Hi!

I'm the overlord of a group currently on silver level. Last Night we stopped right after they opened the blue door into the last area of this Rumor.

There arose a question of wether the monsters could simply open the door and kill the cub themselves.

This makes it pretty impossible for the party to rescue the cub, but on the other hand if the party simply kills of all the monsters and THEN opens the door (assuming the monsters are unable to open the door); then it is very hard to neigh impossible for the overlord to kill the cub. This would only be done by initiating another spawn, unless the heroes are covering all the areas, or for the overlord to play a Dark Charm.

Comments, rules or how you play are all welcome.

NoNamium said:

I'd need to look at the map to be sure, but two questions come to mind right off the bat:

1) Is the Blue Door a Rune locked door? If it is, then the monsters can't open the door themselves (unless its a named monster).

2) If its not, but the door opens to an unrevealed area, then the monsters can't open it since they are not allowed to open doors leading to unrevealed areas. Since Rumor levels typically do have areas separated by doors, I think this is more likely the answer.

Since you said "last area" above, #2 is most likely your answer.

Unfortunately that is not the answer. The "cell door" is a normal white door, with square ends (not the triangular area-defining ends). So it is not an area by itself, nor is it a rune-locked door. I do seem to recall some debate over this long ago, but I can't see anything in the Gathered Questions list, nor the FAQ.

edderkoppen said:

Yeah if the cell is in the last area, then I can't think of any reason why the monsters can't go open it and kill the cub. Unless there is something in the Rumor text that prevents that.

This problem also arises with the dungeon level(s) that involve saving prisoners and such. Any quest that has squishies the heroes need to protect, really. There's no rule preventing the OL from killing the squishies well in advance if he can reach them, there's only his sense of fair play (or lack there of)

Our group is not about "Fair play". We treat it like a chess game, exploiting mechanics when we can.

Unfortunately sometimes things just seem so either/or, that we need some middleway. Doesn't seem to be one here

The heroes get to go first. That's really the only thing stopping the OL from killing the NPC's.

Thundercles said:

Aye, however if you don't know the setup, then you have to be really lucky you put your pieces right when you open the door, otherwise it's neigh impossible to make sure only one or two monsters can reach the pup.