A new FAQ has been posted. List your responses here. (padding for length)

Looks like they took a bunch of questions from Thundercles' last posted list (March 5) without any of the suggested modifications I posted, and managed to misunderstand pretty much all the questions I predicted they would (plus several others). For example (page 4):

Q: When a hero is moved into a space at the end of a Knockback attack, does the figure have to pay any cost or penalties for that space?
A: Yes.

This is copied verbatim from Thundercles' list, except without all the examples that hinted at the numerous different cases he was actually trying to clarify (and that, IMO, should have been split into separate questions), though they answered a couple of those in separate questions elsewhere in the FAQ.

However, despite a large number of useless answers, this FAQ does actually include a lot of perfectly good answers to long-standing questions, and I think they managed to avoid adding anything that makes the rules worse than they already were, so this is looking way more promising than last year's FAQ update.

Gripes to follow...

The filename claims the FAQ is v1.3, which is really interesting considering that a FAQ labeled as v1.3 came out around the time I started playing Descent, and there were 3 other releases of the FAQ between that one and this one (one of which claimed to be v1.4, and the others only had dates).

There's an extended campaign rule for the overlord's final purchase in the general "Rules Changes and Clarifications" section (p.2 bottom left); that's probably an error.

The "Large Monsters and Terrain" ruling that we all love to complain about appears unchanged, except for one new sentence at the end that contradicts both the original rules and the modified rules immediately preceding it.

Page 5:

There's an answer about Grappling figure in mid-jump, though it only says its possible...a little more detail might have been nice, but I guess there's not very many ways it could reasonably work. Of course, we now have an even greater need for a ruling about what paths are legal when making a multi-space jump (arbitrary path, straight line, LOS...), to determine whether the figure can maneuver around the Grapple zone or not.

There's an answer about the Knight skill, except the answer has nothing to do with the question...they told us that we can't pay extra fatigue for even more extra attacks, which I doubt a single Descent player has ever wondered, rather than addressing whether or not you need to spend any fatigue in order to get the one extra attck.

Page 6:

The question about moving non-square figures made it in, but all they do is tell us to follow the diagrams, apparently not realizing that the diagrams only illustrate a few examples instead of giving us a complete account, so that answer is basically worthless.

Page 7:

There's a rather comical mistake in the wording of the answer to the second Hordes of the Things question, but it's easy enough to guess what they meant ("before the overlord used Hordes of the Things' effect on that area" rather than "before the Hordes of the Things card was played").

Page 9:

First part of the Spirit Spear answer seems to miss the distinction the question is making (between every square being adjacent to every other square, or the squares merely forming a contiguous whole), but it at least manages to imply a specific answer.

The answer to the Daze vs. power boost question is bad enough that I'm unable to guess what was intended. It says that the Daze tokens are lost, which makes no sense. But if you assume that means "then you lose dice due to the Daze tokens", then either Daze works radically different from how I've always played it or there's a fundamental sequence problem: you can spend fatigue to add dice after the initial attack roll, but it was my impression that you had to choose which dice to lose due to Daze before rolling them and seeing all their results?

Page 10:

Trapmaster + Poison damage answer contradicts conventional forum wisdom, but is not unworkable.

The important of the Welcome Mat answer is unusable due to another misunderstanding; they appear to have imagined we were asking about leaving a gap between the pit and the door, rather than whether the pit could occupy a space diagonally adjacent to the door.

Bottle Imp answer typo: second "unequipped" should be "equipped" or "re-equipped".

Page 11:

Dark Relic answer is confusing, since it's preceded by two independent questions; you could read "No" as answering the first and the rest as answering the second, or all of it as answering the second and ignoring the first. Should probably be split into two separate questions and answers to clarify, or else the answer should be more explicit.

Page 12:

Leech question asks if the rule is A or B, answer says "yes." Not helpful!

Avatar Guard clarification (can't interrupt an opponent's Guard order) seems weird...heroes can only use Guard orders during the overlord's turn; does this mean that the avatar can use a Guard order during his own turn? (Since otherwise I don't see how the issue could even come up.) It's possible this only seems weird to me due to unfamiliarity with extended campaign rules.

Page 14:

"Swallowed heroes get one half of an action (as though they were dazed )" should presumably say "stunned." It would be a good idea to list this as an errata, not a FAQ, since the ToI rules say no such thing. Also, it should be in the ToI section, since it involves a ToI-specific ability and no part of it is specific to RtL.

Page 16:

Stealth figures added to an attack after initial roll: this also has nothing to do with RtL and should be in the ToI section.

Page 17:

Ripper/Bow of the Hawk question: answer simply fails to address the question.

Blocked: "then re-roll as normal". The question has nothing whatsoever to do with re-rolls, so I can only assume they were answering a different question than the one printed here.

Yeah, there are a lot of things that still don't make sense, but at least they're working on some.

As for the Bow of the Hawk and Ripper question, there is the rule in the main rulebook of Re-rolls, page 17, where it state that a single attack may only ever be re-rolled once. I'm taking that to mean that you can never re-roll any dice that has already been re-rolled. So this would make the use of dodge or aim to override the ability of these weapons, along with the Beastman Fetish.

Also, with Swallow, the ToI book did state that any hero swallowed my only make one attack with a single handed melee weapon (or unarmed), Not sure why this needed to be FAQ'd myself... yes, you only get one action, and you can only use it to make the stated attack. >.>

Saying that an attack can't be rerolled more than once isn't the same as saying that a die can't be rerolled more than once. Even if it was, we'd need to know the order/priority of effects.

The Swallow rules in the ToI book state that you can only make one attack per turn, but don't state that you only get a half-action. Without this FAQ ruling, nothing prevents you from Advancing (and spending the movement points on available movement actions, if any) or Readying (and placing an order in addition to your attack). Furthermore, the precedent of feat cards indicates that something limited to once per turn can be done once on your turn and again on the overlord's turn, which means you could declare a Ready action, attack, place a Guard order, and then attack again on the overlord's turn (all while swallowed).

Which was probably never the intent, but it is what the ToI rules say.

19 pages!! Yikes. Can you imagine, in a few years after they release a few more expansions, this document will be larger then all the rules combined!

Wow, I might actually be able to play SoB now.

I guess they didn't think about the promo figures when doing this FAQ. Tobin is broken with the hawkeye cannon, and Truth seeker Kel can block Spawning like no ones business. Combine her with Keirga and boggs the rat, and you almost have the perfect anti-spawning party. For some reason, I want to play the ghostbusters theme if I ever see them together

Regarding a few of the rulings. Antistone, the question about the leach on page 12, I would assume it is meant to be the same source of damage. That is just my logic.

I also agree with you about Trapmaster + poison damage. Like you said, not unworkable.

On page 14, when it talks about being in the stomach and making one attack, they used Dazed when it should be Stunned.

The only one I have a massive gripe with right now is the Divine Retribution/Knockback clarification since its utterly contradicts the established rules for both of those items.

Big Remy said:

By "established rules" are you referring to something other than "what a few people on the forums made up one time"? It was my impression that the question had come up several times and no one found any official support either way. (Other than the "before damage" wording which, IMO, was always an absurd argument.)

Antistone said:

Even though the answer definitely doesn't address the question, I think they did in a round about way:

" Q: As written, the Knight skill card grants an extra
attack when the owner declares a Battle action,
whether they spend fatigue or not ("you may
immediately spend 2 fatigue ... and may
make 3 attacks...").
A: A hero may only spend 2 fatigue for
1 additional attack. He may not spend
more fatigue to gain additional
attacks. For example, a hero may NOT spend 3
fatigue and make 4 attacks."

The answer does say "A hero may only spend 2 fatigue for 1 additional attack," implying that to get said attack, you do have to spend the fatigue. Or am I wishfully thinking here?

-shnar

Antistone said:

EDIT: removed initial response because it frankly was going to do no good given the situation.

If "before applying the effects of armor" has solely been there to indicate the condition for which a lingering effect is applied, then I can completely understand both of those rulings in the FAQ and agree with them. But I've got no "official" indication that is what the phrase means. In the case of knockback, the writing of the word "immediately" has always been the indicator that it happens first.

shnar said:

I agree that this is strongly implied. The trouble is, I don't think anyone was really in doubt about how this ability worked anyway- it was just that it was a very poorly-worded card which taken strictly literally meant something different from what it was meant to mean and generally interpreted as meaning. We were therefore looking for clarification. What we get is *another* implication that it works one way without it actually being explicitly stated.

" After inflicting damage ...immediately" is the indicator that the movement happens first? Sorry, not buying it.

Also, the rephrase of the "before armor" clause in the WoD, AoD, and ToI rulebooks appears to remove the ambiguity, so unless you think that's a mistake, it seems to me it should qualify as "official indication."

Thanks for understanding what I meant despite my stupid wording mistake, though.

Antistone said:

I would be fine and agree with you, except that both the RtL and SoB entries for Knockback both say "immediately" as well. So that's three places where its written the same.

For the ruling for SoB about the whole cavern entrance/whirlpool marker thing....folks, ignore it. Just do what I did, and copy the image out of the pdf rulebook, make it 3in x 3in square (same size as the actual tile), print it out and glue/tape it to some cardboard/foam board/cereal box..

I'll check the image resolution I have, if its 72dpi or under I'll just post the pdf I have on BGG if people want.

Big Remy said:

Um...yes. It says "immediately after inflicting damage" in all three of those places.

What was your point again?

Antistone said:

My point is that if its immediately after inflicting damage that Knockback is applied....why then does the FAQ says that the DR takes effect before the figure is moved since DR only triggers AFTER armor has been applied and wounds have been applied (again the general consensus reading of it).

So unless the immediately part is a mistake from Day 1, I don't see why the hero with DR wouldn't be moved with Knockback prior to losing wounds? Its entirely possible Knockback is a special case.

Do you have an answer to this apart from what, as far as I can tell, is just a disregarding of the word "immediately"?

Big Remy said:

This qualifies as a new 'most incompetent ruling ever'.

Knockback
After inflicting at least 1 damage (before applying the effects of armor) to a figure with a Knockback attack, the attacker may immediately ...

Divine Retribution
When you are killed by an enemy figure

DJitD pg11
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

Check my sig. Damage doesn't kill people - wounds kill people.
Damage happens first, then knockback (immediately), then armour is applied to damage then wounds are applied to the figure, then it is killed, then DR activates.
It isn't often we have such a clearly defined sequence in these rules.

Andnow, officially, it is not clearly defined anymore...

Its going to be embarrassing when DR goes off and the hero not only hasn't been killed yet, but due to the use of wound prevention effects (shields etc) the hero never does die...

Corbon said:

+1 to you sir

I think part of the problem is the use of the word "killed" in the question. Implies that armor was already applied.

I...guess you're assuming that "inflict damage" and "inflict wounds" are separate steps in some sequence and that therefore something that happens "after inflicting damage" happens between them?

I'm reading it as "inflict damage" means resolve all the effects of damage: calculate how much damage is caused, subtract defense to determine wounds, deal with any effects that cancel wounds (shields, etc.), remove wound tokens from sheet. Until you haven't done all of that accounting, the damage hasn't actually been inflicted, you've merely calculated how much you're going to inflict.

I mean...surely you're not arguing that it would under any circumstances be legal to "inflict damage" without following through on all of those steps? If a card tells you to "inflict 3 damage (on some target)," you'd take that as meaning that you have to do all of those things, right? You wouldn't skip the parts about actually removing wound tokens and checking for death on the grounds that the card didn't separately tell you to do those things?

So if all of that is part of "inflicting damage", then "immediately after inflicting damage" means after all of that , and it's completely reasonable that the figure could die (triggering any "upon death" effects) before the movement occurs.

At least, as far as I can reason.

I completely understand your point.

EDIT: stupid web pdf

Actually in the hard copies of the rulebooks I have, both Web and Stun don't have the "after applying any wounds that result from the attack" clause. However, Burn does.

Don't know if that argues that those two are different, and therefore Knockback is different since it has the same wording.

Antistone said:

ok...and now? how do terrain and large monsters interact now?

BigYogi said:

Take your pick. You have three options. a) as in the rulebooks, b) as in the bulk of the FAQ entry or c) as in the last sentence of the FAQ entry.

Who knows?

hehe....in my group we alwyas laughed about the 6squares dragon who's hiding behind a tree

I am kind of disappointed about the new FAQ. I really hoped that there would be an official ruling about tentacles. I still have Lot's of questions on how they work???

• Interaction between lieutenant and tentacles (tentacles move after the lieutenant). Can the lieutenant move more than 3 spaces away from the tentacles? And if this is possible are the tentacles dragged behind the lieutenant to a distance of 3 or do they stay behind.
• Tentacles can grapple heroes in the same space (in descent you attack spaces and not figures). If a hero has been grappled the other heroes have to attack them both or the grappled hero has to attack himself.
• tentacles attacking heroes on the revenge (max space between the lieutenant and tentacles is 3 spaces). So if the heroes stay on one site of the revenge. The tentacles cannot attack them, because the distance is 4 spaces.

An official ruling would be great.