Here's a question that came up over the weekend and I thought I'd ask here for opinions.

Do creatures that have the soar ability (or fly, so gain soar in encounters) get to use that ability while on an Island level?

The heros in my campaign were under the impression that the Island Level is still considered part of the dungeon and so soaring wouldn't apply. I honestly couldn't find a rules argument against it. The real question is, should Island Levels be considered Outdoor Encounters?

From SoB pg 41:

Soar
This ability is only used during outdoor encounters. Any figure with Soar is considered to be flying above the ground, and the range both to and from it is increased by four spaces.

A soaring monster cannot normally be the target of a melee attack. However, monsters with Soar can choose to swoop down
before attacking. If they do so, the extra range is negated until after the attack goes off, at which point the monster flies back up. Heroes may use interrupt attacks (even melee attacks, if in range) to attack a monster while it is swooping.

Note that all monsters with the Flying ability also automatically have the Soar ability.

SoB Island Levels is on pg. 21 for reference. I can't find anything there saying monsters could Soar.

Solairflaire said:

Excellent catch!

I think they should soar, and it is a minor error that they didn't change it (for example, the reason there are some (large) monsters that have soar but not fly is that inside the dungeon they do not have room to unfurl their wings, which certainly does not apply outdoors).

But technically they perhaps don't. We will be 'houseruling' that they do, I'd imagine (although I might be overruled).

We play they do, since "encounters" is not capitalized, for our group it means any time the creature is "outdoors", which includes the island map.

-shnar