After more than 1000 hours of AC play strange situations still arise. A mage is standing on a tree and uses blast and the blast reaches it's square does he get damaged? RAW he should get damaged since he is adjacent to himself even though pretty weird.

Spiritwalker and dark charm. Can you activate spiritwalker with dark charm and attack from someone else? I would think that would be illegal for more than one reason.

1st) The other figures are no longer friendly.

2nd) The wording you may means that the OL can't activate it as he can't activate any ability that isn't used automatically.

There will forever be unheard of combos. There are so many bits, cards and abilities in the game!

Spiritwalker & Dark Charm. I would rule this as ok! Mainly cuz Spiritwalker is not activated or deactivated, rather a hero with this ability, may make an attack as if it came from another hero. So when the OL chooses to declare an attack and have the hero make it, if it's a legal attack the Hero can make, he should have to make it. If spiritwalker required movement, or fatigue, or anything else, I'd say no, but it's just "there" and gives that hero more possible attacks that can be declared.

Note this is already clarified somewhere that if you have the "may ignore one obstacle when tracing line of sight" ability then the valid targets are still valid when the OL tells you to make an attack. It's valid cuz that hero ignores the intervening obstacle. Since that always-on ability is still valid, I dont see why Spiritwalker would be different.

1. FAQ p.6 says that Aura doesn't affect a flying figure passing over you, which implies that a space is not adjacent to itself. That would suggest a hero in a tree is not adjacent to himself, and therefore is unaffected by any of his own attacks--even if under the effects of Dark Charm!

Of course, FFG will never make that official, because it's too counter-intuitive (never mind the mental gymnastics necessary to justify the mechanics of Dark Charm in the first place), so if this ever finds its way into the FAQ, I predict they will rule the opposite way. Whether or how they would actually resolve the contradiction that would create is anyone's guess; the easiest would be to errata Shadowcloak.

2. If a Dark Charmed hero gains the benefits of Command from monsters but not from heroes, then I would expect a Dark Charmed hero with Spiritwalker can cause his attack to originate from the square of any monster within 10 spaces, but not from the squares of other heroes.

Drglord said:

I forget how Shadowcloak responds to Blasts. Does it count the origin as the center of the AoE, or does it count the origin as the figure who created the attack? If its the former then I think it's fairly clear-cut that the mage would be hit if the center of the Blast happened to be adjacent to his current position, and not hit otherwise. If it's the latter (which it probably is, knowing Descent) then I would say he's not hit since, as Antistone illustrates, a given space is not adjacent to itself. Good times. Good, illogical times.

Drglord said:

When making a Dark Charm attack, the OL cannot use gear that is currently unequipped, and he cannot force the hero to spend fatigue. Those are the only restrictions as far as I know. The OL can use any and all skills the hero possesses, as long as they don't require fatigue to activate and as long as currently equipped gear meets the criteria of the skill (if any.) Spiritwalker is fair game. However, the skill does say "friendly figures" and at the moment of the DC attack, monsters are friendly, so I would concur with Antistone (again) that he could make the attack via a monster within range, but not a hero.

I would also extend the "cannot spend fatigue" to other resources, like "cannot spend a wound" to activate a skill and so on. I don't think there are any such skills as yet, but in principle that's what would say.

Steve-O said:

I thought the folks out here ruled the attack originates from the attacking Hero. Thus you're better off just not using the blast, else you can't hit the shadowcloaked monster. You have to move up diagonally adjacent to him, then target a space 2 spaces away and on the other side of him. That's really silly to have to do that, and we've considered making Blast, Breath, and Bolt apply after Shadowcloak instead of before.

i.e. instead of reading the attack first, Breath affecting all spaces under the template, then changing the affected spaces of the breath template by the Shadowcloak not being adjacent, apply the Shadowcloak first and say only susceptible to attacks made by adjacent figures, but then apply the Breath rule which in turn applies to all figures under the Breath Template.

Basically where Breath and Shadowcloak conflict over which spaces are affected, allow the Breath to take precedence instead of the Shadowcloak.

This would make the Breath weapons for the Heroes more valueable, and the Encounters involving Hell Hounds something other than a complete waste of time.

Is this on the list of gathered things for a future faq?

The breath and bolt weapons are already some of the most effective in the game, allowing them to remove Shadowcloak would throw off the already tenuous balance of these weapons. As well, there are only 3 Deep Elves and Trees that have Shadowcloak, and it's the only thing that forces opponents to "close the gap". It gives Melee fighters something to do in otherwords. Ghost works in similiar ways, forcing the Melee character to back off (unless they have a weapon with reach), and encouraging Ranged and Magic characters to deal with the problem. From what I've gathered, Deep Elves can "flicker" out of this realm if attacked at range in any way seeing it coming, including templates, when at Melee this advantage is taken away because they are concentrating on "fighting" instead of just "avoiding". It forces certain Lts to actually face the Heroes rather than picking them off at range. There are advantages to both sides having the "current" effects of Shadowcloak. As to trees and avoiding being hit, being a "dragonlover" I can tell you, when in a forest, with a dragon flying above you and flaming wildly into the woods, your chances of being hit are greatly reduced, as well there is much more in terms of cover, again, it seems to me that the tree Shadowcloak allows you to "avoid" attacks rather than not "technically" be in their effect radius.

Both Shadowcloak and the Templates rules work fine as is. It may "annoy" someone that it works that way (hell I've had moments where I wanted to "lose" the breath template after watching it wipe out an entire monster group before it was ever activated), but both are compensations to balance out either side having the advantage of one or the other. If you can't hit it the way you want to, send in someone who can. Whether you're the OL or the Hero both Shadowcloak & the Templates are available, if it was only in the hands of one side, altering the rules would make sense, for now, both benefit. I seriously hope there are no "additional" changes to the rules as is.

poobaloo said:

Is that different in any way from saying "Shadowcloak does nothing against Breath attacks"?

That's an incredibly confusing explanation and appears to involve on at least two separate misunderstandings about how the rules currently work, and that seems to be the net result, but I really can't tell what thought process is going on behind there.

Shatteredragon said:

it would also be more in line with the rule that blast needs line of sight (only) from the space where blast is originating from (and not from the casting figure) to hit a target.

but supposedly it was ruled in a FAQ the the figure must be adjacent.