I am running a level 7 of vanilla descent game with 4 heroes. Now, one of the heroes has the shop sold rune(fits an other slot, cant recall its name) that allows them to use a fatigue to cancel a wound being dealt to them. Can the rune be used to prevent the curse damage suffered from Soulbiter?

Sorry, I am at work at the moment and I dont have the exact wordings with me.

We ruled it as no the rune doesnt work to block soulbiters damage becuase that did not seem to fit in with the intent of the level. Not everyone was satisfied with this but thats how we played it and we're currently slugging through the level. I can say that if the curse damage was able to be dodged in that way, this level would be a joke as the guy with the sword is a fatigue generating machine.

Ghost armor is the card. Thats the card the hero is trying to use to dodge the soulbiter damage.

I can see nothing in the rules that would Ghost Armor prevent from preventing the Soulbiter damage.

Why would that quest be a joke? What do you mean by "fatigue generating machine"? The hero has to spend fatigue to prevent the Soulbiter damage if wearing Ghost Armor - how would he generate fatigue?? Ah, you mean he HAS a lot of fatigue so avoiding the damage isn´t a problem? Well, we´ll see...

This quest was the hardest ever for my group, there never was a victory - yet it was the last quest played prior to the introduction of Feats in our group.

For comparison, all WoD quests so far up to Nr. 5 were beaten in the second or third attempt, yet Soulbiter ate four attempts until the heros quit.

Btw, are you aware that Soulbiter changes from Melee to Ranged after breaking the first seal? This info has been given somewhere in the prehistoric forums yet never made it to a FAQ answer (and I am one of the few initiated to pass on that ancient knowledge )

I agree with Parathion's confusingly-worded conclusion--Ghost Armor should work just fine at canceling the wounds dealt by Soulbiter, as far as I can tell. Sometimes the heroes get lucky skill combinations, but them's the breaks.

Keep in mind that it may be difficult to Rest while carrying Soulbiter, since it inflicts wounds at the end of your turn, and suffering wounds causes any Rest order you may have to be removed. (Unless of course you cancel the wounds, e.g. with Ghost Armor.)

RIght, I see nothing in the rules either that says soulbiter's damage can be mitigated with ghost armour. We ruled it as the intent of the level that you cant use the ghost armour. I was curious what the community thought.

IMHO, It does seem a bit hokey though that you can buy ghost armour from the store and pretty much mitigate the entire damage output from the sword at a fairly low cost. The fatigue generating machine in my group is Lyssa with the skilled ability and a near constant supply of fatigue potions. So right off the bat, she has 7 fatigue. Because another skill of hers is cleaving, she is usually carrying 3 fatigue potions from the beginning. Plus, I have an additional hero with the leadership skill who can toss a rest on Lyssa after her turn is over(after soulbiters damage). So thats 2 damage from soulbiter each turn, easily mitigated with 2 fatigue of 7. Not a challenging compromise in the least.

I honestly dont know how your heroes got stumped on this quest 4 times. Were going through vanilla descent currently and the only level that posed a challenge thus far was level 5. That took them 2 tries. Everything else has been a cake walk. This level has given them a hard time so far, but thats only because of the way were playing soulbiters curse.

Exeter said:

You may have misread - we are saying that there is nothing preventing the damage from being soaked with Ghost Armor. Fair play to the heroes. I suggest making the hero with SoulBiter the target of your attacks early. If you can exhaust the fatigue potion train early perhaps you'll have a decent chance. BTW, it sounds like you are playing with the campaign rules from the back of the book? Make sure you are reading them right - I believe those rules state the character and their skills are discarded and redrawn at the beginning of each dungeon. Allowing the characters to carry anything over will stack things too quickly in the heroes' favor - give yourself a fighting chance.

Exeter said:

You just got a group of heroes with a set of skills/abilities that really breaks the difficulty of that map. It happens. Like if you have the expansion with the store-bought rune with blast, and someone draws Landric with the skill for +2 surges on a magic attack. Then all he needs is to roll two surges to clear out a 5X5 area of trash enemies.

Exeter said:

First thing that comes to mind is..... wow............

Either you have the best hero-players ever, using the random heroes/skills drawn at the beginning of each new quest to their absolute maximum, Or the OL has no clue on what to do and what not.....
Or you're playing something wrong.....

This is the first time that i heard that a hero-group completes so many quests so easely.

If the OL is giving absolute hell, and the heroes succeed the first time, everytime, with following the rules, then hats off!

My guess:

Fatigue-generating machine = Varikas

Exeter said:

1. Then you probably aren't reading properly.
Unfortunately Soulbiter isn't up yet at http://www.descentinthedark.com/_s_/index.php, so I can't confirm this 100%. Its been at least a year since we played that quest for the final time.
Soulbiter says something like the bearer suffers a quarter of its (starting) wounds (usually 2-4) at the end of its turn if it didn't kill something that turn, right?
Ghost Armour (also not up yet) is an 'Other' 'Rune' which says the bearer may spend one fatigue to prevent one wound, right?
So there it is, right there, in the rules (card text). Soulbiter's effect (one of them at least) is to deal wounds. Ghost Armour's effect is to prevent wounds using fatigue. The rules are specific. Ghost armour can be used to prevent wounds. Unless something even more specific overides that, it stands.
The problem with 'intent' is that not everyone always feel the same way about what the 'intent' is. All too often it is basically saying "I don't like the rules as they are and being the incredible mindreader that I am I know better than the writer what he intended (which wasn't what he wrote)". Sometimes there are grounds for that, supporting evidence etc, but it is rare.
The rules don't specifically say you can use Ghost armour to mitigate Traps either. Or to mitigate monster attacks.

2. There are also skills that help a lot in this quest. Sharl Brightwing can more than nullifies the damage possible from Soulbiter. We got through this level finally when a hero drew Earth Pact (on a Dwarf), which is not quite as effective, but still can be used to considerably mitigate the effects. Drawing a healing treasure will do wonders. Frankly, I think it is a good thing that there is a possible mitigation from a Shop item (ie available to every party) rather than just to those parties that draw luckily.
It is also well established in general, that one fatigue and 1 wound are roughly interchangeable at a basic level - from Red Scorpion's special ability to Ghost Armour itself. The fact is, even with Ghost Armour, you are still seeing the Soulbiter deal 2-4 fatigue per turn (when it would deal wounds), which is nothing to be sniffed at. That your heroes were smart/lucky enough to get a very high fatigue hero to carry the Soulbiter, who also had low wounds (so less effect from Soulbiter), Leadership on a different hero to help things and reducedSoulbiter's effect a little is just good play.

3. If you don't get a good hero/skills mix to mitigate Soulbiters effect this level can be very tough. If there is no good plan/option for dealing with soulbiter then the heroes can get in a lot of trouble early. With Soulbiter such a bad (weak at dealing damage) weapon early on, and Ranged generally being the weakest damage dealing skill set as well, it can be very difficult early on to get the kills required. Especially if the OL cottons on and plays very defensively.
We played this quest about 5 times before we got it right (with teh Earth Pact to survive early and drawing a healing wound IIRC), though IIRC not a single other quest was failed from the base book.

I can't check the card, but I'm pretty sure that Soulbiter is always a Ranged weapon, despite the picture of a sword.

Maybe the OP should state which expansion they have in play, if any. I can imagine that without any treachery or some of the stronger spawns from the expansion, a lucky hero party could survive this...

@ Corbon: The quest guide explicitly states that the weapon starts as a Melee weapon, but then is silent when to change anything about that. This info was given on one of the prehistoric forums only.

Parathion said:

Fair enough. I don't remember that, only that the Soulbiter card itself actually says Ranged (ie, not just blue dice type).
And I can't even check that while at work...

Shmoozer said:

I like to think that I am giving them hell but I'll let you decide that. I write descent battlereports at www.livetocrush.net of the levels as we play them. Obviously the first 2-3 levels were more noobish than the later levels. I've read up on every OL and hero tip I could find on here, but it has basically improved my game very little (aside from the spiked pit/cushing block move which is win). Maybe were doing something wrong or maybe I just suck. I have no idea. Read through the last couple of battles I went through and see if you can spot something incorrect.

At the beginning of every quest, the heros go back to their starting setup of 300 gold and the same 3 skills they initially drew. Then we give the bonus based on the hero's level. Starting level 7, they were level 2.

Right now I am facing:

Varkais with able warrior, relentless, and mata/kata

Trenloe with tough, knight, and parry

Lyssa with cleaving, skilled, and weapon mastery

Bogran with precision, leadership, and crack shot

This isnt too ccrazy of a hero setup to me. It's better than my last set which contained Ronan with leadership, rapid fire, and marksman.

As for what the rules say, don't say, intended, and what the game designers were thinking that I deduced using my level 14 superior brain augery spell, we ruled it that way and as were in the middle of the level we are playing it that way. It doesn't make much sense to me that the JITD heros/skills have a locally sold work-around for a cursed relic of power that only existed in fables.

Found a "small" bug in your play - Mata or Kata opened a glyph?! That´s not according to the rules and a very strong amendment, since familiars cannot be stopped by anything except a closed door.

If you would allow this in my group, the little critters would open up all the glyphs with the heros waiting in town to enter the rooms with a Battle.

*deleted unintentional double posting*

Perhaps it's the difference in you playing campaign-style and us playing single levels. Your Heroes get stronger ech time they level, but keep in mind that the OL gains benefits as well, as the heroes get higher in level!
Also, why are you letting them use the same skills each time? Drawing random new heroes and random new skills each time is also an essential part of randomness that will add to the difficulty.

Anyways, i haven't read the battle-reports to the letter but they seems pretty descent

Parathion said:

Found a "small" bug in your play - Mata or Kata opened a glyph?! That´s not according to the rules and a very strong amendment, since familiars cannot be stopped by anything except a closed door.

If you would allow this in my group, the little critters would open up all the glyphs with the heros waiting in town to enter the rooms with a Battle.

I'm not in 100% agreement. Activating a glyph is not listed as a movement action on pg 16 of the JITD rules. The only time a familiar is not treated as a hero is for LOS purposes when spawning monsters. Under glyphs all it says is that a hero has to pass over the space, so I would say he could. I might be wrong on this, but it seems legit.

And that battle entrance move occassionally happens anyway. Half the group goes to town while the other half advances forward, then the glyph gets activated and battle city in the back field ensues.

@ Schmoozer: The only reason I let them keep their skill cards is because if they had to lose them, then they arent really playing a campaign with the same character and the same skills. It pretty much just turns it into a one-off game.

Well, it´s a rare instance, but the rules are crystal clear in this case:

Once a hero moves through a space containing a
glyph, the glyph is flipped over to its white (activated)
side.

And one should not underestimate the tactical impact your change has on the game.

Exeter said:

Uh, no, there are virtually no purposes at all for which a familiar is treated as a hero. They're different for LOS purposes (even when not spawning), for collision purposes, for attacks, for conquest, for inventory, for turn sequence, for traps....just about everything.

There is just no way that you can argue that everything that works for a hero should also work for a familiar by default . The rules have to specifically grant the familiar the same ability.

Exeter said:

Actually, Descent JitD was designed to be a one-off game. The campaign mode that was added feels like it was added for the sake of it and it doesn't work well. No wonder you get balance problems. If you want something more than a one-off game, get Road To Legend, it has much better campaign rules.

Scy800 said:

Indeed. However, there are some simple things you can do to make it work. Our group lets the heroes keep their skills and training tokens (but definitely not equipment), but the OL gets an additional threat per hero per turn after the first dungeon, and gets +1 Treachery (split among the types however the OL wishes) for each dungeon the heroes have beaten.