Hello everyone! So being East Coast Canadian and loving to do everything half-arsed backwards, I started my Descent AC with SoB. But now we have RtL in our grubby paws and haven't even played our first game yet, and the questions are cropping up. So after plumbing the forums for answers with no avail, I have questions!

1 - Highly Skilled - The assumption is that before switching to RtL we revert the Skill deck back to it's "Pre-SoB" condition. Thus nothing bringing skills from SoB back in to RtL. I am pretty sure I read this in the SoB rules some where, but couldn't find it when I needed to.

2 - Ferrets! Always with the Ferrets! - Being shiny optimist, my 'Heroes' are already banking on getting Mata and Kata. Is there any harm in using the SoB rules for Mata and Kata?

3 - Funky Colours - It may just be the painkillers talking, but I am fairly sure there are differences between the RtL monster Cards and the SoB monster cards. Should I just assume that the monsters are scaled differently for each setting on purpose? Or are the SoB cards intended to be the proper uptodate and balanced versions?

Thanks gang. Bear with us as we bombard you with more in the future.

Mordaith said:

1) Yes, you should revert back to the base skill decks and the do the set up. Check the FAQ for additional skills to remove for RtL.

2) Officially, RAW would say that M&K have their original function in RtL, but you could easily house rule to use the SoB version.

3) I *think* the only differences are that some of the SoB monsters have swim (which would be useless in RtL) and they have fixed the Hellhound misprint in SoB.

For the record, the SoB skills are meant to be used outside of the advanced campaign: they replace specific cards, although the 1:1 relationship isn't enumerated. One could try to reverse engineer the relationship and then draw up a new Skill Availability list for RtL based on the Torrue Albes skills. The replacement process is on page 9 of the SoB rulebook.

The SoB rulebook says that a base game can be played with the new skills by removing the ones that SoB doesn't use and replacing them with the ones it does. It also says gives a list of the only cards that should be shared between campaigns (rumors and dungeon levels IIRC). Using the SoB skills in an RtL campaign is doable, though you'll have to decide which towns teach which skills. If you do it, you may just want to go whole hog and use the SoB rules in their entirety (except for encounters of course). Then you've got RtL avatars and upgrades wrapped in SoB rules.

Thanks for the quick answers. We had a good six hour session last night so a few questions came up.

Most notably;

4 - Who's Turn is it anyway? - There is a character named Talia that can move about when she activates her Guard action. When she is doing so, is the Overlord permitted to play cards like spiked pit trap or Crushing block?

5 - Unloved and Unleveled - In SoB the majority (if not all Leader Monsters) on incidents and Dungeon cards have something like "Has an extra X wounds and X armour per game level" I notice this doesn't occur on any of the RtL cards. Should it be read as such? Or is the scaling on RtL so different that the monsters don't need the extra oomph as the game rolls on?

Ah heck. Two? I was sure there was more. But I am just getting up and have not had my morning tea yet.

Thanks in advance everyone.

4 - Who's Turn is it anyway? - There is a character named Talia that can move about when she activates her Guard action. When she is doing so, is the Overlord permitted to play cards like spiked pit trap or Crushing block?

He can play any cards whose triggers occur. Spiked pits and crushing blocks trigger on movement, without regard to whose turn it is, sohe can play those on Tahlia. He can also play them when someone is knocked back into a valid square. It's only iof the card says "play on a hero's turn" or something similar that he couldn't play it, since it's still his turn.

5 - Unloved and Unleveled - In SoB the majority (if not all Leader Monsters) on incidents and Dungeon cards have something like "Has an extra X wounds and X armour per game level" I notice this doesn't occur on any of the RtL cards. Should it be read as such? Or is the scaling on RtL so different that the monsters don't need the extra oomph as the game rolls on?

That is just for Sea of Blood. I've heard of people who have house ruled it into their Road to Legend games, but there are definitely some big differences in the rules sets, so I don't know how well it turns out. I assume it wouldn't be too bad, but you'll probably need to look at the SoB leaders and see what sorts of boosts they get to make sure the RtL ones aren't too huge. For instance, demons in RtL sometimes get an extra 16 wounds. If they get only 8 per tier in SoB, you'd probably want to use that and avoid having demon leaders with 93 health at gold level.

Thanks! That pretty much wraps that set up.

Another six h our session until 4 am, another set of sleep deprived questions!

6 - We are sorry your time is up! - In SoB heroes can run out of time in the dungeons. Is this not so in RtL? I was unable to find the rule for it.

7 - Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Guys! Let's all just calm down! - The heroes home town is under attack! They run back to find a couple of the Overlords LT's kicking the walls with their booties of evil! So.. When.. exactly can the champions of light start kicking butt? Can they attack the turn they arrive there? Does it take weeks action "Our turn Evil over Lord! We're attack your LT!". Can they visit town before or after they beat the butt of the bad guy? What about multiple LT's do they need to wait another week for each LT? Or can they attack every LT in a space in one week, choosing the evil encounters each turn they do so?

8 - That feeling of impending DOOM! - or.. really any other Power card. Can multiple copies of the same power card be in play? (Two horde of the things?) When a LT is reinforcing a dungeon, I know it doesn't count towards their limit, but does the actual card come in to play? If the Lady Farrow is reinforcing a dungeon, do I just 'say' that Brilliant Commander is in play, and lo' I draw another Brilliant Commander I can save my hard in rupies and play it.

9 - Don't Count on me! - So..If minions R us is having a world shortage on Beastmen, and I go to spawn a Beastman, I can't. I understand this much. But what about other tokens. If I run out of Poison, Bleed, Web, Stun, What ever - can I just not use them anymore? Has the game decided "Whoa! Dude... Take it easy!" What about my Threat tokens. If I run out of little red and blue skulls... Can I not gain any more? Have the players hit that awkward threshold of "We are sooo going to get our asses kicked next level... at least it can't get any worse?" or do I just start grabbing beer bottle caps and saying "And this little fella here is a five token bit!" in my slurred voice, while the players shake their heads and say "You are never going to remember that. Just write it down!"

Not that the above ever... happened... with alarming frequency....

Thanks again!

Don't worry guys... I got this one.

6 - We are sorry your time is up! - In SoB heroes can run out of time in the dungeons. Is this not so in RtL? I was unable to find the rule for it.

-Read the FAQ noob.

7 - Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Guys! Let's all just calm down! - The heroes home town is under attack! They run back to find a couple of the Overlords LT's kicking the walls with their booties of evil! So.. When.. exactly can the champions of light start kicking butt? Can they attack the turn they arrive there? Does it take weeks action "Our turn Evil over Lord! We're attack your LT!". Can they visit town before or after they beat the butt of the bad guy? What about multiple LT's do they need to wait another week for each LT? Or can they attack every LT in a space in one week, choosing the evil encounters each turn they do so?

Heroes must declare a move action to attack. So they have to first flee back to Tamalir, then attack the lieutenants on the next week. They can attack any number of lieutenants in a week, one at a time. They can also visit the town, but not until after all of the fights are resolved.

8 - That feeling of impending DOOM! - or.. really any other Power card. Can multiple copies of the same power card be in play? (Two horde of the things?) When a LT is reinforcing a dungeon, I know it doesn't count towards their limit, but does the actual card come in to play? If the Lady Farrow is reinforcing a dungeon, do I just 'say' that Brilliant Commander is in play, and lo' I draw another Brilliant Commander I can save my hard in rupies and play it.

Reinforced power cards come out of the deck and are put on the table. You can have multiples of a card in play, and they will stack with one another.

9 - Don't Count on me! - So..If minions R us is having a world shortage on Beastmen, and I go to spawn a Beastman, I can't. I understand this much. But what about other tokens. If I run out of Poison, Bleed, Web, Stun, What ever - can I just not use them anymore? Has the game decided "Whoa! Dude... Take it easy!" What about my Threat tokens. If I run out of little red and blue skulls... Can I not gain any more? Have the players hit that awkward threshold of "We are sooo going to get our asses kicked next level... at least it can't get any worse?" or do I just start grabbing beer bottle caps and saying "And this little fella here is a five token bit!" in my slurred voice, while the players shake their heads and say "You are never going to remember that. Just write it down!"

If you run out of anything, you can no longer use that type of token. I can't imagine a group running out of anything but monsters, especially threat.

Definite;ly read the FAQ. Also check out the list of answered questions stickied in this forum for a bunch of previous customer service responses that haven't all made it into the FAQ.

Ok, there has been some discussion in my group recently.

And before tomorrows game, it would be super keen to get cleared up.

10 - Line of Spawn? Do other monsters block LoS for spawning purposes? I've looked in to it, and couldn't find a clear answer. When I first started playing, I ruled that figures were ignored when factoring LoS for spawning, however later one of the other players was very adamant that the did block LoS. This new ruling allowed the OL to spawn monsters behind other monsters, pretty much. Which is the correct way of looking at it?

Thanks a bundle everyone.

The other player is wrong.

"The overlord player may not place a spawned monster in a space to which any hero figure on the board has line of sight (see “Line of Sight,” page 9-10). Exception : For purposes of spawning new monsters, other monster figures do not block a hero’s line of sight ." (JitD p. 12)

Gadzooks! Thanks for that. Not sure how I missed that one. Time for some players to hang their heads in shame, and the others to point at me and chant 'cheater cheater cheater'

If it's revenge you're looking for, don't spring it on them until the overlord's plans hinge on spawning behind other monsters.