Hi all,

some questions came up when we last played Road to Legend:

- Persisting potions: What happens if you still have an active invisibility/power potion at the end of an encounter/dungeon? I would say it is gone without effect, as the rules state that all effect tokens except curse or poisen are discarded.

- Is there anything the heroes can do when they arrive at a secret master location (e.g. as a "visit" action)? I could not find anything. Exactly what can you do there if you spend a whole week of game time. Of course there is the +Health/+Fatigue training. I also recall that you can train any trait. I think somewhere in the rules it also says that you can, for 50 gold, heal all wounds and fatigue. Anything else?

- Is there any circumstance when an item from the item deck is removed from the game? If you find a treasure cache card in a chest, is it just reshuffled into the deck? That way, you could create a deck that only consists of tresure caches, which would mean drawing cards never stops... What if you use a crystal of tival? Is it returned to the box, gone from the game, or does it return to the deck?

- Boosting power dice with fatigue: When you spend fatigue to boost power dice, what is the limit? For example, at bronze level, if you have 3 black dice, can you spend 3 fatigue to upgrade to 4 black and 1 silver dice? If you have 5 black dice, can you upgrade to silver? Do you have to upgrade before the roll, or can you "re-roll" one or more of your black dice as a silver die. I would assume the limit for boosting is the same as the one appropriate for the campaign level as permanent upgrades.

- If two heroes are in a town during a dungeon exploration, what exactly can they do besides visiting a building each turn? If they want to rest or exchange equipment, do they have to choose a run or ready action and do it according to movement points? I couldn't find anything about spending movement points in town. Is visiting a building a half-action, or does it take your whole turn.

- Ready action and leadership skill: Could you take more then on of your three half-actions to place multiple orders on different heroes? If so, must these be different orders or could you give three guards to three members of the party?

Thanks for the help!

Recalled more:

-Area effects and Stealth and/or Dodge: If one guy in an area template (e.g. breath) has the stealth ability, and and "x" is rolled on the stealth die, does it save everybody under the template? If one or more guys have the dodge order, the rules state that only on can ask for dice to be rerolled. If that results in an "x" (or lower damage or whatever) does it affect everbody under the template?

-Larger dungeon levels: How are the few dungeon levels (for example rumor levels) handled with regard of setup? Are areas set up only when revealed by first opening the door, as in vanilla descent? Or is everything set up from the start, as with normal dungeon levels? If so, can the overlord open doors to "unrevealed" areas or can he spawn there?

MiB1975 said:

Correct. It ends when you leave the dungeon.

MiB1975 said:

I think you've covered it. I personally had forgotten about the healing bit.

MiB1975 said:

Items are only removed from the game if an effect says to place it in the graveyard. Otherwise it is placed in a discard pile which gets reshuffled if the draw pile runs out. Same goes for treasure caches, crystals, etc.

MiB1975 said:

The only limit is how much fatigue you have to spend. There are caps on how high you can train your trait dice per campaign level, but fatigue upgrades (and other abilities that provide upgrades, like Sir Valadir) aren't limited except by what you're willing to spend. You must finalize the colour of a power die before rolling it. For example, you may roll RGYBBB as your base attack and then spend two fatigue to add either 2B or 1S. Assuming you go with the 1S you could later spend another 3 fatigue to roll 1G as well. You may not spend fatigue to upgrade a B to an S after having rolled the B.

MiB1975 said:

Town works differently in RtL/SoB than it did in vanilla. I think the only thing you can do is visit a building and you have to return to the dungeon to trade stuff, but I could be wrong about that.

MiB1975 said:

It's been a while since I looked at Leadership, but I was always of the impression that you could only place one order with it, either on yourself or someone else.

-Area effects and Stealth and/or Dodge: If one guy in an area template (e.g. breath) has the stealth ability, and and "x" is rolled on the stealth die, does it save everybody under the template? If one or more guys have the dodge order, the rules state that only on can ask for dice to be rerolled. If that results in an "x" (or lower damage or whatever) does it affect everbody under the template?

If a Dodge changes the result of an attack, it affects all targets in the AoE. That's also how things work in general for other re-rolls like Aim or Lyssa and Trenloe's abilities. If the Stealth die rolls an X, the attack will only miss the figure with Stealth, everyone else will be hit as normal. That's a special case spelled out by the Stealth ability.

Now that I think about it, I'm not sure what happens when multiple figures have Stealth, but I'm inclined to think the single Stealth die roll would apply to all Stealthy figures affected by an attack.

-Larger dungeon levels: How are the few dungeon levels (for example rumor levels) handled with regard of setup? Are areas set up only when revealed by first opening the door, as in vanilla descent? Or is everything set up from the start, as with normal dungeon levels? If so, can the overlord open doors to "unrevealed" areas or can he spawn there?

These dungeon areas are treated exactly as in vanilla, as far as I know. The triangle points on the doors indicate division of Areas. Remember that the spawn marker flips up each time a new area is revealed. That one's easy to forget when 90% of the dungeon levels are one area apiece.

MiB1975 said:

Correct

MiB1975 said:

RtL pg20
If the hero party ends their game-week movement in a Secret Master Area, nothing happens immediately .
There is no 'visit' action at a secret master area, though I understand you may have been referring to the 'visit' action in an explanatory fashion.
RtL pg20
However, if the heroes choose a Recuperate/Train action while at a Secret Master Area, they have the option to improve their maximum wounds or maximum fatigue . See “Secret Training” on page 23 for detailed information. Heroes can also opt to learn skills or improve their traits at Secret Master Areas, in similar fashion to training at a city’s Training Ground.
You may get a secret master upgrade (wounds or fatigue), train skills (check the list of what skills can be trained where) or train traits. There are no buildings, so you can't shop at a market or alchemist, can't heal at a temple, nor go to a Tavern for a rumour.
You may not heal at a secret master. Originally there was a recuperate action that you could do anywhere on the map. However this was effectively removed, although the reference on pg10 was not edited out. The GLOAQ clarified this.
GLOAQ
2, Can a party still pay to recuperate when in the wilderness?
snip
2. You have to be in town to heal.

It is worth noting that training tokens are restricted to what comes with eth game, as are fatigue tokens (24 or 25 IIRC). THese are actually very important restrictions even though they seem minor and annoying. Especially the fatigue. Your party may train so that they have more combined fatigue that the counters allow, but someone will always have to be short.

MiB1975 said:

Only when something is explicitly sent to the graveyard is it removed. Yes, a treasure card in a chest is just reshuffled, though not until the end of that 'draw' (normally 'actions' don't get interrupted and there is no reason why the treasure draw should be interrupted and the obvious one why not), so it can't be redrawn immediately. We don;t in fact get explicit instructions on when to reshuffle decks except that treasures sold at the mrket are reshuffled into their deck in a manner that suggests immediately (so they could be found in a chest in the next heroes turn in the dungeon). Treasures not purchased at a market are explicitly reshuffled at teh end of the week (because they remain in the market all week).

MiB1975 said:

The limit is 5 dice total. 5 Gold dice obviously. And of course, your fatigue, noting that you can't 'interrupt' the attack to drink a fatigue potion.
The rulebook as actually perfectly clear on pg 24, you just need to follow it closely. You may spend fatigue, one at a time, to add a (black) dice or to upgrade a dice. Technically if you want to add a gold dice you actually add a black dice, upgrade that black dice to silver and then upgrade that silver dice to gold. "A hero can do this as often as he likes, as long as a given power die is upgraded before being rolled."
It gets more complicated when you add in dodge/aim, but see FAQ pg7 for that.

MiB1975 said:

Your whole turn. There is no spending MP in town - you never get any except the turn you leave town. This also means you can't exchange equipment, as it costs MP which can not get (not even by spending fatigue. A restock action just takes your whole turn to restock. Thats it, nothing else.
FAQ pg15
Q: Can a hero traveling to town via a glyph take any action before Restocking, such as attacking? Does returning from town still cost 1 MP? What other limits are placed on heroes in town and using glyphs?
A: A hero who begins his turn adjacent to or on top of an activated glyph has two options: take a normal turn or go to town. If he goes to town, he is immediately moved to the building of his choice and gets to Restock there. No movement points, no declared action – he just Restocks.
A hero who begins his turn in town has two options: Restock again (at the same or a different building) or return to the dungeon. If he returns to the dungeon, he declares a normal action (Battle, Ready, Advance, Run) and then must spend a movement point to move from town to the dungeon, just like normal. If he somehow can't do so (i.e. he Battled and had no fatigue left) then the entire action is canceled and the hero Restocks instead.

MiB1975 said:

No. Even the actual definition of Leadership wouldn't let you do this as it requires a Ready action, which only gives you one order and ether move or attack, not two orders.
Leadership has been further defined to require three different half-actions - it can only be one move, one attack and one order.
FAQ pg1
You may not choose the same half action twice with Leadership. It is not possible to place an order on another figure and an order on the figure with Leadership. It is possible for a hero with Leadership to give another hero a Rest order, and then have that hero activate and recover full fatigue on their turn in the same round that the order was placed.

MiB1975 said:

ToI pg7
When a single attack roll would affect multiple figures (for example, an attack using Blast, Breath, or Sweep), and any of those figures have Stealth, a single stealth die is included in the attack roll, but the stealth die’s result is used only for the figures that currently have Stealth

Apart from the stealth die though, the same result is used for all figure affected by the attack. So yes, one guy dodging an AoE attack will help everybody. Equally, one monster with Fear that causes the attack to fail protects all the monsters from that attack.
It's pretty simple, there are virtually no 'memory states' in this game - everything s represented by a marker or card etc. So if you have to reroll dice, you never have to 'remember' what they were for some purposes - they are rerolled for everything.

MiB1975 said:

Exactly as per the normal rules. Where Areas are defined then they operate exactly as they do in vanilla. See pg31 for area definition.
In short, areas are only setup when revealed and the OL cannot open doors to unrevealed areas nor spawn there.

Go to the Descent support page on FFGs site and get the FAQ. Also get the other rules as they are pdf searchable which makes a huge difference in finding stuff. But be aware the basic rulebook pdf is an old version that contains several errors.

Great answers Corbon,

I realize that having a searchable pdf of the faq and manual is a good thing, but I still resist the urge to have notebook next to me when playing Descent, so we still end up browsing the faq during sessions (and overlooking things that are there).

The good thing is that in most cases my intuition seems right

Two more questions came up yesterday:

- Multiple Lieutenants in a single area: I think the situation with multiple lieutenants in a town is clear by the FAQ. If you had 2 Lieutenants at a town to which the heroes move would be like this:

1. Roll for encounter along the trail

2. Fight Lieutenant 1 (optional, heroes choice whom to attack)

3. Refill Fatigue etc. after encounter, but not health, killed heroes rejoin party unless TPK

4. Fight Lieutenant 2 (optional again)

5. Refill as per 3.

6. "Arrive" in Town and use "visit" action

I could not find any rules explaining what happens when you have the same situation at an unexplored dungeon location. I see no reason why not to replace 6. by "Start exploring the dungeon (also optional)".

At what point in the sequence would the party receive the 1 Conquest token for first visiting the dungeon? It is normally not important, only if that one CP would shift the campaign level to silver or gold...

- Question about treasure cache only deck: What happens if the heroes manage to reduce a treasure deck to only treasure cache cards (possible with the backpack treasure card) and then find a treasure in a dungeon?

- Large monster movement: I realize there is a pretty new forum entry to this, but is it clear now if a larger monster can "squeeze" through gaps caused by obstacles, such as water spaces, or stone?

MiB1975 said:

Agreed

MiB1975 said:

The moment the heroes party ends it's map movement (before it encounters the first Lt.
It still doesn;t actually make any difference as the campaign only ever changes during the Time Passes step of the Game Week (step 1, pg 10).

MiB1975 said:

They'd draw all of the remaining treasure cache cards, earning themselves a nice little pile of cash and or potions, then you'd have to decide whether the heroes had actually found a 'treasure' or not and should get a CT for 'not' finding a treasure. My personal inclination is that they should not - they did find a treasure - a treasure cache of 'caches' actually!

MiB1975 said:

No, it can not. There are frequent forum entries on this and the answer is always no. If you can't enter, you can't enter. This is backed up by changes to an outdoor encounter rule allowing large monsters to enter otherwise impassable trees.

Corbon said:

Seems like a reasonable solution, however one could argue that the drawing never stop - there is nothing that says the discard (now containing only treasure cache cards) and continue drawing. OMG, the game is broken

MiB1975 said:

You can wrongly argue that and break your game if you like (I realise you aren't).
But it is wrong. Treasure caches say to draw another card, they do not say to reshuffle first . You keep doing what the card says, and only what the card says, and then you run out of cards. End of draw. If you reshuffle before the end of teh draw, you are adding in a step that is not mentioned anywhere, and interrupting an un-interuptable action to do so as well.

If your reasoning is right it should apply to the following situation as well:

You have a lot of treasures in the discard pile, and only a few (lets say 2) remaining in the draw pile.

Hero opens chest and rolls two blanks. One of the cards drawn as a treasure is a treasure cache. By your reasoning the heroes would not get to replace the treasure. Same situation essentially, but I bet you no one will agree with that reasoning if it robs you of a treasure in a "regular" situation.

Point is moot anyway, we'll just stop drawing once we are through the deck once should we get into a "cache only" situation...

Corbon said:

Um... there's not exactly consensus on this issue... Corbon's answer is always no, but I don't read the rule that way, and Antistone has said that he thinks the FAQ ruling is "confusing and ambiguous".

EDIT - I don't intend to bring that discussion to this thread, though. There are 2 other threads (one very recent, which I may add to today if I have time at work) about the issue with plenty to read.

MiB1975 said:

I don't know how you managed to arrive at that conclusion!

If the heroes rolled two blanks and drew a treasure and a cache then they would draw a third card as instructed by the cache. Eventually they would get both of the treasures left in the deck.
But since the drawn caches are not being reshuffled into the deck before redrawing, if there were three blanks rolled then eventually there would be two treasures and a pile of treasure caches and no more deck. At that point it stops.

mahkra said:

No one has posited any remotely decent reason how the answer could possibly be yes (IMO, because there isn't one!)

You have complained that you don't like it but your reasoning why is backwards (you don't like it because of the way you read it into other things, not because it in itself is flawed). For further discussion, see the other thread.

Corbon said:

The possible reason is very simple - if a large monster can choose to ignore the rubble's effect, then he can enter the space. But that's a very big if, and that's part of the discussion for the other thread. And I admit I have been more concerned about the ramifications for non-rubble spaces, but if all you're given is one general rule, you have to interpret that rule the same way for everything. And I'm just not sure the logic that "makes sense" for rubble can be applied to everything.

I have realized that there are some problems with my own reasoning (which is why I like to discuss these things on the forums), but I haven't been able to put my thoughts into writing in a clear manner yet, mostly because the rule just doesn't make sense. It's one of those cases where the FAQ specified a result for us but did not give us a mechanic, and I'm having trouble coming up with a mechanic that actually produces that result.

I'll try to update that other thread sometime today. If I can actually get my thoughts sorted out enough to write up something, I'd definitely be interested in feedback.

Continued the campaign, new question:

Can you wield two shields?

I guess yes, unless you are One-fist

If so, can you still attack using a red die and your melee trait, such as an unarmed character can, or is it impossible to attack without changing equipment?

If it is impossible to attack, can you even announce an "advance" action without switching equipment at the start of your turn?

A hero may wield as many shields as his hands allow. So, yes. If a hero had 4 hands (wouldn't that be a weird hero), he could use 4 shields.

I was in a group that said you must have a hand free to punch someone. I've always played (after that group) that any hero always has the option to use the unarmed attack even if they are equiped with a weapon and both hands are taken up (or equipped with 2 shields). It's just simpler to me and it's rarely an issue. An unarmed attack is so weak anyway it rarely helps much.

The only time a hero couldn't declare an advance action is when they are stunned or monkeyed. Those are the only two I can think of anyway. If they had some condition on them that prevented attacking, they could still declare advance actions. They just couldn't use the attack it provides.

Solairflaire said:

+1 to all this.

You can definitely declare an advance action even if you are somehow not allowed to attack. There's no REQUIREMENT that you make an attack if you have one available, it's just an option. Of course, if you truly could not attack then declaring an Advance would be kind of silly. A Run or a Ready action would get you as much and more than an Advance with no possibility of attacking. That also goes in the much more likely scenario that there is simply nothing you can get in range to attack with a single move half-action.

And yes, we also play that you can make an unarmed attack regardless of equipment. You can still punch someone with a sword in your hand - it might even hurt a bit more with the added weight of the pommel behind your fingers. As for punching with shields, I believe the common fantasy term is "shield bash." =)

And another one...

can you spend movement points while in another characters square (e.g. to drink a potion, open a door, or change equipment)?

can you open a door from inside a pit (assuming the door is adjacent to the pit)?

Corbon said:

Well...

My group is entering the legendary dungeon on gold level campaign.

After finishing the dungeon we will be above 600 xp total.

We will be entering the Overlord's dungeon.

I have now just realized we have been playing incorrectly this entire time about treasure caches.

We had read it that ALL treasure caches were worth nothing during the game.

We thought that they were left in and only represented market shortages during market trips at towns.

This just goes to show how small little things like this are easy to overlook.

I also believe that the heroes and I are owed about 4000.........

MiB1975 said:

Yes and yes.

Just no transfer of an item to another hero in the same space, since that requires adjacency.

Hi all,

our Campaign is stil ongoing, and a couple of questions have come up. Possibly some of them have been answered already, but I'd like to keep all of it in one place. Here we go:

- Rapid Fire and Quick Casting Skills: Can you use these abilities during the Overlords turn (using Guard), providing you have enough fatigue (and in case of Quick Casting) the skill hasn't been used on the Heroes turn. There is nothing in the rules or FAQ we could find, so we allow it for now, but it seems extremely powerful

- Ascencion Plot: The initial Plot card states that the OL receives "5 extra Conquest" for each city razed. The city Vynelvale states that "no extra conquest" is earned for razing this city. This probably refers to the 1 extra Conquest/week/razed city the OL receives. Does the OL still receive the 5 Conquest when razing Vynelvale

- Caverns of Time Rumor Level: I am usually all in favor of the Heroes, but this Level seems quite (to) frustrating for the OL. "Warping" to the new area occurs whenever a Hero (also the first one) ends his turn on the hourglass/encountermarker, which means that the other 3 Heroes can stil take a turn in the next (fairly small) area. Spawning is not possible in the Area the heroes are in (they will alway have LOS to each square), is unneccesary in the already revealed areas since monsters have no way of "following" the heroes and not allowed in the yet unrevealed areas. So it is just a killfest for the Heroes, and one with 2 untriggered Glyphs to boost.

Also, with the default layout in Area1, it is impossible to place all 4 heroes adjacent to the encounter marker as asked for in the description. Is there an errate to the map we missed?

- Rapid Fire and Quick Casting Skills: Can you use these abilities during the Overlords turn (using Guard), providing you have enough fatigue (and in case of Quick Casting) the skill hasn't been used on the Heroes turn. There is nothing in the rules or FAQ we could find, so we allow it for now, but it seems extremely powerful

Yes, definitely.

- Ascencion Plot: The initial Plot card states that the OL receives "5 extra Conquest" for each city razed. The city Vynelvale states that "no extra conquest" is earned for razing this city. This probably refers to the 1 extra Conquest/week/razed city the OL receives. Does the OL still receive the 5 Conquest when razing Vynelvale

This is a question that comes up every now and then, and I'm not sure if there's an official answer (or even a board consensus). I'd say no, but that's just me and I'm not so married to the idea that I'd argue if the majority of my group said yes.

Without the maps and card handy, I have no idea about the last question, sorry.

Had some questions about RtL and decided this would be a good thread to keep going.

There is a little bit of a debate about how to handle attacking Lieutenants. There is more or less a general consensus on how to handle the issue at large but there's always someone in the group that tends to think too much into situations and two sides have formed.

Q1. If the party starts their turn on a town and a lieutenant is already there, is the party able attack the lieutenants and still gain the benefits of Training/Recuperating?

A1. In the manual, attacking the lieutenant is listed under the "Move-action" section. So if the party was already at the town they would have to "move" to attack the lieutenants and therefore cannot train or recuperate. This means that after attacking the lieutenant they would only have the option of visiting buildings.

A2. Since the party did not have to "move" to get to the lieutenants area, they are able to attack the lieutenant and then afterwards train skills and spend 50g to fully heal up.

(Personally I'm leaning towards A1 but after spending quite some time perusing the forums I couldn't find any threads that talked about this specific issue)

Q2. When a Lieutenant retreats, it is sent back to the Overlord's keep. On the Overlords next turn, is the Lieutenant able to immediately move 1 space or does he have to spend that turn "moving" onto the board?

A1. The Lieutenant is sent back to the Overlords keep in the same way the Heroes are sent back to Tamalir after retreating or a TPK. On the Overlords next turn he is able to move the lieutenants 1 space like normal.

A2. The Lieutenant has to spend his move exiting the keep and moving onto the board in the same way the Heroes have to spend movement to get back to the dungeon after a death. Since the lieutenant only has one movement point on the world map, this simply means placing him back on the board at the keep location and having to wait till the next turn to move him.

(Once again I'm leading towards A1 on this one)

MorphingJar said:

Follow the procedures.
First you declare what sort of action your party is taking, then you get to do stuff that that action type allows you to.

MorphingJar said:

Please show anything, anywhere that has the faintest indication that A2 is possible. There is no such mechanic. All movement on the map is by trail. There are no such things as movement points of the map.

I have another newbie question about power potions in advanced campaigns:

I'm playing Karnon in the advanced campaign. He starts out with a melee trait of 5. Is there any reason for me to drink a power potion, ever? People giving RtL strategy advice have been extremely bullish on the use of power potions. Does it, for example, automatically upgrade any black dice to silver if the normal five-power-die maximum is reached?

Gramarye said:

Yes, like any other hero who reach the 5 dice limit.