Burnt Offerings

Today I completed the final scenario for Burnt Offerings, the first adventure of the Rise of the Runelords adventure path for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I elected to play through the campaign in solo mode using the human fighter Valeros as my character (I'm using the dwarf ranger Harsk in the multi-player game I'm doing with Amy, but we haven't made much progress on that one). 

Val is a great character for solo play because he's a total beast in combat. By the end of this adventure, his normal attack roll using his favorite weapon (a magical bastard sword) was up to 2D10+5. That's really good. Most monsters at this stage of the campaign have a difficulty rating of between 8 and 12, so Val can carve up foes with ease even if I'm rolling low numbers. Where Val struggles is with Intelligence- or Wisdom-based skill checks. Intelligence checks typically come into play if you're trying to acquire spells or arcane items, so I'm rarely disappointed when I botch such a roll -- what's a fighter going to do with wizard spells anyway? Wisdom, on the other hand, is essential for closing certain locations and overcoming certain barriers -- in other words, you need to succeed at Wisdom checks in order to move the story along. Often I've encountered crucial Wisdom checks requiring a roll 6 or 7; Val's Wisdom roll is a ridiculously terrible 1D4, meaning that I need to use up a blessing or an ally to give myself enough of a bonus even to have a shot at succeeding at the check. 

So that's where I stood heading into the final scenario of Burnt Offerings. After examining the adventure's master villain and her henchmen, I felt confident that Val would be able to win easily, even considering that two of them had the ability to inflict damage before the encounter. 

As it turned out, however, this scenario was anything but a cakewalk. Tomorrow I'll give you the full recap on Val's struggles to overcome some of the worst luck I've had with this game.