Imagine this: During Sauron's turn, he uses the "Command Monsters and Minions" action to put influence in a hero's space, and move two different monsters there as well.

During the "Ambush" step of that hero's turn, Sauron chooses one of the monsters for the ambush, and the lucky hero is NOT defeated. This leaves one monster still in the same location as the hero.

Rules page 24, first column, the paragraph just above "Favor Tokens", reads: "If a player wished to explore the location that he started his turn on, he may skip the "Move" and the "Combat or Peril" parts of his first Travel step and then explore in his current location (after which he may choose to take additional Travel steps, as normal).

The inclusion of the phrase "his FIRST Travel step" indicates it's OK to just ignore the remaining monster (which would have been ignored anyway had the hero chosen to move), but it just seems wrong to me to be able to hang around a monster and not have to fight.

We'll play it as written, of course, but I'm curious: how are y'all reading this?

TK

You'll have to fight it next turn if its still there.

It's not as if all of the Heroes and monsters are standing around staring at each other. Locations are very big places so it is entirely plausible for two creatures to be in the same location without necessarily battling each other or even being aware that the other is there.

It's usually not in the hero's best interest to stay in one place for an entire turn anyway. If there was anything there worth picking up, he picked it up at the start of the turn. It's time to move along. You don't get anything for killing the monster anyway unless you have the appropriate mission, and even if you have the mission you can't just chase after monsters the whole game and ignore the plots. The mission means squat if you don't achieve dominance.

Now that I've finally had a chance to play as a hero, I can see the beauty of this rule. In terms of the number of Player turns, the game is VERY short. This rule makes it possible for weakened heroes to complete quests rather than be perpetually ambushed by a lurking minion.

REALLY enjoying this one!

TK