Absolutely - but the fact that all the healing we're talking about comes with a cost of a full action is something that also needs to be factored into the equation. An Apothecary with Bottled Courage and Potent Remedies can heal an average of 6 per turn and get off three attacks; he may not be the BEST healer but that certainly makes him a fantastically efficient one.

Definitely worth considering. As long as the bard has the lute, cacaphony (activating understudy) only "costs" 2, as he can always recover 1 of the 3 suffered by using the lute on another hero. And since cacaphony grants +1 stamina, he really only needs to rest every other round.

The Bard certainly isn't the only player in town when it comes to healing- but his combination of good healing, good fatigue regeneration, and the ability to do it without the use of actions (for the most part) makes him stand out.

I think you've got the lute backwards, Zaltyre - the bard loses 1, the other hero gets it.

I think you've got the lute backwards, Zaltyre - the bard loses 1, the other hero gets it.

Sorry, I'm still thinking Mok. The lute is normally "suffer 1 and another hero recovers 1." (-1/+1)

With "understudy" active, it becomes "suffer 1 and another hero recovers 2." (-1/+2)

With Mok but no "understudy," it's "suffer 1 and another hero recovers 1, but then recover that 1, so it's free." (0/+1)

With Mok and "understudy" active, it's "suffer 1 and another hero recovers 2, then recover that 1 plus 1 more." (+1/+2)

Or, to put it a different way, with understudy active it's "another hero recovers 2 and who cares what you suffer, because Elder Mok is the most ridiculously overpowered character in the game, with functionally infinite stamina." Again, let's leave Mok out of this.

Or, to put it a different way, with understudy active it's "another hero recovers 2 and who cares what you suffer, because Elder Mok is the most ridiculously overpowered character in the game, with functionally infinite stamina." Again, let's leave Mok out of this.

Sure thing. In that scenario, he has to be resting at least occasionally to keep up the heal, it's fatigue costly. The Apothecary can get a great deal of healing (and fatigue recovery) once he has "Potent Remedies," but its delayed in turns as he's got to distribute the elixer tokens.

Absolutely - but the fact that all the healing we're talking about comes with a cost of a full action is something that also needs to be factored into the equation. An Apothecary with Bottled Courage and Potent Remedies can heal an average of 6 per turn and get off three attacks; he may not be the BEST healer but that certainly makes him a fantastically efficient one.

The apothecary is an efficient healer becacuse he can give his group healing tokens that they can take with them, even if the party splits up.

Treasure hunter wants to go off and get all the search tokens? Here's an elixir, see you at the exit!

Geomancer's stones got a little banged up, but you don't want to have to resummon the one blocking up the monsters? Here's an elixir, good job, you rock!

On top of that, depending on what other skills the apothecary learns, you can add other functionality like removing fatigue, removing conditions or adding power to an attack!

Treasure hunter wants to go off and get all the search tokens? Here's an elixir, see you at the exit!

Geomancer's stones got a little banged up, but you don't want to have to resummon the one blocking up the monsters? Here's an elixir, good job, you rock!

You mean giving a token to the geomancer himself, right? The stone is not a hero, nor is it considered a hero for hero abilities. It can't hold an elixer token, or use one.

LoR FAQ/Errata states "Elixir tokens: add "allies and familliars can also gain elixir tokens." and then explains what they can do with the token.

Summon Stone geomancer cards states: This familliar is treated as an obstacle but may be targetted by an attack.

It's a familliar, familliars can receive tokens. Doesn't say anything about having arms to use it. Otherwise, Brightblaze could not use it either... the Reanimate wouldn't be able to use it since it's dead and can't actually drink.... The wolf could not use it, no hands.

It's not logical, but it's legal.

God, the rules about what works on different types of in-game things are such an absolute mess. I would ASSUME "this familiar is treated as an obstacle" has the intention of disallowing things like this - but RAW, it's hard to argue with "familiars can gain elixir tokens."

Good catch, Alarmed.

God, the rules about what works on different types of in-game things are such an absolute mess. I would ASSUME "this familiar is treated as an obstacle" has the intention of disallowing things like this - but RAW, it's hard to argue with "familiars can gain elixir tokens."

Good catch, Alarmed.

The "familliar is treated as an obstacle" is actually to disallow moving across it. My interpretation, and this is open to discussion, is that since it's an obstacle allies cannot move over the "rock" and neither can goblins using scamper. When on the board it is a familliar, but for purposes of movement and line of sight, it is an "obstacle".

That's why they are the best tools for blocking corridors or worse, if you get that map with the bridge that's only 1 square wide... try and get your monsters over THAT, OL!

God, the rules about what works on different types of in-game things are such an absolute mess. I would ASSUME "this familiar is treated as an obstacle" has the intention of disallowing things like this - but RAW, it's hard to argue with "familiars can gain elixir tokens."

Good catch, Alarmed.

The "familliar is treated as an obstacle" is actually to disallow moving across it. My interpretation, and this is open to discussion, is that since it's an obstacle allies cannot move over the "rock" and neither can goblins using scamper. When on the board it is a familliar, but for purposes of movement and line of sight, it is an "obstacle".

It IS very hard to argue with "allies and familiars can gain elixer tokens," however I'm sort of going to do it anyway. My thought (and I will seek actual clarification on this) is that what was meant to be written was "allies and familiars treated as figures can receive elixir tokens." I think this is the case because that's what is already consistent with the rules about familiars treated as figures . That is, a familiar treated as a hero figure is considered a hero for the purpose of hero abilities. "Brew Elixir" states, ...choose yourself or an adjacent hero... and ... during his turn, a hero may discard 1 elixir token ... RAW (pre-errata), that includes allies and familiars treated as figures -that is the Wolf, the Reanimate ( though he is explicitly prohibited from regaining wound by any means) , and also now the conjurer's image tokens ( though the image tokens never activate, and so can't discard them .) RAW (pre-errata), that does not include familiars not treated as figures, like Skye, Shadow Soul, Brightblaze, or Summoned Stones (3/4 of them don't even have a health value.)

Regarding a summoned stone being treated as an obstacle- except the fact that it can activate and be attacked, it functions exactly like a red outlined space. No one can even in passing be in the same space as it (except flying monsters may ignore terrain when moving) and spaces cannot be counted through it. This INCLUDES fire breath paths- that is, if a shadow dragon attacks a summoned stone and his fire breath path is forced to start on the target space, he literally can't use fire breath, because his traced path can't include the summoned stone's space. If you have summoned stones completely blocking a hallway, you cannot howl past them with barghests. If you have summoned stones behind an overgrowth, they're basically invincible, since they can't be scampered through (not heroes) and can't be attacked through the overgrowth.

I agree with Zaltyre 100%. But what things can affect what familiars, allies, heroes, familiars treated as figures, figures treated as heroes, heroes treated as monsters, zebras treated as raccoons, and trees is probably the worst-written part of this game's terrible rules set.

Zaltyre's Fire Breath example is a great one - I don't think that's how the rules SHOULD work, I don't think it makes SENSE for them to work that way - but Fire Breath isn't an attack, it's an effect that tells you to trace a path, and you can't trace that path through an obstacle. Giving Elixirs to Summoned Stones doesn't really make sense (in the context of the rules; I could not care less about making sense narratively) but the weakly-defined rules seem to allow it.

If anyone wanted to start a community project to rewrite the rules - with proper keywording, good organization, and internal consistency - I would happily help.

If anyone wanted to start a community project to rewrite the rules - with proper keywording, good organization, and internal consistency - I would happily help.

At risk of tooting my own horn, what I was hoping to do (and I think at least semi-successfully did/am doing) with the glossary was to lay out the terminology in the rulebook in one concentrated place. For the most part, FFG's rulings/errata have not deviated from those definitions- I don't think a rewrite of the rules is necessary- just some clarity in addition to that provided in the FAQ, which I was trying to provide.

Until encountering this bit about "familiars in general" receiving elixir tokens, I actually felt fine about the definitions of what can affect what. It's spelled out pretty well.

Zaltyre - No offense, but you're one of a VERY small community of people who post nearly DAILY on these forums. (As am I, obviously.) And if WE are here trying to parse out the rules for this, I think it's reasonable to say that it's NOT well spelled out. YOU may have felt fine with it - but you are far, far from the typical case. (For the record, my groups often still have questions about "can this card/effect/whatever hit this ally/rock/wolf/whatever.)

Thematically, I just think of my Apothecary as smashing a potion onto the stone.

"Here you go, a bit of liquid cement and you're good as new!"

I had not considered the fire breath ramifications. that's good food for thought...

Zaltyre - No offense, but you're one of a VERY small community of people who post nearly DAILY on these forums. (As am I, obviously.) And if WE are here trying to parse out the rules for this, I think it's reasonable to say that it's NOT well spelled out. YOU may have felt fine with it - but you are far, far from the typical case. (For the record, my groups often still have questions about "can this card/effect/whatever hit this ally/rock/wolf/whatever.)

All true. Perhaps this will clear some things up.

1) EVERYTHING in the yellow box is a token, and fits my definition of a token. (It does not block movement or LOS for anyone, and is considered an empty space.)

2) EVERYTHING in the green box is considered to be a hero figure for hero/monster abilities and attacks, and for OL cards that refer to a "hero." They aren't considered heroes for any other reason, unless otherwise specified (for example, the main party is ALWAYS heroes.) Also, everything in this box blocks LOS, and blocks movement for all but other friendly figures (that is, they follow all the rules for figures.)

3) EVERYTHING in the red box is a familiar, and may activate/make a move action + whatever else the card says. They conform to 1 and 2 above in all cases, respectively.

It's just a matter of determining which box a thing fits into. In most cases, it's explicitly written. For tokens, if not specified, it's a token. Once an object has been assigned to a box, determining what does/doesn't affect it is (I maintain) simple, because that's spelled out in the rules (see 1 and 2 above.)

Thematically, I just think of my Apothecary as smashing a potion onto the stone.

"Here you go, a bit of liquid cement and you're good as new!"

I had not considered the fire breath ramifications. that's good food for thought...

The thing is, the Apothecary elixir is quaffed by the stone at some point during its activation, which means it could be far away from the Apothecary when it decides to actually drink it..

No matter how you slice it is, it is really weird thematically

Zaltyre - that is a GREAT chart, and I REALLY like it. In fact, I think it could be really useful for clearing up some of the confusion around this type of issue. One thing I might do - I might just make the two top-level categories "figures" and "not figures" - calling the 2nd group "tokens" may confuse some people into thinking that just because something is represented by cardboard instead of a mini, the rules change.

I would also add the OL's team to the "figures" side (split into "monster", "Lieutenant", and "Agent")

Then, you write definitions for what each box means, and you've essentially got a giant Venn diagram you can start putting stuff in. For example, and I'm just spitballing here - the Summoned Stone would be in the Figures side, because it blocks movement and line of sight. It would NOT be in the Heroes or Overlord side, because neither team can move through it. It would be in the Familiars box, which tells you how it activates and what skills/abilities can be used on it.

The villagers from the intro quest to LoR would be in the figures box as well, but they would overlap both heroes and overlord team - because while they block LoS they don't block movement for anyone.

Does that make sense as a way of looking at things?

So there you go - you made something cool, and I said "now you should do a whole bunch of extra work!" See what you get? :-)

Point of technicality, because I get hung up on things like this- the summoned stone is not a figure. Perhaps it's more like a figure than not, but it's a wholly other category. I'm assuming you know this, and were pointing out that it should go on the figure side, but not in the figure box. Good point about token vs represented by a token and figure vs represented by a mini.

I can use a piece of rock instead of a token to represent my summoned stone, though.

Would that count as a figure instead?

You're totally right, of course, Zaltyre, and you're right about why I put it that way. Since - as far as I know - the word "figure" is only loosely defined in the game, I'm using it (as I said, just off of the top of my head) to mean "Thing that blocks LOS and movement." Is there a better definition somewhere?

You're totally right, of course, Zaltyre, and you're right about why I put it that way. Since - as far as I know - the word "figure" is only loosely defined in the game, I'm using it (as I said, just off of the top of my head) to mean "Thing that blocks LOS and movement." Is there a better definition somewhere?

No, not really- that's the definition of a figure, at least functionally (and I don't know if there's another definition.) A figure is a character that blocks LOS for all, and movement for all but friendly figures. An obstacle is also a thing that blocks LOS and movement, but it's more specifically a type of terrain that blocks LOS, movement for all figures (not just ones that aren't friendly) and also blocks counting of spaces, which figures don't.

The funny part about "mini" being different than "figure" is that for the most part , all minis are figures, and most figures are minis (notable exceptions being allies, reanimate, wolf, lieutenants (if you don't have the packs) and several NPCs throughout the campaigns.)

In related news but not about stones and potions:

Someone justify the prophet to me? I know the insight token can affect characters that are far away but the amount of healing it does is so piddly it seems crazy to call the Prophet a healer at all.

1+1 = 2

Average of a red die is 2 1/6

The prophet heals just 1/6 of a point less than apothecary or disciple, can do it anywhere on the board, and - most importantly - heals a stamina as well.

Justified.

1+1 = 2

Average of a red die is 2 1/6

The prophet heals just 1/6 of a point less than apothecary or disciple, can do it anywhere on the board, and - most importantly - heals a stamina as well.

Justified.

Yup- not to mention some of his coolest skills have more to do with preventing damage than healing it (see Forewarning and Omniscience.)