Hello,

i have a couple of questions as i am new OL trying to do my best with my party of heroes. We are all experienced players ( playing games for 20+ years).

Q1. A hero declares "battle" and me (OL) play a dodge card. Do i get to dodge both attacks? If not can i use my dodge in his second attack? (assuming his first was a miss or dealt low damage)

Q2. If i (OL) attack with a monster that has an area effect attack, such as breath, to 2 or more heroes and one of them has the "fear" skill. Do i still have to roll a surge for my attack to deal damage?

Thanks guys

Overlord999 said:

Wrong button,

Dodge distinctly works differently for OL than it does for heroes. The dodge card is a one shot deal, but it's only played AFTER rolling the dice. The prerequisite for playing the dodge card is in fact a successful attack (after the dice are rolled). There are some things to watch out for in terms of timing though - if a player is aimed, make sure you play fast enough (or tell them to slow down for a second while you make a decision) to cancel them picking up the dice they want to reroll and rerolling those.

Overlord999 said:

1. The dodge would be played after the attack roll of either the first or second attack.

2. IIRC, "fear" affects the entire attack and you would need to roll a surge for the attack to be successful

Hope that helps

In fact, if both of the heroes (somehow) had Fear 1 , you'd need to roll two surges or the entire attack would fail. Surges are spent for the entire attack, not for individual targets, which makes Fear particularly effective against area attacks.

But Fear is incredibly rare.

Do you have any references for your statement, Antistone? I can´t find anything in the basic rules.

Parathion said:

Nothing clearer than the base rules, but I'm not sure how else it would work.

"When attacking a figure with the Fear ability, the attacker must spend 1 power surge for every rank of Fear the figure possesses. If the attacker cannot spend enough surges to overcome the Fear ability, the attack automatically misses. Surges spent to overcome this ability are wasted and cannot be used to activate other abilities ."

"If a hero or monster gains a given special ability from more than one source, any ranks the ability has are added together ."

Whether you combine the Fear from all targets into one lump sum, or process each target's Fear ability as a separate ability, you still end up needing to pay surges equal to the combined ranks. Do you have an alternate interpretation?

Thanks till now guys.

I have to tell you that i have the Greek version and my "Dodge" card writes "play this card when a hero declares that he is attacking one of your monsters...." you guys say that it is played after the dice are thrown. If so then it's clear you get to dodge one attack whenever you decide to play the card.

As for the fear skill i believe it's a matter of LOS.

Fear skill goes "When attacking a figure with the Fear ability, the attacker must spend 1 power surge....." but if you can't see him you can't attack him, i'ts just the template that gets to him.

IMO if you have LOS you have to roll the surge, if not you don't have to.........what do you think?

Overlord999 said:

Disagree. I see no reason LOS would have any effect. Fear says you have to pay the surge when you attack a figure that has it, it says nothing about LOS or the type of attack.

Hm, the first thing that comes to my mind is (rules-lawyerish), that you never attack a figure, always one or more spaces. But that doesn´t lead as anywhere here, I think. :-)

If you spend a surge to overcome Fear 1, then this effect is neutralised. Two figures with Fear 1 still have Fear 1, not Fear 2, so in my opinion the ability Fear 1 is neutralised for that attack (which may affect several Fear 1 figures).

A (only slightly related but) similar situation is with Stealth and area attacks - only one clear result on the Stealth die is necessary (it is not rolled twice) to hit all Stealth figures. Yet for Stealth it was specifically ruled that way.

One supporting argument would be other effects in area attacks: If you can spend surges for damage or effect tokens, e,.g. Burn, in your area attack, then this added damage and the Burn tokens also count for the whole attack and all affected figures, and not for individual figures.

One for the FAQ list, I guess.

Overlord999 said:

Without getting into the nitty gritty of rules lawyering, let me just say this: Nowhere in the Fear description does it say that ability is dependent on the attacker having LoS to the target with Fear. If your attack is to include a target with Fear, you must overcome his Fear regardless of relative position or LoS. According to the Fear description, if you fail to overcome the target's Fear by spending surges as required then the attack will miss. If an area attack misses, it misses everything. Thus you must overcome Fear for each and every target who has it for the attack to succeed against any of them.

Parathion said:

Its not that it stacks and becomes Fear 2 per se and this is only a problem with area attacks. For each figure with Fear, you need to spend a surge for each figure. Think of it like a reverse Command effect.

We will probably go for our first home rule on this

Big Remy is correct. It doesn't matter whether you stack both enemies' Fear, or deal with them individually: either way, you have to spend both surges, or the entire attack fails for all enemies affected.

And LOS is absolutely not an issue here. The ruling simply says that Fear comes into effect when the monster is attacked. The breath template can attack monsters without line of sight. Seems cut and dry to me.

fex said:

+1

The hero is scared of the first monster.. and he's scared of the second monster... he has to overcome his fear of both or he wets his pants.

-1

There is still no evidence I can see to support your ruling.

fex said:

We will go with that, seems the best "in rules" way.

Parathion said:

The evidence is in the methodolgy of using surges.

When you spend a surge (or surges, where a use requires 2~ or more), it is spent (gone) to activate that use and cannot be reused for another use.

If two figures with Fear 1 are hit by the same attack the result will be the same whether the Fear 'stacks' or is applied individually.
If the Fear stacks, then obviously 2 surges must be spent.
If the Fear does not stack then 1 surge must be spent to satisfy one item/line/effect/event (Fear 1) on one character. That surge cannot be used for any other purpose. Another surge must be used to satisfy the separate item/line/effect/event (Fear 1) on the other character. If it is not, the attack misses as per the Fear description. Which means that it misses all targets as per the AoE rules.

The same surge cannot be spent on two different Fear 1s. Each surge is individually spent to satisfy Fear 1 for that particular source of Fear.

So the result is the same regardless of whether you stack or not.

The evidence is not convincing.

It is clear that a surge spent for Fear 1 is gone and not reusable, that was never questioned. It is also clear, that "stacking" is not an appropriate term here, since this basically refers to effects from a weapon or an ability of one single figure, not multiple.

I interpret the rules that for a given attack, a surge can be spent to give the attack the ability to overcome the ability Fear 1. Thus the attack hits regardless of the number of figures possessing Fear 1, because Fear 1 is neutralised by the attack´s ability.

Compare it with the ability: "~ = +1 burn token" in an area attack. If this attack hits several figures, I strongly believe that all of them would get one Burn token per surge spent.

From the rulebook (emphasis mine)

Fear
When attacking a figure with the Fear ability, the attacker must spend 1 power surge for every rank of Fear the figure possesses . If the attacker cannot spend enough surges to overcome the Fear ability, the attack automatically misses. Surges spent to overcome this ability are wasted and cannot be used to activate other abilities.

If your attacks hits multiple figures with Fear, you need to spend a surge for each figure. If for an area effect (Blast, Bolt, Breath), you have one figure with Fear and you can't spend a surge the attack misses, and doesn't damage the the other figures targetted by the attack .

The Road to Legend entry is a little different and actually makes stronger case:

Fear: When an attack affects a space containing a figure with the Fear ability, the attacker must spend one power surge for every rank of Fear that figure possesses. If the attacker cannot spend enough surges to overcome the Fear ability, the attack automatically misses. Surges spent to overcome this ability
cannot be used for other purposes.

As long as you affect a space containing a figure with Fear you have to do it. If you affect multiple spaces , you would have to pay it multiple times.

As for the Burn example, that's because the attack gains +1 Burn. That is not the same as what we are talking about.

The wording in the RtL rules is a strong argument for your side, yet I doubt it was worded that way to explicitly include area attacks, a mere conicidence that it supports your side ;-)

So what about two figures with Fear 1 being attacked while in the same space by a Guard attack - would the attacker also have to spend two surges, or is one sufficient in that case? :-P

Parathion said:

Still have to spend two, since there are two figures in that space that have Fear.

While I believe that my original suggestion that the attacker must separately "buy off" each source of Fear is the most natural and straightforward reading, Parathion is correct that there is nothing in the rules actually contradicting his reading, and it would probably be reasonable to add this to the questions list.

Antistone said:

There is also nothing in the rules to prevent you nuking the dungeon and leaving.

Surges can only be spent once. When you spend a surge on an effect or line on a card then that surge is used for that effect or line only and is gone. That same surge cannot be also spent on a different effect or line item from a different card.
Fear is not a value associated with an attack, it is a value associated with a 'hit' figure, that affects the attack. Effectively, Fear is a line item on the 'hit' figures descriptive card which says "attacking this figure: ~ or the attack is a miss".
Paying the Fear cost for one figure does not pay for the Fear cost for the other 'figure' - they are separate items, not one item associated with the attack.