wakasm

It's Math. Are we saying we can't consider simple Math now as an intended part of the game? There is no loot table in Pathfinder. The loot table is literally... How many cards are there of said type = x How many cards are already out of the box of said type = y Probability of pulling said card from box = (1 / x-y) * 100% So every single card you eliminate from the box increases the chances of encountering something in your adventure path range. If you culled 0 cards from the box by the time you hit Adventure Path 6... you will not see many Adventure Path 6 cards when you run your story, unless you farm for them. Which I guess is their intended effect because they want people to spend money/gold. Obsidian is now determining our chances with that, in addition to adding more cards into our pools from the Treasure Chests.

Part of why it matters is it completely affects the gameplay. In the actual card game... you take every advantage to cull things, meaning, you push more locations, you do things in an effort to cull cards. Think of it like a press your luck mechanic. There is a certain % of dead weight cards, and the more you push, the better your luck at getting better cards. But then you also risk dying, or messing up, because you don't always know what is in a location. What this does is, by the time you get to Adventure Path 6, if you have culled cards correctly, you have a much higher chance at actually encountering and seeing Adventure Path 6 cards because you have removed 50-100+ cards from the game. Since you have, for the most part, a limited amount of time to get through the game (if you are not farming), being efficient in doing this is part of the strategic fun! It falls into the same category as to why being able to not encounter boons is fun. This game is only so deep, and when you remove mechanic after mechanic, at some point... the game is not as fun/deep anymore. With this new system, it removes all of that. Your party has no impact as to what is available. You might as well just finish as fast as possible, move on, because you don't have any effect on the culling anymore. You also can't increase your odds at getting certain cards anymore either.

So much this. It's like they added their own complicated behind the scenes mess to what was already solved for them. When playing story mode... that particular story should just have it's own box. If you add characters, they should start fresh, with what is left in that box. There shouldn't be any ability to bring characters from other campaigns. It's not like the real RPG table top game where you are spending years on a character, with an endless amount of time to build the character up. You have 30+ scenarios, that's it. It's a card game. Working with your luck within the confines of that is what makes the game fun. The ability to farm exactly what you need (while fun in other ways) is what is going to break this game. The ability to farm what you need, then combine that character with other characters, at any time, is really really really going to break this game. I wish story mode just was the card game... any everything else could be experimental, like quest mode. IMO, this all became a thing because they wanted more ways to do micro transactions, and have a "vault", gold, and treasure chests, and they couldn't figure out how to do both... and now we have something different, and lesser than the original. They had more than enough content for F2P with 3 full boxes, 37 characters, and anything they wanted to add themselves. I also feel despite this... they could have added the vault and still had the same "box" concept. The box would just be generated by whomever started the story and used their vault (for multiplayer)

Out of all the characters listed here, I feel that Amiri's move at the end of turn has the most strategic flexibility. In addition to all the bullet points longbow posted here, There are even more interesting shenanigans you can eventually do... like scout multiple locations with spyglass... or take off the pressure off your healers/almost dead healers, by fetching your character with the cure spell and bringing them to who needs healing, so that character can return back to the location they were at. Amiri can throw Harsk and Lem around when needed... there is just so much. Sajan, while is definitely a one trick pony, is good at what he does. It doesn't make him bad. No character in this game is "bad" for better or worse. The fact that he needs very specific items to be a monster at what he does is a testament to his one trick. As other's have said... most of what people claim is good about Sajan, is even better on other characters most of the time. I mean... ANY character with a Poog/Heals is going to be able to take advantage of it at some point, and often for the better. In addition, playing in the app solo and playing the card game in real life are two different experiences. In the app, you get to rerun things and farm over and over and over to get the perfect build. Playing with real humans in real life (and I am guessing multiplayer), "farming" is not as fun to do. Sure you CAN do it, but I have never been part of a group that does do it, because, set-up eats so much time. So a lot of characters have "potential" that never gets fully realized without a lot of luck on your side, which exasperates the whole "one trick pony" thing even more. That separates characters like Amiri and Sajan even more in their usefulness, because Amiri's skills are useful from the very first quest, and Sajan on the other hand never really leaves his one trick pony land and gets that "perfect" deck. And in fact, poog, IIRC, is even a promo card. Merisel is also a "one trick pony", but a much better one. Merisel has to always be alone, and often cannot explore as fast due to how many items/weapons she holds, but has evade, which is even arguably more strategic than moving since if she finds the villian, she can often save you 10+ blessings by just evading him and keeping him pinned down. Lini on the other hand... synergizes with both spells and animals, and has a built in d10 that can be used with any card. So in theory, she should be super interesting. However, in the base Pathfinder... animals and spells are pretty straight forward in what they do, which is why sometimes she feels pretty underwhelming, because there just are not that many interesting cards in the pool to do much outside of the box than "add +x or x to a check". I feel later expansions do more with Allies and Items to make them at least potentially interesting.

He is still pretty "one trick" though even if you discard your blessings =P (sorry. I had to.) However, all of this relates very strongly to having a refined deck. Knowing you will get your cure in X cards is powerful. Knowing you can recharge approximately 2-3 cards all the time is powerful. Also, another concept people don't readily see is that recharging IS healing. You at any point only have to care about your next draw phase. Even if you lose every card in your hand... it's not the end of the world as far as living/dying if you have enough cards to draw. So even if you have 5 cards in your hand, and 4 cards in your draw (and your hand size is 5), 1 recharge is the difference between life and death in most scenarios. Obviously, exceptions apply when there are random discard from top of deck + random draw mechanics in some scenarios, but they are much more rare. So this basically means, characters who have a lot of CONSISTANT recharge built into their cards are effectively healing themselves all the time, or at the very least, can stave off death until a cure can come about.

Well I assumed this was the case, I just didn't do any real Math on what the % chance would be, was just stating a random made up example. My point though was instead of "removing them entirely", if the % chance to encounter them was extremely high due to there not being enough villians/henchmen to pull from... the devs could adjust this with a bias, lowering the encounter rate a bit... vs removing them completely, which this thread is aptly named "Take Boa's out of the Quest monster list". It is this viewpoint I disagree with completely. I actually assumed this was more the case. But I don't really know the Math behind the quest pool stuff as far as what is possible to encounter at any specific XP level. At some point they have to phase out easier henchmen/villian so there could be some weird circumstances where you might face the wrong henchmen too often.

There are lots of instances, in both directions easy and hard, that weren't designed for "quest mode" which I think is the whole point of quest mode. I do think the rate of encountering them should be considered, it will probably suck if BOAS have a simple 50% chance of being the quest henchmen at the tier you are experiencing them, but if they were a 10% encounter rate... I'd say that's perfectly fine. I also think if they add partial XP gain for not winning a quest (like has been suggested in other threads), then it all becomes moot. You can forfeit as well. But removing them leaves those who like the challenge is once again penalizing people who want to see unique combinations of challenge.

While that is true, that is only for a combat check... which... hopefully you have weighed if +1 is worth more than the amount of damage you are about to potentially take. Even if revealed during a combat check, you can still use it for other sources of damage like before you act/after you act/unexpected damage from locations/traps, etc. Maybe it's a villain that has 2 combat checks, with an "after you act "component that will make you have to throw away your sword before the second encounter, or one of those "All heroes at your location take X amount of damage" scenarios on a roll of 1. It is that versatility that makes these cards overpowered with utility already, because those are the moments you have a harder time planning for. You can plan for a potential bad roll in combat damage by overpowering with allies, spells, and blessings, but you often cannot prevent these other sources of damage as easily. That is the utility that just holding onto an armor like this provides. Meanwhile, while you hold onto it... +1 to all your combat rolls! Survive the "surprise" before you act damage, so you can succeed on a combat check., is my most typical use case, but sometimes it is the other situations as well

More difficult/random - yes. But the whole game is random, and that randomness can negatively effect the chance of success in any scenario. I don't see this being any different. There have been times I've encountered the Villain on the first turn making the particular scenario way too easy. It evens out. However, I personally enjoy alternate objectives than "Find and kill the henchmen - Villian". I think the game needs more of these types of scenarios... not less! While this one with Boas is just a slight variation... I think it's worth keeping as an option, maybe tweaked so that the chance of being encountered is less than other scenarios. I don't think BOAs though are broken at all. They just require a more targeted/stricter strategy.

But alas, you bring up the point people keep counter-arguing with you. There are many cases you do NOT want it added in the end. There are many cases you do NOT want even a single spell in your pool of choice. If I play as a Harsk, who adds 1 spell as a card feat, and always want a CURE in that spell slot... I want to always-always-always turn down spells... so at the end of the game, I will have no spells in my pool, and can then fetch a CURE automatically. "The scroll" example a previous posted pointed to. Without the option to say no to boons, this is impossible, and thus, makes taking a spell slot on a character like Harsk useless. And there are multiple examples/variations of just this one scenario... like trying to keep a Holy Candle in your item pool at all times. People have statistically, mathematically, and logically brought up multiple real use cases to have the option to turn down the chance to "acquire a boon". It's so real in fact, that the designers of the game included it as a rule, and later on, in harder scenarios, will be much more noticeable if not included. Plus, player choice is a good thing... it makes the game deeper with more longevity for all involved. Related [Link]

Blackcloth Armor is already probably one of the best Armors in the game for what it does... because it offers utility in addition to being an armor. Typically, armor does nothing for you by holding onto it until you need it, taking up a card slot, yet this one you can reveal to get +1 on combat checks!. Which means if you have it for even 4 combat checks... you've gotten +4 out of it. In addition, you can reduce all damage... not combat damage... but ALL damage... meaning that it works for before you act, after you act, trap damage, pure damage, and combat damage... which makes it even more ridiculous. Especially since a lot of armor is only usable on combat damage. There are other armors that offer unique utility, like the ability to draw cards, etc, but there are many that offer no utility... and in this game... since you can never take any damage more than the cards in hand, armor in general is not as critical anyway, so utility makes the card value way higher than other cards. Very OP. Let's not do this. Especially as an Adventure 2 card.

This is literally the strategy for boas though. You have to go after the villain. You do this in two ways: Keep your guys spread out so that you can always perform some temp closing checks to keep the pool of possibilities of his escape route small Pay attention to Blessing Counts. When you defeat the Villian... he adds 1 blessing into any location he is NOT in. Usually, you know where the villian is/is not based on the Henchmen.. However, after the villian has escaped, you can still know where he is/is not based off of blessings. So a good strategy is to leave locations with 0 blessings open, and let him run away to one of those, and then only go deep enough until you hit a blessing (or villian). Once you hit the blessing... STOP, you know where the villain is NOT. Rinse and repeat. So you don't need to go through 80 cards in 30 turns. You do need to go through each location with strategy to cut down the amount of cards you do need to encounter. You can still get unlucky, if a villian/blessing is at the bottom... but IMO, this is where scout-based hero/items like the spyglass help a lot. You can do this with locations that have blessings as well... but it just requires some memory. IIRC though, the app handles this by putting the potential blessings under a "?" icon (which represents the villain/henchmen) so the game I believe does give you some visual aid to help your memory. I am not sure how it handles it with locations with blessings... I should probably pay attention to that next time I play. Regardless... I do this naturally in the real life card game for any scenario... so I forget how the app handles it.

Other issues with the concept of Legendary Loot in this game, conceptually, beyond it's rarity, is that "Legendary" stuff in this game is not really that great, so the need to grind them that much, in addition to actually finding them, is really really really low. The rare cards are not really interesting at all (that I have seen anyway). Looking at other games that have Legendary stuff, like Hearthstone or MTG or even something like Clash Royale... the Legendaries you can go after either usually share really unique game-breaking effects and/or just are really cool and powerful. This is not the app/obsidian's fault by any means... especially seeing that I can't even start to conceive of what "awesome" cards would look like... especially considering that you would think they would exist in Adventure Path 6... but... at the same time... Should Exist around Adventure Path 3-4-5 to actually get used. Wrath of the Righteous kind of does "Legendary Cards" well by having a corrupted mechanic on certain really powerful cards, that you can eventually wash away through the storyline, which also acts kind of like a sub-goal/achievement type of thing. Would love to see more metagame-y cards such as: Cards that evoke the special powers of other characters through display effects somehow. Cards that have metagame statistics (A sword that tracks how many monsters you've killed with it and gets stronger over many games) Cards that played in combination summon big powerful beings, or villains to fight on your side Cards that permanently boost a stat on a character (this actually exists in Wrath of the Righteous)

All of the board game content into the app (without bugs) I honestly just want them to get all of the board game content into the app, without bugs, before ANY of this. So far we've literally seen like 2/18th of the content that exists... and that is not even including the 37 existing classes. This is with adventure path 4 on the way as well. I don't even know what the math is on that... but that's like 5% of all of the existing content. Once they get that, I'd just like to see custom cards and scenarios.

Which is why having really clear rules is needed. Having nuanced rules also makes the game a lot more entertaining (IMO). So agreed!

Good to see that the logical, intended effect is clarified. I just wish they could word it properly in the rules to avoid having to dig. Thanks Hawk

I am fine with "junk cards" if there was a faster way to discard them and go through the animations for each one. It's just too slow. If they addressed that, then I actually would prefer this system: XP Level Rewards should be Card Feats, Power Feats, Skill Feats, and maybe Loot CardsCard rewards should be tied to each quest attempt, randomly generated alongside the scenario itself. These should not be 100% of the time, maybe 80% of the time you get an item, spell, etc. From there, I wouldn't mind if they then gave a small % to get something higher than your current party rating (If party is tier 1, then 90% chance of tier B, C, 1, and 10% chance of tier 2) This way, you are always getting a reward for playing a quest and never have moments where you get nothing at all, and it would help with the RNG of cards. You would get less "levels", with most likely more XP between levels, but at least you would never play a full quest and only get gold/xp and no card rewards, plus, the only exciting part of "leveling" is the loot and feats anyway.

I actually agree that there is a difference between "fail to acquire" and "fail a check to acquire". I just don't think there are many examples of the game enacting that difference. A theoretical example would be: Scenario Effect: "In this scenario you cannot acquire a card with the corrupted trait on it" Location Effect: "At this location, take one damage when you fail to acquire a card" Second Location Effect: "At this location, take one damage when you fail a check to acquire a card" In this scenario, you could pass a check to acquire, but still fail to acquire something. Similar to you can defeat a bane, but it is still considered undefeated. I just think the rules specifically are messed up in clarifying if choosing not to encounter a boon is a failed check, or a skipped check. They are intentional with the wording "otherwise" so I am not sure why they are not intentional with the wording here as well. I still believe they intend it to be a skipped check, but I think the rules, interpreted as written, wrongfully imply it to be a failed check. Otherwise they could have written it as "If you choose not to encounter a boon, it is the same as rolling and failing the check" (or something even more concise).

I agree, I think there is a difference between failing to acquire, and failing a check to acquire. Burgler steals stuff no matter if you fail on a roll or decide not to engage in the card since both cases cause a fail to acquire. That part I agree with. I don't think that was what was in question though. The part that I think is either in disagreement or unclear is (or maybe we are saying the same thing) is if choosing not to encounter a boon is A failed check Not a check to acquire at all. Both situations count as failing to acquire it, but only one of those two situations counts as a "Failed check to acquire". Logic dictates that if you choose not to acquire a boon, you fail to acquire it, but since you are not rolling anything, you are even failing a check to acquire. (this is how I believe it should be or how I believe the rules are intended). So for instance, Glassworks you ignore that penalty because you did not fail a check. This woudl mean being allowed to not acquire a boon, as rule, is more strategically viable in the Glassworks and is how I personally play the card game. The rulebook, however, is not 100% explicitly clear, since, the whole "may try to acquire a boon" falls under the "Attempting a check" portion of the rules. Encountering a card Apply encountering effects Apply evasion effects Apply before you act effects Attempt the Check (you may choose to encounter a boon verbiage is referenced here) Attempt next check (if needed) Apply after you act effects Resolve the encounter Because of where the rulebook clarifies that you may choose not to acquire a boon; under the "attempt the check" portion of the rulebook... choosing not to acquire a boon is still part of the attempting the check step and failing since you are already mid-check at this point. If this clause was not under the "Attempt the Check" portion... this would be 100% clearer or if they included verbiage saying "this does not count as a failed check". So the question becomes - is choosing not to acquire a boon, during the attempt a check step, the same as rolling a theoretical fail or does no roll happen at all? I personally side that it's intended to be no roll happens and thus no "check" occurs, but I also believe the rules, as written, are not clear and actually imply it's a failed check. That is the portion where I could use some evidence on if you have it.

Statistically it is not a fallacy, but even then it is still a preference of those who care. See: any deck building game ever and Math. Plus, it is an actual rule in the game that was omitted for no reason, despite multiple other reasons - beyond deck bloat - to want this feature. Rise of the rune lords is fairly forgiving regardless and high HP heroes will surely do fine. No one is arguing you can't do this as a strategy... but there are definitely cases regardless and to argue against it at this point is needless since they are implementing it.

My only comment: Worthy Sacrifice: Banish an ally to draw three cards This power gets stronger as the adventures go on... mostly because you can pull cards up to 2 adventure numbers than your current adventure if you don't have enough. So if you are in Adventure 5, you can pull from up to Adventure 3. Maybe you like your poog or father vantus... let someone else hold onto them while you get some Allies ready to sacrifice! You can also use this power to upgrade allies for the entire group in the same vein. They can pass you an ally, and you can banish it at will before the game ends. However, in conjunction with the choose not to encounter a boon... (not implemented in the app) this combo can be really strong. Just don't encounter allies once you sacrifice and you'll get your pick of the litter.

Having played all 3 games, in the card version, multiple times... I can confidently say there are many cases where you would not want to acquire a boon. Obsidian's new method of pulling cards makes sense due to their Treasure Chests... but... it does hurt the strategic value of removing cards you don't want from the likelyhood of drawing them. When the whole idea of no experience (XP) is substituted by probability of random cards... it does suck you can't remove basic cards. However, that said, just because there are less cases in the Rise of the Runelords, does not mean cases to not encounter boons do not exist. Sometimes it is worth while to get boons you do not want... extra HP, trash items you can banish for closing, etc... however, many cases exist in Wrath of the Righteous where you do not want a boon. People arguing that they "never would decline a boon", sure, that's great, if that is your play-style... but that doesn't make it ok that the option does not exist. Having boons you do not want make heals less useful. You'll stay alive, but you are less efficient since there are not many ways to draw cards DURING a turn. I try to heal when i know what is in my discard pile... often aiming to leave only my heal in my discard pile to retrieve it later. Having boons I do not want in there makes it less likely I will heal back the cards I want and it will take more turns to get the combinations of cards I DO want... which goes against the whole idea of having 30 turns. There exist henchmen/bosses you can't defeat (or get bonuses) if you have a certain type of card in your hand (corrupted)... and when a lot of cards have that trait... imagine being forced to take them right before meeting said henchmen/villain. Some characters whose main gimmick/strength is to reveal/draw/recharge cards with a certain keyword on it to reliably do anything and you end up filling your deck with cards you don't need, slowing you down. The oracle is a perfect example of this... someone whom you only want divine cards to keep your turn moving. Since you are allowed to pull boons from the "box" up to 2 adventures prior to your current one... by Adventure 6... I may want to purposely banish a card, and never encounter that type of card, to get a specific card. For instance, if I had bad luck, I may banish an adventure 1 card though a location (lets say a spell), and as a group, have everyone not encounter spells unless its a good one. This way, at the end, I can pull up to an Adventure Deck 4 card from the box into my hand. (Same with cards like the Candle, for instance). The holy candle (and other broken items). You can literally guarantee your party always has a holy candle by just not encountering non-banishable items the moment you use your candle after a certain adventure number. Basically, hold onto it until you need it... and then for the rest of the game... don't encounter items (unless a really good one comes up). If you do this, you can always have extra blessings every game. It's very doable in a 2-player party for instance. Also an easy way to trivialize Legendary encounters. These scenarios are all likely and real. It doesn't matter if they are game-breaking, it's a rule for a reason. Also @hawkmoon... your own thread says the opposite. Vic Wertz posted this after Mike's response. Also, the updated rules clarify this as well, since you can only opt out of attempting a check for a boon during the "Attempt to check" portion of a turn. Which also clearly says that if you do not attempt the check, you fail the check.

That seems to be my experience as well. I was hoping XP would scale with difficulty to help with the level grind. I felt the same way. I love the idea of gaining xp, but dislike the idea of playing full games and not getting any rewards for it. In adventure mode, you get a reward for any scenario. I was hoping playing Legendary would net enough XP to always guarantee a level, but that seems to not be the case. I kind of wish they made card rewards randomized like the villians/locations so you were always getting something out of winning... (items, spells, etc) and instead made the XP grind solely for Card Feats, Skill Feats, and Power Feats, or unique things like random loot from the loot pool based on your "tier" level. This way, you could have less levels with more xp between levels to gain the major character rewards, but every game you are getting some type of reward that is randomized that pulls from the vault based on your level. Also as an aside.... I'm suprised they don't have XP boosters as another gold sink

In addition to power creep and some tough mechanics... Wrath has a lot of nasty barrier type boons that force everyone to encounter something, and you only succeed if everyone wins their personal encounter. Such as Demonic Horde [link] or Arboreal Blight [Link]. So you end up wasting a lot of resources, and in some cases, if even one person fails, the card gets shuffled back in anyway. With 6 players, these cards are both time consuming in both the blessing sense and the real sense of the word. Especially Demonic Horde because one person might fight 3 times back to back to back with unlucky dice rolls. It's not 6 fights back to back, it's 6 fights randomly determined... which means you also can't strategically prepare that much. And even people with evasion powers can't evade, because it requires everyone to defeat their summons to defeat the barrier. Scouting gets a whole lot more useful in wrath! So I can completely understand the "balance" criticism for sure. However, it's not impossible. I agree, I don't think we need that many difficulty levels. Keep in mind there is a lot of content not unlocked and everyone currently playing the game is missing more than 50% of the cards in the actual game. And the later editions of the game (Skulls / Wrath) do have more difficult cards and encounters/mechanics. Personally, I'm fine with the Legendary difficulty as is. It was something I didn't expect from the app personally. I'm more interested in interesting mechanics... and I feel that they could do a lot more with the quest mode and/or custom adventures that are made for the app only. They could do some sort of push your luck mode, or weekly scenario, but even then, there is a lot of randomness to the game that just can't be accounted for completely for any real kind of ranking.

I disagree that money is THE reason why they should be limited... Obsidian made the choice for it to be F2P on their own... and hamstringing stuff you can do with the real game purely because of money is one fast way to lose your customers, free or no. If they made stuff free and grindable... then that is on them. Besides... there are more than enough ways to monetize this game. Adventure Packs Character Class Decks Treasure Chests (something unique to the app already) Unique App Only Experiences (like Obsidian created cards, or Obsidian created scenarios) ... on that alone they could make enough money for the "middle" people to spend something somewhere. As long as they can keep content flowing consistently... which will hopefully happen once they fix bugs. The fact that they made it so you can purchase individual characters with gold already means that the "Middle" players will have more than enough flexibility to just spend enough gold to get one or two characters they want in each version anyway... which isn't going to be the thing that makes or breaks the financials of this game. Based on that... I think characters should be usable however you want... just like the real game. In addition, the CLASS DECKS are designed to be used in all... so... it's really a moot point if 90% of the characters are designed to be used in any of the games. However, I completely understand WHY they might not allow them to be usable: Programming Resources & BUGS Look how much is broken, weird, etc in just the base game. I can see them limited things because of this reason... although... I do believe they could code around that if they wanted to... since most of the mechanics are consistent through all 3 boxes minus what is extra. Very similar to Magic the Gathering... 90% of the mechanics work with the legacy stuff just find in the real world card game, so they should be able to program around it. In fact, it should be simpler since there is no "stack" per say in Pathfinder, only timing inconsistencies to deal with.