Rules Question about Bodyguard and Dark Charm

By Igle-Oviedo, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Our OL player had asked about this.

He plays Dark Charm o Player A (mage) succes, and make him attach himself

Player B with the bodyguard ability wants to swap, nut the OL dont let him becosue say that ist only for monsters attacks and thath ability had be changed.

I had not see any change in the Faq, so I think that Palyer B can swap and take the attack

Bodyguard
0–3
When an adjacent friendly figure is attacked, before the dice are rolled, spend 1 fatigue to swap places with that figure. The attack targets you instead.

Dark Charm. Card Type : Trap Threat Cost : 8 Treachery Cost : - / 1 (purple) Discard Value : 2
Effect : Play at the start of your turn and choose one hero. The chosen hero player must roll one power die. If the result is blank, nothing happens. If the result is not a blank, the hero must make one attack that you declare. This attack may target any hero, including the attacking hero, but is subject to the normal attack rules, including range and line of sight.

The charmed character is no longer a "friendly figure". It is an enemy figure, friendly to monsters, as the hero can benefit from beastman command skill, for example.

So B cannot swap with A because A is not a friendly figure.

gran_orco said:

The charmed character is no longer a "friendly figure". It is an enemy figure, friendly to monsters, as the hero can benefit from beastman command skill, for example.

So B cannot swap with A because A is not a friendly figure.

Good catch, I was just about to miss that detail when repsonding. =P

A hero targetted by Dark Charm is still a "hero" but he is no longer "friendly" for the duration of the DC.

The "attacking" part of the charmed hero is definitely not friendly to the Bodyguard hero (where does that skill come from anyway? Never heard about it).

The "defending" part of the charmed hero is still under the control of the hero, so one could make a case that Bodyguard may be applied.

Related questions on DC´ed heros are valid concerning Skye, since she affects adjacent "enemy figures".

The friendliness of a Dark Charmed hero is a convoluted quagmire. With any luck it'll be sorted out in the next FAQ. Until then my advice is to just pick whichever interpretation your group prefers or flip a coin if you can't decide.

Bodyguard comes from the "build your own hero" rules. I'm quite confident that they have not been FAQ'd, and I think it's unlikely they will be, as I suspect FFG treats them more like "recommended house rules" than actual official content. Those custom hero rules have several problems, both with clarity and with balance. I designed my own hero editor with quite a few more options, if you'd like to try an alternative.

As for the Dark Charm interaction, my inclination would be to rule that the bodyguard can't swap. There's a FAQ ruling (p.6) that Word of Vaal doesn't target the hero wielding it during a Dark Charm, which seems to rule out Parathion's suggestion that the "defending" hero may count as a different team than the "attacking" hero. Also, changing the location of an attacker mid-attack potentially raises complications about whether the targeting is absolute or relative and what happens if old target isn't legal from the new position and so forth, which does not seem to be worth the complication.