1. At 3rd dungeonlevel, are all heroes required to enter the portal to "win" the level, or can the heroes end the dungeon by having 1 hero entering the portal and 3 heroes staying in town?

2. If 1 = true, can the heroes decide to not end the dungeon, to heal up in the temple before ending the dungeon(basicly to be prepared for the next week)?

Moneseki said:

IIRC as long as one hero exits via the Portal then the dungeon is considered completed even with the other three in town because he can always choose to transport back to Tamalir/Home Port when he goes through.

Granted I'm right, then yes they can leave someone there and go to the Temple but its ill-advised in my opinion for a few reasons.

1) Even if three heroes go to the Temple to heal, they can only heal up to the Temple rating for the restock which depending on where you are may or may not be as good as just drinking a healing potion and going through the portal.

2) You are leaving that one hero in a very very bad spot. He's going to be focus of everything the OL has and your LOS blockage for spawning will probably be very low. Depending on the campaign level, and what the OL has available to him, that hero might not live to see his friends come back in. Or I'd potentially just him to around 2 wounds, in hopes that he'll leave the dungeon to go heal and I can work on the guy who replaces him.

3) By the 3rd level, I'm usually getting to end of my OL deck. If your OL is similar you don't want to hang around to give him a chance to shuffle the deck and get 3CT out of it.

This has been discussed before.

For rumor levels, it is explicitly stated that all heros have to move through the portal, stating that this is also the case for all normal dungeons.

The Rumor level (and therefore the entire dungeon) ends as a
dungeon does , when the heroes either all travel through its
portal, or flee by simultaneously returning to Tamalir and
declaring that they have fled.

The forum discussion however concluded that this was sloppy wording and most refused to accept that. In our group, we play it as written: if the heros want to stay at the location, all have to move through the portal.

Healing in Tamalir before switching levels / ending a dungeon is done usually with one or two heros guarding / dodging, while the others heal up.

Off the cuff I was going to say that the party just needed to leave the last level and say they were done. However, going back and reading the rules, it clearly states (in both the RtL and SoB rules) that the party must exit the third level via the portal.

So, I would have to say officially that the party must exit the third level via the portal if they want to stay at that location on the overland map. If one or more of the party left via a glyph and healed up, then the party "fled" the dungeon and therefore must start the next week at Tamalir. (Note: I'm not sure I have actually played that way in my campaigns, but that's what the rules seem to imply.)

>>"At 3rd dungeonlevel, are all heroes required to enter the portal to "win" the level, or can the heroes end the dungeon by having 1 hero entering the portal and 3 heroes staying in town?"

I think the answer you're looking for is yes, all of them must enter the portal. There's no new and special text describing the third level of the dungeon in regards to that, other than this:

"Additionally, when the heroes go through the portal on the third level , they do not emerge at a deeper dungeon level, but instead return to the surface. When they do this, they must mark that dungeon location as explored on the campaign sheet, and may then may either place the party marker in Tamalir, or leave it on the Terrinoth map space where the just-defeated dungeon is located."

I've bolded what I think is relevant. More importantly, though, we have two situations:

1) The heroes want to return to the surface in the same spot, i.e. they do not want to go back to Tamalir. In the case, I think it's obvious and we can all agree that they all have to enter the portal.

2) The heroes want to return to Tamalir once the dungeon is completed. This is a little more complicated. First of all, in situation 2, fleeing a third level dungeon is (generally speaking, possibly different depending on the level or rumor) identical to completing it once you've killed the boss(es). You don't get anything special for actually entering the portal, nor do you lose anything special for fleeing, so entering it and returning to town is the same thing as completing the level. So, to me, the more interesting question is: can the heroes flee a dungeon once one member has entered the portal? Is the answer to that any different on the third level than on the first or second?

Personally, my intuition is that it's no different on the third level than on any other, and no, the heroes cannot flee when one has already moved onto the next level. The main relevant quote I could find:

"If the heroes decide that things are too grim for them to continue on inside a dungeon, they can decide to leave a dungeon and not come back. To do this, they must simply all return to Tamalir at the same time (via glyphs of transport – see “Using Buildings” on page 21) and announce that they’re fleeing the dungeon."

To me, both that text and the text above for the third level indicate that everyone has to enter the portal or everyone has to enter glyphs - and the only way to retreat is via glyphs, so you can't "split" your retreat and go through portals and glyphs. Which, in turn, means that if anyone really jumps the gun and hits a portal, the party can quite possibly get stuck on that level and screwed since they're unable to retreat.

>>"2. If 1 = true, can the heroes decide to not end the dungeon, to heal up in the temple before ending the dungeon(basicly to be prepared for the next week)?"

Yes. The downside is that the overlord gets more time in the dungeon while they're hanging out in town, which means that he has more time to accumulate threat and cards, which means a higher probability of traps or spawned monsters to undo the effect that all that hanging out in town had. And, if he's lucky, he'll pull Dark Charm, which is often an instant kill - or close, anyway. Of course, as mentioned above, you can just all go back to town, heal up, and then retreat. So it goes.

Jesus F'ing Christ Almighty I hate the text editor on this forum. I've never seen one even remotely this bad elsewhere. I give up on making my post not look like total ****.

Big Remy:

>>"IIRC as long as one hero exits via the Portal then the dungeon is considered completed even with the other three in town because he can always choose to transport back to Tamalir/Home Port when he goes through."

Does that definitely work? Is there any official source for that?

>>"1) Even if three heroes go to the Temple to heal, they can only heal up to the Temple rating for the restock which depending on where you are may or may not be as good as just drinking a healing potion and going through the portal."

Am I missing something? Whenever you visit the temple, you can pay 25 gold and get a number of wounds back equal to the temple rating, no? Which means that for default Tamalir, you can send all four heroes to the temple and heal five wounds a turn for 100 gold (25 / hero). Is there a limit I'm unaware of?

>>"2) You are leaving that one hero in a very very bad spot."

Is there any reason all the heroes can't go to town and heal up?

Cymbaline said:

No, I don't know if that definitely works it was just my potential incorrect reading of the rules.

As for the healing, yes Tamalir has a Temple rating of 5. However, in SoB where you go back to your Home Port when you leave the dungeon via a glyph it will depend on where your Home Port is. Look at Gafford, it has a temple rating of 1. Are you really going to go back there to Restock at the Temple? Granted there is only one other town with a rating below 4 I think so in those cases its worth it I suppose. No, there is no limit except that its once a turn.

As for everyone leaving, I really don't recommend that. You pretty much leave the OL complete freedom to spawn in the dungeon level. and put his guys in the best places to block you from getting to that portal unharmed or suffering another hero death.

As for ALL the heroes having to get out via the Portal at the end, if three heroes leave the dungeon via the Portal and the last one is killed en route by a trap, then the dungeon isn't done? So that one lone hero then has to come back in from town, move his way through the dungeon to get to the portal? So if the OL has a few monsters left over or enough to flip and spawn, this one hero (who will probably be a pretty squishy one) is then going to have to potentially deal with all that to get out?

While the rules might say this, I really don't think its what was intended. Otherwise the OL could potentially keep a dungeon level going for a very long time if they can manage to keep killing that one hero before he can get to the Portal by blocking up the entrance to it with monsters. Take like Mad Carthos with even some decent armor on. A Silver upgraded Skeleton Patrol can take him out without too much difficulty, even easier if there is even one or two random melee creatures around.

Big Remy said:

Personally, I think it's going to be a fairly rare situation, and either the heroes should ensure that their squishes are the first in the portal, or the Overlord should eventually cease with the beat-downs in the name of sportsmanship or not getting his ass beat by the four other people across the table. But I see what you're saying, yes.

Alright, so, given that the rules seem to indicate that the lone hero has to move his way through the dungeon, but you play otherwise, how exactly do you play? What happens when the heroes are on level three of the dungeon, three hit the portal, one dies, and they want to stay at their location on the map rather than return to Tamalir? How about when they're on level two and three hit the portal while the third dies?

I see the rest of what you're saying, though. Haven't really messed with Blood Ocean yet, so I kind of forgot about it / left it out of my analysis.

Big Remy said:

Doesn't Tamalir start with a rating of 3 and you have to upgrade it to 5? Or am I just smoking?

Oboewan said:

Could be, I thought it was 5 but I could be wrong. I was looking at a fuzzy pdf map :-)

Cymbaline said:

I just tend to follow the rules for the first two levels on the third, so as long as one hero makes it out the portal then the level is ended once there are no heroes left on the board. So for example, if three of them make it out the portal and one dies and goes to town then the dungeon is over and I give them the choice of coming out at their location or back in Tamalir/Home Port.

If on either the first or second level, this is covered by the rules:

The Portal (RtL)
Beyond the red rune-locked door on each level is a portal leading to the next level. Once a hero steps onto the portal map piece, he is removed from the board and becomes invulnerable to harm. Heroes remain in transit until all the heroes enter the portal or use a glyph to move to town, at which point
all of the heroes are moved to the next level.

So first and second level, if even one hero goes into the portal and the other three go to town then the level immediately ends and then ALL the heroes are moved to the next level.

I actually just noticed an interesting difference however. Here's the same entry from SoB

The Portal (SoB)
Beyond the red rune-locked door on each level is a portal leading to the next level. Once a hero steps onto the portal map piece, he is removed from the board and becomes invulnerable to harm. Heroes remain in transit until all the heroes enter the portal or use a glyph to move to town, at which point
all of the heroes who entered the portal are moved to the next level.

If you go with the RAW in SoB and forget the existence of RtL, then the portal works differently in SoB. When moving to the next level, only those heroes who went through the portal are automatically moved to the next level and placed near the starting glyph. Heroes who were in town stay in town at the start of the level and would have to move through the glyph to come in.

I wonder if that was an intended change or not.

Big Remy said:

One wonders. Kind of makes sense, though starting the level in town means, at worst, that you have to spend one or two movement points to move out of the portal and to where you'd normally have been deployed.

Thanks for the answer on the portal / glyph stuff; I missed the bit about moving to the next level once everyone is off the board completely.

Heroes cannot linger in town between dungeons (nor at the end) for an undetermined amount of time. Once one hero has entered the portal, if all the other heroes are in town, then the next level starts.

I'm like Edroz and always thought that the third level was the same as 1st/2nd, in that one hero enters the portal and the others can go to town or enter the portal as well. I *still* think that's right, though I can see how it can be argued both ways. Here's the text in question:

" The Portal
Beyond the red rune-locked door on each
level is a portal leading to the next level.
Once a hero steps onto the portal map piece,
he is removed from the board and becomes
invulnerable to harm. Heroes remain thusly
in transit until all of them either enter the
portal or move to town, at which point all of
the heroes are moved to the next level.

The Third Level
The master of each dungeon location’s third level is the
dungeon leader. The dungeon leader has the same stats as a
normal leader, but when the dungeon leader is killed the heroes
receive 250 coins and 4 conquest tokens (rather than 100 and
2, respectively).

Additionally, when the heroes go through the portal on the third
level, they do not emerge at a deeper dungeon level, but instead
return to the surface. When they do this, they must mark that
dungeon location as explored on the campaign sheet, and may
then may either place the party marker in Tamalir, or leave it
on the Terrinoth map space where the just-defeated dungeon is
located." pg 18 of RtL book

It's the last paragraph that states "when the heroes go through the portal" that makes it easy to say that all heroes must go through the last portal and not have the option of being in town. However, the continuation of that sentence ("they do not emerge at a deeper dungeon level") makes me wonder if this is just poor word choice, since there is never a time when *all* heroes have to enter the portal to go to "a deeper dungeon level". IMHO, one hero enters the portal, the other 3 can either go to town or enter the portal as well.

-shnar

Cymbaline said:

I don't really see how the text you've bolded indicates what you think it does. It simply says "when the heroes go through the portal". Without using the word "all" before "the heroes" I really don't think that sentence is indicating that every hero in the party has to travel through the portal on the third level in order to complete the dungeon. I think "the heroes" in that sentence is simply referring to the hero party in general, not specifically meaning "every single individual hero within the party". It would also be strange that the rules would work differently for portals on the first two levels than on the third, so I believe Big Remy's interpratation of the rules is correct.

As for why the rules in SoB are worded differently I don't really know. I've always thought it strange that all the heroes in town were magically put back in the dungeon at the start of a new level, but whether they are intended to work differently or one set of the rules had a printing error I have no idea.

Kartigan said:

It makes sense in light of me having missed some of the text that Remy pointed out to me (specifically "Heroes remain in transit until all the heroes enter the portal or use a glyph to move to town, at which point all of the heroes are moved to the next level." ). Having read that text, I'll agree with you and Remy.

Cymbaline said:

No problem.

I'm really curious about the change in wording. Next time my group plays we'll have to play it this way and see what happens.

Kartigan said:

+1

Cymbaline said:

+1

When a member or multiple members of the party glyphs out to heal at the temple don't they automatically always end up in Tamalir and thus have access to the Temple there with its 5 rating? Or can they be anchored to other cities and thus have to use the facilities there?

In Road To Legend, the heroes only "glyph" to Tamalir, no other town. Tamalir has the Obelisk of... something (cannot remember name) which is how the heroes are teleporting between the dungeon and town. In Sea of Blood however, the heroes can travel to a different city and make that the home port, so glyphing to town is not limited to just one town, it will change throughout the campaign.

-shnar

I'm aware that this isn't how the rules are actually worded, but we've always played it that as soon as at least one hero goes through the portal, the level will end once all heroes are off the map. Whether they leave through the portal or a glyph, once they're all gone it's done. We apply this to all levels of a dungeon, including the last, and on the last one we still let them chose Tamalir or previous location.

This of course begs the question of how the heroes in Tamalir got back to the wilderness location so fast if they choose that route, to which we always answer "it's Descent, it doesn't make sense anyway."

Again, I'm aware this is not what the rules say at all, but it keeps things moving and helps to prevent silly ideas like healing up in town with no one in the dungeon. The heroes can still do that, of course, but they'd have to do it before anyone went into the portal, which means they still have to fight their way to the portal, if nothing else, after having left the dungeon unoccupied for however many turns. I suppose this qualifies as a house rule, so I guess I'm not as pure as I thought I was, but I don't think this ruling gives either side a significant advantage in general, and it helps quash a number of twinkish ideas.

Steve-O said:

But it is worded that way, at the very least it's quite clearly worded that once 1 hero goes through a portal, as soon as all the other heroes have either A) gone through the portal too or B) gone to town, then that dungeon level ends. The only ambiguity is the last level glosses over what it means by "ending" the third level of a dungeon. IMHO, it's evident that the last level ends just like the other levels.

The only question I have is how soon does the dungeon end? For example, let's say 3 heroes are in town and 1 in the dungeon at the start of the hero's turn. The one in the dungeon goes first, enters the portal. The other 3 are in town but have not yet taken their turn. When does the level end and start back up, after all the heroes have taken their turn? Or after the "end conditions" are met (i.e. in my example, the 3 heroes in town would not get their turn). I think we play that the level ends at the end of all hero turns, then if conditions have been met, start the next dungeon.

Steve-O said:

Just think of it this way, the very beginning of the dungeon there's a glyph. Any heroes at town when the dungeon ends just port back to that glyph, walk out the front door and seal the dungeon shut.

-shnar

shnar said:

As for your question about how soon the dungeon ends, it ends IMMEDIATELY once the condition is met. If the heroes play it out like in your example, that's just poor tactical judgement on their part. Descent is about making tactical and strategic desicions both for heroes as individuals and as a group. RTL and SOB make these judgements even more important and if poor eecisions are made, learn from them.

As an OL, I don't like the way dungeons levels end to begin with. They will always end on the heroes turn AND the next level always starts on the heroes turn- they get a free turn!

:-)

I'm not so sure about that. The rules state that they are "in transit until all of them [the heroes] either enter the portal or move to town, at which point all of the heroes are moved to the next level." So, if I were to put my rules-lawyer hat on, if a hero starts his turn in town, he hasn't moved to town and so doesn't match the end-level-conditions. Granted, that's being nitpicky, I'm just not sure it's meant to end the dungeon immediately.

Either way, our group is a little more relaxed than that. If the actions could have been done and the players just did them in the wrong order (and nothing the OL could do to change it through his own actions) then we allow it. So in our example, even if it's immediate, we'd still allow it, since the heroes could have gone in a different order (i.e. the 3 in town first, then the 1 in dungeon running away).

In any case, I was just posting this since it's not entirely clear if the heroes get to finish out their turn or not...

-shnar

shnar said:

Interesting, but I think your reasoning produces a different conclusion.

RtL Rules:

Once a hero steps onto the portal map piece, he is removed from the board and becomes invulnerable to harm. Heroes remain thusly in transit until all of them either enter the portal or move to town, at which point all of the heroes are moved to the next level.

If you read this literally, being in town isn't an end-level condition, but the act of moving to town is. So if a hero is already in town when the first hero steps onto the portal, that hero in town would not be eligible to exit the level until he returned to the dungeon and either stepped onto the portal or went back to town again. So the heroes in town would still get to take their turns, but that's because the level isn't actually finished yet at the end of that round.

Also, do all of the heroes have to move to town on the same turn? Or do all of the heroes simply have to move to town at some point after the first hero steps on the portal? Let's say (after hero #1 goes through the portal) hero #2 goes to town, then comes back to the dungeon. Then, on a later turn, heroes #3 and #4 go to town. Does the level now end because all 4 heroes have fulfilled the end condition, even though #2 is currently in the dungeon?

mahkra said:

Well, according to fleeing a dungeon:

"To do this, they must simply all return to Tamalir at the same time (via glyphs of transport – see “Using Buildings” on page 21) and announce that
they’re fleeing the dungeon."

So in order to flee a dungeon, all there heroes must all huddle around a glyph at the end of a previous turn and all glyph to town at once????

It's the same reasoning just using "return" instead of "move" You can't seriously be suggesting that in order to flee a dungeon they all have to glyph to town on the same turn are you?

the wording "at which point all of the heroes are moved to the next level" indicates that as soon as the conditions of ending the level are met, the next level starts and the heroes are setup in the dungeon.

This is Descent... rules-lawyer hats aren't permitted ;-)