Hi, first of all , I am Malevolenced and I am new to this kind of board games , never ever played games like D&D etc.

I love fantasy and Descent: JITD is a great game I am starting to love it

I have some doubts , I read the whole intruction manual and 95% of it I understand perfectly. With my wife we played the very first quest and it went ok , she had 2 heroes and I was the overlord , of course the first time we played we had some issues and questions, specially questions regarding the Blast ability and LoS.

The second game (I am played with 2 persons) so we had 2 heores and me the overlord. And I found out that I have more and more questions. I hope you guys can help me with some questions here , I am sure they all have an answer , I tried the search option on this forums but there are so many topics I couldn't find the answers. So here I will list the ones I remember right now:

-Curse of the Monkey King:

• -How long this curse exactly last?
• -He cannot fight , but can he travel to the town? Then, can he buy stuff from the market? Can he trade with other heroes?
• -Can he pick up items ? Can he open chests?
• -Can he play ability cards?
• -The hero (while cursed) went to a pit and start wasting his MP jumping into the pit over and over until he runs out of life to end the curse faster, is this legal ?
• -After the curse is over , is the hero dead ?
• -Can the monkey be attacked? (in the Instruction manual says he has 0 armor)

-LoS:

-Alright , so far I understand a bit how the LoS works, but there is something that is not clear for me in the instruction manual , like when the hero has a LoS , he still cannot see the monster but can hit them with the Blast ability? That confuses me a bit.(See Line of Sight Example page.10) I need an explanation here because this is very confuse.

-Another LoS question , I am the overlord and want to spawn more creatures , see my picture and let me know if this is possible or I am missing something here ?

-Traps:

-What can I do when I run out of pit tiles and I still have pits trap cards to play?

-Can I play more than one trap while the hero's turn ?

So far these are the questions I remember right now. Hope you can help me

PS: I cannot paste stuff here , weird , maybe because I am using Chrome ? I will update the picture link for the LoS question.

Cheers.

Malevolenced

Malevolenced said:

www.descentinthedark.com/_t_/transformed_into_a_monkey.php

Malevolenced said:

www.descentinthedark.com/_l_/line_of_sight_checker.php

Malevolenced said:

-Take an old one(far away one) or substitute

- Just one per trigger condition, lets say you have 2 pit traps, the hero moves 1 you play one card, the hero moves again, you can play another one...

Malevolenced said:

- The curse lasts 3 turns, IIRC. It tells you to take two tokens (use anything as tokens, we usually use spare dead-end pieces) and discard one at the end of each turn, not including the turn you were turned into a monkey. The curse ends when the last token is discarded.

- Pretty sure the monkey can't spend MP on anything but movement, so that means no trading or market. He can leave the dungeon via Portal (using Road to Legend or Sea of Blood) but I'm not sure he can teleport to town via glyph.

- No chests or pick ups, again these cost MP but aren't actually movement.

- He can use skill cards that don't relate to attacking normally.

- Yes, jumping in a pit repeatedly until dead is legal, monkey or not. The OL still gets to claim your CT when you die, so either way the OL wins.

- The hero does not automatically die when the curse ends, he simply turns back into a hero in whatever space he was occupying at the time.

- Yes the monkey can be attacked.

Malevolenced said:

The hero must have LoS to the target space where the blast will be centered. The effect of the Blast is traced from that square instead of where the hero is standing, so yes, it can hit targets the hero does not actually have LoS to.

Malevolenced said:

Boggs the Rat prevents spawning in both of the marked spaces. Because his special ability is generating LoS. Any other familiar in the same space would not prevent spawning, although it's worth noting that Hero 1 also has LoS to the closer of the two spaces. I don't think he has LoS to the further one though. Drawing a straight line from space to space is not restricted to orthogonal and diagonal lines. At least, I've never met anyone who plays Line of Sight that way. Put a piece of string between the two spaces. As long as it doesn't cross something that blocks LoS, you're good to go.

Malevolenced said:

- Unless the rules say you can reclaim tokens like you reclaim figures, you're SOL if you run out of pit tokens. It's been a long time (if ever) since this issue has cropped up for me, so I'm not 100% sure what the rules say about it.

- You can play as many traps per hero turn as you like, but you can only play one per triggering event. So, if a hero enters space X you can play one trap that triggers on entering a space (like a pit or a crushing block) but you can't play both at the same time. If the hero continues moving after the first trap, you can play a second trap on the next space he enters (each space is it's own trigger.)
Malevolenced said:

Pasting stuff on these forums generates a pop up window (because these forums suck.) Make sure your browser is set up to allow pop ups from FFG and you should be good.

Mcmanus said:

Descentinthedark is a good resource for playing the game, but it's not official and there are a few rules which that site claims work differently than FFG tells us they do. I'm not saying don't use it, just take it with a grain of salt.

Stevo-O mostly had it, but a couple of extra points or explanations.

Regarding the Monkey:
DJitD pg16
Monkeys cannot attack and cannot use any items, including potions . A monkey can move up to 5 spaces on the hero’s turn, but cannot take any movement actions . A monkey has the hero’s wounds and fatigue, but has a total armor value of 0.
After a hero is tranformed, the player collects two wound tokens from the pile of unused tokens in the common play area. The player discards one token at the end of each of his turns (not including the turn the hero is transformed); when he discards the last token, his hero returns to normal .

Also on pg16 is the list of Movement Actions. Since using a glyph, picking up items, opening chests, and passing stuff to other heroes are all movement actions, he can't do any of them.

And, err, m,uch of the point of turning te hero into a monkey is to attack him while he has no armour and can't fight back, so yes, attack away!

Note that there is no such thing as 'trade' between heroes. Each hero can spend 1 MP to pass one item to another hero (multiple times if desired, so 3MP for 3 items) during his turn. The second hero will have to spend MP to pass something else back later (during his own turn) if you want to do that. So there kind of is a 'trade' thing going, but it is slow and awkward and better described as giving each other things than trading.

Note also that ability (skill) cards are not 'played' as such. They are always face up with the hero card and are 'on' all the time. Some, for example ' Mighty' , are 'active' at all times so that when the hero does a (melee) attack he automatically gets the +2 damage. Others, for example ' Knight' , have an activation cost and only 'act' when the trigger (in the case of Knight, declaring a Battle action) happens and the cost (in the case of Knight, 2 fatigue) is paid.
The monkey is not restricted from using Skill cards, although many skill cards that help in attacks, or 'trigger' when declaring an Action (like Knight, triggering on declaring a Battle Action) will be useless to the monkey. See also FAQ pg5
Q: A hero who has been Transformed by either Curse of the Monkey God or Dance of the Monkey God may move up to five spaces and may not take any movement actions. Can that hero take other actions, such as receiving an order token or declaring a Run action? What about a hero who is both Stunned and Transformed?
A: A Transformed hero may not declare any action . He may still use any skills that are appropriate (e.g., Acrobatic, Telekinesis) and may spend fatigue for extra movement points. A Transformed hero who is stunned may only move (i.e., he must choose the “only move” option for being stunned, not the “only attack” option), which in most cases has no effects beyond those of being Transformed. A Transformed hero who has an order token placed on him by means of another hero with Leadership may still use the order, except that he may not make an attack with a Guard order. (Note that while Guard and Aim orders are useless to a Transformed hero, they may still be placed on him by a hero with Leadership.

You probably are already doing both of the last two notes correctly, but the language you used meant that you might have misunderstood them, so sorry if you already had it figured!

Regarding running out of pit tiles:
FAQ pg10
Q: Can the overlord play “Spiked Pit” or “Crushing Block” if all 1-space pit and rubble markers are already on the board?
A: Yes, as with monster figures, you can remove old trap markers in order to place new trap markers.

Regarding LOS:
You appear, from your diagram, to be labouring under the misapprehension that LOS is restricted to the 8 basic directions. Not so. LOS is unrestricted unless a line form centre of space to centre of space passes through another space that has a LOS obstruction (figure, some obstacles like rubble, wall, door, etc). That means that you can see every space that there is no obstruction too.
Check the LOS example on pg10 (even though it has some mistakes!).
Sir Validor can see the yellow space slightly into the northern corridor. A line from the centre of his space, to the centre of that space passes exactly through the corner of the wall, not through the wall itself. There is actually a mistake from Silhouette, who should also be able to see the SW-most corner of the main room - it is exactly the same situation as the Validor one above.
Look again at Sir Validor and the head of the Hellhound. He can see that space. If we call SVs space A1, and the HHs head is at B5 on a grid, the line between them passes through A2, A3 (exactly half way along the bottom of A3 it crosses into B3), B3, and B4. SInce there are no obstructions in any of those spaces, he can see from A1 to B5.

LOS is really a simple matter of geometry, though for some people their brain doesn't work that way and they have a great deal of trouble 'getting it'. But once you 'get it, it's mostly very easy. If you can't then a piece of string, edge of ruler or a laptop with a 'checker program' will do the job.

In your example both Boggs the Rat and Hero 1 have LOS to every s ingle space you drew.
Hero 1 to the space below the stairs LOS passes exactly through the corner, which is not actually part of the wall (the same as the first Sir Validor example above). Any space to the 'left' of this line (from Sir Validor's perspective) would be blocked by the walls. Since the LOS to the space SE of the stairs passes is to the unobstructed 'right' of that line, it is also 'clear' and he can see both of these spaces (so no spawning!)

The whole 'corner is not part of a space or side edge' thing is a concept you need to 'get'. That is, for example, how Silhouette can move between the block and the Beastmen in the movement example on pg 9. When she does that strange move NE between them, she passes only through the corner where both their spaces touch, but doesn't actually pass through either of their spaces . Thus she can do this move even though both enemy figures and rubble block movement.

Thank you guys for all the answers , this clears all my doubts.