectoplasmist role) can leverage it for powerful Strength checks in combat despite lacking weapons, and gets bonuses to her Diplomacy check against it. OA1 Estra (Spiritual Counselor role) is even more powerful, since she can draw a card every time she passes a Charisma/Diplomacy check, therefore leveraging Neferekhu to draw card after card constantly as long as anyone at her location makes Wisdom or Knowledge checks (including checks to recharge spells).
Neferekhu is one of the most interesting and, at times, broken loot cards ever released, without being obviously so like some late-game Loot cards from specific APs (like the Immortal Dreamstone, Emerald Codex, or Khai-Utef).
Interesting. I'm not familiar with those other characters but I can certainly see how a "weapon that isn't really a weapon" could start to be exploited.
I think the biggest issue for me was Balazar stopped feeling like Balazar (at least from a character mechanic standpoint). With Neferekhu and The Ring I almost never needed to chuck my saved monsters into the combat. I actually think Neferekhu alone might have been fine but finding the ring so soon after and adding that d4+ad# to every combat got out of hand.
I wonder how other people feel about finding a semi-broken card/combo. For me, it feels cool until it becomes boring. We are about to play the final scenario in MM and I have already vowed to leave Neferekhu at home :)