I've noticed people have had very different experiences in RtL. I'm wondering if this can partially blamed on their strategy. To that end, let's pretend the following encounter and incident are drawn:
(Will be in second post, to prevent it loading on every page).

The hero party is as follows:
Battlemage Jaes: Unmovable. Axe, Chain mail, Fatigue potion.
Eliam: Able Warrior. Axe, Leather Armor, Fatigue potion.
Lyssa: Rapid Fire. Crossbow, Shield, Leather Armor, Fatigue potion.
Mad Carthos: Prodigy. Immolation, Leather Armor.

Each hero currently has full health and fatigue.

Where would you place the encounter leader?

Encounter:

Narrow Path: Abundant Cover--No attack can affect more than one figure (attacker's choice).

Incident: Nova the Dragon. Nova is a master Dragon with 24 extra wounds. Nove is immune to all lingering effects, but her attacks are normally mellee attacks and do not have the Breath ability. No minions. Abilities: 4 threat: Nove is healed of 5 wounds. 8 Threat: this attack gains the Breath ability and is Ranged.

The encounter is not an ambush. The current campaign level is Copper. Titan is overlord, siege engines is overlords upgrade, All monsters are copper level. There are no other overlord upgrades/avatar abilites relavant to this encounter.

The Heroes are placed as follows:

Battlemage Jaes: E1 Eliam: A5 Lyssa: A4 Mad Carthos: D1

Question 1: Where would you (as overlord) place Nova.

Huh....I actually never pulled Nova.

I'd either place her with her front edge on I-10/11 or M-4/5

I'd place her front edge on N4/5

Nice thread! I'm really interested to hear how the experts would play this.

M 4-5 - wouldnt this be illegal? Can the Dragon sit over a water space?

The dragon cannot retreat due to the water spaces, so it's fight to the death. Given this, I'd put her somewhere that I can hopefully reach the heroes. Most likely the lower left corner, like EFG 10-11.

House rules will come into play here - what are you using for Shadowcloak - per RAW, a hero standing in a tree space is immune to a dragon's breath (unless the dragon is adjacent) meaning a dragon can only target one hero (the first space in the breath template). We HR breath to take precedence to avoid things like this being a waste of time to even set up.

I would not place Nova above a water space because this would cause an annoying debate between the players if the dragon is allowed to attack there ;-)

The problem is that a Dragon has “soar”, but it doesn’t have “fly”. If the Dragon is soaring above a water space and if it gets entangled there by the heroes (so it cannot move away), it couldn’t attack (if you read the rules strictly). To attack, a soaring creature has to dive down and to give up soaring for a moment. But if it does so, it is standing (remember: it isn’t soaring any more) on a water space, and this is not allowed.
There wouldn’t be any problem if the Dragon had “fly” AND “soar”, because in this case it could give up “soaring” and attack “flying” above the water space, because it would have still the ability to “fly” above the water space.

It’s a strange and paradox case without any logic, and I bet it would cause a really annoying debate in nearly every players group. So you see why you shouldn’t place the dragon there? ;-)

If I had the choice, I would place the dragon with its front edge on L10/11, maybe some spaces closer to the heroes (maybe G, I or J 10/11), but in every case above a tree (so it would get the shadowcloak ability whenever it dives down to attack).

True, forgot about the whole Fly vs Soar thing. In which case I'd go with I-10/11and Soar.

I have acutally pulled this encounter. The fact that Nova must swoop to attack makes this very difficult. A crossbow with rapid fire is going to make short work of the dragon and if you swoop down I read that you MUST have a valid place to land. My heroes quickly deduced that because of the dragons slow movement you can actually box it in by having heroes blocking every other space.

OOOOXO

OXOOOO

As you see here the dragon can not actually attack the second hero beause it has no place to land. And the dragon can not actually move over the first hero because you can not park a soring figure on top of anouther figure. If I remember right the movement of the dragon is 3 or 4. This basically gives the party a way to keep the dragon from flying around while pelting it with crossbow and magic. If the dragon tries to land it is hit with guard. I would put the dragon at n/o 9 hoping to get enough threat to give one breath attack but would not expect much from this encounter. If the dragon lived more than 3 turns I would be shocked.

edit:

If the heroes have no dice upgrades this would help against the crossbow. Of course the range feat will fix the issue for one turn. But if you run into a crossbow with guard and rapid fire you will quickly be dead. Is this a yellow and red encounter? Just saying I don't think this encounter can be against a brand new party.

While soaring over a tree, do you still get the benefit of the Shadowcloak?

Lyssa with her Rapid Fire wont do damage once she overcomes the Soar (range), Fear, and Armor. It's going to be up to Carthos, who will have to move adjacent to the Dragon to hit her (Shadowcloak) and even then with the Soar and Fear factors, barely chip away at it on a good roll. One hit from a Dragon on Carthos / leather could kill him, then the Heroes have nobody that can hurt Nova. I would take this battle as an OL.

granor said:

To the best of my knowledge, you do not have to land when making an attack while Soaring.

Big Remy said:

It is my understanding to make a MELEE attack you have to have a valid landing spot. The dragon's attack is MELEE in this encounter. If you do not have to land to attack then it changes a little but I am still not convinced. Fear is only 1 surge at copper IIRC and assuming the party has no dice upgrades or feat that would help seems ideal at best. If you are waiting for your breath attack that cost 8 threat so you get one on turn 2 and one on turn 4 I think you will be dead before turn 4. (5th turn of the heros)

poobaloo said:

No. This has been stated in a FAQ.

If the heros allow you to hit the wizard they deserve to lose.

Graf said:

Knew I remember that Soar automatically gives Fly. From the GLoAQ:

Soar
Do creatures with Soar also have Fly abilities?

Yes. While outdoors (not while in a dungeon) creatures with the Soar ability have all the benefits of Fly in addition to Soar. Likewise, creatures with Fly retain all those benefits while outdoors, in addition to gaining the benefits of Soar.

Back to my original placement at M4/5 since Soar allows you to ignore the terrain of the space you are in and with Fly Nova can Fly right past the water.

I believe fly allows you to ignore obstacles only while you're moving through them. In other words, you can't end a movement (or attack) while in (or soaring over) blocking terrain (which water is). I don't have my rule books handy currently though.. so I may be wrong.

Also, by paying 8 threat (special ability #2) the dragon can make a normal attack (normal for him that is), so breath can (and should) come into play.

I'm leaning towards placing nova in k4-m5. The heroes have a difficult time winning this fight. I suspect staying put, building up threat and focusing on mad carthos would be the best move.

snacknuts said:

How would you get to the wizard of a hero was on j and one on h? (those 2 being not the wizard of course)

snacknuts said:

FAQ:

Q: Do Soaring creatures benefit from terrain?
A: While a creature is Soaring, it ignores the terrain in its current space. A Soaring creature may choose to “land” and disable its Soar power until its next turn; if it does this it is affected by terrain just like any other figure.

Soaring ignores terrain, so it ignores the water space.

Odds are I wouldn't initially. By saving up 20 or 30 threat, I could pay 8 to use the breath template (to avoid having to swoop) and roll enough to hopefully kill one of the blocking heroes. Also, once allt he fatigue potions are all used up, carthos will have to rest to have enough fatigue to hurt Nova. This means he can't attack every turn. The move + attack + move [back] + Ready [rest] would take two turns to achieve since his fatigue is tied up adding dice, instead of adding mp.

Big Remy said:

The FAQ question asks specifically about terrain "benefits" and the FAQ answer states "affected by terrain" implying that it only refers to terrains with affects (trees, mushroom, mud, elevation, etc..). Water has no such affect, It simply cannot be entered.

This breaks down into a terrain/obstacle/prop/benefit debate though, until those are clarified It's a judgement call

snacknuts said:

The Fly ability doesn't grant you the ability to end your movement in a space containing an obstacle that blocks movement, but it doesn't restrict your ability to attack while occupying such a space, and naturally there is no universal rule prohibiting it. It should be perfectly legal for a figure with Fly to enter a water space, attack, and then leave the space on the same turn.

Even if it doesn't also have Soar .

I ran a few numbers out of interest. Based on descentinthedark.com and the info in this thread, looks like Nova should have 36 wounds, 4 armor, and Fear 1.

• Without spending fatigue to add power dice, looks like Lyssa has only a 14% chance to damage Nova even if she Swoops. That's 243 attacks (on average) to bring her down. I don't think Rapid Fire matters, since buying extra power dice on an attack that you know already hits has to be massively more efficient than buying extra attacks.
• Mad Carthos can down Nova in about 10 attacks from a range of 1-2, or 26 attacks from range 5 (1 plus soar), without spending fatigue.
• Without fatigue, guard attacks from Jaes and Eliam combined inflict about 2.4 damage per swoop (if they can both reach). That includes misses in the average.
• Which I guess means that everyone except maybe Mad Carthos might as well try to Rest a lot, since a few fatigue per attack can plausibly triple their damage rate.
• If Nova used that heal ability every turn and never swooped, looks like she'd be pretty close to forcing a stalemate, especially if Mad Carthos and Lyssa have to be careful never to give her an opportunity to attack them. Can the OL win on time, or does this literally continue forever if neither side dies or flees?
• Road to Legend is weird . I honestly have no clue what the design intent was for this encounter.

snacknuts said:

Err... No.

Water is an obstacle and is terrain if anything is. The effect of water is that it cannot be entered. While soaring, the effect of water is ignored.
The answer, by the way, is not restricted to 'benefits'. "While a creature is Soaring it ignores the terrain in its current space."

Soaring creatures ignore all terrain in their spaces. They may choose to Land (no cost) in which case all terrain effects apply. If they do not land, they are not affected in any way by terrain as they specifically ignore terrain in their space (and, as Soarers all have Fly, also ignore terrain as they move into it, so can move into water spaces even when not soaring (but cannot finish on them unless they Soar again)).

Landing is a choice made by the figure. Once a figure Lands it is affected by terrain normally (except that it still has Fly of course). Arguably, it can even remain Landed on a water space because when Landing it is not Entering the space (it is already on the space) and the water restriction is only entry. If it was landed and used Fly to move onto the water space (perhaps retaining Shadowcloak while moving) it could not stay on the water space unless it first Soared then Landed again - which would allow a guarding hero a snapshot at the soaring monster temporarily not in the tree.
Landing is not related in any way to Swooping. The only effect Swooping has is that temporarily the figure ceases to have the range additions and non-melee restrictions of Soaring. A Swooping figure still retains all the other effects of Soaring, including (well, more or less only) ignoring terrain - which means that a swooping monster in a tree does not have shadowcloak. The FAQ answer says 'disable' Soar, but that is not what the rules say and is, I believe, a mistaken description rather than a new rule.
There is no requirement to Land when Swooping. Indeed, Landing when Swooping would commonly be referred to as a 'crash', and considered a Bad Thing !

Antistone said:

Different encounters pose different challenges. Even the same encounter poses different challenges at differing strength levels.

A starting party that encounters Nova should probably flee - there are few maps that Nova can block all the exits and none if the heroes have Acrobat/Fly. Even if they can't flee, a few power pots will make a big difference. So will a few decent items.

If the encounter is effectively unwinnable for the heroes (say Nova is Silver already!), and unfleeable (box canyon is it?), then it is effectively a random block on the heroes journey (albeit one that gives the OL an important large lump of CT!). However that requires quite a lot of bad luck for the heroes. The random element in this means that the heroes cannot guarantee their movement plans 100%, though it will approach 99% very quickly.

Much of the time the boot is on the other foot. Random encounters are often easy bonus cash and CT for the heroes. There are also random enounters that allow the heroes to buy potions as though at a town, shop at a market as though at a town, find cash, and even buy a skill of their choice.

Removing the second sentance from the FAQ answer leaves an incomplete, partial answer; it was asked and answered in the context of "benefitting terrain". I still see this as a debate between obstacles vs terrain. A door could be considered terrain (a feature of the land), and a soaring creature certainly wouldn't ignore a closed door. Getting a soaring creature near a door could prove tricky though... at least with the FFG provided areas/dungeons.

snacknuts said:

There is no mention of benefiting terrain in the answer. "While a creature is Soaring it ignores terrain in its current space". That is explicitly clear. It does not say '...ignores beneficial terrain in its current space." Sometimes (all too rarely given the poor quality of question phrasing) the answer exceeds the question's parameters.

Terrain is commonly used (or defined as) to mean features that are part of an area, and in fact have some area themselves.. That would translate in Descent into space-occupying features. A door does not occupy spaces, it deliniates between them and is in fact infinitely thin, since it is a line between two adjacent spaces. Doors are not terrain because they do not occupy any area. In Descent, doors are not features 'of the land', they are features ' between the land'. In this they are unique I think. In real life a door might be considered terrain. An infinitely thin feature such as a national boundary however would not. Doors in Descent are more like boundaries.
As an aside, as Soar is specifically only used in outdoor encounters, soaring and dungeon doors cannot mix anyway.

However, we could also look at the rules... (using pdf word search for terrain)
Terrain:
DJitD/WoD - not mentioned.
AoD - several places, all referring to Corrupted Terrain, which is defined as an obstacle. Otherwise not mentioned.
ToI - mentioned on pg4 as a descriptive reference to the tiles (areas). The tiles are apparently 'dungeon terrain' or 'outdoor terrain'.
RtL - only mentioned descriptively under Map Pieces (area tiles) on pg3
FAQ - pg2 (Large Monsters and Terrain). Gives several examples of terrain, including obstacles (lava), traps (scything blades tokens), trees (obstacles from FAQ pg7) and Elevated terrain (beds, tables, thrones and sarcophagi - probably obstacles but not properly defined).
FAQ - pg 8 (Corrupted Terrain) "... as an empty space ..."
FAQ - pg 10 (Soaring) "... in its space..."

You put those together and it is rather clear that 'terrain' as used in Descent, means an area (space or spaces) with something in it* (obstacle, trap token or one of the undefined objects new to RtL). It may or may not (there is no evidence it does, so one assumes not) include chests, glyphs, coinpiles and other tokens that fall under the Treasure category - though in this context none of the Treasures make any difference anyway since they have no effect or cost inherent in moving onto, through, or out of their spaces.
Since we explicitly have at least two different obstacles (lava and trees) given as examples of terrain (not to mention that the elevated terrain items probably will come under the heading of obstacles if they do get defined as more than just props) it is not feasible that water, an obstacle, would not be considered terrain.

*Edit: In fact, given that the tiles are explicitly described as being terrain, and may have nothing in their spaces, it is in fact clear that 'terrain' in descent just means spaces (and whatever they contain that has effects). Of course empty spaces have no effects so are not really relevant to the discussion...

granor said:

By using threat for extra movement.

Answering the original question...
Given how tough Nova is for the heroes, I would start her (Landed) front edge on D/E8. The heroes have no reason to fight and are almost certain to flee. Placing her at H4/5 means that even Carthos, who is the slowest hero and would have furthest to run if exiting southwards can still get beyond Nova's reach on turn 1. My only hope is for the heroes to fall to the temptation and 'have a go'. Being in the tree (E10) means that they must come adjacent to me but then everyone can attack comfortably. And then I can attack back, and possibly again the next turn.
My regular RtL partner is too smart to fall for this and would without a doubt immediately run everyone toward the uncovered exit expending all fatigue necessary to get beyond 7 spaces (Mv 4 + 2 extra from 4 threat + 1 for adjacent melee attack) each turn. Against him I would just offer the immediate escape and we wouldn't bother setting it up.

If I was playing a bunch of morons that I thought would fight, I would set up J-L/10-11 (Landed). I want them coming to me, close enough to bring them all in and with the melee guy interested as well and not running off through the other exit. I am far enough away that they will have difficulty doing much on turn one and I have room to retreat (and a good place to retreat to) when they get closer, luring them further in, giving me more time to accumulate threat for adding dice when I hit.
OTOH against players this stupid, I probably would be trying to help them rather than hurt them!

We had something similar to this in my first ever campaign, first hero turn. Heroes started off with the Razorwing encounter. They (the razorwings) can block off all exits, although they can't attack without guarding melee counterattacks. But Razorwings are tough for starting heroes, especially with only Jaes/Fire Pact as a wizard (yes, the draw was that bad) and one ranged hero. I think the OL was generous enough to make a 'mistake' and leave a gap for the second last hero to run through and escape while concentrating his forces on the other remaining hero. It sure was a sour way to start though and with 5 players with busy lives only lasted 2 sessions.

you're missing the point, don't add more to the answer by ignoring the question:

Also from the FAQ:

A: You can buy and sell in any order and as often as you
like.

This clearly means that one can do this anywhere, anytime, money isn't mentioned, therefore it isn't spent (or regained). Monsters, Familiars, and villigars can also shop.

Taken in context with the question:

Q: In town, are you limited in how many items you can
buy or sell and do you have to buy and sell in any specific
order?

One cannot take an answer out of context.