Brainwave

Sajans ability says "For your combat check, you may use your dexterity skill; you may not play a weapon on the check." This doesn't say anything about "melee", nor does Sajan have the melee skill on his character sheet. Sajan using his ability is exactly the same as Seoni punching something using strength, except his is dex and hers would be strength. In neither case could they use a melee bonus to add to that check because they don't have and aren't using a melee skill. Now you can always choose to take a default d4 when rolling a skill you don't have, but if he chose to do that he would have to roll that as his combat check instead of activating his power, as the power specifically uses dexterity, not melee.

I'm not saying it's not better, I'm saying it's not that much better. When the difference has to be broken down into the margins of getting a higher roll within a practically identical range of rolls, then it's pretty minor in my opinion. In addition, Acid is rarely something that monsters are immune to and is in my experience one of the better options for the few times elemental damage is a benefit. Cold, on the other hand, I'm not sure is ever needed to defeat something and I literally ran into that wight henchman that's immune to it in the game I played after my earlier post. In other words I consider Scorching Ray to be a slight upgrade over the improved Acid Arrow but I won't take Frost Ray over it.

While I agree elite spells should be better, I'd have just made it 2d4+1 because now the next upgrades (Scorching/Frost Ray) became minimized - 2-11 damage upgraded to 2-12 damage (for a harder recharge roll). Yes you can do fire or cold damage instead of acid, but cold damage isn't really that useful from what I remember and many of the monsters that need fire to defeat can also be defeated by acid, so the elemental traits aren't really that big of a deal either.

To add to the Ezren Illusionist comments above - I also played him and took that role card and found it underwhelming. I think what I realized is that while the idea of evading and ditching monsters to the bottom that you don't want to deal with sounds neat, the reality is that the vast majority of the time it's really not that hard to just kill the monster. Sure there's going to be the rare occasion when Ezren specifically runs into something nasty that he doesn't have a good way to deal with, but taking a role card specifically for those scenarios is really overvaluing the need to avoid fighting stuff. The only caviat I have is if you were playing Ezren solo, or maybe in a 2 man game, where he's having to fight a bigger percentage of stuff, that might make it more important. Ezren vs a Siren in a 6 player game, there's probably enough blessings to defeat it, or send someone else over who has a decent wisdom, but in a solo game with no blessings, that would be a problem.

Yeah I've gotta say overall I'm not super motivated to do it again with another group. Perhaps if they adjust some stuff or if I get a bunch of useful sounding treasure chest cards unlocked, I might try it again. But otherwise that range of missions (which as you said is probably at least 3 per level, maybe sometimes taking 4) so at least 30 missions to get through that stretch, with not much in the way of upgrades, is pretty bad. Compare it to the normal game where you're adding new boons every 5 missions, and each mission is unique so more interesting in the first place, it's just not even close.

2 - As far as I can tell, there's no XP scaling between difficulties. In fact I don't really see any bonus from playing on a higher difficulty other than more gold. I'm not sure about getting XP based on remaining blessings but I don't think so, I haven't noticed this. What I have mostly noticed is that you get XP for defeating monsters, and I think for closing locations. This XP is not currently being awarded if you fail a mission but it sounds like this is a bug they intend to fix. The main thing I can tell you is that with a couple different groups on different difficulties, the XP slowed down for me as well at about that point. From there on, it was taking 2-3 missions to level up instead of 1. The exception to that we're missions when I started getting the "when a henchman is encountered all characters must summon and encounter an ancient skeleton". At first this scenario ability was really annoying, but then I realized that because of all the extra fighting (each kill of each ancient skeleton was giving me an XP hit) that I was getting at least double the normal XP from those missions. 3 - The way card distribution seems to work is : 1-9 lower end B/C cards, 10-19 better B/C cards, 20+? Deck 1 cards. This isn't strict though, for example you'll start running into Yap the Pixie very early as I guess he's considered a weak card compared to its normal deck number. In other words they reassigned some cards to different deck levels based on perceived quality of card. But I think I only saw maybe 2 Deck 1+ cards before hitting 20. My highest group is 24 so I can't say at this point whether Deck 2 cards are included but I'm going to guess not. Not sure why they didn't just make each grouping of 10 levels a deck and include all 3 current decks which would also make the 10-19 range less tedious because at least for me that whole range of levels was pretty much one Augury card upgrade. Supposedly treasure chest cards add more cards to those lower distributions but I don't own any so can't really say.

Right, which is why I took the "before you act" parts out of the card texts in my last post. I recognize that's just referring to the step of the turn in which that text applies. Haven't played wrath but I can imagine the arguments my S&S partner and I would have had over that power. That wording...

Actually I think people are arguing that it's not the "you" in before you act that means all characters, it's the "you" in "succeed at a wisdom X roll or you may not play Y on this check". To me this makes no difference though, as the Sinspawn also has a "your" in the effect part of the text "succeed at a wisdom X roll or your checks are increased by 1 for the rest of the turn". This is just a different tense of the same exact word... I love the 1+1=3 analogy btw

I think "you", meaning every person who's arguing with me about this (see what I did there) are just assuming what you think the Sinspawn is supposed to do or assuming what you think the original intent of the card is, instead of looking at the text on the card and realizing that no matter how ridiculous it might sound, that if "you" means every character, then every character needs to roll on the Sinspawn because the wording is almost the same as on the Warchanter. If what you were trying to say above was that the you = all character ruling on the Warchanter is stupid and should be changed and the card errated instead, then I agree with you. But right now, you = all characters is the rule. I'm honestly tired of arguing for this, so I'm going to stop. The other examples I gave above, which you would realize if you read the linked post, were to show the guy that claimed that other characters would only have to make recharge checks on someone else's turn (as some kind of counter argument for how the card should work) that there are clearly other kinds of checks you make on other characters turns.

This is disappointing. The app seems the perfect way to implement the actual card game rules which were tedious to keep track of in the physical game but when you've got a computer to do it for you, seem like they'd be a lot more doable.

If the weasel specifically gives a bonus to melee (I don't know the card) then yes. The Mace for example, has the melee trait on the side of the card so you get melee added to the traits of that check and I believe as Hawkmoon said, that this then allows you to add melee bonuses to that check without having to revert to d4s. If you find this confusing, you're not alone.

Thank you for this. I was feeling crazy or daft for seeing this as the most natural fix, in place of the travesty that was made of the word 'you'. Of course, the fact English language somehow up and decided to stop distinguishing between singular and plural 'you' doesn't help any... I'm just going to close by saying I agree with this so much. I've seen the thread about why Paizo chooses to errata a card before and it makes me want to pull out my hair. I mean I'm slightly curious how a game company makes decisions but as a player of this game I'm much more interested in the nuts and bolts of the decisions themselves and that those rules decisions are consistent and make the game rules easier to follow, not harder. Whether you agree with me or not or think I'm a crazy person on this issue, I definitely agree that the whole situation would have been better if the "you" = all characters had never happened. And, it amazes me as a person who's played other card games, that ruling that "you" means anything more than the active player seemed like a good idea.

Nope. What about the skeleton horde barrier (or the scenario power that makes everyone encounter an ancient skeleton when a henchman is encountered). Or even better, there's a villain that makes someone at that location encounter a Sinspawn before combat. What if a different person fights the Sinspawn than the person going to fight the villain? Those are just two examples that have happened to me personally, I'm sure there's other ways on top of that where other characters could be making different checks on that same turn. And honestly, it doesn't matter. You don't just ignore a rule that affects a certain card because it mostly doesn't matter. Either the rule applies to that card or it doesn't, period. And I don't see any reason why the "you" rule wouldn't apply to both cards.

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be difficult, I still don't really see the difference. Warchanter - "Before you act, succeed at a wisdom 8 check or you may not play spells with the attack trait or weapons." Sinspawn - "Before you act, succeed at a wisdom 6 check or the difficulty of your checks is increased by 1 for the rest of the turn." To respond briefly to the other replies - I'm not interested in what's perceived as the original intent of the cards. I'm interested in how the cards should work based on the rules of the game. Whether or not the original intent of the Sinspawn was for every character to roll or not is irrelevant. What I'm saying is based on the ruling that the use of "you" on a card like the Warchanter applies to all characters (and yes I've read the linked post) that then the use of the word "your" on the Sinspawn card means the same thing.

If you're saying that what matters is the second "you" in the Warchanter's text, not the "you" in "Before you act" then I still don't see how that matters. The Sinspawn also has that except instead of the word "you" it's "your" and your is just the second person possessive version of... You. Basically, there's no difference that I can see. They both use a slightly different tense of the same word to describe who is affected by that card text. If the "you" on the Warchanter means all players then the "your" on the Sinspawn should mean the same.

I agree with all of that except it's not super tough with 2 guys. I played a 2 man group up to lvl 12 on Legendary without ever touching a normal or heroic scenario and for the most part had no problems. Maybe a 10% mission failure rate. This is vastly different from playing 6 man. That's my point. It's not that tough with 2. If it was, then the "Legendary is supposed to be next to impossible" argument would hold more weight with me. And secondly, especially in a game where a forfeit button exists, there should be some attempt to balance the wildcards against each other. Otherwise it just encourages forfeiting if you hit that particular one (or perhaps the -5 blessings deck one) until you roll a game without those, which are significantly easier.

Yep, I have all the purchasable stuff other than treasure chests. Only seen the one masterwork and the one Augury and I believe you're correct that there should be more than one copy if it's using the full story mode vault list. So perhaps it's not, which is quite possible considering other changes that have been made. Semi unrelated question - do you get Nualia and Gogmurt a lot as villains? I'd say 80% of my games, I get one of those two, with Ripnugget and Stickfoot a distant third. The only others I've *ever* seen are Black Fang, the redo the fight on a 1-2 guy and maybe one other, once each. So, even if boon distribution just seems off due to not having as many treasure chest cards unlocked as expected, there's also stuff like this which is completely unrelated to treasure cards.

I don't have Seoni either but I do have Lem and Ezren, so Augury isn't directly tied to Seoni. Also, hit 19 last night and can confirm no staff of minor healing or Father Z yet. I've also only seen the one copy of Augury even though I got it about 4 levels ago but there should be more than one copy in the card pool. I've also only got one copy of masterwork tools and I got that one copy a long time ago. I can't remember where I read this (might have been in this thread somewhere) but one of the devs mentioned that treasure chest cards are supposedly part of the reason why the card distribution feels off. In other words, it sounds like they might have balanced the card distribution in quest mode around all of the cards, including all of the treasure chest cards being unlocked. Not sure if that was a good idea since treasure chest cards are going to generally be unlocked last, after all the other content (and even if someone buys the pack, unless they are farming gold it's going to be awhile before they get a lot of treasure chest cards). And because of this people will generally be playing quest mode at first with just the story mode cards. So if it's not fun and you're not getting any new cards for a long stretch, I'm not sure that's going to motivate people to keep playing to unlock treasure chest cards to (possibly, it's still unconfirmed) fix that problem.

Of course it can be done. The point of the post wasn't whether it was possible at all, it was that the wildcards that affect the blessings deck are completely unbalanced compared to the others and specifically make 6 man groups very difficult to win with, compared to small groups. Even with just basic understanding of the game mechanics, it's fairly obvious that anything that affects the blessings deck is going to affect big groups more than small groups, I don't even think that's up for debate. So those powers are inherently unbalanced and I believe Night Approaches in particular (which btw is also backed up by at least two other posts I've read where people say they just forfeit if they get that power) is a problem. If other people want to keep playing with it and find it fun, that's up to them, but I do not. Personally, this comes down to the idea that I don't agree that large groups are intended to be somehow more inherently difficult to win with in this game. I think in some ways they are as an unintended consequence of the way the game handles the blessings deck but I don't think that Paizo ever intended 6 man play to be some sort of super hard mode. In fact, they used to claim that everything was balanced whenever anyone would claim that 6 man was hard, based on discussions on their own boards. So saying that it's okay if those wildcards make 6 man much harder because it's already a hard mode, is a flawed argument, in my opinion. And I just don't see any reason for it.

For story mode it's definitely not supposed to generate more copies than the number available in the vault. I believe this is the same in quest mode but less sure as it doesn't always operate under the same rules.

Normal difficulty here is the same as the card game. There's no additional modes in that game, correct.

I think they need to (and from some posts I believe it is being looked at) tune the card distribution a bit more. I'm lvl 16 and it's still the same. I think the only "new" card I've seen in the past 5 levels has been Augury, which I can completely understand if they want to make it higher level than other B level cards, but there should be other cards popping up in that range as well. I expect, based on other posts, to see a lot more cards appear as I approach lvl 20, but yeah more really need to be redistributed between 10-20. As it is, while I find it somewhat entertaining to "level" a group of guys in quest mode, I'm only really doing it because the story mode is unfinished. Long term I'm much more interested in playing groups through the set unique story missions than replaying endless random quest missions where you encounter the same stuff over and over. Which is even less exciting if you're not even encountering much in the way of interesting cards from around level 8 (by that point you have all the good boons that are available early other than 1 or 2) to at least level 16. Personally I think you should get both gold and XP for time spent rather than having gold be somehow tied to difficulty / ability to complete missions (except as maybe a completion bonus) but that's just me. Agreed about difficulty tiers. I'm usually someone that likes the challenge of playing on a higher difficulty but that difficulty needs to be balanced and winnable if you know what you're doing to be interesting for me. Right now it needs some major tuning (Night Approaches alone is extremely unbalanced) so I've just been playing on normal. If balancing happens, I'll look at it again.

Nope, if anything it seemed worse when I was leveling my 2 guys on Legendary. But it's probably the same. What really gets old is seeing Nuallia like 75% of the time as the villain. Maybe it's just me but I got her a lot on both groups from very early on to still getting her pretty often as I approach lvl 20.

Title says it all. I've been playing some quest mode with a bunch of caster types and realized that normally I am counting on getting my hands on Sihendron Medallions as an armor substitute (not to mention even better loot cards) and it might make playing against some of the tougher villains later on a problem if these cards never appear.

How about instead we just let it go instead of continuing to prod the guy and tell him how rude he is.