Antistone said:

This is a red ecounter. One that is impossible for a starting party to get. I was assuming the party was not new but just had bad luck in equipment. If we are really saying the party has no helpfull feats and no dice upgrades and have somehow gotten a red encounter then they are going to lose. They should run as quickly as they can. But I see no way for this to really happen in RTL.

granor said:

Not true. A starting party could get a red enounter on their first move when heading to Blackwing Swamp. It is a strange choice for a starting party, but perfectly legal. Granted, many of the red trails require secret maps or boats (expensive party upgrades) to traverse, but not all.

A red encounter is merely a more dangerous trail to take. Red encounters tend to be more extreme - extremely good (the training master I think) or extremely bad (the dragon, the demon).
However that is a generality only. The most dangerous encounter that I have played from either side was a yellow encounter with 3 manticores (1 a Master/boss). Manticores are frikken nasty when upgraded (high pierce, decent damage and quickshot), soaring to boot, three of them to block multiple exits and reinforcing capability of one gets killed. The only thing that saved a late-gold (experienced player) hero party from TPK was the Gold flying item allowing one hero to escape.
Admittedly that was on an excellent ice-covered map with a looong way to go to the exit points (benefits of the draw three and choose OL upgrade).

Ok my bad. Gettting a red encounter as your first encounter requires really dumb play from the heroes and bad luck. Unless of course the heroes are trying to lose.

snacknuts said:

Missing the point? Apparently, and still missing it if there is one I did not address.
You made two points in your 20:02:51 answer, one about the FAQ answer and the other, apparently the main one (since you said that you saw this as the (key) debate), about terrain vs obstacles.
I addressed both, ignored/missed neither.

Providing a FAQ answer that specifically, and only, address the exact (two) question(s) asked does not mean that all FAQ answer specifically and only address the exact question(s) asked and go no further.

Here are 4 examples, one from each expansion (DJitD, WoD, AoD, RtL) except ToI (not many questions there yet). Many, if not most, of the Q&A form FAQ entries are like this.

Q: Can stunned heroes perform movement actions (such as drinking a potion)?
A: Yes, if the stunned hero chooses to receive movement points rather than attacking or placing an order. A stunned hero can also freely spend fatigue for movement points
No mention of fatigue in the Q...

Q: What happens if you are on a lava space at the beginning of your turn and you don’t move?
A: If you begin your turn on a damaging effect, such as lava or a monster’s aura, and do not move off of it, you are damaged by it at the end of your turn.
The question was about Lava only, the answer includes all damaging effects...

Q: When making a Leap attack, is the leaping figure subject to Guard attacks, attacks produced by abilities such as Alertness, and Aura? If the figure is damaged by any of those effects, may it apply its Berserk ability to its attack roll (assuming it has Berserk)?
A: Yes on most counts. Leaping figures are immune to Aura, but otherwise subject to all the above noted effects. It may apply its Berserk ability if it takes damage during its leap. Note that if the figure is slain by any of these effects, then it may not make an attack roll at all. Guard may only be activated before or after a Leap attack is performed, never during.
No mention of what happens to a slain Leap-er in the question...

Q: What happens if a soaring creature is webbed? Does the soaring creature fall to the ground?
A: No. A soaring creature that is webbed may not spend movement points. Swooping and attacking do not cost movement points, so it may still do both freely
No mention of swooping in the question...

Q: Can the party land on or move through a dungeon location that has been explored using a week's move action?
A: They may end on or move through the location. They may not re-enter an already explored dungeon.
The entering an explored dungeon part of the answer is extra information outside the bounds of the original question...

The answers all exceed the bounds of the original question. The same with the soaring/terrain question. The answer exceeds the bounds of the original question.

The answer is not taken wholly out of context, but the context is expanded by the answer. Frankly, that's good answering policy and we need more of it (as well as better though through questions that invite more expansive and clearer answers rather than short answer that only answer a specific rather than clear up a generality).

snacknuts said:

OK, you do realize that your own counter-argument makes your original point moot?

Water doesn't prevent you from attacking, it just prevents you from entering the space. If a figure can get into the space, it can attack from it.

It doesn't even matter whether Soar allows you to enter the space, since Big Remy quoted a rule saying that any creature with Soar also has Fly in outdoor encounters, and Fly unquestionably allows you to enter a water space.

Even if you somehow succeed in arguing that water isn't terrain, or that the FAQ rule in question was only intended to cause soaring figures to ignore specifically beneficial effects (both of which are fairly ridiculous), we are still left with the fact that that entire answer could be stricken from the game and there would still be no problem with attacking from a water space.

So, no OL would ever be so silly as to do this, but if a Boulder moves into a space containing a Soaring creature, what happens?

The last time we had a major discussion about different prop classifications, I believe we decided that traps don't count as terrain.

They certainly don't count as obstacles, and Fly provides no protection against boulders. I don't pretend to know what they were thinking when they designed Soar , though.

Antistone said:

I think you misremember. Traps (or at least tokens left behind by traps) are definitely terrain as the Scything Blades are a specific example of terrain (FAQ pg2).
I think we decided, mostly after I had gone off on a wrong tangent trying to reinvent the wheel just because there were some bumps on it, that traps (or the tokens they leave behind) are not obstacles.

Anyway, the question is moot as the Rolling Stone card has specifically been removed from the advanced campaign (that is, RtL) (FAQ pg 9). There is currently no possiblilty that Soar and Boulders can interact.

Antistone said:

Averages can become unhelpful when you have a binomial distribution. I am begining to think descent attack damage is binomial enough to cause problems when looking at average damage.

granor said:

Uh...what?

I'm not sure exactly what your objection here is, but allow me to clarify that I didn't do something stupid like calculate average raw damage and then subtract armor and divide the result into the monster's wounds; those numbers come from a computer program that actually enumerates every possible die roll and considers all modifiers on the attack (such as range, armor, and fear) and determines the probability of every final outcome. It's not going to decide that the average damage of an axe is 7 and that therefore a monster with 7 or more armor can't be hurt by one at all, or anything like that.

If for some reason Nova landed and allowed Mad Carthos to stand next to her and battle every turn, Mad Carthos would kill her in roughly 5 turns on average without spending fatigue; that's the actual number you would be likely to get if you played it out a large number of times following the actual game rules (but using contrived player decisions).

Now, I haven't calculated the probability that he gets lucky and kills her in 3 turns or that he gets unlucky and she survives 17 turns, so it's somewhat unhelpful if we only care about a rare upset. But the fact that we have something resembling a binomial distribution (in that there's lots of independent trials with a small set of possible results for each) actually makes it very unlikely that the probability curve would be misleading in that respect; we've probably got a fairly nice bell curve.

snacknuts said:

I know its off topic, but if you do the draw three pick one as is in the rules how did this party come to be? Honestly Eliam and Lyssa and at absolutely bottom of the barrell for me so there are very few characters that I wouldn't pick ahead of both of them. Also this party is very underwhelming in terms of melee, and by and large Descents best characters are melee. So was this a real partry draw and if so how on earth did it come to pass? If this was pruely fictional in terms of party make up please ignore thsi post.

I wrote a web app to create a party. I let it generate 6 heroes, each with full (2-4) skills. I then picked 4 of the 6, heroes, and then choose 1 of each heroes skills to start with.

I wrote the app for regular descent. It's on my list to make it more RtL firendly--pick 1 of 3 four times, then skills , I just haven't yet. I need to add session control before it'll work and I haven't had the time/need to do it.

The other heroes were runemaster thorne, and Spiritspeaker Mok. I mainly eliminated them because of their skill loadout.

EDIT:

Mad Carthos Damage with Immolation spread;

minimum range of 4 (point blank (1 range) against a soaring (+3) Nova: range < 4 = miss

with no fatigue : miss-19%; 5 damage-1%; 6-11%; 7-30%; 8-31%; 9-8%

(White+green+black(*3) + 2 damage (ability) + 2 surges (skill))

spending all three fatigue before rolling : miss:17%; 5 damage-1%; 6-9%; 7-16%; 8-19%; 9-16%; 10-9%; 11-9%; 12-5%

(White+green+gold-silver-black + 2dmg + 2 surges)

spending all three fatigue after rolling: miss 17%; 6 dmg-6%; 7-17%; 8-20%; 9-13%; 10-14%; 11-10%; 12-3%

(White+green+black*3+gold + 2 dmg +2 surges)

The damage values do not include Nova's 4 armor (master copper dragon). I'm using quick-n-dirty rounding, so they could be > 100%

EDIT: I forgot that Nova, being a master dragon, has fear 1.... throw those numbers away

snacknuts said:

According to the RtL pdf, you draw starting skills after choosing your hero. Therefore, unless you're saying that you eliminated them because you didn't like their categories of starting skills, that shouldn't be a reason for not picking them.

snacknuts said:

Soaring adds 4 range, not 3.

To save you the trouble of recalculating with Fear, the numbers my spreadsheet calculates:

Immolation + 3 black dice + 2 damage + 2 free surges from a distance of 5 against 4 armor and Fear 1:
43% Miss (or zero wounds)
4% 1 wounds
21% 2 wounds
25% 3 wounds
4% 4 wounds
25.975 average attacks to kill Nova

Immolation + 1 black die + 1 silver die + 1 gold die + 2 damage + 2 free surges from a distance of 5 against 4 armor and Fear 1:
22% Miss (or zero wounds)
<1% 1 wounds
4% 2 wounds
12% 3 wounds
19% 4 wounds
20% 5 wounds
15% 6 wounds
4% 7 wounds
10.8596 average attacks to kill Nova

Immolation + 3 black dice + 1 gold die + 2 damage + 2 free surges from a distance of 5 against 4 armor and Fear 1:
21% Miss (or zero wounds)
<1% 1 wounds
4% 2 wounds
12% 3 wounds
19% 4 wounds
23% 5 wounds
15% 6 wounds
2% 7 wounds
10.8514 average attacks to kill Nova

All percentages are rounded down, and I assume that power enhancements on silver and gold dice can be split between range and damage (because it made the program substantially easier to write, and I've never heard a definitive answer one way or the other).

You can download my endurance calculator from the link in my signature if you want to try out your own scenarios.

All this is kind of moot anyways, since wherever you put Nova, the heroes can leave on their first or second turns, Nova would be lucky to get an attack off. Running away from encounters like this one is the smart thing to do.

Antistone said:

Sorry I had no idea you wre going through this kind of effort.

Wulfgar61 said:

I know it has been explained how this party was selected.

Actually, I don't think it is that bad. Speed is important, even more so in RtL than in vanilla IME. This is a fast party.

Jaes is an excellent character, able to fill Tank, Runner or Mage roles, and able to use a useful variety of equipment.

Eliam is actually a lot better in RtL because he can get a fatigue upgrade. Once he has 5+ fatigue his sweep option becomes extremely useful. And it is relatively cheap to build up the missing trait dice in melee. A 5 move sweeper can get into excellent position to clear a lot of monsters in a single attack.

I am definitely not a Lyssa fan but if she is the only Ranged character then she is not a disaster. Plus she has good running capabilities - 5M5F and 2 CT

Mad Carthos is quite a nasty beast even if not my favourite mage. And getting prodigy? Phooar!

This party is fast, flexible and will really rock by mid-late silver. What does lack is a heavy-hitter, though Carthos will fill that role fairly quickly. Naturally the encounter in question magnifies it's weaknesses. OTOH this party can guarantee an escape from this encounter without losing a wound (or potion) due to it's speed. A party with a Mv3Fat3 tank would find it harder (though it probably still could).

The real question, IMO, is why isn't Mad Carthos equipped with the Sunburst instead of Immolation?
He needs only a single surge to get the blast effect (ok, 2 against Fear 1) and he has a damage bonus already. He should be sweeping away minor minions by the bucketload.

Against Soaring, Blast ignores range....

granor said:

Well, it's not much effort once the computer program has been written.

Corbon said:

I assumed that they were being limited to JitD equipment for academic purposes.

Antistone said:

Umm... ok, its a reason. But aren't several of the characters from expansions? Possibly the same expansion as Sunburst? (I have no idea since I don't keep a detailed track of what came with which, don't have my cards to hand to check symbols and weapons are not currently written up at www.descentinthedark.com).

Anyway, the main reason for my post...
Must apologise and correct my earlier comment. Lyssa is not a competent shooter, even if the only choice available. I was thinking of ... well a combination of Lyssa and Tetherys. Still, Lyssa makes a decent runner and (although I know the pick one of three system was not used) she would definitely be my pick over Aurim and Red Scorpion if necessary, even if not much else (possibly over Tetherys and maybe even Laurel as well).

Corbon said:

Ah, Eliam is from an expansion. Though not the same one as Sunburst. Still, that makes my theory less likely.

Jaes, Lyssa, and Carthos are all from JitD.

Antistone said:

That is correct. Like i said, I wrote the app for non-RtL descent. I'm planning on modifying it for road to legend (and sea of blood?) eventually, but that requires session data, which is a big change (record previous choices, plus skill/hero returns, adding 1 skill choice of any type, preventing dupsand parties and accesses , etc..)

In non-RtL play (and lately in Descent Quest) a purely random party with random skills was desired. Have a party of 3 magic heroes and 1 ranged hero made for an interesting quest, especially without an overlord that would automatically adjust for our weaknesses.

My dice probability calc is also aimed for base descent also. The silver/gold dice addition is a filthy patch, I'm also planning on rewriting it; I just haven't, not sure how I want it to work.

I choose base game equipment since everyone should be familiar with what they were. I should have limited characters/skills the same way; I didn't... nobody noticed, but the party also has three heroes with leather armor..... there are only two leather armor cards, I couldn't remember the +2 armor vs ranged/magic + 1 extra "other" slot (wizards robe? sorcerors robe? robe??).

snacknuts said:

You select your hero before dealing out skills in JitD, too. Letting players draw several sets of skills and pick the one they want is a bizarre house rule favoring the heroes, whether you make it contingent upon hero selection or not, and whether you're playing an extended campaign or not.

snacknuts said:

It's a wizard's robe, and it's from the AoD expansion.

And I don't have the cards in front of me right now, but I'm pretty sure there are three leather armor cards. You aren't actually required to use both chainmails if you want to armor a 4-hero party using only JitD cards, IIRC (tunic and wizard robe are both from expansions).

Graf said:

Quod erat demonstrandum.

You see the irony? Exactly how I predicted - it seemed to be some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. ;-)

But you don't have to be a prophet to predict that: You just have to mention the word "soar" in combination with the words "is it possible to" and see - you'll have a debate... ;-)

Graf said:

Strange isn't it. The rules for soar are actually remarkably clear, so there should be no debate at all. But there still manages to be one every time.

Partly I think it is because they are somewhat counter-intuitive and, in a couple of situations, downright ridiculous. But they are those things precisely to keep them simple and clear!

We don't deal out skill sets. The web app i use is here:

http://snacknuts.com/descent/partygen.php

Seeing it should clarify what it does (and doesn't) do.

My biggest problem with soar is the feeling that it wasn't initially thought out and had to be fixed via FAQ entries. Descent as a game uses tokens to track everything, since there's no chit to track a creature's soaring/landing status it leave me with the taste that they created that status to "fix" it.