Another interesting debate from the German forum:

How much threat does the OL receive in encounters? The rules say "1 threat per hero per turn". Some people (not me) seriously argue that this would have to be calculated like this: 4 heroes, having 5 turns (incl. OL turn), resulting in a whopping 20 threat per complete round.

There is obviously no rules basis to counter that argument, is there? Could it be that encounters should have such an increased difficulty, making some very hard to win, and Lt. encounters a possible nightmare? This would also give the Guide and Lawlessness upgrades a significant value boost.

Thinking about this, the special from the Sorcerer King came to mind, with the Avatar card saying "one extra threat each turn in a dungeon", which would then have to be similarly interpreted and results in 9 threat per round (4 normal + 5 for the 5 turns).

Comparing it with the result that each hero may play one Feat card each turn, resulting in a maximum of 20 Feats per round, the argument has some ground to stand on.

Discussion welcome (but please no statements like "that´s definitely not how it´s meant to be played" :-))

I thought it was pretty straight forward, four hero's = 4 threat per OL turn, it never occurred to me to read the rule another way.

These people are obviously struck with the condition Regulus Lawyerus Verbosus , also known as "Besserwisser" in German.

They are right of course! It's so obvious that the OL gets 20 threat a turn in encounters, how can you even doubt it ?!

Please inform them of this evident fact in their German forum and let them play this way.

Parathion said:

There is a specific step (Step 1) in a specific turn (the OLs) for the OL to collect threat. There is no step during the heroes turn that the OL gets an opportunity to collect threat. One threat per hero per turn therefore means 4 threat per round - even if this ridiculous claim is correct, there is no mechanism for 'saving' uncollected threat (which is very important during dungeons if the Heroes have Staff of Knowledge!)

Note that this is different to Feats which have varied triggers, many of which may occur on any turn.

There is also no difference (significant to this discussion) specified in turn order/procedure between encounters and normal dungeons. Therefore someone is being very intellectually dishonest if they are trying to claim 20 threat per turn in encounters but just 4 per turn in dungeons. Fair enough if they are claiming 20 in dungeons though (bet they are not!).

Regarding the actual procedure, there may be no difference between vanilla, RtL dungeons and RtL encounters. However, the standard rules tell us:

Step 1: Collect Threat and Draw Cards
The overlord player collects one threat token for every
hero, and then draws two cards from the top of the overlord
deck.

This sets the amount collected in RtL dungeons to exactly four per OL turn, since no rule exists that changes the vanilla rules of that for RtL.

However, the RtL encounter rules specify the amount of threat as "one per hero per turn", which could be calculated as 20. The RtL encounter rules are silent towards the timing of collecting the threat, so we have to assume it is still done in the OL turn (no need to save threat collected during hero turns).

I can see no dishonesty in that and no conflict with other RAWs.

So, are there any further arguments?

What about the difficulty of encounters, would it be in the realm of possibility that it could be intended to give the OL some (huge) potential in encounters, which are generally far too easy meat for the heros?

So the argument is that the turn sequence for encounters is implicitly altered by that sentence, adding a new step in which the overlord collects threat on every hero turn?

Even if this were definitely a new step in the turn sequence (i.e. we didn't have a previously defined "collect threat here" step), since this is something that the overlord does, we would normally assume that it is only done on his turn , and thus "per turn" means "per overlord turn." Compare some other quotes from the JitD pdf:

"The overlord player draws these [overlord] cards each turn." (p.6)

"Each turn, a hero or monster may make one or more attacks against other figures on the board." (p.9)

"Each turn, the overlord player draws two cards from the overlord deck." (p.11)

"Each turn, the overlord player may play a single spawn card." (p.12)

"Only one stun token is removed each turn , so the figure will remain stunned for multiple rounds ." (p.15)

Antistone, please read and understand both of my posts in this thread.

Nobody is talking about a new step in the usual sequence. The RtL encounter rules explicitly specify the amount of threat the OL receives (in an ambiguous way), not a different timing or an extra step.

Most if not all of your examples are void since they are given in a certain context which makes it clear that the corresponding player´s turn is meant, or have other rules connected to them that are elaborated in detail in a different place.

Compare it - as said above - with the heros´ option of playing 20 Feats in a single round, since each hero may play one each turn - in which turn means just that, not "his turn".

Anybody for some comments regarding the increased encounter difficulty in case of giving 20 threat per round to the OL? Would Lt. encounters become impossible?

• Even without treachery, the lieutenant and his minions would have 10 extra movement per turn.
• Typically weak monsters (like ogres) would suddenly have their primary weakness (speed) removed, and become beasts.
• Lord Merrick could teleport in, battle with 5 extra upgrades on each attack, and teleport out.
• 20 threat per turn means the OL doesn't need to use any event treachery for Danger, so could have more Rages.
• 20 threat means no need for event treachery at all for overlords who would be using it to power traps like Animate Weapons and Dark Charm.

Yeah, it's too much.

Parathion said:

I'm trying to understand your posts, but you're not being very explicit, and your position seems really bizarre.

A hero can play multiple feats per round by playing them on separate turns . He can't play 5 feats all at once just because it's been 5 turns since the last time he played one; he's still limited to one on any particular turn.

So if the overlord is collecting X threat per turn , that can't possibly mean that he collects 5X threat once every 5 turns, it means that he gains exactly X threat on any turn that he collects threat. So if he's collecting threat only on his own turn, he gains X threat per round.

It doesn't say that his threat collection averages out to X threat per turn or something bizarre like that. It's absolutely clear that the overlord collects exactly 4 threat on any turn that he collects threat . So the only conceivable way he's getting 20 a round is if he collects threat during the heroes' turns.

This is most certainly the most bizarre, obtuse, and abusive mis-reading of a rule I think I've ever seen (and I used to play Warhammer!). I'm absolutely appalled when players try to force bizarre and idiotic rulings because they figure out a way to argue for it based on some mutable interpretation of the wording of a rule, despite the fact that the rule is very clear. Here we have the situation where at all times the OL gains threat at the beginning of his turn equal to the number of heroes in the game (always 4 in RTL), and then some clever git trying to argue something that breaks the game, is so bizarrely different than the standard rules that you'd think if someone designed it that way they'd have spent any amount of text to explain that it's different than the standard format.

Parathion said:

As I tried to point out as a second point, and Antistone did better, per hero per turn cannot accumulate and then be collected all in one turn. Just the same as feat plays cannot accumulate and all be played in one turn.

I do see the possible argument that it is not "1per hero, per turn" but "1per hero per turn, one time", so 20 all at once in the OL's turn. It is poor writing that allows this (and poor editing) and it really should say 1 per hero each turn.
The problem (and the germans may not have a full understanding of this because their language might be less vague) is that sometimes English is a vague language that can have more than one possible meaning from exactly the same sequence of words.
In such a case, the 'true' meaning is usually derived from context, or a 'best guess' must be made.
In this case, context would be that the OL already gets one threat per hero, per turn (4) in all other parts of the game. If this was supposed to change then more definitive language would be required.
Or, in this case, a 'best guess' would see 4 threat being accumulated because 20 threat is ridiculous in the context of how it would affect play.

The german argument might also depend on translation issues - if the translator took the wrong english option then it could be quite definitive in the german language version. Apparently there are several such changes (monkeys being unable to be attacked rather than unable to attack for example).

As for comments on encreased encounter difficulty, yes, Lt encounters would become impossible. 20 threat = 10 Move/dice - for any single or combination of monsters. So that Ogre can move 9 spaces (instead of 3) and swing with two extra silver dice added. Every turn. Or move 4 spaces and swing with 3 extra gold dice. Every turn. Or....
No, 20 threat per turn is incomprehensible.

BTW, note that it is not Parathion's position. He is trying to get some discussion on someone elses position that he is having difficulty arguing against if I understand things right.

Parathion said:

Well, try it out and tell us.

How would anyone on this forum know? Do you seriously think someone ever played a campaign this way?

The position of the people who suggest this is the way encounters are played is, however, interesting from a psychological point of view. They seem to think of it as a a great discovery, like they discovered how the game is actually played and that no one ever thought of it before. It's nice to think of oneself as a Galileo or Archimedes: "Eureka, the OL gets 20 threat a turn in encounters and nobody ever noticed it! "

It's an ego trip. We all have those from time to time. I'm probably having one right now. The cure is to make fun of it.

So: ha ha, Parathion. Ha ha.

Feel free to make fun of me, The Greatest Psychologist Who Ever Lived.

@ Antistone: You seem to have diffculties to understand that the amount of threat can be calculated differently from the actual point in time it is given to the OL. If I say that I receive a monthly income of $10 per Antistone forum entry per day, it is clear that I would receive it one time, not every day, but calculated based on the number of days as well as on the number of entries. Of course, the keyword here is "monthly" which is unfortunately absent in the analogous RtL rules passage - but the sloppy writing of Descent rules might allow that as a possible intention, don´t you think?

Furthermore, my comparison with the Feats was to demonstrate that "turn" doesn´t automatically and always mean "the corresponding player´s turn" or "round".

@ Corbon: I am talking about the English version only. The German version is (again) utterly wrong as it is giving only 1 threat per round to the OL in encounters.

And yes, it is not my position that I am discussing here, thanks for pointing that out. I just wanted to make sure that I didn´t miss any rules arguments.

As for the encounter difficulty: In your examples just one single monster (out of several present) gets a significant boost each turn (round!). All other monsters stay the same, representing little to no threat to the heros (I am talking about standard encounters), of course depending on monster upgrades and hero development. If you distribute the 20 threat on several monsters, they all get a bit stronger, which could make otherwise boring encounters a little more interesting - that´s the single point that keeps me discussing whether this unbelievable rules interpretation could be correct. As stated above, upgrades like The Guide and Lawlessness (and the Frozen plot cards) would significantly increase in importance, since encounters would be something the heros would want to avoid, while the OL would want to enforce them.

As for Lt. encounters, I have not enough experience to make a judgement on my own. I guess they would be toughened significantly - but impossible? I am hearing a lot that most Lt.s get chased away and rarely land some good blows on the heros - this would change. Yet the 20 income would significantly decrease the value of Danger cards or the 15 extra threat of one of the Farrows. A Lt. with maxed out Treachery AND 20 income per round could be really hard to beat, I guess - but shouldn´t it be that way? This could make for some epic fights in which both sides play at high stakes, if they desperately need to win that Lt. encounter.

@ Ispher: I guess you know that you don´t like to eat rotten pizza without ever having tried some. Just because you can make an educated guess and have some experience. I thought and expected that would be valid for some theoretical encounter scenario as well. But fun is always great, so: Ha, ha, Ispher

The last encounter we played was with Silence the deep elf, the only creature allowed on the map for the encounter, no reinforcements permitted. 3 heros start asleep, and as the heo's always go first 2 of them woke up straight away. So as the OL, I had 3 Hero's all able to move and do battle actions against 1 deep elf.

I mention this only because taking ten minutes to set up the board kill the elf and take down the board was a pretty pointless exercise as the OL anyway. I know that this is an extreme case, but this is a case I would say in favour of the argument for 20 threat, this would allow silence to be able to move in attack and move out again, the hero could still hit silence by having guard orders, but it would have made the encounter interesting.

I have always read the rules as 4 threat same as dungeons, but the encounter above could be used as an argument for 20 threat.

Just for the sake for argument anyway.

Parathion said:

Actually, unless I greatly misunderstand the hypothetical context, the only thing that would be clear if you said that is that your English could use some work. My posts are discrete events that happen at various times during various days; thus, over the course of a month, "$10 per Antistone forum entry" already counts all of the forum entries on all of the days; adding "per day" to the quantity is gibberish. I honestly have no idea what it could possibly mean, unless we're talking about some sort of archive where the number of "Antistone forum entries" is static, and you perform some kind of maintenance on each one once per day.

But even ignoring that, "I receive a monthly income of X per day" is a weird construction that I don't think would be likely to be used by a native speaker of English. And if it were used, it would NOT mean that I was paid exactly once per month, it would refer to the TOTAL of all of my payments added up over the month. I can say "I receive a monthly income of $20" even if I actually receive four checks for $5 each every month, and that would not be considered untrue or even misleading. Many people would probably consider it a reasonable statement even if I actually receive a single check for $240 once per year.

In the phrase "the overlord receives one threat per hero per turn," the most natural reading is that "per turn" indicates how often the event occurs. As in, "[the overlord receives one threat per hero], once per turn." And both context and prior rules would lead us to believe that's referring to overlord turns, not all turns.

Out of context, that could conceivably be read as part of the quantity instead. As in, "whenever the overlord receives threat, the amount of threat the overlord receives is equal to [one threat per hero per turn]". But that would be impossible to evaluate without further information, since we aren't told what stretch of time we should consider when counting the number of turns. It could be the number of turns since the overlord last collected threat, but since neither this sentence nor any of the surrounding sentences refer to that period (under this reading), there's no reason to assume that. It could be the number of turns since the start of the encounter (so you receive more theat per round as the encounter wears on). Or the number of turns since the start of the campaign . Or the number of turns that will take place during the encounter, including future turns. This instruction is meaningless without further context to clarify it, and since that context does not exist in the rules, this is an invalid parsing of that rule, even if it's a valid parsing of the sentence .

Antistone: Actually, being kind of arrogant regarding linguistic capabilites of other persons doesn´t really help. And it doesn´t look good on you, especially since you repeatedly fail to grasp the concept of calculating "per day" - a month in our currect calendaric system can have a varying number of days, as I strongly believe you are aware of, so a monthly income based on the gibberish phrase "per day" would vary as well. There is actually an analogous example in German jurisdiction: Fines are often based on a fixed "daily rate" (don´t know the exact English term, LEO told me that one), which basically depends on the income of the convict, and a number of days is stated as well in the verdict, similar to the RtL encounter rule expression. As it happens, the fine is generally to be paid in one batch: 30 Euros for 30 days, meaning 900 Euros total fine.

Parathion said:

Actually, he's (Antistone) quite right on this one. Its exactly the sort of thing he expresses better than the rest of us mostly. The 05:00:03 post sums up the linguistic situation perfectly, somthing I tried but failed to do it seems.

Your example above is incorrect english. If an income is based on a daily rate so it varies from month to month it would be a 'daily income, paid monthly'. It would not be a monthly income as it is not fixed at a monthly rate.

As for answering your encounter difficulty summary that basically says 'oh thats not so bad, its only a small buff to a lot of monsters or a big buff to one monster'.
Well, it certainly sounds like you haven't played too much.
The thing is, 10 buffs (per turn!) for any combination of movement and dice is actually rather massive.
Firstly, all your monster weakness go away.
Got a hellhound that can use a breath attack that hits all the heroes but hardly does any damage? Boom, 3 extra gold dice.
Got a Beastman War Party that the heroes cleverly stayed 6 spaces away from (ie just out of reach)? Boom, 1 extra move each and 7 dice upgrades applied to the first attack that doesn't miss.
Know why fatigue is so valuable? Because you can use it exactly as required. when required. Thats exactly what 20 threat counts as - 10 times per turn.
You know those ridiculously expense megakiller traps (assuming you are in the camp that says they can be played outside a dungeon)? Well, no need to build up to them or to use Dangers, you can play one practically every turn!

Even your basic everyday encounters become extraordinarily dangerous.

Lt encounters become virtually impossible.
Currently Lts only tend to get chased away when the OL has not provided support (ie wrong upgraded monsters for that Lt, little or no treachery) and it is toward the end of a campaign level (ie the heroes have had plenty of buffing time themselves, and have good equipment). The main reason Lts get chased away is because they are too valuable to risk - the heroes can afford to fight till the bitter end in an encounter if necessary, the Lt cannot.
Lts that prepare, and stand and fight already are rather epic battles, and at the beginning of a new campaign level they are very scary indeed, buffed or not frequently!
Incidentally, the removal of Telekinesis and Bear Tattoo made a huge difference to Lt fights.

Are you saying that an income that is paid once per month, but is not necessarily fixed and the same for every month, is not allowed to be called a monthly income, ever? Not even in the sloppy Descent language?

Wow, I was not aware of such subtleties in the English language. Frankly, I don´t believe that´s true, but maybe some other native speakers can support your cause - I am always ready to learn and accept new things.

As for the encounter difficulty: Yes, that´s one big hit for one monster - and after that hit it will be gone forever with a high probability. And as Mordak stated, the heros still can Guard, preventing most of that scary Melee attacks. Mind you, the reward for an encounter is the same as for completing a dungeon level (except of course for glyph and chest), so shouldn´t the OL have some options to kill some heros as well? And without his deck the OL´s options are very limited - why not compensate with some threat to do or at least try to do something meaningful?

I don´t see standard everyday encounters as broken (mighty traps, danger cards and the like are not present at all), except probably for some red ones - and shouldn´t the trails they occur on be really dangerous instead of being a laughable waste of time with an almost guaranteed outcome (party victory)? And almost every encounter can be fled by a single hero, giving the complete party the opportunity to continue their travels without delay.

As for Lt. fights, I already admitted I have limited personal experience.

I do feel that none Lt encounters are a bit of a walk in the park for the Hero's, but I think that 20 threat to the OL was not the intention, would be nice for the OL mind, but its not the right reading of the rules.

I would prefer that they do something to make none Lt encounters work better.

Parathion said:

Technically, yes, that is what I am saying. Such an income may commonly be described as a monthly income, but that is a casual description - such a use has the 'monthly' as an adjective, not a noun - an income that is received monthly rather than one which is calculated based on months.
An income calculated on days, for example, rather than months, would be called a daily income, even though you might hear it discussed as a monthly income - monthly being the adjective rather than noun.
These are rules we are talking about, so we must use the technically correct version of the language in preference to a sloppy, incorrect one where we can.
And yes, Descent is often sloppily written. But that is no excuse to choose a sloppily worded interpretation over a correctly worded one.

Common use tends increasingly toward sloppiness. Heck, these days text speak is allowed in high school examination papers in my home country!

But one of the reasons that english is the international technical language of choice is because it is capable of extreme degrees of precision. Never mind that most of it's users (myself included) aren't always capable of being that precise all the time and tend to be sloppy, amd never mind that it is also capable of extreme vagueness.
Its like the eskimos with 150 words for 'snow' - now there is extreme precision for you!

Corbon said:

Wow, I always thought English was used throughout a major part of the world as well as in science and technology because of the extension of the British Commonwealth, coupled with the allied victory in WW2 in combination with the dominating position of the US in politics and economy in the last decades (which saw the major part of the globalisation process as well).

It never occurred to me that it could be a superior quality of the language itself - thanks for enlightening me!

Parathion said:

Man I gotta jump in here.

English can be painfully precise as well as annoyingly vague, and its spread is, in fact largely due to English-speaking country supremacism. In this case, Corbon sounds like he's done more research, but you'd really have to go and look it up to corroborate his claim. Meanwhile, paration, you've been arguing from the vox populi standpoint for most of this thread: the trouble with "common usage" and "common knowledge" is that most people are usually wrong (incidentally, people saying the wrong thing and spreading the wrong knowledge are two ways languages evolve).

Thus, parathion, instead of sarcasm, may I suggest references to credible sources?

Meanwhile, I gotta go with Remy. There's been no indication that threat per turn = #heroes x current turn#, and it doesn't take long to realize that encounters would be hilariously broken in Copper if this were indeed the threat formula.

Thundercles, what exactly do you mean when demanding references? For what in this case?

And if it doesn´t take long to demonstrate the brokenness of encounters in Copper, would you care to take a few minutes and elaborate? Thanks!

Parathion said:

Now you are just acting like an ass.

I very carefully avoided saying that english is superior because it is not. It has more faults than good points by a large margin. Heck, just look at the Descent rules!

Its spread is largely due to politics, commonwealth and economy I guess, but its choice as the major international technical language, or so I am given to believe*, is due to its ability to be very precise in meaning, or differentiate very precise shades - after all, most of the technology we use in everyday life is japanese or german rather than english!

* I haven't researched this as some suggested but I have discussed it with an overly educated friend whose job at the time consisted on translating japanese legal patents and making sure that the english translation was legally precise.
I also have a lot of personal experience explaining shades of meaning to my wife (Javanese - Indonesian) as she discovers whole new areas of (non-academic) reading from my library. She often asks me why an author uses this word instead of that, or what does this or that (often relatively common, and almost nonsensical if unknown) phrase mean exactly.

I live in Singapore at the moment. Chinese, for example is unable to be as subtle in the written form at least because of both its pictographic (is that the right word?) form and tonal components.
My ex-girlfriend, by way of example, wasn't sure how her name translated exactly as there were 3 different options using the same character and intonation and growing up as an english speaker rather than a chinese speaker she didn't actually know which one she was named for/after!

encounter brokenness? <draws 3 at random, discarding and redrawing for Lost and Lone Oracle>
The Sky Darkens. Well, the very first thing I ever did in RtL was get screwed by this Razorwing Encounter. With no Acrobat, 2 soaring Razorwings can block the whole party. They are almost impossible to kill with shop weapons (merely very difficult if you have Carthos and AoE weapon, but he won't last long!) The OL can spawn a new Razorwing every turn, so to make any progress at all you have to kill 1 and damage another.
With 20 threat per tiurn the OL can spawn 4 more razorwings per turn! Or more likely 1-2 razorwings per turn while the ones that get past the melee-guard orders swoop in on the vulnerable mage/rangers and when they finally hit add in an extra couple of gold dice.

I absolutely guarantee you that with 20 threat per turn am early bronze hero party without Acrobat (or Zyla) will be TPKed by any OL not completely incompetent.
With 4 threat per turn if the heroes can kill a razorwing each time and maybe kill or damage another with guard attacks when swooping they can at least make progress, even if dreadfully slow.

Raging Beast - a Master Chaos Beast. Now not only with 10 extra wounds and Regen 4 (and a Shriek ability), but also with effectively 10 fatigue and an auto-rest!

Silent as the Grave, the Master Deep Elf. Now with 16 extra wounds, +3 damage, +1Mv per threat and the rest on extra dice. Move 10 spaces in, attack, move 11 spaces out, add a silver dice to the attack (if it hits). A Silver Silence vs bronze heroes has RGAg base dice, Pierce 6, +3 damage. Add 20 threat to that every single turn. Basically every turn should be run in, kill the weakest hero (one shots are pretty easy with RGAg +3 Pierce 6 and options to add dice as needed) and run out, with the run and and run out distance being extremely large and Shadowcloak meaning that the heroe have to get adjacent before they can attack. Each hero will get a guard attack before dying, smart heroes will get in an extra one or two guard attacks by stacking heroes where they can only be reached by being adjacent to more than one hero.

4 threat makes these encounters tactical and challenging.
20 threat makes them virtually impossible.
If you don't believe me, set them up and play them.

"Income" is an aggregate noun that can refer to any number of payments. The term "monthly income" might be used to refer to a variable total amount of money you receive over the course of a month, but calling something a "monthly income" does not imply that it is paid once per month, it just implies that's the monthly total .

I understand that it's possible to have income that is paid once per month and calculated based on the number of days in the month. "Monthly income of X per day" is simply not how you'd describe that. One would generally say something like "income of X per day, paid monthly" instead.

And I didn't say that "per day" was always gibberish, I said that "per forum post per day" was gibberish, because forum posts are non-repeating events. If I get "$10 per forum post I make, paid monthly", that means that you'd count up the total number of forum posts I made over the course of the month, multiply it by $10, and write a check for that amount. It already counts every forum post made on each day during the month. I can't tell you how to actually say what you were trying to say when you added "per day" in there, because I honestly have no clue what you were trying to say. If you really care, you can try writing the algorithm out in pseudocode.

Now, you seem to want to interpret the rule as describing the average rate at which the overlord accrues threat, but not actually saying when or how he collects it. That would be an epicly stupid way of writing rules, though, because it implies that the player is required to somehow calculate the amount of threat the overlord should receive at various specific times in order to make the average come out correctly, and in addition to being needlessly complicated, that's just begging for a special case to come along that makes the rule explode into dizzying indirections that no one has any clue how to resolve. And even if the designers chose to take that approach for some inscrutable reason, the rules are supposed to provide instructions , not simply a description of various conditions that will hold under the assumption that we play correctly, so they'd need to actually specifically tell us we were supposed to do those calculations, not simply tell us what the average should be when we're done.

If we assume that the rule in question is an instruction on how to play, and not simply an arbitrary statement about what is supposed to result , then it cannot mean that. Not if it's parsed as anything resembling English, anyway. That's just not what those words mean.

Incidentally, Corbon, the huge number of Eskimo words for "snow" is an urban myth. I read a paper once tracing its origins and concluding that it actually started with the claim that they had about four different words for snow (instantly ballooning to an undefined number with seven specific made-up examples the first time it was repeated), and even that original claim was speculative, not based on research. I'm given to understand they've got two roots for snow (one meaning snow on the ground, and one meaning snow in the air or "snowflake") and that attempts to compile every Eskimo word vaguely related to snow turned up several dozen, or a similar number of words to English (that included meta-words like "blizzard" and distantly-related words like "avalanche").