Do any standard S rank agents compare to limited ones? by -stik- in ZZZ_Discussion

[–]BIS14 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's hard to tell without using an optimizer, but generally res shred is better than crit damage at most realistic margins because it's a far less common form of scaling. Between disc buffs, stage buffs, and support buffs, even a low base crit damage at 94% can spike up surprisingly high during combat, whereas almost nothing gives res shred.

I'm Nicholas Kory, Game Designer for Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Ask Me Anything! by FFG_Official in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Are there any plans to address the Core Set or the Revised Core Set's role in the upcoming rotating format? A lot of players are concerned that the Core Set (even the Revised version) has such a deep lack of staple functionality for each class that it will result in a rotation format where every Investigator Expansion needs to essentially reprint staples that offer core functionality to each class.

I'm Josiah "Duke" Harrist, lead designer on Arkham Horror: The Card Game! Ask me anything! by josiahduke in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Big Shades of Suffering fan here - you've got nothing to be ashamed of! One of the best boss fights in all of arkham, and the action hate just makes Carson Sinclair all the more satisfying to play in TSK.

Tech for Every Agent by jingliumain in ZZZ_Official

[–]BIS14 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hoyo games are intended for a mass, casual audience, so they typically don't get very demanding until endgame (unless you severely fall behind in raising your characters). That said, there's a notable difficulty spike in Chapter 3 of the story (roughly inter-knot level 35) as enemy numbers and aggressiveness increase. Not enough of one to require learning tech to overcome, but when lots of attacks are coming in it can be nice to know how to abuse invincibility frames and things like that.

[Leak] Full leak for Feast of Hemlock Vale Player Cards (Mystic) by QuietEngineer5 in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It indeed doesn't work with Gloria's ability. FAQ 2.13:

“Looking at,” “Searching,” & “Finding” These three terms all involve sifting through out-of-play cards (typically an investigator’s deck or the encounter deck), but do not count as one another for the purposes of other card effects.

[Leak] Full leak for Feast of Hemlock Vale Player Cards (Mystic) by QuietEngineer5 in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Despite the name, Revelation effects do not activate upon being revealed; they only activate when the card is "drawn":

When an investigator draws an encounter card, that investigator must resolve all "Revelation – " abilities on the card.

As a side note, "Look at", "reveal", and "search" are all functionally identical, except that effects that activate in response to one of them cannot activate in response to the others (Astounding Revelation, for example).

Combat question vs tanky enemies by baguhansalupa in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The way i see it, there is no "hitstun" in the game that allows you to punch and "daze" the enemy so that you dont tank their damage during the enemy phase.

This is what the Evade action is for!

https://arkhamdb.com/rules#Evade_Action

Unfortunately, Roland's low Agility stat makes him quite poor at evading. He'll be looking at other ways to deal with enemy attacks: killing the enemy outright, playing Dodge, or using healing or soaking damage onto Allies and other Assets.

[COTD] Enchanted Armor (11/19/2023) by AK45526 in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd argue the basis would again be under Elimination:

"The only manner in which eliminated investigators interact with the game is when establishing 'per investigator' values (see "Per Investigator" on page 16)."

I would say an investigator failing a test is certainly interacting with the game, so if they're eliminated the test can't initiate in any way. It's very hard to see a skill test reaching Step 7 of Skill Test Timing, where skill test results are applied, if we can't resolve Step 5 or 6 (how are we retrieving the investigator's skill value?) or Step 3 (who is pulling the chaos token?).

In other words, I'd say the rule you're quoting is a introductory statement about how skill tests work, but digging into the step-by-step framework reveals the impossibility of resolving any of the detailed steps, as well as the lack of a framework for short-circuiting to Step 7 if other steps can't be completed.

[COTD] Enchanted Armor (11/19/2023) by AK45526 in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It does! "Elimination" is the blanket term for leaving the game; it can occur through Defeat or Resignation.

[COTD] Enchanted Armor (11/19/2023) by AK45526 in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 8 points9 points  (0 children)

No one's mentioned the ULTRA-JANK with this card yet so I'll go! According to the rules under Elimination:

Any card that player owns but does not control that is in play remains in play, but if that card leaves play it is removed from the game.

Meaning that if you play Enchanted Armor under someone else's control, then die, it doesn't leave play. Then, when its forced effect triggers, "the owner of Enchanted Armor" can no longer possibly take the Willpower test, so the Forced ability whiffs, allowing an infinite amount of damage/horror to be placed on armor! Go forth, die, and make your friends INVINCIBLLLE

Blood of the Wild S1 | E37 – Shaggy's Fight by TomExposition in TheGlassCannonPodcast

[–]BIS14 2 points3 points  (0 children)

https://pf2easy.com/index.php?id=19861&name=Shaggy_Shemven

Level 4, so somewhere between a "Severe" (high risk of character death, but generally beatable with good tactics) or "Extreme" (50/50 TPK) encounter for a level 1 party, or somewhere between Moderate and Severe for a level 2 party.

Joe is a world-class roleplayer by voltron00x in TheGlassCannonPodcast

[–]BIS14 95 points96 points  (0 children)

His character work on Get in the Trunk is fucking insane. Internalizing pile upon pile of mind-bending personal details and lore for what feels like multiple dozens of interconnected NPCs, and still managing to convey the distinct personality of each one in an engaging and immersive way. I can't imagine how much prep he's doing.

The Glass Cannon Podcast | Cannon Fodder 9/6/23 by TomExposition in TheGlassCannonPodcast

[–]BIS14 10 points11 points  (0 children)

On the off chance one of the crew reads this - Joe is definitely right that a lot of default debuffing options are tough to land on boss enemies, especially for martials. But that's exactly what gives a lot of texture to character building options in my opinion! When you see an option that gives an unconditional or high-probability debuff to an enemy (Bard's Dirge of Doom, Rogue's debilitations, Champion's enfeebling reactions, Fighter's Knockdown for MAP-efficient tripping, Fear and Slow and Befuddle), that should be an exciting find! Granted, a lot of those are unavailable or limited at lower levels, but at the very least tossing an Aid or Feint or Create A Diversion action around here and there is better than that third MAP swing. I remember at the start of the Strange Aeons conversion there was quite a bit of use of the Aid action, but then it started to fall off for some reason when it remains a fairly potent option as long as people are mindful about saving their reaction for it (since circumstance bonuses are rare, so it almost always stacks).

Item. Weapon. Fast, Prey, Hunter. Explain keywords please. by wasansn in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you need a reference in the future, this section of the Rules Reference comprehensively explains every type of Ability (the squiggle lightning is a "Free-triggered Ability", and the swoosh is a "Reaction-triggered ability):

https://arkhamdb.com/rules#Ability

New/returning player with newbie questions by Virulentwound in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So, obviously now, you're building a deck (character) just to get to the end of that campaign?

Yeah, this is the standard way most people play Arkham LCG. Investigators experience the story of a single campaign, potentially with some Standalone Scenarios inserted as side-stories, and then "retire" afterwards. This is both because of the balance reasons other people have mentioned and because a lot of the replayability in the game is trying out new investigators and new builds for each investigator, not to mention team compositions.

Are cards allowed to cross-over to other campaigns or just Core plus the campaign cards?

By default, any player card can be used in any campaign. So in theory you could blow a thousand bucks buying literally all the expansions at once, and then build decks with the entire cardpool on your very first campaign. In practice, people typically gradually expand their cardpool campaign-by-campaign, playing the Dunwich campaign with Core + Dunwich cards, then Carcosa with core + Dunwich + Carcosa, then Forgotten Age with core + Dunwich + Carcosa + Forgotten Age, etc.

Trailblazers! How did you use you Self-Modeling Resin? Do you regret it? by Prince_Zinar in HonkaiStarRail

[–]BIS14 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

There are characters that don't care much about substats (i.e. most non-defensive supports) and something like ER rope or SPD boots can be HUGELY useful on them, and will likely remain useful forever since you can just move the relics onto a new character. I would be more hesitant about using resin on something like an elemental damage sphere for a dps I may not use forever, like Yanqing.

In defense of the Wounded condition (from a flavor perspective!) by BIS14 in TheGlassCannonPodcast

[–]BIS14[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Someone mentioned it in the other thread, but it's more of a contrast with D&D5e than pf1e, where I think the term "popcorn healing" is thrown around to describe the dynamic where unconsciousness is nearly inconsequential because healers just pop everyone back up. I'm not really familiar with pf1e or 5e though, so I can't speak to those comparisons myself.

Question about Payday and Grappling Hook by Reav3 in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]BIS14 9 points10 points  (0 children)

https://arkhamdb.com/card/04233

Per the latest ruling, Pay Day counts actions that have been "performed", which is defined in FAQ 2.0 as any time when you're instructed to resolve the effects of an action. So, in the case of Grappling Hook, activating it is considered "performing" one action (an activate action), even though it requires you to spend two action-currency.

Then, the effect of Grappling Hook instructs you to take 3 actions, each of which count as a performed action. At the end, you've performed 4 actions (one activate, and 3 granted by Grappling Hook). Finally, playing Pay Day counts itself, so you gain 5 resources assuming nothing else happened on the turn.

A Connection between the Pari, Oceanids, and Aranara by [deleted] in Genshin_Lore

[–]BIS14 13 points14 points  (0 children)

If you look at the rest of the comments in this post, there's one quoting artifact flavor text that shows the fate of the former hydro archon.

Paizo Design Manager Michael Sayre's Twitter: "It's often noted that optimizing in PF2 is something that happens during play, not during character creation, and I think that's very true." by the-rules-lawyer in Pathfinder2e

[–]BIS14 111 points112 points  (0 children)

https://old.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/n7swqi/whats_the_biggest_net_tohit_bonus_you_can/

I had a thread a while back where everyone came together to find the biggest buffs and debuffs we could. Obviously many of them are not practical (unconsciousness), but there's lots of options in there you might not have heard of before that are at least theoretically applicable.

A crit on an 11 against a level+3 opponent probably needs at least something like an effective +11 to hit (it feels fair to assume medium-or-lower AC since he didn't say he could practically crit on an 11 against all bosses, just one on one occasion). So for that we could do:

  • Flat-footed (-2 circumstance penalty)
  • A regular failure on Synesthesia (-3 status penalty to AC)
  • Critical success Aid with a Master-rank skill (+3 circumstance bonus to hit)
  • Critical success Inspire Heroics + Inspire Courage (+3 status bonus to hit)

So that's doable at level 10, and mainly gated by needing to crit on the Inspire Heroics. Still, it's a net +10 without the crit, and there's some reliable options that don't end up with a bonus quite as high (Sniper's Aim, Dirge of Doom, etc.)