The Muscle - Certain cards not working against them.

[Ivanstone]

I've had two errors when using two cards against The Muscle.

 

1 - Blessing of Achaekek. This blessing lets you add 2 dice to ANY check to defeat a Villain or Henchman. The check to defeat The Muscle is a non-combat Strength check but only one dice was added.

 

2 - Song of Hawkmoon. Discard this card to decrease the difficulty of ANY check against a card with the Human trait by 4. I used this to try to reduce the difficulty of the check by 4 by a different character and no reduction was applied. I did not check to see if the caster could substitute his/her Arcane or Divine skill (+d8) instead of the Strength check.

[Dyjost]

another issue with that scenario is the damage on move, its listed as combat damage but certain spells, items, and armors won't always let you negate the damage for moving.

I also don't think the Muscle properly shuffles either, i've had times where all three of my non-fighters have run into the same muscle while trying to whittle down a 9 card location.
 

also, can i just say, I hate that there's 6-8 locations that have a massive str to be henchman that is frankly impossible for some and stupid difficult for others? even for my fighters i need a good 2-3 buffs lined up to help them beat the henchman and may not even have the blessings left afterwards to close the darn thing because right after is a dc 12+ con check that even fewer characters can make. its just plain unfun to have 3/4 characters unable to explore because they will die from bumping into these muscle heads. meri can evade them at least, kyra and seoni don't have access to enough scry to avoid these guys. I get the whole path is to play up Valeros, but even he barely has the con to close the location without kyra on standby with a blessing or two. its just a straight up bad scenario in my opinion.

Edited June 14, 2018 by Dyjost

[Jenceslav]

It is an overly-difficult scenario, especially on Legendary, as each tier of difficulty increases The Muscle's check by +5 (not listed anywhere in the accompanying texts, similar with Kobolds and Abberations in other Valeros' scenarios). And you are right that Str 11 or 16 (or whatever) is too difficult for most characters.

Valeros and Seelah after AD6 are probably the best shot - due to Seelah's Crusade. And if you pack her with 5 Blessings of Iomedae, 1 Favour of Iomedae, some Cure or Great Aid spells, fully-upgraded Iomedae-and-spell-shuffling power, then you might be able to beat it. I may not be the best player, but it was the only party composition I tried that could finish the scenario - with luck.

[Dyjost]

thanks for the suggestion

I'm wary about adding in new heroes because my current lineup is Seoni, Kyra, Meri, Valeros, and Tonte. adding in Seelah or Amiri would help, but it might also hurt by adding a 6th. was gonna try adding a Lem to support Valeros/Tonte when they were up to bat, but adding my leveled one kinda broke my AP (had to create new and import to reset it, still missing loot from not realizing what had happened) and a new Lem would require sooo much catching up.

Edited June 21, 2018 by Dyjost

[Jenceslav]

thanks for the suggestion

I'm wary about adding in new heroes because my current lineup is Seoni, Kyra, Meri, Valeros, and Tonte. adding in Seelah or Amiri would help, but it might also hurt by adding a 6th. was gonna try adding a Lem to support Valeros/Tonte when they were up to bat, but adding my leveled one kinda broke my AP (had to create new and import to reset it, still missing loot from not realizing what had happened) and a new Lem would require sooo much catching up.

 

Well, I maybe wasn't really clear - my idea was not to add Seelah, but to narrow the hero roster to 2 characters only: Valeros (required) and fully-levelled Seelah.

During my play through the game, I created three different parties and played the whole game with five different groups to level them (some were deleted, so Kyra, Merisiel and Ezren were used twice). That way, I got up to three instances of interesting Loot (Revelation Quill) and even more Chellan swords due to some bug. One of them is sitting in my Stash along with three Aldern Foxgloves.