Firstly, I never noticed that Leech heals the attacker whenever it causes extra damage - my bad!

But the question is, how does Leech work when applied to monsters (who don't have fatigue at all)?

Leech (WoD pg 6)
For every wound token lost due to a Leech attack, the target also loses 1 fatigue (or suffers 1 additional wound, ignoring armor, if the target is out of fatigue ) and the attacker is healed of 1 wound

Can you be 'out of' something that you don't even have a stat for? Possibly, possibly not...
If not, does the attacker heal if the extra wounds aren't caused?

The question comes up due to the new Trickster skill - and also the Count's upgrade for Razorwings that gives them all Leech and Ironskin (therefore it becomes a possibility for Necromancy as well).
There may be other new potential interactions too with more opportunities for monsters to be hitting other monsters that weren't previously possible....

I guess I would say since they have no fatigue to lose they must lose another wound. Seems to be with the spirit of the ability.

I can see it going either way. The ability alone definitely makes it look like the monsters would take double damage, but the swim rules give a presedent for monsters ignoring fatigue loss. Is there a majority opinion in your group?

What does the Trickster skill do? And who thought it was a good idea to create a skill with the same name as an existing special ability?

Leech was obviously written with the expectation that only heroes would be attacked with it, which was a reasonably safe assumption when there's no possible way (until SoB, apparently) for a hero to ever gain Leech or control a figure that has it. I suppose monsters with Leech could've tried cannibalizing other monsters to heal themselves, but I guess it never came up.

My guess is that if FFG produced a ruling, they would say that Leech only has an effect when attacking a hero, similar to Frost , since it relies on a subsystem (fatigue) that only applies to heroes. But I suppose they could also say that figures with no fatigue just take double wounds. I don't think they'd keep the healing without the extra wounds/fatigue loss.

I would say that Leech has no additional affect against monsters since they have no fatigue in the first place, and precedent is set in the swimming rules that even though it costs fatigue to move through deep water for players, monsters that do not possess the SWIM ability do not have fatigue and are unaffected by the additional cost.

Seriously, if a hero can do 12 wounds worth of damage and heal himself with Leach, I am pretty sure that's enough without adding the double damage, thank you very much!

Leech (WoD pg 6)
For every wound token lost due to a Leech attack, the target also loses 1 fatigue (or suffers 1 additional wound, ignoring armor, if the target is out of fatigue) and the attacker is healed of 1 wound.

Note that a target does NOT have to have fatigue or take double damage for the healing effect to happen. The qualifier *AND* makes this effect occur for every single wound inflicted (ie: 5 wounds lost, 5 wounds healed). The qualifier *ALSO* states that if the leech attack causes wounds, it drains fatigue/deals double damage in addition to the damage done.

You're trying to make a "precise wording" argument for a rule that explicitly does not even address the circumstances in question? Really?

Whoever wrote the Leech ability obviously didn't attempt to cover a situation where the target neither had fatigue nor was "out of" fatigue. Therefore, whatever some part of the rule may happen to say when read strictly under those conditions is happenstance and has no relationship whatsoever to how the ability is or is not intended to work.

To monsters leech has no effect, it's just like moving monsters without swiming through water they spent 2 movement points but cause they don't have fatigue those rules do not aplies like in the case of heroes who also looses fatigue. Check that , it is explained there.

Fizz said:

Monsters never lose wound tokens (unless they are healed), thus no fatigue loss / extra wounds / attacker healing.

Parathion said:

They don't? That's odd, I swear they all have wound values. "Taking damage" and "losing a wound token" are pretty much the same thing, some people just do the accounting differently (creatively) on the monster since they dont have a nice central place (like a character sheet) to account for lost wound tokens.

Monsters do have wound values and suffer wounds. But, by rule , they do not "lose wound tokens" when they "suffer wounds."

JitD rules p. 10 (emphasis added)

For each wound a hero suffers , the player must remove one wound token from his hero sheet and return it to the pile of unused tokens in the common play area, making change if necessary. When a hero removes the last wound token from his hero sheet, he has been killed (see “Monster and Hero Death,” page 16).

For each wound a monster suffers , the overlord player places a wound token from the pile of unused tokens next to the monster figure on the board. A monster figure is killed when the number of wound tokens it has received equal or exceeds its wound rating, as indicated on the monster’s reference card. When a monster is killed, the overlord player simply removes its figure from the board, and the monster becomes available for spawning or placement once more.

Which is yet another reason that trying to follow the precise wording for a case that obviously wasn't intended to be addressed is insane.

Then that means players cannot use Leach, period. No healing, no double wounds, no nothing.

Fizz said:

Which is clearly not the intent, given the existence of Trickster.

House ruling it that monsters don't get double wounds, but heroes do get to heal, sounds reasonable to me.

haslo said:

I guess that's the best house rule in this situation.

Monsters not having fatigue cannot defend against double damage so he looses only 1 and having leech on the heroes party it makes sense that it has to have some effect, otherwise would be completly useless.

Slapul said:

Why does this need a house rule? No, it's no blatantly spelled out in the rules how Leech interacts with figures without a Fatigue rating. How hard is it to apply the rules for swimming to Leech? No Fatigue, no extra wounds. Leech heals for the number of wounds dealt, whether there was fatigue loss or not. It's not like the heroes need the extra wounds anyways.

Your house rule means well, but in reality it weakens one of the OLs better creatures by a large amount. I'm really trying to understand why so many people nowadays need to play by the RAW and end up coming up with situations like this. I have been just fine with house rules and my own interpretations. I may not be playing to the letter of the words, but I'm certain I'm playing to their intentions.

ProtoPersona, you're being wildly incoherent. First you complain about how this doesn't need a house rule, because it's "blatantly spelled out" (which is horse puckey), then you start ranting about how bad it is that people insist on RAW and aren't willing to houserule (the position you just endorsed ). In the middle, you also suggest a house rule which is EXACTLY THE SAME as the house rule you're complaining about.

Descent needs rules police!

Fizz said:

Antistone said:

Fair enough. I can see I should have worded myself better. My point was more that the RAW are not a gospel, especially when FFG is writing them. You can call it shoddy writing, lack of caring for their customer base, or whatever makes you happy. I understand Descent is at it's heart a competitive game and needs an unbiased set of clearly spelled out rules to resolve disputes.

Thing is, I doubt any of these things will ever change. We as players will need to interpret the intent of the rules on more than one occasion, now and in the future. I really don't see personally why this should be a problem for most gaming groups. Take a consensus, put it to a vote, or whatever makes your group happy. Personally, I can see enough precedent in the rules to make a call for Leech to work the way I explained. Maybe that isn't RAW, but if you only play that way maybe FFG games aren't going to make you all that happy.

As for the house rule I was complaining about, I may be inferring too much, but the way I read what he wrote was Leech heals when used by heroes, but only does 1 extra damage and no healing when used by monsters.

Thundercles said:

+1. You gotta step real careful around these parts stranger.