Some RtL campaign game questions

By thess2, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

I have a couple of questions regarding the campaign game (RtL) and I thought I’d post them here in hopes of finding the answers. We are using all of the expansions. I am playing the Sorcerer King, and we’ve just entered Silver campaign level. The guys I play with are real rules lawyers so I’d need some sort of reference to convince them.

Here are my questions:

How does restocking work? In our game, the heroes have been drawing and purchasing treasures in Tamalir when they die in a dungeon or use a glyph to restock. This is in addition to the times they visit the city from the main map board although they only draw once per game week. Their argument is that the rules state market treasures are drawn every week, therefore they would have the ability to purchase them if visiting the market during a restocking turn. Is their argument sound or does this give unfair access to extra treasures?

How does the doom card work? Is the extra power die always black, or does it upgrade with the level of the campaign (to silver, then gold)? It seems that one extra black power die isn’t worth the cost during the gold and silver levels of the game.

Are there ways the OL can use surges other than to generate threat? The “Gathered list of answered questions” in the Fantasy Flight games forums provides an example of an OL using surges to activate bonuses for monsters, but I could not find any rules for that.

How does the taunt ability work? If I (the OL) declare an attack with a melee monster such as a beast man, can he attack his intended target if that melee monster is not adjacent to the hero with taunt? Or, would he have to use remaining movement to move toward and attack the hero who taunted? What about a ranged monster without line of sight to the hero with taunt? This assumes both monsters are within the five square taunt range.

The heroes are limited to the training tokens included in the game. If one hero hogs them all, that's going to be trouble for the party.

I have a couple of questions regarding the campaign game (RtL) and I thought I’d post them here in hopes of finding the answers. We are using all of the expansions. I am playing the Sorcerer King, and we’ve just entered Silver campaign level. The guys I play with are real rules lawyers so I’d need some sort of reference to convince them.
Here are my questions:

How does restocking work? In our game, the heroes have been drawing and purchasing treasures in Tamalir when they die in a dungeon or use a glyph to restock. This is in addition to the times they visit the city from the main map board although they only draw once per game week. Their argument is that the rules state market treasures are drawn every week, therefore they would have the ability to purchase them if visiting the market during a restocking turn. Is their argument sound or does this give unfair access to extra treasures?

How does the doom card work? Is the extra power die always black, or does it upgrade with the level of the campaign (to silver, then gold)? It seems that one extra black power die isn’t worth the cost during the gold and silver levels of the game.

Are there ways the OL can use surges other than to generate threat? The “Gathered list of answered questions” in the Fantasy Flight games forums provides an example of an OL using surges to activate bonuses for monsters, but I could not find any rules for that.

How does the taunt ability work? If I (the OL) declare an attack with a melee monster such as a beast man, can he attack his intended target if that melee monster is not adjacent to the hero with taunt? Or, would he have to use remaining movement to move toward and attack the hero who taunted? What about a ranged monster without line of sight to the hero with taunt? This assumes both monsters are within the five square taunt range.
The heroes are limited to the training tokens included in the game. If one hero hogs them all, that's going to be trouble for the party.

(I'm not sure why my text disappeared when I originally posted)

Restocking:

- If the hero is spending his turn at the Temple and spends 25 gold, he is healed a number of wounds equal to the Temple rating (it starts at 5 but can be upgraded to 7)

- Shopping: Each game WEEK, the store at Tamalir can only have X number of treasures. At the beginning, that is only 2, but can be upgraded to 3 and 4. So, when the heroes enter a dungeon and then go to town and shop in town, if this is time first shopping, then the hero draws the market rating number of cards (i.e. 2). That's it, no more for the rest of the game week. It's not until the next Game Week can you draw new cards.

- Alchemist: Similar to store, there's an alchemist rating (2 at Tamalir). That's the total number of potions that the group can buy during a game week. So, while in a dungeon, only if a hero spends his turn at the Alchemist (and not at the temple/market) can he buy potions, and only TWO potions can be bought per dungeon.

Doom Card: I /think/ this is official, but it adds one powerdie "boost". So you can make that an extra black die, or an upgrade from black die to silver die, etc.

OL Surges: They can *only* be used for Threat, except for Dark Priests, then they are used for Threat, Range and Damage :)

-shnar

Edit: BAH! My post exploded.

- Shopping: Each game WEEK, the store at Tamalir can only have X number of treasures. At the beginning, that is only 2, but can be upgraded to 3 and 4. So, when the heroes enter a dungeon and then go to town and shop in town, if this is time first shopping, then the hero draws the market rating number of cards (i.e. 2). That's it, no more for the rest of the game week. It's not until the next Game Week can you draw new cards.

- Alchemist: Similar to store, there's an alchemist rating (2 at Tamalir). That's the total number of potions that the group can buy during a game week. So, while in a dungeon, only if a hero spends his turn at the Alchemist (and not at the temple/market) can he buy potions, and only TWO potions can be bought per dungeon.

I concur. This might sound harsh to some, but in my experience that party finds more than enough potions in the dungeon to keep up with or without the alchemist. There have been very few situations where our hero party even WANTED to visit the alchemist. As far as items goes, there's a reason the numbe ris limited, and that reason is because frankly the power scale isn't that long. If you want to extend game play sufficently to have a long campaign, you have to reduce the rate at which the heroes find new treasures.

Doom Card: I /think/ this is official, but it adds one powerdie "boost". So you can make that an extra black die, or an upgrade from black die to silver die, etc.

I don't recall seeing anything official about this ruling, although I certainly play it that way myself. Anything that adds one black die in vanilla, when playing RtL I treat as "+1 die upgrade." So the bonus from Doom! does not become an extra silver die in the silver campagin, but if (at any campaign level) a monster is rolling 5 black dice already, we play that Doom! makes one of them silver. And so forth. Again, I'm not sure that this has ever been made official by FFG, but it seems the fairest way to proceed to me.

Interesting... I didn't know this. How do you guys keep track of how many potions have been bought each week? Do you just not care? :-)

PetriH3 said:

Interesting... I didn't know this. How do you guys keep track of how many potions have been bought each week? Do you just not care? :-)

We've always kept track mentally. Generally on those rare occasions the heroes even bothered to use the alchemist, they bought him out on one trip, so for us it's always been a binary toggle ("has the alchemist been spent? Yes/No.")

If you're having trouble remembering the limit though, you could use Invulnerability potion tokens (since the potions themselves aren't used in RtL.) Put a stack on top of the alchemist equal to his limit while in the dungeon. Once they've all been bought he's done.

It's always been an on/off for us as well. With only a 2 alchemist rating, I can't see a time when the party would want to spend multiple turns at the alchemist buying them one at a time. I guess it's possible, but unlikely. If it happened, we'd just mark it on the record sheet where we track everything else.

exactly. We either know if they've visited the Alchemist or not that week.

And I think it's in the FAQ somewhere that Doom adds one power boost (as opposed to one black die), but I'm too lazy to look it up :P

-shnar

Yes, It's in the FAQ.