Hi folks,

My girlfriend and I have just started playing Decent 2e and are really enjoying it so far. We do a few things we are learning yet with the rules and so far we have been able to clear most of them up but one we are still unsure on is regarding the Surges.

If you roll a surge and your hero bonus is +1 damage, do you count that +1 damage with the initial defense dice roll? ie: You roll 3 damage on the dice and 1 surge, Does the defending unit roll against all 4 damage? or does that +1 damage bonus get applied AFTER you do damage ( defending against 3 damage instead of 4, the 4th damage point is added only if one of the first 3 damage hits the target successfully)

It seems really weird to write it out and explain but I think I've said it how I should.'

Thanks all !

Combat is resolved by following a defined number of steps. Damage dealt and suffered is calculated at the last step before the attack is resolved. Frankly, there is no "rolling against damage" because dice are rolled in step 2 of combat.

This might be really confusing when you start Descent but it is an integral part of the rule set. I guess this might be a good opportunity to post another preview page of the rules reference guide that I am working on at the moment. It should clarify most of your questions. If not, I am doing something very wrong .

Have a look and feel free to ask further questions!

Attacks have a specific order in which things occur. This order is usually pretty helpful in clearing up questions. In your case, it's relevant to look at steps 4 and 5:

Step 4: spend surges

Offense and defense dice have already been rolled, the attack has already not missed (otherwise you woildn't be spending surges). The attacker uses her surges to trigger abilities (such as +1 damage, recover a fatigue) and these happen immediately to do whatever they're doing (fatigue recovery, knockback) or altering attack results (adding damage). There is an exception for surges which add conditions, where adding the condition must wait until step 5- but the surges are all spent now.

Step 5:deal damage

Take the total attack results (hearts plus hearts from surges) and subtract the shields rolled by the defender to determine the damage dealt. If that number is greater than 0, any conditions from step 4 will be inflicted. If the number is 0 or less, the defender suffers no damage and no conditions. Rememner that things like knockback would have happened previously in step 4 (no damage necessary to do those).

Short version-there is no distinction between roll damage and surge damage. The defender deals with all of it at once.

EDIT: Sadgit wins.

Sorry, mate!
Anything I need to add to that page?

Wow thanks for the help both of you! your guide is an excellent source of information. The game is a lot of fun so far but there are loads of rules to remember and sometimes you read a rule several times over and it still just doesn't click

Wow thanks for the help both of you! your guide is an excellent source of information. The game is a lot of fun so far but there are loads of rules to remember and sometimes you read a rule several times over and it still just doesn't click

You don't know the half of it yet ... wait until you have a few campaigns under your belt, where you have seen a lot of different combinations of events, cards, skills, etc.

It can sometimes be daunting to parse everything out correctly; and this is not always the fault of the player. That is to say that FFG sometimes leaves much to be desired in their inconsistent use of terms, phrases, wording, etc.

But you usually can rely on getting some excellent help and direction from the people who participated heavily in this forum.

Welcome to the game and enjoy !

Wow thanks for the help both of you! your guide is an excellent source of information. The game is a lot of fun so far but there are loads of rules to remember and sometimes you read a rule several times over and it still just doesn't click

You don't know the half of it yet ... wait until you have a few campaigns under your belt, where you have seen a lot of different combinations of events, cards, skills, etc.

It can sometimes be daunting to parse everything out correctly; and this is not always the fault of the player. That is to say that FFG sometimes leaves much to be desired in their inconsistent use of terms, phrases, wording, etc.

But you usually can rely on getting some excellent help and direction from the people who participated heavily in this forum.

Welcome to the game and enjoy !

I appreciate the welcome! We tend to use google quite frequently while playing which makes the turns take quite a while. I do agree the wording is a bit tough to follow and over thinking situations really makes it more difficult for us in our current campaign. I know I'll have some more questions its just inevitable . We even got tripped up on the monster action list on Road to Legend, 4 actions with arrows and we almost had ourselves convinced we had to do all 4 actions and then end turn..Good thing we checked the rule book again to remind ourselves monsters get 2 actions just like us players. lol

We are really excited about adding expansion packs and monster / hero pack additions to the campaign. One thing we did read about is the duration of the base campaign being much much shorter than the original Descent 1e. I'm a big fan of having a long campaign so I've got high hopes that adding in all the expansions at some point will be a lot of fun

We even got tripped up on the monster action list on Road to Legend, 4 actions with arrows and we almost had ourselves convinced we had to do all 4 actions and then end turn..Good thing we checked the rule book again to remind ourselves monsters get 2 actions just like us players. lol

Just remember when looping through those actions, that monsters can only attack ONCE (unless they have the Ravage ability).

Once they attack once, you skip all subsequent actions that are attacks.

We even got tripped up on the monster action list on Road to Legend, 4 actions with arrows and we almost had ourselves convinced we had to do all 4 actions and then end turn..Good thing we checked the rule book again to remind ourselves monsters get 2 actions just like us players. lol

Just remember when looping through those actions, that monsters can only attack ONCE (unless they have the Ravage ability).

Once they attack once, you skip all subsequent actions that are attacks.

Exactly right. We almost had ourselves thinking they got to attack twice on the turn AND retreat afterward

Actually while I'm at work here I was just looking around at some of the expansions and I'm curious... We are interested in purchasing a whole bunch of the expansions and monster packs. I understand the monster packs will be randomly added into the campaign ( using Road to Legend ) but are expansions added into the original campaign to make one monster game or do we play those expansions separately on their own?

Thanks for all the help and tips so far folks !

EDIT * Might have answered my own question here. From what I read there are " Big box expansions " and Small box " Big box expansions don't mix with the original campaign but Small box expansions do?

All expansions combine to a certain degree. Big boxes contain full campaigns, smaller ones contain shorter campaigns. Some of the quests in those small campaigns can incorporate into the longer ones.

All expansions combine to a certain degree. Big boxes contain full campaigns, smaller ones contain shorter campaigns. Some of the quests in those small campaigns can incorporate into the longer ones.

Perfect, Thank you I'm all about adding new content ! I think we will add monster packs first just to jumble up the different encounters.

Having played some campaigns , i just discovered, reading Sadgit doc, that a recovered fatigue from a surge could immediatly be spent to trigger an ability for the current attack. Does it mean for instance that the stalker could immediately place a trap token and get a + One damage ?

By the way really nice work done Sadgit ! NIce move to have introduce RtL in your Rules Guide.

Tintaglia's question is essentially a question on interrupts. Although interrupts are notoriously not well defined by the existing rule-set, in this case we actually do have a clear ruling:

• The active player may interrupt actions (other than move actions) only by effects that explicitly list the action in progress as a triggering condition. For example, an attack may be interrupted by an effect that triggers "before rolling attack dice" or "after suffering damage" but not by an ability that triggers "during your turn".
• Set Trap has no triggering condition that explicitly refers to attack actions. It has been stated by FFG that if an ability has no explicit triggering condition, the implied default trigger is always "during your turn". Thus, Set Trap cannot be used to interrupt an attack. Makeshift Trap also cannot be used as it has an explicit triggering condition ("after performing a search action") which is not an attack.

Glad that you like the preview page, Tintaglia.