I've been looking at Arkham Horror LCG characters again on Arkhamdb, and noticed that Akachi, a mystic (spell-caster class) is allowed to take non-mystic cards that have the spell trait or occult trait.
That includes one of the most powerful seeker cards, which is also somewhat difficult to get: Archaic Glyphs. It's slightly a pain, because it starts out in one mostly-useless form, you need to play it, then use cards on it to translate it. Then you need to spend xp to get the other form. Assuming you spend the first scenario out of usually 8 translating it (it could take more, but it's not unreasonable to do the first scenario), it changes into a different type of card. This means that there are characters who can translate it, but can't use it, or could use the translated form if they could take the original form to translate it (notably Norman Withers from the Edge of the Earth campaign). One of the 3 translated forms (you can normally choose) allows you to investigate for clues with no bonus (you can also just do that as a basic action without a card), but for each 2 points you succeed by, you gain an extra clue.
Your base skill is a number between 1 and 5 (0 for one character), plus you can get maybe 1-3 more points depending on ally cards, tools, etc. in your deck, but that takes time to set up. Skill cards can also add 1-3, or up to 4 in special circumstances. A popular card adds 1 to your skill, with +1 clue if you succeed. Some assets also allow you to spend resources to increase your total skill just for a single action (you get 3 actions and 1 resource given to you/turn, but can get others in various ways). You then compare your skill to the difficulty of the test (1-5, most of the time), and pull a number out of a bag ranging from +1 to -5 (-8 on the hardest difficulty) with one that reduces your total to 0 (you fail unless the test is also zero) and add that number for your total. Most likely, you'll be prepared to use this card and get 3-4 extra clues, unless you're really built for it. There are also only a small number of clues (usually 1 or 2 per player, up to 4 players) on each location as a limit. As a further limit, it uses a charge for each attempt, and only has 3 charges.
There are 2 reasons I mentioned Akachi. First, she gains an extra charge on cards with charges when she plays them, which is an impressive +33% here. And she has access to cards to recharge it. Second: She is a mystic, not a seeker who the card is meant for. Her stat to use it is 2, which is almost as low as it goes. She also can't gain most of the cards that improve that skill/stat.
So it's a potentially great card that could possibly get you 8 actions worth of clues for 1 action (plus the action to play it, and the resources, and spending at least one scenario trying to unlock it), and there are characters who would be great with it, if only they were allowed to try it. And here is this character who can set it up amazingly but can't make it work 90% of the time, and that's hilarious to me.
So of course I'm trying to theorycraft the "best" version of her for this one stupid purpose. Because that's how deckbuilding games work (why win with a great character when you can also win with a terrible character that has no business even trying?). I'll also probably tell one of the serious players I play with.
Edit: As an explanation, I'm supposed to be spending this week building 2 good characters for the new campaign starting this weekend. I have one that works well enough (Kymani, a challenging character with a base 5 in what is normally a dump stat; characters have like 12-13 stat points total in 4 stats), and one that is just not working out. The other player has straightforward characters, so I cover the weird edge cases that get thrown into campaigns to see how you handle them. And now I can't quit thinking about this stupid unworkable build. I just saw Arcane Studies. She *can* but more investigate skill for a single test, if she can accumulate money.
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Topic: How did you last die? (Read 2416835 times)