More questions for everybody to argue about! Yay!

1. When a hero dodges a breath attack, does that in essence let everyone get the benefit of it? How we have been playing is everyone affected that didn't dodge handles the damage accordingly, then the character who dodged gets to force his re-roll to resolve damage against him. If multiple heroes dodged (but not all that were affected) then the non-dodgers take the hit, then only one re-roll is done for the dodgers.

2. So in the manual, it says that when a treasure chest is opened, each hero draws one card from the X treasure deck. The quest guide sometimes says 2 X Treasure. Does that mean each hero then gets 2, or is that just to the opening player and the rest still get 1?

3. Can you play a chest curse on a hero who did not open the chest? Can you play more than one curse per chest, since some chests say more than one curse?

4. Does Acrobatics let you traverse rubble?

5. Can monsters open doors? Can monsters from unrevealed areas open a door, thus revealing it?

Thanks for the help. Also, my friends and I would like to make the game a bit more competitive between heroes. Are there extra rules for this? I came up with a couple ideas (to list here). Any comments and/or other suggestiosn would be appreciated.

A. Only the hero who opens the chest or picks up the money marker gets the full amount. All other heroes get half. So a money marker gives 100 to the opener, 50 to the rest. A chest with 100 coins and 2 treasures only would give 50 and 1 treasure to all other heroes.

B. Whoever accumulated the most conquest tokens is considered to have completed one extra quest for the purpose of determining their level. Whoever accumulated to least conquest tokens is considered to have completed one less quest for the purpose of determining their level.

C. Every time the overlord wins, he starts a new game with +1 threat.

1) By the rules, yes, everybody benefits from one person dodging (so do monsters if you have a blast attack and one monster dodges). I don't think that makes much sense either, so we house rule it as you do.

2) Each gets 2, unless I'm mistaken.

3) I'm not absolutely sure here either - my take would be, you can play multiple trap cards, if you have enough threat. What I'm sure about: The trap cards themselves should tell you if they can be played on anybody but the opener - often, it's formulated "play if a hero opens a chest, the hero player..." ... then, it's obviously only possible to play it on the opening hero. And, curses don't have anything to do with trap cards (or curse tokens from WoD, for that matter), they're just bonus threat the overlord gains (before he can play trap cards, by the way, so he can play trap cards with that newly gained threat).

4) Yep, unless the quest tells you they can't.

5) Yes, they can open doors, but not into unrevealed areas (unless the quest says otherwise). Normal monsters can't open or close rune doors (just regular doors), but master monsters can - that's not in the core rules, but in the FAQ.

As for your competitive ideas, I think the game is better played cooperatively - as heroes who don't play together have a way higher chance to perish and fail. Generally though, if you reward one player more than the others, you should maybe keep the sum constant (like with the gold piles) - as the quests are balanced for the players getting the full amount, i.e. 400 gold from a pile and not a mere 250, so instead of A you could go "150 for the opener, 50 for everybody else", or something similar. B sounds good, C sounds challenging - which I like

On item 3.

When the OL plays a Trap, they do it in response to a triggering condition (ie. "When a hero opens a chest..."). So you could not, for instance, play a "Crushing Block" on a hero when a chest is opened since it has a different triggering condition. You may only play one card per triggering condition. Chest Curses only provide the OL with Threat, they do not provide the OL additional opportunities to play traps.

3. You can only play one trap card per triggering condition, so if a hero opens a chest, they can suffer at most 1 trap. As for the "X Curses" numbers listed for chest contents, the Overlord receives X threat per Hero for each curse in the chest, which may be used to play traps. It has nothing to do with the curse token, or a number of playable trap cards. Lastly, chest traps can affect only the chest itself, the hero that opens the chest and the area around the chest.

5. Yes, monsters can open normal doors. No, a monster can NEVER reveal a new area.

Thanks for the catch on 3.

As for 5, "NEVER" is not true, as this official bonus quest ("The Chase", available here ) shows.

An exception to the rule that proves the rule.

haslo said:

The FAQ entry for this specifies NAMED monsters for this (master or normal).

Thanks for the info. Any other thoughts/ideas for more competitive play without making things unbalanced? We basically just want a LITTLE bit more competition than the quest guide gives without hero players going at each others' throats. Just some reward for doing better than the others without breaking the game.

You could do most of what you suggested.

Didn't someone make a "Capture the Flag" variant using the rules from Doom?

Oboewan said:

Doh, thanks!

Big Remy said:

Of course, it's just that I said in my first post that "it's not possible unless the quest states otherwise", and Thundercles felt the need to clarify that it's "never ever ever" possible

haslo said:

Yeah, sorry about that, it was past midnight and I wasn't reading enough. If only I could go back and edit out the stupid....