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I have 2 separate questions:


In just a few words, how would you describe the individual specialty of each character?


You have a 3-member party. 2 of the members are the Spellweaver and the Mindthief. What 3rd character would you add to support those 2?


Cheers, and happy dungeon delving! meeple
 
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lucus Trout
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Part 1. Isaac answered this really well but I can't seem to find the quote on my phone. Here's my bootleg version after playing every starting class a time or two.

Brute-Tank (I've played him the least, he's good but I don't have more comments)
Scoundrel-Rogue, only level 1 that can disarm traps
Cragheart- kinda tanky, can deal damage to groups well but may damage allies
Spellweaver-Mage good AOE, small hand size takes a bit to get used to.
Mindthief- highly customizable within scenario due to augments low life melee can be tricky
Tinkerer- support. Lots of healing, refreshes teammates stamina.

Part 2. I'm gonna comment on all of them, consider them in my personal ranking order with regards to your particular team.
I would personally go Tinkerer. Can sorta be a tank/heal and getting those discards back makes everyone else awesome.
Brute would be a natural fit to tank for your party but he doesn't infuse much magic for the Spellweaver.
Cragheart, can be tanky, infuses magic but a little tricky, might harm your lowlife team mates.

Scoundrel, maybe my last choice but still such a good class, they infuse some magic and can one shot even powerful elites.
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Drake Coker
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San Diego
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This is my tank for Combat Commander
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Add Brute or Cragheart for someone who can take a hit.

I'm no expert, but:

Brute: tanky sort
Cragheart: not as tanky as Brute, but does take a lot of hits, has decent damage (especially ranged) and decent healing. Well-rounded.
Scoundrel: classic "thief": high single-target damage and trap disarms
Spellweaver: classic elemental mage. Area damage, fragile
Tinker: healer, support, long-lasting, some burst damage
Mindthief: alternative to Scoundrel, high damage, flexible, tricky, low hit points but able to self-heal and defend well when needed.

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Seth Oakman
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Pretty much anyone but Scoundrel.

I'd go with Cragheart over Brute because of his ability to infuse. If your 3rd person doesn't want to play a cragheart, tinkerer is pretty versatile and keep your party sustained. He will likely slip into the support role in this particularly party though, whereas a cragheart will likely end up being a bruiser/offensive tank.
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Isaac
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Yeah, as Lucas mentioned Isaac described them really well. Here's the quote:
Quote:
The Brute is your typical tank. He gets up in the monster's face with melee attacks and has defensive abilities.

The Scoundrel is an opportunistic melee attacker. She can deal huge damage in the right circumstances.

The Spellweaver is your multi-target ranged attacker, throwing out big spells to do lots of damage, but she can burn out quickly if you don't play your cards right.

The Tinkerer is healing and support, providing bonuses to his allies and negatives to his enemies. He's also got a good amount of ranged damage.

The Cragheart is more of a jack-of-all-trades. It's got melee attacks, ranged attacks, and healing, but you also have to be careful about hurting your allies.

And the Mindthief is just weird. She has a lot of crazy abilities - summoning, mind control, and psychic augments that enhance her melee attacks.
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Luke
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I'd add a Cragheart for off-tank with some healing ability, or just a Brute specced for tanking.

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Jason Winterfeld
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Tecumseh
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Definately the Brute or Cragheart....

I found playing the spellweaver that it helps to have someone upfront to be able to take all the damage while you dish it out. The Cragheart is good, but the Brute is so much better in this role. But the player might not like taking a beating each and every scenario, the Cragheart has abilities that break up the "Let me take all the hits" mentality and with his positioning and abilities he can wreck some havoc.
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Luke
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icechamber wrote:
Definately the Brute or Cragheart....

I found playing the spellweaver that it helps to have someone upfront to be able to take all the damage while you dish it out. The Cragheart is good, but the Brute is so much better in this role. But the player might not like taking a beating each and every scenario, the Cragheart has abilities that break up the "Let me take all the hits" mentality and with his positioning and abilities he can wreck some havoc.

A note on the spellweaver cragheart combo.

Cragheart can often infuse Earth, which the Spellweaver can use on a few of her cards.

Helps the damage output.
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John Drama
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squash wrote:

You have a 3-member party. 2 of the members are the Spellweaver and the Mindthief. What 3rd character would you add to support those 2?

I haven't seen other classes than the 3 we are playing in our party, so maybe my answer may not be the most meaningful.
But our party happens to consist of Spellweaver, Mindthief and Brute. So far it works really well. 3 Scenarios played, 3 won (altough very close 2 times).
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Josh McDowell
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Exo Desta wrote:
I will just say that I decided to go unconventional and use the Cragheart as the sole tank for my 4-man party, alongside a Scoundrel, Tinkerer, and Spellweaver. It hasn't been so smooth! Easily the biggest weakness they have, which I'm constantly trying to plan around, is a lack of damage mitigation (the Cragheart has alot of hp and a large hand size, but zero* mitigation in his early cards; basically he is going to eat whatever damage comes at him).

Based on this, I would recommed using a Brute as your front line tank at least to start the game. By the time you come back around to having to substitute another class in as your tank, they'll at least have a few more options to try and do the job right.

Just 2 more c.

* Edit: Forgot that the Cragheart does have one early card that gives him Shield (the whole team in fact), but it's lost on use soblue

Interesting. This is the exact makeup of my group. We've only played around 6 scenarios, but have won every time on normal difficulty. In fact the one we played last night we completed in 4 rounds, with not one person resting.

I'm playing the Cragheart and as the only "tank" type person in our party, I'm soaking up a bunch of the damage. Having the tinkerer helps a lot along with my own heals. I guess it's about managing your cards well, knowing when to heal and when to hit and managing the mobs. I'll even throw down obstacles at times to control their movement. That, along with a good player on Tinkerer has proven successful.
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M. S.
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squash wrote:
...
You have a 3-member party. 2 of the members are the Spellweaver and the Mindthief. What 3rd character would you add to support those 2?
..
yeah I would also suggest the Brute as a relative classic tank.
But that may be just me, I have a soft spot for tankish classes.

My 3 char solo team in general favours classic archetypes brute, spellweaver and tinkerer in support role.

Ironically, the Brute was the first to die. I had a long talk with myself and reminded him "this isn't Diablo, you might have to think". My brutish self just nodded with slightly glazed over eyes, but so far he seems to have understood it - I think at least.
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Eamon Burke
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Brute in this case. Spellweaver can do some serious damage and crowd control, and having a defense heavy guy like brute would be a bonus. Plus he's a little faster, initiative wise.
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Todd T
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Exo Desta wrote:
mcscowl wrote:
I guess it's about managing your cards well, knowing when to heal and when to hit and managing the mobs. I'll even throw down obstacles at times to control their movement. That, along with a good player on Tinkerer has proven successful.
Not having played the Brute yet, I wonder if this is how the game is meant to be played. That is to say: maybe there isn't a true tank in this game, but everyone is meant to share the load to some degree.
I think you're onto something, though having a tank would be helpful.

Our group played the first scenario with the Mindthief, Scoundrel, and Tinkerer. I was kind of like the tank thanks to the Shield augment and being able to Lose cards to negate damage. But in reality, we all just shared the load. I helped to create opportunities for helpful Long Rests (Invisibility in the doorway) along with summoning a rat storm to soak up damage. Amazingly none of us exhausted at the end, though two of us were really close to going the following round. Our Tinkerer played conservatively with his cards, so he could have lasted another 5 or more rounds if needed.

Hand management plus working as a team really is a powerful combo.

@Josh- sounds like you're having a blast with the game. Glad to hear you're enjoying it, too!
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Wes Holland

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Regarding the question of who to slot in:

Scoundrel: The hardest to add, because I'm pretty sure your damage mitigation strategy will be 'kill it before it attacks'. Which doesn't always work. Would be very interesting to try that sort of group, and I suspect the Mindthief will be using Shield augment pretty often. Brings no elements to the table for the Spellweaver.

Tinkerer: Second-hardest, I'd say. He would bring a bunch of Heals to the team, and a little bit of damage. Only a few elements for the Spellweaver, though. He'd be a strict Support in this lineup, I suspect.

Brute: Second-easiest. Mindthief and Spellweaver don't want to be up front taking hits, and that's what the Brute does best. Lots of battlefield control in positioning foes, and generates Wind for the Spellweaver, which she doesn't otherwise have access to.

Cragheart: Almost certainly the easiest. He brings Heals and general willingness to mix it up. He brings battlefield control in Obstacle-Creation for the Spellweaver to hide behind, and the Mindthief to Invisibility for monster confusion. Also brings good ranged attacks and melee attacks, so he can choose whether to be the front line or let the Mindthief take some heat off for a bit. Also makes a ton of Earth for the Spellweaver to use.
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Cragheart works really well with the spellweaver; plenty of earth.
Sure, look out for the ally-damaging actions but they should be quite easy to use effectively since SP and MT won't be as in the thick of it as the CH. Note that he has a high number of 'lose' cards (especially the cool ones), you need to spread these out with some thought so you won't run out of movement cards late-game for instance.

CH has some great range cards to start with, and later on you can build him to be more melee based with use of obstacles as awesome utility. My lvl 5 has a few kick ass combo's he can pull off... I love the Cragheart!
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Cthulhu Dreams
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I'd go Cragheart (don't take the recommended starting equipment either) and advise against Brute. Our problems begin when one guy is out in front all by himself is out in front and gets whaled on by a bunch of dudes. If you are all ranged you can prevent that. If you are mostly Merle you can share the pain. Ranged with 1 Meele guy is going to ensure the melee guy gets pounded.
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Hey, I've created a video channel! Hover over my avatar to get more info! :) - Josh -
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Thanks so much for all the very helpful replies!!

It's interesting that the only character not being recommended is the Scoundrel! arrrh

Before starting this thread I was leaning toward the Tinkerer (just because it looked like an interesting character), but there are some compelling arguments here for the Cragheart. So now I'll make a poll with just those two classes:


Poll: Help me round out our party!
Which character is going to be best to play with the Spellweaver and the Mindthief?
So who should I be?
Tinkerer
Cragheart
      70 answers
Poll created by squash
 
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Scott Douglass
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I haven't tried too many different party combinations yet, but with just the base classes I would pretty much always want either the Brute or the Craigheart so that I had some sort of front line. I haven't played the Mindthief yet though, so I could be mistaken about the importance of having someone to tank in your specific party composition. The Brute is a pretty standard melee tank. He has defensive abilities and draws aggro by being out front. The Craigheart is more of an off tank, but has more ranged/support options, and can control terrain, which allows you to drastically reduce the ability of non-flying enemies to get to grips with your party in the first place.

The Brute is probably better paired with the Scoundrel than the Craigheart, since he will enable her flank abilities more consistently, and gumming up enemies with terrain can also limit the Scoundrel's ability to line up her big attacks.

I'm not sure about with the Mindthief.

With the rest of the starting classes, I'd say the Craigheart is better than the Brute, since slowing down enemies and preventing attacks entirely is better than taking them to the face with slightly better damage mitigation when the rest of your team wants to kite anyway. The Craigheart is also one of the better starting classes at infusing elements, which should pair well with the Spellweaver for some additional synergy.

So overall, for your party I would suggest the Craigheart.

If you don't want to fill that last slot with a tank for some reason, the Tinkerer is a very strong, versatile class that offers a lot to any party.
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Seth Oakman
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I just want to add that though I voted for Cragheart, it ultimately is more important that you have fun as the class you pick than it is that it works optimally with your party.

If you think you would like Tinkerer and Cragheart equally, I say Cragheart. If you would prefer Tinkerer, give it a try (you will almost assuredly be playing a support build though).

If you go Tinkerer, consider using his Harmless Contraption Summon and the Rat Swarm Summon of the Mindthief to help soak some damage. Healing them and keeping them alive (especially the rats) will both add damage to the party and a bit of shielding in many cases.
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