I'm not sure I remember the name of the dungeon correctly as I don't have the rule book with me at the moment. But it's the one with two rune locked doors and 4 question marks in two rooms, and the only way for the heroes to open the rune locked doors is to stand on the question marks at the same time.

There's a Master Naga boss in the second room, and since he is a named monster according to FAQ he can open and close the runelocked doors.

The wording on the dungeon card says (going by memory here) "...standing on the quest markers opens the door..." it does not say anything about unlocking it, or giving the rune key to heroes. So by this logic I as OL figured I could park the leader next to the first door and just keep closing it forcing heroes to go back and stand on the quest markers to open it.

Would this be the correct way to play the dungeon, or would you allow your heroes to open the rune locked door using normal movement action after it's been opened via the question markers once before ?

trulez said:

I don't have access to the map, but is the level boss behind the rune locked doors or can the Heroes attack him without having to open the doors?

If he is outside the doors and the Heroes can attack him without opening the doors, then I don't really see anything wrong with what you did. They should have gone and killed the level leader first.

If he's behind the doors, then that presents a problem. I don't recall someone bringing this up before, so there must be something going on.

In either case, I would not allow the heroes to use normal movement points to open the doors once they have been opened once. Defeats the purpose of the level.

The boss is behind the rune-door.

If the heros can´t reopen the door after standing on all four encounter markers, then the level becomes difficult but not impossible.

Just checked the level map. It is not very difficult to solve it, even if the Naga keeps closing the door and the heros have to stand on the markers to reopen.

For me, this level falls into the "remember, it's a game" mode. I think an argument could be made to say the the level leader could just close the first door and make the heroes use the pressure plates again to open it. For me, that's being a bit of a jerk and rules lawyer. I think that the door was intended to stay open once opened. Anyways, there is a very easy way around this situation for a smart hero party. They can easily set up to open the first door at the start of the heroes turn and then get several attacks against the level leader before he has a chance to close the door.

For me, the better OL tactic was just not letting the Heroes open the door in the first place. The party has to split up to open the doors. This makes it hard for them to cover the LOS. When we played this level I was able to bottle up the heroes and crushed them. I got 27 CP to 6 for the heroes. I probably could have got more if I had not made a tactical error near the end of the level.

Parathion said:

The heroes have to cooperate and work fast.

The door opening requirements are that the 4 spaces have to be stood on by heroes at the same time - not by heroes ending their turn on them. So the heroes should get 3 heroes to move onto the ?s on one turn (turn 1 if it is a very fast party and/or using up potions, turn 2 otherwise), while the fourth hero stays centrally located to prevent spawning in the start area. Then in the following turn, the first hero to go is the central one who runs to the last ?. The next hero moves off a ? and opens the door leaving 2 heroes to advance and try to kill the Naga.

The Naga cannot reach the door before turn 3, and may not be able to shut the door before turn 4 IIRC (unless a charge card is played/wasted.

Where it gets (got) really interesting, was when Poltergeist was available for the OL. Leave the Naga sitting on the rear glyph (to prevent heroes glyphing in to room 2) and Poltergeist the door shut (after making sure that the heroes are split on either side of the door). The heroes cannot reopen the door until all in the second room are dead and can come back through the starting glyph. The OL could kill those at his leisure (especially if they were weak hitters or disarmed, accumulating threat and cards all the while.

It is still possible with a knockback attack, but that requires an Ogre to do the knockback and yet the Naga must be close to the door - virtually impossible without a Charge unless the Ogre starts in the forward room or the heroes are incompetent.

It is my strong suspicion that this level is the single most important reason Poltergeist was removed from RtL.

Corbon said:

I thought monsters couldn't stand on glyph spaces...?

edroz said:

I don't get this.
Note, this comment is not personal to Edroz (though it is difficult to write it without it seeming so), but a general one to this particular attitude.
What makes you (or any one person) the arbitrator over what is jerky and rules lawyering? I don't think the door was intended to stay open. I think it is an interesting tactical puzzle for the heroes, with pressure (thus making it more interesting - it would be a fairly bland puzzle without that!) coming from the fact that in 4 turns or so the OL will be able to close the door at will with the Naga and undo the heroes work.

I do think they forgot Poltergeist when designing it, though.

NigelTufnel said:

They can't stand (stay) on Activated glyphs. They can (and should) stand on unactivated glyphs to make it more difficult for the heroes to activate them.

Anyway, due to having grapple, unless the heroes have an anti-grappler (ox tattoo?, or the silver knockback weapon) then the Naga can come forward and participate in finishing off the trapped heroes and still protect the glyph. Probably. Might be better to play it safe though.