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Warden posted:Hey, guess what I just learned we've also been doing wrong?
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Jul 16, 2020 16:45
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| # ? Jun 9, 2024 13:47 |
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Warden posted:Hey, guess what I just learned we've also been doing wrong? The official FAQ is worth a read too if you haven't seen it. It's mostly clarifications of rules that are ambiguous or underspecified, but there are a few actual changes/erratas as well.
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Jul 16, 2020 16:52
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Yeah, I probably should read that closely before I stick my foot in mouth again. Thanks for being helpful to a dumbass newbie, everyone.
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Jul 16, 2020 18:13
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Warden posted:Yeah, I probably should read that closely before I stick my foot in mouth again. DON'T BE THE ONLY PERSON THAT READS IT seriously at least two people in the group need to have scoured the rulebook. it's just good practice
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Jul 16, 2020 18:14
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and whenever you have a question, check the rulebook or faq, because otherwise that's how you have everyone retire a character before realizing you get a perk on leveling up.
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Jul 16, 2020 18:16
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Warden posted:Yeah, I probably should read that closely before I stick my foot in mouth again. I mean, again, it's a dense game with lots of dynamic interacting rules and you're not going to escape mistakes entirely, but yeah it's always good to be thorough. I made sure everyone read through the rulebook at least once and watched a series of tutorial videos and it's still a learning experience. Definitely read the FAQ but don't feel bad for any rules mistakes (feel bad in 3-4 months when you get in a heated rules debate that you end up being wrong about which also happens to most people lol)
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Jul 16, 2020 18:20
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Warden posted:Yeah, I probably should read that closely before I stick my foot in mouth again. For what it's worth I think 90% of the players in this thread have made an equal or greater number of mistakes! This game has a ton of moving parts and a lot of rules and it's really hard to keep all of them straight all the time. My group has played probably 50 scenarios and we're almost done with the main campaign, but we still make the occasional mistake on focus or monster movement, and one of my players just had to ask if he could use a ranged heal on himself last session.
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Jul 16, 2020 18:39
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dwarf74 posted:* Summons are extremely overvalued in base GH. There's a few incredible ones, but largely those are ranged (for example the Spellweaver's Mystic Ally). FH tries to fix this by making some non-loss summons in classes like the Necromancer. Summons are overvalued, but also very play-style and group-composition dependent. They obviously work better with low initiative tanks or curse-stacking builds, and whoever is playing the primary summoning class has to be very precise, but a summons that performs Attack 2 for 10 turns is a loss card that delivered far more damage than almost any single card in the game, plus possibly absorbing one or more attacks. But because you have to have high group coordination, especially to shelter melee summons, most groups simply can't make them work. I can absolutely see how a long-term playtesting group would value them more highly than the average group. Double-loss cards needed a rethink. If they gave you something instead of the default Attack/Move when you played them as a non-loss, and maybe if they couldn't be lost on a short rest, that'd be the start of an interesting dynamic. In most instances, there is no in-game reward for the Scoundrel not exhausting in the final room of a scenario, and the two loss cards allow for one foe to be deleted in most instances. The real drawback is that there's easier ways to simply remove normal or sometimes elite enemies. Without the various executes, those two cards would be more attractive.
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Jul 16, 2020 18:44
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Narsham posted:Summons are overvalued, but also very play-style and group-composition dependent. They obviously work better with low initiative tanks or curse-stacking builds, and whoever is playing the primary summoning class has to be very precise, but a summons that performs Attack 2 for 10 turns is a loss card that delivered far more damage than almost any single card in the game, plus possibly absorbing one or more attacks. But because you have to have high group coordination, especially to shelter melee summons, most groups simply can't make them work There's classes that can make them work, but for classes like the Mindthief, they're basically throwaways. Particularly at higher levels, ime. They're not the very worst cards out there - unlike most losses they can mess with enemies' AI and soak damage - but I don't think they're usually worth the loss for most classes. It's why I'm excited about the Necromancer.
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Jul 16, 2020 19:09
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dwarf74 posted:tbf, 'two-stack' advantage and disadvantage is an extremely common house rule.
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Jul 16, 2020 20:35
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Warden posted:I friend managed to talk me and two others into trying Gloomhaven on TTS a while back. Couple of games later I bought the physical game to support the devs, though we continue to play digitally. I agree with all of your observations. It's definitely no secret that there are balance issues, weird flaws due to rules interpretations, insanely overpowered/underpowered abilities and items, etc. Some of these problems are even being mitigated in the sequel (Frosthaven), for instance the Stamina Potion is being nerfed to recover 1 card instead of 2 and the new classes won't have any "Kill" abilities. At the same time, it's okay for some cards to be outright worse than others. There are a couple of classes that are far and away "the best" due to what's available to them, but there's no "bad" class, which is what matters imo. That's a really hard thing to pull off and part of why Gloomhaven is pointed to as being well-designed, despite its flaws. The Mind's Weakness is a great example, Mindthief has a lot of cards that will simply not be used because TMW is simply too good, but the class is still quite good, thematic, and fun to play while not being overpowered, so those design shortcomings wind up not mattering much. And the Mindthief is still very effective and fun to play even if you dip into the other augments, it's just a little less optimal. dwarf74 posted:tbf, 'two-stack' advantage and disadvantage is an extremely common house rule. And depending on implementation, also super overpowered. If you're throwing away all rolling modifiers on disadvantage then 2 stacks can be okay, but some people don't seem to do that which feels a bit too good. And I saw one post on reddit where on advantage someone was creating a pile just for rolling modifiers, then taking the best of 2 "end" cards and then adding the entire rolling-modifier stack to it; yikes! Play the game however you want imo but they may as well house rule that every attack is actually a Kill at that point
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Jul 16, 2020 21:13
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Yeah I'm not personally a fan of 2 stacks for a variety of reasons, and if I was going to do any houserule it would be something like what TheOneAndOnlyT described above. Quite honestly I am fine still missing on advantage occasionally tho
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Jul 16, 2020 21:24
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Yeah we do two stack where all rollers are discarded on disadvantage. I agree it's a power boost. However, I still prefer it because it makes perks a lot more straightforward and obviously beneficial. Basically, I don't think anyone should ever be put in a situation where it's mechanically better to avoid getting new perks, or avoid rollers, and two-stack does that. It makes all your perks* actual perks. * don't even loving start with that Cragheart perk 
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Jul 16, 2020 21:42
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah we do two stack where all rollers are discarded on disadvantage. (sun) there's a whole lengthy back part of the sun perk tree where they all feel like drawbacks and it sucks!
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Jul 16, 2020 21:45
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:(sun) there's a whole lengthy back part of the sun perk tree where they all feel like drawbacks and it sucks! I'd so much rather increase difficulty a bit than maneuver around all those feelsbad perk choices.
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Jul 16, 2020 21:49
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Yeah my Sun has almost all her perks unlocked and I can't imagine playing advantage RAW.
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Jul 16, 2020 21:56
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah we do two stack where all rollers are discarded on disadvantage. To be fair, the math works out such that picking a rolling modifier is on average more beneficial than not having that perk, even if you're advantaged 100% of the time, so you've never really hurting yourself by adding rolling modifiers to your deck. There's more than one thread on BGG where the math has been worked out for a few classes under different conditions. Yes, there are going to be times where you roll into a miss while advantaged and that feels bad, and that design can be improved, but in the long run you still come out ahead despite those flaws (and obviously the RAW rules are much better for you if you're disadvantaged, since rolling into a non-miss is beneficial when the alternative may be missing). The perception of rolling modifiers being "bad" are largely a result of observation bias; you remember the times that you roll into a miss while advantaged, whereas you don't remember (or often, don't get to observe) the situations where rolling modifiers saved a disadvantaged attack or were simply a small overall benefit. But we can acknowledge this while still granting that it does feel bad to roll into a miss on advantage and that maybe this shouldn't happen
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Jul 16, 2020 23:54
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Jaws pretty much solved the issue (rolling modifiers act as terminal modifiers for advantage / disadvantage) and I'll probably start using that version at some point.
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Jul 17, 2020 00:02
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I'm not going to try to convince anyone else to do two-stack, just spelling out where my priorities are. It's a rational choice under the circumstances, imo. IIRC, though, similar math threads have demonstrated that two-stack is also not that big an advantage. Doctor Spaceman posted:Jaws pretty much solved the issue (rolling modifiers act as terminal modifiers for advantage / disadvantage) and I'll probably start using that version at some point.
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Jul 17, 2020 00:05
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dwarf74 posted:There's no rollers in Jaws. I thought the rules still talked about them though?
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Jul 17, 2020 00:23
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dwarf74 posted:IIRC, though, similar math threads have demonstrated that two-stack is also not that big an advantage. Yeah, the most in-depth thread I saw lead to it being like a 0.1 or 0.15 average increase in damage. That's not nothing, but it's not a very big increase. I'm fine with the very slight imbalance in exchange for the advantage/disadvantage rules making more intuitive sense.
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Jul 17, 2020 00:27
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Has Gloomhaven Helper been updated to play nice with Jaws of the Lion? We're starting the latter tomorrow and I don't want to go back to The Dark Days of doing all the fiddly bullshit I hate. I absolutely adore the game, but I would never play it without the app.
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Jul 17, 2020 01:09
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:One of my friends did the math on this and came up with an alternative to the advantage rules which I think has a roughly equal EV to the rules as written. Basically, the normal drawing rules still apply in advantage and disadvantage, but if you draw a null on advantage, that's -2 instead, and if you draw a 2x on disadvantage, that's +2. It makes rolling cards much less of an active detriment during advantage, while also keeping characters' damage about the same as before. I think this is actually in the rulebook as an alternative/easy mode.
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Jul 17, 2020 01:16
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Doctor Spaceman posted:I thought the rules still talked about them though? It ends up being pick your favorite if ambiguous for advantage, pick the worst (or first if ambiguous) for disadvantage. Xiahou Dun posted:Has Gloomhaven Helper been updated to play nice with Jaws of the Lion? We're starting the latter tomorrow and I don't want to go back to The Dark Days of doing all the fiddly bullshit I hate. Missions and everything.
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Jul 17, 2020 01:16
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I must have conflated a few things I'd read then.
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Jul 17, 2020 01:19
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dwarf74 posted:
Sweeeeeeeet. I just finished reading all the rules. Is there a thread consensus on what do to do with the first couple of scenarios if everyone is already an experienced player? Nothing I'm about isn't in the rulebook so it couldn't be called a spoiler. I appreciate how the scenarios are even more carefully designed to show off rules and build complexity, but we've beaten the base game and Forgotten Circles so I don't think we need to play 3 scenarios before we find out what poison does or whatever. The three takes I can conceive of off the top of my head are 1) do it exactly as written and probably be bored cause we're used to it being complex ; 2) start as proper level 1 characters and risk being bored for the opposite reason cause we're just gonna eat the monsters' lunch ; 3) skip ahead a few scenarios and lose content. None of these sound appealing.
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Jul 17, 2020 02:37
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Skip the first two, there's nothing to those, I'd start with the 3rd just at a higher difficulty level (2 should feel like a normal easy scenario), and use all the normal cards for everything instead of the A / B cards and basic monster cards. 4 is a straight up normal scenario, with appropriate difficulty and everything, so definitely don't skip past that.
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Jul 17, 2020 02:52
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They go quick, but there's rules in the back of the Glossary for bringing in Gloomhaven characters. I'd just follow the same guidelines, but use them for the Jaws guys if you want to skip them. Or just play them, they aren't bad 
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Jul 17, 2020 06:10
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Yeah I read the rules in the back. They seemed kind anemic. We'll figure it out as a table tomorrow.
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Jul 17, 2020 06:14
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Got a few questions, if you're willing to answer me. Angry-Face L3 - Prosperity 4 Darkened Skies hits everything within Range 3. If the player uses Hawk Helm, it then hits everything within Range 4, correct? And you can pop Piercing Bow and Minor Power Potion with that, so everything within Range 4 gets hit with Attack 4 which ignores all shields, yes? And if a monster is in adjacent hex, then that attack is rolled with Disadvantage? Cragheart L6 - Item 112 from random side scenario 65 Cataclysm is a melee attack entirely, since the word "Range" doesn't appear anywhere, right? So, if I consume Earth mana and use Ancient Drill, every attack within the AoE is Attack 8 Pierce 2?
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Jul 17, 2020 11:14
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Warden posted:Got a few questions, if you're willing to answer me. Yes to everything I think.
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Jul 17, 2020 11:15
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Warden posted:Got a few questions, if you're willing to answer me. Yes to all. That said I would personally still never take the Angry Face card in question. The Cragheart one is decent.
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Jul 17, 2020 12:05
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NRVNQSR posted:
Do you mind elaborating on that? Does it have something to do with having more non-loss top attacks for the first few rest cycles?
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Jul 17, 2020 12:16
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I didn't take that Angry Face card because it's better suited to larger groups.
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Jul 17, 2020 12:29
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Warden posted:Do you mind elaborating on that? Angry Face Not really; the class has a huge hand size and very few important losses so it will almost never have any longevity problems. The issue is more that Darkened Skies is a card that's great close to the action and very weak far away from it. Angry Face generally isn't close to the action - partly because they don't need to be with most of their attacks range 4 or higher, but mostly because it's a class that moves very, very rarely. You will often only take three move actions in an entire scenario, if that, because using your bottom actions for Dooms is so much more effective. That makes it very difficult to do the dance in-and-out of combat that's required to use a card like Darkened Skies effectively. That said, there is an exception in the form of Felling Swoop, which is one of your best movement cards and will often end up putting you in the thick of combat. Following up a Felling Swoop teleport with an AoE is high risk, but has the potential to be pretty strong. Even so, passing up amazing cards like Press the Attack or even Flight of Flame at level 4 to take it would feel like a hard choice for me.
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Jul 17, 2020 12:41
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Doctor Spaceman posted:I didn't take that Angry Face card because it's better suited to larger groups. We have a four-player group. Brute, who is either one or two scenarios away from retirement, a Saw who I *think* will retire in 2 to 3 scenarios based on the kill notes on his sheet, my Cragheart who is 0/15 on his Personal Quest, and newly acquired Angry Face, who we haven't used in a Scenario yet. We are at Prosperity 4, but we're 1 donation and two retirements away from Prosperity 5. Edit. Also, thank you NRVNQSR for your answer. We're still trying to figure out Angry Face's cards and starting items, and I am not even playing it, we just like planning and theory-crafting together. Warden fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 17, 2020 12:44
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Warden posted:Do you mind elaborating on that? Yes to your spoiler, the other level 3 card is excellent and exactly what you need at this stage of the game. It also scales better, and upgrading it is fairly cheap. Drop 100g into it and you've got yourself a non loss 10 initiative attack 6 range 4 1xp, which is absolutely fantastic. You'll still be using press the attack at level 9 if you ever reach that point. I took flight of flame at level 4 instead of darkened skies because jump 5 + boots gives you all the repositioning you need in one bottom action, which means more time to doom your targets, which translates into a fair amount of damage/utility across a scenario. And sometimes, you just need to run a lot. It all comes down to either focusing on your very consistent single target damage or having an expensive but powerful trump card for big groups. I'd say you already have all the AoE you need with a cragheart and a saw. Eraflure fucked around with this message at 13:12 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 17, 2020 13:08
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More on Angry Face: I like Press the Attack and Flight of Flame too. Level 5 is a good time to go back and pick up Darkened Skies if you want it. Inescapable Fate is good for one particular late-game build and Wild Command is fine but not essential.
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Jul 17, 2020 15:14
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Doctor Spaceman posted:More on Angry Face: I like Press the Attack and Flight of Flame too. Level 5 is a good time to go back and pick up Darkened Skies if you want it. This is exactly what I recommend too. Darkened Skies is amazing but it's better at higher levels.
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Jul 18, 2020 04:57
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So we started Jaws of the Lion today (gently caress it's weird being level 1 again), and jumped ahead to the third scenario and we were bored to tears. Like it's still Gloomhaven and it was pretty fun, but we were playing at a level up and we still were just eating the monsters's lunch. We might as well have had god-mode one, we barely even got hit cause we just turned the monsters into salsa on contact. Like this might be because we've played a lot already, but we rapidly were doing planning based around "O yeah the monsters will die before I move I guess I'll loot some stuff and you can open the next door?" It probably picks up soon and I'm sure we'd have loved it when we started, but if you've played through all of Gloomhaven and FC, the difficulty curve takes a hell of a dip.
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Jul 18, 2020 07:09
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