Vicious Trident- is this card a trap?

[LemLover]

I believe it is a vicious trident + 1 or +2, I can't recall.  It makes you discard one card to use it, and then discard one card after you use it.  It sure is powerful, but I ended up dropping it from use and picking up a all around use weapon instead. Otherwise it bogs down your hand until you come across the exact right situation to use it.  Thoughts?

[Ethics Gradient]

Pretty much yes, it is a trap.  It's the kind of weapon you might only use out of desperation because losing a few cards is better than losing your entire hand.

 

Maybe in the future there will be some combo to mitigate its drawbacks, but for now The Trident is best used (if used at all) as a one-shot weapon when you want to empty your hand for a ton of damage.

[Nym]

Vicious

 

Pretty much yes, it is a trap. 

 

Likewise for Vicious Axe. Kind of a bummer that the best weapon in the game so far is a common treasure card from Deck 1.

[stevozip]

Give it to Kyra

[cartmanbeck]

Just to give some context, these weapons are based on the Vicious magic weapon property from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, which allows the weapon you're wielding to deal 2d6 extra damage to the enemy at the cost of dealing 1d6 damage to yourself. Be happy they didn't make it exactly like that... 6 damage to use a weapon would be horrible. LOL

[Ethics Gradient]

Give it to Kyra

 

Maybe that could work in the digital version, but in tabletop, the correct answer is: "Tear up the card and throw the tiny bits off the nearest bridge."  

 

#PathfinderOldSchool

[Dainalt]

I kind of feel the same way about a lot of cards.  In the tabletop game, where you can't replay scenarios over and over again, you can't be quite so choosy.  It's necessary to make do with what luck hands you.  In the app, you really can fine tune your hand.  I never even bother with the trident because I never need to.  I rarely fail at combat checks and the times I do tend to be a bad luck event where I feel like taking my chances with no weapon in my hand at all.  Using the trident, I'd be more likely not to have a weapon because it bleeds your hand and deck anyway, meaning less of the cards that really tend to give an edge in tight spots such as blessings, spells, items, or allies.  I'm not going to pretend to be a games theory master.  I'm not.  at all.  ...But I don't see many ways even to take this card that's bad on its face and find some outstanding utility.  I honestly can't think of a planned strategy that makes sense for the trident.  It might situationally have some utility that can make it useful, but those situations call for other strategies that work just as well or better and almost universally superior overall.  It's simply wiser to plan to make the use of other strategies that will deal with the same situation and be useful in other situations as well than to try to machinate a specific situation to make use of one card.

 

Other cards might come in handy later to make the trident shine, but those cards will probably do the same for other weapons.  The Vicious Trident is remarkable in that it's one of the few cards I've seen where I simply will not play with it at all.  I'd take a non-magic regular weapon over the trident because, while it sucks not to have the magic trait on a weapon in later decks, it's less painful to put the trait on an attack than it is to deal with the trident's drawbacks.  If I need greater damage output as provided by the trident, instead of discarding a card to make use of the trident, I can use it directly to impact damage and some of those cards will be revealed or recharged instead of discarded.  On table or in tablet, the trident simply doesn't make the cut... or stab if you prefer.

 

There are some cards in the table top version that I do enjoy because it's a lot harder to harvest the brilliant cards.  You can't play several games in a row on the table in a short period.  So, even if you're inclined to replay scenarios for cards, you simply can't unless you're truly dedicated.  So you learn to use and love cards that don't work quite as well as the perfect card somewhere in the mix because the good card you have is better than the time sink of trying to replay to find the perfect card you don't.  ...And, while I don't care how others play, for myself I find replaying scenarios on the table akin to cheating.  However, that doesn't bother me at all on the app, so go figure.

 

I think a thread talking about how seemingly substandard cards can shine with simple strategies would be great, though.  I should look to see if there is one.