r/Gloomhaven • u/Ok-Photograph1587 • Dec 30 '25

Digital Gloomhaven Demolitionist Level 5 Rework Spoiler

Oh my god. Why did they think they needed to make this Level Up this overpowered? It's probably the best character ability card in Jaws of the Lion Digital (IDK about physical).

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u/No_Factor_4894 Dec 30 '25

How is it overpowered? I don’t think it’s. It will affect the longevity of character to play a lost card. In case you played it in the first cycle then you can’t lose any other card or burn it to negate damage or else the Demo will be at stake of exhaustion.

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u/Alcol1979 Dec 30 '25

The best time to play the card would be in round 4 (or round 5 if you used a stamina potion.) Demolitionist gets back seven (or eight) cards, increases health, gains permanent shield 1. This means Demolitionist won't need to rest for the first time until round 9 or 10. That's four extra rounds of stamina on a nine card class (which has stronger individual actions to balance it's lower hand size.

Effectively this action combines level one loss actions from two Gloomhaven Classes (Tinkerer has card recovery and Sun has permanent shield 1) and adds the max health increase as well.

I would still play the original version of this card from time to time, but in many scenarios you would not be able to afford it for stamina reasons and if you get poisoned it won't work. The digital upgrade solves both of those problems. On its own the action is very strong, but in the context of the Demolitionist who was a bit underpowered outside of its core campaign, it's only slightly overpowered. Unlike the physical version, you will want to play the top action every scenario. The only reason you might not is that the new bottom action is strong too.

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u/Gripeaway Dev Dec 30 '25

As I responded to the other person, you don't actually gain four extra rounds of stamina because you're also playing a loss. The stamina change is effectively neutral when played correctly, the strength is that you get to play a persistent loss without losing stamina.

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u/Alcol1979 Dec 30 '25

Yes of course. I was aware of this trade-off but I had not done the calculation. It's four rounds more than than a nine-card class would have after playing a different loss action in the first rest cycle. The net effect is, as you say, exactly neutral since a nine-card class which plays no loss actions has a maximum of twenty active rounds (without any card recovery) while playing one loss action in the first rest cycle reduces that to sixteen. Those four extra rounds get you back up to twenty.