I see a big problem with soaring in outdoor encounters, because they block movement but are off the ground... so actully if u have a melee party or if you loose the ranged and magical heros its an autolose... most of the time, specually if the encounter is involving a lutenant because the OL can block him behind some soaring monsters and then its just a matter of time when the reinforcements wil finish you off ... and razorwings are the best for doing just that ...

what do you think?

This part of the current FAQ from 03/25/2009:

Dungeon Level 14: The Fountain of Life
If an invulnerable monster blocks a path, the heroes may move through that monster.

I've chosen as overlord to extend this to any encounter.

interpretation: A monster is invunerable if no character is able to hurt it.

We simply say heroes can move trough them anyway, but cannot end the turn under a soaring monster. I think it's stupid heroes cannot move past a soarer. I know not everything has to be realistic in a game, but this goes a bit too far IMO.

Unfortunately, Soar is a bit strange.

However, you can still hit Soaring creatures with melee people if you have them Guard and activate the Guard when the monster swoops.

People are naturally welcome to house rule Soar as they see fit, and I've seen lots of house rules for Soar, some of which I agree with and some which I don't.

I have also tweaked the rules on Soar to allow things to walk underneath them. I've also changed a few other things about soar too.

yes i know about guard but that does not change a thing..

Well if the soaring monstar blocks the entire path and never attacks. The overlord can simply move monsters out from behind it and attack with those from a distance.

I did this trick with a manticore and using my lieutenant I effectively got endless threat. That meant that I in effect could get unlimited move and max-dice without getting hit. the remaining melee hero could do nothing to prevent this and thusly conceeded.

After this I've just used the above ruling for dungeon 14 as a general guideline for these situations.

I understand how the rules are written and agree that it's stupid. Normally I'm all for RAW regardless of illogical combinations, but this is one area where I'm sorely tempted to make a house rule. I say create a "Sky" area that exists off board (like the Town in vanilla). Any creatures with Soar go to the Sky and cannot interact with figures on the ground. If they want to attack they have to swoop down (and put themselves back on the map.) If all remaining monsters are in the Sky, the heroes can leave via any exit point and the encounter ends in hero victory. Those high-wheeling dragons have obviously chosen to disenageg, for whatever silly reason.

I find that soar is pretty unforgiving, but I suggest keeping blast/breat runes handy on your mages. At higher levels, you will also find that your ranged characters don't have too much trouble with soaring creatures..at least in terms of getting the range too them. Also keep in mind that soaring creatures suffer the same penalties for ranged attacks as heroes do if they do not swoop.

That being said, in our last campaign it came down to Lt. battles for Tamalir. Merick and his manticores and Kratz the plague were pretty hard to beat. Of course, I was way ahead in conquest and it seems like if you're way ahead you should be able to win. It seems that the OL often beats up on the heroes early on, but by the time you hit mid-silver or certainly gold he has nothing to show for it. Since the only other ways to win for the OL are killing all the heroes in the final battle (supposedly highly unlikely) or through plots (and only one of these doesn't require lieutenants to travel all over the place and the other gives the heroes 9 turns to get to your keep, anyway), it seems that Lieutenant battles should be winnable for the OL and hard for the heroes...especially if certain classes of monster are upgraded.

Soaring demons do seem a bit over the top to me in the Demon Prince's Lt. battle, especially if your OL has monster treachery and a dark servant card in his hand. All that fear AND you need 5 range to hit if your "adjacent"? You better have a lot of dice.

I fail to see why a hero team that has lost all of it's ranged attack capability should be allowed to win an encounter of this type.

This is a game that has winners and losers if the heroes insist on playing stupid they should lose.

granor said:

I'm with Granor on this one. Lts have to be really tough or the OL basically has no chance. Heroes have to be prepared for Lt fights. If they let it get to 'must win' then find they can't, then they get what they deserve.
Even a no trait melee character can use a blast or breathe weapon as a backup, and with a powerpot or fatigue pot can still do a fair amount of damage to most (probably not a soaring Fear-ed monster though).

I'm still not happy about Slaggoroth with the 3-trail rule enabling some pretty severe harrassment that gets boring quickly though...

Steve-O said:

I generally like to tweak my rules rather than make major changes like this, but I actually really like this idea for its simplicity and think it has a lot of potential given how many soar-frustrations it would get rid of in one fell swoop. No pun intended. So, instead of a move action, monsters can choose to move to the Sky, from the Sky to any available space on the map, or swoop (to specified squares on the map at which point they can both attack and be attacked by a Guard action

My one big criticism would be the suggestion that there would be a hero victory if all monsters are in the Sky. This would effectively mean that the Demon and Dragon encounters would not be allowed to Soar at all and would bring up the fairly ridiculous situation of Kraatz having to land one razorwing in a far corner of the map at all times to prevent an automatic hero victory. My suggestion would be to make attacks to and from Sky possible to or from any square on the board but at a very high range (8 maybe? Time for some Aim orders from the trees.). Breath templates can't be used unless the monster is landed or swooping, and Blast attacks still need the range. This way, heroes can still fight back and, if they can't get that range, they are able to flee, but not as a hero victory.

It would change the nature of soar encounters hugely though. I suggest you test a few encounters at different campaign levels.

well just look at it this way ... how can a monster that is of the ground block movement?? Well maybe a soaring monster that ocupies more spaces but how come.. if he bloks movement that u cant hit him melee?

I dont think there is a good expenation for that..

If there is and encounter with a lieutenant that has razorwings reinforcing him, lets say in late silver age ... and the razorwings are golden and the Ol has at least 1 dark charm from treachery . A normal party with 2 melee heroes 1 ranged 1 magical . There is less then 10 % chance for the heros to win if the OL is not really dumb. Surely you can have a bow on both melee chars but it will hardly penetrate the armor of most soaring monsters... And its just a matter of time when the reinforcements will overrun the party.

I'm just going to join the chorus of "Soar sucks!" I understand what the rule is trying to accomplish, but the RAW is confusing and illogical. A very bad combination!

Why is everybody complaining that a Soaring monster blocks movement and LoS, while a monster or hero in a pit does the very same?

Parathion said:

I don't really have an issue with Soar for the most part. The reason you don't hear the same for the pit is that being in a piut doesn't add 4 range to the attack.

inle_badger said:

I agree about not making big changes to the rules. Normally I'm in the camp of "just play it RaW and don't worry about the why." In my experience the game is reasonably well balanced by RaW as long as you don't obsess over the illogical things that pop up. Most people that have balance issues also seem to have lots of house rules. Soar is one thing that really gets under my skin though, not sure why it bothers me so much when I can turn a blind eye to all the other nonsense so easily. Still, there it is.

I like your suggestions here (about allowing attacks at range and such.) I wouldn't let monsters Swoop from the Sky though, because then they can just stay in the sky all the time and still attack on their turn anywhere on the map. The only way to get off a decent attack at non-extreme ranges would be to use Guard. I'd require a monster to come down for at least one turn in order to use template or melee attacks (or ranged/magic at non-extreme ranges.) I'll play with that and see how it works.

Steve-O said:

I'd be very interested to hear how you get on. Make sure you post your results once you've tried it out a bit.

Personally I think swoop would be needed to keep soaring encounters the worst, which I think they're intended to be. Without it, I'm not sure that monsters like Razorwings would have much of an advantage at all. Guard and careful use of trees would still let you get a swing at them or that pesky dragon, and if the party isn't well enough equipped to deal with the encounter, the Dragon/Demon/Manticores would still have to land in order to stop the heroes from escaping.

Just going to add my opinion that you should be aware changing Soar is a HUGE blow to the Overlord, and will have a dramatic effect on game balance. It IS a thematic abomination, but it serves a pretty important purpose. Without it, Alric is dead in the water - and yes, a party with only two shooters CAN beat Alric with Soaring Razorwings. You need more shooters to beat Kar-Amog or Kratz, but then, the party DOES get a lot of choice over their Heroes.

Nerfing soar also creates internal balance issues, in that Beasts become the worst monster class by far. Soaring is the main thing they have going for them, since they're junk in the dungeons.

The_Immortal said:

Well if you are worried about the game balance, dont you think they should make some different logical rule, instead of some non logical rule change of flying. That in my opinion makes even more balance issues.

The_Immortal said:

You make a valid point. Maybe I'll try keeping the attack rules as +4 range and swooping allowed. After all, the only real issue I have is with the whole "this figure is soaring high in the sky, but it still blocks LOS and movement on the ground" bit. That's the only thing I'm really trying to change. Actually, I take that back. The Sky is off board which means its functionally that range from everywhere on board, so make it 8 range to hit the Sky, but leave swooping in after all.

It's nerfed due to being the same distance from everywhere and buffed due to being +8 instead of +4. Might work out. I'll let you guys know how it works.

I've always assumed that Soar blocking LOS and movement grew solely out of an attempt to prevent confusion on the physical gameboard. If it didn't do those things, you'd have plenty of cases where you'd have 2 figures occupying the same physical map space, having to keep track of who is Soaring and who isn't for LOS purposes, etc etc.

My biggest problem with Soar is that you can still Swoop and make attacks while webbed, whicn just makes no sense to me whatsoever. If you are webbed, you should drop to the ground and not be flying anymore. Granted this is somewhat of a thematic argument, but still.

Big Remy said:

Good explanation ! Never thought of that.

And i totally agree on the web thing.

Big Remy said:

I agree, this is obviously the reason why Soar works the way it does. It just bugs me for some reason. Other similar rulings have been made before and I've just brushed them off (see almost anything about pits) but Soar for whatever reason I just can't let go of.

Well, it is sort of a ridiculous ruleset..