My Scoundrel kept getting boots. I had three pairs of special boots before retirement. Which was last night. Now to sort out my new Mindthief.
Your Mindthief is going to want some of those boots. Ratling legs don't carry them very far (especially if you're used to the hyper-mobility of the Scoundrel).
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
I ended up giving my first pair of speedy shoes to Two-Boxes, who had lots of trouble keeping up with the group's flow as well as his much faster minions.
Now that's a TANK class. What's funny is it replaced the Three Spears class for the player, and he started using that character near the end of my Brute's service life, so we have had an unbroken chain of beef through our plays.
I got in my first real game with Gloomhaven last Saturday (I bought it back in January). 3 players (brute, spellweaver, tinkerer). We managed to go through scenarios 1 and 2 in about 4 hours.
Super fun! I think we even managed to follow most of the rules correctly. 1st scenario we got through by the skin of our teeth. 2nd scenario we steamrolled. After that, thanks to a lucky city event, all of us had enough xp to level up.
But we were contemplating a few house rules:
You can loot the dungeon even if you've completed it, rather than being forced to leave the second the scenario is completed
Players can give and/or trade money and items if they want to
Instead of being forced to pick 1 new card at level up, you get both. But your hand can still only have 1 level 2, 1 level 3 etc cards at most. (Effectively free respec.)
Some people use the “loot the dungeon” house rule, which I’m indifferent on, but allowing characters to trade money and items breaks the game pretty thoroughly. There is a reason some characters are better at looting and some are better at gaining XP.
And story-wise, they ain’t friends. They’re all just mercenaries, so there isn’t even a good lore reason for it.
You don't leave immediately when the scenario is complete; you have until the end of the round. Anyone who moves after the player(s) who obtains the last objective is free to loot away.
Personally, I like not automatically hoovering up all the loot at completion. Greed should have a cost.
Other than the advantage/disadvantage rule (which, as previously discussed, is kinda dumb and non-intuitive), I think the only thing I'd houserule is the amount of GP represented by each loot token. I am not about to go out of my way for 2 measly gp; pretty sure it would take at least 5 to even tempt me. But it is what it is.
Vyolynce on
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
Ehhh, I think I'm fine with a house rule that says you're free to loot anything you can until exhausted. I don't play that way personally, but it doesn't make sense for a bunch of loot-and-cash motivated mercenaries to leave that big shiny chest alone after killing everything.
Without getting into specific spoilers there is at least one personal retirement goal that requires the acquisition of wealth so these housrules would completely wreck that.
The game is easy enough as is with having to spend actions mid mission to grab gold.
Also again without getting into spoilers if you let people loot until exhaustion my current character will be able to loot every coin of every dungeon because they never exhaust.
Thematically, I can see the case for missions where you kill everything. There are several others were there is a boss fight so its not a given the mission ends with a desolate dungeon.
Balance wise, the party will over time grow more powerful than otherwise. It also takes some the party/personal decisions with regards to if loot should be picked up rather than help kill a monster. Shouldn't be a problem if that's what the party wants, but the challenge will fade a bit.
Mechanics wise, I don't understand this. Seems like you are spending some chunk of time just pushing around plastic which could be spent starting up a new mission. My party does tend to be a little more AP oriented. Some would spend ten minutes puzzling out which order to play cards in order to get 3 coins instead of 2 (the effort/gain not being the issue as much as optimization). If you're going to cheat, I'd just take all the coins on the map and divvy them out to the surviving party members, simple quick and easy.
We were playing the first scenario, and after slaying all the monsters the last room was filled with dropped monster loot and the chest. One player was exhausted form combat, one had just run out of cards, and the spellweaver could have gone another two rounds at least. Seemed really arbitrary to leave all the cash just lying around.
(In the second scenario, the treasure was behind a locked door, so we had to leave that.)
We were playing the first scenario, and after slaying all the monsters the last room was filled with dropped monster loot and the chest. One player was exhausted form combat, one had just run out of cards, and the spellweaver could have gone another two rounds at least. Seemed really arbitrary to leave all the cash just lying around.
(In the second scenario, the treasure was behind a locked door, so we had to leave that.)
It's really artificial, but I personally like the optimization-tension it adds to gameplay.
Tonight the Faded Legacy party upgraded to Scenario Level 2 (which we realized we probably should have done a week or two ago but hey, easy mode is an option) as we headed to Scenario 7, wherein we snatched victory from the jaws of the defeat that was almost snatched from the jaws of victory.
After splitting up and collecting three of the five goal chests, we mapped out a solid game plan that had our Cragheart jumping behind a bunch of Earth Demons while I Mindthieved my way behind the Forest Imps and Inox Shaman that were distracted by our Scoundrel coming the other way to get the final two. One turn into executing that plan, the Cragheart realized that his only Loot action was lost to a short rest earlier in the game, making it impossible for him to get the goal chest per the rules of the scenario. Meanwhile, our Brute was stuck in the opening room dealing with an amazingly resistant elite Forest Imp and was giving in to despair. I was the only other one anywhere near the Earth Demon chest, but I had just burned one of my Move 4s heading the other way and was running low on cards. Oh and the Scoundrel was just about dead thanks to the Imps poisoning him and then raining down pain. We were pretty sure we were boned and just going to be looting and stunting for XP at this point.
We put our collective heads together and reasoned that it was just barely possible for me to reverse gears and head back toward the Earth Demons while the Brute followed the Scoundrel's path and hooked around, heading for the final room and chest as long as he could duck being obliterated by the Inox Shaman that was still patrolling the hallway (the Scoundrel took out one Imp before falling and I blew up two more with a Cranial Explosion). It would be tight, but the Cragheart was able to sonic spin-dash
(move 6 in a straight line) his way back and forth to lend support/distraction. The Brute jumped over the Bears guarding the fourth goal, drawing their ire but weathering their initial attacks while I set up to get in range for my Loot 2 to claim the final goal without having to deal with the poison/stun traps in between.
On the next turn, the Brute looted his chest and then was mauled by the bears, leaving him at 1hp. He was then finished off by the opening-room elite Imp that had been haunting (and cursing) him literally the entire mission. But I was able to deploy my Loot 2 action to claim the final goal so it didn't matter that half the team was down!
So happy we don't have to replay that one next week.
Vyolynce on
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
Interesting thoughts on house rules. We hadn't even considered them. I'm torn honestly. On the one hand, i want more gold, on the other, i know the game isn't designed that way. I guess right now that i think about it more. There isn't anything i REALLY need from the store. Maybe at higher prosperity i'd want some of it. But even then, i suspect that having limits on what can be equiped where will limit how much gold i actually require. Meh i could go either way i guess.
The rule about looting doesn't make a ton of sense from a role-playing perspective, but it creates some interesting tension between killing monsters and making money. Do you use all for of your movement to get to the next room faster, or do you just use three to pick up that sweet, sweet coin? A lot of the tension of that decision is lost when you know you'll be able to come back and lot everything anyway.
My wife and i are playing through and the only houserule we have is that we can share funds or items. It works for us.
Edit- huh. We actually do another i had forgotten. We treat leveling up as level x unlocks level x cards. We absolutely hated the you only get 1 card system.
My wife and i are playing through and the only houserule we have is that we can share funds or items. It works for us.
Edit- huh. We actually do another i had forgotten. We treat leveling up as level x unlocks level x cards. We absolutely hated the you only get 1 card system.
I can see why you can only use, e.g., max 1 level 2 card in your hand. But I think it's silly that you have to choose which one it is when you level up, and the other is gone forever.
My wife and i are playing through and the only houserule we have is that we can share funds or items. It works for us.
Edit- huh. We actually do another i had forgotten. We treat leveling up as level x unlocks level x cards. We absolutely hated the you only get 1 card system.
I can see why you can only use, e.g., max 1 level 2 card in your hand. But I think it's silly that you have to choose which one it is when you level up, and the other is gone forever.
I like it. Means if someone picks the same class later on they can feel different and new still.
My wife and i are playing through and the only houserule we have is that we can share funds or items. It works for us.
Edit- huh. We actually do another i had forgotten. We treat leveling up as level x unlocks level x cards. We absolutely hated the you only get 1 card system.
I can see why you can only use, e.g., max 1 level 2 card in your hand. But I think it's silly that you have to choose which one it is when you level up, and the other is gone forever.
Wait, is it? I thought you were allowed to add any one card you can access when you level up.
Not that any of us have gone back for a lower-level card yet...
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
My wife and i are playing through and the only houserule we have is that we can share funds or items. It works for us.
Edit- huh. We actually do another i had forgotten. We treat leveling up as level x unlocks level x cards. We absolutely hated the you only get 1 card system.
I can see why you can only use, e.g., max 1 level 2 card in your hand. But I think it's silly that you have to choose which one it is when you level up, and the other is gone forever.
Wait, is it? I thought you were allowed to add any one card you can access when you level up.
Not that any of us have gone back for a lower-level card yet...
This is the case. If you really want both level 2 cards, you can get the second one when you get to level 3.
Of course, IME the choice between the cards usually comes down to opposing playstyles, and higher level cards are almost always better than lower level cards, so I have never actually taken this option. But you're really fucking with the balance of the game if you get to take both cards every time you level up.
My wife and i are playing through and the only houserule we have is that we can share funds or items. It works for us.
Edit- huh. We actually do another i had forgotten. We treat leveling up as level x unlocks level x cards. We absolutely hated the you only get 1 card system.
I can see why you can only use, e.g., max 1 level 2 card in your hand. But I think it's silly that you have to choose which one it is when you level up, and the other is gone forever.
Wait, is it? I thought you were allowed to add any one card you can access when you level up.
Not that any of us have gone back for a lower-level card yet...
This is the case. If you really want both level 2 cards, you can get the second one when you get to level 3.
Of course, IME the choice between the cards usually comes down to opposing playstyles, and higher level cards are almost always better than lower level cards, so I have never actually taken this option. But you're really fucking with the balance of the game if you get to take both cards every time you level up.
Certainly if you get to play with both level 3 cards when you reach level 3, that'd be a huge balance change, but I don't think anyone is advocating that? I don't think it's an unreasonable house rule to add both level 3 cards to your "card pool" so long as you don't bring more than one to any given mission.
I dunno, I like having to make the decision to take some weaker early level up cards that synergize better with other later up level cards than just having my cake and eating it too.
I don't like it because it feels generic and cheap to allow respeccing at any time. Like if you could assign your perks before you started a mission based on what your goal was going to be. There can and should be downsides and upsides to your choices, or else it just feels like I'm moving a piece of plastic around a board instead of a real person.
Alternatively, it feels massively anti-fun to me to have to plan out my entire character build before making my first card selection at level 2. Or having to stick with a card I don't like for the remainder of a character's career if I decide later that I've made a bad choice. And I really enjoy looking at the setup of a mission and trying to figure out which cards would work best for the encounter.
But that's me. You do you. Creator seems to have a "whatever is the most fun for your group" philosophy, which I appreciate.
If I have non-reversible choices I get choice paralysis. Like, when I play a computer RPG, unless I have a guide that tells me exactly what skills etc to get, or can respec relatively easily, I simply don't level up.
It's not about tailoring my cards to the mission, it's about not being locked into a bad choice forever.
Thus, I added both level 2 cards to my card pool, but no more than 1 level 2 card to my hand.
Maybe it’s the chance personal goals i’ve gotten but I don’t feel like I’m stuck with a character that long so I didn’t sweat it.
My first character retired like 5 or so missions in shortly after level 3. (We did play one mission twice because we lost not knowing that we could lose a card to negate damage.)
My character's personal quest involves going on a specific named sidequest, then doing some other stuff afterward. Unless we start unlocking side quests much faster (we've only found one so far), I would not be surprised if I am playing this character to level 9.
One of the other players in my group is almost done with his personal quest, and we've just hit level 2 as a party. So there's some pretty big variability.
Yeah my first personal quest is to do a group of specific quests, which unlocks other stuff which i then have to do as well. Sooo.. not really a quick jaunt. In fact I'm level 5 and have done 1 of said quests.
Our house rules:
We're strict about gold on the ground at the end, unless it's obvious we've won and still have the cards to pick up whatever is near. We've never had gold problems, though we don't augment cards that much, which requires a gold income that all but requires cheating.
We allow a little fudging with choosing cards the first few adventures with a character.
We stay mysterious about character goals up until the party is required to take certain actions to complete it.
We've found that some of the questionable rules help cut down on the enormous amount of analysis paralysis the game induces. At first we were playing where we just unlocked new cards and made a new deck every time, and it could take an hour just for everyone to decide what deck they were bringing that game. The communications rule cut down on the ability to spend ages planning every move, so even though we were sometimes inefficient, games got over faster. There is still a bit of resentment when someone plans a big move only to have someone with a faster initiative spoil it, so we'll fudge that a bit with "I'm winding up for a big hit on xxx" sometimes.
Rule I'm trying to follow but am having a hard time with: People will do illogical things for reasons they aren't allowed to talk about. Don't press the issue if you can't figure out why they aren't playing the way you think they should. (This one is hard, as one of my group has prescriptions that make her goofy at times, so it's hard to tell if it's pain or a personal goal that is making her play like she does. Plus I'm kind of an asshole.)
First time through we failed, but we had a room wrong. Spawned creatures don't get to act on the turn they spawned IF they spawn in the end step, so the demons all portalled in and then got a free hit on us. That didn't go well.
Our third player got his first retirement at the end of the scenario, and he unlocked Circles.
It was my first game with the Mindtheif. Having come from Scoundrel I'm not sure how to deal with having so many loss cards, but I'll get there.
First time through we failed, but we had a room wrong. Spawned creatures don't get to act on the turn they spawned IF they spawn in the end step, so the demons all portalled in and then got a free hit on us. That didn't go well.
Our third player got his first retirement at the end of the scenario, and he unlocked Circles.
It was my first game with the Mindtheif. Having come from Scoundrel I'm not sure how to deal with having so many loss cards, but I'll get there.
I've only played a couple games, but they were the Mindthief, and I really enjoyed it. Spoiler in case anyone cares.
For me the way I tried to balance the loss cards was to only bring one summon (if that, i haven't found the summons too helpful) and one "Aura" (not sure what they're called exactly but the persistent buff to your attack that adds like Muddle or Poison or heal or whatever the initial one is). After that I just prioritized attacks that give XP but are not loss (Mindthief has a few, and some really good ones iirc, like a ranged attack that immobilizes. After that it's just a matter of saving up your big loss cards for the end of the scenario.
So far I haven't had any issues with running out of cards, but again, I've probably played less than 7 missions with them.
Thinking about the gold after mission more, i think i don't like to change the default. If you allow gold to be picked up after fight, then why limit XP gain after combat...and if you can gain xp outside of combat....why don't i level up in town all the time. No, i'm off the fence, mission end is mission end for us. But rule whatever works for you group, is always in play. If it's not fun to be broke, don't be broke...
It's one of those things where I'm happy just waving away any explanations in favour of game balance. "Do I get the coins/chest/try for my battle goals/personal goals, or do I contribute optimally" has lead to plenty of fun situations in our games. Seems a shame to remove that.
First time through we failed, but we had a room wrong. Spawned creatures don't get to act on the turn they spawned IF they spawn in the end step, so the demons all portalled in and then got a free hit on us. That didn't go well.
Our third player got his first retirement at the end of the scenario, and he unlocked Circles.
It was my first game with the Mindtheif. Having come from Scoundrel I'm not sure how to deal with having so many loss cards, but I'll get there.
I've only played a couple games, but they were the Mindthief, and I really enjoyed it. Spoiler in case anyone cares.
For me the way I tried to balance the loss cards was to only bring one summon (if that, i haven't found the summons too helpful) and one "Aura" (not sure what they're called exactly but the persistent buff to your attack that adds like Muddle or Poison or heal or whatever the initial one is). After that I just prioritized attacks that give XP but are not loss (Mindthief has a few, and some really good ones iirc, like a ranged attack that immobilizes. After that it's just a matter of saving up your big loss cards for the end of the scenario.
So far I haven't had any issues with running out of cards, but again, I've probably played less than 7 missions with them.
This is basically my strategy with the Mindthief and I'm like 6xp away from Lv5. Mindthief apparently excels at gaining XP; I racked up 16 last night before the bonus 8xp for clearing an L2 scenario.
Another important skill for the Mindthief?
Invisibility. I am usually the second-fastest player (stupid Scoundrel) and I easily have the lowest HP, gaining only one per level up so even though I'm at L4 I still have single-digit HP. Attracting aggro is not a good idea. Into the Night is a clutch card, but buying a Cloak of Invisibility will pay off huge down the road.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
First time through we failed, but we had a room wrong. Spawned creatures don't get to act on the turn they spawned IF they spawn in the end step, so the demons all portalled in and then got a free hit on us. That didn't go well.
Our third player got his first retirement at the end of the scenario, and he unlocked Circles.
It was my first game with the Mindtheif. Having come from Scoundrel I'm not sure how to deal with having so many loss cards, but I'll get there.
I've only played a couple games, but they were the Mindthief, and I really enjoyed it. Spoiler in case anyone cares.
For me the way I tried to balance the loss cards was to only bring one summon (if that, i haven't found the summons too helpful) and one "Aura" (not sure what they're called exactly but the persistent buff to your attack that adds like Muddle or Poison or heal or whatever the initial one is). After that I just prioritized attacks that give XP but are not loss (Mindthief has a few, and some really good ones iirc, like a ranged attack that immobilizes. After that it's just a matter of saving up your big loss cards for the end of the scenario.
So far I haven't had any issues with running out of cards, but again, I've probably played less than 7 missions with them.
This is basically my strategy with the Mindthief and I'm like 6xp away from Lv5. Mindthief apparently excels at gaining XP; I racked up 16 last night before the bonus 8xp for clearing an L2 scenario.
Another important skill for the Mindthief?
Invisibility. I am usually the second-fastest player (stupid Scoundrel) and I easily have the lowest HP, gaining only one per level up so even though I'm at L4 I still have single-digit HP. Attracting aggro is not a good idea. Into the Night is a clutch card, but buying a Cloak of Invisibility will pay off huge down the road.
Yeah, I will definitely second the XP gain thing. On my first scenario i think I got something like 14 just from action cards.
Played and won Scenario 5 today. Definitely feels like we've got the flow of battle, finally - I managed to make use of my Scoundrel's Smoke Bomb to get Invisibility while opening a door, for once, and did it in such a way that it forced one of the enemies to route through a trap to squeeze past my invisible self. And then next round I aced the biggest enemy that was in that room with the double damage effect from the smoke bomb, woo!
I have noticed I'm falling behind a little on XP, because my deck just is not good at generating it. I think I'm going to start being a little greedier on using my gold for shared purposes, since picking up a little more loot is my advantage compensating the low XP gain. Our Spellweaver on the other hand makes XP like it's his job, and he made it to level 3 this time, while the rest of us are still level 2 - I think that means we'll be fighting Level 2 enemies next time, right? That should be interesting.
Four retirements today, two of them by the same player (he pulled a retirement quest whose condition was witnessing two other retirements, soooo...) Totally new party makeup for next week, I'm excited!
Posts
Your Mindthief is going to want some of those boots. Ratling legs don't carry them very far (especially if you're used to the hyper-mobility of the Scoundrel).
Super fun! I think we even managed to follow most of the rules correctly. 1st scenario we got through by the skin of our teeth. 2nd scenario we steamrolled. After that, thanks to a lucky city event, all of us had enough xp to level up.
But we were contemplating a few house rules:
Thoughts?
And story-wise, they ain’t friends. They’re all just mercenaries, so there isn’t even a good lore reason for it.
Personally, I like not automatically hoovering up all the loot at completion. Greed should have a cost.
Other than the advantage/disadvantage rule (which, as previously discussed, is kinda dumb and non-intuitive), I think the only thing I'd houserule is the amount of GP represented by each loot token. I am not about to go out of my way for 2 measly gp; pretty sure it would take at least 5 to even tempt me. But it is what it is.
The game is easy enough as is with having to spend actions mid mission to grab gold.
Also again without getting into spoilers if you let people loot until exhaustion my current character will be able to loot every coin of every dungeon because they never exhaust.
Balance wise, the party will over time grow more powerful than otherwise. It also takes some the party/personal decisions with regards to if loot should be picked up rather than help kill a monster. Shouldn't be a problem if that's what the party wants, but the challenge will fade a bit.
Mechanics wise, I don't understand this. Seems like you are spending some chunk of time just pushing around plastic which could be spent starting up a new mission. My party does tend to be a little more AP oriented. Some would spend ten minutes puzzling out which order to play cards in order to get 3 coins instead of 2 (the effort/gain not being the issue as much as optimization). If you're going to cheat, I'd just take all the coins on the map and divvy them out to the surviving party members, simple quick and easy.
We were playing the first scenario, and after slaying all the monsters the last room was filled with dropped monster loot and the chest. One player was exhausted form combat, one had just run out of cards, and the spellweaver could have gone another two rounds at least. Seemed really arbitrary to leave all the cash just lying around.
(In the second scenario, the treasure was behind a locked door, so we had to leave that.)
It's really artificial, but I personally like the optimization-tension it adds to gameplay.
We put our collective heads together and reasoned that it was just barely possible for me to reverse gears and head back toward the Earth Demons while the Brute followed the Scoundrel's path and hooked around, heading for the final room and chest as long as he could duck being obliterated by the Inox Shaman that was still patrolling the hallway (the Scoundrel took out one Imp before falling and I blew up two more with a Cranial Explosion). It would be tight, but the Cragheart was able to sonic spin-dash
(move 6 in a straight line) his way back and forth to lend support/distraction. The Brute jumped over the Bears guarding the fourth goal, drawing their ire but weathering their initial attacks while I set up to get in range for my Loot 2 to claim the final goal without having to deal with the poison/stun traps in between.
On the next turn, the Brute looted his chest and then was mauled by the bears, leaving him at 1hp. He was then finished off by the opening-room elite Imp that had been haunting (and cursing) him literally the entire mission. But I was able to deploy my Loot 2 action to claim the final goal so it didn't matter that half the team was down!
So happy we don't have to replay that one next week.
Edit- huh. We actually do another i had forgotten. We treat leveling up as level x unlocks level x cards. We absolutely hated the you only get 1 card system.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
I can see why you can only use, e.g., max 1 level 2 card in your hand. But I think it's silly that you have to choose which one it is when you level up, and the other is gone forever.
I like it. Means if someone picks the same class later on they can feel different and new still.
Wait, is it? I thought you were allowed to add any one card you can access when you level up.
Not that any of us have gone back for a lower-level card yet...
This is the case. If you really want both level 2 cards, you can get the second one when you get to level 3.
Of course, IME the choice between the cards usually comes down to opposing playstyles, and higher level cards are almost always better than lower level cards, so I have never actually taken this option. But you're really fucking with the balance of the game if you get to take both cards every time you level up.
Certainly if you get to play with both level 3 cards when you reach level 3, that'd be a huge balance change, but I don't think anyone is advocating that? I don't think it's an unreasonable house rule to add both level 3 cards to your "card pool" so long as you don't bring more than one to any given mission.
I can see where you're coming from tho.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
But that's me. You do you. Creator seems to have a "whatever is the most fun for your group" philosophy, which I appreciate.
It's not about tailoring my cards to the mission, it's about not being locked into a bad choice forever.
Thus, I added both level 2 cards to my card pool, but no more than 1 level 2 card to my hand.
My first character retired like 5 or so missions in shortly after level 3. (We did play one mission twice because we lost not knowing that we could lose a card to negate damage.)
One of the other players in my group is almost done with his personal quest, and we've just hit level 2 as a party. So there's some pretty big variability.
Steam - Talon Valdez :Blizz - Talonious#1860 : Xbox Live & LoL - Talonious Monk @TaloniousMonk Hail Satan
We're strict about gold on the ground at the end, unless it's obvious we've won and still have the cards to pick up whatever is near. We've never had gold problems, though we don't augment cards that much, which requires a gold income that all but requires cheating.
We allow a little fudging with choosing cards the first few adventures with a character.
We stay mysterious about character goals up until the party is required to take certain actions to complete it.
We've found that some of the questionable rules help cut down on the enormous amount of analysis paralysis the game induces. At first we were playing where we just unlocked new cards and made a new deck every time, and it could take an hour just for everyone to decide what deck they were bringing that game. The communications rule cut down on the ability to spend ages planning every move, so even though we were sometimes inefficient, games got over faster. There is still a bit of resentment when someone plans a big move only to have someone with a faster initiative spoil it, so we'll fudge that a bit with "I'm winding up for a big hit on xxx" sometimes.
Rule I'm trying to follow but am having a hard time with: People will do illogical things for reasons they aren't allowed to talk about. Don't press the issue if you can't figure out why they aren't playing the way you think they should. (This one is hard, as one of my group has prescriptions that make her goofy at times, so it's hard to tell if it's pain or a personal goal that is making her play like she does. Plus I'm kind of an asshole.)
Our third player got his first retirement at the end of the scenario, and he unlocked Circles.
It was my first game with the Mindtheif. Having come from Scoundrel I'm not sure how to deal with having so many loss cards, but I'll get there.
I've only played a couple games, but they were the Mindthief, and I really enjoyed it. Spoiler in case anyone cares.
This is basically my strategy with the Mindthief and I'm like 6xp away from Lv5. Mindthief apparently excels at gaining XP; I racked up 16 last night before the bonus 8xp for clearing an L2 scenario.
Another important skill for the Mindthief?
Yeah, I will definitely second the XP gain thing. On my first scenario i think I got something like 14 just from action cards.
I have noticed I'm falling behind a little on XP, because my deck just is not good at generating it. I think I'm going to start being a little greedier on using my gold for shared purposes, since picking up a little more loot is my advantage compensating the low XP gain. Our Spellweaver on the other hand makes XP like it's his job, and he made it to level 3 this time, while the rest of us are still level 2 - I think that means we'll be fighting Level 2 enemies next time, right? That should be interesting.