So my group has a guy who is really gangho to follow the rules to the letter [Main Game - No expansions], and last nights 8 hour game session brought up several disputes:

Can you make a ranged attack to a figure in an adjacent space? This came up, because one player argued that it doesn't make sense to use a ranged attack on an adjacent figure, in the sense of a bow and arrow for example: Do they take a penalty at all?

In the Brothers durlog quest - both giants are immortal until their hearts are found and destroyed. When I giant recieves enouh damage to be considered dead, but his heart hasn't been destroyed, does a character with the Vampiric Blood skill still get to remove one fatigue token even though the giant comes back to life after 2 turns and technically doesn't "Stay dead"?

Can a Wizard with the guard "ready action" use the Quick Casting Skill to attack twice during the overlords turn at different targets? At the same target?

Buying Skills: The rule book is generally poor to describe how this works. How many skills can a character have maximum? Do skills carry over to the next mission even though items and such do not? Do they get to choose what they want or is it randomly chosen. If they don't like the random skill can they choose not to buy it? General advice on character skills and how many can be purchased would be helpful.

Can a hero use a skill like telekenisis after they have used both their actions? Or does using your second action end your turn.

If you are casting a magic attack that has Blast, and you target a space 5 spaces away and you roll a range of "2" Does the attack land on the square two spaces away? or does it fail because range is insufficient?

Web Rules: Web states a player cannot move while webbed. If a player is webbed they roll one black die hoping to get a surge to break out. Can a player roll two black die because he has two actions? or just one a turn?

If a player is webbed can they attack?

If a player is webbed can they use skills, or take a ready action?

Can a hero with leadership give a ready action to a player that is webbed and can they use it {ex: give a webbed player dodge}

If a hero is transformed into a monkey with "CURSE OF THE MONKEY GOD" can they use skills they had as a hero? Like if I was a hero with "Leadership" can i give a ready action to a friendly target even while a monkey?

Can a hero choose to use BLAST 1 if the blast would affect a friendly target? What if a hero had Blast three, but only chose to blast 2 for that attack after rolling the dice?


Any advice or answers would be appreciated.

Ranged question: Of course you can. No there is no penalty, all you need to do is roll 1 range on the dice (basically don't roll an X). There is nothing in the rules to support a different viewpoint

Brothers: Well you gain fatigue tokens, not discard them with Vampiric Blood. Its the opposite of Runebound. As for the dead part, the wording in the quest quide to me at least indicates that you do kill the Giant, he just doesn't stay dead. The line above the part in the quest quide for the first flavor text when the heroes kills a brother actually says "If the Heroes kill a brother but haven't founds his heart:" implies to me he is dead. The reviving of the Giants is different than Undying referenced on the card so it somewhat of a judgement call. I'll rule that he does get the fatigue for dealing the killing blow. Could be wrong.

Wizard and Guard: Absolutely on both. Any and all appropriate skills a can be used when making an attack using a Guard. Quick Casting is actually specifically mentioned in the list of skills dealing with this question in the FAQ.

Buying Skills: I know in RtL its a maximum of 5, can't remember if that's the same in vanilla. If you are following the Basic Campaign rules, then any training they bought (incuding skills) goes away at the start of the next quest. You revert to your starting setup, so the three skills you originally grabbed. They pick a card at random from any deck they want . The rules don't allow you to get your money back if you don't like the draw, since that would defeat the purpose of it being random. If you could do that, you could wait another turn, spend the money again, pull a skill and see if you get a better one. As for advice, I would buy training tokens before skills. If you are going to buy a skill, I would always buy from the ones your character already has skills in and that compliment your primary attack role (so a hero with 2 melee dice and one ranged dice would probably be better off getitng melee skills).

Telekinesis: You can use TK anytime during your turn, it does not take up an action to do so.

Blast: The attack misses, unless you can add range using power dice that rolled enhancement or rolling extra dice with fatigue or spending surges for range . Also, remember Blast is optional now.

Web: It doesn't say you can't move, it says you can't spend movement points. Big difference. You roll once at the start of your turn per the rulebook. You do not get to spend an extra action to try and break free. A webbed player can attack, since it doesn't cost movement points. They can use any skills that don't require them to spend a movement point, and they can take a Ready Action because that doesn't require the spending of movement points. The hero still receives the movement points form doing a Ready or Advance or Run, he just can't spend them. Yes, a hero with Leadership can place any Order on a webbed figure, nothing prevents that.

Monkey: He can't take any actions, but can still use certain skills like Acrobat and Telekinesis. Yes you can give a monkey an order with leadership. There is an entire FAQ entry regarding this question.

Blast: First, Blast is always optional according to the FAQ. So if the Hero with it doesn't want to use it, he doesn't have to precisely for this reason. However, the second part of your question is different. If the weapon says Blast 3 , then it does Blast 3. You can't scale it down to Blast 2. If that weapon said something like 2 surges = Blast 1 and you rolled 6 surges, then you could do Blast 2 since you aren't required to spend the surges.

CanadianCole said:

1. Yes you can. There is no penalty. It doesn't make sense to carefully lay down your loaded crossbow (so as not to damage it or have it go off), draw your dagger, and stab the monster next to you. Besides which, the spaces must be several metres across at least, so even adjacent figures could easily be 4m away.
Last, but far from least, idiotic attempts at what makes sense are doomed to failure as even sensible logic doesn't always work. It is a boardgame, and sometimes things have to suffer slightly in order to keep the rules playable and the game flowing.

2. Not sure without the quest book. In general, for post death affects to work, death has to be 'permanent'.

3. Yes. Each attack will be independent and could be at different targets. They must be immediately consecutive though.

4. In base Descent, purchasing skills is a part of shopping. It is very simple and I find it difficult to understand how you can have problems with it.
Pg 18 DJitD, Shopping
Item Cost in Coins
...
Draw 1 New Skill Card * 1,000
...
* When purchasing treasures or skills, the hero player draws the card at random from the appropriate deck (selecting any one of the three skill decks when purchasing a skill).
You purchase a skill card draw (from the deck of choice). It is a Draw that is purchased (therefore random), not a skill (of choice). The Draw is purchased and therefore the skill cannot be returned if you don't like it - you didn't purchase the skill.
I can't find the skill maximum in the base rules - I thought it was 5, but maybe there isn't one. Definitely it is 5 in RtL. Regardless, as you will see below, it is very unlikely to even matter.
Nothing carries over into the next mission. Nothing . Each mission is completely independent and designed that way - even the team should not carry over (though often does). There are some very basic optional 'campaign' rules in the quest guide (not available as pdf so I can't reference it for you) but if you want to play Descent as a campaign then RtL is the way to go. IIRC (and I may not), even in the basic campaign rules the heroes keep nothing but get to start with slightly more cash as they progress.
Note that whinging roleplayer heroes often want to keep all their loot and gains for the next game. That seriously breaks the game design because both general play and quest design are built for weaker beginning hero parties that grow in power as they go throgh the dungeon and the dungeon gets progressively harder. Starting off with already 'stacked' heroes completely screws the balance and is incredibly mismatched, enough to be boring.
General advice on character skills - it is 99.99% stupid to buy more skills in base Descent. For the same price, you can buy 2 traits - in most cases that is as good or better than the good skills for damage dealing. Further, for the same price you can buy 2 silver or 4 bronze treasure draws (which at worst can be sold back at half price). A decent treasure, especially of Silver level or higher, is always better than a random skill. Consequently there are a ery limited pool of skills which if you are lucky enough to draw them are worth as much as a single good silver item. Usually they are skills that boost stats, add attacks, or give a very unique and critical special ability (Acrobat, Telekinesis, Bear Tattoo, Leadership). But in general these 'very good' skills are less than 20% of the deck - you are much more likely to draw something of negligible value, or of lesser value than 2 silver items, a gold item or 2 trait dice. So purely aside from the limited amount of time saving 1000 cash at a time will happen, there are always better things to buy than a skill draw.

5. Using the second 'action' does not end a heroes turn. The hero can still do things as long as he/she has MP or Fatigue to get MP left unused.

6. The attack fails because you did not reach the target space. See page 11. If you do not reach the rane to the target (which is a space) then the attack fails.

7. Webbed figures cannot spend MP. They still get them, when they choose their action, they just can't do anything with them. The roll (surge) to break the web is a start-of-turn event, not an action. You cannot get a second roll because of having a second action. Web is very nasty in Vanilla Descent.

8. Yes. They can do anything they like (as normal) except spend MP (note, things like drinking potions, opening doors, giving other heroes equipment, all require spending MP).

9. Yes. They can do anything they like (as normal) except spend MP. They can declare Ready actions and place orders, they can attack, they can use their skills (including such as Knight, to get 3 attacks and 1/2xMv MP (which they can't spend)), they can do anything except spend MP.

10. Yes. All web does is prevent the spending of MP.

11. They can use some skills, but not others. Leadership cannot be used because it requires the declaration of an action type (Ready), which monkeys lose the ability to do. The can use skills like Acrobat and Telekinesis though.
From DJitD pg 16
Monkeys cannot attack and cannot use any items, including potions. A monkey can move up to 5 spaces on the hero’s turn, but cannot take any movement actions.
Note that the monkey moves 5 spaces, not 'gets 5MP'. So unless there is something elsewhere I have missed, that actually makes the monkey quite fast in some cases as it does not have to pay additional MP to cross difficult terrain or get out of pits. However after moving 5 space he will have to pay the extra costs when spending MP he has accrued from fatigue expenditure.
From the FAQ pg 4
Q: A hero who has been Transformed by either Curse of the Monkey God or Dance of the Monkey God may move up to five spaces and may not take any movement actions. Can that hero take other actions, such as receiving an order token or declaring a Run action? What about a hero who is both Stunned and Transformed?
A: A Transformed hero may not declare any action . He may still use any skills that are appropriate (e.g., Acrobatic, Telekinesis) and may spend fatigue for extra movement points. A Transformed hero who is stunned may only move (i.e., he must choose the “only move” option for being stunned, not the “only attack” option), which in most cases has no effects beyond those of being Transformed. A Transformed hero who has an order token placed on him by means of another hero with Leadership may still use the order, except that he may not make an attack with a Guard order. (Note that while Guard and Aim orders are useless to a Transformed hero, they may still be placed on him by a hero with Leadership

12. Yes, a blast attack may also hit friendlies. If you choose to use blast, you do not get to choose how to limit the blast, except by the way you choose to spend surges. Most Blast weapons are Blast 1 or Blast 0 and get additional Blast only through spending surges, so you can always choose how big to make their Blasts (you don't have to spend surges if you don't want to). If however, you had a weapon with Blast 2 as a base, then you could not limit the Blast area to Blast 1.I am quite sure there are not Blast 3 weapons, so it i a simple case of the hero not choosing to spend all his surges to limit your example to blast 2.
Also worth noting that using Blast (and Breath) is not longer Mandatory and Blast/Breath weapons (or monsters) can be used as non-blast/breath weapons (ie only hit the targeted space) - although that should be declared before rolling the dice.

Corbon said:

+1 to the man giving better advice here than me.

CanadianCole said:

Allow me to point out that heroes do NOT get two actions in a turn. They get one action, which is either an advance, battle, run, or ready.

Admittedly, each one of those actions is some combination of two of: get movement points equal to your speed, make an attack, or place an order. So it is often convenient to think of a turn as consisting of two half-actions. But you need to declare a single combination action at the start of your turn (advance, battle, run, or ready). You can't change your action (or part of your action) part-way through your turn (unless you're playing Grey Ker), and you don't need to take the parts separately (for example, if you advance, you can move some of your speed, then attack, then continue moving).

On the topic of skills, there is no limit to the number of skills you can have outside of Road to Legend, but you're unlikely to get many of them. I somewhat disagree with Corbon's assessment--I think that a lot more than 20% of the skills are better than two trait dice (especially when most monsters die in one hit anyway), and treasures have slot limits, so if you already have a good weapon of the highest level you can buy, I don't think that buying skills is necessarily a bad idea (armors are nice, but there's only 2 per treasure level in the base game, so your odds are pretty slim). However, there's just not enough coins in most dungeons for it to happen very often, especially when you lose half of your unspent coins every time you die.

Antistone said:

I was thinking myself earlier that my own analysis may be biased one way or another due to always having full decks of Shop Items, Treasures and Skills from all expansions.
In consequence, the proportions of what is 'good' and what is not, and thus which options (trait dice/treasure draws/skill draw) are best, may be slightly different from my analysis when only the base game is considered. I think more treasure draws are probably likely to be a better option with full decks, as there is simply more treasure available and an increased chance of finding something useful in each draw I think.
Not to mention that the first 250-400 cash will be spent on Ring of Protection and Ghost Armour (and then potions) which greatly lessens the chances of 'saving' 1000cash at a time.

As to skills?
From Fighting skills deck (19 skills) I would consider Knight, Taunt, Bear Tattoo, (possibly) Tough, Tiger Tattoo, Cleaving and Leadership to be generally better than 2 trait dice. Unmoveable as well if it combo's*. That's around 33-40%, except on the draw 3, discard 1 and redraw 1 system I would expect slightly more or these to already be gone, say 3 out of 5-6ish, leaving only 3-4 good cards out of 13-14.
From Subterfuge skills deck (19 again) I would consider Acrobat, Eagle Eye, Skilled, Swift, Rapid Fire (on the right character), Shadow Soul to be generally better than two trait dice. Precision and Born to the Bow might get a look in as well. Again, 33-40%, again I'd expect a slightly higher percentage of these to be missing leaving 4-5 good cards out of 15-16.
From Wizardry skills deck (18 skills) I'd consider Telekinesis, Quick Casting, Spiritwalker, Boggs and possibly Blessing (onl;y because it can help all the party) or Prodigy (surges are often specifically useful for Magic) as better than 2 traits. Again, the usual applies and I'd expect 2-3 of those to be gone leaving 3-4 good cards out of 13-14.

*ok, Unmoveable is great all the time for non-melee characters. However the risk of drawing a 'useless' skill from the Fighting deck is far too high for a non-melee specialist to aim for 'Unmoveable' - which means it only needs to be compared for melee heroes. And I don't think it is that good on it's own for those heroes unless it combo's with another 'Battling' skill like Knight or Battle Cry, or for specific heroes like Talia or Glyr. A smart OL simply won't leave you enough targets to make 'Battling' viable often enough if you aren't able to be quite flexible with it.

So I guess 20% was overly harsh and around 30-33% good cards would be fairer. And maybe another 20% would be 'ok' skills. But I reckon that leaves at least 40-50% or more as being significantly worse than 2 trait dice.

You can add to that situational modifiers that mean some good skills are not useful for certain characters (and some bad skills work out rather well when combo-ing with existing skills that the hero already has). For example, Acrobat is one of he best skills you can have, but almost entirely pointless on a slowish specialist shooter (say Kirga with Eagle Eye, Marksman and Crack shot for example). In general, however, I think that probably works out to lessen the number of 'good' draws a particular hero could get from a random draw.

However, this is all just comparing a random skill draw vs 2 trait dice. IMO neither come close to 2 silver treasure draws or a gold treasure draw. Gold 'others' are always better than any skill. And a Gold weapon of any type (even one the hero has no trait dice in) is going to be better than a shop (or often even bronze) item in the heroes specialist combat area (not to mention that now the Power pots will be really useful for that hero!) Two silver draws (or a silver and a 5 potions and trade in the silver you don't like +250 more for another silver) should get you something really good, even if you need to pass it to an ally to make best use.

Potions also need to be factored in. Swift is one of the best skills you can get, giving +2 to the Move characteristic. Yet it costs 1000 cash to buy an extra skill. That's 20 potions. Which means an extra 2-4 MP, or 2-3 trait dice, or wound-recovery-means-I-don't-die per turn for 20 turns (less something for the logistics of having to go back to town to buy potions). Very few games will last 20 turns, even 10 turns, beyond the point of having 1000 cash to spend, so you will almost always be better off spending the cash on potions and treasures instead, making sure you always have enough potions to use 1/turn.

IMO, in order for a hero to consider buying an additional skill, that hero should already have at least a good silver weapon in his combat specialty and at least 4 trait dice in his combat specialty. He should probably have at least 1 other slot and/or armour slot also filled by treasures. And be maxed out on potions already. And someone has already bought RoP.

It just doesn't happen.
At least once you add in the expansions.
I don't think I've played a game of 'pure' Descent since the first expansion was released, and that would have only been 1-2 learning games. So sorry, all the advice and analysis may not be entirely applicable if you have no expansions available. Howver I do think that it is likely that the general thrust of my comments will still be applicable.

Are you sure that RtL isn't coloring your perceptions of the usefulness of extra trait dice?

I don't have the decks in front of me, but just from memory, I would tend to add Mighty, Weapon Mastery, and their ilk to the list of skills better than 2 trait dice (greater consistency, usually slightly better average result, and they don't count against your limit of 5 power dice). Probably even including Inner Fire in that batch. And Furr the Spirit Wolf for similar reasons; similar bonus damage to two trait dice, but you can target the damage separately.

Add Cautious to the list, easily, and probably Alertness and Able Warrior, because extra actions are just a lot better than damage when so many things die in one hit anyway.

Vampiric Blood is fairly awesome, especially with an AoE weapon. I'd also include Battle Cry and Relentless, because while you'll add your trait dice many more times than you could pay for with the fatigue those generate, I honestly think the extra trait dice will be overkill a sufficiently large fraction of the time that you'd still be better off with the little extra fatigue that you can spend when you want and on what you want.

I haven't actually played a game with Sharr the Brightwing, but she looks very handy. Same with Necromancy.

Possibly even Parry, because melee monsters are quite common, and armor gives increasing returns, and there's not much other than actual armor that adds to it. And depending on the game, Divine Retribution can actually be pretty handy sometimes.

Add those in and the odds of drawing a "good" skill may be quite a bit better than the odds of drawing an "other" item at all, let alone a good "other" item. And if there are more chests in the dungeon, keeping an "other" slot free has nonzero utility.

And while I haven't counted (again, don't have the decks right now), I suspect the fraction of "good" skills is actually higher without expansions than with them.

Potions are great bang for your buck, and heroes should buy lots of them, but there's a sharp limit to how many you can carry and use (especially if you're buying them late in the game). Your entire party can't have more than 9 vitality potions at a time, so the fact that you can afford 20 doesn't matter unless you're prepared to make many return trips to the shop, which kind of negates the actions they save you. You couldn't carry them all anyway, even if there were that many tokens. So the fact that you could theoretically buy 20 for the same price as a skill actually means very little. And I defy you to find any "other" item that's as useful as having 1 potion per turn, either.

Antistone said:

No, I'm not sure RtL isn't colouring my perceptions. :-)
Especially since I am long unused to 'every monster is a one-hit kill' thinking!

I'd have to concede the +2 damage/surges skills as being at least as good, possibly slightly better. I would not include Inner Fire in that bunch, although in the right circumstances it can be better (it makes the WG treasures actually useable at not-point-blank ranges).

I'm not really a big fan of either Alertness or Able Warrior. Having 2 Fatigue 'left over' just was never that common when I played vanilla. Knight gets in because it's an extra attack + move and have both Unmoveable and Battle Cry to combo with. However, having just the base set heroes to think about may change that. Both Talia and Glyr (best Knight/Unmoveable combo's) are expansion heroes IIRC.
Furr I have found to be much less usefull than he appears. There are almost no monsters he can kill outright, the limits of being within LOS and 5 spaces are significant and his damage averages much less than 2/turn. 2 trait dice (or a +2 skill) might easily be used 2 times in a single turn.

Cautious is useful all right, like Wind Pact, but difficult to compare against 2 trait dice.
Vampiric Blood has never actually come in useful in any game I've played. It really seems to need a combo as most of the AOE weapons are pretty weak themselves unless they get extra boosts. I have seen it used well with Cleaving though...
Sharr I'd completely forgotten about (my 19/19/18 card decks are set up in a RtL party spreadsheet and so don't include the removed skills). Sharr is so blindingly good she is a game breaker every time. Necromancy has been less than great whenever it has been used. It has great potential at times, but seems to fail whenever something critical is planned (for example those 1-2 turn dungeon levels I posted - you can guarantee the necro wouldn't work when you planned it to...)
+1 armour vs only some monsters I find extremely limited. Unless it is matched on a tough tank with grapple or something similar, forget it.
I'm in the Divine Retribution is a mug's game camp. You have to have a dumb OL to get much out of it and it encourages the sacrifice of precious CT.

The other point, which is very significant but difficult to quantify, is that many of the skills are situationally dependent, not just map situation but also existing skill situation. The tank with Knight and Battle Cry is going to find Able Warrior worth a lot less thank the Tank with Relentless. The mage with Spiritwalker is going to find Divine Retribution worth much less compared to Earth Pact. One Fist drawing Rapid Fire is going to cry, where Swift would be superb. In general, I think that this particular point greatly lowers the number of significantly useful skills for a hero (who already has three).

As for the treasures, 'other's are not necessarily the target, just an example. Pretty much all the treasures are really usefully in Vanilla, unless you have already got a really good weapon in your specialty (and so have the other party members). Even then, a Tank with a Silver melee weapon will often find a gold magic or ranged weapon just as good and even more flexible. Pretty much any armour is going to be significantly better than shop armour, more of a boost than a skill would have been at least.

And of course, you can't carry 20 potions. But you can carry 3-6 (usually about 4 max, as the pack will be mostly full) and you should be running through them at a rate of 1/turn for sure. It should be a rare turn in which you don't drink a potion if you have been able to afford them. If you had the cash, and don't come away from town having both drunk a potion and still being fully laden potion-wise, then IMO you have made a mistake.

So I still think a mix of treasures and potions is definitely going to be the best option, and even a trait dice and potions/treasures will be better than a random skill draw.

Treasure is king in normal descent. Getting a good weapon is the most important thing for a hero to do. Once a good weapon is acquired the heroes should spend all their turns killing stuff. Any trips to the town are wasted. Remember folks it doesn't matter how much health you leave the dungeon with. It doesn't matter if 3 of the heroes are dead. It doesn't matter what skills you have. All that matters is if the quest is completed.

You are buying lettuce and water instead of just buying bunnies. (500 geek points to ANYONE who gets THAT reference) A short description of the refrence and the game mechanic is required.