Ran into a kooky situation in our RtL campaign last night. Got the overland encounter with Manitcores and the map was one that had lots of trees. We quickly realized that the OL could park the three manticores on top of tree squares, blocking the paths to the exits and the players could never get past. The reason is trees give units in the trees Shadowcloak, meaning they must be attacked from adjacent squares, but Soaring makes it so that the range is always true range + 4 therefore the Shadowcloaked Manticores could never be attacked by any character. This was further exasperated by the fact that the Manticores get two yellows and blue giving them plenty of range to pick off the heroes from height.

We found this something of a flaw as it forces the game into a situation where the OL is waiting for the players and the players are waiting for the OL (to leave the trees). The only solution we could see would be for one of the heroes to have had Acrobatics and sprint for the exit while the rest sacrificed themselves to the Manitcores to end the encounter. We thought this was pretty dumb. (Another dumb thing is that a large monster has to only be in one tree space to get the Shadowcloak ability...we removed that stipulation and that is how we got around the problem...but as written the problem exists).

I'm interested to hear what the rest of you have to say about this issue.

Fang

According to the Descent FAQ, Soaring creatures ignore terrain effects for the squares they are in. If a Soaring creature lands, then it could benefit from Shadowcloak, but it loses the +4 range benefit. I would replay the encounter or come up with a nice compromise since that encounter was played wrong.

+1 Proto

Don't forget that the OL has to designate at the beginning of the monster's turn weither or not it's soaring... so no soaring, hitting then landing in the trees.

Nakarashi said:

Q: Do Soaring creatures benefit from terrain?
A: While a creature is Soaring, it ignores the terrain in its
current space. A Soaring creature may choose to “land”
and disable its Soar power until its next turn; if it does this
it is affected by terrain just like any other figure

You decide if they land at any time during that monsters activation. Though landing and then going back to Soaring during the same activation is kinda pointless.

Don't they have to land in order to atack if they have melee atack?

And in this case could they go back to soaring after this ?

Slapul said:

No, they swoop to attack. Landing and swooping are different and have different effects.

RtL pg30
However, monsters with Soar can choose to swoop down before attacking. If they do so, the extra range is negated until after the attack goes off, at which point the monster flies back up.

From the FAQ
Q: Do Soaring creatures benefit from terrain?
A: While a creature is Soaring, it ignores the terrain in its current space . A Soaring creature may choose to “ land ” and disable its Soar power until its next turn; if it does this it is affected by terrain just like any other figure

Melee soar-ers are required to swoop in order to make their melee attack. Swooping is a (very) temporary condition that negates the range penalty (and implicitly the non-adjacency) and automatically ceases at the end of the attack. Swooping has no effect on the terrain effects applying (Soarers are flying 'above the ground' and can ignore terrain (in their own space) so no terrain effects are applying to them actually) because swoopers are still soaring, not landed, just very temporarily at a very low height.

Land ed soar-ers are not soaring (until the start of their next turn) so no soaring rules apply to them and they have the full benefits of any terrain they are in (because they automatically have fly, they still don't suffer any penalties). They are also not at increased range and can be adjacent to other figures.
They also can not re-soar until the start of their next turn - once you land, that's it until your next activation.

Hm, so Swoopers can be attacked by a Guarding Melee hero? Or are they still considered to be Soaring and thus have no adjacency to the Melee Guard (but adjacency for their own Melee attack?!) ?

I have always allowed the heros to Melee Guard attack a Swooper until now - I would be glad if the rules would lead to a different interpretation.

Parathion said:

No, swooping monsters can explicitly be attacked by melee heroes (if in range). They are still soaring (so terrain effects do not apply) but temporarily lose the range bonus and are (must be, implicitly) considered adjacent to the spaces around them.
RtL pg30
Heroes may use interrupt attacks (even melee attacks, if in range) to attack a monster while it is swooping