30 minutes ago, klecser said:

Good advice all!

General strategic question, and this could be completely context-dependent:

Is it generally better to split the party or keep them together? I've tried both and I'm not convinced that either is necessarily a no-brainer.

To me, it depends entirely on the scenario goal, the shroud, and the relative abilities of our protagonists along with whatever gear they have. (So, context is king here)

For Roland and Wendy, I like to make sure they have a specific purpose if they’re going off on their own. Priority #1 is generally gathering clues to advance.

If there’s only one clue per investigator at a site, I don’t usually consider that worth taking up an action from both investigators to get there.

If I have a multi-clue gathering card, I like to save those for the high-shroud areas, I also like to plant Roland in the highest-shroud clue areas so that he can fight someone to get those clues. That’s usually more efficient than actually investigating. Roland and Wendy have tools to either bypass checks, get efficiency, or pull victory from defeat, use them in the very difficult locations whenever it’s feasible, or when you can pump a check enough to make it very likely. Wendy is an especially safe bet for pumper checks, since she can do a retry on tentacles.

for a 2 person party? It's really hard to say. It depends mostly on who your characters are and what their decks can do.

Let's say you have Daisy and Skids. Daisy is completely helpless. She might very well be the best (or one of the best) at getting clues, but she's not good at evade, and she's not good at combat. She needs somebody to protect her, either by killing monsters or at least by pulling them away and then evading them. This is a situation where you want to have your characters stick pretty close together.

But supposing you have Wendy/Roland. You have a lot more freedom, as Roland should ideally be able to combat his way through monsters, and Wendy can probably evade them. You can probably afford to split up a bit more if the situation dictates it.

But there are so many exceptions. For example, maybe Wendy has Backstab in hand and it's early game, and Roland hasn't found a weapon. You might consider having Wendy stay close so she can protect Roland as he draws cards, gains resources, and tries to set up.

Maybe it's a situation where there is a tougher monster that is going to take multiple turns for Skids to defeat. It's probably better to have Daisy go on ahead and try to pick up some clues and risk maybe drawing a monster on her turn than to wait around and waste a few turns while skids chews through some high HP monster.

There's so much to consider, how much doom is on the agenda? How much health do your characters have remaining? Do you have any cards in hand that might save you if you do have your seeker happen to bump into a monster (even something as simple as Manual Dexterity or Unexpected Courage)? Do you have any special insight to the scenario (have you played it before? Do you usually run out of time, or is the threat being KO'd? Is there a hint in the scenario log that will give you an idea of what sort of mission this is going to be? When you built the encounter deck are there any cards you are particularly worried about?) Many of these things are important to keep in mind when deck-building as well.

So yeah, it's hard to make any sweeping generalities. Think about what resources you have at your disposal, and what tools you might be likely to draw/have in play in the near future.

In my opinion, it depends on the scenario, your deck builds, and your investigators. Minh and Carolyn wouldn’t be nearly as effective always on their own, because it would make their abilities almost irrelevant. Ursula on the other hand, is so single minded, that she and Pathfinder will leave you for the next clue. You have rogues who are “lone wolves”, Survivors who want backup. Mystics, who are there and then suddenly vanish!
There are also situations when you need everyone’s abilities to come together. One to evade the baddie, so that everyone else can whale on him without giving each other damage, or every hand on deck to get 12 clues off a location. Or concocting the Plan of plans to lure 2 Acolytes and a couple of 3 health enemies to one location and then get the heck out of dodge while throwing dynamite over your shoulder, defeating all of them (and their stinking doom) at the same time! Those are the moments that stay with you!