So we took a crack at Manor of Ravens yesterday, and I was wondering if you guys had been in the same situation before. In this quest the heroes start at the Rookery, which is a 4x4 tile with Skarn in the middle and a bunch of windows the heroes can throw themselves through to land on a pre-defined spot on the quest map. That's quite brutal for an introduction to the campaign, lol. The heroes need to kill Skarn, and Skarn needs to escape.

Now here´s the thing, my players had 4 heroes including a Necromancer and a Beastmaster. Both Reanimate and Wolf are considered heroes, so technically the heroes could just spawn their familiars in the Rookery, and escape through the window, leaving Skarn with the familiars. The condition stating that Skarn can be moved to a landing of the OL's choice if there are no heroes left in the Rookery does not trigger since familiars are heroes too.

I did not mention that to my players yesterday but they could have just escaped, looted the search tokens and basically clear the way of bandits/wraiths while waiting for the only-one-move-allowed-with-3-move-points-yeah-baby Skarn to close to the exit.

What makes this way worse is the fact heroes start a mini campaign with 4XP so yesterday our Beastmaster had two skills giving +6 health on the wolf. Wolf gets to roll gray and an additional brown if next to a hero, which the reanimate is, so you have a small little tank there. Skarn has no damage surge, only Mend, OL cards off the equation. Flail is useful, though, but in our situation we had a Treasure Hunter with the surge ability allowing him to move the figure one space, so technically speaking Skarn could have been forced to a corner of the rookery with only the Wolf as adjacent figure and no way to get to the reanimate to steal the Wolf's additional brown defense die.

SS..

SS..

..W.

...R

Seems a bit unbalanced to me! Luckily we never came to that situation, but it was a strange scenario to consider.

It's funny how little there is to find about the Manor of Ravens expansion on the web, it almost looks like nobody's played it Unkindness in particular. I tried this yesterday in conjunction with Raythen's plot deck and it was fun to fly around looting search tokens.

You can just kill the wolf and reanimate though, they're not particularly durable.

You can just kill the wolf and reanimate though, they're not particularly durable.

Reanimate sure, but the Wolf had +6 Health and gray+brown for defense, so that takes a few turns for Skarn to take down with no extra damage/pierce ability on surge. The best way to deal with it though is to at least get 1 damage through and get a double surge to throw the Wolf through the window, like any hero. With Basic II in the equation, the double surge is easier to obtain, however the one damage is a bit trickier.

As always it all depends on luck

I preface the following remarks with the fact that while I have MoR, I have not as of yet played it. Nor have I had my Dt Mt Dew this morning, so I am operating on no caffeine, but ...

According to the Base Rules, page 18, we have:

Any2cards, you're going to want your caffeine. FAQ, pg 3, top right (Familiars section):

ROTFLMAO ...

Thank you. I knew I should have drunk my Dt Mt Dew before posting. I haven't actually played any Descent 2 in months, and something was nagging me that the responses were correct, and yet for some reason, my mind was saying "no no no".

I am moving back to Vegas on Monday, and will once again have access to a regular game day group. Can't wait !!!

Thanks for the clarification.

So they're not heroes, they're just familliars, but because they are treated as figures, they are to be treated as heroes.

That's hilariously twisted logic. FFG is going to need to start selling small devices called "Rules Arbiters" to help people keep all this stuff straigth.

So they're not heroes, they're just familliars, but because they are treated as figures, they are to be treated as heroes.

That's hilariously twisted logic. FFG is going to need to start selling small devices called "Rules Arbiters" to help people keep all this stuff straigth.

Except for the specific circumstances listed above (hero/monster abilities, attacks, OL cards) they are not treated as heroes. The only things treated as heroes 100% of the time (well, 99%- not during a dark charm action) are the 2-4 heroes that make up the party. Everything else may just sometime s be treated like one.Usually, this is a figure that is friendly to the heroes.

Now here´s the thing, my players had 4 heroes including a Necromancer and a Beastmaster. Both Reanimate and Wolf are considered heroes, so technically the heroes could just spawn their familiars in the Rookery, and escape through the window, leaving Skarn with the familiars. The condition stating that Skarn can be moved to a landing of the OL's choice if there are no heroes left in the Rookery does not trigger since familiars are heroes too.

To my knowledge, familiars are treated as heroes for OL cards, for hero skills and for monster abilities, but not for quest rules . Edit: sorry, already answered.

Also, a Wolf can have maximum +4 health (through Predator), not +6.

The condition stating that Skarn can be moved to a landing of the OL's choice if there are no heroes left in the Rookery does not trigger since familiars are heroes too.

I completely missed the actual point of your thread. For quest rules, unless specifically stated, the wolf and reanimate are NOT heroes. They don't stop Skarn.

The wolf gets no base defense dice. With 4xp I can't see how to get extra health and grey+brown defense-am I missing something?

Ooo! I had the chance to play the first two quests in the mini-campaign for Manor of Ravens. I LOVED the thematic feel to the whole thing, and the beginning where the Heroes start in the rookery just throws you smack dab in the center of the action! It was great!

It was also one of the few games where I had another friend play as the Overlord (in part because I really wanted to try out Astarra as a Conjurer... and she rocks!).

Another friend was playing as Raythen with the Bounty Hunter deck. There's a card in there that can force a monster to lose a surge, from what I remembered, which meant that Skarn never had a chance of throwing us out of the Rookery. We eventually defeated him, but he almost managed to escape when on the ground. (the quest basically requires that either the heroes or Skarn must be thrown out of the Rookery, so in essence, you have to beat him twice). It felt pretty balanced to me, and it was a lot of fun.

The wolf gets no base defense dice. With 4xp I can't see how to get extra health and grey+brown defense-am I missing something?

With 4 xp, the best the wolf could have is +4 health and a brown die, from Predator and Survivalist. It doesn't matter, though, because the wolf doesn't interfere with Skarn's trigger. It can be ignored.

The condition stating that Skarn can be moved to a landing of the OL's choice if there are no heroes left in the Rookery does not trigger since familiars are heroes too.

I completely missed the actual point of your thread. For quest rules, unless specifically stated, the wolf and reanimate are NOT heroes. They don't stop Skarn.

I think this was the point that was causing my confusion earlier, and I neglected to emphasize it. I am glad we agree on this.

I didn't look at the rule that closely, simply assumed he was correct. I haven't had a chance to play Descent in months, so that's what I get.

I didn't look at the rule that closely, simply assumed he was correct. I haven't had a chance to play Descent in months, so that's what I get.

It's my fault for not reading the question closely- the characteristics of the familiars match what I put in my first response- but the topic was about treating them as heroes with respect to a quest rule- which doesn't happen unless a quest says so.

** takes a deep breath **

Alright so yeah, you guys are correct about the fact familiars cannot be considered as heroes for the Skarn trigger in the rookery. So Skarn would escape in the case of only familiars being left in that room. Like I said, this situation did not occur, it was just something I considered while my players did something else, so phew that we didn't play this wrong.

Secondly, since I´m on a spree with false information about everything Survivalist does indeed grant +2 Health for the Beastmaster and not the Wolf. So it is correct that the Wolf only gets +4 from Predator and nothing else. I blame the Beastmaster player for that then since he said it was both

To be fair, as a general comment about mini-campaigns, that's a hell of a lot of cards and skills to ingest when you start one. All my heroes had purchased 2 extra skills on top of their starting possessions, all had 1-2 item shop cards etc. So the learning curve is quite steep and I did let some of my heroes just tell me about said abilities (I normally check everything myself). I mean, even if you already know most cards, it takes a while to figure out how they interact with each other.

About balance in this quest, it's a bit tricky to settle on this. I thought it was going to be an easy win for the heroes as they could have just pounded on Skarn, only leaving him with a few health left, then escape and snipe Skarn outside to finish him off. At no point I thought there was any benefits in killing him in the rookery just to give him +12 life when it reassembled outside. Skarn is weak attack-wise against the heroes' gear (near all of them had extra dices thanks to the mini campaign setup + the Wolf's brown dice) and I was also getting problems getting the extra surge cards from Basic II. In this quest I basically rolled a X on half my attacks and I thought it was going to be quick. What saved me is that the heroes decided to stay together, which allowed me to use bandits as walls to go through in order to get to Skarn. Lindel (Treasure Hunter) could un-blockade a few figures thanks to the Whip but it took them time to regroup, especially since I kept shutting the northern door on them so they had to waste actions opening the thing again. I won the quest in the end as heroes got stuck and the only one of them who was in range of Skarn died from the bandits. As far as Skarn is concerned, it was just about getting Mend to make him survive.