I couldn't find a specific answer here and I wanted to make sure I was ruling as accurately to the rules as I could during our game.

The Mirror Shield makes characters immune to lingering effect tokens... such as Curse. My question is about when a character that has both Mirror shield and a cursed item. Is there any rule indicating that the player must equip the cursed item prior to equipping Mirror Shield. All I see is that the player MUST equip or discard the cursed item immediately. But one would assume in general that equipping happens all at once.

At this time I ruled that the mirror shield does indeed protect the wielder from curses from cursed items in addition to curses from things like Black Curse. Any thoughts? I wouldn't normally question it, but it makes a pretty awesome combination of mirror shield and ANY cursed items. Thoughts?

The only time that you must immediately equip or discard a cursed item is when you die with it equipped; you can put it in your backpack when you receive it (or any time you voluntarily un-equip it without dying) and carrying it there as long as you want. Items that are not cursed simply remain equipped when you die, so if you die with the Mirror Shield and a cursed item, the Mirror Shield is definitely already equipped when you're re-equipping the cursed item.

The only times I can think of when you would equip both the Mirror Shield and a cursed item at once is if (a) a single hero draws them both from the same chest, or (b) you have them both sitting in your backpack, and want to equip them together. In that case, I think I'd be forced to turn to the normal rule I (ab)use for ambiguous timing effects in Descent: the FAQ says that "start of turn" effects are resolved in any order you want, and so absent any rule to the contrary, I tend to apply that to any simultaneous effects. In this case, though, it's only a couple movement points one way or the other.

As for whether it's balanced to have Mirror Shield negate the negative effects of cursed items, it was introduced in the same expansion (unless I'm much mistakendon't have the card in front of me), so it would be a pretty big snafu if FFG didn't consider their interaction.

This just came up in our group. The Hero that just got Mirror Shield is carrying two other cursed items. So we're wondering when he dies, does the mirror shield prevent him from being cursed? And also as he swaps items, does the mirror shield allow him to equip cursed items freely without ever being cursed?

Seems like it shouldn't happen, since the mirror shield would deflect effects being thrown on the hero, not effects from weapons he is voluntarily wearing, however a strict reading of the rules would lead me to conclude that the mirror does block curses from cursed items.

Here's the Mirror Shield text: "Exhaust to cancel 2 wounds being dealt to you. You cannot cancel wounds that ignore armor. Effect tokens cannot be placed on you, even if this card is exhausted." I would think it should read "Effect tokens from attacks cannot be placed on you" but then again, expecting things to make sense in Descent is never a good idea.

-shnar

I'm no authority on the subject, but I'd rather say that since the mirror shield discards lingering effects, the same should apply to any curse effect token on the character using the mirror shield. I don't think that's so unbalanced since:

a) all cursed items I'm aware of are copper treasure items, meaning their power level should still be sligtly inferior to that of silver items. Since you have the Mirror Shield, it means you have access to silver items and are probably going to substitute your copper item.

b) Two cursed items are a two handed ranged and a two handed (staff) magic weapon, so no shield allowed (as for now). Another one is a shield...and having a character going around with two shields means having a character unable to deal damage most of the time, with all that this implies. Actually the only cursed item stacking with the Mirror Shield is the Shadowblade. Having two items stacking nicely in a game doesn't really make an issue for balancing on my opinion.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Minor point of order, the Mirror Shield prevents lingering effects from being placed. It does not discard existing lingering effects.

Otherwise, I agree, the Mirror shield does prevent Curse tokens being placed and so combines well with the Shadowblade , and that combination is not particularly unbalancing.

Also the Bottle Imp. Though I'm not sure the Bottle Imp could qualify as a good treasure of its level even if you just removed the word "cursed" from the card.

Thanks Corbon for the precisation, and thanks Antistone for remembering us of the existence of Bottle Imp. I keep forgetting about it. It just seems to me so unfair that Copper Cursed Items are so amazing and the only Silver Cursed Item is such bad I wouldn't probably consider using it even if it were Copper...

All considering...ok, Mirror Shield stacks well with Shadowblade AND Bottle Imp (unless you're sending an uber-tank with Taunt, Mirror Shield and Skull Shield around, which is VERY situational, I believe)...I still can't see any mayor balance problem.

Dark Young said:

How did everyone else in the group rule it? I assume you're the Overlord, since I've never seen a player use phrasing like "I ruled that X happens." An important point about Descent to keep in mind is that the Overlord is just another player in the game. He's not a dungeon master, and has no power to make rulings any more than any other player, unless they give it to him. Granted, I can't see any player arguing with this particular ruling, but it's something to remember later. Unless your group wants a dynamic where the OL is in control of the rules, he shouldn't be.

It's less that I'm overlord and more that I know the most about the game amongst all the players, frequent the boards the most of all of us, etc. So they tend to defer t o me when rules questions come up, and I lay out everything I've learned to this point, arguments I've seen on the forums, what the FAQ says, etc. Also, it's my game so it might be a sign of respect?

-shnar