Hello FFG community,

I'm the Overlord for the first time and we're about to delve into the second part of "Secrets in Stone". I have a question regarding the Persistent Curse in which players must roll to see if they get cursed at the start of their turn. The heroes insist that if they get it, they can then immediately roll to see if they can remove it. Is that the case or does it persist until the start of the next turn?

The most experienced member of the group (the bearer of the rules) states that since both rolling to get this condition and rolling to alleviate conditions are start of turn options, the player can decide which resolves first so they can roll for the persistent curse before then rolling to resolve it. This has some reason to it but it also sounds counterintuitive to the point of the persistent curse. Because I have two summoning heroes, this would make a tremendous impact in the game.

I apologize if this has been addressed in full but I have searched the internet, this forum via the engine and by thumbing through the first 20 pages of threads to no avail.

I'm not sure if there is an official ruling on this, but we played it as you only do the roll to see if you were cursed. There is no subsequent roll to get rid of it. You're just cursed until the end of your turn. If you get a regular curse, you can roll to get rid of that one.

The quest rules specifically state that the curse lasts until the end of their turn. Quest rules trump all other rules, so no, they can't get rid of it the ordinary way.

If it says that, then that's it. I apologize for not having the book with me at work. We all work together so now is when it has come up in discussion. I assume the text isn't available (or easily available) online to prevent people from using the quests without purchase.

Had it not said that, would the players have been able to immediately roll a second time to remove it? (I understand this question may be meaningless as I can't think of another circumstance where this would happen at the player's start of turn phase)

Whenever there are two or more effects that happen at the same time (like in your example, start of turn), the active player decides the order in which they are resolved.

Had it not been for the quest rule Whitewing mentioned, your friends would have been right. However, the more specific (as in, limited) a rule is, the higher priority it has, so your intuition was correct.

The question is far from meaningless, since there are plenty of situations where you get 2+ events at the same time (especially if you play with a plot deck).

Thank you for your input. The group rule master got the book on his lunch break and has confirmed the thread's outcome. Things aren't looking good for them. They have to roll higher than 5 to not be cursed for their turn (four fatigues for the destroyed alters and one more for the win). With a Necromancer and Beastmaster in the group, it should be quite the challenge for them.

In my optional, Persistent Curse should be consider as a new condition (same effect as curse) that can only be removed at the end of hero's turn.

Also a hero can be curse & persistent cruse in the same time.

For cruse, following the normal checking of knowledge.

Thank you for your input. The group rule master got the book on his lunch break and has confirmed the thread's outcome. Things aren't looking good for them. They have to roll higher than 5 to not be cursed for their turn (four fatigues for the destroyed alters and one more for the win). With a Necromancer and Beastmaster in the group, it should be quite the challenge for them.

When i was playing this mission as overlord the heroes lost the first encounter dismally and i started the next encounter with 5 fatigue. However their party at the time hardly had any abilities denoted with action arrow so the curse was hardly much of a big deal to them anyway.

I ended up winning by the absolute skin of my teeth! Its not an easy quest for the overlord to win at all i think. The heroes can just basically kill everything except 1 monster from the open group (so ariad doesnt activate), heal up, block the door with 2 heroes then proceed to search the search tokens with the other 2. Ariad has difficulty getting to the hero with the objective and the heroes proceed to nuke Ariad.

I am going to play this quest,

Also think hard to win.

So , as OL, I think I will spend long enough time in encounter 1 after having 3 fatigues.

Try to get as much as T token as possible for next quest

My win literally came down to using dark resilience (roll 2 red power die, monster recovers health on dice... essential card for these sorts of quesst) and Masques (Lord Merric Farrow plot deck) to make the last attack a instant miss, which would have in high likelihood lost me the quest.

If i was to play the encounter again i would pick a large monsters for the open group, use them to block paths leading to the search tokens which would force the heroes to kill them to get them. Not a totally fool proof plan, but better than my choice of barghests.

In the future i would stay away from this quest as an overlord, heroes with their act together have a very good chance at winning due to the way the lieutenant is activated.

Going to try to win scene two tonight (lost scene one with three tokens). I thought about fireimps as open group because: a) they can block the way because of numbers, b) are easily killed burning actions (opening the door) and c) punish the one killing them by fire damage.

What do you think?

I play basic II with two net traps and the punisher cards that let your monsters move when heroes move with exhaustion. Both of the latter I have in hand plus Dirty fighting and a useless mimic. EDIT: well considering the extra movement shadow dragons are quite attractive. Move one square expand two more. Neat way to get them blocking the passages like BentoSan suggests:

If i was to play the encounter again i would pick a large monsters for the open group, use them to block paths leading to the search tokens which would force the heroes to kill them to get them.

Any ideas? I'd hate loosing this one...

Tonight being in less than two hours

Tonight being in less than two hours

I can't speak for every situation, but I recently played "The Monster's Hoard" using fire imps and shadow dragons, and while the dragons did a lot of damage, the fire imps were a huge hinderance to the heroes- especially if you can make them waste actions attacking the imps and dispelling burn condition. Don't forget combustible on the masters.

Burn is like a "stun-lite." You don't HAVE to spend an action to get rid of it, but if you don't, you pay a price.