Explaining movement actions

By modernman55, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

My play group seems to keep getting confused by the way movement works. Mostly this manifests when I preform an interrupt attack action while moving. In addition to that they keep thinking spending one fatigue grants them an entire move action instead of one movement point. They are new to the game and have only played three quests and we meet once every two weeks so its understandable they forget some rules.

What I ended up doing is just explaining movement to them in different terms than the rule book. Instead of saying "you can move up to your speed when you make a move action", I told them to treat a "move action" as an action where you dump movement points into a movement pool, you can move one space by spending a movement point in your pool and can spend them anytime during your turn. They just sit there in the movement pool waiting to be spent and are lost at the end of your turn. Spending fatigue will add one movement points to your pool. Some heroes have free movement points added to their movement pool, like Brother Glyr, so preforming a move action will add points to their pool.

The group seemed to get it better, and one said its similar to the way Mana works in Magic The Gathering,

Is there some incompatibility with the rules in this way of looking at move actions in Descent Second Ed? I don't think this conflicts with any of the rules but I would like to know if someone else sees a problem in interpreting it this way.

Edited by modernman55

For the most part, this works. In fact, the definition of a move action is that a figure "gains MP up to its speed." The confusion is usually about what then is meant by "during a move action" or what does it mean to "end a move action?" After wrestling with this a bit, I think I've come up with a suitable explanation (with a lot of help from other people on this forum:)

A move action increases the MP in a figure's MP pool by an amount equal to its Speed. Once performed, a move action is considered to be “in progress” (except while interrupted) until all of the MP gained by it are spent and the figure performs another action, or the figure’s activation ends, whichever comes first. If a move action is interrupted with another move action, both move actions are considered to be occurring simultaneously.

Move actions can be interrupted with other actions. Also, MP gained from suffering fatigue are distinct from MP gained from a move action- so technically, if the OL is trying to play Tripwire, he can only play it if the MP used to enter that space came from a move action. As a consequence, heroes need to be specific about when they are using the MP gained from fatigue- and that's the only conflict with your definition- it's not a big one.

Also, when a figure becomes immobilized, it's MP drops to zero immediately. When a figure "ends its move action," any move action MPs that have not been spent are lost (even if the figure has performed 2 move actions.)

Edited by Zaltyre