Here's the RTL scenerio.

A hero with 1 health and 1 fatigue is battling a Lt. The hero has only one single [un-aimed] attack remaining. If the hero fails to slay the Lt this turn, the hero will most likly die on the Lts next turn causing the heroes to fail this encounter. The overlord has no cards in his hand at this point, so the Lt dodging isn't an issue here.

Is this legal:

A) The hero in question has 3 (black) melee trait dice, and is using an axe. He first rolls the red dice. It isn't an X, so he then rolls the remaining dice. He needs only 1 more damage to kill the Lt, so he adds a fourth power dice by spending his last fatigue. He rolls and enhancement. Victory!

This example is legal in my book, not rolling all the dice at once can add suspence to the outcome, which can be a good thing

B) The hero in question has 5 (black) melee trait dice, and is using an axe. He first rolls the red dice. It isn't an X, so he rolls the remaining dice one at a time until he has one [black] dice left to roll, and notices that he is 2 damage short of killing the Lt. He decides to upgrade this final dice to silver with his fatigue. He rolls...

I'm not sure if this is legal or not... Thoughts?

Trying to dig through the rules on this one.

I think that it'd be based on any house ruling. Technically speaking, the book doesn't tell you how to roll your dice, so I believe that #2 isn't illegal... just REALLY bad sportsmanship. If you have this problem too often, I'd suggest setting a house rule: You MUST spend any fatigue to upgrade your standard pool of dice before rolling ANY of the dice. (Which is how I have my games setup) That keeps it fair, and stops the whole "I'm 2 shy, so I'll upgrade this now" garbage.

Not legal at all. Your player is cheating.

Fatigue spent after the roll of the dice may add extra black dice

To upgrade dice to silver / gold, the fatigue has to be spent before the roll of the dice.

And the dice should all be rolled at the same time. If your player insists on rolling them one at a time, he cannot choose to upgrade them during the roll, and he is slowing the game down for everyone else

Situation B:

RTL Rules Pg.24 say it very cleary. The only dices you are NOT allowed to upgrade are the dices that have already been rolled.

Since that last black die you are talking about hasnt been rolled yet its absolutely valid to upgrade the dice BUT only if its a dice that has been bought with fatigue.

If it are his main black dices, then its part of the initial attack. The rulebook doesnt explicitly say that you may roll one black after the other, so I assume that those dices have to be rolled all at once.

So having 5 black in your melee trait may be a disadvantage in that special situation.

Far as I know nothing says they must be all rolled at once, so the upgrade I guess is technically legal. However if I was OL I'd be a little peeved :-)

I once, just to irritate my friend playing OL, rolled them one at a time and was tossing the black dice at the ones that came before them to change outcomes I didn't like. I managed to convert two blanks into surges :-) Such poor game playing, but I was just messing with him and volunteered to reroll it.

We had a player who would 'hold back' dice from his roll and try to change the results of his just rolled dice by hitting them with the following dice. Here's a thought, invest in a dice tower. We play that all dice must be upgraded by fatigue first and rolled simultaneously, after that, you may spend fatigue to roll additional black dice.

JitD Pg.11:

When a hero makes a
melee attack, he adds a number of power dice to his roll
equal to his melee trait.

JitD Pg.10:

[...] the attacking
player rolls the dice corresponding to the attacking
weapon or monster.

[...]
Attacker is a Hero: If the attacker is a hero, the dice
the player rolls are listed on the item card for the
weapon the hero is using. In addition, the hero may add
one or more of the black power dice to his roll, depending
on his traits

No all we can do is discuss if "roll the dice" means roll them all at once or roll them one after the other. lol Guess you just have to decide for yourseld, or flip a coin

Dreepa said:

It might be different in that strange language that is 'American' ( ), but in English the singular of dice is die. If the rules say roll the dice, it means more than one. If it says roll a die, it means just one. If a singular, extra dice may be added before or after the roll by other effects (ie fatigure spent during an attack, wild talent adding an extra dice to avoid traps etc.

So, arguably, you shouldn't be rolling only one die at a time when instructed to roll the dice.

Two at a time ok, one at a time bad.

Of course, the rules are written in American, not English, so I could be completely wrong...

Corbon said:

I think dice refers to every dice here. I doubt the intent of the designers ever was to have dice rolled one at a time (or 2 by 2)

Although the issue would not be that unbalancing, as it doesn't make much sense that having 5 black dice may be worse than having 4. However, it would make the game much slower.

Thanks for all the replies. Before I give my opinion on my question, I'd like to point out that there isn't a player in my group that has used this tactic to *cheat* the system, It was purely a thought exercise. I also believe that using dice to intentionally change previously rolled dice is dishonest.

The English language is a tricky beast, and in my example, the forms of the word "roll" have several meanings depending on the context.

Each die is roll ed (verb) to randomly choose one of its sides. All of the die are rolled (verb) together to generate a sum. The derived roll (noun) is the sum of the values of all the dice involved.

I believe that the noun form of the word, i.e. the final result of all the dice, is the usage that adding/upgrading dice refers to. I also believe this is exclusively form that aiming and dodging follow.

When adding a die by spending fatigue, the roller does so after the roll. This means the roller can see the developing roll (results) before spending his fatigue. If the attack is already sufficiently lethal, the attack will likely decide to not spend fatigue. It would also be unwise to add a die if the attack is a miss (rolled an 'X').

Upgrading a die seems to be more of a gamble in a sense. One does so before the roll (result), even a partial result, is known. This seems a gamble, as the upgraded dice may be wasted if the attack would have succeeded without, or if the result is a miss. It is mathematically NOT a gamble though, since the more precious metal die adds more to the roll (result), and the upgraded die doesn't increase the odds of a miss.

Employing the technique of changing the dice either through upgrades or knocking one over is taking advantage of this games random number generator. It should be avoided

Also, I built a dice tower a dice tower a while back, It has solved all the mechanical issues present with rolling dice. The player that used to slide the dice, the player that can never seem to keep them on the table, and the unlucky X roller all seem to be more consistent.

--my $0.02

~JC

I felt this was very clearly explained in the manual

Under the "how to do an attack" portion it has it step by step what the player must do. The spending fatigue and rolling dice for the basic attack were clearly two seperate steps so I'd have to say that it's illegal since he was doing the steps out of order. Someone else already pointed out that when it comes to upgrading dice rather than adding them that it clearly said it must be done before rolling the dice, plural meaning all in my book.

Rolling one at a time is suspensful but doing it too much really adds to the time spent resolving a single attack and what your player is doing may not seem like cheating but he is trying to change the probabilty of his success in his favor mid attack. Part of the game is fair and random outcomes. What he's just done is changed the outcome of the attack's success from 25% to 50% in a clear bypass of the rules.

its up to the OL just how fair that feels.

Ok, I should clarify perhaps.

I agree that it is clearly laid out in the book how to do attacks, rolling dice adding or upgrading etc. My reference to rolling 2 dice at a time was a joke.

From the original post I think that option A is illegal but irrelevant as the player could add the extra dice after he rolled the first ones so it makes no difference. I would let it pass without comment if I saw someone doing that.

Option B is cheating IMO and I if I saw someone doing that I would explain the rule and then give discuss with the group giving him the the option to either not upgrade or to reroll all dice with the upgrade. If I found him doing it again I would tell him its cheating and to stop. If he did it again I wouldn't game with him anymore, probably.

Option B could potentially be even better for him considering that he might get better results on the dice that were already rolled. I'd play it safe and just stick to option A. It seems fair and is RAW.

If they want to roll one at a time that's fine. I'd just make all decisions that effect the roll before he begins and make it perfectly clear what dice are being rolled before any series of dice are rolled. For example, declare the attack and what dice are a part of it with any upgrades, roll each one a time until all are rolled, then take that result and possibly spend fatigue for more power dice, then rolled those power dice one at a time until all of those are rolled, then apply the final result.

again, I think any backpeddling in the order of things done is because they've seen a part of the result and didn't like it, but that's the risk he took.

Isnt it kinda ironic?

You have 5 melee traits but this is actually a disadvantage when it comes to upgrading dices. It would even be plausible that a player voluntarily rolls less dice (rules say you MAY add the black dice) to have some room for extra fatigue dice that can then (if needed) be upgraded. How absurd. I love descent rules *sigh*

Dreepa said:

Erm.... If you have a melee trait of 5, you get 5 black dice. You can upgrade them to silver / gold, you just have to do so before you roll them. You may know that, and maybe it is just me not understanding what you were saying.

Big Remy said:

If done in jest like this, it can be funny. If somebody does that with the belief that it's an allowed way to roll dice however, it's a surefire sign that he has to rethink his gaming ethics. Winning is good and all, but once a die is rolled, it's rolled, and its result is clear, no matter what happens to the die itself afterwards.

Paul Grogan said:

It was just a weird thought

I dont know if I can get my point accross that well in a foreign language, but I ll try:

Imagine there is a monster you can beat with a single roll, however, the odds are not in your favor at all (you need a perfect roll, all black dice need to show a power enhancement). So instead of trying it right away with all 5 dice (that would leave you with no upgrade possibility after the roll) you decide to just attack with the weapon's dice only plus, say, 2 blacks. That gives you the option to roll 3 more black dice later on BUT which can be upgraded. You waste fatigue for those 3, sure, but on the other hand you can actually calculate the risk, and refrain from adding fatigue if the roll sucks. So if the roll turns out to be rather good, but still not as good as it needed to be to kill the monster, you can add fatigue to roll 3 more UPGRADED dice, one after the other, reassessing after each roll. If you had rolled all 5 blacks initially your chances to kill the monster would have been less, because you cannot alter the score afterwards. Its like all or nothing. If you see your roll is good, you put all fatigue in and actually have a high chance killing the monster. Whereas rolling upgraded dice up front will burn the fatigue without knowing if it will be a waste or a good investment. You burn less fatigue rolling all 5 up front, sure, but chances are the burned fatigue i used for nothing. Maybe you even missed with the main die... fatigue gone for nothing... It didnt had any effect. The monster ist still alive.

By volunarily rolling less blacks you have the option to adapt to the siuation, at the cost of more fatigueloss, but also with a better chance of a successfull use of the fatigue.

And so far my experience in Descent has always been like that: Either you do something very commited with high chanced to succeed or you dont do it at all. A half wounded Troll doesnt do less damage. So if I use my assets, they need to have impact. Nothing worse than spending not enough fatigue, leaving me with half my fatigue while I failed at killing. Removing threats is prio A.

So in this special case it might be a good decision to throw less black and up your chances with fatigue or live with the failure but not having wasted ANY fatigue. All or nothing

Dreepa said:

That is why I always recommend that the heroes don't buy more than their third black die until they've upgraded their existing ones. In my current campaign with my brother, Andira rolls two silver and a gold. That way, you've always got the option to add a die or two after to nudge the result.

Since it says that upgrades to power dice must be purchased before the roll of the dice, my ruling is that it means before the rolling of ANY dice. Once that red die has been cast, the most you can do is buy extra dice (and possibly upgrade those)