Gloomhaven Catch-All

Certis wrote:

It's funny, because the manual states (I think) the scenario ends as soon as the goal is met. So you kill the last enemy and that's that. It's just bonkers to me, like, do I kite this last dude so I can loot that chest? I'm assuming the game is balances with this restrictive loot collection in mind so we don't hoover up all the loot on the map after finishing. Instead, we just give ourselves one extra round after finishing the scenario to play cards and collect what we can.

I've seen that as a pretty common house rule. Remember, that the scenario doesn't immediately end when the goal is met though, the round still fully completes. So if people still have actions to grab gold and treasure, by all means.

Considering how skin of the teeth we tend to be, a lot of treasure (and unlocked side scenarios) would be missed without the post-combat extra round for us.

Certis wrote:

It's funny, because the manual states (I think) the scenario ends as soon as the goal is met. So you kill the last enemy and that's that. It's just bonkers to me, like, do I kite this last dude so I can loot that chest? I'm assuming the game is balances with this restrictive loot collection in mind so we don't hoover up all the loot on the map after finishing. Instead, we just give ourselves one extra round after finishing the scenario to play cards and collect what we can.

I thought the same thing, but it is as Minotaar mentioned. When I went back to check the rules from they scenario I mentioned above, it said "the remainder of the round is played out, then the scenario ends" (p.33) Potentially a difference maker in non "kill all monsters" goals, as the monsters may get some last shots in. Also gives some looting time.

This definitely seems to be to area that is house-ruled the most. So far we have played by the rules as written. We haven't yet resorted to kiting a monster, but came close one scenario. I ended a scenario when my Scoundrel son...man that works on multiple fronts...wanted another round to run around and loot. My Spellweaver did not care for such material concerns! Seems to be the weakest mechanic logically, but, like you, I assume there is a balance element in play to force decisions in game.

Tempted by an extra round however, as we recently unlocked the ability to modify our hero decks. Got very excited and then looked up the gold requirements to add +1 or base effect/elemental modifiers. Welp, this will take awhile, unless we hit a big gold reward event after blowing all my gold on a fancy new bow.

The creator of Gloomhaven has said that he tried to balance it on terms of gold collection etc, most notably how certain classes just loot better than others. Looking at Scoundrel specifically she's designed to have a ton of trinkets and extras, same as the Tinkerer, whereas the Spellweaver not so much.

I guess the real measure would be if you find it's becoming too easy it might be due to more items than accounted for, which you can then just bump up the difficulty as needed.

We play mostly by the rules. We do allow sharing of our gold while in town, but on a case-by-case basis. I think it only makes sense to help the Cragheart afford the nicer armor, since it means he is still around to absorb the hits I would otherwise be taking. This has really kept the tension high during the end of a scenario, since we know that it will end at the end of the round where we complete the objective. I think the balance is not only to prevent players from getting too much money (although I'm sure that is a part of it), but to prevent punishing players who either through bad luck or bad hand management are out of the fight first.
Our first two scenarios our party only had the Scoundrel left, and we only won because of a lucky Crit draw on one occasion, and the Tinkerer recovering the Scoundrel's fastest Move card as his last round on the other. The third scenario I felt really guilty (but not guilty enough to not do it), but I intentionally didn't hit the last monster with my attack so that I could get one extra round to grab a treasure chest. If either me or the Scoundrel had taken enough damage to lose a card, or if either of us drew a Null card, the whole scenario would have been a failure - and that's where the game gets great - those moments of insane pressure, trying to eke out one last treasure chest, possibly at the cost of the mission.

Minotaar mentioned the point I was going to raise: That extra round(s) will mess with the balance of the loot collecting and experience gaining classes. Like, OK, the scenario is over but you still have more turns and lots of cards... one character walks around hoovering up loot while another blows large movement 1-use cards to gain the experience? The characters really do seem designed to play differently and that includes progression along loot / experience paths.

My wife was getting a little salty about never getting treasure chests because I'm the Brute and she's the Tinkerer (therefore I'm always in front and closer to the treasure chests when looting is possible). We've started to hit more interesting scenarios where the loot is behind traps and stuff and that's made it easier for her to use her loot 2 card and disarm trap cards to get into position for more loot. I have a feeling once the game is in full swing and we start having characters with wildly different levels, etc, we'll feel the mechanics a lot more intuitively.

We did houserule (as others on BGG did) that if one character gets a super amazing item that they don't even want then the other character has a 1 time option to buy it instead just watching it go into the shop (at the same 1/2 price).

Atras wrote:

I think the balance is not only to prevent players from getting too much money (although I'm sure that is a part of it), but to prevent punishing players who either through bad luck or bad hand management are out of the fight first.

After our discussions and research it came down to 2 things:

1) At some point you're going to have a party with high and low level characters simultaneously and sharing gold gets very problematic at that point.

2) the character balancing mentioned above.

We're grudgingly following the rules right now but we're making on the fly changes when the fun seems to be getting sucked out in order to 'keep progression within the class' or some such.

We don't do item sharing or gold sharing with a few exceptions:

Party loot is party loot, pass that around freely. That's anything from an event or quest that says 'Party Loot: XYZ'
If someone is going to sell an item back to the shop, a party member can 'make a better offer' to get it instead, basically pay half + 5g.

Taking gold off the ground in the game is pretty cut throat. There's some begging and pleading that occasionally wins out but mostly it's the proper 'nya nya' response. I think I've also mentioned that we play with the 'one more round for room looting' rule at the end of a scenario.

Minotaar wrote:

The creator of Gloomhaven has said that he tried to balance it on terms of gold collection etc, most notably how certain classes just loot better than others. Looking at Scoundrel specifically she's designed to have a ton of trinkets and extras, same as the Tinkerer, whereas the Spellweaver not so much.

I guess the real measure would be if you find it's becoming too easy it might be due to more items than accounted for, which you can then just bump up the difficulty as needed.

Funny thing about that. For only having one loot card, the Spellweaver can loot quite effectively. Range damage to multiple targets + summons. 4 Move card + Loot 1 card. Use the bottom of the Loot 1 card (Move 8 Jump Lost Card) to grab the big chest. You may even recover that Move 8 Jump card to use again depending on the round. I think the Spellweaver has gotten all but one of the "special" chests so far. That card has turned out to play a pretty big role in our games so far, much more than I ever would have suspected.

The trade off is the Scoundrel has better turn to turn looting options, so over time is still likely to out loot, as should be the case. The more I think about it, RAW (rules as written) seem to be working pretty well for us.

Dang, I LOVE this game. Sad I won't see high level Spellweaver based on her quest but looking forward to playing other classes, either an unlock or one of the other four starters.

I hadn't considered the gold balancing / effect of having lots of items when we scooped up all the gold at the end of the mission. I think I will go along with you guys thought and say "one more round after last bad guy is dead" to try to balance out greed with what Isaac designed.

We don't gold share in our group since thematically we're supposed to be a group of mercenaries who are out for themselves. Also I enjoy the decision making of "do I spend time trying to get that gold or do I try to help complete the scenario's objectives"... you have to hand manage carefully to accomplish both. That adds to the challenge of the game. We're still early in the game though...we successfully completed 1 + 2, but failed on 67. This game is so much fun!

Certis wrote:

It's funny, because the manual states (I think) the scenario ends as soon as the goal is met. So you kill the last enemy and that's that. It's just bonkers to me, like, do I kite this last dude so I can loot that chest? I'm assuming the game is balances with this restrictive loot collection in mind so we don't hoover up all the loot on the map after finishing. Instead, we just give ourselves one extra round after finishing the scenario to play cards and collect what we can.

We just finish out anyone's turn who hasn't gone in the round that the goal is met. We _want_ to hosuerule that we get all the phat lewtz we left lying around, but assume that balance reasons make it where you're not supposed to.

Playing the scoundrel, I've been focusing more on loot in recent scenarios as I don't seem to get as much EXP as the my 2 buddies.

We're only hosueruling 2 things:
1) We allow selling of items to other players for cost on card
2) If we ever get Advantage, we won't follow the rules as written for when a rolling modifier shows up. We will turn 2 full stacks of attacks and pick the one we want. This hasn't happened, yet, as we've been getting rid of the negative attacks from our decks so far.

-BEP

2) If we ever get Advantage, we won't follow the rules as written for when a rolling modifier shows up. We will turn 2 full stacks of attacks and pick the one we want. This hasn't happened, yet, as we've been getting rid of the negative attacks from our decks so far.

That's funny, that's how we did it in our first scenario before rereading the rules and realizing that they meant it a totally different way.

Of course we were also using our entire class modifier deck (as in, ALL the cards you get from perks) rather than the base deck (which includes no 'stacking' attacks).

We screwed up a lot of stuff in our first scenario.

In all fairness, the way the rulebook is laid out a lot of it makes no sense (or is hidden in caption illustrations) until you have already played through a scenario once.

bepnewt wrote:

1) We allow selling of items to other players for cost on card

So instead of the store getting the money (ie the money going away) the other player gets the full cost of the item? Since normally you'd get half the cost of the item when selling it back to the shop, that's quite a difference.

Its not a bad rule, but it does give the selling player way more gold than they'd normally get.

polypusher wrote:
bepnewt wrote:

1) We allow selling of items to other players for cost on card

So instead of the store getting the money (ie the money going away) the other player gets the full cost of the item? Since normally you'd get half the cost of the item when selling it back to the shop, that's quite a difference.

Its not a bad rule, but it does give the selling player way more gold than they'd normally get.

Yes, that's exactly what we do. It's odd that we don't houserule where you get all the coins on the ground at the end of the scenario because we're not supposed to, but we do allow the item selling. I think that what we do is actually worse as far as putting more $$$ in the hands of our characters.

Oh, well. In the end, we're having fun and it's our game. And every time we have a rules question, we pretty much rule against ourselves until we can find the right answer.

-BEP

Our game started out with me and Dorkmanship playing GH as a duo. A guy in our D&D group has joined us for some scenarios recently, and is playing the spellcaster whose symbol looks like a sun.

The last scenario we played, Dork (Brute) exhausted with the last room still not opened. On his last turn, he took out 2 bad guys, which we really needed to have a chance to win. Tom (spellcaster dude) was lagging way behind because he doesn't have the movement that the Brute and I (scoundrel) have. It took some serious tactics to get the last door opened, the loot looted and the bad guys down to win the scenario. I had exhausted on during the last round after getting the loot chest and Tom had to kill the final bad guy by pulling at least a +1 from his modifier deck. He was about to exhaust so it was now or never.

He pulled his x2. It was awesome.

Twice during the scenario, Dork had "8 damage" attacks do zero via the NULL card. And, he also had a 4 or 5 damage attack nullified. The card gods were brutal to him that scenario.

Still loving the game.

We will probably paint our minis at some point. I have way too many minis to paint for D&D and not enough time since I am a real slow painter.

-BEP

My wife and I had a similar situation in the

Spoiler:

Warehouse

scenario last time we played. (spoiler for an early scenario). We are playing spellweaver Vanda and tinker Tomax - ranged attacks all up in here but few HP.

It would not have been so close had we not missed like four times early on. We should have just bypassed the living bones that kept healing itself.

I managed to get the last door open, and we both did a bit of damage to the boss characters. Vanda was down for the count and I had one turn left after the current one. I threw down my two biggest high-damage loss cards which cards willing would knock out one, but the problem was I could only target one with my big 5 damage card. If I was attacked this turn I would likely either die from damage or lose too many cards to continue. Lo and behold I drew the "Extra target" perk card. Both baddies nuked before they could respond! No time to loot though, we only came out with single digit gold per player.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Lo and behold I drew the "Extra target" perk card. Both baddies nuked before they could respond! No time to loot though, we only came out with single digit gold per player.

Much cheering was heard, much drink was consumed! Awesome ending.

-BEP

Played our first "side quest" scenario that was one of the guest created ones. Some neat, optional mechanics. Two elements start every round strong and the other four start as inert. Of course, the baddies can make use of the strong, so there can be an incentive to use them before the monsters can. Also, two chests gave items that, if you can reach a certain spot on the map, will do one time, automatic damage to the boss. Made for some fun choices. We each had one of the items so we had to decide if we would both put ourselves closer to the boss and minions or forgo the extra damage. We chose to both use the extra damage and were fortunately able to do enough damage to finish him off.

We each got 25 XP (9 from skills, 6 from completing scenario, and 10 as the reward). Very happy we decided to do this one! The Scoundrel also got 22 gold. We are now Level 3 and will be reviewing the Level 3 cards and which perk we want. Attack deck is shaping up nicely!

Scoundel's attack modifier deck can get real lean. And nasty!

Minotaar wrote:

Scoundel's attack modifier deck can get real lean. And nasty!

I think my next perk I pick up is the one that removes the 4 "+0" cards. I haven't done any maths to see what makes the most sense but I like the lean deck. I hit level 4 at the end of the last scenario. I haven't drawn any 2 checkmark scenario cards and I've missed a couple of my scenario goals so I only have 2 perks from those so far.

-BEP

bepnewt wrote:
Minotaar wrote:

Scoundel's attack modifier deck can get real lean. And nasty!

I think my next perk I pick up is the one that removes the 4 "+0" cards. I haven't done any maths to see what makes the most sense but I like the lean deck. I hit level 4 at the end of the last scenario. I haven't drawn any 2 checkmark scenario cards and I've missed a couple of my scenario goals so I only have 2 perks from those so far.

-BEP

I got lucky with battle goals and just got my fourth perk with the level up to 3rd. It is cool that the classes have different perks as well. Twice, I was able to replace a -1 card with a +1 card. A straight up no brainer with my first two perks. I will probably add a second +2 ice. There are also +2 fire card options as well as the Remove 4 +0 perk. All would be nice.

Listening to the podcast now. Certis, you're certainly not the only one who only used their Gloomhaven modifier decks to start with. I've heard of a bunch of groups making that error and realizing how easy the game seems.

Personally I love the way perks will change the attack modifier deck, it allows you to really customize how your character plays.

A lot of guides suggest that from a mathematics point of view, eliminating your negative cards first has the biggest impact on play, and subsequently eliminating the +0 cards. I've kitted out my Scoundrel pretty well now at level 6 with several check marks for extra perks, so my only real concern is hitting the critical miss or any curses (but getting the "doesn't suffer from scenario effects" early on is also a must).

We're having heaps of trouble taking down a Boss

Spoiler:

Jekserah

And after 2 attempts of the scenario with our group we are thinking of dropping the difficulty to easy for the first time.

Prozac wrote:

We're having heaps of trouble taking down a Boss

Spoiler:

Jekserah

And after 2 attempts of the scenario with our group we are thinking of dropping the difficulty to easy for the first time.

We are holding off that one (or at least I THINK I know which one it is, but am only guessing) until we are level 4 and have a chance to get another item and perk or two. Given we are at level 3, we would be facing the level 2 monster scale, same as if we were level 4. Of course, I am teetering on exhaustion after a treasure chest unleased pain and misery instead of goodies. I was able to finish off the baddy at the start of my turn so the Scoundrel doesn't have to waste an attack action and can start moving towards the last room (a long tile to get to the last room), where she will have to deal with any remaining monsters to complete the objective. Given I only have 3 cards left and used my recover lost card ability, no way am I making it there. If kiddo cannot finish them off, it will be our first scenario loss.

Scenario Number

Spoiler:

Scenario 4, the Crypt of the Damned

On the plus side, our town card choice gave us 10 XP each, so we are only 25 or so XP away from 4th Level. I love how the town and road cards are not totally predictable and can add outcomes that are dependant on reputation, class, and have outcomes that both reward and punish. We had to make a negative choice to offset the 10 XP, but totally worth it!

Level 4 achieved!

Here is a question than I could not find and answer to:

On the monster modifier deck, one of the the symbols was the all-element Trivial Pursuit Circle with a colon followed by a single element symbol. So it looked like this:
IMAGE(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wZGR4lNkGyurIGU1YCSeLfTQR-BEGQx2DFwBbXukhAhv2aXKcNiuu0VuyOnKhaHj0g=h310)

I know if it is just the pie, then players get to determine which element is created. What does this mean? If it is just that a fire element is generated, then why have the first one and the colon?

bhchrist wrote:

I know if it is just the pie, then players get to determine which element is created. What does this mean? If it is just that a fire element is generated, then why have the first one and the colon?

My assumption is if there is an element currently infusing the field, the demon changes it to a flame and it goes to the right side of the element board ( ie. starts over ). If there are more than 1 on the board, players would choose which gets converted to flame.

-BEP

Edit: Quote is not Edit

bepnewt wrote:
bhchrist wrote:

I know if it is just the pie, then players get to determine which element is created. What does this mean? If it is just that a fire element is generated, then why have the first one and the colon?

My assumption is if there is an element currently infusing the field, the demon changes it to a flame and it goes to the right side of the element board ( ie. starts over ). If there are more than 1 on the board, players would choose which gets converted to flame.

-BEP

This. The flame demon will eat anything up there and turn it to Fire, even Fire. Note he does nothing with that bit if there are no inert elements

Just to clarify a bit more since I don't think it was specifically mentioned: The "red circle X" means that an element within the "red circle X" is consumed to give you the benefit that comes after the colon. If the specific element listed isn't Strong or Waning, or any element in the case of the full pie, then you/they don't get the benefit after the colon. (As polypusher says above)

So in the case above there is the "pie" symbol but in this case the "pie" is behind a red X so instead of creating any element you are consuming any element.