Hi,

I have a doubt: if there is an hero on a glyph and a monster with breath hits him is the glyph damaged?

thanks you!

I don't remember this quest, but I'm assuming there's special rules that say glyphs can be damaged by attacks. Unless those rules specify that the glyph must be targeted alone or by a specific attack type which this breath attack is not, then I would say yes, the glyph gets damaged too.

Although I would agree with Steve-O on general principal and for most purposes, this quest is a special case. The quest text reads:

"Each glyph in this quest is considered to have 25 wounds and 0 armor. If there are no figures standing on a glyph, it can be attacked as though it were a figure......"

Hence I would say that no, for the purposes of this quest if there is a hero on the glyph, it cannot be attackeddamaged. This is a departure from normal rules though, since I believe attacks normally target spaces and not figures.

Kartigan said:

Alternately, this could just be clarifying that you can actually attack a glyph space even if it is not occupied by a figure. (Normally an attack that would not hit any figures would automatically fail, preventing the OL from generating threat by attacking empty spaces.) If that's the extent of the relevant rules text, I think any attack involving the glyph's space should damage the glyph.

No, I agree with Kartigan: it's quite clear occupied glyphs cannot be attacked.

But if there's a figure on the glyph, the glyph doesn't need to be attacked, since an attack against the figure would hit everything on that space. (I use this terminology loosely, though, because attacks always target spaces, not figures.) There are other examples in the game where an attack damages more than one thing in a single space.

I think that if glyphs had to be unoccupied to be harmed, it would say "if there are no figures standing on a glyph, it can be damaged ". But that's just the way I read it.

Although I can see where you are coming from mahkra, I would have to disagree with you. The whole point of heroes standing on a glyph in that quest is to protect them from being attacked, otherwise it wouldn't need to be a breath attack or anything else like that, any kind of attack would damage both the glyph and the hero. I know that this is a departure from normal rules, but the quest says right in its description that it has a lot of weird rules unto itself that are unique to the quest. In my opinion, it is quite clear from the quest text that the only way a glyph can be damaged is if there are no figures on it, then the monsters of the overlord can attack it as if it were a figure.

If the rest of the quest description seems to imply a certain mechanic, then I'm willing to accept that context could change the meaning. I don't remember this particular quest, and the Descent stuff is all at my brother's house, so my reasoning is based on just that two-sentence quote you posted earlier.

Then I'll ask the ignorant question. Glyphs can be destroyed in vanilla Descent or are you guys talking about something peculiar to Altar?

Glyphs can't normally be attacked or destroyed, though this isn't the only quest with rules that allow it (Altar of Despair- the quest, I mean, also has rules for glyph-destruction, though they're completely different to the Hold the Line rules).