Acid Arrow not the same as in print?

[Tobold]

I noticed that in Pathfinder Adventures the spell Acid Arrow deal +1d10+1 damage, while in the print version it deals +2d4 damage. Is that a bug or a feature? Are there more cards that differ from the print version? Is there a list somewhere?

[da_mayor]

It's a feature, there are others that differ, and I haven't seen a list (thought I would love to).  B-)

[269Hawkmoon]

So far, I've noticed:

 

Acid Arrow (as mentioned above)

Holy Candle (banished instead of buried)

Stride (Replaces Levitate, playable only on your own turn, but you can move another character at anytime during your turn and yourself at the end. Read about it here.)

Haste (Same tweak as above)

Poison Traps (1 harder difficulty. Pointed out by eagle eyed zeroth_hour here.)

Toxic Cloud (When you can play it changed. Read about it here.)

[ArchSenex]

I prefer the change.  Printed Acid Arrow makes little sense why you'd have an elite spell that's the same power as a basic.

[Brainwave]

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

[Longshot11]

The Bandit henchman has also been upgraded with the Veteran ability.

[da_mayor]

I prefer the change.  Printed Acid Arrow makes little sense why you'd have an elite spell that's the same power as a basic.

 

Remember, "Elite" doesn't mean "Awesome".  It means "Second-least lame."

[delpheki]

I think it's a nice change of pace to have when you run into something like a warlord that penalizes you per die rolled but I kept lightning touch and arcane missile over it because I prefer higher probability of average numbers.  Saying 2d6 is only slightly better than 1d10+1 I think undervalues the higher chance to get middle of the road numbers.  90%(maybe more) of the time I have a huge margin of victory as long as I don't roll extreme lows and extra dice helps curve it out.

 

This is an awesome resource for determining value.  http://anydice.com/

 

In this case 2d6 vs 1d10+1 say your check to defeat is 10 and you are getting a +5 needing to roll a 4 or better leaves a 30% margin of failure vs 2d6 at 16.67% 

 

On the other end acid arrow becomes better if you really need a big roll to beat something but like I said that is rarely the case.

Edited May 19, 2016 by delpheki

[Borissimo]

 

I prefer the change.  Printed Acid Arrow makes little sense why you'd have an elite spell that's the same power as a basic.

 

Remember, "Elite" doesn't mean "Awesome".  It means "Second-least lame."

 

 

Yes, but Second Lamest should still be better than Lamest! The original Acid Arrow was a little goof in the design and I'm so glad that Paizo greenlighted the change in the digital edition.

[Nathan Davis]

Zombie Minions have Veteran status. Ameiko's Ally card packs a bit more of a punch. A number of Henchmen had their difficulties ticked up. We thought about making the BYA checks that increase difficulty if you fail have some more impact (like adding 2 or 3 to the difficulty vs 1), but haven't done it.

[Brainwave]

I think it's a nice change of pace to have when you run into something like a warlord that penalizes you per die rolled but I kept lightning touch and arcane missile over it because I prefer higher probability of average numbers.  Saying 2d6 is only slightly better than 1d10+1 I think undervalues the higher chance to get middle of the road numbers.  90%(maybe more) of the time I have a huge margin of victory as long as I don't roll extreme lows and extra dice helps curve it out.

 

This is an awesome resource for determining value.  http://anydice.com/

 

In this case 2d6 vs 1d10+1 say your check to defeat is 10 and you are getting a +5 needing to roll a 4 or better leaves a 30% margin of failure vs 2d6 at 16.67% 

 

On the other end acid arrow becomes better if you really need a big roll to beat something but like I said that is rarely the case.

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

[zeroth_hour]

http://anydice.com/program/8655

 

higher end checks on Acid Arrow are slightly better at the cost lower level checks being slightly worse.  But you don't hail mary on every check you make, so I think the 2d6s are slightly better.

 

The only thing that enhances elemental checks from what I remember in RotR is The Old Light (which gives a bonus to Fire checks).
 

Thanks Nathan for highlighting some other stuff, I seem to remember Zombie Minions being harder than it was in the Season of the Runelords I'm going through but I couldn't figure out why until you pointed it out.

[Irgy]

What I think is weird is that they went to the trouble of renaming "Levitate" to "Stride" because it worked ever so slightly differently, and made a big hoo-ha about it in the previews, but then they've changed a whole lot of other cards and haven't renamed a single one. Haste has even had the exact, word-for-word same change as Levitate/Stride, but no rename. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't mind either way with renames, it just seems strangely inconsistent.

 

Acid arrow in particular is a huge change for no rename. That said I'm glad they did it. The original was kind of stupid, the difference in traits comes up basically never and so it was a really disappointing upgrade. As it is it's about half way between lightning touch and scorching ray, as it should be - the average roll is 3/4 of the way between but the higher variance offsets that. Speaking of which...

 

Brainwave - I don't know about you, but for me by the time I have Scorching Ray (at least AD2 obviously but usually not until about AD3 on average), 90% of checks I make will only fail on a terrible roll. So the chances of rolling badly aren't just corner cases, they're all that matters. The average/range are basically irrelevant.

 

Edit - Urgh!

I had a table here, I pasted it straight in from Open Office and it looked great in the edit window. Then when I click post it's not even a table, it's just a worthless mess of numbers. Well you'll just have to take my word for the analysis below (or go to zeroth_hour's link)

 

So if you need a 4+, 5+ or 6+ (including the arcane die, as was originally clear in the table) Acid Arrow is actually worse than Force Missile, and at a fairly realistic target of 8+ it's still a bit worse than half way between the Force Missile and Scorching Ray. By AD3, if I need much more than 8+ on those dice I'll use a card to add more dice. Adding more dice to the picture also makes Acid Arrow slightly less favourable. Also note that changing the d12 (Ezren) to a d8 or d10 doesn't change the relative odds between the spells at all.

 

Of course this is partly just because the game gets too easy in the later adventure decks, so all you're doing is covering yourself for really bad luck. The higher difficulty settings in the app will hopefully change that a little.

Edited May 20, 2016 by Irgy

[delpheki]

I think the renaming of levitate has more to do with the fact that the name levitate and its picture do not really transfer logically to magically warping someone across town.  If anything, I would think Levitate would work more like find traps and add to a check against banes with the trap trait.  Haste on the other hand works just like it does in most RPG's and give the player more/extra actions.  Just my opinion on its flavor though.