Foul Misgivings Bug - Only encountering Iesha Foxglove

[HouseTully]

I replayed through the Foul Misgivinings encounter because my thief died and wanted to get the skill point. Upon replaying I found every single time I would encounter a henchman it was a 'Haunt' for a split second, then it would switch to the story panel and upon returning it would immediately be Iesha Foxglove (the first play through you would roll for it)

 

What's worse is she seemed overpowered this time. She require a charisma roll of 18 (18?!) and if she hit you did something like 17 damage. 

 

I think the entire encounter was bugged though not sure what/where it went wrong.

[da_mayor]

Just verified.  The rule on Heroic Foul Misgivings is, "When you encounter a Haut, summon and encounter the villain Iesha Foxglove.  1 Wildcard power."

[da_mayor]

Did you specify Normal difficulty?  If you're replaying a scenario, it usually ramps up the next difficulty by default (Heroic).  The rules are different at Heroic difficulty, and there's a "wild card" rule, some of which include, "All banes are 3 higher difficulty to defeat".

[HouseTully]

I was playing on the second tier difficulty rank... so I understand the dice rolls being a little higher, but I never rolled on a single haunt. If this is by design it seems horribly OP to me. Every henchman in the encounter is a 18 charisma roll? I fail that every single time and get double digit damage every time... and that's not even on the highest difficulty level. 

 

At that point what's the point of the haunts if they all turn into Iesha automatically?

 

It seems bugged to me. If it's not bugged, then just really confusing and poorly designed. 

[da_mayor]

Yes, correct, you should never have rolled.  That's not a bug.

 

First, they still raise all your difficulties by 1 each.  Second, the point of Iesha Foxglove is that she requires you to work not to take damage.  And instead of having a hope that you might not have to make that Wisdom or Charisma/Diplomacy roll, it's automatic.  The point is to make the scenario more difficult.  I think it managed.

[Borissimo]

Yeah, OP, I'm afraid you haven't found any bugs here. You've merely discovered the joys of one of RotR's most (un)beloved and (in)famous scenarios!

 

To deal with Aesha Foxglove, you have a variety of options:

 

1) Evade (Merisiel, Invisibiliy, Cape of Escape, etc)

 

2) Be Kyra and actually defeat her

 

3) Punt the check and Bury/Banish an armor to block the damage

 

4) Make a hard divine/diplomacy check, or at least get close enough so as not to take too much damage (Lini, Lem, Seoni)

 

Characters who have armor should NOT discard/recharge it under any circumstances. Characters with multiple armors should pass one off to characters who have none. Characters with evasion cards should NOT discard them under any circumstances. If you successfully scout a Haunt (Seelah, Harsk, Augury, Shalelu, Spyglass), then make sure the character who encounters the haunt has 1 of the above tools at her disposal to deal with Aesha afterward.

 

As for the difficulty increase of the Heroic version of this scenario, I get the feeling you haven't played heroic difficulty much, because this is beyond any doubt one of the gentlest Heroic scenarios. Normally, your odds of hitting Aesha are 1/2 for the first character, 2/3 for the second, 5/6 for the third, and 100% after that. Those are pretty bad odds, dude. If you're banking on not encountering Aesha to succeed at the scenario, then you're playing it wrong. The Heroic scenario text doesn't do anything that couldn't (and most likely wouldn't!) have happened to you anyway.

 

One more thing to consider: if you find Aldern Foxglove at any point before reaching Foul Misgivings, consider giving him to a character who can recharge/bury dead held cards (Amiri, Harsk, Merisiel, Seoni, Lem) and keeping him till Foul Misgivings. It's a pain to lug stinky ol' useless Aldie around, but he sure does make Foul Misgivings easier!

[HouseTully]

Again, this just seems broken to me. If I wanted to try any of the solutions Borissimo suggested that'd be fine... only problem is you can't edit you deck on the fly. I can't just go back to the adventure screen and add in evasion items or more armour because the second you're fished a scenario all of the items you received disappear. So basically I'd have to go back and replay almost the entire campaign up until that point to customize my deck for that one encounter. 

 

1. Evade doesn't really work as a strategy because you'll need to encounter her eventually to close locations and finish the encounter.

 

2. "Be Kyra" isn't a solution. The game should allow for any reasonable party to defeat her without having to need one character out of the 10 or whatever amount there are.

 

3. That's fine for my warrior and paladin but everyone else who doesn't have armour is kind of screwed.

 

4. If your party is like mine, you only have like 1 character that can actually make or even come close to making the check. Even then it's near impossible because if you screw up the roll and get a 1 or 2 then you're equally screwed. 

 

Sorry- this encounter is seriously screwed up. Maybe not a 'bug' but extremely overpowered. My character with the highest relevant ability rolls still gets destroyed. 

[Borissimo]

HouseTully, you're right that you can't alter decks on the fly, and I sympathize with the difficulties you are having in this scenario. At the same time, several aspects of your post indicate that you're still not understanding the game properly or playing as well as you could be.

 

1. Evade doesn't really work as a strategy because you'll need to encounter her eventually to close locations and finish the encounter.

 

This is just not true. You never need to defeat Aesha; you only need to defeat the Skinsaw Man.

 

3. That's fine for my warrior and paladin but everyone else who doesn't have armour is kind of screwed.

 

If you have the Warrior (3 armors) and Paladin (3 armors) in your party, then why aren't you passing armors around? Valeros and Seelah are the two most heavily armored characters in the game, and Seelah's even guaranteed to start with an armor.

 

3. That's fine for my warrior and paladin but everyone else who doesn't have armour is kind of screwed.

 

You haven't said who's in your party, but lets consider the possibilities:

 

Valeros, Amiri, Seelah, Kyra, Harsk -- Have armor

Merisiel - can evade

Seoni, Lem, Lini - can come close to making the check with 1 blessing, thus shouldn't take much damage

 

That's 9 of the 11 characters. So Sajan and Ezren are likely to have hand-wipes, yes ... unless you *cough* have another character give them armor!

 

This game's been out for 3 years. The scenario is well loved/hated by players, yes, but if it were truly broken, it would have been errata'd long ago or changed in the digital version. It's a doable scenario. The more time you spend trying to play better and the less time you spend blaming the game, the sooner you'll overcome this challenge and never have to worry about it again.

Edited May 9, 2016 by Borissimo

[Hannibal_PJV]

Yes, it can be done with a lot of armors and evades!

Healing power after hand wipe can Also,be usefull )

[HouseTully]

Well you need to defeat Iesha in order to close locations. No? 

 

I never considered passing armours around but won't sharing armours with those that aren't proficient defeat the purpose?

 

I have the thief, the wizard, the fighter and the paladin. 

[Longshot11]

 

Seoni, Lem, Lini - can come close to making the check with 1 blessing, thus shouldn't take much damage

 

That's 9 of the 11 characters. So Sajan and Ezren are likely to have hand-wipes, yes ... unless you *cough* have another character give them armor!

Divine casters should be able to beat Ieasha's divine check with a blessing or two.

 

When it comes to Arcane casters however - 'Invisibility' is your best friend ,and this is a BASIC spell! And I'm not talking just Iesha here, I'm talking throughout the whole Adventure Path: this is an evasion spell without any limitations, it's not Mental so it works on Undead (such as Ieasha), and there's a single Monster in the entire game that can resist it - the Adventure Path boss himself (ok, if you have the promo cards, there's also that Grindilow...). The fact that you can also use to auto-succeed a Stealth check (some Traps/Monsters, closing the Rope Bridge...) is just icing on the cake.

[HouseTully]

Great. I'll just add that to my deck... Oh wait, I can't cause it wasn't in my setup from the last scenario. *Sigh* Ok, well I guess I now have to play through a bunch of random scenarios in hopes to find it. 

[Borissimo]

Well you need to defeat Iesha in order to close locations. No? 

 

I never considered passing armours around but won't sharing armours with those that aren't proficient defeat the purpose?

 

I have the thief, the wizard, the fighter and the paladin. 

 

Nope, no need to defeat Iesha to close locations! The order of events is:

 

1) Encounter Haunt

 

2) Roll to see if you get bitch-slapped by Iesha

 

3) Attempt to close location regardless of what happened with Iesha

 

As for the armors: characters who aren't proficient with armors will banish them (as opposed to bury them) on use. Other than that, they can use the armors just fine. In my last playthrough, Ezren ended up banishing an Elven Breastplate, which was sad ... but still totally worth it

 

I think you can totally beat this scenario with your current party without having to go back and do any grinding for boons. Your thief can evade, and your fighter and paladin have armor. Here's what I'd suggest: put Seelah and Ezren in the same starting location and have Seelah go earlier in the turn order. On Seelah's first turn, have her give Ezren her starting armor. Then proceed to play as usual, making sure of course to never discard/recharge your last armor. If possible, try to corner the villain so that you can temp-close locations at the end without having to encounter all the haunts. There's a decent chance that either Seelah will scout the villain or that Merisiel will encounter + evade the villain, so your party has a better than average chance of pulling this off.

 

Good luck!

Edited May 9, 2016 by Borissimo

[HouseTully]

Thanks for the tips. I'll try out that strategy and hopefully it works!