Attempted our first Kraken encounter and I have to agree with the sentiments expressed by Kartigan. As it currently stands as far as the rules that are available for guidance, it's not a whole lot of fun to play. As Thundercles pointed out and as was reiterated at the Realms of Terrinoth event, Kevin Wilson welcomes players to just come up with whatever works for them. (I still hope to see this covered soon in a FAQ.) In the meantime, I took Kartigan's questions and expanded on them. This is a rough draft of house rules that I put together. With these, or some reasonable facsimile..at least it becomes possible to make use of the Kraken, even if it isn't perfect (or even pretty). I would be interested in people's thoughts. Thanks in advance.

Kraken Rules :
How does the movement of the host and the tentacles interact? First, the host does its action (run, advance, battle, ready) and does its normal movement. The tentacles move with the host at this time, as if they were retracted into the body of the host. At the conclusion of the host movement, array the tentacles around the host body. When this step is completed, the tentacles do their individual movement and/or attack. The host must maintain a static position while a tentacle has a hero grappled. If the host moves during this time, the victim is released (ungrappled).
Do tentacles gain the abilities of their controlling figure? No. As for Swim, it isn’t necessary as the tentacles move with the controlling figure on its initial movement, and do not move on their own until the secondary (attacking) move.
What happens when the controlling figure moves further than 3 spaces away from its tentacles? When the host moves, the tentacles give up their position and become one with the host again (see rule #1).
Are figures that are immune to Grapple immune to being "Grappled" by the tentacles? Yes.
Can threat be spent to cause the tentacles to move more than 1 space per turn when dragging a hero? Yes.
Do tentacles block Line of Sight and prevent enemy figures from moving through them (basically, are tentacles "figures" themselves)? No.
Can a figure being grappled by a tentacle attack said tentacle? No.
If a hero attacks a tentacle grappling another hero does the attack hit both the grappled hero and the tentacle holding him, or only the tentacle? For this one, roll the stealth die with the attack. On an “X” (on the stealth die), the attack misses the hero (but hits the tentacle). Otherwise it hits both the hero and tentacle.
Could threat be spent to add power dice to Constrict? Yes.
Can tentacles gain orders from their controlling figure like an aim or dodge? No.
If a tentacle is partway on the ship and partway off and the ship moves, what happens? The tentacle drops off the ship and rejoins the host at the nearest point available.
If a tentacle is all the way on the ship and the ship moves, what happens? Both the host and the tentacle (and all other tentacles) move in tandem however many number of spaces the ship moves (as if the figure was being pushed ahead of the ship).
How do tentacles interact with features of the ship such as railings, weapon mounts and cannons? Treat the tentacles as if they have the Nimble skill, where it never costs more than one movement to enter a space. Tentacles may enter cannon spaces.

Schmiegel said:

Hmmm, well first off I want to applaud your efforts to make the Kraken workable, as you pointed out Kevin did say the game is to be molded to your group and the Kraken definitely needs a lot of molding.

I especially like your idea about the stealth die when the Tentacle is grappling a hero, that seems to fit really well from a thematic stand point at the very least (one hero having to aim carefully to avoid hitting his comrade who's being held by the tentacle). I don't think I like the fact that Grapple immune heroes are immune to Grapple though, if heroes get certain armor the Kraken fight could become totally meaningless since the it'd be impossible for the Kraken to hurt those heroes (can't grapple them to Constrict or get them near the Kraken's mouth), but whatever works for your group since as you say these are house rules just to make the Kraken workable!

The ability to spend threat to "drag" a hero more than one space per turn seems very powerful to me. Not neccessarily imbalanced (I haven't played with the Kraken enough to know really) but that does seem very powerful to be able to instantly drag a hero into the water where the Krakensharks wait to rip them to pieces for just 4 threat (to move them the two extra spaces back to the Kraken). But I suppose the Kraken will have already acted that turn and so couldn't attack, but using threat you could pull the hero out very far away from the ship to the other side of the Kraken (a death sentence if he doesn't have swim, especially since the Kraken blocks LoS from the other heroes on the ship). Spending threat to add power dice to Constrict seems less powerful, but still worthwhile (though maybe not if you could just drag them to the sharks instead).

Giving the tentacles the Nimble ability seems pretty nice, but without it they may have difficulty doing much without the OL spending threat to move them.

I don't know quite what to think of the whole "tentacles move into the Kraken and then pop out once it stops moving", seems like a simple way of dealing with the problem of the Kraken moving more than 3 spaces away. I think i would change it so the Kraken could move even if it's tentacles had a hero grappled so long as it didn't go farther than 3 spaces away. And I'm not sure what you mean by the "part way on the ship" or "all the way on the ship", how can something be "partway" on the ship?

All in all though it looks like a nice set of workable rules you've come up with there! Let's us know how it works out for your group.

As an overload with the Kraken, I think these house rules are a good start. However, I think that there are a few things I would like to add to the discussion:

1) Give the tentacles swim . No other Kraken abilities, just swim . It's the easiest way to ensure the Kraken's tentacles can do what they need to do. That's a HUGE simplification to the existing rules and your house rules.

2) I like the addition of the stealth die to see if you hit a hero that is being grappled , a miss on the normal die misses both still, or would you need to roll a missing on the stealth die AND the normal attack die?

3) Can a figure being grappled by a tentacle attack said tentacle?

I think heroes should be able to attack a tentacle grappling them. This is especially true for melee heroes, as once they're grappled , they get to do next to nothing unless another tentacle happens to be in melee range). Give them something to do. Allow a hero do at least do a basic unarmed melee attack (single red die, no power dice or upgrades of any kind) against the tentacle grappling him with no chance at hitting himself.

4) Can threat be spent to cause the tentacles to move more than 1 space per turn when dragging a hero?

I'd say *NO* to this. Since the tentacles have to remain within 3 spaces of the Kraken, that gives the heroes exactly 3 nail-biting turns before before the Kraken chows down (and if you've played it, you know that the Kraken's bite is death for a hero). For 6 threat, you can kill a hero, and that's just too much. Besides, in the vanilla rules, you aren't converting movement points into the "pull one space", it's an either/or on the Constrict or "pull".

5) Issues with Tentacles getting "outside" of the 3 space rule: There are soooo many ways tentacles can be outside (inadvertantly, of course, via ship movement, knockback, etc...). Here is what i propose: Tentacles that become out of the range of the Kraken MUST attempt to get back into range. After the tentacle's activation, if it is not within 3 squares of the Kraken, it cannot grapple , constrict , "drag", or use any offensive ability allowed. It may still be attacked, as normal.

6) Kraken moving in tandem with the ship should only happen if the Kraken is adjacent to the ship, and only if it has at least two of it's tentacles on the ship it is adjacent to. Then the tentacles on the ship and the Kraken would move with the ship, and the tentacles in the water would stay in place (if you gave them swim as per #1).

7) The ship is too wide, the heroes can jump in, fire a cannon, and jump out and basically become tentacle-immune. So give the Kraken a method to nibble on the ship for a few turns!

** At the beginning of the Overlord's Turn, if the Kraken is adjacent to The Revenge , any tentacle on The Revenge that is not currently in the same space as a hero may roll a power die. On a power enhancement, The Revenge takes one damage. No more than 2 tentacles per turn may attempt to damage The Revenge in this fashion.

Let's keep this discussion going, I would love to see the community come up with some playable and fun rules (even though that's what FFG and KW were supposed to do before SoB set sail....)

Fizz said:

Some good thoughts there Fizz. I believe what he was saying (and what I think is best) is that a miss on the stealth die misses only the hero (still hitting the tentacle), but a miss on the regular attack die misses both. I also agree that simply giving the tentacles swim is one of the easiest solutions, and I also agree that if the Kraken is adjacent to the ship and has a couple tentacles on board it should be able to move with it.

I think that as far as the whole "moving farther than 3 spaces away" thing that we should simply go by what the rules say, albeit with some extrapolation. Simply put, the tentacles can't move or be farther than 3 spaces away from the Kraken, ever for any reason. Meaning that if the Kraken moves, the tentacles stay where they are if they are within 3 spaces, otherwise they drag behind the Kraken, keeping the 3 space distance (and dropping any hero they had grappled). As far as knockback goes, again you simply cannot move the tentacles more than 3 spaces away from the Kraken even when knocking them back. I think this keeps things nice and simple.

As far as the whole attacking the tentacle grappling you, I really don't think I like the idea of the hero being able to attack the tentacle grappling him, a battle from many heroes could kill the tentacle outright, negating their usefulness entirely. Maybe you could go with a the "swallowed" ruling of making 1 attack with 1 hands worth of weapons, or making unarmed attacks (even allow them to use their melee trait dice), but frankly I think that simply not attacking the tentacle grappling you and taking your turn normally is just fine. Yes this is a disadvantage to melee heroes, but no more than web, soar, ghost, pits, crushing blocks, or normal grapple is anyway. Plus any ranged or magic hero will be blasting the Kraken for 3 turns straight as the tentacles slowly drags it to its mouth. Also bear in mind that melee heroes could put guard orders on themselves to hit the Kraken or any tentacles they get dragged next to since Guard orders are not canceled by movement only wounds. And remember that if the tentacle does drag itself all the way back to the Kraken, the melee hero will get to battle on the Kraken before he could bite him (since the tentacles activate after the controlling figure). Though I suppose the Kraken could just keep scooting back and forth with advances to hit the hero once per turn while the tentacle held it.

I am also of the opinion that dragging a hero with threat is far too powerful. As far as adding threat to allow more MP for constrict, I'm not really sure. Constrict seems like a pretty worthless ability 99% of the time (such as the Mistress of Serpents gettting it on her Naga, with only 3 MP the Nagas are usually better off just attacking the hero outright unless the hero is dodging or very highly armored), but allowing that for the tentacles may make it so they don't really bother dragging the hero back to the Kraken which is kind of their purpose. So I think I'd vote no on the threat for MP when considering dragging or constricting, but I'd like to hear other peoples thoughts on the subject.

I don't believe it is necessary to allow the Kraken to damage the Revenge. Even if the heroes are waiting on the far side of the ship, the Kraken should be on the other side of the map just sitting and collecting threat while hiding behind a rock or in front of the heroes ship where their cannons cannot reach. Once the heroes get close, the Kraken just runs behind the ship and waits longer. Even if it is hit by cannon fire from Guard orders its regeneration will recover all of its wounds. Then when it has oodles of threat it just swoops in and latches on to all four heroes no matter which side of the ship they are on (unless they split up 2 on one side 2 on the other, but even then the Kraken could grab at least two of them and after killing them repeat the process again).

It is indeed fun to hear peoples thoughts on this and I'd like to get more discussion. I sent in all of my questions weeks ago and have of course gotten no response and they didn't put anything in the FAQ when they updated it (even though it desperately needs it), so frankly I think coming up with house rules for the Kraken is the best solution until FFG comes out with some kind of official answers. Even if we wanted to play by RAW (which I do) there just isn't enough information in the rules to know what the heck to do with so many of the Kraken's weird situations (that really aren't weird at all but commonplace and they are more like glaring rules omissions).

Guys, thanks very much for the great responses!! I too would like to see this be an ongoing discussion, until as a group we can put our heads together and make some sense out of this situation. Obviously it shouldn't be necessary to have to take a step such as this, as it's a pretty glaring omission to leave so many questions hanging (like so many limp tentacles) about an expansion superstar of the Kraken's stature. (Isn't that him on the Sea of Blood game box cover..?). I kind of winced when I read that the Kraken is being used as a pretty face for marketing purposes for the hard version of the Island/Ocean board that is being made available this summer. Hopefully a FAQ focusing on the Kraken will be out before the new game board is released..

Don't get me wrong, I think the Sea of Blood expansion is spectacular and I really appreciate the game. But we shouldn't have to figure out our own rule set for a creature of the magnitude of the Kraken, pure and simple....But I'm not going to waste any more time whining about that. I don't have much time at the moment, just wanted to chime in and let you know that I haven't abandoned the discussion and appreciate your input.

For one thing, at the Realms of Terrinoth event, Kevin Wilson did state that the Kraken should be able to attack the Revenge. But he didn't get any more specific than that, so maybe by that he simply meant for the Kraken to do its normal attack (with its mouth). That would be an incentive for the heroes to upgrade their ship quickly. Obviously Pierce 10, Bleed and Poison would not come into play, but that would still be a powerful attack. That would be a straightforward solution to that issue, leaving the question open as to is it too powerful? Certainly the Kraken would have to be adjacent to the ship. As far as Fizz's idea about having the tentacles do the attack on the ship, to me that seems not powerful enough.

Kartigan does have the correct interpretation on what I was suggesting for using the stealth die (a miss on the stealth die misses only the grappled hero and still hits the tentacle, and a miss on the regular die misses both).

The only other point I wanted to address tonight has to do with spending threat when moving a grappled hero closer to the Kraken's mouth. (We hadn't actually tried this house rule in action, or any of them for that matter, this is all purely theoretical after having the same frustrating experience that Kartigan has described with this encounter). Anyway, after further consideration, I absolutely agree with you both that this is way overpowered and should not be allowed. Some of these thoughts were simply starting points for a discussion, and again I'm happy to see that one is now underway.

I'll continue with this in the next night or two. I just wanted to keep the discussion alive at this point and am now out of time. Thanks again for the feedback.

Kartigan said:

Tentacles are an oddity (being the only monster in the game that can remain in the same space as a hero, and their abilities are entirely dependent on being in the same space), and here is where I (respectfully) disagree; under "normal" grappling situations, the grappled character is able to attack his opponent. Even a ranged or magic character could still do this. Plus, I don't think it's out of the realm of plausabilty that if a hero were grappled by a giant tentacle, they he would have some recourse to attack it. Sure, the other hero's can save him, but there is risk associated with that (they are more likely to kill the hero than the tentacle).

Well Fizz I believe I can appreciate where you are coming from with this. But I am concerned about the damage output of Silver level heroes against a single tentacle. By that point in the campaign and wielding silver weapons heroes will be dishing out considerable amounts of damage (melee heroes especially). Since it takes 3 turns for the tentacle to drag the hero to the Kraken's mouth, that means a hero can take 3 battle actions against the tentacle holding him. That's 6 attacks against a single tentacle by heroes with silver weapons. I can't find my tentacle card at the moment, but IIRC don't they only have about 40 wounds and 3 or 4 armor at that level. If you are playing with not giving them the Kraken's abilities (and according to KW they aren't supposed to have them), that doesn't seem like much to withstand a dedicated melee hero chopping away at them for 6 attacks.

Like I said I don't have the tentacle card in front of me, and I don't have Xcel on this computer to use Antistone's Endurance Calculator so I can't be sure of this, but if a tentacle can't even withstand the attacks of the 1 hero it is grappling before it can pull them back to the Kraken or Void then their encounters become trivial. It gets even worse with the void since it requires 4 turns for the tentacle to drag the hero all the way back into the void's mouth, allowing for 2 more attacks and at that level the heroes will have gold weapons.

Still I see your point that it could be rather rough on melee heroes since they will have a hard time reaching anything else. As such, I would probably do some sort of compromise, like allowing the hero to make unarmed attacks against the tentacle holding them (including their melee trait dice), or possibly grant them only 1 attack per turn against the tentacle holding them (though even that may be too much). You could also give the tentacles the Ironskin and Regeneration of the Kraken, but then that does nothing for the Void's tentacles.

Also on another side note, I really think that allowing heroes immune to grapple to be immune to the grappling of the tentacles is a very bad idea. If they get one of the grapple immune armors they could simply chain pass it from hero to hero whenever one of them gets grappled, rendering the Kraken and the Void completely unable to harm the entire hero party. I think this makes sense from both a rules standpoint (since tentacles don't technically have the Grapple ability) and a mechanics or balance standpoint since without it the encounters with those LTs become completely trivial.

Still, at this point with the completely limited information FFG has put out regarding tentacles, I guess all we are left to do at this point is to try and come up with house rules that work for each of us. I really wish they would answer with something official though, there are so many rules questions on this subject and the fact that they weren't answered in the rulebook is bad enough, but now even after the 1st FAQ for Sea of Blood to leave one of the more glaring rules ommissions totally unanswered is disappointing to say the least.

Stupid lack of an edit ability after your post has been up very long......

Looking at the tentacle abilities I found that silver tentacles have only 5 armor and 25 wounds. Though 5 armor is a decent amount, with only 25 wounds they still won't last 3 (4 against the Void) turns against a battling melee hero with Silver weapons.

I can see no indication from the rules that the hero being grappled would not be damaged by other heroes attacking his square though. Attacks target spaces, not figures, and if the OL can get 2 monsters hit with a Guard order if they are in the same square, I can only assume the same would apply to tentacles. This is a little ridiculous though, as no hero has 5 armor and 25 wounds (at least it is very unlikely they would at the Silver level of the campaign). Which means that the hero would most likely be killed by his comrades attacking the tentacle before the tentacle would!

For that reason I really like Schmiegel's house rule with the Stealth die. Makes the heroes slow down and think about attacking the tentacles, more likely to Aim and attack then just battle through the one holding on to their buddy. Still, once again I'd like to know what FFG's thoughts were on this when they were "designing" (and I use that term very loosely) it.

Also I find it interesting that Kevin said the Kraken should be able to attack the ship, since their is nothing to indicate that on the card or rules. But still it could be a nice change, though a red, 2 greens, and 2 silvers (Kraken's silver attack) might chomp through a hero ship pretty quickly! Next time I'm near a computer with Xcel I will use Antistone's calculator to do the math for me, a battling Kraken may be able to take out the Revenge too quickly if his attack isn't limited in some way.

On a side note, anyone know why they've listed the stats for Copper tentacles? Kraken isn't available until silver and the Void isn't until Gold, are there any other monsters that even have the Tentacle ability? Also has anyone gotten any kind of a response to their questions to Fantasy Flight regarding the tentacle issues? I know I haven't, though it is kind of fun just making up house rules . Now all I need to do is set up hero parties and test them out in mock battles.

Please note that in my example for having a hero attack the tentacle grabbing him, the hero would only get a single unarmed attack (which is a single red die, with no ability to boost with power potions, weapons, melee dice, free surges, skills, feats or anything else), with no chance of hitting himself. This should be the ONLY attack allowed vs. the tentacle (ie: no battle actions to get two attacks against the same tentacle).

That's a maximum of 4 damage per strike, which, now that I think about it, would have no chance of getting through the tentacle's armor. So it stands to reason that I would amend my previous house rule to have the attack ignore armor, or allow the hero to add his melee trait (again, only count actual damage rolled, surges have no effect on unarmed attacks). However, adding the melee trait is a dangerous can of worms, since a melee hero could (theoretically) pump out 19 damage with 5 gold dice and one red, but would generally average around 9.25 damage, minus armor....hey....that's almost a wash.

As for the Kraken, my house rule would cap the Kraken's damage against The Revenge at up to 2 damage per turn. This would make attacking the ship more of time pressure mechanic, rather than an OL strategy for victory.

Aye, those sound reasonable Fizz. According to Antistone's Endurance Calculator (which is super neat btw), the Revenge could withstand an average of 3.75~ attacks from the Silver Kraken when it is a sloop, 7~ when upgraded to Galley and ~10.2 when a full Brigantine. I just made the Kraken roll 1 red, 2 green, and 5 blacks (to represent 2 silvers, and the bonus die for Doom!), not quite the same thing, but close. Thus a battling Kraken would most likely rip through the revenge in only 4 or 5 turns. Still, if it is battling that means it isn't dodging or chomping heroes so the heroes would probably stand a decent chance of killing it before then.

I do like your time pressure idea though, with the Kraken slowly chomping through the ship if the heroes don't do something to stop it. I also agree that allowing a hero to make unarmed attacks with their melee dice against the tentacle holding them isn't that unreasonable. Gives melee heroes something to do and even if they were spending fatigue and stuff they'd be unlikely to be able to fight off the tentacle by themselves.