Hey guys,
I'm playing as Mad Carthos and just got the magic Rune Word of Vaal.
The Word of Vaal states "Attacks with the Word of Vaal affect all enemy figures within 3 spaces of your hero and only miss on a miss result."
So here's my question, does this card only damage those within the 3 spaces or can my hero still target enemies outside of this space as long as he gets the range?
The card's not entirely clear, but my inclination is to limit it to targets within 3 squares. Also, "only misses on a miss result" is an oversimplification; it ignores range, but can still miss due to Fear, etc. (this was officially erratad for the Trueshot relic, which uses similar wording; FAQ p. 9).
It's still the strongest weapon in the game by a considerable margin. Some people have posted to this forum saying they removed it from their games because they thought it was too powerful.
Actually I feel the card's effect is quite obviously a bonus feature... You still attack normally, with no limitations to 3 spaces. The 3 spaces thingy is an additional attack on all enemies near you.
Antistone said:
The card's not entirely clear, but my inclination is to limit it to targets within 3 squares. Also, "only misses on a miss result" is an oversimplification; it ignores range, but can still miss due to Fear, etc. (this was officially erratad for the Trueshot relic, which uses similar wording; FAQ p. 9).
It's still the strongest weapon in the game by a considerable margin. Some people have posted to this forum saying they removed it from their games because they thought it was too powerful.
I agree about limiting it to the three spaces. Regardless of what space you actually attempt to target, it still seems that the spaces affected by the attack are those defined by the card (ie all enemy figures within 3 spaces) and therefore not those 'normally' affected by the attack.
I do find it strange when people complain about its power and remove it from their game. It is the least useful of the gold level magic weapons IMO. Your mage has to get in amongst the bad guys to use it, which means he probably is attacking once at most. And it is not particularly strong against bosses, but still kills most non-bosses making the stun near-useless.
Compare with:
Curse of Rot - only affects one space but has a green dice in place of a yellow and more or less ignores armour, so really smashes the tough monsters with trivial ease
Flame Strike - Blast2, Burn, ~~ for more blast or burn, Green dice in place of yellow (much better), almost as good AoE with Blast 2 and optional increase and Burn effects as well. Main disdvantage is that it can affect friends as well, but at least it has range capability so you can battle from a distance - and it really isn't that hard to manipulate the target space and friendly figures so that you avoid hitting friends
Staff of Knowledge - same dice, 2 free surges,
can reduce the OLs threat
- this is the worst weapon in the game IMO, for the OL.
Star of Kellos - green dice for yellow, and prevents all undying within 6 spaces. This is also one-handed, which allows the mage to carry a shield and makes a big difference to survivability.
Admittedly most of my play these days is Advanced Campaign, but even in vanilla dungeons I think I'd pick WoV as my least desired gold magic weapon.
Wanderer999 said:
Actually I feel the card's effect is quite obviously a bonus feature... You still attack normally, with no limitations to 3 spaces. The 3 spaces thingy is an additional attack on all enemies near you.
It doesn't say 'additionally'.
It just says that the attack affects these spaces.
Corbon said:
but still kills most non-bosses making the stun near-useless.
Oh horrors! The Stun might not help if the affected monsters instantly die! How weak!
The other gold weapons aren't exactly terrible, but it's really hard to top AoE, at least in vanilla. Word of Vaal has the largest AoE, it ignores line-of-sight, and it excludes allies, which makes it very easy to use in anything but a huge open area, and makes it a lot easier to delay your attacks (e.g. with a Guard order) without interfering with your allies' actions.
If you can hit 3 monsters at once, it outdamages the Curse of Rot against ALL unnamed monsters except master demons (in vanilla); if you blanket one new area as it's revealed with that giant AoE, the Curse of Rot will probably never catch up. The Stun is just a consolation prize on pathological rolls.
Corbon said:
It doesn't say 'additionally'.
It just says that the attack affects these spaces.
Which could be interpreted either as a definitional statement ("the set of figures affected by this attack is ...") or as a bonus ability, like Burn or Knockback, that builds on the attack's basic effect ("whatever else happens, the attack always affects these figures..."). The card is genuinely ambiguous, there are no similar effects to compare it with, and, as far as I know, no official clarification. You just have to arbitrarily pick something.
If a skill said "exhaust when making an attack; that attack has the Burn and Knockback abilities" you would probably interpret that as meaning that they have those abilities in addition to whatever abilities the attack would otherwise have; it's a bonus, not a definitional statement.
On the other hand, if a skill card said "exhaust when making an attack; that attack rolls the red die, two green dice, and your melee trait dice," you would probably interpret that as replacing your normal attack dice. It's grammatically identical, but the implication is different because of our background knowledge about how attack dice and attack abilities work in Descent.
Antistone said:
Corbon said:
but still kills most non-bosses making the stun near-useless.
Oh horrors! The Stun might not help if the affected monsters instantly die! How weak!
The other gold weapons aren't exactly terrible, but it's really hard to top AoE, at least in vanilla. Word of Vaal has the largest AoE, it ignores line-of-sight, and it excludes allies, which makes it very easy to use in anything but a huge open area, and makes it a lot easier to delay your attacks (e.g. with a Guard order) without interfering with your allies' actions.
If you can hit 3 monsters at once, it outdamages the Curse of Rot against ALL unnamed monsters except master demons (in vanilla); if you blanket one new area as it's revealed with that giant AoE, the Curse of Rot will probably never catch up. The Stun is just a consolation prize on pathological rolls.
Oh dear, pick the weakest subsidiary factor in an argument and think it all falls apart....
Sure it can shatter an entire new area, but you have to get into that new area to blanket it.
Whereas Flame Strike will probably blanket the new area just as effectively, with far less (often none) movement required and do more damage to boot. All you have to do is avoid friends, which is usually trivially easy to do in a new area...
It is also extremely rare to be getting gold items and then opening areas that are not the final boss'. Which means that the highest priority left in the new area is almost always to kill the boss. All of the other gold magic weapons do that better, most of them much, much better.
It's still a good weapon, but as an OL I'm much happier seeing WoV come out than seeing any other gold magic weapon. By the time gold wepons are coming out the heroes are already clearing rooms with ease mostly, so an enhanced room clearer is far less worrying than a high damage dealing weapon.
Don't get me wrong, WoV is still a really nice weapon to have. It just makes me laugh when people claim it to be so overpowered that they remove it from their games, yet pretty much every weapon you can get in gold is just as good in one way or another.
Antistone said:
Corbon said:
It doesn't say 'additionally'.
It just says that the attack affects these spaces.
Which could be interpreted either as a definitional statement ("the set of figures affected by this attack is ...") or as a bonus ability, like Burn or Knockback, that builds on the attack's basic effect ("whatever else happens, the attack always affects these figures..."). The card is genuinely ambiguous, there are no similar effects to compare it with, and, as far as I know, no official clarification. You just have to arbitrarily pick something.
If a skill said "exhaust when making an attack; that attack has the Burn and Knockback abilities" you would probably interpret that as meaning that they have those abilities in addition to whatever abilities the attack would otherwise have; it's a bonus, not a definitional statement.
On the other hand, if a skill card said "exhaust when making an attack; that attack rolls the red die, two green dice, and your melee trait dice," you would probably interpret that as replacing your normal attack dice. It's grammatically identical, but the implication is different because of our background knowledge about how attack dice and attack abilities work in Descent.
Exactly, which is why it's not 'arbitrarily' picked. We do have prior background knowledge - there is a similar ability, breath.
Attacks with the Word of Vaal affect all enemy figures within 3 spaces of your hero and only miss on a miss result.
We know from the Breath special ability that Attacks with the Breath ability use the Breath template to determine which spaces they affect ... all figures underneath the template (friendly and enemy) are affected by the attack and that this replaces the normal attack on a targeted space. It is also pretty much exactly the same wording when you look at it (apart from friends being affected by breath).
Corbon said:
Speaking of, the similarity to breath tends to make me think that WoV is an either-or ability, which is to say you can attack one creature like normal with range and all of that, or you can use the "template" of "within three spaces". But both is right out.
Corbon said:
Exactly, which is why it's not 'arbitrarily' picked. We do have prior background knowledge - there is a similar ability, breath.
Attacks with the Word of Vaal affect all enemy figures within 3 spaces of your hero and only miss on a miss result.
We know from the Breath special ability that Attacks with the Breath ability use the Breath template to determine which spaces they affect ... all figures underneath the template (friendly and enemy) are affected by the attack and that this replaces the normal attack on a targeted space. It is also pretty much exactly the same wording when you look at it (apart from friends being affected by breath).
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for Breath), that is substantially different wording.
"attacks...affect all enemy figures..."
"attacks...use the Breath template to determine which spaces they affect..."
Breath is explicitly changing the algorithm for determining affected spaces. Word of Vaal just says that certain spaces are affected. The equivalent wording for Breath would be "Attacks with the Breath ability affect all figures underneath the Breath template when placed..."
There are actually a ton of abilities that change which spaces an attack affects, but none of them seem all that helpful:
Even if you found something that should clearly work the same way as Word of Vaal, unless you also find a second description of the same effect that is more explicit, you've only proved that they should both work the same way, not which way that should be.
Honestly, if someone challenged me about the ability or attack dice examples from my last post, I'm not sure I could defend them, either. We're into territory where interpretations of the wording are based on subtle inferences drawn from huge networks of interlocking rules and background knowledge. I don't know how you can actually make a cogent argument one way or the other if someone disagrees with you.