What's your opinion on Heroic Scenario powers?

[StormbringerGT]

Those of you who have played Heroic Scenario's (or Legendary) what was your take on them?

Were they too hard? too Easy? Which ones?

Which ones were easy/hard for solo characters? Which ones were too easy/hard for parities of six?

 

When did you tackle them? Did you attempt them as soon as you unlocked them? Did you come back with a party with better gear and more levels under their belt?

Feedback? Ideas? Suggestions? PROFFFFFIIITS?!

[Hannibal_PJV]

The combination of Night approaches and An il Wind has caused most difficulties. Seoni has been saver in those scenarios.

Every time you fail to accuire boon, discard a card From the blessing deck and the difficulty of accuiring boon is increased by X.

 

Also Retaliation combined with scenario power that Goblins causes damage can be somewhat irritating From time to time. Two fire damage From one minion and a lot of coblin raiders cause some headache even to a party with a lot of healing.

 

All in all I like them a lot!

 

Most of them have very minor affect in the game though. Accuire and bury a card is just fine and allmost usefull From time to time.

Combine that with Night approaches and you can have very easy time.

 

In legendary mode the movement restriction has caused much more thinking. So that you can get to the right place in time. Movement spell can really save a day in that mode!

 

The worst you can get is when scenario power and heroic/legendary scenario power combine.

I have met Many Goblin raiders with difficulty of 18 lately... Also scenario powers that discard blessing cards combined with scenario powers that discard blessing cards make Many scenarios hasty indeed. Spy glass and Augyry with Seonis power Are most valuable then! I think that I did not get any usefull material to deckbuilding in those situations because you don't have time to farm boons...

 

For small parties the check difficulty increase in most painfull. For big parties the blessing deck reduction is more stressfull.

 

Interesting to see what happens when the game gets more difficult in Late level 5 and From the middle of adventure 6 to the end... It can be painfull, but all those special loot cards and even some treasures will make the game easier, so let see if the Runelords see bane or if the heroes gets slaughtered...

 

Have to try next croup directly From legendary level and see how difficult it will be to get ahead. The heroic level is not bad at all even with "newbie" heroes. The advancement will be slover, but it just mean more replayas of same scenario and more boons. In legendary level the Beginning can be very painfull because you don't have good gear. But eventually you will get what you need to go on.

 

Ps. I have to say that wrath of the righteousnes is more difficult than Runelords with extra scenariopowers... Not sure that I would never would like to play the Wrath of the righteousnes in the Legendary difficulty, it could be absurby hard. The Runelords is the easiest of all released Pathfinder adventurers, so here this difficulty mod is very good!

If you ever do this for Wrath of the righteousnes , consider that you put on easy mode, normal mode and hard mode. It would be more usefull to Beginners Also! (Easy mode without demonic horde and maybe some other nerfs, normal mode same as it is in the Wrath normally, and heroic with adjanced movement and maybe very minor variation to difficulty otherwice... Or no extra difficulty at all Beside that momement)

 

Pss. Update. Just played totally new croup From the Beginning to the end of 2 adventure Path. Only using legendary mode and not farming any extra boons.

It was relatively easy actually, much easier that I expected. I needed one rerun with Local heroes because time was out due, discard X card From the blessing deck if you don't accuire boon. But that was really close call. Then I met my first real defeat ever in this game: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/86480-worst-luck-stories/page-4

That was fun, but sometimes combinations can be really hard. Goblins 2d4 + 3 From the scenario power was challenging. A top notch Group could have done it, but that would require some farming. After that there was no problem at all. Two time outs mainly for some bad rolls so They were possible even to this croup. So up to the end of level 2 no problem. What will happen and the end of adventure path 5 is quite different challenge...

Edited May 6, 2016 by Hannibal_PJV

[Tobold]

I was okay with the one that reduces the number of blessings by 5, but the Night Approaching one I found very hard, which means I failed more than 5 times on average to acquire a boon, even on heroic. On legendary, with the one that make acquiring boons harder it would be totally lethal.

[Brainwave]

I've actually been thinking about this (I haven't unlocked AP2 yet, I know I'm working on it...) but so far terms of the modified scenario powers on Heroic the only one that stood out was the 2d4 goblin difficulty on Approach to Thisletop. I should replay the others a bit more, but most felt like they increased the difficulty a bit but not overwhelmingly. That one seemed like a bigger difficulty jump, if it were me I'd just make it 1d4+1 or *maybe* +2. That one required multiple attempts to complete (on both Heroic and Legendary) and most of the rest by comparison I got on the first attempt(Also I ran them all right away without doing any extra farming, with Kyra and Meri).

 

In terms of the wildcard powers, I've given that a lot more thought - (I might be missing one or two, but I think this is most of them)

 

Blood in the sand - when you discard more than 1 card as damage from a combat check, bury one of those cards.

 

Low difficulty. Very rarely even comes up, generally combat checks are the checks that you make an effort to succeed on, so failing on more than 1 or 2 in a scenario is extremely rare. In addition, this still has no effect if you use armor, only when you fail and check and have to discard cards to pay for it.

 

Darkest night - difficulty of checks to defeat banes increased by 2.

 

Moderate. This one can make things a bit more difficult but unless there's some other effect also increasing bane difficulty, it's not really that bad.

 

Driving rain - difficulty of all checks increased by 1.

 

Moderate. While increased difficulty does add to the challenge, 1 point really doesn't make it that much harder but it does have an overall effect over the course of the scenario.

 

Full packs - when you acquire a weapon, armor or ally bury a card.

 

Low. This one doesn't really bother me at all. Yes, you can't immediately use stuff you acquire (well you can by burying a different card) but generally I don't go out of my way to pick up boons that aren't upgrades anyway and quite often they are just filling up my deck with junk for the rest of the adventure. You do lose out on free explores from picking up some allies but overall not a bad one.

 

Ill wind - difficulty of checks to acquire boons increased by 2.

 

Low. See above. It might make picking up the deathbane crossbow harder, but rarely does something like this matter for actually completing the scenario.

 

Impending doom - blessings deck includes 5 fewer cards.

 

Hard. This one is tough for me to rate as I've only played 2 character games. It really hasn't been a problem for me there but as with everything blessings related, it will get tougher with more characters. With 6, I can imagine this could be a real problem.

 

Night approaches - when you fail to acquire a boon, discard the top card of the blessings deck.

 

Hardest! If one of the powers needs to be tuned, this is it. If we had the ability to pass on rolling for boons and if this wouldn't count against you if you did that, I'd put it on the same level with the other boon-related powers. As it is, you just don't have the blessings to spend to make sure you acquire the majority of boons when you encounter them. Even with 2 characters, I've run out of time from getting this. Now with more, you would have more blessings floating around, but you'd also be encountering more cards. This one is really tough.

 

Painful memories - when you acquire a spell, item or blessing, bury a card.

 

Low. See Full Packs. Although slightly worse because you can make more use of blessings normally than random draws of other cards, but still not really a major difficulty bump for most scenarios.

 

Retaliation- when you defeat a monster, roll 1d6. On a 1, take 1 point of damage.

 

Low. But random. Overall this one generally causes me to take about 2 extra points of damage over the course of a scenario, not a big deal. But if unlucky, it could be more of an issue.

 

My overall take - Night Approaches just isn't on the same level as the others. If they're meant to be balanced together you might want to take a look at it. Also Impending Doom might be a real problem for a 6 player game, but I haven't been able to test that yet (but from playing a 6 handed solo game with the card game, I remember it coming right down to the wire on turns, many times).

[StormbringerGT]

Great feedback everyone.

 

@Brainwave So if you were defeating these on first attempts with a Kyra and Meri who have not farmed, my take away is that overall Legendary Mode is easy and not living up to the name?

[Daichi09]

The combination of Night approaches and An il Wind has caused most difficulties. Seoni has been saver in those scenarios.

Every time you fail to accuire boon, discard a card From the blessing deck and the difficulty of accuiring boon is increased by X.

I try to not play this combination anymore, it sucks. It's not impossible as I've passed this combination before, but I normally just restart if I get these together.

 

+2d4 to all goblin checks, has required quite a bit of luck for me to pass. I think 1d4+1 or 1d4+2 would be a bit more fair, the potential of getting +7 or +8 to a goblin check is crazy compared to everything else topping out at +3.

 

The ones that make you bury a card when you acquire a boon type, I kinda wish there was a a version that had a check involved so there was a chance I could keep a card. When you aquire a boon, roll 1D6, on 1,2,3 bury a card.

 

Some ideas for new wildcards:

• +2-3 to recharge a card
• All damage is increased by 1
• +2-3 to Barrier checks
• +2-3 to checks to close a location
• +2-3 to beat a henchmen (or Villain)
• When you defeat a monster, roll 1d6. On a 1, take 1 point of damage, on a 2 take 2 points of damage. >:E (Or if that's too hard, a single damage on 1 or 2...)
• When you encounter [a specific card type], recharge a card

[Hastur]

I'm only playing with my party of four.  If that disqualifies me, then you might want to ignore my input.  Hell, might want to anyway. 

 

I've done eight scenarios on legendary, and those were all with the same party, so it's not like I started a new party and had it go all the way through on legendary.  I'm just a run of the mill player, so I would think that I represent more the player who likes to keep things fresh rather than one who likes to prove his Pathfinder Prowess and the Adeptness of his Arcane Acumen.

 

I did all of Perils through legendary.  I've done all but one of the second pack on legendary, and I've done some from the first pack.  The upshot is that I've done 8 out of the 12 possible legendary runs so far.

 

The short version of my assessment is that legendary is fun without being a complete chore.  I still enjoy playing the scenario.  I'm not just doing them for bragging rights.  Rather, I find the legendary difficulty is good for when I want more of a challenge without taking away from my experience playing normally.  Sometimes I want hard and sometimes I don't.

 

So, being a more casual gamer than some here, I would suggest one thing is that I don't tend to pay that much attention.  What I mean by that, and this is intentionally not reading the other posts so I can give my unvarnished opinion as one of those lame folks who doesn't want to Lem solo on legendary complete with video and an "I used Lem and made Lemonade" t-shirts.  So, Driving rain, which I only cite now because I turned on the game and started the last legendary 2nd AP I need to do to see what came up.  Okay, everything is harder by two.  Fair enough.  I don't even pay attention to whatever the difficult check is on the card anymore specifically because I've been playing hte legendary scenarios and everything just seems harder.  So, the way this works in my mind while I'm playing (Since I'm clearly not going game theory on things) is that this time around the checks seem tougher.  Next time, it could be the one where I have to bury a card when I get a boon.  There's one that makes me bury one of my discards.  The bury a boon thing isn't so bad, but it can suck.  The checks harder by two is more of a pain as is the bury a discard.  One thing I noticed is that Ezren can use his Sihedron Medalion and recharge it and thus escape the consequence, but otherwise that bury rather than discard can really nickle and dime you to death.

 

The real tough one is the limited movement thing.  Usually, I only look to see what the location has in it, special qualities, and how it's closed before I place, but legendary makes me at least consider which locations are adjacent to one another.

 

Don't know if this input helps, but it does reflect at the very least how this gamer sees heroic and legendary versions.

[da_mayor]

I should go into more detail, but I'm not really focusing that way when I play,  Overall, Heroic mode costs me when I'm careless.  So far, Legendary mode has scared me enough that I haven't been careless.

 

So, the boons you get added to your vault from completing adventures on Legendary...  Are they fixed or random?

[Brainwave]

Great feedback everyone.

 

@Brainwave So if you were defeating these on first attempts with a Kyra and Meri who have not farmed, my take away is that overall Legendary Mode is easy and not living up to the name?

So first off, found the normal-heroic jump to be more of an increase in difficulty than heroic-legendary, as the biggest difficulty increases for me, other than the couple of really tough wild card powers, were the increased scenario powers. For example, on poison pill, having increased barrier difficulty makes taking out those poison traps with Kyra a lot harder, sometimes when I found one, if I didn't have a dex blessing or thieves tools on Kyra, I'd just leave the location and move Merisiel over there.

 

However, and this is a big however, I suspect adjacent movement will matter a lot more with more characters and more locations. When Meri needed a heal I could always get Kyra to her fairly easily but if it took 3 turns to get Kyra to a heal target, that's a lot more wasted time.

 

And yes, I hadn't farmed when I ran through them and I also don't own the add on deck so no deathbane crossbow or 2nd masterwork tools, etc.

 

But to say it was easy would be a huge understatement. On normal you can often autopilot through these easier scenarios without even thinking about it and have plenty of turns left. On Legendary in particular there were many attempts that were very close and I did run out of time at least once, maybe twice, on scenarios other than the goblin one, it was just less memorable because I didn't have to repeat them as many times to win.

 

It seemed properly difficult overall and I do think more characters would make it even harder in some cases, as many of the effects relate to the blessings deck.

[Brainwave]

I should go into more detail, but I'm not really focusing that way when I play,  Overall, Heroic mode costs me when I'm careless.  So far, Legendary mode has scared me enough that I haven't been careless.

 

So, the boons you get added to your vault from completing adventures on Legendary...  Are they fixed or random?

The boons that you get for completing each adventure set on Legendary seem to be fixed cards, when choosing your adventure from the map screen, you can see what card you'll get down on the bottom left by tapping a button I think.

[Namyra]

My experience so far is the following: Normal on solo (Seelah), Heroic with 3 characters (Kyra, Ezren, Harsk), and Legendary solo (Lem). And two more playthroughs on Normal (so to speak) in the physical card game when it first came out, one with 4 characters, one with 2. I've also played all of Skull & Shackles twice, Wrath of the Righteous once, both full organised play seasons (at home) once each, have started on Season of the Runelords, and played through a complete homebrew version of Carrion Crown that a friend of mine made as well.

 

I'm pretty impressed with the difficulties, this is one of very few games where higher difficulty doesn't just mean enemies have bigger numbers or you have fewer resources or something like that.The Heroic scenario powers are all a small (but most definitely not insignificant!) change but they seem well-considered and thematic, which is great. The restricted movement on Legendary adds a new tactical element that I found quite interesting as well (and I expect might get even more interesting with a bigger party, as with 3 locations it is mostly "which end of this straight line do I want to start at").

 

The wildcards are cute, though as people have mentioned before, they're not necessarily equal in difficulty. I find Night Approaches to be one of the worst, even for a solo character, and certainly for the party of 3. It probably gets even worse for a party of 4-6. For solo Lem, +3 difficulty to banes is quite terrifying, +3 difficulty to boons is less terrible but does mean he has a hard time acquiring things (and it is not nice to have it combo with Night Approaches at all). Unlike what people said here before, I find Driving Rain the second worst. In adventure deck 2 at least it is already +2 to all checks, which is pretty bad for all non-combat checks, really hurts recharging spells especially, and also makes Goblin Warchanters even more the bane of everyone's existence than they already are normally.

 

I also think out of the Heroic scenario powers, the one outstanding one is on Approach to Thistletop, especially since the scenario also contains the Goblin Fortress, and having goblins at +2d4+2 difficulty is really quite brutal. It's probably less bad for a more combat-oriented character or a larger party, but for solo Lem that one was pretty harsh. I agree that 1d4+1 or +2 might be better, as it keeps it a little more stable, and you don't get +7 or +8 outliers like that. Those d4s are fickle beasts.

 

I'd imagine the one on Undead Uprising might be horrible if you get too many undead random monsters in a large party, but larger parties can usually cope with higher difficulties better as well, so it might balance out.

 

Local Heroes for the wrong party might be harsh too. I'd imagine losing 3 turns when you're already having a hard time acquiring allies and thus closing locations could be difficulty for a medium to large party with few or no characters good at acquiring allies. It was fine for Lem, though of course I got a Snake as the only ally in the Woods, and had no blessing, so had to trudge through the entire Woods. Joy.

 

I don't think Heroic/Legendary are too easy, I needed a few tries on some of the scenarios for sure (some of that might be because of the Lem Challenge, admittedly). The game's not super easy depending on your party as is, anyways, I've certainly failed some scenarios (some more than once) in the physical game here and there. I think Heroic and Legendary both are certainly an added challenge, and it's well worth replaying things on higher difficulties not just to prove you can do it but because things change in an interesting way.

Edited May 3, 2016 by Namyra

[Brainwave]

I'd forgotten about Local Heroes. That Heroic+ scenario power in a game with a lot of characters, combined with the fact that there's no villain in that scenario so you have to close every location might be pretty tough time-wise. I think that might have been one of the ones that took me 2 tries with Kyra and Meri.

[PinkRose]

Can you make a setting beyond Legendary for people and just let them pick as many Wildcards as they want?

[Feywood]

The legendary penalty that restricts you to moving to adjacent locations can definitely make you pay more attention (notably in full-party groups), as sometimes the character you'd be best off with at a particular place might be working on something 2-3 spaces away, and if you have to move through a location that penalises you for entering (e.g. makes you discard a card), that's another hit. It's a pretty simple but effective move.

 

That said, after a couple of wipes on the normal Base scenarios while I was learning the game, I was mostly okay except for a couple of problems with a few of the heroics in the later adventures, but I actually one-shot every single legendary scenario in adventures 1 and 2 with Merisiel and Kyra.

 

Right now I'm still occasionally getting caught off-guard and losing due to my own inattention, as I usually skip the scenario overview ironically because the penalties aren't so much of a concern, which means sometimes I don't notice when blessings are also getting discarded due to failed rolls, etc.

[haloa92]

I've just lost my first legendary, and it happened because of a combination of bad luck (REAL bad luck), and two harsh wildpower together (-5 blessings and discard a blessing on a failed check). Overall, I think they are well balanced. Not too difficult, but not too easy either. I usually complete everything in order, so when I get a new character I do Brigandoom normal, Burnt Offerings normal, Skinsaw normal, then Brigandoom Heroic, Burnt Heroic and so on. 

I'm on my first Skinsaw Legendary and I just lost crow bait for the aforementioned reasons. When I complete it i'll update  

[bein]

I've only finished dangers of the lost coast, and I just finished burnt offerings on normal. So my opinion is limited to that.

 

Move restrictions are a good add they make it fun and definitely make you think about how you're going to close them down, AND make you re-evaluate things like "I know the villain is the next card, so i'm going to close all the rest out first"  maybe not if you have to burn 3 turns to get back to that spot.

So , as someone already said the combo of "cards are harder to acquire" and "whenever you fail to acquire burn a blessing" is rough... extremely hard for the original 2 characters.   (I find they just can't get allies very easily, or maybe it was my bad luck.  Lots of guards and troubadours, but nothing else) .   The wildcard that "whenever you acquire a blessing / ally, bury a card" that one can make things harder  than it might look. Its deceptive.   It really stops you from chain exploring off boon acquisitions which is a whole strategy of certain character builds.   - 5 blessings puts the screws on  a party of 4+ pretty good too.

 

The other wildcards; things are harder to acquire by 2, harder to defeat by 2.   They make it difficult but not terribly so.   Most monsters you run across need something like 8-11 base so 10-13 with that power out.   A good roll with just a good weapon / spell for seoni/ harsk/ meri is upwards of 15  kyra is reliably in the teens too, but a little lower, (even when they aren't undead)  ; before blessings. So those change my appraisal of what boons to use in combat slightly, but not by much.   Getting both of those seems to be the easiest wild card pairing.
 

I got some pretty lucky pulls in the first adventures, ended up with +1 weapons , magic armor, Father Z(burned 2 blessings to ensure I got him!) couple other named allies  by the time I was on legendary.  my decks were pretty well top of the basic pile, imo.   I lost on legendary a couple of times, always from running out of time. especially poison pill.   Some of that could be my play style, I could have done better but I definitely found legendary challenging the first time I hit it. 
 

RIght now my opinion is legendary is plenty hard.  I find myself losing a good number of times.  if you want to make them harder, leave the wildcard for boons at +2;  move  the enemy wildcard to +3.  Other than that leave them alone.  If you want to make the scenario's tougher modify the adventure rules ( for example in poision pill on legendary all traps are +3 to disable. Stuff like that) Otherwise you could always add 1 more monster to each of the locations... that would greatly increase the difficulty I think.  But that might  be more manipulation to the game than you are willing to do?  When you start tweaking the location decks it really messes with the game balance.   We tried that to make the game harder for us (paper version) we found just one extra monster/ barrier  per deck and we consistently ran out of time. 
 

 EDIT: now that i'm doing Burnt offerings on hardest difficulty I can definitely say it is plenty hard. As of right now, my win / loss ratio is pretty lopsided.  Then again I might just be a newb.
 

Edited May 5, 2016 by bein

[Hannibal_PJV]

I would very much like to see more cranual difficulty system. I Also,think that this would be easy to do.

 

Suggested difficulty modes

- normal

- advanced (normal + adjanced movement)

- heroic

- epic (heroic + adjanced movement)

- legendary

 

So you could only add the option of using adjanced movement Also with easier settings. Normal mode with adjanced movement would be good step up to Beginning players, if he wants to have some roleplaying flavor to the game.

 

Unlockin could be as it is today, so that

Normal mode unlock advanced and heroic

 

And heroic unlocks epic and legendary so in this way this update would not screw up now opened difficulty levels.

Other alternative would be posibility to togle adjanced movement on and of, so you could use it at any difficulty level without ahdingon new levels.