The purpose of this thread is to determine if the current ruling in the FAQ is a step in the right direction, what possible ways there are to exploit the current rule, and to provide alternate rulings if we decide that there needs to be a complete overhaul of the FAQ ruling (possibly other things related to these too). Mostly, this thread is to start discussion so that the community here can try to give FFG a helping hand in finally getting it right (not saying we will, but we may as well try). I'll start with some links to relevant discussions on the topic, all of them posted after the latest FAQ.

New FAQ Posted , first post March 12. Antistone provides potential and actual problems with the ruling (Reply #49). No other real discussion was given about this issue. There was a revised FAQ released 2 days after the relevant post, but the ruling remained unchanged if I remember correctly.

Trees and Large Monsters , first post June 18. The discussion mostly revolves around when the Overlord gets to decide if a large monster is affected by terrain. Can a large monster ignore the MP cost to enter a single tree space but then gain the benefits of Shadowcloak if under attack later?

Large Monster Movement , first post July 18. The discussion here is about large monsters and rubble. Can a large monster choose to ignore rubble spaces while moving?

The descriptor and questions are simplified, but I think people will understand if they read the threads.

Personally, I think the current ruling is confusing for the most part because a lot of things are still undefined as to how they interact with it. To sum them up, they are what Antistone said after having read them once (in the New FAQ Posted thread). Another thing to add, are we supposed to ignore the specific wording on Pits, Lava, Mud, and Ice that state they only interact with large monsters if they are fully on those types of obstacles? It does allow large monsters to move around better, but is that enough to let the ruling stand and only get these things clarified for the new FAQ coming up? What other possible things could there be that we would need clarified if the ruling stands? What exploits are possible? Other issues? It is better than the last ruling about “front halves” and “back halves”.

I have an idea for a possible total overhaul of the ruling, but I don't want to post anything about it unless we decide that the ruling needs a total overhaul. If people want, I can post it anyway for reference.

There will be two separate threads for large monsters and movement once the "new-FAQ" work starts coming out.

One deals with actual movement details (which spaces can the large monster move to as in rotating and moving 'forward', diagonally or 'sideways') and it's starting point will effectively be the final post in the thread you linked to recently in the stickied FAQ thread. That might be the final result post too, since it was the result of 4pages or so of discussion and refinement last time. But it will be still up for change...

The second deals with how large monsters interact with terrain and will be aiming to address all the points you mention above.

I suggest you be a little more patient (sorry) and post your ideas or commentary in those threads when they appear. They will be most welcome. Otherwise you may just be duplicating work already done.

What is already done is (mostly) a basic background description of the issue, a carefully crafted question or questions to ask FFG and a set of crafted answers that hopefully FFG can pick one of that they like best (or adapt it) and resolve the issues properly. The idea is that we will post this work in a thread as a starting point and see what other ideads or refinements people have. The 'starting point' work is likely to have the original crafter's bias reflected slightly, so the whole thing is subject to revision based on general input. But if we can give FFG a summary of the issues, a well prepared question and a selection of answers to choose from we have a much better chance of getting coherent answers that resolve issues and don't cause more issues down the track.

But if you want to double up on this, feel free to go ahead...

EDIT: In summary, the existing official material is not satisfactory. The large monster movement/terrain rules simply have gaping holes in them.

I can only speak for myself, but at this point I've given up trying to make sense of Large monster movement. I have a basic understanding of what I think should happen, and I generally try to avoid putting my large monsters in corner case situations as much as possible.

Corbon said:

It never hurts to start early. I was mostly looking at the Large Monster and terrain issue instead of the Oddly Sized Large Monster movement rules. When you say we, are you in discussion with someone at FFG about this to get their perspective on it?

The current ruling has a lot of loopholes and confusion associated with it right now and it seems that it may have more that we aren't seeing because we're distracted by the obvious things. A re-write done by the community may (or may not) have better language and be less confusing while maintaining the integrity of the rules.

This is what I see as the main issue right now. Do we try to work with what is given right now and just get a bunch of clarifications or do we start over and come up with something new? Either way, there is obviously a lot of work to be done on the issue. The overall issue is how often and when should large monsters be affected by obstacles and props?

On a related note. Until RtL came out, was there any confusion about when and how often large monsters were affected by obstacles and props? RtL and SOB are the only times they didn't specify for each prop (and by extension obstacles) how it interacts with large creatures.

Solairflaire said:

No. A bunch of work has been done on it already. We are in discussion with FFG to set up a sub-forum, because we have over 30 threads similar to this one (mostly simpler) to present for general discussion. Failing a sub-forum we will either post each thread here (clogging up this forum) or each thread in turn into the stickied FAQ thread (which will a. make it massive and b. mean that things there will tend to get lost in discussion of other things.

At the moment we have prepared, to bring to the public for commentary, a general background info-dump (mostly a direct copy of a well written post by Mahkra in a thread here), then a suggested rewrite of the large monster terrain interaction rules with 3 bullet points (and a fourth bullet point that covers entirely new territory but might be taken up by FFG as an option). Then there are some commentary notes about the bullet points and what they address. (Note: this is a disticntly different and unique format for this subject only because I just couldn't get things simplified into questions satisfactorily.
The plan is that this will be presented to the general forum public as a starting point for discussion and refinement. Ideally, someone might actually be able to prepare it more efficiently as questions in a manner that I was unable to do - I and personally not comfortable with offering FFG a 'rewrite' instead of Q&A! Once the group has 'refined' the post sufficiently then it will be presented to FFG (along with all the other refined posts) so that they can decide what to do with and what to put in the next FAQ.
If you are desperate to start your thinking, planning, discussion points etc, then you can probably see that initial post here . I'm not ceratin how the google groups thing works though.

Solairflaire said:

Well, I tried working with what we have, and failed (it was multiple horrendously complicated Q and As), so I went the rewrite route, trying to stay as true to the existing rules/rulings as possible (with the exception of the fourth, extra bullet point). But I am not entirely comfortable wit this method (it has not been used on any other thread except to a limited extent on the Kraken thread (which basically simply lacks any credible rules in a number of situations).

Solairflaire said:

There were always some anomalous effects, IIRC. But RtL made things a lot worse with terrain that gave significant advantages instead of penalties.

Corbon said:

Hahaha, where'd you find one of those?

I like your disclaimer in that Google groups thread. (" even though related directly to an 'entering impassable terrain' argument ")

Solairflaire said:

I think the most obvious rules loophole was that if a large monster was half in mud and half in lava, it could use each of those terrains to be safe from the other, and would suffer the effects of neither. But there were probably other issues as well.