Gotta say I love this forum. The people on it are fantastic!! Thanks for all the discussion and answers you guys have already posted that have helped me and my group out tons!

On to my next question, I've found several references to Undying being treated differently between vanilla Descent and Rtl. Would someone be kind enough to describe exactly what those differences are?

What I know is that in Vanilla Descent if the damage is enough to overkill the undying critter then it wraps around and still exists if the 'save' roll is made.

Status effects and the like stay on the critter as well.

In Rtl, status effects are discarded, but does the damage still wraparound or not?

Thanks

dragon76 said:

Differences are in bold.

Vanilla (DJitD pg23)
When an Undying figure is killed, roll one power die. If a power surge is rolled, the figure is instantly restored to full health (although any leftover damage from the killing blow is then applied to it) . An Undying figure must stay dead in order for effects that take place when it is “killed” to actually occur.
Wraparound damage and nothing for lingering effects (so they stay unless the figure stays dead).

RtL pg30
When an Undying figure is killed, roll one power die. If a power surge is rolled, the figure is instantly restored to full health, and any lingering effects are removed. An Undying figure must stay dead in order for effects that take place when it is “killed” to actually occur
No wraparound damage and lingering effects are removed

dragon76 said:

No it doesn't. Excess damage is lost whether the creature saves or not. I think this is mainly to give the OL a bit more of an edge in smaller dungeons where spawning is harder to do. Not that I would know, of course, because my undying creatures always fail their first save anyway. =(

Thank you once again.

In the first dungeon I ran my players through, I can't remember right now which one it was, but one of the two level leaders was a master skeleton +8 wounds. It revived FIVE times. Players still had shop weapons, had to work to get through the additional armor, and then he kept standing up. I was accused of cheating after three revivals, so I let the player who dealt the "killing" blow roll it. SURGE! It was pretty cool from my side of the table.

Also - I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one whose wife plays. It does make it awkward playing that crushing blow...

Valheru said:

I'm assuming the accusation was mostly in jest. Unless you hide your dice rolls from the heroes (which I assume you don't since there's nothing to allow it in the rules) then the other players should be able to see the results for themselves. Still, pretty cool way to throw it back in their faces. =)

Valheru said:

This is just my personal opinion, but I don't think female gamers are as uncommon as some male gamers like to believe. Especially among the wives and GFs of male gamers. I mean, most relationships are based on common interests after all, unless you sneak out of the house to play board games (reminds me of an excellent comic I saw on BGG yesterday) then she's probably at least open to the concept.

My theory is (and this is at least partially based on my own romantic history) that gamers prefer to tell themselves "there are no girl gamers" rather than admit they just don't have the nerve to make a move on the girls they know who might or might not be willing to give it a try. And having found my very own girl gamer several years back, I can say with certainty that they do exist. =)

All accusations were purely in jest. We have a lot of jesting. That was just the best though when they rolled and the bugger still got up. Very cool.

As a hero I've played through a Road To Legend campaign and loved the game so much I've bought my own Descent Core Set to play with another group of friends, which means that I'll be the Overlord finally (evil laugh here).

Knowing both rules for Undying, which is better to use in the base game - the vanilla or RtL version?

Cailus said:

Vanilla = Base Game (and non-advanced campaign expansions - Well of Darkness, Tomb of Ice, Altar of Despair. (Although this too has been debated on the forums - what really is Vanilla... general consensus is that when you refer to "Vanilla" it is Base and WoD, AoD, ToI.)

If you are only playing the core box of the game - you use the "Vanilla" Rules.

Cailus said:

Technically speaking, the Overlord is just another player and has no special privilege to modify or ignore rules. As such, if you are playing a vanilla game (ie: not RtL or SoB) then you must use the vanilla rule.

Having said that, I don't think it would be a huge change to use the advanced campaign rule instead. As long as everyone at the table is cool with the switch, go nuts. (I know my hero players prefer the vanilla rule since it rewards their tendency to overkill things... =P)

Valheru said:

In my SoB campaign, I had one monster roll a surge on undying NINE times. At the time, we didnt know about the "vanilla vs. campaign" undying rules, so we were "lapping" round the damage and at one point the monster had to make two undying roll from one attack (to which he made them both!). I finally told someone if they got me a pepsi, I would auto-fail the roll. Pepsi was gotten, and I was willing to auto-fail it, but my players wanted to see if I could get a TENTH undying roll. I failed.

Moral of the story: It doesn't hurt to bribe the Overlord.....

Not to start a fight or anything, but this weekend at the Terrinoth event, Kevin himself stated that undying does not carry over damage in either basic or campaign play, saying that this decision was made to simplify things and players wouldn't have to sit there and figure out how much damage carries through, say, 3 or more undying rolls caused by one uber-hit from a hero. Just sayin.

As an OL, I know I for one prefer it this way .

Cyan_of_Doma said:

So he either decided to just throw out a long standing rulebook entry right then and there, or they made the change and never decided to notify anyone?

Big Remy said:

<cringe> Sometimes designers need to just not open their mouths....

Frankly, I'm reluctantly willing to take 'hearsay' from conventions etc as to interpretive aspects of the rules. I am not willing to accept outright changes to clear and explicit rules without something in writing.
Kevin may have said it but it doesn't exist until it is in the public domain in written form.

If I remember correctly, the question was asked during the decent tournament yesterday, which involved going through dungeon levels from RtL. So, he may have meant that Undying worked that way for the tournament (which was a hybrid of RtL rules and vanilla rules). Or, he could have simply misremembered the rules.

LinkN said:

That sounds much more reasonable on his part.

And is a demonstration of why hearsay is dangerous...

When I heard Kevin talk about it it wasn't in the tourney...I think it was during what was supposed to be the seminar on how to be a better hero, which eventually just turned into general q & a about the game.

Fair enough about seeing it in writing though Remy, I can understand where you're coming from. To be fair though, he DID design the game after all...it's his baby, so I would tend to think he could revise it and make rules calls as he sees fit.

Cyan_of_Doma said:

Maybe.*

But there is a difference between interpretations or clarifications and major rules changes. Major rules changes really do need to go through the proper channels, or at the very least be in writing in the public domain.

*Rules designers are not always the best people to do revisions or make calls, particularly off the cuff rather than in a considered, planned, organised manner.
I used to play a tactical miniatures ruleset (since superceded by other rules) that was utterly destroyed by the author 'officially' answering questions. Anything the author wrote/said was considered 'biblical' and this particular author, though one of the greatest ruleswriting geniuses in military gaming history, is famed for being fairly incompetent at actually playing his own rules. His 'answers' often flat out contradicted the written rules and/or previous interpretations, created wierd anomalies and completely changed tactical methods, basically at random. Many a player travelled, sometimes internationally, only to find that when they arrived at a tournament there was a new set of amendments and interpretations, often based on a phone call or email the day before the tournament by the organisers, being handed out and they not only had to absorb radical changes with no practice or testing but often their carefully designed army was now severely disadvantaged.
I very much doubt that KW has quite the odd mix of genius and incompetence that this particular person has, but the fact remains that 'designers' are often too close to their own product to be the best person to make changes. They might be the best person to announce changes, but they should not be making decisions on their own without input from others. It is the same principle as proofreading/editing - you always get someone else to proofread or edit your work.
There is also some doubt that just being the designer gives you the automatic right to make changes and revisions as you see fit. The designer is designing the game for the customers - he has no job if he has no customers, and the customers have actually paid for the game. It isn't just 'his baby' once it has been published. The designer has a responsibility to make changes carefully, in a considered manner and through a proper process. A Living Rulebook is one such process. A FAQ is another such process. Official Q and A through the FFG website is another such process, though really that should only be for interpretation rather than actual changes to the rules. Random discussion at a convention is not such a process.

Keeping in mind that I don't know what Kevin Wilson's actual words were (or the context in which they were spoken), I'm concerned about the failure here to distinguish between clarification, errata, and revision.

The designer is usually in the best position to clarify what was intended when a rule was created, and may be in the best position to recommend changes. He is rarely in the best position to make statements about what the published rules actually are , because he's seen too many versions and probably hasn't read the final version as often or as carefully as others. If he really said something like "Undying does not carry over damage in either basic or campaign play" (as opposed to, say, "Undying shouldn't carry over" or "I haven't intended Undying to carry over since I designed Road to Legend,"), then it's not even a question of authority or channels, he is factually wrong .

The game is not "whatever the designer has in his head right at this moment." There lies madness. You can't play by that, nor is it guaranteed to be static, coherent, or internally consistent. The game is what the players agree to play, which in the case of a purchased board game is generally the printed rules.

Designers can make rules mistakes, too, and enshrining a mistake simply because a designer made it is a profoundly bad idea. I've made mistakes playing my own games, and I'd be pissed if I were forced to perpetuate them after realizing the mistake (beyond fair resolution of the immediate in-game situation).

As far as the actual change, my gut reaction is that I dislike it because it further devalues high-damage attacks, further screws small parties of heroes, and makes the (very rare) Undying-negating weapons a lot more game-defining (increasing luck dependence). The given reason of reducing stuff for players to track is flimsy; it's already considerably simpler than calculating the wounds inflicted in the first place, and multiple revives on a single attack is extremely rare. It possibly makes balancing quests easier, though, because you can make a more accurate prediction of the number of attacks needed to kill an Undying monster (except in Enduring Evil, where monsters are already supposed to survive multiple attacks and weapon scaling is already taken into account, so it makes balancing quests harder ).

I won't be adopting that rule even if it makes it into the official FAQ, but at this point I only play Enduring Evil anyway, so I guess that doesn't really say much about the rule.

Cyan_of_Doma said:

As designer he is certainly in a position to make changes and push them into the FAQ if he wants to change the way Undying works. Personally I don't care too much which way Undying works so if this new ruling shows up in the next FAQ I won't lose any sleep over it.

Having said that, I'm not going to change the way I play until I see that change in writing somewhere (most likely the FAQ.) Reason being no one here has provided an exact quote, they just paraphrased his answer. People have a way of colouring things with their own opinion when they paraphrase - intentionally or not. Also, no one here has really clarified what exactly the question was that this magnificent answer was responding to.

Did someone ask him how the rules are supposed to work as of now as an official errata ? Did they ask how it was supposed to work in the tournament at that convention (which was apparently a hybrid of both rule sets)? Did they ask him which Undying rule he preferred "in general?" The exact question that was asked - and how Kevin may have interpreted it - could have a pretty wide-reaching influence on what exactly his answer means. Unless someone has a verbatim transcript of the Q&A session (or perhaps a video recording?) I would be hesitant to take anything being "reported" from the convention as gospel truth. If and when these rulings appear in the FAQ I will accept them, as I said above I don't really have any objection to the change if it is intentional. Having not been there myself, however, I'm not just going to take one or two fans' word for it that this is what it should be now.