All

Would really appreciate a bit of guidance on exactly what Grey Ker can & cannot do i.e. how does his Special Ability interact with the Skill cards. I’m playing Overlord & have just started running another RtL campaign – the player using Grey Ker is very new to Descent & I want to make sure I can give him some good tips/advice in order to use the character to the best of his ability - yes, an Overlord that cares! Most importantly I want to make sure that everything we consider is within the rules. Although as a group we have played quite a lot of Descent (mostly RtL), this is the first time anyone has used Grey Ker.

Thanks in advance.

I have actually never used him myself, but the FAQ has a pretty good entry with an example of how he interacts with some skills.

Q: How does Grey Ker's ability work? Can I declare a Battle action to activate my Battle Cry power, and then declare an Advance action to activate my Relentless power?

A: Grey Ker may still only declare one action per turn. His ability allows him to change what action he is taking mid-turn (provided that the new action is legal), but changing his action is not the same as declaring a new one. For example, Grey Ker could declare a Battle action (potentially triggering Battle Cry or a similar skill), spend some fatigue to move, make an attack roll, and then change to an Advance action to move his speed or to a Ready action to place an order token.

I see, pretty good. So if he got Unmovable he could declare Battle, which triggers Unmovable, then change to Sprint = double movement & a Ready Order as well as +1 Armour until next turn?

Any other suggestions?

Noodle2977 said:

That is one of the really nice things about him, is just getting a skill like that and always declaring that action type and then doing whatever the heck you like. Heck, you could declare the battle action with unmovable, then either more or attack and add both an aim and a guard, so you could do an aimed guard attack

And of course it's nice to be able to change your declared action when you miss an important attack or won't be able to get where you need to due to the overlord springing a trap on you.

Hammerdal said:

Good thought with unmoveable...I had that last campaign and it was awesome to have a guard order every turn. However, you cannot have two orders at once, so aiming and guarding together doesn't work.

Oh, can't do 2 orders at the same time? That's a shame. I kinda like the idea of it, although I suppose it could be abused.

Hammerdal said:

How?

You may be right, I just can't think of anything obviously abusive you can do. It's not like there are special skills or abilities that could give you an unlimited number of orders except for this rule, and none of the orders are particularly synergystic. Maybe Dodge + Rest, but that's hardly game-breaking.

I could understand saying that you can't have two of the same order at once, just due to token limitations, but the rule that you can't have two different orders at once has always seemed kind of arbitrary. Especially because it means that you sometimes can't place an order because you can't conveniently get rid of an old order that you don't want anymore.

As far as I can tell, there's nothing that says you can't discard an order at any time for no effect.

There's nothing that says you can , either, but I can't see a situation where discarding an order token could tip the balance of the game in the heroes' favor. At best, it's neutral.

Thundercles said:

As noted above, sometimes this would allow you to place a new order when you couldn't otherwise, which could be advantageous. For example, you could use Leadership to place a Rest on a hero before their turn starts when they have a Dodge (or other order) left over from the previous round, or you could get rid of an Aim during your turn (allowing you to place a new order with a Ready) without having to move first (for example if you want to spend all your movement points on movement actions, or if you're stunned). Though one could maybe argue that you could remove an Aim order at the start of your turn by "re-equipping" the weapon you already have equipped.

Antistone said:

You can certainly change your equipment to get rid of an aim order. I think the "loss" or orders has more to do with limiting the orders versus mandating they stay.

Sihlouette's ability let's her exchange and order for another one at any time, allowing her to effectively declare a dodge for the bulk of the OL's turn and then change it to a rest after the OL is done activating monsters but before her turn. Given that leadership is explicitly noted in the faq as being able to give a rest order before someone's turn, this seems just as reasonable.

Moreover, the rules state that a hero cannot have more than one order placed at a time; it does not say anywhere that you cannot place a new order if you already have one readied. I think the only thing we need to know is you can't have both a dodge and a guard or a dodge and a rest at the same time. Things like Leadership (a skill) or Sihlouette's (HERO) ability, are the only things that can skirt around that, and I think they're supposed to be powerful because we are talking about skills and hero abilities, which tend to be strong and which are both rare, given the # of other skills/heroes you could end up with.

Feanor said:

Actually, that's exactly what it says. In the next sentence.

"A hero can only have one order at any one time. A hero that has already been issued an order cannot receive another order until the first order is used or removed." (JitD rules p. 14, "Hero Orders")

As for the rest of it, no, I don't think that being able to discard orders at will would be broken, but neither do I think that having multiple orders at once is broken. That was my original point.

Gentlemen – I had intended this to be for suggestions on playing Grey Ker…

Noodle2977 said:

Sorry it's gone on a tangent about orders. That being said, Grey Ker is affected by the things that have been discussed. I think the main point of Grey Ker's ability is that he has the benefit of knowing what will happen before he does his action and can change his action to suit what he wants to do. If he wants to battle to get two shots on that undying master skeley, but the skeley fails it's undying roll he can change to an advance or place an order, etc. It's even better with something like unmovable or battle cry where he can "declare" an action to gain those benefits but do something completely different.

I'm sorry it's on this thread, but I will be posting a second time to respond to my response. Sorry for the clutter.

I played with Grey Ker recently, and I found that his ability is most useful when coupled with a skill, as has been mentioned.

I was lucky enough to draw Battle Cry, but even with that I only used it maybe half a dozen times. I would imagine that without a skill like that, I would have only used his ability 2 or 3 times in the whole dungeon.