Spending Movement Points

By Sadgit, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

I am currently in the process of updating the CRRG for version 1.4 to be released in a couple of days and stumbled upon some interesting details on movement points (again):

1. At the end of the figure's activation all remaining movement points are lost . A familiar loses all remaining movement points at the end of its activation, even if it is activated again in the same turn e.g. via Undead Fury (from an uFAQ).

2. If a figure receives movement points during another player's turn, the figure may be moved before the active player resumes his turn or not at all (from an uFAQ). Interesting detail here: The two move actions granted by Syndrael 's Heroic feat are performed "immediately". This means the other hero has to spend the movement points first because as soon as Syndrael spends hers (or interrupts her move action), she would technically resume her turn and the movement points of the other hero would be forfeit (confirmed by another uFAQ).

3. The Maneuver ability of a reanimate (monster not familiar) grants 2 movement points to an adjacent minion monster (not necessarily another reanimate ). I am not sure when those movement points are to be spent: As an interrupt during the reanimate 's activation? However, as in this case the movement points are not granted during another player's turn (see 2.) and the minion's activation has not ended (see 1.) they should still be in the minion's pool when it is activated. Thus, it is well possible that the minion starts its activation with 2 additional movement points that may be spend during its activation.

What do you guys think?

Edited by Sadgit

A question on "No Rest For The Wicked" also related to movement points:

Play this card when a hero suffers 1 Fatigue to gain an additional movement point. Choose 1 monster to move 1 space immediately after the hero spends that movement point.
Until the start of your turn, you may trigger this ability each time a hero suffers 1 Fatigue to gain an additional movement point.

Zaltyre and others have previously taken the stance that the OL has to choose a monster as soon as the hero spends a fatigue to gain a movement point. Then, after the hero spends a movement point, the chosen monster may spend its.

However, to me it is not unambiguously clear that both, choosing the monster and spending a movement point are on separate timing triggers. From my understanding the 2nd sentence on the card would allow the interpretation that choosing a monster and moving it both trigger after the hero spending that movement point. This would give the OL a slight advantage as the heroes would not know which monster will be moved before the hero spends the movement point.

Is there an official FFG answer on this around?

Edited by Sadgit

Regarding the reanimate, that rules response was written from a hero perspective, and monster activations are treated a lot like hero turns (think conditions). Remember that even though reanimates activate together in sequence, they have individual activations. When the reanimate grants MP, the monster receiving them must spend them immediately, because it is outside its activation, which I'm 99% sure is treated analagously to a different "monster turn" even though it's the same "player turn". (in short, treat it just like Syndrael's feat but with MP instead of a full move action).

I think I see your confusion on "No Rest...", you're wondering whether it's:

a) Play this card when a hero suffers 1 Fatigue to gain an additional movement point and choose 1 monster. After the hero spends that movement point, immediately move that monster 1 space.

or

b) Play this card when a hero suffers 1 Fatigue to gain an additional movement point. After the hero spends that movement point, choose 1 monster to move 1 space immediately.

Right? If so, I don't think it has been officially addressed. I have always read/played as "a" (as you said,) but I can see "b" as a valid reading, too.

Edited by Zaltyre

I agree that treating the movement points from the Maneuver ability like out-of-turn movement points is the best solution here.

Your assumption is correct, that are the two options on No Rest for the Wicked that I see here.
Maybe someone can submit a rules question to FFG. I have already accumulated 4 open questions on my bill.

Edited by Sadgit
22 minutes ago, Sadgit said:

Maybe someone can submit a rules question to FFG. I have already accumulated 4 open questions on my bill.

I find this statement very interesting. I also have multiple questions awaiting answers, one of which is more than 6 months old. I have said this before, but I really think that FFG (and the people who immediately support this game - D2e) have put far, far less effort into this game in the past few years, especially since the coming of the Disney license for all things Star Wars.

It is becoming increasingly frustrating to support this community and this game, when FFG seems (and I do stress "seems") to not really care at this moment. It has been almost 18 months since an official FAQ update for the game, not to mention questions that seemingly don't get answered.

Submitted:

"Which of these is the intended order of events for "No Rest for the Wicked"? (In short, when is the monster chosen?) Thanks!

a) Play this card when a hero suffers 1 Fatigue to gain an additional movement point and choose 1 monster. After the hero spends that movement point, immediately move that monster 1 space.

or

b) Play this card when a hero suffers 1 Fatigue to gain an additional movement point. After the hero spends that movement point, choose 1 monster to move 1 space immediately."

I think I've played as "a" because otherwise the OL does nothing when he plays the card- it's just play the card and wait. Additionally, notice that the ability can be triggered again each time a hero suffers fatigue. If the OL were choosing the monster when the hero spends the MP, the bottom text might as well be, "activate this ability whenever a hero spends a MP gained from fatigue".

Answer received:

The monster is chosen when the card is played, then moved after the hero moves.

Thanks,

Nathan Hajek
Game Developer
Fantasy Flight Games

Mmmmh. In the meantime I found this older uFAQ, apparently also from Nathan:

Quote

The order of operations for No Rest for the Wicked is as follows:
1 Play card.
2 After hero spends the movement point, choose and move 1 monster.
3 Thereafter, each time a hero spends a movement point he gained from suffering a fatigue, you may choose and move a monster.
The phrase "each time a hero suffers 1 [fatigue] to gain an additional movement point" is not speaking to timing, it's about the trigger. It's saying, each time a hero fatigues to move, you can use this ability again. Meaning, when he spends that movement point, you get to choose and move.

Source

I guess the recent answer overrules the one from 2014?

Edited by Sadgit

I would say... yes? I wasn't aware of that older answer.

Nathan! If you can hear me, please put this in the next FAQ! Thanks!

Edited by Zaltyre
1 hour ago, Zaltyre said:

I would say... yes? I wasn't aware of that older answer.

Nathan! If you can hear me, please put this in the next FAQ! Thanks!

Next FAQ?!

Seriously? :D

10 minutes ago, any2cards said:

Next FAQ?!

Seriously? :D

That was not meant as a confirmation. In several of his rules responses, he's added something to the effect of "I'll make a note to put this in the next FAQ." So, my hope is there's something coming.

Does this reflect the current rulings on No Rest For The Wicked? Is there a better way to word this?

Quote

Play this card when a hero suffers 1 fatigue to gain an additional movement point and choose 1 monster. After the hero spends that movement point, immediately move the chosen monster 1 space. Until the start of your turn, that monster gains 1 additional movement point each time a hero spends a movement point gained from suffering fatigue.

"Play this card when a hero suffers 1 fatigue to gain an additional movement point and choose 1 monster. After the hero spends that movement point, immediately move the chosen monster 1 space."

Awesome.

" Until the start of your turn, that monster gains 1 additional movement point each time a hero spends a movement point gained from suffering fatigue."

Maybe I'm arguing in circles here, but I didn't think it had to be the same monster each time. The recent response from Nathan definitely clears up the timing of the monster choice when the card is played (you declare the monster when the card is played, not when it's time to move).

My understanding would be each (subsequent) time a hero suffers a fatigue to gain a movement point, you choose a monster. Then, when the hero spends that movement point, you move your chosen monster one space.

That is:

When the hero suffers the fatigue, you choose the monster

When the hero spends the MP, you move the monster.

I guess your are right. I was assuming that Nathan's " The monster is chosen when the card is played" would exclude choosing other monsters in later iterations of the effect.
It obviously depends if "this ability" in the second part of the card includes the effect (choosing a monster) that triggers when the card is played or not.

Edited by Sadgit

Interesting. In essence, the card creates additional monster meta data that is attached to a movement point. The thing that makes my head hurt is the complication of having to manage every movement point as individual entities.

Example:

A hero wants to spend 3 stamina to add 3 movement points to their movement pool. The Overlord responds by playing "No Rest for the Wicked" and states they played it as a response to the hero gaining the 1st movement point.

Thus, from my understanding of the above, they have to choose a monster 3 times -> one for every movement point added to the movement pool.

Then, when the hero moves a square, they will have to state which of the 3 movement points they are spending from the pool. The point they spend will determine which monster is allowed to move.

Another interesting aspect of this is that if a hero spends 2 movement points to move into a Water space, then possibly two monsters would get to move at the same time (since two 'tagged' points will have been spent)

Seems like quite a headache! To make matters worse, if the hero has the Elven Boots (which grants a movement point right from the start of the turn), then they could also move a space and no monster would be allowed to move. (They could argue that the movement point they are choosing to spend is the one from Elven Boots)

Edited by Charmy

If a hero with a speed of 4 takes a move action and suffers 1 fatigue, for MOST purposes he's got 5 MP and no one really cares where they came from. It only starts to matter when the OL wants to play Tripwire, or No Rest for the Wicked, etc.

Just like your "order of damage dealing" in the other topic, this is one of those things that 90% of the time is completely irrelevant, but gets gummed up by the presence of an interfering trigger.

Officially speaking (as per the FAQ) a hero is always supposed to announce when he's spending a fatigue-gained MP. It's just that in practice this is usually needless to do.

Edited by Zaltyre
20 minutes ago, Zaltyre said:

Officially speaking (as per the FAQ) a hero is always supposed to announce when he's spending a fatigue-gained MP. It's just that in practice this is usually needless to do.

Yes, that's right.

I was mostly musing about the fact that, when it comes to "No Rest for the Wicked", not only do you have to specify that are you spending a fatigue-gained MP, but you also have to specify which fatigue-gained MP you are using, since each one is now unique (i.e. affects a different monster)

Edited by Charmy

Ah, I understand now. You mean that if a hero suffered 2 to gain 2, you could have "the flesh moulder MP" and "the goblin archer MP".

Yep. I love "No Rest for the Wicked" as a card, it's such fun to use against a group that loves to fatigue move and then double attack (I espescially love using it sort of like "nimble" against a melee hero...) but it does complicate the movement decisions significantly.

Edited by Zaltyre
2 minutes ago, Zaltyre said:

Ah, I understand now. You mean that if a hero suffered 2 to gain 2, you could have "the flesh moulder MP" and "the goblin archer MP".

That's right! Oh, what fun it would be to have to write a computer game engine that could run Descent... :P

46 minutes ago, Charmy said:

That's right! Oh, what fun it would be to have to write a computer game engine that could run Descent... :P

Some game developer made an attempt at it during Descent 1st Ed, and it quietly disappeared. In many ways the timings for 2nd Ed are even weirder, so I can't imagine the work it would require now.

MTG is a good example of this. I'm the early days the electronic versions were just helpers, they didn't enforce any rules just provided the tools. Later official games enforced rules, but with a severely limited set of cards.

Now the entire thing works great (may still be a few excluded cards, not sure). I think that the projects to automate it just exposed weakness in the rules, and the system is greatly improved now.

14 hours ago, Zaltyre said:

That was not meant as a confirmation. In several of his rules responses, he's added something to the effect of "I'll make a note to put this in the next FAQ." So, my hope is there's something coming.

I wasn't very clear with my SARCASM apparently ... :o

44 minutes ago, any2cards said:

I wasn't very clear with my SARCASM apparently ... :o

The " :D " just looked so genuinely excited.