Hello everyone,

today I had my first Descent game and it was great fun for everyone. Heroes won but for I as the Overlord might have won too: everything was decided by Narthak doing one less wound than required to One Fist!.

I've read the FAQs and some topics in this forum, but could not find exactly the answers I was looking for. I think the best solution is to ask them directly, sorry if I'm asking something about the very basics of Descent, but you have to start and in the beginning you don't know how to solve everything.

1) I've just learned that OL can't play Crushing Block Trap card if there's already a tile that block movement, in order to prevent him from sealing a portion of the Dungeon. What about big sized Monsters that are technically sealed in a room, as happened to Narthak in my first game? Have they some way to cross a Rubble tile and get out or must the OL avoid such situations?

2) Can OL move the Hero that survived the Crushing Block Trap into an adiacent Pit Space (thus causing him one more wound)?

3) Can Heroes adopt annoying strategies such as popping out of a Glyph, attacking and then travelling back to town? Is there some official limitation that I missed, such as "you can be on the Town tile only once in a turn"?

4) How are re-roll actions combined together? What's the correct timing? If the Hero has a Weapon or Ability that allows him to re-roll one or more dice, if he decides not to use it, then the OL plays a Dodge card and forces re-rolling, can the Hero use the effects he didn't use before and re-roll after solving Dodge? I claimed that when he accepted the result of the first attack roll, he can't change his mind after I played the Dodge card; was I right or wrong?

Thanks for some clue about these.

1) You've got to avoid those situations.

2) Yep, throw 'em in a pit!

3) You can only travel via glyph once per turn. If you come out, you can't go back in that turn and vice versa.

4) Aim and Dodge cancel each other. No attack can ever be rerolled more than once.

To further clarify a couple points...

1) Since the heroes are all 1x1, it is the overlord's choice whether he wants to play Crushing Block in a position where it will prevent his larger monsters from fitting through. But if you choose to partially block the corridor, you're stuckthere's no way for a 2x2 monster to fit through.

4) Aim and Dodge cancel, as James said. However, there are some other reroll effects in expansions (notably the Ripper, Bow of the Hawk, and Beastman Fetish from Tomb of Ice) that are less clear. If you ran into one of them, you may need to just make something up.

The_Warlock said:

1. No, large monsters cannot cross rubble. Sometimes this does prevent them from moving about. But the rule about Crushing Block not being placed adjacent to an obstacle that blocks movement is irrelevent for Large monsters (or rather, large monsters are irrelevent for this rule). Note that the rule is to stop preventing the heroes from moving.
FAQ pg11
Q: Which map items count as obstacles for the Crushing Block trap card?
A: Crushing Block may never be played in a space adjacent to any token (or built-in map element) that blocks movement. The reason for this is to prevent the Overlord from sealing a hallway completely and preventing the heroes from ever progressing. This is a list of all relevant obstacles, current through the Road to Legend: Boulder, Crushing Wall, Rubble, Water. (Villagers are figures, not map elements.)

2. and 3. What James said.

4. Most of the specials (eg Lyssa, Trenloe) that allow some dice to be rerolled specifically say that they cannot be used if an attack is aimed or dodged, so they never combine. Dodge and Aim combine by canceling each other out, neither having any effect. Additional dice added with fatigue cannot be added after a dodge is played as per FAQ pg5, but the OL must allow time for the hero to add more dice before playing the dodge.
Q: Is the effect of the overlord’s “Dodge” card that the hero’s attack completely misses, or that the overlord can force the hero to re-roll dice rolled for the attack, as with the hero dodge orders?
A: The “Dodge” card allows the overlord to force re-rolls. It does not allow more dice to be added after the re-roll. Once the dice are rolled, any fatigue may be spent to add power dice. Once all dice are done being rolled, the Overlord may play the dodge card. Once the card is played, no more dice may be added

Thanks everybody for the clear answers.

1) I realized too late that I've blocked large size monsters into a room (Narthak and the Master Manticores of "Into the Dark"). OL needs to pay attention, but in some cases such a situation could benefit the OL's play. If you trap a Named Monster into a room, players are forced to go inside and try to kill him somehow. In my case the players were too much Ranged/Magic-oriented and I had a hard time forcing them to get inside the final room with not enough movement to turn back. The northwards corridor was filled with opened pits and rubble. Surely experienced players would have taken down the Giant a lot more easily, but nevertheless I was just one wound away from final victory!

2 and 3) Ok. Where's the rule about Glyphs of Transport restriction to one use per turn?

4) Actually the question was risen because of that damned Bow of the Hawk from Tomb of Ice (even though I just started playing Descent, I own all expansions and I've mixed Treasure cards together). In this case it's not a matter of Aiming and Dodging, which is perfectly clear from the Rules. Besides being utterly imbalanced, at least for my little gaming experience, (a Silver Ranged weapon with Pierce 3, chance to re-roll a die of your choice when attacking and an impressive 1 Blue/2 Green/1 Yellow attack), it's not clear when a Hero can re-roll the die. From my point of view, this should be done when he's calculating his attack result. If the OL plays Dodge card, the Hero is not able to adjust anything. Otherwise it will be too powerful for a Silver Object. What do you think?

Descent is really a great game, really funny, even though a game lasts very long (depending on player's skill of course)! I wish I had more time for playing, at least once a week.

The_Warlock said:

page 17 of JITD under the Glyph of Transport explanation: "A hero may only use a glyph once per turn—he
may not use a glyph to go to town and then return, or vice versa.

4) IMHO, once the Dodge card is played, no dice can be re-rolled. The OL should give the hero a few seconds to decide if they want to re-roll a die, then play the Dodge care. Of couse power dice can still be ADDED with fatigue after the Dodge is played but that's another mechanic.

I can't find it now, but I could swear I'd read somewhere that no die can be rerolled more than once.

The Bow is nice, but it's not overly powerful IMO. It's drawback is that it has no way to spend surges. It does less damage than a Scythe of Reaping or Flying Death (with good power dice pools).

There's a rule that no attack can be re-rolled more than once (JitD p.17); there's no rule that a single die cannot be re-rolled more than once. The rule that prevents multiple re-rolls also doesn't actually say what happens when you would re-roll the attack more than once, except in the specific case of Aim vs. Dodge, so it's rather unhelpful for anything else. There's also a relic that explicitly ignores the rule (Fortuna's Dice, WoD).

Fatigue may NOT be spent to add power dice after a re-roll. From the FAQ, page 5: "Once the dice are rolled, any fatigue may be spent to add power dice. Once all dice are done being rolled, the Overlord may play the dodge card. Once the card is played, no more dice may be added."

The Bow of the Hawk is rather awesome, and is probably the best silver ranged weapon in vanilla Descent, though that's mostly because of it's ability to reroll an X, not because of raw damage. The Ripper is similarly good compared to copper weapons (maybe even better).

I am aware of no clear rule that specifies how the reroll from the Ripper or the Bow of the Hawk should interact with aim or dodge rerolls. I would probably play that the weapon's one-die reroll happens after power dice are added but before the reroll due to an Aim or Dodge, but it hasn't come up in my games yet (and probably never will, since I'm playing Enduring Evil now).

Thanks, I share Antistone's thoughts about Bow of the Hawk re-rolls. Although I don't know what's this Vanilla Descent/Enduring Evil stuff you're talking about, I really appreciate your help and surely will come back again for further discussion.

By the way, where is it possible to learn something about the game variants you mentioned?

The Enduring Evil is a rebalance of Descent, you can find it at "Descent Home Brews" in this Forums (For some reason I can't copy&paste on these forums, so no link, sorry). Vanilla Descent just means the basic game without expansion, or in this case, Descent other than Enduring Evil Descent

nachti said:

For some reason the forum admin has chosen to have the forum's editor (which looks like a mod of fckeditor) override Control + V, Shift + Insert, and other paste shortcuts. Instead of just pasting it pops up the editor's 'paste" form. If you've got popups disabled it won't work. If you're a firefox user you can tell it to allow popups specifically for the forums, which will let you paste. I assume other browsers have a similar option, but couldn't tell you where to find it.

"Vanilla" Descent actually may include expansions, but it's used to contrast the original quest-based format with the extended campaign from Road to Legend. I specified vanilla because the upgraded power dice in the extended campaign probably make the Ripper and Bow of the Hawk comparatively worse, because you'll roll (and waste) more surges.

Enduring Evil is my homebrew variant. It uses different cards.

That's what we found. Ripper and Bow of the Hawk ended up being back-up weapons. Especially since power potions allow five upgrades as opposed to five black dice, surges show up a lot more often, and it can be a shame to have no use for them.

Quick note on #2: You can't a Crushing Block trap adjacent to a Pit space in Vanilla Descent. It's against the rules. You can, however, play a Spiked Pit trap card on a hero after you move them with Crushing Block.

This is because the list of "Obstacles" in the original version of the game includes Pit tokens.

Thundercles said:

This is untrue. Crushing Block does not care about obstacles, it cares about obstacles which block movement. spaces next to pits are perfectly valid.

It depends on whether you're using the text on the Crushing Block card or the (most recent) FAQ ruling on the subject. Considering the history of FAQ rulings, the poor rigor of the current one, and the fact that it changes how the card works in a fairly arbitrary fashion, I think either option is defensible.

The_Warlock said:

From the question above it is apparent the OL must make sure not to block off sections of the dungeon via traps, ect. In the same vein, would you all agree that before the OL plays a trap card he have to ensure there is a legal adjacent space for a hero to be able to move to in case the Hero avoids a trap?

You know, I lost my first game as Overlord because I myself dropped a block on a hero, thus giving the heroes cover, partially sealing Narthak into his room, and basically being A Bit Thick.

I know this is dragging up a thread from quite a long time ago, but I happen to be skimming old posts for some other answers.

In regards to trapping your mobs inside a room, I did the same thing with Narthak from the first quest. However...

Somewhere in the rules (or maybe on a card...sorry, don't have them in front of me) it says you can remove traps from the board in order to place new traps. So, technically if you draw another Crushing Block, you could remove the one blocking Narthak and be more aware while placing the new one.

Right?

You can remove a token to place a new one if you're out of tokens, so you can't just draw one more Crushing Block, you have to draw a ton more.

Ahh, ok. I couldn't remember if it specifically said "if you're out of tokens".

How many 1 piece rubble tokens are in the set?