Beg to differ there, Loki.

We bought several sets of dice for all players, so they don't have to passed back and forth across the table all the time. This reduces the time we spend looking for them on the cluttered gaming table, too.

Maybe these dice used are skewed (ie a so called 'unfair' die in the mathematical term, as in 'an unfair coin'), so they actually could produce a (slight) margin of error. Maybe. Or maybe it is selective memory. But I 'personally' would swear there was someone out there to get my players.

Corbon said:

Hehe, nice story. I agree with you on that. It's easier for me to remember when 2 gaming sessions ago, one of my melee heroes (Haggletooth, the custom hero who can sweep in place of 2 attacks on a battle action) missed two sweep attacks in a row, getting 4 x's in a row since he was using the Beastman Fetish. This was on a single rumor dungeon level. On the other hand, last game session, we did 2 entire dungeon levels, and all the heroes combined only rolled 2 misses, and one of those was during an animate weapons attack.

I love it when weird dice stuff happens. I once had an elite beastman war party freshly spawned, and in the vicinity of the heroes (they made a big LOS mistake). They all missed. Every single one of them. It was incredibly fun. Apparently the beastmen had some serious issues. Though i do wonder how they became an elite team...

I can understand that Undying can get frustrating but it is a very important part of the game. I've had so many leaders die without doing anything meaningful to the heroes, and undying monsters never resurrecting even once... so as an overlord, once in a while I enjoy it immensily when my ogre keeps coming back. And my heroes? They simply flee when it takes too long and congratulate me on kicking them out

What I don't like about Undying on leaders is that it blows all the tactics away. What does it matter when you position your heroes really well and think everything through when the monster just keeps on living and kills the heroes? What does it matter when you just kill the monster on the first attempt and the dungeon is over? What really annoys me is when I lose a game in which I made no (obvious) mistakes while the opponent did just due to bad bad luck. I also don't like it when I win that way.

Also, I find it way more enjoyable to lose as the overlord than I do as the heroes. I don't really know what's causing that, though. When your undying monster instantly dies, you just get the next one. When the undying monster you try to kill just won't die, you die.

When a strong monster has Undying (and I do not play RtL, so the Staff of the Grave being drawn is unlikely), sometimes the whole dungeon depends on your Undying rolls. You could basically roll that one die instead of playing the dungeon (well, exaggerating a little^^).

Plus it makes Staff of the Grave and Star of Kellos really overpowered.

We have houseruled it that undying cannot work more than three times in a row, but I like an option with increasing difficulty, I will give it a try next time we play.

nachti said:

You die, but "you just get the next one" because death doesn't end the dungeon in RtL.

While I can appreciate the thought out probability arguments (having studied under a PhD who's thesis was the probability a coin would land on its side after a flip) and I can appreciate the arguments on luck (because I've been branded as the luckiest bastard to roll dice in my own gaming group), I have an angle on the undying question to address that I'm unsure if people have considered yet in this thread...

It comes down to that simply... my entire gaming group, OL included, enjoys when the game progresses forward. We like to average about 30-90min on any single dungeon level, and that's pretty accurate considering we have one really slow thinker in our group. While it can be taken in stride, or laughed about as coincidence that an undying figure can revive itself 4+ times, the sheer level of "boredom" that sitting on the same level of a dungeon with that undying type being directly in the way of continuing onward in the dungeon (because it presents a tactical obstacle) is the real problem. We'd like the game to progress, but are looking for some maintenance of consistency in the roll to make the consequences of "changing" an RAW less effective on the game itself so neither side is left with a detrimental shift in power because of the situation.

Honestly, we're just looking to have the game move on. So what would some of those of you who consider yourselves experts in the realm of probability and game mechanics suggest. We have our own thoughts, but wanted to see what the brightest minds of the community decree as good ideas. ;D

+1 to all the people who contributed to this thread too, despite some ruffled feathers, I read some nice ideas here

As I said back on the first page, if you want to eliminate the extreme cases where a monster revives numerous times, while leaving the Undying ability approximately equally powerful, my recommendation is to allow an Undying monster a 50% chance to revive the first time it is killed, and no chance at all to revive more than once. (If you have trouble keeping track, place a Curse token on the monster the first time it revives.)

What about replacing Undying completely? Something along the lines of "when this figure is killed, roll power dice one at a time until a surge is not rolled. For each surge rolled, the Overlord collect 2 threat and may choose one hero to deal 2 damage to (ignoring armor). He may choose the same hero multiple times. If the undying figure is a leader, double the threat and damage per surge." This leaves Undying as a real threat and simulates having to kill the creature multiple times, but avoids the issue of having to actually play through it several times.

The numbers could probably use some tweaking, but I think the basic idea is sound.

Or you could change the result needed on the die for each subsequent undying roll to succeed. What I mean by that is that the first roll could succeed on a power enhancement, the second on a surge, the third on a blank, and then well, you're out of luck. The monster stays dead. This would increase the number of monsters that revive the first time, but limit the number of times they can come back. You could skip the power enhancement part and go straight from surge to blank, or use this only on dungeon leaders with undying. Just an idea I'm throwing out there.