Lost Legends: "Elementalist" Question

By Inspector Jee, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

2 minutes ago, Sadgit said:

I recreated them in Adobe InDesign.

Ahh. I'll have to see about getting that software myself then. Like your expansion, those are also some really nice reproductions of the original assets/fonts.

Edited by Charmy
1 minute ago, Charmy said:

Ahh. I'll have to see about getting that software myself then. Those are some really nice reproductions of the original assets/fonts.

Thanks. Took a while to get those correct. The elemental symbol is still not 100% right.

Edited by Sadgit
2 hours ago, Sadgit said:

Thanks for that. I created versions of the cards including this errata.

Download them from here.

Finally something to put into the CRRG :)

Oh are you the person who made that? If so, well done. That thing is amazing.

- Jee

4 hours ago, Sadgit said:

Thanks for that. I created versions of the cards including this errata.

Download them from here.

Finally something to put into the CRRG :)

Shouldn't the All-knowing be limited to once per turn ?

I am just including official erratas. Not re-designing the cards.

45 minutes ago, Sadgit said:

I am just including official erratas. Not re-designing the cards.

There's more, then, I think. I suppose the life bonus of the 1xp lorekeeper is meant to be active even when the card is exhausted.

all cards with "until refresh" should be "while this card is exhausted", and a card of the Elementalist should be "exhaust" and not "exhuast"

Yep, I will do these tomorrow.

I could be of some help, but you do it better than I would

9 hours ago, Sadgit said:

Thanks for that. I created versions of the cards including this errata.

Download them from here.

Finally something to put into the CRRG :)

The D2e Card Viewer supports these ERRATA'd versions of the cards (as well as showing the original cards).

As always, the official errata'd cards have the text *** ERRATA *** at the bottom of the cards.

At the start of a hero's turn, he refreshes his card not unexhaust. So shouldn't be refresh ?

6 minutes ago, rugal said:

At the start of a hero's turn, he refreshes his card not unexhaust. So shouldn't be refresh ?

I agree that refresh is better.

I updated the page with the Lost Legends erratas. If you find additional typos, issues, etc. just post here or PM me.

Do we have any other pending questions, problems which would require an errata/faq from ffg? If yes how about collecting them all and send at once to FFG?

23 hours ago, Inspector Jee said:

From Nathan Hajek:

Tide should have the same timing as Blaze, after dice are rolled. The timing on Tide is an error.

All-Knowing should have “other” in the text so that it cannot target itself: “Choose any number of your other skill cards and… 

I have not been thinking properly. Nathan's answer on All-Knowing does make sense only if All-Knowing would be exhausted when used. This is not the case. At least not from the text of the card provided by FFG. :( I guess, he simply forgot to mention it.

Edited by Sadgit
2 hours ago, Sadgit said:

I have not been thinking properly. Nathan's answer on All-Knowing does make sense only if All-Knowing would be exhausted when used. This is not the case. At least not from the text of the card provided by FFG. :( I guess, he simply forgot to mention it.

Not necessarily. All-Knowing doesn't require that the chosen skills be exhausted. It simply says " Choose any number of your other skills cards and test [Book]. " If you succeed it instructs you to unexaust those cards, but that's hardly proof that they had to have been exhausted in the first place. I sent a reply for clarification on that at least, but either way I think All-Knowing is meant to be able to be used multiple times per Turn.

- Jee

Edited by Inspector Jee

Nathan's answer is clarifying that All-Knowing is not supposed to target itself. Why should a player target All-Knowing if not to refresh it?

When do you sleep Sadgit?

4 hours ago, Sadgit said:

Nathan's answer is clarifying that All-Knowing is not supposed to target itself. Why should a player target All-Knowing if not to refresh it?

To make itself free for the rest of the Turn, which is the other (and arguably much more important) thing that All-Knowing does. The only reason that we're even having this conversation at all is because a free All-Knowing + free Bottle Courage = infinite attacks.

- Jee

Edited by Inspector Jee

I do not agree with you here. I think that:

1. All-Knowing is supposed to exhaust when used.
2. All-Knowing is supposed to be limited to once per turn. Adding "other" by the uFAQ ensures that.
3. All-Knowing is supposed to target only skills that have been exhausted.

Everything else would be stupidly overpowered. Your interpretation would allow many broken combos. For example a Lorekeeper with 5 Stamina (common for a mage) and standard Prayer of Healing + Divine Fury build would allow heroes to recover 5 red dice worth of damage AND add 5 yellow die to the attack pool of a hero every single turn for 1 rest action. Add Cleansing Touch and you can remove up to 4 conditions. Bottled Courage would still allow 5 additional attacks per turn. With Stamina Potions it's even more crazy. This is clearly not intended.

Maybe it would help if you post the question that you sent to Nathan.

@ kbalazsa : Who can sleep with so many great games to play :)

Edited by Sadgit
32 minutes ago, Sadgit said:

@ kbalazsa : Who can sleep with so many great games to play :)

So you have others (friends, family, anybody) sharing your insomnia close to you, or you just playing alone? :)

I had an extended Kingdom Death: Monster session with my weekly gaming group yesterday night. Such drama :) .

On 7/13/2019 at 2:29 AM, Sadgit said:

I do not agree with you here. I think that:

1. All-Knowing is supposed to exhaust when used.
2. All-Knowing is supposed to be limited to once per turn. Adding "other" by the uFAQ ensures that.
3. All-Knowing is supposed to target only skills that have been exhausted.

Everything else would be stupidly overpowered. Your interpretation would allow many broken combos. For example a Lorekeeper with 5 Stamina (common for a mage) and standard Prayer of Healing + Divine Fury build would allow heroes to recover 5 red dice worth of damage AND add 5 yellow die to the attack pool of a hero every single turn for 1 rest action. Add Cleansing Touch and you can remove up to 4 conditions. Bottled Courage would still allow 5 additional attacks per turn. With Stamina Potions it's even more crazy. This is clearly not intended.

Maybe it would help if you post the question that you sent to Nathan.

@ kbalazsa : Who can sleep with so many great games to play :)

To be clear: none of this is my interpretation. I am ascribing no other meaning to All-Knowing other than what is written directly on the card (include Nathan's errata). According to the RAW, you can use it multiple times on any Skill Cards - unexausted or otherwise - other than itself. The word "other" appearing on the card does not alone guarantee that the FFG intends this Skill to be restricted to once a turn - in order for that to be true, you need to also be sure that All-Knowing cannot target unexhausted cards. And we aren't.

Now, this is all just devil's-advocate playing; your inteprepration of their intention seems reasonable. The only thing that gives me pause is that while I didn't specifically ask if All-Knowing had to be exhausted in order to use it, I gave FFG every chance to see it (my question was more concerned about whether or not it could target itself). Here is the full text:

"The new hybrid Lorekeeper class's 3XP ability is called "All-Knowing" and as written it has to potential to generate an infinite number of skill uses per Turn. This is particularly egregious when combined with skills that give you non-action attacks. "All-Knowing" doesn't say it can't target unexhausted skills, so it can legally target itself. This means that the first time per Turn that a player uses it they can pay the 1 Fatigue cost, choose itself + another skill that gives them a free attack (like "Bottled Courage" from the Apothecary class), pass the [Book] test (not difficult since "All-Knowing" gives you +1 [Book] and Mage archetypes tend to have high [Book] anyway), and after that *both* skills are free to use until the end of the Round. Since "All-Knowing" has no limits on the number of times you can use it in a Turn, the player can just keep using it (for free) to keep a skill like "Bottled Courage" perpetually unexhausted, thus enabling its use ad infinitum, thus granting infinite attacks on a single Turn. Is this intended and if not, what SHOULD the text of "All-Knowing" be instead? "

That last sentence is a straight-up plea for a full-errata'ed text, and yet he gave no such indication that it couldn't be used multiple times per turn or that it couldn't target unexhausted skills - only that it couldn't target itself. I'm not saying your wrong but if you're not, then FFG messed up AGAIN on their 2nd chance to fix the text of that card.

- Jee

Edited by Inspector Jee

Thanks a lot for posting the full text of your question. It is indeed very strange that Nathan did not comment on the possibility to use All-Knowing multiple times during a turn. Your question clearly should have led to Nathan addressing this. He did not. I can only assume that FFG intends to allow multiple uses of All-Knowing a turn.
It is my opinion that this puts All-Knowing into "game-breaking" territory. I will house-rule that card in any game that I play.

Edited by Sadgit

I don’t disagree that some of the cards are worded poorly and seem to create some OP combos. But to be honest, except for maybe this All-Knowing issue none of it is really game breaking even the Elementalist. Actually, what I mean is that there are numerous other examples of OP combos in previously released material that wasn’t hated on nearly as much as this expansion and confusing wording that caused much weeping and gnashing of teeth. For example, the Bounty Hunter can Lie in Wait and combo into Rapid Fire and still have 2 attacks left that turn. Add another attack if you are playing 2 players and another if you are Logan Lashley. That’s 6 attacks for 1 stamina and 4 XP plus 6 movement points. Or 4 attacks and two movement points without Logan and 2 players. That is very specific obviously, but not difficult to come by especially if you are playing a mini-campaign.

And if you want to complain about confusing wording just search for the threads about almost every Beastmaster skill Especially Feral Frenzy and Savagery.

Edited by ren6175

Your example of 6 attacks isn't particularly persuasive.

1) The 2 player bonus attack action is universal to the core rules, and not related to the game balance of any particular class or skill.
2) Logan Lashley's heroic feat is a one-use-per-encounter, and again, not related to any particular class or skill.
3) Lie in Wait requires the player to have sacrificed an action on the previous turn, so it is actually not an extra attack: it was paid for in advance.
4) Rapid Fire does grant a bonus attack, but if you observe every class combination in the game up till this point, they have been designed to carefully restrict the number of cards that provide additional attack actions. In the case of the Bounty Hunter, this is the only one that grants an additional attack. Similarly, Thief gets Bushwhack, Treasure Hunter gets Dungeoneer, Stalker gets Ambush, etc. Restricting the number of bonus attacks is extremely important for game balance. All Knowing throws that out of the window, and into a pool of sharks.

The game up till Lost Legends was actually reasonably well balanced. I had issues with things here and there, but nothing that would keep the game from being competitive so long as both Overlord and heroes made choices that were of similar power level. (e.g. respond to Treasure Hunter Logan with Zachareth, respond to Astarra or Mok with servants, etc.)

With the new hybrids and the Elementalist and no corresponding stuff for the Overlord of equal power, the balance is majorly upset. Elementalist with Storm's Fury, Primal Harmony and Nature's Embrace, combined with, say, a Runemaster with Exploding Rune and Berserker with Whirlwind would easily obliterate any monster group encountered. No real ability for the Overlord to counterplay against mass stun and move with no line of sight or action requirement. Large monster blockades can similarly be flung aside, and any quest which involves non-lieutenant monsters ferrying objectives (i.e. lots of them) can be trivialized.

And woe betide your monsters if there is a tile with pit spaces. Expect your small monsters (even powerful ones like say, a hybrid sentinel or deep elf) to be turned into mince meat by being dragged in and out of the pits, or just left inside them and stunned - which fully disables even a ranged monster for an entire turn. All the while the Elementalist being out of sight in another room and not needing to roll dice, spend actions, have pre-placed summons, or familiars, or use heroic abilities or feats. Hazard spaces are nearly as bad, since the monster has the choice of either attacking and then immediately dying, or doing nothing but dragging themselves out of danger and taking a bunch of damage along the way.

I encourage those who don't believe me to try playing against the original Elementalist as overlord. Especially one that can shrug off stamina limitations, such as Quellen with Watchman/Bard support. It is a miserable experience.

Edited by Charmy