I find it rather weak that only one player can have improved defence or any of the other non-basic cards for that matter. If you have two warriors only one person can have the cards. It may be good for balance etc. but if you have more than one slayer in your group, then only one of them can have the special slayer attacks. That's pretty weak. They should at least release a package where you can buy extra cards.

Also the extra dice package is lame... you just get a few extra dice, not even an entire package.... you have to buy quite a few of them if you just want the GM and players to each have their own set.

Well I can't say I necessarily disagree. But just how many slayers do you want in your party? There's only one career card for each career as well. I can't imagine anyone player wanting to play the same class as another player.

Adventurer toolkit contains an extra set of basic action cards (I use it as GM), and, for your problem, an extra set of IMPROVED XXX cards.

It might help a bit.

I understand your frustration about the limited cards, to a point.

The starter deck does include multiple copies of some of the Improved defenses. But yes, having just one copy of the other actions can be annoying. One of my players grabbed most of the choice ranged actions before the others had a chance, and our whole group is focused on ranged attacks. But they worked it out amongst themselves and understood that the game encourages diversity. If more than one player had really wanted to take the same action, I would have let them.

In that case, I would have kept the shared ability card with the group's party card, so that we could easily reference it. I'd give each player a proxy, a piece of paper cut down to the size of an action card. I'd write in the action name, recharge time, any other other essential notes, but not the full card text (maybe later). It would take a couple of minutes to set up, but it would solve the problem just fine for us, I think. We already share the cards that are socketed to the party card, so this wouldn't be much different.

If you've ended up with two Slayers in your group, it means that two players are already sharing the Slayer career card. You're complaining about something that the game, as written, doesn't expect to happen: two Slayers. The first player to pull the Slayer career should have removed that card from the deck before the next player had a chance to pull from the career deck. Having two Slayers is pretty easy to deal with, since the only thing you need to know about a career during play is its talent sockets. But it means that only one player has the career card in front of them during play; the other player has to make do without it, or use a proxy. I would think that if you've found a solution for a shortage of career cards, you should be able to find a solution for a shortage of action cards, too.

As for the dice, I have the dice from the core set and the Adventurer's Tookit and I know that I sometimes run out of fortune and misfortune dice. (I need about 2 more of each, but that's all. I'll be picking up one dice pack and continuing to share the dice with my players. As the GM, I usually build the pool anyway and then hand the dice to the players to roll.) A complete set for a single player would require maybe three or four additional dice packs, costing $35 to $50 if you bought them all together. I'd rather buy as many "bite sized" dice kits as needed, rather than have to buy a whole bunch in one go, which would be many more than I need. But this game really does require a lot of dice, and there's no way around that.

Point... No one even wants to play the same races let alone the same class/career.

DagobahDave said:

I'll buy the expansion... didn't know it had dice as well. So with that and a pack of dice it will be fine. I agree with the slayers... a very bad example on my part. Mostly it's the fact that only ONE player can have each of the advanced defence cards. I have only one of each of the four advanced cards. That should be fixed. I agree that diversity is fine, but especially the defence cards annoy me.

Gallows said:

Why would the players need to have a full set of dice? Couldn't the GM hand out the challenge and misfortune dice, reducing the number that your players need?

For most situations, the players aren't going to need much more than a few blue, greens, reds, and the occasional yellow die. The GM can hand out purples, whites, and blacks depending upon the situation. I feel it makes it more dramatic when the player gets his characterstic dice ready as I hand over the challenge dice.

I don't see the problem with anything you brought up (in games without cards, the players share books more often than not, right? Why can't they share cards?), but I also realize there's diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks. To each their own.

I realized gaming this weekend (we played a very tactical-based Dark Heresy game - NOT my favorite style), that there's a great diversity amongst play styles and what works for one person might not necessarily work for another.

The rules state that you gain improved dodge on agility of 4+ and a trained skill... but only ONE player can get that card. I am somewhat fine with the non standard cards and special attacks being unique. The advanced defensive cards state that they replace the dodge card. It's not a big problem, since my players just use the regular defensive cards and the rules from the advanced one.

But since this game DOES feature such a card system, there really should be all the cards you would need and the advanced defensive cards are pretty basic ones that all players should have if they train for it.

DagobahDave said:

Gallows said:

There is no dice in the expansion.

It's really neat though, and I would recommend it nevertheless

Carahue said:

My bad. I picked up both products at the same time, and thought I combined the dice from both. I'm probably thinking about the little extra packet of conservative and reckless dice that came with the core set.

It looks nice and much cheaper than the core set. But what's in the book? Any scenario?

There's no book in the Adventurer's Toolkit. It includes more action cards, a few more party cards, a few more career cards, but no adventures or additional reading material. There's a single small sheet of paper that describes the contents and has a few notes about the cards, but I think you can find most of that info in the Errata and FAQ sheet that you can download from this site.

Personally, I like the idea of using cards for certain aspects of the game like classes and abilities, to cut down on cookie cutter characters. I mean when there are 40 classes (core + Adv Tooklit) there is no reason for 2 players to play the same class. The same thing for Action cards. With the number of action cards available, it is nice to see some diversity. It was a little boring in Dungeons & Dragons, when fighters were all similar and Rogues were all similar and Sorcerers were all similar, etc. I pretty the limited number of copies of copies in order to enforce diversity.

Gelmaron said:

What about games in which the characters are all members of the Watch? Or it's an intrigue game where all the characters are nobles? Or military games with a mercenary company? These are not unusual campaign or adventure set-ups. True, you can still get career variety within such set-ups, but it would still be reasonable for all the characters to follow the same career. Diversity can easily come from character background, personality and roleplaying. And as you say, Action cards and characters sheet details also offer some variety, so there's not really a problem with multiple characters following the same career.

Either way, having only one Watchman career sheet for a Streets of Altdorf campaign isn't going to be a problem for anyone with a scanner and a printer, regardless of the legalities (although as long as it was for personal use, would this come under the US concept of Fair Use?).

Cheers

Sparrow

Career cards are not professions. So a mercenary company may really afford differents careers in it, and not only "mercenary". Think about the A-team (80's power !)... Let's say their mercenary party was 1 experienced soldier, 1 sort of stagecoach, 1 dilettante and 1 thug.

willmanx said:

If we're going to be picky about it, then a career is actually a sequence of jobs, so the Career cards might actually be better termed Profession card's anyway, but that's beside the point.

Using the A Team example, all of the characters were experienced soldiers, though with different Talents, so I think my point stands.

Cheers

Sparrow

fwiw, career sheets barely get referenced during play.

monkeylite said:

Yup, I can see that being a normal approach. For me, it's a case of having a mild touch of the OCDs - I'd need the bits on the side to socket the Talents, just to make it neat and tidy.

Cheers

Sparrow

monkeylite said:

Yeah we have removed them from the table and are simply using the great character sheet from hammerzeit, because it has talent slots as well. Perhaps a character sheet extension for eon would be nice so you can create your own with specific talent slots and such would be a nice tool.

James Sparrow said:

I forgot about the sockets.

Having two wizards or priests also causes players to share Actions, namely Channeling + Petty Magic and Curry Favor + basic blessings but also the Career sheet.