My "House Rules"

By Uvatha, in Talisman Home Brews

Here's my house rules I use in play and when my Forever Talisman rules are used in setting up a Talisman game. Please feel free to copy, edit for your own playing use. Or even address anymore potential rule issues that you think warrant to be added to the list (the idea being to address as many as possible without getting to long and winded).

House Rules:

• Treat the “War of Seasons” Ending as a Revealed Ending.
• If a Revealed Ending is being used in this Forever Talisman game and it requires an expansion then that expansion board is added to play if not already.
• The player who has the first turn draws the hidden ending needed for play (still not looking at Hidden Ending when drawn of course).
• Any special ability or effect that allow a player to use the special ability or effect at “anytime” or “anytime this round or turn” cannot interrupt another special ability or effect unless it says it can in its rules e.g. (counter spell).
• Buying items (at shops) and healing or any other effect of spending gold for a gain is a buying effect in the game and thus cannot be interrupted unless the special ability or effect says it can see above.
• Every chance has to be given to the player whose turn it is to allow them the opportunity to use any special ability or effect before another player can use a special ability or effect.
• Special ability and effects between players out of their turns is first in first use given no other player can interrupt another special ability or effect unless written as such in the special ability or effect rules (and only after the rule above).
• Spells are considered effects for the above purposes. Same goes with encountering cards or players and ditching cards.
• Any effect that makes one player pass cards to another player may be done even if the player who gets the card has to ditch the card. Cards and tokens passed to Toads are treated just like if the character had the cards, tokens when transformed. Cards that become followers (but are not followers) can never be passed to another character.
• Only cards that say “Draw” in its game text trigger any effect keyed to “Draw” (e.g. The Blood moon Time Card flipped when one or more events are “Drawn”).
• When a player loses a turn they do not have a start of turn or an end of the turn. Moving Werewolf and Reaper is allowed if losing a turn.
• There is no taking back turns if an effect or ability is forgotten and its passes the phase in which it was meant to be done its effect is lost.
• All cards from The Nether Realm expansion can never be burnt, warlock quest and path cards also can never be burnt
• If it’s needed a player chooses the direction they are moving before teleporting to a space.
• If a player travels to the crown of command by teleporting and they encounter an Ending in which they do not have the right cards to fulfill the Ending they teleport to the portal of power instead.
• Being a Werewolf and the Battle Royale Ending: players on the Crown of Command and attacking each other ignore their Lycanthrope card effects.
• Feral Hunger causes enemy that roll two dice for their attack strength to roll two sixes instead of one.
• The Valkyries “resurrect” ability only effects followers that say “Killed” in game text effects.
• The game includes the amended rules for the Grim Reaper in the “Grim Reaper HQ” pdf.
• The Relic Card: Arnkell can be used to teleport if the player has a cursed follower but cursed followers are not ditched and stay with the character.
• If a character is asked to lose a Strength or a Craft they have to lose at least 1 of either if possible.
• An enemy is considered “Killed” if taken as a trophy.
• When any deck has no more cards to draw from the decks discard pile is reshuffled and then used as a new draw deck.
• Automatically win always trumps Automatically defeated.
• If any cards effects conflict with an Omens effect the cards effect overrides the Omens effect.
• The Barbarian character can take objects-followers that have their own Spells, these Spells cast by the Barbarian can be affected by other spells.
• Characters can only Ditch cards in their turn.
• “The forbidding effects on cards” which is referred to in the Can or Cannot Golden Rule (page 15 base rules) have to state an actual forbidding effect (example: a card that says “must” does not mean the opposite on the cards text is a forbidding effect).
• The Transformed Woodland card allows the character to keep all cards held by the character before and after being transformed.