Hi all,

In a very specific (but not entirely implausible) scenario, I reckon the Hexer can kill two whole monster groups in one round from a standing start, almost irrespective of hero, weapon or any other gear...

For example this situation, Hexer on the X with the adjacent class cards:

Hexer turn as follows:

1. Shoot Master Zombie - use a surge to hex any Zombie (with Internal Rot this places 2 Hex tokens)
2. Use Viral Hex for one fatigue to put a hex token on the master Goblin Archer, doubled again by Internal Rot to 2 hex tokens (he's within 3 spaces)
3. Plague Cloud! for three fatigue
   • All Zombies and all Goblin Archers become Hexed due to the recursive nature of Plague Cloud - two hex tokens on each of the others
   • Perform an attack which targets each hexed monster in your line of sight and ignores range:
     • All monsters are hexed and in line of sight
     • Use Enfeebling Hex to discard hex tokens from any targets (CRRG p49): discard 20 hex tokens...
     • Each hex token discarded increases the damage dealt to each target (CRRG p49): +20 damage on top of your dice roll...
     • Internal Rot also gives Pierce 2 on each hexed monster...
4. Even in Road to Legend where you only deal full damage to one monster and half to the others, you're hitting each of them for 10+ hearts with pierce 2: they're still all going to die

The bigger the monster groups / the more monsters, the more damage they all suffer...

If there was an additional Shadow Dragon in the bottom right corner adjacent to the Zombie group, you could assign the full damage there and one-shot him as well as killing all five Zombies and all five Goblin Archers

Anybody have any reasons why this wouldn't work? Is there something I've misunderstood?

Anybody have any suggestions for scenarios which can beat this for destructive power?

Seems legit! I don't see any rules errors.

Nothing close to this would ever happen if the Hexer played against a skilled Overlord, but it is a fun bit of theorycrafting!

I'm personally not a fan of high-stamina cost skills with multi-target effects like this one, Break the Rune, Prismatic Assault and Cataclysm for three reasons.

1) If you roll an X, you're not only out an attack but also a bunch of stamina, summoned stones, etc. Not good. I do like that plague cloud applies the hex tokens regardless of the attack's outcome though.

2) They cost a lot of XP to acquire - XP which could be used on skills that have passive effects that are always useful, or cheaper skills that can used more often with less setup.

3) Good Overlords just don't give golden opportunities to use these abilities all that often - they will play around the skill. If the opportunities don't arise, then the heroes will truly underperform compared to heroes which took different skills.

Meanwhile, take the "Exploding Rune" Runemaster skill. It costs a measly 1xp and it threatens deadly Blast attacks at the cost of 1 stamina. This will perform as well as these other skills in many scenarios at much less cost.

In RtL, its a different story. The AI is dumb as a stump, so it will easily totter into ideal board state. In that case, have at 'em!

For huge high-cost attacks, I think I'd like a house-rule that you may treat an X as a blank, or perhaps reroll it or something. Same-sign with significant overlord cards (I don't know what those might be, though- it's been many months since I've had access to my descent collection)

I tend to be leery of stuff like that for the same reason Charmy mentioned. It is so much fun when it works, though.

It's not so bad for Cataclysm or Prismatic Assault, since they are separate attack rolls for each stone/token, but yeah, X could be a problem for the solo-roll skills

And you're right, these sort of things are no use in an Overlord game, but they're fun to imagine/try to setup for RtL

You can't house-rule out the X though, that's the risk you take for the massive reward...

If you go to the trouble of setting up a character with this sort of capability, put some mitigating measures in place:

• Use Widow Tarha with her re-roll ability
• Have a Bard nearby with Rehearsal giving re-rolls
• Get the Golden Mask to treat X as blank

On 4/12/2018 at 12:35 PM, Xyphistor said:

1. • • Each hex token discarded increases the damage dealt to each target (CRRG p49): +20 damage on top of your dice roll...

I always bit confuse with hex token here.

let's say there is two hexed monsters ( A and B ) with two hex tokens each. I'm performing a regular attack targeting A . now there are total 4 hex token on the map. can i remove all 4 hex token (2 from both monsters) to add 4 dmg on attacking A ?

is that how you get +20 dmg on your dice roll? right?

for me, this doesn't make sense to me. removing hex token from non-targeted monster to add dmg to targeted monster.

If that is allowed, then here is another situation. here is another story. if there is two monster A and B . only B is hexed with 2 tokens. can i attack A and remove 2 tokens from B to add 2 dmg?

Enfeebling hex says "When performing attack targeting a hexed monster, a hero may discard any number of hex token.." . it specifically says targeting a hexed monster. I interpret as you can discard hex token from targeting monster.

Am I wrong about this?

48 minutes ago, stainless said:

for me, this doesn't make sense to me. removing hex token from non-targeted monster to add dmg to targeted monster.

When using Plague Cloud, the monsters shown in the example are becoming targeted by the skill. Thus all of them they are fair game for removing hex tokens on to add damage.

You can't remove hex tokens from non-targeted monsters to add damage.

What Charmy said ^^

You can only discard hex tokens from the target of your attack to add damage to that attack. So with a regular attack, which only targets one monster, you can only discard the hex tokens from that one monster.

Plague Cloud is a special case since it specifically targets all hexed monsters (in line of sight), and therefore allows you to discard hex tokens from multiple monsters to add damage to the attack as a whole.

On 12/4/2018 at 6:35 PM, Xyphistor said:

1. Plague Cloud ! for three fatigue
   • All Zombie s and all Goblin Archer s become Hexed due to the recursive nature of Plague Cloud - two hex tokens on each of the others

It seems to me that Plague Cloud is being misinterpreted and abused by not properly following the attack steps. Where does this recursive nature come from?

CRRG also states: "3) Repeat steps 1 and 2 until no new monsters are hexed." Can anybody direct me to FFG's original statements that back this up?

Thanks. so i was not so wrong about hex tokens. and I understand Plague Cloud is a special case

but I'm with lucaster about the recursive nature of Plague Cloud.

6 minutes ago, lucaster said:

It seems to me that Plague Cloud is being misinterpreted and abused by not properly following the attack steps. Where does this recursive nature come from?

CRRG also states: "3) Repeat steps 1 and 2 until no new monsters are hexed." Can anybody direct me to FFG's original statements that back this up?

I read CRRG last night after posting here. why is that step 1 and 2 repeated?

9 hours ago, Charmy said:

You can't remove hex tokens from non-targeted monsters to add damage.

That's a rational assumption, but the card just says "discard a token", it doesn't say that the token must be discarded from the target monster though.

9 hours ago, Charmy said:

When using Plague Cloud , the monsters shown in the example are becoming targeted by the skill.

Placing a hex token on a monster makes the monster a target? How's that so?

9 hours ago, Charmy said:

You can't remove hex tokens from non-targeted monsters to add damage.

That's a rational assumption, but the card just says "discard a token", whithout specifying whether the token must be discarded from the target monster.

(Sorry for double posting, but this bloody forum doesn't allow me to add/remove quotes when editing a comment)

The CRRG entry is based on multiple unofficial FAQs by FFG .

32 minutes ago, Sadgit said:

The CRRG entry is based on multiple unofficial FAQs by FFG .

Thanks for the link! I just noticed that this is also addressed in the Official Errata And FAQ, although without mention to a recursive targeting loop.

That's how I would play it in my group, like a sort of "double blast".

I believe the OP is not following proper steps for Plague Cloud. When you use it, it lets you perform an attack that targets all monsters that at hexed at the time you avtivate Plague Cloud . In the example, that would be the two masters. Attacking in Descent has very specific set of steps:

1) declare weapon and target(s).

2) roll dice

3) check range

4) spend surges

5) deal damage

Plague Cloud states that “ before rolling dice ” you may add hex tokens adjacent to the targets. “Before rolling dice” happens after step 1, “declare weapon and targets .”

Thus, because you have already declared targets (the two masters)in step 1, you can not change your targets after all of the adjacent minions become hexed.

Also, the Plague Cloud card even says monsters “adjacent to targets” may become hexed. This demonstrates that some monsters being hexed may not be targets of the attack, just simply adjaccent monsters.

To work the way you think it does, you would need to change Plage Cloud from “before rolling dice” to “before declaring targets” and then come up with some different mechanism to determine which monsters gains hex token. (Perhaps, “before declaring targets, each monster without a hex token that is adjacent to a hexed monster gains on hex token.”)

Take away? The steps and exact wording matters!

FFG ruled differently. See uFAQ I linked.

Wow, this thread got bumped. 😄

Anyways on the subject of attack with highest damage potential, I actually mathed all of this information out quite some time ago looking only at base equipment and what hero skills could be acquired from each class.

The Hexer's insane damage potential is actually dwarfed by one other class: The Champion, namely the skill: Valorous Strike . Because of how this card works the damage potential is basically infinite. All the Champion has to do is rack up Valor tokens (either by killing monsters or through his other skills) and convert them into damage for that skill. With enough saving, a Champion could one-shot an Act II Queen Ariad, even with a perfect defense roll and additional modifiers via overlord cards (That's at least 38+ damage there folks). And with Reinhart the Worthy's unique ability and Heroic Feat, it's very unlikely that the attack won't reach it's mark. THEN add in Melee weapons that can target more than one foe and you've got some real killing power on your hands. The only benefit the Hexer's power has over the Champion is that Valorous Strike is best focused on a single target.

Of course a skilled Overlord wouldn't allow such a situation to occur, but the Road to Legend app is a different story...

Also if you're wondering which class had the worst damage potential with just the base weapons and whatever skills their class had, I can't recall what I deduced, but it was probably the Spiritspeaker or Bard (It's been a while since I gave this much thought and I lost that Spreadsheet I made years ago).