Hello people.

I have one pretty simple question.

Do I have to pick an action before I start playing or can I do it while pleying as long as I stay withink the rules?

For example:

My characters' turn begins. I am standing behind a door. I decide to open it. Do I have to choose if I will run or if I will advance before I open the door? And what if for example I declare a run action, open the door and two monsters stand right behind it blocking my movement. That means that because I chose to run my turn gets wasted as I cannot advance further into the room?

And, to take it even further, if I had used fatigue to open the door hence no movement points used, I should be able to pick among run, advance and battle.

I can think many more dumb situations where your pre-chosen action is pretty useless, and not because you are a crap player, but because you couldn't have known. And I am not talking doing something illegal. If the actions/movement used up to this point could be fitted into more than one action why don't I have the option to change what I am doing up until the point I cross the line? For example move above my normal movement (without using fatigue), thus taking me to the run action, either I like it or not.

This generally always frustrates me a bit. Iwould like to hear what is the "correct" way to play the game according to the rules, but I also I would like to hear what do you think of it.

Cheers!

You have to pick your type of action - Battle, Advance, Run or Ready - at the start of your turn. You can't, for example, choose to do an Advance action and change your mind to a Run action when the Overlord messes up your attack by dropping a Crushing Block on your head during your movement so you have to move around it and can't reach the monster that you wished to make a melee attack on.

However, the details of the action can be changed. For instance in the above example where you could no longer reach the target monster that you were hoping to hit, you could choose to spend fatigue in order to get the extra movement points so that you can reach it, or you could choose (after the block has been resolved) to spend your remaining movement points to move to a different - and closer - monster and hit that instead.

The exception to this is the Ready action. You have to decide whether you will move or attack at the start of the turn, but you don't have to decide which type of Order you are going to place until you actually place it (usually at the very end of your turn, unless you chose to use an Aim order followed by an attack).

As for my thoughts on it, I think it is important for balance. One of the weapons in the Overlord's arsenal is that of stopping the players from getting to where they want to go and doing what they want to do. If the players can change their actions whenever they want, it removes that Overlord weapon.

I agree with Boggs, according to the rules the decission needs to be made at the start of the turn. And it can definitly happen that it turns out that your choice is completely useless.

But I completely understand what you mean, and I allowed "my" heroes to change their action during the turn, as long as their actions fit into the maximum of movement points. Basically we play exactly as you described it and it is not too hard for the OL, believe me!

Ayora said:

This is 100% and is part of the game pre-planning is an important part of the game tactics.

Ayora said:

Don't let your players eat at the kids table. Don't allow them to change their action. I would not paronize to them and force them to get better at playing instead of letting them make mistakes without it affecting them.

Grey Ker's special ability is to do exactly what your letting your players get away with.

If you have a player that just can't seem to every declare an action at the start of his turn then suggest they use Grey Ker.

Your player should become alot better players if they think out their action as it should lead to better hero coordination.

You choose your action before you make any move and you saying what are you doing. Becouse you don't know what is behind next doors or something. This is a part of this Descent that you exploring unknown dungeons (at least when you playing first time in some quest). Suprising is part of Overlord skill as well. And if you want to change your action when you declared any you can play Grey Ker (if you will be able to change your actions as you want he as hero and his hero skill will be totally useless - what means he is good becouse you can declare for example Advance action and spend fatigue to open doors (when you are adjacent to them) and change it for Battle action to attack what you will after doors opening).