Thoughts on all characters

[ttoida]

So, I've completed all of the available content with the following party:

 

Merisiel

Kyra

Seelah

Seoni

Harsk

Ezren

 

Here are some thoughts on these characters.

 

Merisiel:

Good character, the only one who has strong Disable, which is pretty important.  Also has good Acrobatics and Stealth, which don't come up as often, but can be useful.  High Dex makes her very strong in combat, although she sometimes has trouble finding one of her weapons.  Fortunately with her Sneak Attack and a decent Strength score, she can often defeat an enemy without even using a weapon, and of course in a pinch she can Evade.  I try not to do this too often though, because it's important to get through the decks as fast as you can.  Biggest weakness is probably that she has a lot of Items, which aren't all that useful until you start getting some good stuff later on.

 

Kyra:

Good character.  Best Divine caster in the group, and with a decent Strength score she can hold her own in combat.  Her healing ability is ok, but again you need to get through decks as fast as possible, so you can't afford to skip too many explores.  Her bonus against Undead is very useful, and her high Wisdom makes her very good at closing a lot of different location types.  Weakness is her low Strength score, which limits the benefit of Blessings in combat.

 

Seelah:

Great character, with a very strong kit overall.  Good strength and melee, and the ability to add a d6 to any check is amazing.  More than makes up for her lower strength, as compared to Valeros or Amiri.  Not a great spellcaster, but can Cure herself to get back all the cards she's discarding with her Inspired Grace.  Crusade is situationally useful, good for burning through a deck looking for a villain/henchman.  Good Charisma is important for acquiring Allies and closing locations with Diplomacy.  Weakness is, as in the pen and paper game, a reliance on multiple ability scores.  Strength and Wisdom are both important to her, and both are only d8, but as noted above, her Inspired Grace can make up the difference.

 

Seoni:

One-trick pony, but is very very good at that one trick.  She kills stuff, regardless of what cards you have in your hand.  Not a lot of finesse here, just blasting stuff over and over until everything is dead.  High Charisma is useful for some things, and her Arcane triggers off Charisma as well, so she has two useful skills.  Weakness is that she is pretty bad at everything else.  With only three spell slots, you can't afford to carry a lot of utility spells, and her other ability scores are all pretty low.  She also burns through cards pretty quickly, and doesn't have a good way to get them back.

 

Harsk:

Wonderful support character.  Reliable in combat, since he pretty much always has weapons available.  Base Dex is only d8 though, so while he's generally good, he has the same issue as Kyra in that his base combat die is low.  He's much better as a support character, with two excellent powers.  Sniper's Shot is excellent, especially since it only requires a Recharge and not a Discard.  Scout Ahead is also great, allowing you to see what's coming so you can plan accordingly.  Weakness is that his skills aren't very good.  He has Survival and Perception, but with a d6 Wisdom they're just not reliable.

 

Ezren:

Versatile caster, has so many spells that he has a lot of room for utility.  There aren't a ton of great ones early, but later on things like Fiery Weapon are excellent.  Can hold his own in combat because he usually has a lot of spells available.  His Powers are all very good, Expanded Spellbook can extend his turn if he has stuff like Detect Magic available.  Eldritch Exuberance is amazing in certain locations, but he really needs this stuff because he doesn't have any Blessings to gain more explores.  He does have Allies for this though.

 

[PinkRose]

Great review.

One note I would change.

"Weakness is that she is pretty bad at everything else.  With only three spell slots, you can't afford to carry a lot of utility spells"

Because she can use any spell for damage her 3 spells can all be utility. At least that's how I see it.

[Dunesparrow]

Hey there.

 

Cool review

 

Interesting group make up.  Good to see that various six person parties can make it.

 

Are you planning on playing through again with the remaining 5 characters ?

 

Thanks

[wakasm]

The cool thing about this game is that all the characters are playable.  Rise of the Runelords is not as punishing as what is to come in this regard. However, there are some mechanics that are more OP than others... looking at cards/rearranging cards and evading are (IMO) among the top 2 things a character can do to really give you the upper hand.  

 

Because of this... Merisiel's evade is underrated in this post IMO.  

 

Evade is actually really powerful, and in later expansions, actually gets nerfed a little bit since most other characters that have evade (not in this version/rise of the runelords) have limitations to what they can evade or it costs them something to evade. 

• Evade lets you handle any location where you have to summon a monster at the beginning of each turn
• Evade lets you handle group traps/penalties where you have to summon a monster
• It let's you evade the villain in most cases... which means you can really plan your next moves since you'll know what location it's in
• It let's you farm for good items a lot easier... since if you see a really good boon, you can evade it, and then go after it with a character that can make the check much easier

and most importantly... when you unlock specializations later on (after Adventure 3 or in Quest Mode), if you take the Acrobat ability:

• Let's you put evaded things back on top of the deck... which is both scouting AND strong for planning or bad pulls

Merisiel is great because she is one of the few characters you can guarantee to leave at a location solo and handle things.  

 

It is true, if you evade too much... you lose a lot of time.  So it's important only to evade when it's strategic.  But if she evades even 2 summoned monsters... it's generally a net win anyway since most other characters would in many cases have to burn a card to encounter (like spells, discared weapons, items etc). 

[Brainwave]

Completely agree about evading. In addition to everything that you said, it allows Merisiel to explore in less optimal situations than Kyra for example. Just used up all of your cards except one good card you don't want to lose fighting a nasty monster, but got a free explore afterwards from a location special? If you're Kyra you might choose to forego that explore in case you run into something nasty, end up losing your remaining cards and possibly other effects on top of that. But Merisiel (mostly, of course there are some things you can't evade) can explore in a more risky situation and just evade if it's something nasty or anything boon you don't want to miss, etc.

[torm3ntin]

 

 

• Evade lets you handle group traps/penalties where you have to summon a monster

Never realized that.

 

So if another member of my party gets that trap, or something that summon other monsters for everyone, i can simply evade instead of fighting it? (unless otherwise stated in the card, that you lose if one of them loses - if i remember there is a henchman like that) ???

[Hannibal_PJV]

Yep.

[Brainwave]

Some of the later horde type barriers will say stuff like this card is not defeated if all the summoned stuff isn't defeated but for everything early like the Skeleton Horde barrier and there's a villain in the first pack who summons something before you fight her - it doesn't specify that those things must be defeated to defeat the initial card, so evade away!

[Borissimo]

This was a nice write-up! I agree with most of what you wrote, but of course, it wouldn't be an interesting game if we could all easily agree on everything. There were two points in your write-up regarding which I have a large quantity of respectful disagreement. One of which was your underselling of Merisiel's evasion, which Wakasm has already addressed. The other was this:

 

Seelah:

... Crusade is situationally useful, good for burning through a deck looking for a villain/henchman.

 

I'm not sure the phrase "situationally useful" does justice to this ability. May I suggest something more along the lines of "bonkersauce ridiculous?"

 

Every time you scout a boon, it's like you get a free exploration. When you upgrade Crusade so that it lights up at the start and end of your turn, now Seelah is getting 0-2 free explorations per turn. Unless you put her in a location with 6 monsters, it's almost certain that she'll get at least 1 free exploration out of this each turn. Imagine if her hero power read, "At the start of each scenario, put a Holy Candle next your character sheet that you can use whenever you want." That'd be pretty amazing, yes? Well, what she has is even better.

Edited May 5, 2016 by Borissimo

[Dunesparrow]

Hey there.

 

I think the Crusade ability is great if you are willing to accept the loss of the boons that you run into or if you find yourself in a desperate situation to find a Henchman/Villain.

 

There are many Boons that are garbage, but I think that makes encountering the worthy Boons all the more important.

 

Rise of the Runelords is not especially difficult, but there comes a point where you can no longer improve your characters primary skill and you need other advantages, such as Boons.

 

It should also be noted that I greatly enjoy encountering and acquiring boons and upgrading characters decks, so I don't like missing out on Boons.

 

Thanks

[Hannibal_PJV]

Seelah is very important in legendary level.

[StormbringerGT]

I could read these discussions all day!

But then I would be fired pretty quick!

[Nathan Davis]

Seelah is the best character. That's just science.

[PinkRose]

Seelah IS the best character. 

I take back what I said about producers.

[269Hawkmoon]

Ezren:

Versatile caster, has so many spells that he has a lot of room for utility.  There aren't a ton of great ones early, but later on things like Fiery Weapon are excellent.  Can hold his own in combat because he usually has a lot of spells available.  His Powers are all very good, Expanded Spellbook can extend his turn if he has stuff like Detect Magic available.  Eldritch Exuberance is amazing in certain locations, but he really needs this stuff because he doesn't have any Blessings to gain more explores.  He does have Allies for this though.

 

You just need to turn your Ezren into an acquisition machine. These numbers are all based purely on the RotR cards, so Treasure Chests could change it. You'll notice that the last time you'll see a non-Magic armor is in B/C. The last time you'll see a non-Magic item is in 1 (there are 4 of them). The last time you'll see a non-Magic weapon is in 1 (there are 2 of them). From then on, every deck is just adding more possibilities for Ezren to get free explorations. Give him all the Codices you can. And the Monkeys you can. If you get that Smith ally from a treasure chest, give it to Ezren. Give him 3 Swipes if you can. 3 Swipes + 1 Monkey = 4 ways to automatically acquire a lot of stuff with the Magic trait. The Smith and the Codices will fill in the rest. And Haste if you need it. Honestly, you can build an awesome Ezren with almost 0 attack spells. Make him all about acquiring things and examining location decks. He's basically the second best character ever.

Edited May 8, 2016 by 269Hawkmoon

[Hannibal_PJV]

So true. It is easy to underestimate Ezren because he does not have blessings... Who needs them in anyway?

Well actually blessing Are usefull, but why carry them along, just find them From the locations as you go!

)

[Hastur]

I've just gotten into the second pack with my party of six.  My first party was with four characters.  I still haven't played with the monk.  So, there will almost certainly be things that I don't understand.  After all, I needed the app to show me things that I was doing wrong with the card game. Then again, I only recently acquired the card game also.  As an aside, imagine going through Perils, Offerings, and the beginning of Skinsaw rebuilding every deck with only basic cards and the cards we'd gotten as random.  Add on to that experience the fact that I insisted that my group play with every character from the basic set and the character add on pack.  It's a wonder they haven't killed me yet.

 

Anyhow, my observation having played only as far as the app lets me play, but at least through legendary, is that Ezren is a killing machine.  Someone mentioned boon acquisition above, which makes sense, but I've actually found that I tend to put Ezren in tough spots.  This might be playing him wrong, although I will say that any hiccups haven't come from Ezren in the first place, but he's the most reliable character for putting the hammer on bad guys.  He virtually always has an offensive spell and can get once quickly if he doesn't.  From the beginning of Offerings, he's my go to guy for bad places.  The one and only exception is the that undead chick who needs a divine check to completely defeat.  Other than that, I look for the hardest location in terms of combat checks, stick Ezren in there, and use him to beat the crap out of bad guys.  Granted, I'm forced to eschew allies like acolytes in order to take folks who allow me an extra exploration, which might statistically disadvantage me compared to some other players.  Frankly, while I like Seelah, I just find her kind of boring.  But it doesn't matter whether or not I'm playing the other characters wrong, I'm certainly playing Ezren right, because in the party that has Ezren, he closes locations fast and hammers mobs with a huge amount of damage without extra support.

 

Then again, before I act like I know what I'm talkin' 'bout, in the card game, I mistakenly thought that only one person could use any card type in any situation.  Imagine how much easier it was when I realized that everyone could use a blessing in the same battle assuming everyone had access to one!  Hot damn, that's good stuff.

 

Ultimately, it doesn't matter which character is best.  As long as you can finish with the characters you enjoy playing, it's all good.

 

As far as Merisiel, I have to say that even a noob bastard like me knew to use her in that one place that summons a bandit henchman at the start of every turn.  A free evade is pretty damned awesome.

[wakasm]

Hey there.

I think the Crusade ability is great if you are willing to accept the loss of the boons that you run into or if you find yourself in a desperate situation to find a Henchman/Villain.

Thanks

You aren't losing the boon, you are just scouting it and putting it on the bottom of the location. Now you know it exists and you focus your efforts for it. When the time comes that the greatest Boon you have been looking for gets scouted with crusade, all you have to do is not close the location and go through the deck. Or find a way to shuffle the deck, like evading a monster... You'll have time since crusade has been saving you blessings anyway as you find a potion of glibness for the 300th time.

 

Meanwhile.... Crusade gets to be ridiculous useful the other 99 times you don't find that great boon.

[Hastur]

 

Hey there.

I think the Crusade ability is great if you are willing to accept the loss of the boons that you run into or if you find yourself in a desperate situation to find a Henchman/Villain.

Thanks

You aren't losing the boon, you are just scouting it and putting it on the bottom of the location. Now you know it exists and you focus your efforts for it. When the time comes that the greatest Boon you have been looking for gets scouted with crusade, all you have to do is not close the location and go through the deck. Or find a way to shuffle the deck, like evading a monster... You'll have time since crusade has been saving you blessings anyway as you find a potion of glibness for the 300th time.

 

Meanwhile.... Crusade gets to be ridiculous useful the other 99 times you don't find that great boon.

 

I completely agree... unless the next draw is the villain.  Then you've banished the deathsbane x-bow.  Yes, Seelah is a statistical boon for closing locations.  Fair enough and the 'science' proves it.  However, 'fun' isn't always 'science.'  I know some folks like to talk about the cold hard numbers, but if there were any one character everyone must play in order to succeed, the designers at Paizo did a poor job crafting their game.  If the all knowing designers at Obsidian tweaked Paizo's game in order to make it so, then they've done a grave disservice to the intellectual property.  Sure, the so called 'science' might indicate a logical path, the illogical human, which is every person on the earth, might not always take it.

 

Strong letter to follow.  I will point out, in closing, that I'm not the Pathfinder card game guru in the room, but I've been enjoying games for a long long time and I know what's fun.  The strategy that ends up in victory most often isn't always the one that's most fun.  ...Or, to put it another way, I might not always fight for the winning side, but I've never fought for the wrong side.

[wakasm]

There isn't any one character one must play to succeed, but this was a thread about all the characters, which it needed to be pointed out which gameplay mechanics are strong, which crusade is. Play a lem with swords or Merisiel with spells... you'll still be able to beat the game. Have fun with whatever build you want!

[Hannibal_PJV]

So true! Every characters has it weak and strong points. How you best utilise your croup is the key. There has been good examples how some characters work.

[Qvoth]

a question to those that bought the 4 person character add on deck or the whole bundle
is the deck c character specific?

 

edit: why is there a white background on my post?   

Edited May 10, 2016 by Qvoth

[Hannibal_PJV]

It is Bundle spesific, you get one more cure spell and so on...

[Blave]

How about adding the remaining 5 characters to the first post? I'll give it a try, though my experience with a few of those have been short-ish and quite bad. I've never played the card game so my thoughts are based solely on the app. Also, I play 6 character parties exclusively. I'll add some thoughts on future developement with class roles as far as I can judge them from their ingame description.

 

The result is WAY bigger and more in-depth than I originally intended but right now I can't streamline it further. I might do so at a later time (and/or add my thoughts on the other 6 characters)

 

*Casts Wall of Text*

 

Amiri:

Skills: Very high Strength (up to d12+4) and good Constitution (up to d8+4). Melee (Str d12) +2 and Survival (Wis d6) +3. Both very useful, though her survival is held back by her low Wisdom and probably not all that usable in the later parts of the adventure.

Thoughts: Great beatstick. Not much else to say, to be honest. Rage will allow you to push some important rolls into almost guaranteed range, but I personally dislike the bury cost which can really exhaust her if you overuse it. Also makes you think twice about burying cards for their effects (like armor negating all damage) because it will cause your deck to go down fast.

Her Move Fast is mostly useful to get to an open location after a successful close. Likewise, Move Another can get another character away from a closed location before their turn begins. That's really nice synergy with "Start of Turn" abilities like Seelah's Crusade. Both abilities are probably WAY better with the limited movement on legendary difficulty but I'm still fooling around with the game to know it better and haven't tackled legendary yet.

Development: Probably needs hand Size 5 asap. I find 4 cards in hand run out way too fast when you are holding at least one weapon and start discarding blessings/allies for exploration. Leaves little room for Rage burying.

Her roles seem fine but they don't bring anything new to the table. You are either a bit more resilient as a Juggernaut or a bit stronger on the offense as a Berserker. I'd probably go with Berserker but I don't think one role is significantly better than the other.

Our Lord in Iron's favor doesn't really do much because your most important checks (usually strength because SMASH!) use a d12 anyway. It could occasional help on some survival checks or similar to close a location.

 

Valeros:

Skills: High Strength (up to d10+4), good Constitution (up to d8+4), decent Dexterity (up to d8+2). Melee (Str d10) +3, Diplomacy (Cha d6) +2. Diplomacy isn't reliable enough for closing locations, but there are a few decent allies that you can aquire with a 4 or 5 diplomacy check.

Thoughts: Another great beatstick. Don't let his lower strength fool you, he's as good at melee as Amiri most of the time (d12+2 and d10+3 both average at 8,5). For REALLY hard checks, he falls behind because he lacks rage and blessings only add a d10 instead of a d12 to his melee checks. That being said, You shouldn't need to go all-in with your melee that often and I've never run into any trouble with Valeros as my beatstick.

I prefer to spread out my party, so I don't use his Teamwork very often but it is still useful if you pair him with combat weaker characters (like Lem or Lini).

Weapon Mastery is pretty good. You'll often have more weapons than you need and being able to recharge them instead of discarding them for their additional effecs is a powerful ability.

Development: Again, I think hand size 5 is a must. Being limited to 4 cards just takes way to much flexibility out of your character.

Guardian grants Armor Mastery which recharges armors instead of discarding them. To be honest, I rarely discard armors. Some very powerful ones work of revealing and if you take high damage at once, burying an armor is usually the best choice. Shield Another adds a defense component to Teamwork - nice if you put multiple characters in the same location, useless otherwise. Miraculous Constitution turns a d8 into a d12 when using a blessing. Nice to have but not too exciting.

Weapon Master improves the bonus from Teamwork up to d4+5 which is a pretty hefty bonus for a passive ability. But again, it's useless unless you cluster your characters. Weapon Supremacy makes recharging weapons for their effects even more of a no-brainer because you (probably) don't need to go through your whole deck to draw the weapon again. Close Quarters greatly improves your flexibility on weapon choices by adding every single ranged weapon. Ranged weapons are usually weaker than melee weapons but they can offer specific effects (Deathbane Crossbow) or have other uses on discard like helpng a character at another location. Miraculous Strength turns a d10 into a d12. Not useful at all.

Personally I'd go with the Weapon Master role. Shuffling weapons instead of discarding them is awesome and being able to use ranged weapons with the Melee skill is just too good to pass up.

 

Beatstick showdown!!!

So, who's the better beatstick? Personally, I prefer Valeros. He lacks the giant perfomance spikes of the barbarian but he's still VERY good and consistent at melee. And he doesn't need to burn through his whole deck to get extra dice on melee checks.

That being said, objectively I think Amiri is better. She does have more utility with her movement powers and rage can help her on out of combat Str/Con checks as well. She can run out of steam rather quickly of you aren't careful, though.

 

Sajan:

Skills: High Dexterity (up to d10+4), decent Wisdom (up to d8+3). Acrobatics (Dex d10) +2 and Fortitude (Con d6) +2. Acrobatics is occasionally useful. Having your best skill being "occasionally useful" is not a good sign for a character. Fortitude is also occasionally useful but because of his low constitution, Sajan will probably fail horribly at Foritude Checks more often than you'd like.

Thoughts: I heard that many players think he's a powerhouse but the best thing I can say about Sajan is that he reminds me of the Monk class in the Pathfinder tabletop RPG. Unfortunately, the RPG-Monk is a pretty bad class. Lots of great abilities and lots of potential but in actual play, it quickly falls apart.

First of all, he doesn't have any skill bonus that helps him to beat monsters (those are usually the skills melee, ranged, divine and arcane). He's a good acrobat but Acrobatics checks are rare and seldom crucial.

He doesn't have any weapons unless you invest card feats first. He can use weapons he finds during exploration but he's not proficient so he'll suffer a -4 penalty with quite a few of them. His low Strength also limits him to ranged weapons if he ever wants to fight anything remotely challenging.

He can use his Dex skill for unarmed combat. Sounds good (a d10 is way better than a d6) but that's still only a result of 5,5 on average. For comparison: Kyra does the same with her melee d6+2 AND can carry weapons AND cast spells if things get rough. I don't think there's a monster out there that requires less than a 8 to beat, so 5,5 doesn't cut it. If you add 1d4 via the Amulet of Mighty fist, you reach 8 on average which is BARELY enough to beat the weakest monsters in the game. Items are his favorite card type and he does carry four of them right from the start but if you need one or better two amulets in your deck to beat any monster, the remaining two items don't add much utility either.

His only (slight) salvation is his Inspiration ability, allowing him to use multiple blessings on a combat check and recharge them instead of discarding them. So if you have lots of blessings and empty your hand, you can get like 5d10 for your combat check, which STILL has an (admittedly small) chance of failing against the difficulty 8 monster! Using multiple blessings is also not too exciting if you play with a full party since usually another character can help you out if you need more dice.

On a side note, Kyra can later learn to recharge blessings of Sarenrae on ANY check and can even learn to shuffle the blessing into her deck or put it on top instead of recharging it.

Development: Get his Hand Size up to 5 asap. After that, there's not a whole lot to do. Adding the magic or fire trait to his weak-ish fist attack is occasionally useful (there it is again), though magic can also be added with the Amulet.

For card feats, you can (and probably should) get him some weapons, though he still won't be proficient until you unlock his role (and invest a power feat).

Drunken Master is all about using liquids. You can stumble out of the way of non-combat damage, reducing it by a few points. For liquids management, it adds 6 to any check to acquire a liquid and allows you to recharge any liquid with a Fortitude 6 check. That’s not too bad as liquids are usually banished on use. Liquids still have the problem of being only useful for very specific checks and having the right drink at the right time is not guaranteed. The Liquid Courage power forces you to draw a card at the start of your turn. That’s usually a good thing but in some (rare) situations it can force you to discard more cards when you recharge your hand or outright kill you. You can also (finally) become proficient with weapons. The problem is, spending card feats on weapons means less card feats for items like Liquids. On the other hand, if you go for more items instead, you probably want an amulet or two which results in roughly the same amount of utility items. Both reduce your chance to draw your blessings, which also sucks. I’d probably still go for weapons on a Drunken Master.

The Zen Archer role turns you into (surprise!) an archer. You can gain proficiency with weapons, reduce non-combat damage or gain a bonus to acquire bows. You can also recharge a bow instead of discarding it for its ability. With a maximum of 3 carried weapons, even recharging is likely to leave you without any weapon at all but it’s still better than discarding. Survivalist lets you draw a card at the beginning of your turn if you start with an empty hand. You usually don’t take massive damage or use all your cards up to help other characters on their turns, so it’s rather rare to start your turn without anything in hand.

If I have to chose, I’d probably go with Zen Archer because Sajan’s high Dex synergizes well with bows. I’m not a big fan of clogging my hand with situational consumables, so Drunken Master seems to be the worse choice. Both roles are better than the base class, but with the monk being as weak as it is, “better” is still not good enough.

 

Lini:

Skills: High Wisdom (up to d10+4), decent Charisma (up to d8+3) and Constitution (up to d8+2). Knowledge (Int d6) +3, Divine (Wis d10) +1 and Survival (Wis d10) +2. Knowledge is nice and the low die doesn’t hurt Lini as much as other characters. She’s the best character at Survival and a pretty good Divine Caster.

Thoughts: Lini has the potential to be quite powerful. “Potential” is the important word here and when you first use her, it’s hard to see. She starts out weak, very weak. It’s hard for her to beat monsters without using spells, but there are rather few offensive divine spells. On the plus side, she does start out with 6 spells, more than any other divine caster. She doesn’t carry a weapon, so without spells you are stuck with her strength check, which is a d4. Her Beast Shape ability allows her to discard a card to increase her strength or dexterity die to d10. So for the steep price of one discard you can have the same useless offense as Sajan for one single check. Yay?

Her potential comes from her Animal Trick ability. It allows her to reveal any animal type ally to get +1d4 to ANY check. While that doesn’t seem to great, it can potentially go up to 1d4+4. With that kind of bonus, you will succeed at many checks very easily. Allies being her favorite card type also mean that animals are readily available from the beginning of each scenario (just don’t put any non-animal allies in her deck!) This is also why her d6+3 knowledge is actually useful because you can later go up to d6+d4+7 which is pretty good.

You need one animal in hand at all times, but if you draw more than one, Lini can actually recharge animals instead of discarding them, giving her – in theory – infinite free explorations, which is awesome.

Development: Get Animal Trick to +2 asap. It adds to your combat checks, spell checks, recharge checks, closing checks and everything else. Stay clear of anything weapon or armor related. It’s too much of an investment for too little gain. For card feats, I’d probably alternate between getting more (animal) allies and more spells.

Her Shapeshifter role improves her Beast Form. Frankly, by the time you get to chose a role, you should have more than enough spells so you never need Beast Form for combat and for non-combat checks the base ability should be good enough. You can also get up to +4 to acquire animals, but usually that requires a survival roll which is her best skill anyway, and you got Animal Trick to improve it. Miraculous Wisdom turns a d10 into a d12 and is not worth a power feat.

Wild Warden is the role that gets Animal Trick up to d4+4. That alone is reason enough to pick this role but you get a +4 for spell recharging checks and an extra d8 when fighting animals on top. I definitely recommend Wild Warden as Lini’s role.

 

Lem

Skills: High Charisma (up to d10+4), Decent Dexterity (up to d8+3). Knowledge (Int d6) +3. Diplomacy (Cha d10) +2, Arcane (Cha d10) +1, Divine (Cha d10) +1. Arcane and Divine are obviously great. He’s also very good at diplomacy (second only to Seoni). He also gets a +3 in Knowledge which isn’t too great with his low Int but it helps early on and can later be improved when you get the Virtuoso role.

Thoughts: Lem is a great character. He’s not the most powerful by any means but he is just so versatile. First of all, you get to chose his favorite class type at the beginning of every scenario. Having only one weapon doesn’t matter if you are guaranteed to have it in your opening hand.

Second, he’s the only character that can cast both arcane and divine spells. If you don’t count animal trick, he’s as good at divine spells as Lini! He is the weakest of the arcane casters, but a d10+1 even at the very beginning of his career is still pretty good.

Third, Versatile performance. At the start of your, you can exchange any card on your hand with a card of the same type in your discard pile. Didn’t succeed at the recharge check for cure? Just switch it with another spell and use cure to get the other spell back into your deck!

Fourth, Bardic performance. Recharge a card to give another character at your location up to d4+3 to any check. Like Valeros’ teamwork, it’s only useful if you don’t spread your characters but it’s still very nice to have.

Development: Max out Bardic Performance. Beyond that, it doesn’t really matter what you do. For card feats, stay clear of weapons and armors. I’d increase spells to 6 first to make better use of his arcane and divine skills. After that, more blessings and/or allies are probably a good idea.

Both his roles allow Blessings of Shelyn to add d12 instead of the usual die, so load up on those blessings. The power description doesn’t specify that it works only for your own checks, so it might also work when you support another character with a blessing.

His charlatan role can add 2 to checks to acquire allies and beat henchmen and the villain. It’s nice but nothing too exciting. Quick Wit will allows him to automatically recharge mental spells. Mental spells are rare and usually only delay a problem instead of being a solution. Without it you’d often succeed at recharging anyway, so it’s not all that useful.

Lem’s second role is the Virtuoso. This role allows you to apply Bardic Performance to your own checks. Recharge a card to gain d4+3 to ANY check. It’s a more costly than Lini’s Animal trick (and slightly weaker) but it completely blows the situational +2 of the Charlatan role away. On top of that Virtuoso Lem can get +2 to recharge and acquire spells, adding more spell uses to his versatility. In my opinion, Virtuoso is way better than Charlatan.

[269Hawkmoon]

Sajan is the best character ever. No d4 on his skill list. And Acrobatics comes up more often then you think.

 

Cards that you can use Acrobatics to defeat:

Ambush

Collapsed Ceiling

Explosive Runes

Falling Bell

Pit Trap

Satyr

Trapped Passageway

Avalance

 

Cards that reference Acrobatics in their powers:

Dorella and Hookmaw Kreeg

Arkrhyst

 

If you don't have Merisiel, Sajan can be your Stealth character too. Give him the Boots of Evlenkind. Now he can succeed at any Stealth check and boost his Acrobatics check.  In a 6 character game, Acrobatics or Stealth are the closing check on a location in 16 of the 33 scenarios in Rise of the Runelords. If you go Drunken Master, max out Sajan's Constitution feats, get him something to make a 6 automatic (like Amulet of Fortitude), load up on Potion of Healing and play your blessings to assist others like crazy, then heal them all back.

 

I do usually end up giving him a weapon (like the Dagger +1) but early on I'll give him a blessing or item feat. Hand size is definitely the first power feat though.

 

As for the others:

 

Amiri is awesome. I totally underestimated her when I first started playing. Burying seemed too costly and moving didn't seem helpful. How wrong I was. Yes, be selective in your burying, but don't be afraid to use it. Move away from locations that are negative (like the Guard Tower and Mountain Peak) and abuse locations that are positive (like the closed Mountain Peak). Move yourself or others to you so that they can give you cards and you can keep burying. Keep people away from Merisiel.

 

And read Our Lord in Irons again. You don't have to be playing Gorum for you own check or even for a Strength check. Does Kyra want some help with that Dexterity check? Gorum from Amiri adds 1d12. Did Valeros just encounter that spell that Ezren will cry over Valeros failing? Gorum from Amiri adds 1d12.

 

I always max out Valeros' Charisma before I touch his Strength. And I try to give him the Crown of Charisma too. He can pick up allies with ease after that. I also like to give him the Shock Longbow +1 and let him use it to help others (he gets to recharge it). And I pretty much always recharge his weapon so that I can cycle through his deck.

Edited May 10, 2016 by 269Hawkmoon