From the basic rules (or any of the basic expansions):

Blast: Blast attacks affect every space within X spaces of
the target (only spaces with line of sight to the target are
affected).*

From RtL:

Attacks with the Blast ability affect every space within X spaces
of the target space, where X is equal to the rank of the Blast
ability. However, a space is only affected by the attack if it has
line of sight to the target space (ignoring figures for this
purpose).

Is this (the ignoring figures portion) yet another of the tiny differences in abilities between Vanilla and RtL?

FAQ is silent on this - any other input known?

I personally would throw that up to someone adding it during editing of RtL, but that's just a guess.

However, I'm not sure how big of a difference it is if I'm understanding it right. Its LOS from the target space. So on a Blast 1, it won't matter. On Blast 2, even if there is a figure blocking LOS from the target to a space directly behind it, the two adjacent spots should have LOS I would think.

I guess I can see if you get into like Blast 4 or something running into problems.

It becomes important starting with Blast 2.

In the non-RtL case, the figure in Blast 1 radius blocks the Blast from another figure behind it, while in RtL the Blast 2 automatically hits this figure.

Parathion said:

So in RtL, you cannot jump on the grenade to save your friends.

wait...you can jump on the grenade in vanilla ?...that seems just a bit retarded.

Parathion said:

Parathion said:

Yeah I just realized that after thinking about my original statement for Blast 2, but sadly the edit button had gone away.

I honestly don't know. I'm not sure why they would make an intentional change to make Blast work better in a smaller dungeons (RtL) over vanilla Descent.

Dunno what kind of rulebook the OP has, perhaps an earlier version? Mine says:

"Blast

Attacks with the Blast ability affect every space within X spaces of the target space, where X is equal to the rank of the Blast ability. A space is only affected by the Blast attack if it has line of sight to the target space (ignoring figures for this purpose)..."

(JitD Rulebook, page 22)

Same as the RtL rulebook.

He's evidently got the same one as me:

Blast
Attacks with the Blast ability affect every space within X spaces of the target space, where X is equal to the rank of the Blast ability. A space is only affected by the Blast attack if it has line of sight to the target space. Blast areas cannot pass through walls, closed doors, or blocking obstacles. The Blast attack deals its full damage to each figure affected by it (friendly and enemy). If a Blast attack is dodged by more than one figure, only one re-roll may be made (the first dodging player to the attacking player’s left decides which dice, if any, are to be re-rolled).

I'm missing it too in my rulebook.

Actually what he cut and pasted was the short version of the ability given in the back of the rule books for the expansions. The entry from your makes a lot more sense to me.

My JitD rulebook also specifically says that you ignore figures.

Also, this passage from Big Remy's is interesting:

Big Remy said:

...as that kind of implies that it can pass through other things. I'm guessing, then, that it was always intended to pass through figures, and they just forgot to make that explicit in the first write-up.

edderkoppen said:

I found where is the version that doesn't state "(ignoring figures for this purpose)". It's the¨PDF on the FFG Descent Support page!!!

Seems like their PDF are outdated. I also found out that in the WOD PDF, they don't even mention the Trickster special ability. So we have to trust the old paper versions after all.

FFG, please give us updated versions.

Ezhaeu said:

Bit of an understatement there. The JitD PDF seems to be older than the oldest retail printing of the game, as near as I can figure. In every case where people have found a difference between different printings of the rulebook, the PDF is always out-of-date, and you can even find a reference to a "slime" obstacle that I presume was dropped from some internal version of the game before its release.