My apologies if this has come up before, but I couldn't find anything that answered my query to my satisfaction, so here we are.

So I've recently purchased Descent and being the only one to actually read the rules decided to be the Evil Overlord on the technicality that I was the most experienced player. We played it at our gaming club on Saturday and much fun was had by all, even though the first game took 6 hours to complete.
It wasn't a good first time as an Evil Overlord, as I would spawn monsters as soon as get them which did more to slow the party than actually threaten them, but what threw me most of all was the heroes spinning and flipping out like ninjas while hiding behind a wall of steel plodding down the corridor.
For example, one of the players took Grey Ker and the skill Swift and latter acquired the Ring of Quickness and Greater Healing. He had other equipment, but these are the relevant abilites in play when he did the following. At that time he had movement seven.
Grey Ker Advances two spaces;
Shoots his crossbow;
Activates Rune of Greater Healing twice;
Palms off a potion to another hero;
Moves back two spaces.
This is correct right? It seems legal, but those are a suprising amount of different things being accomplished just by one hero. Aside from paying the cost the Greater Healing can be used at anytime during the heroes movement? Or is a hero only allowed to activate it once per turn?

I don't have my cards in front of me, but I'm pretty sure Greater Healing says it can be used as many times as the hero wants. In general, unless an ability requires you to exhaust (or discard) the card as part of the cost, you can use it as much as you want/can afford. That goes for surges on weapons, too, which is where it really becomes a pain for the OL.

The move you describe sounds legal to me. What's more, your observation about spawning as fast as you can is functionally accurate. The monsters that start on the map are basically speed bumps once the heroes have silver gear all around. Defeating the heroes is not about saving your monsters from death in a single turn, it's about learning how to play around the fact that they are - oh so terribly - expendable. You'll get the hang of it. Although if you can convince other people to take turns as OL, you might find it useful to learn the game from both sides. Both for your own benefit and that of your hero players.

Don't worry too much about spoilers in the quests. 90% of the important info is blatantly obvious anyway. If you've already read through the book, you can just promise to keep your mouth shut and let other heroes make the important decisions, if that makes your group feel any better.

Also, there's a much higher learning curve for the heroes than for the overlord, and the first couple of quests are easy ones to account for that. It won't be long before you'll find a quest that just seems downright impossible for the heroes to win, especially if you're playing with fewer than 4 heroes.

Hello again, thanks for answering my question before, I've played another game and now I have some more.

So I did somewhat better this time around, I managed to kill 3 Heroes using Trap Master to mess about with their movement, even got Dark Charm to work twice, if not for the Cloak of Mists Trenloe would have killed Ispher in one shot, armed as he was with the Rageblade.

But on with the questions.

Dark Charm says you make the hero attack a party member, can you use this to move the hero and attack? Or does the hero remain where he is?

Does the Falling Block from the trap now block movement and line of sight?

Can a Hero use the Ghost Armour ability to cancel wounds caused by Traps such as the Falling Block and Spike Pit?

Can the Overlord use Charge for the monsters Movement and then Aim for the monsters attack in the same activation?

Can a Hero shop in town and then return to the dungeon if he has sufficent movement?

Can a Hero spend Fatigue to shop?

Thanks for your time.

1. You cannot force a hero to spent movement points (or use fatigue), so the heroes remain where they are.

2. Yes, the falling rock blocks movement and LoS

3. Yes, each time your fingers are about to remove wound tokens from your character sheet, you can use ghost armor to decrease the damage.

4. You can trigger effects only once, so you can use charge for activating the monster and aim for the attack. If you attack twice, you can also play aim for the first an then aim for the second attack (manticore comes in my mind...)

5. an 6. I would say yes, although it has been quite some time since I played regular descent. But you cannot enter town, shop and come back to the dungeon in the same round. And if you have to spent movement for something, you can also spend fatigue.

Edo..

Heh, **** shame about the Dark Charm, but the Block is interesting. Has anyone had a situation where two falling blocks have actually closed off a section of the dungeon, preventing the heroes from completing a dungeon? Do the heroes have any recourse like tunneling through the obstacle?

Also I am wondering if its legal to drop a block on a Glyph of Transport, blocking that Glyph. What about dropping a Block down a Staircase?

What happens to a hero in a pit trap if I drop a block on him? Granted the Hero spends 2 movement to climb out of a pit, is the Block trap played before the player moves or immediately after he exits the pit? If before is the pit essentially filled in burying the hero alive? Probably not I m thinking, it sounds too good to be true, which is often a good litmus test.

I can use Knockback to knock a hero into the pit, yes?

Zergonapal said:

You cannot play a Crushing Block beside any other obstacle as detailed by the text on the card:

Play this card when a hero moves into an empty space that is not adjacent to any obstacles . Place a one space rubble token on that space. The hero suffers 4 wounds (ignoring armor), reduced by 1 wound for each surge he rolls on 4 power dice. Then, move the hero to an adjacent space of your choice.

As Glyphs, Staircase and pits are not empty spaces you cannot a block on them.

You can certainly use knockback to knock a hero into a pit.

dragon76 said:

The card says you can't play it on a space adjacent to another obstacle, which means it's impossible to block off a corridor entirely with this card (even if the other block was printed on the map.) More generally, the OL cannot take any action that would make it impossible for the heroes to complete the quest. This has been brought up in the FAQ, in response to the Guardian standing on the blade of light in quest 6, I believe.

Note that the FAQ has changed Crushing Block. You can now play it next to obstacles, but not next to pits or obstacles that block movement. That doesn't change the specific answers given (you still can't smack someone that's in a pit or block off a section of the dungeon) but you can do other things, like shove someone into a dart field.

Hello, thank you one and all, I have returned with some more ninja shenanigans.

Can a hero use all but one of his Fatigue to buy extra movement and then at the end of that movement use the last Fatigue to drink a Vitality potion and then spend the Fatigue recovered to pay for more movement? Can the hero do this while running?

Can you use Fatigue to move after a Battle action?

Must spawned monsters be deployed adjacent to each other? Within X squares of each other? What is X?

So I am preparing for the campaign as a preparation I had one of the other Hero players take a stint as the Overlord. Two rooms in and neck deep in monsters we established that the Overlord is not supposed to get 2 extra threat per player and draw 2 extra cards per Overlord turn

Zergonapal said:

Yes and yes. This is the primary reason for the FAQ errata saying that a hero can only drink one potion per turn. There were some truly astounding theoretical scenarios being drawn up with the original rules that had no restriction on potion use, thanks largely to vitality potions. Do note, however, that your Fatigue is not doubled by a Run (if that was why you tacked on the last part.) A hero who declares a Run action gets double his Speed in MPs naturally, but his Fatigue pool remains the same.

Zergonapal said:

Before, during and after, yes. At any point during the hero's turn. You can declare a Battle from town and use fatigue to step through the glyph and come out guns blazing. Remember you can only go one way through the glyph network each turn, so no hiding in town.

Zergonapal said:

No. The only restriction is that each figure must be placed out of the heroes' line of sight (and not in an unrevealed section of the map.) There's no requirement for all the monsters provided by a single card to be placed together. Remember other figures don't block line of sight for spawning.

Cool thanks, I'm sure I'll come up with some more stuff in a few weeks time. At the moment it is taking us about 6 1/2 hours to get though the JitD dungeons, partly because I am getting other people to play the Overlord. Really its the Overlord that slows everything down, as the OL has to not only go through his hand but then activate each monster.

I have a theory that its best to divide the cards into lots. One of cards that you want to play, one of cards that can or will be discarded and lastly one of cards that are useful but can be discarded.

But anyway we have agreed to take a weeks break to play other games like Flames of War and Warhammer as we play this at our gaming club.

Steve-O said:

Just for completeness, there is a Power card (Hordes of Things) that allows you to add monsters to the board (not spawn) that requires they be placed adjacent to the monsters in a newly revealed area.

Zergonapal said:

I generally discard anything I know I don't want to play as soon as I draw it in order to keep my hand manageable. The threat doesn't expire after any period of time, so the only reason to hold on to a useless card would be to bluff the heroes. That generally doesn't work in my experience; they call your bluff enough times without seeing response and figure it's nothing important.

dragon76 said:

Quite true. Monsters placed on the board by Hordes are not spawned and not subject to spawning rules. You can put those monsters anywhere, even within line of sight, but they must be adjacent to a pre-existing monster on the map as the card details.

I never discard a card unless I need it for the threat or my hand is full. You never know when something might turn out to be useful.