I did a search on the forum, and didn't see that this has been suggested previously, and I was a bit surprised. Is there a reason why we couldn't switch out characters during a scenario, in between the individual battles? Let's say you just did the first battle out of three, and you barely scraped by with your standard outfit. For battle 2, you can swap out your standard fighter for an alternate cleric that you previously built, for example. Or your played an all wizard kiting group, but you want to get some melee in there for battle 2. It seems like the current tips from Gary and the summary of the upcoming battle is completely useless when you can't jump out and swap characters or even gear according to the information you just received. At the very least let us hop back to the Keep instead of blacking it out when we are mid-adventure?
I guess the reason is that you only earn experience at the end of the adventure, so maybe it is done to prevent any abuse of the system to level up low level characters quickly. And you can swap equipment between battles on the screen where you collect loot, although as you point out this is before you see the preface to the next battle. Of course if you are defeated you can always change your setup before you try again.
I see your point about the character switching, but forgetting that part I'd still like to see at least an opportunity to switch equipment just before the battle starts. Call me crazy, but I like having the chance to apply the pre-battle knowledge BEFORE I get my butt kicked. I know I have had at least one battle where I read the details and thought to myself "Oh, wow, that would have been really good to know back when I was actually able to equip the piece that is already sitting in my inventory!" and then proceeded to lose messily, knowing the whole time that I just needed to change a couple slots and this wouldn't have happened. :/
But it doesn't really make sense from the lore/story point of view, those specific characters are "going on adventure" and changing gear doesn't make much sense either since you are getting ambush/initiating a fight. Maybe once the rogue is added to the game changing the gear before the battle could be one of characters features (Scouting and sneaky stuff).
How does changing gear not make sense before a fight? If you are purposely seeking out trouble (as a band of adventurers is wont to do) would you not bring tools to account for different possible dangerous circumstances? If you are playing a sword fighter in Dungeons and Dragons table top, you generally also bring a mace on your character sheet in case you run across undead skeletons. One quick weapon swap later, you can bypass the damage reduction. The party wizard brings wands and scrolls to back up his normal spells. I'm not sure why this is any different in terms of what "makes sense."
You have a point, though you can change gear between the battles. As I see it there isn't much logic behind that from story immersion perspective, but having a card that would let you change parts of your gear, that would be really deep and interesting mechanic.
The "changing gear" thing is due to Rudolpho (or Rodolfo) the Mule: http://www.cardhunter.com/2011/11/dev-diary-15-adventures Sadly, they reduced Rudolpho's presence in the game, so none of this is obvious. I hope to see the mule again sometime. For the record, though, I don't feel that changing characters in the middle of an adventure is needed, and am concerned it would mess with the XP logic.
Yes, after the first bit of feedback I can see where actually changing characters mid-way through an adventure could cause trouble. (Mostly I just liked the idea of having a dwarf fighter built out with chop for AOE, and a human fighter with penetrating strikes for big armor, and pulling them off the bench as needed) Which is why I reverted my opinion to simply wishing for a chance to swap gear before the next battle starts, not just after the first battle ends. Otherwise, what's the point of the lovely tips and flavor information we are given?
I feel the same from a purely strategic game-playing point of view. But in RPG terms, the current system actually has a certain logic. If the flavour text says, for example, "You find yourself in a goblin village. Tiny agile goblin children throw stones at you, while their parents approach wielding giant clubs", surely the predicate is that this is what you find and must deal with using the gear you brought knowing only that goblins were involved. You don't know the details until first contact with the enemy. So while it does act against perfection in terms of strategy, it's not bad in RPG terms. Also, the first missions of any campaign tend to introduce the enemy and are not very hard, so if you brought fairly flexible gear you should be able to hack it, and can modify what you are wearing for the second mission on the basis of what you are up against in the first. All in all, I quite like the current system. Rodolfo seems a good idea in theory, but I do not think he is a good idea in practice. If you have a Rodolfo you invoke a meta-game where you have to select an intermediate and limited set of all your gear. I know this *does* actually happen in MtG with 'sideboards'. But I am not convinced it will add much to the game. Look at it this way: if you lose a mission you are clearly facing a challenge, so why not let you choose freely the gear to deal with the challenge. Isn't that how things *should* be working?
