The Telekinesis card states that the Hero may " spend 1 fatigue during your turn to move any figure within your line of sight 1 space, following normal movement rules. " I only allow movement between squares that are both within line of sight. However, the question came up during our last session of whether the hero could move himself with this ability.

I believe there's a character with a special ability that allows himself to be warped anywhere within line of sight so I figure Telekinesis must be used on a figure other than yourself. But the statement says " move any figure " rather than " move any other figure. " I don't think I'm being harsh by decreeing that it only affects other figures. What do you think?

One fatigue to use telekinesis or one fatigue for a movement point. I see no difference. Is there a reason the player wants to use telekinesis?

Can you use telekinesis off of a guard order?

I would vote yes you can. I am just not sure if it matters.

We have always played that it affects yourself. The only way it is at all ambiguous is whether or not a figure has 'line of sight' to itself. To us, the answer has always been presumably yes.

That said, particularly in Road to Legend at least, Telekinesis is the strongest skill in the game by leaps and bounds, so anything that limits it a little is fairly reasonable.

Granor,

Actually, there is HUGE difference. If you can use Telekinesis on yourself, then you are effectively immune to Web, Grapple and all terrain that increases movement costs (notably pits, but also mud, trees, elevated terrain...). Even if that's ALL it did, it would still be reasonably powerful.

The_Immortal said:

Didn't think of that. Hope my players don't read this.

granor said:

No, you can't. Telekinesis can only be used "on your turn", and using a guard order token is an out-of-turn ability.

TuftyMcTavish said:

I don't see how that follows. If you're concerned about overlap, the hero special ability has no distance limit and works off of MP rather than fatigue, so it's not as if Telekinesis makes it redundant.

I agree with previous comments that there's nothing in the card text that would imply you can't use it on yourself. Also, I notice in the FAQ v1.4, near the bottom of page 5, there's a question and answer that imply that a hero is using telekinesis on himself.

The_Immortal said:

Requiring you to spend fatigue on something rather than movement points acquired in another way (e.g. from an action) is still a notable effect, so this is still different from immunity.

And bypassing the movement penalty of climbing out of a pit seems like a dubious benefit if you have to throw yourself into the pit and take damage instead of jumping over it.

Even if it granted actual immunity to web and grapple plus some of the weaker benefits of the Acrobatic skill, I doubt that would qualify as a "reasonably powerful" skill. I'd be prepared to redraw it for a random one in most games, unless I had a really terrible (or terrible-for-my-hero) skill to trade instead.

In my games thus far, Telekinesis hasn't proved to be terribly useful, but it's only come up a couple times, and expansions weren't involved, so it's possible it gets better. I certainly imagine it could be fun to throw monsters into lava or scything blades if they're available. But moving yourself seems like an extremely tame use; I'd have no problem allowing it.

So, I attempted to quote from two posts by copy-pasting the tags the forum generated when I tried to quote the first one. Will be interesting to see if it actually works...

snip some decent analysis

Antistone said:

Mate, Unbelievable!

Telekinesis is hands down the most useful skill around (assuming decent fatigue, which in RTL is readily accessable).

- Move the heavy hitters into positions where they can Battle instead of Advancing, or effectively speed up the runners.

- Move monsters off chests/coins and unactivated Glyphs so the loot can be secured or the glyphs activated

- de-grapple friends, move monsters into grappling friends to block corridors or pin the monsters

- move monsters aside to make a gap for another hero to sprint through. This is especially critical in outdoor fights with Soaring creatures if Soar has not been house-ruled.

- move monsters into pits/lava/scything blades etc or out of trees so they lose Shadowcloak (especially Lieutenants!)

- move monsters together so they can be breathed, blasted, swept, cleaved, brawled etc

- push giants, trolls etc just back out of their charge range so they can't hit anyone next turn

- move Aura-ed monsters beside heroes so he heroes don't have to take the damage

- move friends/self into or through terrain that slows them down (mud, trees, out of pits, etc)

- move Bogran around a corner so he can come forward and claim his damage bonus

I'm sure the list could go on and on and...

I'd have to admit the possibility that Telekinesis does get better and better as more expansions are added, especially RtL. However most of the things above apply to the basic game as well.

Consider a Hero with Telekinesis, 7+ fatigue (very easy in RtL) and a Fatigue Potion. What he/she can do is... Godlike! And thats not considering his actual actions either.

Telekinesis will not make you effectively immune to Web, and here is why: You cannot replenish your faituge with a potion, so you will not be able to move farther than the amount of fatigue you have at the start of your turn. You could try resting, but that isn't always easy to do.

The points about Grapple and movement impeding terrain are well taken.

Yeah, all your interesting examples come from expansions, and most from RtL. Regarding specific points:

- Fatigue is already worth MP, and while sacrificing your fatigue to give someone else movement occasionally lets you bypass some logistical issue...runners can already move very fast and tanks can already very frequently battle just by using their own fatigue, and spending your fatigue to save their fatigue isn't tremendously powerful. Requires very specific circumstances to be a major asset.

- There is 1 kind of monster in the base game + WoD (the only expansion I happen to currently have) with grapple: the naga. It's a large, slow monster that can hit you from a long way away and it can't be spawned without treachery. You can easily go through an entire quest without seeing a single one, and even if you do see one, it can easily be dead long before it's grapple ability matters. Quest 3 has six naga, of which four have better than standard stats, and you can still easily beat the quest without grapple making the slightest difference. If a naga moves close enough to actually grapple a hero, that's often good for the heroes, because it makes it easier to kill.

- Aura is slightly more common, but still not spawnable without threachery (and generally not worth spawning even with treachery), and spending a fatigue to avoid one lousy point of damage is not an exceptional ability. If you seriously care, you can usually let your ranged/magic heroes kill the master hellhounds while melee goes after something else, and that leaves, what, demons? Yeah, those make naga look like they're hiding under every rock (based on quests I've played so far).

- The only terrain that's really worth fatigue to throw monsters into or out of (lava, scything blades, etc.) comes from expansions. Pits or the Holy Aura skill let you inflict at most 1 damage per fatigue, which is only marginally better than just adding power dice to your attack.

- Getting out of range of giants and ogres is usually pretty easy to do without pushing them around--they're quite slow, and can't navigate corners or tight spaces easily. That is, assuming that you don't simply kill them before they get a turn.

- Diagonal movement costs 1, so side-stepping pits, mud, etc. is frequently free and rarely seriously expensive. And as already noted, Telekinesis doesn't even save you movement on pits unless you're willing to take damage, and mud is from an expansion. I suppose there could be quests where this is actually useful enough to care about, but I haven't played any thus far.

- With AoE weapons, or maybe with some specific abilities like Bogran, I suppose I could see this skill making a significant difference, but that's highly situational, and has more to do with the fact that AoE weapons are staggeringly powerful than Telekinesis actually being good. Even with Bogran, you're getting a couple points of damage in exchange for a fatigue under ideal conditions, and with a little planning ahead you can probably get a similar benefit without the skill.

So, like I said, better with expansions--maybe a lot better in RtL, I don't know--but very situational, and in the base game, it can't make a plausible bid for being a top-tier skill even under ideal conditions.

Heroes in pits are often there due to the Overlord playing a Pit trap card. Telekinesis will often negate the movement penalty from pits, reducing the Overlord's options.

In a more general sense, Telekinesis' power comes from its ability to correct Hero movement mistakes and severely hamper the efforts of the overlord to control the positioning of the figures on the board. This tends to make monster formations pointless, reducing the tactical options of the overlord. By giving the positioning advantage to the heroes, Telekinesis becomes a much more powerful ability than its direct application would imply.

Telekinesis is at its best when it's used to give a speed boost to the slower members of the party. A high-fatigue character can really enhance the party's mobility and damage output by advancing the slower melee tanks using telekinesis, no matter what the game mode.

TuftyMcTavish said:

I have one query regarding telekinesis if the card says " following normal movement rules" are the penalties for moving though mud, across lava, not being able to cross water, etc that cost more points to move through are they not part of the normal movement rules.

That said if i was running it and people kept on using fatigue to move people as a standard tactic crushing block then moving them to a square of my choice which would hopefully become a pit would come out in force.

Thundercles said:

If you fall into a pit, and decide to end your turn and wait for the hero with Telekinesis to rescue you, the pit has already done its job: you didn't get out on your turn.

Similarly, if you make a mistake or get an unexpected event during your turn (OL card, unexpected attack roll result, etc.), the hero with Telekinesis can't help you until his turn, so it's probably not really that much of a help. I suppose he could move you out of range of a monster or a boulder or something, but if you lost an attack opportunity because you fell in a pit or had to spend 1-2 fatigue on extra dice to finish off a monster, Telekinesis isn't going to help (unless you are the hero with Telekinesis, and even then, it's draining your fatigue, so it's pretty limited).

I'm not saying that Telekinesis is never useful, but I think you are rather overstating its power.

I agree at least somewhat with Mr. Antistone's position: in the base game, telekinesis is certainly not the best skill. That title goes hands down to Acrobat. It is definitely a mistake to say it is not one of the best skills, but it is not in need of a serious nerf.

The main strengths of telekinesis can be summed up in two points that are applicable to ALL games, expansion, vanilla, or RtL.

1. Monster blockading. Normally, two size-1 monsters blocking a hallway require an attack to clear the path. With telekinesis, it requires only a fatigue. The same is true of monsters standing on glyphs, treasures and other strategic objectives. In Descent, the Heroes lose when they are unable to obtain strategic objectives. Telekinesis makes it nearly impossible for the Overlord to stop them from doing so.

2. Strike range. Telekinesis increases the overall strike range of the party far more than any other skill. A 5-5 runner can normally achieve an objective that is at most 19 spaces away. If a character other than the runner has telekinesis, the runner's strike range extends to 19 + 2N - 1, where N is the fatigue of the telekinesis character. It can extend the battling range of the strongest character by an equal amount, allowing the party to eliminate threats that are much farther away than would normally be possible.

The number of small mini-immunities that you gain by using it on yourself is just icing on the cake.

In non-RtL Descent, it is not too bad, because telekinesis will not always come on a high-fatigue character, and restoring fatigue is relatively more difficult. In RtL however, it basically breaks the game, as neither of the previous constraints are true, and it is also even more useful tactically in a variety of situations.