First of all, please do not use this thread to discuss questions and answers. I am trying to compile a list of all the rules questions and queries that have not yet been answered, not to start a thread where we then argue about them

Here's a start:

1) In RtL, the city of Orc Market says that items can be purchased for 50 coins less. Does this mean treasure items or shop items also, since some shop items only cost 50. Does this mean they are free?

2) In RtL, one of the encounter cards has a Deep Elf known as Silence. Her ability is "2 Threat: Move one extra space". Is this a misprint, since all monsters in encounter already have that ability?

The only thing I would add, is that please read the thread before posting so it doesn't get clogged with 5 people asking the same question.

I just got Descent this Christmas, so please excuse if I'm asking things that already have officially been answered...

3) Is the Gauntlets / Rapid Fire combo intended to be useable multiple times per attack half action?

(I don't know if that was answered before, honestly, although the recent thread about the combo didn't mention any official responses and without errata / ruling, the situation is somewhat clear, but potentially very powerful.)

4) Is it possible for a hero to switch space with the Shadow Soul, if the hero was swallowed and is currently in the stomach tile?

5) How do Feat cards from Tomb of Ice interact with the Road to Legend advanced campaign?

(Apparently there was an answer to this at some point, but I think it should make it into the FAQ as well.)

6) Is it possible to have a hero gain a Rest order through the use of Leadership with another hero, and then have him take his turn and immediately gain the benefit of that Rest order already, without any possibility for the Overlord player to interfere?

(Again, there is a rather strict interpretation of the rules that allows this, so this would be more an errata than an answer really.)

1) Altar of Despair / Tomb of Ice: Does the activation of a Dark Glyph trigger the drawing of a Feet card?

2) Altar of Despair: When attacking with a creature with the Morph ability, can an Overlord elect to attack with the red melee die to avoid the effects of the Taunt skill possessed by a hero he is not adjacent to and attack a hero it is adjacent to or can a character with the Taunt skill force a creature with Morph to use a white or blue die to attack him instead?

3) Journeys in the Dark: Does the Ring of Quickness allow a hero with a web token to move one space?

4) Road to Legend: Does a Recupertae/Train action taken to heal to full health and fatigue cleanse a hero of all poison tokens?

5) Road to Legend: In the ‘Down a Hole’ rumor, is there anything stopping the dungeon leader from simply moving into position to be crushed by the boulder so that other monsters in the dungeon are free to kill your objective?

- Sorceror King's Keep - Final Room - Mirrors can be sniped, OL has no recourse
The heroes can (and will) simply sit in the hallway and snipe at the mirrors, easily destroying them all without ever having to enter the room. This neuters what was otherwise a fun final battle concept. Alternatively, if they get locked in the room, 8 mirrors seems a bit much (when the Avatar can do a Battle action and attack twice). By way of suggestion, what about forcing the heroes into the room, but only having four mirrors?

*Telekinesis vs. The Beastman Lord: anticlimactic?

*Excessive use of Fatigue and Fatigue potions at higher RtL campaign levels is an issue, especially with heroes like Silhouette, who can replenish it every turn without risk.

*Shadowcloak: a better wording may be required. How does it interact with Spiritwalker?

*Arcane Energies: Blast should not be mandatory, otherwise a grappled Sorcerer King cannot attack the hero holding him without hurting himself.

*Snipers: are skeletons forced to use this ability to target a Hero with Taunt they couldn't target otherwise?

*Titan Avatar vs. Zyla: if she manages to use Bear Tattoo to grapple the Titan, can he harm her at all? (Suggestion: make Ghost into Stealth against attacks by named critters).

*Humanoid Monsters in RtL: might need some re-thinking due to melee-only monsters and poor speed.

*Eternal Night and the Titan: Plains of the Ruby Gate are adjacent to his Keep, thus nothing can stop him from casting the sunstone into the deep.

*Golem in RtL and the Lone Golem card need an edit.

*The way Dark Relic interacts with RtL is completely unclear.

*Staff of Knowledge might need an edit with all the extra surges Heroes generate in RtL.

*Shadow Soul can be used to block an Ogre from attacking if it is placed two spaces ahead from a hero in a corridor as he has insufficient speed to reach a hero, attack, and withdraw from the space held by Shadow Soul. Not intended, I guess.

*Guard plus Web, also the Stuck in the Middle RtL level 30: how is a figure that is webbed in the midst of its move affected? (possibly imbalanced if a guard-webbed figure is stopped, as it did not get a chance to discard the web token; the Stuck in the Middle level needs clarification too, such as "a hero entering a square marked with X ends his move there, and gets a web token. Also, the replayability of this level is an issue: perhaps the OL can draw up which spaces are webbed on a small map, and a path must exist, or he simply chooses whether white or black tiles are trapped?)

*The Prison (RtL Dungeon 9): spawning in closed cells and placing the starting monsters there hsould be prohibited.

*The Crypt (RtL level 15): there should be a precaution against heroes placing guard tokens while waiting for the leaders to appear.

*Down the Drain (RtL dungeon 33): the water fails to accomplish anything, as a Hero has next to no chance of being swept into the drain. All the water does is obstruct monsters.

*The Fountain of Life (RtL Dungeon 14): dropping a Crushing Block next to Chall within 3 spaces of the Fountain can make the level impassable.

*Two by Two (RtL dungeon 20): the card is bugged. As written, the level is impassable (it should read eastern and western section of the map, not northern and southern).

*Ancient Library (RtL dungeon 10): the leader is a joke.

*Ancient Grove (RtL outdoor location): any large monster is wholly unable to navigate this level.

That's what I came across today. More to follow.

The usage of the following terms within the rules is erratic and needs clarifying.

"Dungeon" - as used to mean "the entire/collective thing that you explore that has 3-4 levels". Can be 'entered' only once'.

"Dungeon Location" - the mapboard named area/location where a dungeon is found. Can be moved to/through any number of times, the first such time allowing the heroes to clain 1CT.

"area" - is used at least once in place of the term 'dungeon location' which leads to confusion with related rules. Please use the same term so that rules for doing the same thing can be applied reasonably.

"enter" - when refering to the hero party going into a dungeon (changing from a token on the mapboard to 4 figures on a dungeon level). Can be confused with 'explore'.

"explore" - used sometimes for 'exploring' a new dungeon location (and thus getting 1 XP) and sometimes for exploring a new dungeon (becoming 4 figures on a dungeon level)

While this is mostly minor nitpicking it does make it difficult to clearly explain (especially to newcomers or to those who might have translation problems) exactly what things the party does happen when and what the results are.

The main problem however, is the wording on page 18, 'The Third Level' section.

The party may not re-enter a dungeon location they have explored for the remainder of the campaign.

This is not the same as pg 10 where the heroes get 1 XP for ending their movement in a 'new' area and may then enter the dungeon . This also means that the party cannot explore close to Tamalir without cutting off large sections of the mapboard.

Suggestion: Assuming that the otherwise consistant terminology of Dungeon and Dungeon level does mean different things as written above, remove the word 'location' from the first and third paragraphs of 'The Third Level' section on page 18 . Further, replace the final word ('it.') of the first paragraph on page 17 with 'the dungeon.

Further cleaning up the terminology would be useful, but this is the minimum required (I think) to remove the problem of the heroes being unable to enter the same location twice (eg once been to Thelsvan Highway they can never go there again and all of the southeast is cut-off.

incarna said:

No. The Ring of Quickness grants one extra movement point, regardless of declared action. Web (and Grapple) prevents the spending of MP. The Ring of Freedom allows heroes to spend MP, regardless of other factors (such as Web or Grapple).

Leadership card text

Does the "In addition, ..." part mean that this aspect of the skill can only be used in conjunction with taking the three half actions? Or can you let another hero place an order when doing a normal Ready action without spending fatigue?

*Leadership should be re-phrased to: when you declare a Battle, Run or Advance action, you may pay 1 Fatigue to have any Hero place an order. No nonsense with three half-actions and forcing people to make xactly one move, one attack and one order.

*Lawlessness is useless as it stands, as it actually helps Heroes, especially when they have the Staff of the Wilds. If it added let's say 0-2 Beastmen, Skeletons or Spiders to any non-lieutenant encounter, though...

*Protective Magics could use a boost.

*The Lone Troll card needs to go up to 2 Treachery, or at least higher casting cost.

*Animate Weapons and Dance of the Monkey God are extremely tough on the party in conjuction with Danger and Merrick Farrow, if the party lacks Wind Pact.

*Curse of the Ancients and Cursed Treasure ae quite pointless.

*Poltergeist is quite possibly broken.

*The Twins Rumor needs a safeguard against the OL killing Siris before the Heroes have any chance to reach the kids, like, with a Rolling Boulder, which would make the level unfinishable. What happens anyway if one Siris is run over by a Boulder while the other is not? Can a Boulder place in response to a Hero's move kill one of the twins?

*The Dark Shard Rumor: the shard prevents the boss demon Orz from going anywhere, thus heroes can stay behind the corner and snipe at the shard and/or demon without fear of retaliation.

*A Mother's Lament Rumor: can the cub leave through a glyph, fulfilling the victory condition?

*The Valley of Souls: the special rule giving monsters the Undying trait is worthless for most, as only two of the critters here are not Undying by default.

Not really a question: I d love if Kevin reruled CB and LTNT use of treachery!

Come on Kevin, its broken!

So why are there rule change requests mixed in with the unanswered questions here? Balance issues should be their own separate thread.

When a hero switches spaces with the Shadow Soul familiar, can the Overlord play a Trap - Space card on said hero?

RTL: When an item is bought in Riverwatch, does the market immediatelly refill? Or is the phrase "The market always refills" only related to treasure caches?

Dreepa said:

Do the props "Bone Heap", "Giant Mushrooms", "Trees" and "Ice" count as obstacles (for the effects of Acrobat and others)?

Forum Goer - SUMMARIZE!

*cough*

Ok, so I watched too much Transformers - Beast Wars as a kid. So sue me. (Every time I Maximize or Minimize my windows in, well, Windows I use that battle cry. Ah, ruined youth)

Anyways, think it's high time for a gathering of the gathered questions. Here we go. (edits happened, I'm a programmer/quality control guy by trade, editing is a compulsion, bad grammar makes me [sic], etc., etc.) Oh, Xandria, I heavily edited your comments because most of them were nonsensical out of context of the references you were making and some of them were straight up rude. Hope you don't mind.

I would have sorted these by game but I did this the stupid way (in the actual form editor, which sucks), so I'm not feelin' it right now. Maybe next summary.

Questions:

1. In RtL, the city of Orc Market says that items can be purchased for 50 coins less. Does this include shop items as well? Since some shop items only cost 50, does this mean they are free?
2. In RtL, one of the encounter cards has a Deep Elf known as Silence. Her ability is "2 Threat: Move one extra space". Is this a misprint, since all monsters in encounters already have that ability?
3. Shadow Soul:
   A. Tomb of Ice: Is it possible for a hero to switch space with the Shadow Soul, if the hero was swallowed and is currently in the stomach tile?
   B. When a hero switches spaces with the Shadow Soul familiar, can the Overlord play a Trap - Space card on said hero?
4. How do Feat cards from Tomb of Ice interact with the Road to Legend advanced campaign? - answer exists, just asking to get answer included in official FAQ
5. Altar of Despair / Tomb of Ice : Does the activation of a Dark Glyph trigger the drawing of a Feat card?
6. Altar of Despair : When attacking with a creature with the Morph ability, can an Overlord elect to attack with the red melee die to avoid the effects of the Taunt skill possessed by a hero he is not adjacent to and attack a hero it is adjacent to or can a character with the Taunt skill force a creature with Morph to use a white or blue die to attack him instead?
7. Snipers: are skeletons forced to use this ability to target a Hero with Taunt they couldn't target otherwise?
8. Leadership card text: Does the "In addition, ..." part mean that this aspect of the skill can only be used in conjunction with taking the three half actions? Or can you let another hero place an order when doing a normal Ready action without spending fatigue?
9. Ancient Library (RtL dungeon 10): Does the leader reappear in his original spot or respawn as per normal spawn rules? What happens if the heroes have LoS to the entire level, something which is very easy to do?
10. A Mother's Lament Rumor: can the cub leave through a glyph, fulfilling the victory condition?
11. Do the props "Bone Heap", "Giant Mushrooms", "Trees" and "Ice" count as obstacles (for the effects of Acrobat and others)?

Balance Issues:

1. Is Rapid Fire combo intended to be useable multiple times per attack half action? This results in synergy with a copper item, Gauntlets of Power, that restores 1 fatigue per 2 surges spent, which often results in monster number being the only limit to the number of Rapid Fire attacks.
2. Is it possible to have a hero gain a Rest order through the use of Leadership with another hero, and then have him take his turn and immediately gain the benefit of that Rest order already, without any possibility for the Overlord player to interfere?
3. Road to Legend : In the ‘Down a Hole’ rumor, is there anything stopping the dungeon leader from simply moving into position to be crushed by the boulder so that other monsters in the dungeon are free to kill your objective?
4. Road to Legend : In the final battle with the Sorcerer, the heroes can (and will) simply sit in the hallway and snipe at the mirrors, easily destroying them all without ever having to enter the room. This neuters what was otherwise a fun final battle concept. Alternately, if they get locked in the room, 8 mirrors seems a bit much when the Avatar can do a Battle action and attack twice. By way of suggestion, what about forcing the heroes into the room, but only having four mirrors?
5. Telekinesis vs. The Beastman Lord/Titan/Great Wyrm: A high fatigue hero can use telekinesis to keep these avatars at Bay for several turns, resulting in an anticlimatic fight.
6. Fatigue ugrades result in excessive use of Fatigue and Fatigue potions at higher RtL campaign levels becoming an issue, especially with heroes like Silhouette, who can replenish it every turn without risk.
7. Arcane Energies: Blast should not be mandatory, otherwise a grappled Sorcerer King cannot attack the hero holding him without hurting himself. Also, it's possible for a hero to obtain Ironskin and other defenses against Blast, resulting in a major disadvantage for the Sorcerer King.
8. The Titan avatar and the Beastman Lord Avatar could possibly be grappled by Zyla with Bear Tattoo, rendering their attacks useless. Is this intentional?
9. Humanoid Monsters in RtL are almost all melee only with poor speed, making them weak choices.
10. Eternal Night and the Titan: Plains of the Ruby Gate are adjacent to his Keep, thus nothing can stop him from casting the sunstone into the deep once he gets it into play. Is this intentional?
11. The Golem in RtL is far too weak; does less damage than most other creatures in the game, and Blood Apes are similarly resilient to damage for a much lower cost to put them in play.
12. the Lone Golem card costs too much Treachery for how weak a Golem is compared to other Treachery spawn cards.
13. The heroes generate enormous amouts of surges in RtL making treasures like the Staff of Knowledge somewhat overpowered.
14. Shadow Soul can be used to block an Ogre from attacking if it is placed two spaces ahead from a hero in a corridor as he has insufficient speed to reach a hero, attack, and withdraw from the space held by Shadow Soul. Is this intentional? - ( I have no idea how you could avoid this - ed.)
15. What happens if a figure is hit with a web token during its move, such as in the level "Stuck in the Middle" (RtL level 30)? Does its movement end? Also, the replayability of this level is an issue: perhaps the OL can draw up which spaces are webbed on a small map, and a path must exist, or he simply chooses whether white or black tiles are trapped?
16. The Prison (RtL Dungeon 9): spawning in closed cells and/or placing the starting monsters there should be prohibited, because it allows the overlord to kill the prisoners before the heroes can react.
17. The Crypt (RtL level 15): there should be a precaution against heroes placing guard tokens while waiting for the leaders to appear.
18. The Fountain of Life (RtL Dungeon 14): dropping a Crushing Block next to Chall within 3 spaces of the Fountain can make the level impassable.
19. Two by Two (RtL dungeon 20): the card is bugged. As written, the level is impassable (it should read eastern and western section of the map, not northern and southern).
20. Ancient Grove (RtL outdoor location): any large monster is unable to navigate this level, breaking some encounters.
21. Lawlessness is useless as it stands, as it actually helps Heroes, especially when they have the Staff of the Wilds because most encounters heavily favor silver and gold level heroes. If it added let's say 0-2 Beastmen, Skeletons or Spiders to any non-lieutenant encounter, though...
22. The Lone Troll card should go up to 2 Treachery, or at least higher casting cost, because it is far too powerful at 1 Treachery, especially in comparison to other Spawn Treachery cards.
23. Animate Weapons and Dance of the Monkey God are extremely tough on the party in conjuction with Danger and Merrick Farrow, if the party lacks Wind Pact.
24. Curse of the Ancients and Cursed Treasure ae quite pointless, as 1 ct matters little throughout the course of the Advanced Campaign.
25. The Twins Rumor needs a safeguard against the OL killing Siris before the Heroes have any chance to reach the kids, like, with a Rolling Boulder, which would make the level unfinishable. What happens anyway if one Siris is run over by a Boulder while the other is not? Can a Boulder place in response to a Hero's move kill one of the twins?
26. The Dark Shard Rumor: the shard prevents the boss demon Orz from going anywhere, thus heroes can stay behind the corner and snipe at the shard and/or demon without fear of retaliation.
27. The Valley of Souls: the special rule giving monsters the Undying trait is worthless for most, as only two of the critters here are not Undying by default.

Possible Rules Clarifications : - (I don't really know if these have a place here)

1. The usage of the following terms within the rules is erratic and needs clarifying.
   
   "Dungeon" - as used to mean "the entire/collective thing that you explore that has 3-4 levels". Can be 'entered' only once'.
   
   "Dungeon Location" - the mapboard named area/location where a dungeon is found. Can be moved to/through any number of times, the first such time allowing the heroes to clain 1CT.
   
   "area" - is used at least once in place of the term 'dungeon location' which leads to confusion with related rules. Please use the same term so that rules for doing the same thing can be applied reasonably.
   
   "enter" - when refering to the hero party going into a dungeon (changing from a token on the mapboard to 4 figures on a dungeon level). Can be confused with 'explore'.
   
   "explore" - used sometimes for 'exploring' a new dungeon location (and thus getting 1 XP) and sometimes for exploring a new dungeon (becoming 4 figures on a dungeon level)
   
   The main problem however, is the wording on page 18, 'The Third Level' section.
   The party may not re-enter a dungeon location they have explored for the remainder of the campaign.
   This is not the same as pg 10 where the heroes get 1 XP for ending their movement in a 'new' area and may then enter the dungeon. This also means that the party cannot explore close to Tamalir without cutting off large sections of the mapboard.
   
   Suggestion: Assuming that the otherwise consistant terminology of Dungeon and Dungeon level does mean different things as written above, remove the word 'location' from the first and third paragraphs of 'The Third Level' section on page 18. Further, replace the final word ('it.') of the first paragraph on page 17 with 'the dungeon.
   
   Further cleaning up the terminology would be useful, but this is the minimum required (I think) to remove the problem of the heroes being unable to enter the same location twice (eg once been to Thelsvan Highway they can never go there again and all of the southeast is cut-off.
   

Answered Questions, Questions with Answers, And Stuff I Straight Up Didn't Understand:

1. Journeys in the Dark: Does the Ring of Quickness allow a hero with a web token to move one space? - No, it only grants an mp, which you still cannot spend.
2. Road to Legend : Does a Recupertae/Train action taken to heal to full health and fatigue cleanse a hero of all poison tokens? - Yes, when recovering to full health, all poison tokens are discarded.
3. Shadowcloak: a better wording may be required. How does it interact with Spiritwalker? - If there is a hero A adjacent to the Shadowcloaked monster, a hero B with Spiritwalker may attack the aforementioned monster from hero A's space.
4. The way Dark Relic interacts with RtL is completely unclear. - Um, no it isn't. Read the manual.
5. Down the Drain (RtL dungeon 33): the water fails to accomplish anything, as a Hero has next to no chance of being swept into the drain. All the water does is obstruct monsters. - I don't understand the problem here, the water stops the heroes from moving and forces them to go the long way around to get to/from the glyph unless they want to get dropped in the pit. Remember you cannot jump water.
6. Leadership should be re-phrased to: when you declare a Battle, Run or Advance action, you may pay 1 Fatigue to have any Hero place an order. No nonsense with three half-actions and forcing people to make xactly one move, one attack and one order. - This comment is less an inquiry and more of a completely bitchy command. I can't in good conscience add it to the list of questions to ask.
7. Protective Magics could use a boost. - Why?
8. Poltergeist is quite possibly broken. - Why?

Thundercles, I re-read my comments, and failed to reveal any rudeness save "the leader is a joke" and the note about Leadership, where I dared to call the current ruling nonsensical.

Feel free to PM me about other rudeness I have failed to detect, so I may learn, and avoid it in the future.

As for Leadership, it is easy to re-phrase my note to something like "perhaps a better ruling may be that upon declaring an action, a hero with leadership may pay 1 Fatigue to have any her oplace an order".

Concerning Protective Magics, I think they should, I dunno, protect the avatar, which a whopping +1 Armor at gold level somewhat fails to achieve. Sarcasm fully intended. It could perhaps be also used to somewhat defend against lingering effects, or the us of some Hero skills... just a thought. Something to make it actually have some impact.

As for the Down the Drain level, the water carries you what, 1-3 squares after your move? You can easily calculate where you get to and run zero risk of ending up in the drain, unless the OL knocks you into the water... wait, not even then, as it is your turn then, and you may safely get out before being swept away. As it is written, the water is impassable for the monsters, which may need to be edited.

Poltergeist can be used to a) autokill the whole party in levels like Bridge of Death; b) act as a Charge on all monsters by moving them towards the players and the players towards the monsters; c) as it can be used before spawning to spoil even the best of spawn prevention. It should allow a resistance roll for Heroes to be moved, or cost threat per object moved, or target a limited number of objects. I mean, the card is cool, but too cool, to be honest.

Thundercles - Wow. And thanks for all your hard work.

Unfortunately, my rules questions to FFG have still gone unanswered, so whilst we are compiling the list which is great, still nobody is listening to us.

Thunder, you forgot the question about the Riverwatch market.

And if your doing balance issues, please add "crushing blow seems incredible valueable for the cost, and overpoweres other cards"

The mentioning of the totally useless golem trachery card would also be great (too expensive), though you already mentioned lone troll.

Last but not least: Is it allowed to throw your TRAIT black dice one after the other, to be able to upgrade the dice when you see fit, like its done with adding fatigue?

Thank you

PS: You said you re a programmer / QA guy. Made me curious: What do you do? Im in QA myself.

Ok, new comments will totally go in next time I summarize (SUMMARIZE!....sigh). And Xandria, I guess rude was the wrong word: I felt that we shouldn't be sarcastic when asking questions. Sarcasm is hilarious, but I don't know anyone at FFG personally and so I don't wish to assume how their senses of humor work.

Paul, it's ok, the list went compiled for several months on the old site before it got any love; you just gotta wait until the time is right.

Dreepa, sorry, I totally missed the Rivenwatch question (had to mess up somewhere I guess). If I do that again, it'll definitely go in. Lone Golem is Balance Issue #12 (right about that point where all that text starts bleeding together). Crushing Blow and the Dice roll questions will be tossed in on the next summary effort. As for QA work, I've been working for Shasta QA (ending my efforts with them soon, I think) , but my project is *TOP SECRET* . You know, nda's and such.

Paul Grogan said:

Have these questions been submitted directly to FFG? Their official policy is (or at least it used to be) that they do not answer questions on the forums. Occasionally KWilson or someone else would pop in to help out. However, FFG's official presence on their own forums is conspicuously absent in the past few months.

I'm sorry, this is a thread about questions, so let me phrase my response in the form of a (rhetorical) question :

"Why won't FFG respond to posts on their forums?"

RtL-Question:

a ) Do the heros receive 1 CT when a sarcophagus or boneheap is searched, a "treat it like a chest" result is rolled, and no blank for treasures in that chest is rolled ?

b) Does the Great Wyrm receive 1 CT if a "treat it like a chest" result is rolled on a sarc. or boneheap?

@Paul, @Redneck and possibly others: There was this post here, where KevinW announced a possibly impending FAQ update . That post was the motivation for this thread here, and I'm sure the FFG rules team appreciates there's an ordered and maintained thread with collected questions anyway, for when they have the time

That being said, @Thundercles, awesome work

I missed that one. I stand pleasantly corrected.