While there are still some problems, it is good to see FFG edit their FAQ within a few days. Thank you.

Antistone said:

Thanks for the review again Antistone. I actually did make a concentrated effort to include everything from your previous review of the FAQ into what was sent to FFG, even basically just cutting and pasting your questions/comments off the forum for a few of them (Hordes of Things is one).

Well now that I've been outed as a FAQ editor, truth be told, I actually edited the last FAQ as well with someone. I made FFG do four revisions on that FAQ, and I still didn't cover everything or get most of the important issues resolved on that one for various reasons. There were typos and rules problems that I pointed out to them 3 times that they never changed. The problem is that as much as we both went over the wording of the questions to try and get them as clear and as specific as we can, I can tell you from previous experience that those questions are the ones that get screwed up the easiest. Whoever at FFG is writing the answers seems to greatly prefer generalized questions that can be answered with a Yes/No which leads to problems such as we get in some parts of the FAQ.

I will however, be arrogant enough to give you some "rulings" here that based on experience of doing two FAQs I can make (and I use the word "ruling" very very loosely):

Re Knockback: Cripes they messed it up still. So we now have two completely contradictory statements right next to each other in the FAQ. IMO they simply forgot to remove/change the statement concerning DR and Corrupted terrain. The fact that they added the statement about when it triggers makes the other two statements irrelevant. So this combined with the ruling on page 9 about timing of "before the effects of armor" have solidified (again, IMO) Knockback as being something that is a special case to the damage/wounds resolution in Step 6. I'm sure not everyone will accept this, which is fine but its what I'm playing with from here on out.

Re Knight: I don't even know how they possibly gave those answers from the those questions. Knight is spend 2 fatigue to get the movement and the attack, and no you can't do it multiple times based on the previous answer from this version of the FAQ.

Re Monster movement on pg6: No ruling here, but this makes this now the 5th time I've asked them to clarify this and its is being ignored agian. Sorry folks.

Re Blocked: Yeah, they are still confusing things about the card, but the answer fits with the general rules of anything that causes an attack to be changed to a miss covers all figures affected by the attack (with the exclusion of Stealth I think in some cases).

Re Beastman Fetish: Still not sure why this is where it is in the FAQ since its not an Overlord card, but because of the ruling and the one above about the effects of Ripper and Bow of the Hawk (and by extension Trenloe and Lyssa), Beastman Fetish now contradicts its own text by allowing the player who owns it to reroll another players dice, and it also can be used to cancel rerolls like aim vs dodge.

Re Sob Lts: Very glad to see that clarified that they are stand-in models. I tried to make the argument that switching Darkwind to skeletons like the FAQ originally appared to read was A) resulted in weakening his minions and B) basically made it the Siren Lt.

Re Whirlpool/Cave Entrance: I really don't like this answer, mainly because it screws up the Winnowing Straights map. I highly recommend people just to copy the picture of the Whirlpool out of the rules pdf found on the website and print your own proxy. If you can't/don't want to do this, for Winnowing Straights I again recommend people put some random tokens around the encounter marker and deem them impassable like the rules for that level say the cave entrance spaces are. I tried to point this out to them, but it was left not commented on.

Re Truthseer Kel: As Thundercles mentioned, I tried to get them to errata her for SoB/RtL down to attacks only for balance issues we all know about. I'm guessing because she is a promo figure they don't want to. I encourage people to talk to their players and houserule her down to attack only for game balance, especially in SoB.

Alright, said my piece and sorry if I have over stepped my bounds on "rulings". I have no idea why I have now twice been asked/contacted to edit the FAQ but I have and I (and Thundercles) tried our best. Sometimes we get stuff fixed, sometimes we don't and sometimes we don't word things the best. We actively tried to take questions directly from the board here and get them in (again, several of the fixes are a result of direct quotes of Antistone's comments so he should be commended for those).

I have long been in favor of what Corbon I believe has mentioned before about hashing out the lists to find the best questions or issues that really need to be resolved. I personally think one of the best ways to go about this would be to have the forum members "elect" 4-5 members who are deemed to have the best understanding of the rules to act as a Player Rules Council. Since FFG employees are not allowed to browse the forum and answer questions here, if everyone agrees that these Council members will be given the right to make binding rules judgments and clarifications based on the most currently available rules resources until official answers can be obtained from FFG it could greatly improve the FAQ process. I have seen this practice used on the AEG forums for the Legend of the Five Rings CCG and it works wonderfully.

A separate thread to discuss this will be set up in the near future.

shnar said:

thanks, you're right. negative answer to a negative question....i should read more carefully...
and you're also right, the FAQ could be written a little more clearly

I've seen prioritized lists before, split into game breaking, highly unbalanced, vaguely unbalancing, merely ambiguous, and grammar errors/typos. I think it's a good idea to categorize the questions, so stuff like truthseer kel doesn't fall through the cracks, but I think try to stay as objective as I can on what they should be by simply letting the forum-goers decide. Ideas?

So as to not double post:

BigYogi said:

Thundercles said:

Good job. Thanks.

Thundercles said:
I've seen prioritized lists before, split into game breaking, highly unbalanced, vaguely unbalancing, merely ambiguous, and grammar errors/typos. I think it's a good idea to categorize the questions, so stuff like truthseer kel doesn't fall through the cracks, but I think try to stay as objective as I can on what they should be by simply letting the forum-goers decide. Ideas?

I think all questions sent in should have a selection of answers, probably with explanatory examples included, to make things easier. Doing so also helps make sure the question is carefully worded.
The yes/no answers might be in favour for FFG but they lead to a dreadful mess and are frequently wrong because the question isn't deep enough.
If a variety of answers are provided then FFG staff making the decisions have the details and implications right there in front of them and need only cut the 'wrong' answers. If there is an answer that is not presented then they have to write that themselves, but they should at least have gotten the basic ideas about the question already without having to do all the research.
Are FFG staff particularly reluctant to 'borrow' fan answers verbatim?

It means more work per question, but we should be asking fewer questions anyway.

Nice work, thanks to all involved!

A few issues:

Q: The Rumor reward "Prince of Thieves" grants a 20%
discount to "Market Items"; how does it interact with
Dawnsmoor's "Orc Market"? Which discount goes first?
A: The Orc Market goes first.

If the Orc Market goes first, then Copper / Silver / Gold Treasures would cost 160 / 360 / 560 coins, which is not possible to pay for.

If the Rumor reward goes first, then the costs would be 150 / 350 / 550, which looks better.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Q: Does the radius of a Blast attack, or other area attacks
(such as the Word of Vaal, Sweep) extend through a
staircase?
A: No.

This contradicts an earlier ruling made in the old Descent wiki. I wonder if the change was considered carefully.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Throwing Stones (Dungeon 38)
Q: Is Gorg, the leader, allowed to throw the stones
diagonally and/or along an uninterrupted line of sight?
Can he pick up a rubble token from a certain adjacent
space and use a different of his adjacent (or even one of
his occupied) spaces as a starting point for his throwing
attack?
A: The rubble token moves from its space of origin. The
stones may be thrown diagonally.

Nice clarification for the origin of the stone movement.

Yet it is still unclear if the stones may be thrown horizontal/vertical ONLY or diagonally ONLY (leaving a lot of blind spots for the attack), or if the movement can be any combination of horizontal/vertical and diagonal movement steps.

Corbon said:

No, they are not. I wrote at least three of the Q/A's in the March 2009 FAQ update.

Actually, Big Remy's idea is probably the best when sending questions in. Make the questions so that a clear Yes/No answer can be given, rather than an answer that requires additional explanation.

I'm still kind of surprised that this FAQ has the handful of simple typos that it does. A simple Spell Check would have caught them...

-shnar

shnar said:

Spell check is hard to remember at 3:00am, sorry buddy

Big Remy said:

*grin* well, I don't blame you. The editor if anything should have proof-read this or spell checked it.

-shnar

shnar said:

Quite simply, this isn't always possible. It is good if you can, but even then you have to be careful of things like the recent double negative which had a no answer which meant yes (as evidenced when it was changed in the FAQ re-release).

I still think that longer answers, pre-provided, are the best idea. Then you can control whether the answers are for the specific situation or providing a general rule as well.

Example:
Q: The Rumor reward "Prince of Thieves" grants a 20% discount to "Market Items"; how does it interact with Dawnsmoor's "Orc Market"? Which discount goes first?
A1: Prince of Thieves goes first, then the Orc Market. Copper/Silver/Gold Treasures will cost 150/350/550 coins respectively
A2: Orc Market first then Prince of Thieves. Copper/Silver/Gold Treasures will cost 160/360/560 coins respectively
A3: The two may not be combined. You may choose either discount to use but not both.

Actual answer from FFG: A: The Orc Market goes first.

Which leads to this problem that you can't actually pay the costs properly as we only have 25coin units.

By controlling the answers and providing multiple options, we give more information to those making the decisions, enabling them to understand the question better (hopefully) and reducing the chances of them blundering by not paying close enough attention. We also don't lose them in over-long but carefully constructed questions whose details get easily misunderstood by someone skimming through them.
Now all the decision-maker has to do is read the question, compare the answers and cut the wrong ones. If he really wants he can also write a different answer in instead.

As an aside, this is the sort of question that I think should not be sent in (no offense to those who did, or those who asked it).
A little basic maths tells us that there is only one possible option that works within the game system, so why do we need to expend that precious, precious resource, FFG staff time, on telling us something we already know?

Corbon said:

I did only a cursory check on most of the questions: looked them up in the rulebooks and descent in the dark, that sort of thing. I didn't really get a chance to edit it all because it's a ginormous time sink; Antistone, Corbon, Parathion, Remy and others on the gathered list thread were a huge help, but this is the kind of thing we should be checking before the questions get on the list, right?

Thundercles said:

I didn't pick this particular problem before either - Parathion posted it as a continuing problem with the FAQ.

It is definitely too big a job for one person (or even 2 or 3) to do this. However this is yet another reason why writing out our own potential answers attached to the questions is so useful - because every mind on the list gets to see the logic holes, loopholes, missed ideas etc etc and collectively we can gradually, iteratively, provide cleaner and tighter Q+As so that many get resolved without FFGs help and those that can't be get sensible results with minimal effort from FFG.

Unfortunately, however, I doubt we will ever get past the people who say "I don't care how obvious it is, I don't care what the (official!) rules say in black and white, only an 'official' answer from FFG is good enough'.
(Translation: "I do not accept evidence, reason, logic or natural law. I also refuse to think in any way shape or form. Down is up unless God says it is down. So even though God already wrote that down is not up, I require him to tell me that Down is Down or I will not believe it".)

I originally didn´t want to ask the question, but for the sake of comprehensiveness regarding the Orc Market I thought it wouldn´t do any harm and wouldn´t waste any resources.

At least the question has as much right to be asked as the one about what happens to potion tokens after their use (did someone really believe the potions would return to the hero for infinite reuse??). The possible answer "no two discounts may be combined" (which hadn´t even come to my mind) justified my question even more.

Anyway, I strongly support the approach that we spell out possible answers in most cases as suggestions from which FFG staff can pick.

Even if we don't end up sending them the answers, it's a really good idea to try and answer the questions beforehand; the simple act of attempting to answer a question should help see if it's worth asking.

Designer just alerted me to one last update:

Knockback now triggers after Wounds and is consistent with the "before the effects of armor" question (other effects -> after wounds) and the DR/Corrupted terrain question.

Orc market/Prince thing now does multiples of 25

Truthseer Kel nerfed: her ability doesn't work for the purposes of spawning.

It'll go unannounced on the main page, but yeah, looks like someone is watching the forums, at least a little.

UPDATE: New FAQ posted to day.

I emailed the powers that be, and explained the deal with the contradictory answers and the various implications for DR and Knockback and asked them to please fix the issue. This is the result:

Q: Does Knockback trigger after inflicting damage or after inflicting wounds?
A: Knockback should trigger after wounds are inflicted.

Q: If a hero with the Divine Retribution Skill is killed by an attack with the Knockback ability, does Divine Retribution take effect before or after the figure is moved by Knockback?
A: Divine Retribution takes effect before the figure is moved.

ALL effects that say "before applying armor" now resolve after wounds have been applied. That is as clear as it is going to get. I am perfectly fine with it, though I do wish it had remained that the movement happened first. But when I'm wrong, I'm wrong and it would be stupid of me not to say so. Its makes the rules much cleaner for all effects and for any possible future interactions.

Knight: Still f'ed up....I think.

Falcon's Claw with Guard and Web: fixed, the removed the double negative.

Orc market/Prince of Theives: fixed!

Truthseer Kel: She no longer affects spawning.

Truth me told, the only one I emailed them about was DR/Knockback so someone there must have come on and seen the posts concerning the other issues.

EDIT: Double post by me and Thundercles, you friendly (well at least him) neighborhood FAQ editors.

I doubt we're ever going to get a clear answer to the Knight question. It's just too hard (and takes too much text) to explain what the issue is. Whoever's writing the answers clearly can't figure it out and thus tries to answer all questions they can think of about the Knight skill and fails to address the actual question. Honestly, it took me a good 5 minutes (and one rather long forum post on BGG) to work out what Antistone was on about. Annoying though it is, I think we may just have to accept that the skill almost certainly works differently from how it's technically worded (or play strict rules as written, I suppose, but I'm at least 99% confident that's not what anyone involved in the design intended).

I'm glad about "Knockback after wounds", actually. It keeps everything consistent. Leech and Poison *have* to be applied after wounds, and it seems sensible if all attack-related effects are applied after wounds instead of some after and some before. Also, as the only case I can think of where it matters *is* the Divine Retribution case, and here "Divine Retribution first" works better, as otherwise monsters with knockback are basically immune to Divine Retribution.

Okay, I have to ask...what is the deal with the knighthood skill? Why does it need an FAQ ruling in the first place, it seems pretty clear to me. Can someone explain why there is confusion?? Please?

Jonny WS said:

So as far as I can tell, the argument has been that there are two possible readings

So Knight says: When you declare a Battle action, you may immediately spend 2 fatigue to gain movement points equal to half your speed (round up) and may make 3 attacks instead of 2 this turn.

Reading 1) You declare a Battle action and spend 2 fatigue to gain movement equal to half you speed, also gaining 3 attack instead of 2

Reading 2) You declare a Battle action. You get to make 3 attack instead of 2 without spending fatigue. You may then spend 2 fatigue gain the movement points.

I've always read it as the first one, you had to spend fatigue to gain both benefits, but the use of "...and may..." between the two benefits has lead some to question it.

Wow! lol Okay then. Yeah, I read it as the first one myself as well. I don't know how you could mix that up or even think that the other way is possible, but then again, I used to Play Magic: the Gathering for many years, so it is pretty clear how to read things in games now.

I guess some people just do not know how to understand certain things. I always read the word "immediately" as do this now before you do anything else. Its just like the skills that grant extra attacks. Like in the case with quick casting, you pay the cost of fatigue right now, or lose the chance to pay altogether.

And the "you may make 3 attacks instead of 2" well, " you may " just means just that. You could attack 3 times this turn instead of 2 if you wanted to. You could declare the battle action, pay the cost...and then move around in a circle and not attack anything. If that happens though, I tell brother Glyr to stop getting drunk off the healing potions. lol

Great work on getting the FAQ fixed, I would have to wait another year before we saw an updated version! Kudos to everyone who made it happen!

*starts game of Sea of Blood*

Jonny WS said:

Don't forget that Truthseer Kel has been nerfed if you use her

Oh, ha! They slipped that in. Nice, that's kind of how we thought she'd be tweaked.

-shnar

YellowPebble said:

It is actually very simple.

The current text on the Knight skill card is:

"When you declare a Battle action, you may immediately spend 2 fatigue to gain movement points equal to half your speed (round up) and may make 3 attacks instead of 2 this turn."

Whereas it should be:

"When you declare a Battle action, you may immediately spend 2 fatigue to gain movement points equal to half your speed (round up) and to make 3 attacks instead of 2 this turn."

Replace the second "may" with "to", and voilà - fixed! Knight works as we are used to!

One thing that didn't happen: the promised errata for Divine Favor. The minimum of one ruling didn't make it in.