If a hero has a shield and cloak, can he choose which one to use first for preventing damage from an attack? I think we've always done the shield first, for no reason that I can recall, but it just occurred to me that that's a sub-optimal play if the hero can actually use the items in any order.

We've always done that the hero can pick, so cloak then shield, but I don't know what the official word, if any, is.

We've always done the shield first, then the cloak. Shields cancel wounds "being dealt" and cloaks cancel wounds "you suffer." While it's a stretch, especially considering how non-technical the Descent rules are, that seems to indicate that shields work on incoming wounds whereas cloaks protect against the ones that make it though.

In our group heroes choose. Naturally they choose cloak first, then shield.

James McMurray said:

Thanks James, I guess there was a reason. I couldn't remember why my group had decided shields should go first, but re-reading the cards and the Attacking section of the JitD rules with your comments in mind, the intent that shields are supposed to go first seems clear to me. (It's ambiguous enough that I could see it going either way, but this is good enough for me.)

Even if you buy James' reasoning for shields (which I don't), you still have to deal with Corbin's ability, which is worded more like a cloak.

Last time this was discussed on the forums, the best we came up with was (ab)using the FAQ ruling that the hero can choose the order of "start-of-turn" effects to say the hero should be able to choose the order whenever multiple things affect him simultaneously.

Antistone said:

This line of reasoning is where my vote goes. "wounds being dealt" vs "wounds you suffer" is close enough to be the same thing, IMHO. Descent is known for not using consistent terminology and these two things sound essentially the same to me. Trying to make them different sounds like splitting hairs. If we accept that both of these trigger conditions are the same, then both items trigger at the same time, so I'd say you can use them in any order you like.

The two terms do sound pretty much the same, but the exact same progression in terminology (wounds dealt, then wounds suffered) occurs in the Attack section of the JitD rules. I certainly don't think there's sufficient support for a definite answer, but I think there's enough to show intent. Because it is ambiguous, I have to make an assumption in my interpretation either way, so I'm going to go with what I think the designers intended, even if it's not spelled out very well.

As for Corbin's ability, I've always done that last and can't think of any reason to do it differently.

IMO the biggest problem with the various cloaks (even the gold one) isn't their power or the timing concerns, but their annoyance factor. Whether they make a character harder to kill is subservient in my mind to their ability to make a character incredibly more annoying to kill. I tend to completely ignore characters wearing one just to avoid the excess die rolling, assuming there's not another viable target. Since conquest is conquest, there's rarely a point where you have to actually kill character X in order to gain it.

Granted, we've played mostly advanced campaigns recently, where exactly which character dies tends to be less of an issue because it's not going to end the dungeon either way. I can see how the "pay 'em no mind" strategy is less useful in a vanilla game where the way to win is more tied up in the here-and-now tactics and less in the long-term strategy.