The party tries to prevent the capital city from being sieged by fighting Sir Alaric.

The campaign has just advanced to gold level, so his stats are optimal.

The overlord has 3 event, 2 trap, and 1 monster treachery.

As expected, heroes lost in a few rounds due to 2 dark charm, 2 enrage, 1 danger, 1 skeleton pat.

I was thinking a lot but i could not imagine any way to prevent our DDs to be killed by either dark charm or an enraged lieutnant. How to win an enounter against Sir Alric?

Besides: How to spawn monsters via monster treachery cards? Place them near an exit zone or place them out of line of sight on the map?

I dont have the answer, but do have a related question!

In outdoor encounters, the OL can spend 2 threat for the equivalent of 1 fatigue - adding/upgrading power dice, or extra movement. Can he do the same in dungeons, or are dungeons played out just like vanilla in that regard? In other words, can an OL willingly discard his hand cards to get more threat, then spend the threat instead on adding movement / dice?

Then on the trait dice limits, in say Copper phase... a hero can upgrade to a max of 3 silver dice. If he manages to do so, can he still use a power potion, and go beyond that? Say his base hero is so great it has 2 silver and 3 black. Can he then get +5, making it approximately 2 gold and 3 silver dice?

Is there a limit to how much an OL can pump up his attack in the same way?

Can an OL keep adding 1 die at a time (for 2-6 threat) or does the hero / OL have to pick the number of extra dice at one time? Otherwise an OL with 20 threat and a hit, could 1 by 1 add up to 10 die upgrades, by adding them 1 gold die at a time, for 6 threat.

Marnon said:

Win? Fight him before the campaign advances a level, not after! Basically, the party messed up their timing and will probably lose the campaign as a result.

Spawning monsters through treachery works the same way as reinforcements (play the card, place the monsters off map at an exit and move them on next turn). Actually, I looked and looked for this, but couldn't find it in either the rules or FAQ. Maybe it was a KW reply on a forum or I am just having one of those mornings...

BTW, not the advice you seem to need, but do you realise that you have a very inefficient use of treachery cards there? One of the Dark Charms and the Danger can be basic cards, not treachery cards, so only cost half a treachery point. Thus you could add a crushing block, pit trap, or high value throw-away-for-threat trap and another basic event. In addition, enrage is inefficient if you plan to use it on the Lieutenants as they can already Run or Battle. Hence both Charge and Rage have the same effect as an Enrage card when played on a Lieutenant (Charge when Battling for 2 attacks and double move, Rage when Running for double move and 2 attacks). So instead of 2 Enrages you could have 2 Charges and 2 Rages! Or any 2 of the 4 and some other event (Poltergeist is brilliant). Of course, Enrage is very useful for the supporting cast of monsters...

Wouldnt a charge with a battle action be 0 movement? I'm pretty sure it would.

Charge: "Double a monster's SPEED for this activation"

Sir Alric has a speed of 4. So doubling that, he has a speed of 8 for this activation.

Now choose the action:

Advance: "Move up to a number of spaces equal to his speed and may make 1 attack during his turn"

... So in advance, (just like vanilla) Alric could attack once and move 8 (double 4).

Battle: "A hero [or lieutenant] that battles may make up to 2 attacks during his turn, but receives zero movement points from the action.

... So if you battle, you battle twice, and get no movement, even tho you have double speed (8).

Run: "... that runs may move up to a number of spaces equal to twice his speed, but cannot attack".

So Charge just doubles your speed. It does not allow you to do both battle and move, nor does it allow you to move a number of spaces equal to double your speed - it just lets you double the speed itself, which then is used in the various choices of actions.

-mike

poobaloo said:

Looks like you are right. Charge doesn't work that way then (though it works in other ways). I hadn't looked at the card texts myself, just based this on the advice of KW that Rage works best on a Running Lieutenant and has no extra effect on a Battling Lieutenant.

Mea Culpa.

Better look closely at Enraged as well, but I suspect 2 Rages will be much better value than 1 Enraged for a Lieutenant, and 2 Charges almost the same value (twice can move double and attack once with an Advance action).

poobaloo said:

The threat for fatigue/movement is only in outdoor encounters, not dungeons. If you have treachery, you can discard cards for threat in outdoor encounters for this purpose. RtL pg 14 (my emboldening)

but in addition, there are a two abilities that are always available to the overlord during an encounter: Ability Threat Cost

Move a monster one extra space (like a hero spending a fatigue for speed). 2
Add a black power die to a monster’s attack roll, or upgrade a power die by one step (like a
hero spending a fatigue on an attack). 2

The trait upgrade maximum/level is to Traits (ie, the permanent qualities of the character), not to the actual power dice being rolled. A hero can use fatigue or potions at any time to upgarde as many power dice to whatever he can afford, up to 5 gold dice (even in Copper level). RtL pg 23

There are two restrictions on trait upgrades :
snip
Second, trait upgrades are limited based on the current campaign level. In a Copper campaign, a hero can upgrade a maximum of three of his black dice to silver dice, and may not upgrade silver dice at all. In a Silver campaign, a hero can upgrade as many of his black dice to silver dice as he wants, but only a maximum of three of his silver dice to gold dice. In a Gold campaign, a hero can upgrade as many of his black and...

The only limit for the OL pumping (other than threat of course) is the 5 (gold) dice on any attack. (No limit is mentioned in the rules, other than the repeated limit of 5 power dice for any attack. Why should there be one?)

Either player can add one power dice at a time (2-6 threat or 1-3 fatigue) up to a maximum of 5 dice. However all upgrades on a particular dice must be before it is rolled (in effect, you can't upgrade an already rolled dice). So if adding one-by-one, the maximum times the OL could add a dice would be 5 (assuming the attack started with no power dice at all), never 10. DRtL pg 24

Upgrading Power Dice With Fatigue During Play
While playing out an encounter or dungeon level – or in similar circumstances throughout the Advanced Campaign – in addition to spending 1 fatigue to add a black power die to an attack, a hero can spend 1 fatigue to upgrade a black power die to a silver power die, or a silver power die to a gold power die. A hero can do this as often as he likes , as long as a given power die is upgraded before being rolled . For example, after making an attack roll, a hero could spend 3 fatigue to add an extra gold die to the attack, but he couldn’t spend 1 fatigue to roll an extra black die, then spend an additional 2 fatigue after rolling that die to upgrade it to a gold die.

Marnon said:

Don't get me wrong, I don't have the cards in front of me, but are you sure you did the treachery correct? You can only get treachery cards equal to the number of treachery you have for that type, or two normal cards for one treachery of that type. (E.G. Three 1 cost treachery for event, four normal for trap, and one spawn treachery card, from your numbers you gave.)

As for the spawning of the monsters, it was clarified by Kevin W. in the old forums, they are Reinforced instead of spawned.

Hope that helps.

poobaloo said:

Like you said, spending threat as fatigue can only occure during outdoor encounters, none inside dungeons.

I am unsure about it, and I'll look into it more later, but I am pretty sure that the overlord has the same limits as the heroes as per the campaign level.

On a side note, in Road to Legend, whenever a 'Vanilla Descent' card, hero ability, overlord card, etc.. refers to a 'power die' or 'black die', it works for any power die of any colour in Road to Legend. EDIT: I'm a little wrong there. Whenever they say "add a power/black die", that means the same as 'upgrading' a power die. E.g. Multiple DOOM! cards can add raw black power dice, add extra upgrades, or a mix of both.