I actually meant “should I have gone with 3 characters” when I was talking about the difficulty. :)
As for if you should buy it, I assume you have watched some videos and have a basic understanding of the rules and mechanics. So assuming you enjoyed the idea of characters having decks to represent both their overall life score as well as their equipment, spells, allies, and etc. and assuming you think it sounds like a cool way to play where you assign some characters to a given location deck to explore said deck and encounter the cards and barriers there, that’s 90% of the game. If that all sounds like a fun thing, go for it!
But remember that there are some sticking points with some of the games detractors.
First up, it’s very random. You can mitigate this with your abilities and cards and blessings, but at the end of the day like @triggercut put it, it’s all just odds. For every high of rolling a 6 on d6 when it’s your last ditch effort to accomplish something really important, you’ll roll two 1’s and a 3 when you need a 9 or better and have 3d12+2 on a skill check.
Second up, it’s timed. You have those 30 turns, like you say, and you have to close the locations and accomplish the goals before time runs out, which can go hard or easy depending on the random shuffle of the location decks. However, this is also the meat of the game - the decisions and strategies you employ to assign characters to locations, when to close a location and when to keep exploring anyway, how to account for the effects of a location closing or the abilities a location can provide, too.
So assuming those caveats don’t bother you, this is probably for you.
Actually, the app does have a distinct coop mode. At least, it did when I last checked. But it’s local coop, so everyone plays on the same device. In practice it’s not much different from the usual mode. When it’s your turn, it will block your ability to see other players’ hands. If you want help during a check, it will highlight the characters who can help you, and tapping on their portraits will ping them. When you hand the device back to them, they will be notified they have a help request and have the option to contribute cards or abilities.
All in all it’s pretty cumbersome, but it does prevent the “alpha gamer” problem. Also, Obsidian said they intend to implement online multiplayer, which I suppose would use the same interface.
Yes, this is pretty much a model for online coops. One thing that sticks out is the voting/advice system. When a target is being selected on another player’s turn, you can click a card just as though it were your turn. But since it’s not your turn, it simply puts your avatar next to the card as a suggestion for the player who actually has to decide. IIRC “Don’t care” is also an option, just like in the single player game. It’s a seamless way to provide advice. And in some cases the votes are binding, just like in the real game.
By the same token, why would you play D&D with more than two people? You need a DM and one other person, anyone else is superfluous!
For me what really clicked was when I realized the importance of moving characters from location to location as needed. In my first (unsuccessful) run at the first chapter, my mage wasted several turns blocked by an unpassable rockslide. It finally dawned on me that I could move my thief to the location and use her to pass a dexterity check to get past it, but by then it was too late.
Right now I’m running a party of 3 (a druid, a barbarian, and a ranger walk into a bar…), and beat the first chapter after the tutorial with plenty of time to spare, but I’ll be curious to see how the difficulty ramps up.
Well said by @triggercut and @Scotch_Lufkin from someone who also has experience with the physical and mobile versions.
With the latest mobile update and Steam release, they added an option to display chance of success. Now, purists won’t use it, which I can’t fault, but it really will tell you the impact of adding a wimpy d4 to a check, for example.
Prior to its inclusion, I was trying to calculate roughly everything in my head, which isn’t easy when some checks are using multiple d12, d10, d8, d6, and/or d4 dice! If you’re rolling, for example, 1d10, 1d8, and 1d4, you might think, “Ok. The max I can roll is 22 and the min is 3, giving me a median of 12.5. So I should be able to clear this check 17.” But there’s more to it than that, and that can frustrate new players when they fail such a check.
As Scott alluded to, regarding closing locations, sometimes you’ll find the Henchman very early in a location. If you defeat him, do you close it, thereby banishing the remaining boons (precious treasure!) and banes, or leave it open to fight through those banes for the remaining boons? If you choose the latter, you then must encounter the remaining banes, as there’s no other default method to close a location (if the Villain isn’t there) once the location’s Henchman is defeated. Greed or no greed? :-)
I had forgotten that I talked with Tom about Pathfinder on one of the podcasts. Good times. :)
It is a pretty darn cool game (with statistical wrinkles that you need to accept) and I’m enjoying the digital version on iPad long after the physical one. The biggest trouble for me as I return to it is the difficulty of multiple heroes. You need to be quick on closing locations, and even if having more skills or blessings help, I keep getting stuck having the heroes that can’t get the job done eating up those critical blessings cycles towards the end. For example, I get stuck really needing a Divine check to make progress, and suddenly everyone besides the Cleric is just burning turns. I think I just need to relearn some tricks and better balance my allies rather than specializing.
Currently I’m running Cleric, Warrior, Wizard, and Rogue. I might dump the Wizard though. While I want Ezren for intelligence checks and he’s great with spells, having zero blessings hurts all around.
Oh, hey cool, I was going to @ you but I didn’t know your user name!
One thing I’m finding with Ezren though, is he can clear through a lot of cards very, very quickly if you put him in locations with spells to pick up, as he gets a free explore after learning new spells. He can also use allies to get more explores, which is what I’m doing, and that works well. He’s the one that usually closes a location first actually, for me.
Oh I agree. I have a love/ hate thing with Ezren. He has great turn stamina as he gets to go again and again while also refilling his hand. There are also the times that he burns out as he fails too many checks and has nothing left as he needs spells. Yet, his utter division from the divine can really complicate the party’s ability to cooperatively pull through. That is one of the cool things about Pathfinder, it does a neat trick in translating fantasy tropes into card mechanics.
I love Ezren. Brilliant, fast, and a million tricks. And lemme tell you, if you don’t have somebody with Arcane, you are gonna pay for it later.
Actually, while I’m posting I might as well include my favorite party:
Ezren, Druidy halfling, Thief chick, Seelah.
Ezren: Tons of spell choices, tears through magic places, closes Arcane places like a champ.
Druidy McNatureface: Her animal bonuses eventually make her amazing at everything, solid spell use too.
Thievery the Sneak: Explores dex areas by herself, a killer scout who has some great high level abilities. She also specializes in trap killing and solving areas that regularly summon enemies.
Seelah: My paladin bae. Your principal weapon user, tons of blessings, and absolutely burns through locations when you don’t care about boons. Probably my favorite character, she just radiates heroism to me.
By the time you get to Skinsaw Murders, Ezren is a ridiculously powerful, booming machine, with the caveats mentioned by others about his lack of ability to offer blessings to other team members. Has to be played well.
I just finished all the scenarios recently (on mobile) with a party of Seelah, Kyra, Sajan and Seoni. Kyra’s ability to put Sarenrae blessings on top of her deck is ridiculous. My card-recycling drunken master Sajan was pathetic in comparison, requiring multiple feats and cards to half the effect. Seelah and Seoni were both solid.
So, if I choose to buy this on Steam, is the base game enough, or do I need the Obsidian Edition? It’s a 60% difference in price, which is somewhat significant.
Nope, you can get everything you would really want/need for $18. The Epic and Legendary cards are free as separate DLC (or they were yesterday, at least). The Obsidian Edition will give you access to the upcoming Goblin campaign though, but you could just buy that later if you were interested.
Here is what you do get extra:
The Legendary Dice are pretty cool though. Here is a screenshot I took last night where I’m using some of them I like.
And the Alt Equipment sets give a different flavor for each character, like the Scholar Wizard that has a slightly smaller boost to Arcane checks, but can take extra cards from revealing items when he casts a spell, and also loses a (useless for him) weapon slot and gains an (invaluable) item slot.
The promotional ally cards are pretty sweet, too.
The 5,000gp is a fun way to open a bunch of treasure chests and maybe get some great loot to start with, but that’s kind of like “easy mode” depending on what you get. For example, I got a chest as part of the tutorial (500gp value) and it had a freaking Warhammer +3 in it, which I put right in my fighter’s deck. Kind of crazy. That’s like a chapter 3 item!
I am assuming the line item I didn’t grab in my screenshot under the Obsidian Edition…
is the same as the free Epic and Legendary DLC that is available. It’s named the exact same thing, so it probably is.
Hm. I reinstalled this on my new phone, but I can’t find the unopened chests from last year’s E3 digital ticket bundle. Maybe I actually opened all and then forgot about it?
You probably don’t need it but if, like me, you are falling in love with the game, you’ll be glad you picked it. It’s tough to ask others that sort of thing! ;)
As Scott said multiple times, you need to be enjoying the randomness to fall in love with the game, but if you do… Oh boy, you are in trouble.
As an early dabbler, I am amazed at how smart the card=HP thing is, and at how well it translates into the various class (the rogue glass cannon vs the fighter’s seemingly limitless pool of health is striking).
Oh yeah, Blood Bowl is a great example where the strategy is in how you mitigate risk, and while Pathfinder isn’t quite on that same level as Blood Bowl (which is even more random, I think) it’s very much in the same category.
And the Pathfinder setting (which of course is based on DnD 3.5 rules, though that doesn’t come into play here mechanically) is just a wonderland of really great ideas. If the idea of your fighter exploring a location and finding a Spiked Chain +1 or your Sorcerer finding an Acid Arrow spell excites you, then you should probably have already been playing this. :)
I really wasn’t trying to talk you out of the base edition (which I’m sure is totally fine) but for only $10 more you get some cool goodies, future goodies too, and it helps support Obsidian a little, which means we may yet see online multiplayer support added some day.
[quote=“magnet, post:442, topic:73372, full:true”][quote=“tomchick, post:433, topic:73372”]
Well, sure, just like you can play solitaire with others by letting them place the red cards while you place the black cards.
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By the same token, why would you play D&D with more than two people? You need a DM and one other person, anyone else is superfluous!
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You could have stopped at “Why would you play D&D”. :)
