More Questions from a new Descent Player

By valoren, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Thanks in advance for helping our team out!

1) Can all types of monsters open doors (to already explored areas), or does it require specific types of monsters (e.g. named monsters)

2) There has been several conversations over whether you have line of sight through your own players. For example, does a skeleton have LOS through a beastman to do a ranged attack on a hero? The rules address specifically you cannot fire through one monster to hit another monster..but we were curious about going through a friendly.

3) Stun attack wording is confusing to me. If I am Overlord and my monster has stun ability on its monster card. Do i apply a single stun token if i hit the player for at least one wound (excluding armor affects)? Or is it the other way around, where a player that hits me gets stunned because it hits me and i have the stun ability on my monster card.

4) If my monster has reach and sweep ability, does this mean if i roll a successful attack, all enemies within range 2 are hit (assuming normal Line of Sight conditions).

5) As Overlord, i can spawn in any areas that have been uncovered, assuming normal spawning rules. Heros were thinking that OL could not spawn in a room where no one was in even though it had already been revealed.

1) Normal monsters can open and close normal doors to already revealed areas. Named monsters can open and close Rune Locked doors as well.

2) No, friendly figures block LOS as do enemy figures. The exception is for spawning, then monsters don't block LOS.

3) First option, except it if you hit the Hero for 1 damage before applying the effects of armor . Wounds are removed after you subtract armor from damage. So essentially as long as a monster with the Stun ability on its card attacks the Hero and doesn't miss, the Hero is getting a Stun token. Pretty much all status effect tokens occur as long as you hit the Hero.

4) Yes it will hit all enemy figures within 2 squares of it on all sides. From the FAQ:

Q: Does Sweep affect friendly figures? When a figure has both Sweep and Reach, does it strike every creature in range or only those to which it has Line of Sight?
A: Sweep affects only enemy figures, never friendly figures (unless Dark Charm is played, of course!). For the purposes of a Sweep attack, figures do not block line of sight – that is, a figure which is completely behind another figure (friendly or enemy) may still be affected by the Sweep attack. A figure that is completely obscured by rubble, a closed door, or some other effect that blocks line of sight would be immune to the Sweep attack, however.

5) You absolutely can, which is why the Heroes need to keep moving to avoid monsters hitting them from behind. You can spawn into any revealed area on the board, granted it is out of LOS of the Heroes. If you couldn't, you'd never get to spawn anything.

valoren said:

Thanks in advance for helping our team out!

1) Can all types of monsters open doors (to already explored areas), or does it require specific types of monsters (e.g. named monsters)

2) There has been several conversations over whether you have line of sight through your own players. For example, does a skeleton have LOS through a beastman to do a ranged attack on a hero? The rules address specifically you cannot fire through one monster to hit another monster..but we were curious about going through a friendly.

3) Stun attack wording is confusing to me. If I am Overlord and my monster has stun ability on its monster card. Do i apply a single stun token if i hit the player for at least one wound (excluding armor affects)? Or is it the other way around, where a player that hits me gets stunned because it hits me and i have the stun ability on my monster card.

4) If my monster has reach and sweep ability, does this mean if i roll a successful attack, all enemies within range 2 are hit (assuming normal Line of Sight conditions).

5) As Overlord, i can spawn in any areas that have been uncovered, assuming normal spawning rules. Heros were thinking that OL could not spawn in a room where no one was in even though it had already been revealed.

1) Yes. Bog-standard doors that do no lead to an unrevealed area can be opened by any monster at all. Or shut by them. Yes DJitD pg 4 and FAQ Pg1

Both heroes and monsters may open and close normal doors ,...

Named monsters may open and close runelocked doors, whether or not the heroes have the runekey to that door. However, named monsters still cannot open any door leading into an unrevealed area.

2) No. LOS is blocked by figures. No exception is given for the figures being friendly - the monster not shooting through a monster is an example of this, not a rule. Partial exceptions are given for a skill (crack shot?) and the Sniper upgrade in RtL. See DJitD pg 10

Line of sight is blocked by walls, closed doors, other figures , and blocking obstacles. Thus you cannot, for instance, shoot directly through one monster to hit another monster behind it.

3) Yes (the first option), although its damage not wounds. Hitting a monster with Stun ability does nothing special, its the (attack with) Stun that stuns. See DJitD pg 23. It could technically be read the reverse way instead (isn't english wonderful preocupado.gif ). That would create particularly fragile monsters. Check out the monsters that have Stun and make your own mind up which way it should read...

After inflicting at least 1 damage (before applying the effects of armor) to a figure with a Stun attack , place a stun token next to the figure.

4) Yes. Nice combo eh? See DJitD page 23

The Reach ability allows a figure to make a melee attack targeting both adjacent spaces and spaces at a range of 2.

Sweep attacks affect all enemy figures within melee range of the attacker

However, since the giant is a Master giant, he also has the Sweep ability, which lets him attack every space highlighted in red at the same time. He makes a single attack roll, and both Sir Valadir and Mad Carthos are affected by it. Silhouette is still safe, since he has no line of sight to her.

5) Yes. Your heroes were wrong. There is no such restriction. See the 8 bullet points on DJitD page 12. Squares in previously-passed-through rooms that no longer are covered by Hero LOS will fit within the 'may' bullets and as long as they are not excluded by the 'may not' bullets then you can spawn there.

If you have Acrobat Reader you might find downloading the rules pdf(s) and FAQ pdf and using the search feature to help you with rules questions useful. It is easy to miss rules when searching the book, much easier to find things if you use a mindless pc to do your work for you. When you find the releveant parts read them carefully. Don't paraphrase. Don't add stuff in.

The only one of your questions that was actually ambiguous was 3). The rest are only mis-interpretable (once you find the right piece of text) if you add things that aren't there when you read it. Eg "LOS is blocked by walls, closed doors, other figures (except friends) and blocking obstacles." The (except friends isn't there, so the rule is clear unless you mentally add that bit. Several were explicitly answered by examples.

BTW, I'm not suggesting to anyone that they don't bring questions. But answers necessarily take time and rarely arrive in time to satisfy the discussion in which they came up. A searchable rules pdf can help you sort out questions on the spot and get on with the game with everyone satisfied on the spot. It is a bummer to find out a day later that that critical attack which won or lost the game was done wrong....

I agree with Corbon about the pdfs. Most of the time when I'm answering questions posted I end up searching the pdfs to make sure I have the wording right.

Apparently, figures never block LoS for spawning, so villagers and familiars cannot have monsters pop out from behind them. This was offered as a rules clarification answer on the old boards