We had our first RtL session last night, and this dungeon came up. We were unclear on whether the monsters were able to open the prison cell doors. The FAQ says to consider them undiscovered areas for purposes of spawning, but that doesn't necessarily mean the monsters can't open the doors.
We played it as though they were not allowed to open them. And I, the Overlord, got my butt beat in there. I only managed to kill one villager (got another down to 1, but couldn't seal the deal).
I think you played it correctly. I believe it is the case that monsters are not allowed to open doors to unrevealed areas. Also, thematically, I don't see it making sense for the villagers to be imprisoned only so they could then later be slaughtered by (a more vicious class of) monsters.. Regardless of how it turned out for you, I think you played it right.
You played it correctly. Monsters can open doors, named monsters can even open runedoors. Neither can open doors that lead to unrevealed areas.
I would like to disagree here. The FAQ entry says to treat the cells as unrevealed for purposes of spawning. For all other purposes, the complete map is already revealed (basic RtL rule). Thus, I would definitely allow the monsters to open the doors.
One could even argue to place the starting mobs in the cells, because that is not regarded as spawning (in other levels you may place starting monsters right within LoS to the heros). But I doubt that would be the intention of the level.
Parathion said:
I would like to disagree here. The FAQ entry says to treat the cells as unrevealed for purposes of spawning. For all other purposes, the complete map is already revealed (basic RtL rule). Thus, I would definitely allow the monsters to open the doors.
One could even argue to place the starting mobs in the cells, because that is not regarded as spawning (in other levels you may place starting monsters right within LoS to the heros). But I doubt that would be the intention of the level.
I agree with Parathion.
I think this level has a bunch of prisoners that need rescuing. But the heroes are not rescuing the prisoners 'at their leisure', they are doing it under time pressure as the monsters would rather kill the prisoners (as demonstrated by having a game incentive to do so) than let them be released. The FAQ entry came about because it was too easy to start with, and/or spawn monsters inside the cells and kill the prisoners before the heroes could get to them - even if the heroes were able to kill the monsters on the outside and cover the doors!
I just played that level for the first time the other night, and we did it the same way as veinman. Took that to mean the overlord could not start or spawn in unopened cells, or open the doors. Turned out the OL got his butt kicked. However, I think that if he had started in the cells, he could have started those hell hounds in there with an added skeleton and just burnt the villagers down in 1-2 turns, or at least gotten the 4 on the sides, without much trouble. OL at least got to beat up the heroes a bunch, but didn't manage to kill a single villager, coming up one damage short on the one villager he went for. Found it wasn't too hard to cover line of site for spawning on that level, so the overlord couldn't get close to the villagers for the most part. So as heroes, I was happy I managed to save all the villagers, but a bit disappointed at the lack of gold piles on that level. Even more disappointed that this being our first silver level dungeon, I couldn't roll a blank on 20 treasure chest dice throughout the 3 levels (got lucky on the other hand on the Derafin the Mighty rumor level, getting 2 chests out of the bone piles, although still no silver treasure).