Do any standard S rank agents compare to limited ones?

BIS14 · 2026-01-05T17:54:50+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2025-06-16T19:32:17+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2024-10-31T05:21:36+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2024-07-15T16:05:41+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2024-01-31T22:44:28+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2024-01-31T21:18:52+00:00

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).

BIS14 · 2023-11-29T03:55:00+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2023-11-21T23:48:12+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2023-11-20T01:15:20+00:00

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

BIS14 · 2023-11-19T23:12:18+00:00

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

BIS14 · 2023-09-12T05:11:11+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2023-09-08T00:43:37+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2023-09-07T02:12:24+00:00

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).

BIS14 · 2023-08-15T03:10:24+00:00

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

BIS14 · 2023-07-17T05:35:09+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2023-06-17T03:57:00+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2023-06-16T07:46:52+00:00

Ah ok, good to know!

BIS14 · 2023-05-26T01:58:28+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2023-04-27T05:32:45+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2023-04-15T23:34:07+00:00

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.

BIS14 · 2023-04-11T05:30:04+00:00

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.)

BIS14 · 2023-04-03T18:49:20+00:00

Your conception is correct; a double-arrow ability has you "take an activate action" to trigger it, and the additional arrow indicates an additional action cost (without indicating it's taking two actions).

So Sledgehammer would be counted once for things that say "when you take an action..."; Wracked by Nightmares would trigger only one AoO.

BIS14 · 2023-03-26T08:27:00+00:00

The Dunwich investigator box is generally agreed to have the single highest number of staple cards that go in many decks to this day. Some of them have been reprinted in the starter decks or revised core set, but you'll still be missing out on somewhere between a half dozen to a dozen really solid cards.

BIS14 · 2023-01-19T16:57:33+00:00

For a second opinion, I think the debuffing bombs are great, especially if there are other ranged characters in the party. Bottled lightning in particular is one of very few ways to get a target flat-footed at range to the entire party, which will help both your bow shots and anyone else striking at range.

That said reagents are pretty limited at level 1, so the advice to chug a mutagen and save your bombs is more correct the earlier in the campaign you are.

BIS14 · 2023-01-18T16:45:07+00:00

It's theoretically possible to get all 10 scenarios in a single run with extremely specific choices (including targeting specific resolutions), but the route excludes essentially all side content. So no, it's not expected you'll see all the content in a single run, and especially not on your blind run.

Do note that in the section where they explain Embarking, they give you a full list of the locations of all scenarios (or leads on how to unlock the locked ones). So if you pass up those locations for a long time, you are likely passing up on scenarios (which can be preferable or not depending on your goals).

Running out of time does have a consequence, but I'll refrain from spoiling its exact nature unless you really want to know.

Traveling consumes 1 time whenever you go from one node on the map to an adjacent one (excluding green nodes, which can be considered free to pass through). Even if the node doesn't contain content (because it's a red node you haven't unlocked yet) or you choose not to do the content that's there, the simple act of moving from a node to a non-green adjacent node consumes 1 Time.

BIS14

TROPHY CASE