TOPIC: Thoughts on playing rare based hardcore

For several years past I've run TD with friends at pretty high gearing levels (~2 characters easily geared for Epic, the other 8 easily geared for Nightmare).

In the last year I decided to part ways with most of my tokens, and am playing with somewhat optimized rare builds (level 4 characters).

I wasn't sure exactly what to expect going into Gen Con this year and playing Hardcore with level 4 characters / rare builds, and here is what my group experienced:

1. Coaching was easier / less stressful with fewer doodads to pass around and worry about (we still use pre-printed stats for the coaches, but I quartermaster all the tokens so there were just fewer things to worry about).

2. With dramatically less HP (level 4, no 10x Charm of Awakened Synergy, no Harlax Helpful Lamp) and healing (no Lenses of Divine Sight, healing bonuses in the +5-10 range), combat and healing were a bit more exciting - healing was needed in combat a few times, Dwarf Fighter Taunt felt more impactful.

3. I was worried about player death and even a TPK for the first time in a long time.

We played Dune Viper, combat oriented choice made in coaching. In the 2nd to last combat room, with the large illusory/construct Snake monster we had several people within 1 shot range of being dead - and had used up all our card-based healing spells.

Fortunately the dungeon design in that dungeon had the "end boss" monster a bit more forgiving (if you passed saving throws anyway) and we made it through.

4. Consumables, especially healing consumables, were relevant and enjoyable to have.

At very high gearing levels I've been trucking around consumables for years and only ever using them when player communication breaks down and the on-the-card healing isn't getting used by the party. I've even stopped using things like Pouch of Tulz+Bull's Strength because when you're at +20 to hit +35 to damage what's the point.

5. You really, really don't need to go bananas on tokens to play at hardcore - our group was only 5 player due to some unfortunate cancellations, and Hardcore felt like a good challenge to me. Had we had 10 players at this gearing level I think it would have been much easier (although perhaps eaten into a lot more healing consumables due to large amounts of AOE damage).

In total: I didn't notice much difference in the fun I had, if anything I'd say this was a bit more fun than I've been used to, and these builds also would work just fine next to PUGs token 10 pack players.

I tend to prefer 5th level + rare instead of just pure rare builds since the casters get extra spells and some classes get extra abilities. That said, those builds are too good for hardcore, but not good enough for nightmare, leaving you in a bit of an awkward spot for what difficulty to play with. Healing is especially painful with pure rare builds, but linked shirt of healing and Triton rings makeup lots of ground that you wouldn't see on UR+ builds.

I’ve been playing rares, a level enhancer and cheap blues (+6 save rings, whetstone, master ale drinker bead, blessed gloves) and it feels overpowered for hardcore and I at least feel like I can not hold the party back in nightmare).

This is my favourite way to play. If I scrape through barely alive then I’ve had an amazing time.

I’ve piloted a bunch of builds and if nothing ever hurts me, half the time I just stand around twiddling my thumbs until I have to slide something.

But I am also the kind of person who is okay with failing at stuff and rolling 1s and making idiot choices.

So yes absolutely. Let’s put the cleric TO WORK

I love your idea of running rare base HC runs. I'm the one that generally gets the tokens to setup builds for my friends to allow them to focus on the game rather than the cost of the tokens but as time has gone on and more of my friends are interested in playing the game (which is great!) but its gotten a bit too taxing to get everyone to NM. would you mind sharing your character builds? I want to know the general gauge of damage, saves, ac, etc for HC as to not be too strong but also not too weak. It feels like power creep has really set in as I thought I had my friends saves at a decent point for Nightmare 16 - 20 but we all failed a dex save on a roll of an 18 on NM in one of the recent gen con runs and that was the red flag that I don't think I can keep up with maintaining my friends builds for NM and if thats the case it would be just more fun if I had more people in my group consistently playing each year on HC and easier to update builds.

Hardcore from my group running it is:
30+ HP to avoid one shot (only happened once)
+8-10 hit means you almost always hit under bard song
+10-13 saves means you save almost all of the time
+7-12 damage is likely fine? Hard to say, my group had heavy hitters in when we started

Andy Duong wrote: I love your idea of running rare base HC runs. I'm the one that generally gets the tokens to setup builds for my friends to allow them to focus on the game rather than the cost of the tokens but as time has gone on and more of my friends are interested in playing the game (which is great!) but its gotten a bit too taxing to get everyone to NM. would you mind sharing your character builds? I want to know the general gauge of damage, saves, ac, etc for HC as to not be too strong but also not too weak. It feels like power creep has really set in as I thought I had my friends saves at a decent point for Nightmare 16 - 20 but we all failed a dex save on a roll of an 18 on NM in one of the recent gen con runs and that was the red flag that I don't think I can keep up with maintaining my friends builds for NM and if thats the case it would be just more fun if I had more people in my group consistently playing each year on HC and easier to update builds.

I think that one Dex save in dune viper was meant to be failed. I walked into nightmare with my Cleric with a +30 ref save and failed in 2 separate runs.

One of my friends suggested selling off our expensive stuff and just playing HC years ago.

Another advantage of low end builds is that you aren't lending out $1500 of weapons to the monk who has never played the game before for an in person run.

I would say that challenge can be found at any level. Sure, the base numbers of classes become less important more tokens increase numbers, tokens can sub for class abilities, or whatever, so it is qualitatively different, but just in terms of making consumables matter and making all spell slots matter, that can happen with legendaries, Eldritch, et al.

My initial interest in URs was to create build variety. I think there's likely enough variety at rare level at this point for HC play, but it would be hard to give up all of the variety I currently have.

There are more factors than one would think to determining what makes sense for collections/builds for any given player. Rare HC also likely works better when doing only in person runs. Since most of my runs are VTD and I care about different things in PTD versus VTD, targeting collection for PTD play doesn't make sense for me.

I had a friend who was interested in joining me for a run this year last minute so I had to hobble together a monk build for him with not that much to work with. got the necklace for the monk and had a pretty much red range monk build with the dead shot set and he did just fine. there are a lot of reds out that that give some decent variety and can still pack a punch!

Andy Duong wrote: I love your idea of running rare base HC runs.... would you mind sharing your character builds?

The builds are not in an easily shareable format, but the ranges are:

To-hit in primary mode: +10-14 (except wizards who are much lower).

To-damage in primary mode: +11-+19 with a few outliers: Barbarian +31, Cleric +6, Wizard +21

Saves:
Fort +13-+17
Reflex: +10-+17
Will: +14-+18

AC: +22-+28 with outliers of Barbarian, Monk, Rogue, and WIzards having AC in the 13-19 range

HP: Most classes in the 30s, outliers of Barbarian at 43, Cleric 25.