Our group has just started a our second campaign of RTL and the OL has taken the sorcerer king. Now one of the upgrades that he is looking to buy is the one that gives sorcerers Blast. I have noticed the following in the Official FAQ:

FAQ Page 2: "Attacks with the Breath ability are not required to use the Breath template. The figure's controller must make the decision before dice are rolled. If the monster or hero chooses not to use Breath, then the attack is resolved as a normal attack of its type."

FAQ Page 9

Q: Do monsters with Blast have to use Blast on every attack?

A: Yes

It seems a bit odd that a hell hound or Dragon that breaths a Jet of Fire can target one square but a sorcerer or Demon (I believe the Demons can also have blast when their Avatar is selected) with their Mystical powers can't.

If the FAQ was saying that a Hell hound or a Dragon could attack an Adjacent Foe using their ranged dice as a Melee attack as least it would be consistent but this just seems odd.

I'm in favour of blast being compulsory but if blast is compulsory shouldn't breath be as well.

I think its one of the fun bits of being a magic user is having a blast of breath weapon and trying to use to maximum effect without roasting yourself (or your allies).

This is an example of using FAQ rulings to "fix" problems in the game.

The Breath ruling was made to fix the problem of heroes grappling a breath monster by a diagonal (it would have been a whole lot simpler to have just not given the heroes Grapple, but no one asked me).

There hasn't been a problem yet with Blast, so it hasn't been "fixed" in any way.

There may be in future though, with the new hero creator allowing heroes to get Ironskin (again, you shouldn't give the heroes every monster ability; but again, no one asked me).

Or the fact that the Skull Shield gives a hero +5 Armor vs Blast. That'll get painful in the final battle with the Sorcerer King.

So these "turn off the ability" things were made to fix problems in the game; not to aid realism.

Seconded: not every ability that's OK for a monster to have is OK for a hero to get. Of course, I'm not totally convinced that Ironskin is a good idea for monsters , either, but I suppose I'll reserve judgement until I've seen it in play a few times.

For a mod I'm working on, I invented a weakened version of Grapple called Entrap (ranked) , which increases the movement point cost for opponents to leave a space adjacent to you, rather than denying movement entirely, and large figures get to ignore one rank per extra space they occupy (as in the errata'd Knockback ), so dragons are fairly resistant, and even a hellhound can move at least 1 space unless you've got 5+ ranks. A hero can still theoretically get 9-10 ranks of Entrap and completely immobilize a dragon, but only by combining bonuses from several sources, so it's hard to pull off and a significant resource investment. On the flip side, you only need 1-2 ranks to stop beastmen, etc. from running past the tank to the mage. There's also some meaningful benefit to having multiple figures with Entrap , because the effects from multiple opponents stack.