Characters racing through the Spell deck is one thing, being able to cast the same Spell every turn as per the cards wording would destroy the game. If you had Temporal Warp then nobody else would ever get a turn!

Geoff

Again, good point... and definitely exposes another character design flaw if such a change was used. But by the standard rule of Spell limit for casting and having, the Apprentice would only be allowed to reuse a spell twice, hence casting it three times. The rule of Spell limit for casting supersedes instructions on any one spell card.

The odds of another spell being cast by another character and thereby burying that reused spell would be based on the number of other characters in the game. If only two characters, then yes, that one potent spell might keep returning on the Apprentice's next turn.

Here is another way to solve the problem of the discard spell cycling, like you described.

"When you draw a spell, you may choose to take the top card from the discard pile if that Spell was discarded by another player"

We could also modify that further to "if the Spell was discarded by another player in your region."

Unlike other characters, the Apprentice is intended to be a "dabbler" vs a full spell casting character. So like his other abilities, such as spell failure, I'm in favor of making any autodraw ability added to him more limited than other characters. Placing spells he casts on the bottom of the discard pile disturbs the function of other characters that can draw from the discard pile; that just doesn't work and gives him a hidden advantage to affect those other characters.

Would you care to share a full write up of how you would rework this character card? I for one would be interested.

few questions:

1) courtesan (again): could she seduce also female characters?and what about special ch. like dark servant? IMO she can seduce only male human ch. (human means elf, dwarf etc, but not ghoul or minotaur, for example). what do you think about it?

1.1) stealing followers: every kind of follower or only male followers (not demon/animal/female followers)?

2) illusionist: if you draw an adv. card and you succesfully use your alignment ability, do you change your alignment until next change?

ex: I'm neutral, i draw a sword that can be carried only by good ch. I roll and the result is 5. ok, I can take it, BUT will I remain neutral or will I became good? who will change aligment, card or character?

3) shapeshifter: if you change trophies or obtain in other ways Strenght or craft cones DURING your shape time, what happens if you come back at your original form? do you lose the cones or not?

I know that there isn't an "official" answer, i'm only interested about what you people think.

see ya!

about apprentice magician, I'd like to play it as the gipsy but it's true that it is not good connected with the "you always have a spell" ability...but IMO it's a good way to play, not too overpowered (if you have a good spell but you don't want give it to the gipsy, wait until she have the max number of spell, than cast it, so she couldn't take it.). the possibility to choose from the the discard deck is too powerful, no way...the last JC's version (the spell on the top deck, only casted by another character) is the best solution until now, even if sincerely the first version was the one I prefer (if you don't like the spell you can draw a new one and you must keep).

air show said:

I can see your point, but you may be taking "seduction" as too simplified. Seduction can be more than sexual attraction. It can be simply pulling someone into doing as you wish based on the playing with their desire for anything they want badly. And for simplicity, it should probably be left as is, affecting any character.

air show said:

See above.

air show said:

The Illusionist, by its title, is not changing its alignment; it is making another person think they have another alignment. In essence, this would be "phantasm" and not an illusion. The former affects the mind directly, the latter presents something that fools the physical senses. Illusions are done through manipulating sight and sound, physically aspects of reality, and therefore thaumaturgy. Affecting the way something thinks or thinks they perceive something is the mental aspect of reality and therefore sorcery (in the real sense and not in the blurry fantasy / mythology uses of the term). But that's a perspective that is too complicated to distinguish for Talisman.

air show said:

The way I've been reading it, the only thing that shapeshifting does is temporarily change your starting Strength and Craft values... though I don't see how such an ability could alter the characters Craft (mind). I consider this the most glitchy if interesting character in the batch, and I've seen much better (and wores) "shapeshifter" type characters done in the fan community.

And of course, all of this is just IMHO and my view, that's all.

I generally agree with you on the Apprentice. It's original approach was best, though not good. I was only playing along with others' ideas in the rec.s I made concerning the discard pile.

exhaustive as usual, JC!

thanks for reply, I agree with your interpretation about courtesan and illusionist.

Probably I'll take back the shapeshifter ch. from the deck for the moment, maybe best versions will arrive.

just a little off topic: did you ever play dungeonquest? IMO, every talisman real player (or boss, in your case) should play it al least once! if so, what do you think about it?

air show said:

We owned the original Dungeonquest a long time ago and played it as a faster alternative to Talisman. It was a lot of fun, and we like that it was a bit deadly and you could see a game where no one made it out alive. That's something that some other players didn't like. Like Talisman, we left it behind a decade ago. Like Talisman, we will probably get into it again... but not until we see what FFG is going to do with it. I hope they don't try to dumb it down and make it too easy, but I also hope they fix that awful, glitchy combat mechanic.

We used our own approach to combat where a D6 was rolled for the character and another for the monster. We rigged the monster side of the chart on the board so that it reflected the different types of enemies. The two rolls were quickly cross-referenced on the chart, and the result was plain to see. Simple, clean, and none of that hand out combat tokens each time for the player and opponent to choose and play like a dumbed down hand of the old kids card game called War. A horrible, horrible game mechanic that one!

The other alternative I could think of is if two "combat" die were included with the game, one for player and another for opponent, with results icons on each one. Combined results rolled on the two die could eliminate the chart entirely.

right. I agree with you about the combat mechanic...I love the original game with its expansions, i hope FFG won't change so much (even if the Runebound world will be used and I don't know if that's a good choice) but we have to waity until summer's end...

maybe we'll talk about it in the future.

see ya soon!

Fingers crossed... and waiting in anticipation!

Hi guys, I was away from the forums and the game for several months, new baby in the house took over! We just started playing again and I was wondering if there were printable translations of these cards? I'd like to print them out on sticker sheets and afix the text to the ones I got from Mephisto. Has anyone tried anything like this? What's been the best course of action?

I'm also thinking that playing a game with these in the the regular deck would be problematic from the offset because they are so distinguishable from the other player cards. Does anyone have a solution for that? I was thinking that when you go to randomly pick your 3 or however many cards, you can say just one of them can be a Mephisto card. Thoughts?

Many congratulations on your new addition!

To make new cards that you cannot tell from official ones, I recommend grabbing a copy of an upgrade pack, and using sticker paper over those. A bit costly perhaps, but your problem would be solved.

If you want to use the originals though, just deal cards at random.

talismanisland said:

Congratulation on your new baby inkblob

Complementing talismanisland's recommendation, I would proposed that you put your cards into sleeves, they are very hard to distinguish from the official ones by the touch and mix well into a stack.

Cheers

Cheers, thanks guys! We're at #4, at least there's no shortage of kids to play board games with I might go with the sleeve option, as that has the bonus of protecting the cards and not being as pricey as a whole other box. I havn't played a game yet with these characters, looking forward to that, and the new expansion pack! Checked one of the game shops today, and he said he'll put to the side for me when it comes in *cackles*

inkblob said:

We use tokens with numbers and put them in a bag.

Each character has a number, and the mephisto characters are included.

This resolve the color problems of the character cards.

we have printed the text on paper and we have stick it inside the character sleeves.

I really like that token idea.... takes up a lot less space too when selecting cards. Thanks, I'm going to adopt something just like that, and can see that working for any type of card and expands tidely as you get new characters.

Is there an updated copy of the most recent set of translations that is suitable for printing somewhere on the interwebs?