Couple of question from my playgroup (LoS, Conquest, etc.)

By Eruletho, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Allright, we just ground through 7 or so hours of RtL and back, and came up with a few questions the various rulebooks are unclear on. Kinda hoping some of you may be able to shine the light and help us out:

LoS: Can heroes draw line of sight through their allies for attacking? Can heroes draw LoS through their allies for the purpose of keeping the OL from spawning? How about through enemies for either of the above? Can the OL draw LoS through his friendly creatures, enemy heroes, or neither/both?

Conquest: In RtL specifically, why does it seem so hard for the OL to get a decent amount of conquest? I was the OL in today's game, and I had about 46 conquest when we stopped. All 4 heroes, by our reckoning, had 50, bringing the hero side to 200 to my measly 46... was I forgetting things or just really bad? I was getting conquest at the start of each week (we only played 5 weeks though, so not alot to gain there), whenever I killed a hero, and that was about it. I never cycled my deck, though I know that's a way to do it. Am I missing something?

Another question that I had that actually relates to the rules is for glyphs: When a hero uncovers a glyph, does just that hero gain the XP/Conquest for it, or does everyone? It didn't come up in the RtL rulebook, and I couldn't find anything about it in the FAQ.

Any help would be vastly appreciated!

All figures block LOS for purposes of attacks, but never for purposes of spawning, regardless of alliance. Heroes can't attack through heroes, monsters can't attack through monsters, and heroes can see through both monsters and other heroes to prevent spawning.

Also note that figures do not block LOS when determining the area affected by a Blast attack; only when tracing LOS to the central target square.

I think your problem with conquest is that you're tracking it wrong: the heroes have a single collective pool of conquest, not 4 separate pools for individual heroes. I think the heroes get separate XP pools, each equal to the party's conquest (though I'm a bit fuzzy on RtL mechanics), but conquest is definitely only awarded to the party, not to individuals.

LOS:

Can heroes draw line of sight through their allies/monsters for attacking? No in both cases, unless they have the Precision skill then they can ignore one figure or obstacle.

Can heroes draw LoS through their allies/monsters for the purpose of keeping the OL from spawning? Allies: No. Monsters: Yes. Monsters do not block heroes LOS for spawning as per pg12 of the JitD rulebook.

Can the OL draw LoS through his friendly creatures, enemy heroes, or neither/both? The OL has to follow the same LOS rules as the heroes so you can't draw LOS through your own monsters or enemy heroes unless you have a skill that let's you do so.

Conquest: That would be because you are calculating conquest wrong gran_risa.gif The PARTY gains Conquest. So your heroes have 50 right now, not 200. Whenever a heroes does something that gains Conquest (like kill a leader or activate a glyph for example) the PARTY gains Conquest. Then at the end of the dungeon or game week, that Conquest is converted to Experience that each hero gains. In your case, the hero PARTY has 50 Conquest (which is what determines the Campaign Level) and each HERO has 50XP (which they can spend for Training and other upgrades).

Glyphs: Its exactly the same as the base rules, the heroes gain 3 conquest for the PARTY, which then later translates into 3XP for each hero.

In all cases for RtL, unless there is a specific rule overriding something from the JitD base game, the base game's rules apply.

Big Remy said:

Can heroes draw LoS through their allies/monsters for the purpose of keeping the OL from spawning? Allies: No. Monsters: Yes. Monsters do not block heroes LOS for spawning as per pg12 of the JitD rulebook.

Hadn´t there been a clarification that all figures (monsters, heros, villagers) are ignored for spawning purposes? I couldn´t find that again (FAQ and GLoAQ seem to be silent about that), did I make that up in my mind?

I thought that "all figures" was always the rule, but since the PDF agrees with Big Remy I was going to wait and check my printed rulebook to see if it's one of those details that got changed before release (as the rules PDF is older than dirt and never gets updated).

My printed rulebook agrees with what Remy says, only Monsters fail to block LoS when spawning. We've always played that other heroes still can block LoS when the OL spawns, though maybe my rulebook is outdated.

I thought there was a rule-update that says all figures and tokens don't block LOS in purposes of spawning. This rule-update has come up in regard of the question if villagers in RTL block LOS in purposes of spawning. But maybe I just err and confound my memories.

If figures und especially villagers do block LOS, every villager is a death-trap if he stands close to a hero.

Anybody else with some useful input or some recollections about the mentioned clarifications?

We have "The Monastery" (Lvl 27) coming up tomorrow and I have a nice Silver Hellhound spawn card in my hand that I would like to use properly demonio.gif

Parathion said:

Anybody else with some useful input or some recollections about the mentioned clarifications?

We have "The Monastery" (Lvl 27) coming up tomorrow and I have a nice Silver Hellhound spawn card in my hand that I would like to use properly demonio.gif

It was on the GLOAQ in the previous board and got lost in the changeover.

This, from Thundercles, in a previous discussion (the forum search software actually works now).

Re: Rules Question : Descent‏
From: kevinw ([email protected])
Sent: Fri 7/11/08 9:54 AM
To: [MY EMAIL WAS HERE]

No, figures never block line of sight for spawning purposes .

On Jul 11, 2008, at 3:26 AM, [MY NAME AND STUFF] wrote:

> Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
> [MY NAME AND ALSO EMAIL] on Friday, July 11, 2008 at
> 03:26:14
> -
>
>
> questionfor: Descent
>
> question: Do any figures block the heroes' line of sight for the
> purposes of spawning?

Big Remy said:

Can heroes draw LoS through their allies/monsters for the purpose of keeping the OL from spawning? Allies: No. Monsters: Yes. Monsters do not block heroes LOS for spawning as per pg12 of the JitD rulebook.

As per the very old official answer from FFG, the rulebook is slightly incorrect and no figures block LOS for spawning. At the time the rulebook was written, monsters and heroes were the only figures. Monsters didn;t block LOS and heroes didn't make any difference since the 'blocking' hero would have LOS anyway (well, nearly all of the time and FFG are good enough at their own rules to figure out when it wouldn't).

Corbon said:

As per the very old official answer from FFG, the rulebook is slightly incorrect and no figures block LOS for spawning. At the time the rulebook was written, monsters and heroes were the only figures. Monsters didn;t block LOS and heroes didn't make any difference since the 'blocking' hero would have LOS anyway (well, nearly all of the time and FFG are good enough at their own rules to figure out when it wouldn't).

+1, Corbon beat me to this answer. I had never noticed the discrepancy in the rulebook, but honestly I'm having trouble thinking of a scenario where Hero A could block Hero B's LoS to a space which Hero A doesn't have LoS to himself anyway. Even so, I'm glad someone found a clarification on that because it seems overly anal to me to say you can see through monsters but not other heroes.

Steve-O said:

but honestly I'm having trouble thinking of a scenario where Hero A could block Hero B's LoS to a space which Hero A doesn't have LoS to himself anyway.

Just to prevent Steve-O's head hurting...

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X2X1RXX

Hero 1 can't see monster M because of Rubble R. Hero 2 could see Monster M if Hero 1 was not present, but Hero 1 blocks Hero 2s LOS to Monster M.