Can someone tell me if I'm making an error in my reading of this skill?

As I understand it, the hex spread is completely recursive and will cover any los-visible 'chain' of touching monsters starting with ones that are hexed, hex them all, target them all, then allow you to spend all the hexes they just got to affect the damage on all of them.

So let's say you have 2 visible hexed monsters. Each is next to another monster who is in turn next to a third monster. Plague Cloud with Internal Rot will Hex all six monsters with 2 tokens each, then attack all six with +12 damage?

Even more extreme, if you are Seer Kel you can ignore LOS for every step, potentially affecting basically every monster in the room.

Although plague cloud can hex any monster adjacent to a target monster, you still only perform the attack against hexed monsters in your LOS. And the + damage only applies if you discard the hex tokens, so it's very difficult to do a big cloud often. Otherwise, yes- if you discard 12 hex tokens, that's +12 damage to the attack. Remember that hex tokens are limited by the supply.

Hmm, that still seems really powerful, especially if you combine it with Seer Kel who basically now is just straight up attacking every hexed monster in the room with +2 damage per target. If you spend just one round preparing with viral hex (and use it again before Plague Cloud this round), then she's more or less certain to hex most if not all of the monsters in the room and then hit them all.

Heck, even in a single round, if you can find any two monsters who are standing next to at least one other, a simple attack->viral->plague combo will already hit 4 targets for +8 damage.

@Dervish ...

Everything you have stated has some validity to it. Having said that, it is often in the heroes best interest to not be attacking at all, but to perform whatever actions are necessary to achieve the win state (goal) as described in the objectives.

Heck, even in a single round, if you can find any two monsters who are standing next to at least one other, a simple attack->viral->plague combo will already hit 4 targets for +8 damage.

It's not entirely clear to me from this statement what you mean. Please note that neither plague cloud (nor any attack, with extremely limited exceptions) will target or affect any single figure more than once. If there are only 2 hexed monsters next to each other (and no other monsters around), plague cloud will hit 2, not 4 monsters.

@Dervish ...

Everything you have stated has some validity to it. Having said that, it is often in the heroes best interest to not be attacking at all, but to perform whatever actions are necessary to achieve the win state (goal) as described in the objectives.

Right, but doesn't one hero having overwhelming firepower help with that a lot? If the group knows that Seer Kel hexer can clear the room in two turns, they don't have to worry about doing much damage themselves, which in turn frees up more actions across the group for handling objectives.

Heck, even in a single round, if you can find any two monsters who are standing next to at least one other, a simple attack->viral->plague combo will already hit 4 targets for +8 damage.

It's not entirely clear to me from this statement what you mean. Please note that neither plague cloud (nor any attack, with extremely limited exceptions) will target or affect any single figure more than once. If there are only 2 hexed monsters next to each other (and no other monsters around), plague cloud will hit 2, not 4 monsters.

Sorry maybe I should have worded it better, I meant if there are "two pair" of monsters, each pair being next to each other, then hexer can easily clear all four. Hit one, viral to one in the other pair, hit both pairs with plague cloud for +8.

Gotcha- yeah, that's true. As an OL, if I had a hero with that skill, you can bet I wouldn't put my monsters together.

What would you do about the two-turn Seer Kel scenario though? Flee the room?

Turn 1: attack twice, viral to cover 4 monsters

Turn 2: hex a fifth, viral again to get as many as possible, plague cloud to clear everyone out.

For starters, given her typical-for-a-mage low willpower, I'd be armed with basic 2 to make sure I had access to Uncontrolled Power. Also, plague cloud isn't cheap- if I can force her to suffer just 2 fatigue and then keep her from recovering (shades, monsters with "wither", etc), she'll have a hard time launching that attack.

It's also one of the few scenarios where I would tend to favor small groups of large monsters. I'd rather an attack with +4 against 2 dragons than one with +10 against 5 changelings.

Hmm that makes sense, thanks

No problem- and if you're the hexer here and not the OL- when I"ve played as the hexer, I've usually skipped plague cloud. I like the hexer's 1 and 2 XP cards too much, and plague cloud is expensive (XP and fatigue).

My strategy has been to load monsters uo with hex tokens mostly for affliction, fel commansd, and plague spasm. I let my teammates do the heavy smashing.

You also have to remember, although the combo sounds powerful, Seer Kel is not the only character/class/skill combo with room clearing implications. And although room clearing helps free up the other players for game-winning actions, there is always random chance that may cause an attack to miss, low damage, etc, that can throw a wrench in your plans.

In the group I play with, we're convinced that any time a players winds up for a super-duper mega attack of doom, it increases the chances of missing by %50 because it seems like that's when we always roll that X.

That's why I'll usually play the skirmisher with the Carve a Path/ Unstoppable combo. I've had too many path carves that were utterly epic whiffs.