I can think of two instances where the Enhanced Edition nerfed (lowered) a hero's potency by changing the wording on their abilities or cards. I'm curious to hear if those nerfs translate into an actual noticeable reduction in how powerful a hero feels, or if they're essentially unnoticeable. Has anyone played a game using the EE and said to themselves, "man, this seems tougher than it used to be"?
1) Wraith's "Stealth" power used to say it "prevented" the next two damage dealt to her but now says it "reduces" the next two damage. The original wording made her power work against irreducible damage, the new wording means it won't.
2) Ra's "Staff of Ra" used to increase his hp by 5 when you put it into play. Now it just lets him regain 3 hp, resulting in a 2 hp loss in any case, and if you get the Staff out before Ra has taken any damage, it's a 5 hp loss since the entire hp boost is lost to you. I'd always assumed that Ra's starting hp was 5 less than what the game designers figured was his "normal" hp, since getting the Staff into play was such an easy and almost required thing for Ra to do. With the EE nerf, does that mean that Ra's base hp should have been boosted?
On a related note, the EE seems to do away completely with the concept of increasing a target's maximum hp. I think this is a fine change since it was always kind of cumbersome to keep track of and the net effect of it was usually just to have the target regain some hp anyway. But it is technically a nerf in most cases.
Has anyone noticed these nerfs during play, and if so how have they affected things? Are there any other nerfs worth discussing that anyone can think of, maybe to environment cards or even villains?
I disagree that the change to the Staff of Ra is a nerf. In original play, we would play the staff and consider it a change to his original hit points, then rarely be willing to destroy it. Now, we energetically play it, sac it, and play it again, gaining life hand over fist! (This is actually the reason why it went to 3 instead of 5 - in play testing, 5 was an insane amount of life to be gaining like that.) Getting rid of max HP really made the Staff of Ra a much more interesting card.
And yeah, all changes to max HP were removed. It really was annoying to remember to remove the HP after the initial effect was removed, etc. Visionary has a card (don't remember off the top of my head - Demoralize?) that reduced non-Hero target HP, now it does a point at the start of her round. I wouldn't say it's nerfed - it's just different, as it's better in some situations and worse in others.
If I remember correctly, Wraith's Stun Bolt went from reducing by 2 to reducing by 1. Now that was nerfed, but it needed to be!
we would play the staff and consider it a change to his original hit points, then rarely be willing to destroy it.
That actually sounds more like how someone with an ancient staff of power would treat it, rather than treating it as a magical hp grenade. ;) I'm surprised that blowing up the staff repeatedly matches the original design intent.
I imagine they're going for a Thor's Hammer thing with that. Where else would Ra summon the Staff from? He's Ra, not Dr. Blake Washington, Jr., so he would already have it on him. I think the implication is that he summoned the Staff back to his possession after throwing it at someone or something.
I find the change to be nothing but good. Throwing the Staff in the old game sucked. Plus, if there were any damage/Equipment destruction effects, Ra got super punished. Three damage and destroying an Equipment card turns into (essentially) "Take eight damage and reduce your damage by one" with the original. With the Enhanced Edition, it reflects Ra's Godhood in a much more interesting way. He doesn't lose his Godly vitality when he ditches the Staff, but his great attacks become greater in his possession (and he gains HP rather than having floating "Staff HP" that can be taken away with incredible ease). It feels more like you're playing a God rather than being the Megatron gun that Starscream shoots. Move over, Staff of Ra! Ra is the star of this deck!
The technical change in Wraith's base power is not noticeable. The previous interpretation came up in matchups with Plague Rat and Ambuscade and the like, but you really don't use her base power all that much anyway.
Staff of Ra is a total upgrade. Now all three aspects of his iconic weapon are awesome.
The removal of the mechanic that altered maximum hit points, in addition to being a positive change for rules cohesion, makes almost all of the resulting cards better.
Luminous Leadership is now a threat worth destroying, rather than a minor annoyance.
Demoralization loses some interesting utility, but makes up for it in offensive potential.
Actually, I believe the change to the Wraith's base power was more to using consistant wording. According to the Rook City rule book (when irreducible damage was first mentioned), it was stated that irreducible damage cannot be reduced. It could however be prevented completely if a card could completely prevent damage or had damage immunity. While Wraith does "prevent" damage instead of reducing it, her wording doesn't say to "prevent completely" or "prevent all damage," only the next X damage. Which creates odd cases and ambiguity as far as what that really means. By only using the word "prevent" only in the context where all damage is prevented, and using "reduce" only in the context where damage is reduced by number, everything is much more consistant.
I don't have my box yet, but on the EE proofs Wraith's stun bolt got nerfed to "reduce damage by 1" instead of two. Take this with a grain of salt because Wraith also had 27 hp on these proofs as well.
From tearing through the cards of a friend's copy after the second day of GenCon, I like the slight alterations. Wraith doesn't feel so completely ridiculous that you have to slap yourself if you lose, saying 'The Wraith would never have had that outcome.' It also helps that NightMist and the Argent Adept, and Unity all feel just as ridiculous as she does now. Visionary now has EVEN MORE AWESOME flipping about even whilst relaxing in her lovely cocoon. (Plus, her new artwork is stellar. Stellar.)
I can't remember what Luminous Leadership does, but that and Demoralization were the two cards I quickly found after learning that the maximum HP mechanic was out (and a good thing, too. That was the slightest of annoyances).
I don't feel the Staff of Ra was particularly overpowered, though. 5 HP is massive, but there are a bazillion ways to destroy equips, and Ra has so very few that Mars, for instance, can ruin his day. Keep in mind, of course, that if you lose you Maximum buff, you lose the HP you had gained. Thus, gaining 5 HP is great, but losing 5 HP can easily spell death.
I honestly like the new "healer"-y Staff of Ra, and like some others said, I envision it working kinda like Thor's Hammer. I am a little surprised you didn't mention the nerf to Stun Bolt though.
That was a typo (Christopher confirmed that Wraith still has 26 HP in the EE Proofs topic in the IR Playtester Forum). Stunbolt reducing damage by one rather than two is still useful. It just doesn't completely shut down the Villain deck like it did before. She can still search for ANY equipment card in the game and then play another card with Impromptu Invention and use two powers with Utility Belt. She's easily still in the top tier.
