The hero party in my group did the expansion dungeon from Tomb of Ice that grants one of the heroes Ironskin . Blast and Breath have been adjusted in the FAQ ruling to be used against single targets rather than using the " Breath Template" or the additional area affect of "Blast". When used against an individual rather than area, they no longer apply as "multiple space area affect attacks". Can they be targeted on the Hero with Ironskin and still do damage as long as they aren't used to affect an area?

Does this also mean that any trap that affects more than one space will also not harm the hero with Ironskin ? Even if they are the only one near the trap? Or is it strictly limited to "attacks" only?

And was there any legitimate reason for Sweep to be included in the Ironskin immunity, since Giants are the only monsters with Sweep and are already restricted by extremely slow movement? Everything else about Ironskin at least generally makes sense but this one... although it hasn't come up as an issue in the heroes hands yet (only once had Sweep used against me as OL and it was a Melee feat card), although since they will likely only ever come across one (and in the extremely rare case two) opponent(s) with Ironskin, this will only very occasionally be an advantage for the OL.

Probably one of the best combinations for a "Tank" though, Ironskin and Taunt ... makes about half of my attacks useless.

If an attack is not using Blast or Breath , then the fact that the figure had the option to use one of those abilities will not protect the figure with Ironskin . It's a regular attacking targeting one space, it'll work on an Ironskin figure just fine.

Except for Dark Charm, traps are not "attacks", and therefore Ironskin does not protect against them.

Ironskin works differently in the advanced campaign than in normal quests, for no clear reason. The vanilla version of Ironskin does not protect against Sweep . If you want to be really pedantic, you could argue that the campaign version of Ironskin doesn't protect against Sweep either , because Ironskin says it protects against "attacks that affect more than one space " while Sweep says it affects "all enemy figures within melee range", and doesn't say anything about "spaces". I feel Descent's editing took a turn for the worse with the release of Road to Legend ...

Sweep is not optional, but neither Blast nor Breath were originally optional, and were errata'd to be optional due to problematic situations involving heroes with Grapple (which I think has since been removed completely from advanced campaigns). If FFG thinks that a hero becoming immune to giants and master trolls is problematic, they might change Sweep to be optional as well. Then again, if they didn't want the hero to be immune to stuff like that, I'm not sure how they imagined that giving Ironskin to a hero could possibly be a good idea in the first place.

Yah, overall it is a very powerful ability in the heroes hands, soso in the OL's depending on how many of the heroes have Pierce, and rare since it only comes up with Golems and the rare dungeon level leader or Lt.

Wow... I never considered that... since the Sweep ability isn't optional that would make them immune to all attacks from Giants and Trolls... I think for my game I'll not include Sweep in the immunity of Ironskin. Everything else made sense in it's own way, but Sweep... Giants and Trolls are already limited by how wide they are, having a hero immune to all attacks from them just stand in the entry to a hallway and block them while the other heroes peck at range seems like giving the heroes an almost invincibility. Since there are no restrictions like this on Dragons and Demons (largest creatures from the Eldritch and Beast catagories), I don't see a reason to limit Giants and Trolls attacks.

I'll have a player vote on this one I think, either we'll play it as "Sweep" being optional or just not include "Sweep" in the Ironskin restrictions. Looks like this one was destined to become a house rule.

Antistone said:

Well I can see other advantages to having Breath be used against an individual rather than as a template, including the seriously limited ranged. In this case I just view it more as the dragon focusing a direct flame at an individual rather than flaming an "area" which allows it to shoot farther than a limit of four spaces range.

I think Blast wasn't so much of an issue with Grapple, can't see how it would be unless the hero also had Taunt which would force all attacks directed to hit the hero and the grappled figure since minimum Blast area affect is 1 effectively killing themselves in the process. On the other hand, I can see it being made optional so that the OL didn't have to wait for the heroes to kill all the other monsters before using creatures with the Blast ability, something that would restrict them to being last line of defense type monsters.

Blast is about to become an issue in my games for once (most monsters with it die long before they get to use it). The heroes are about to fight "Lord Merrik", the last Lt I have on the board (Sir Alric was owned by Rapid Fire, four high damage attacks in a row, one with a Power Potion), we are just about to switch to the Gold level of the campaign (4 more conquest tokens to go) and will right after their battle with the Lt whether they win or lose. Since their tank has Ironskin I suspect he'll have to flee again (already had to flee twice with him as the cards I drew for encounter maps were the ones that limited all attacks to affecting one figure only, and the second time no figure could attack beyond 3 spaces, both severely handicaping the Lt). I might be able to kill the other three heroes before he does, his support consists of the usual (4 Skeletons, 2 Sorcerers and a Manticore) plus two cards to spawn Beastmen which means by my second turn they'll have two gold master Beastmen to face and four white as well. Beastmen seem to be the biggest threat to them in the game, other than the rare leader or so.

Of course the option to turn off the Breath ability is USEFUL for a variety of tactical reasons, but that didn't stop its use from being mandatory for years after Descent's initial release. It was changed to being optional in a FAQ update released shortly after people started pointing out that a hero with Grapple can stand diagonally adjacent to a monster with Breath and the monster couldn't attack the hero at all.

Blast was still mandatory for a good while after that (at least several months, maybe a year?) until people started complaining that a hero with Grapple that was orthogonally adjacent to a monster with Blast could still be attacked by the monster, but only if the monster was willing to hit itself as well (due to line-of-sight restrictions, it can't target any squares that are closer to the hero than to itself except the hero's square).

Incongruously, the Bolt ability is STILL mandatory, unlike Breath or Blast . One likely reason for this is that (unlike Breath) it CAN hit diagonally-adjacent targets (except maybe for large monsters; it's not as clear as it could be) because the template is 2 squares wide at the base. Though it might also have something to do with the fact that it's incredibly rare, showing up only when explicitly called for by special quest rules, and thus people don't notice or complain about it as much.

Thanx for the reminder regarding Bolt, I've never used it before so I might have thought of it as optional if you hadn't reminded me.

Well, for sweep vs. ironskin i'd say that if there is only one 1 figure in range of the sweeping monster, then only 1 space is affected. Since only one space is affected, Ironskin doesn't kick in... Now if you had 2 heroes with Ironskin, you could do the blocking scenario where neither hero is an eligible target.

Antistone said:

I think the idea was allow it to be used off of one square adjacent, even on large monsters to prevent issues that cropped up with the Flame template being exploited with Grapple. So it is not a requirement to place all starting squares adjacent to the figure, just one must be aligned, and it must be from the end of the template, not the sides. This negates any fear of Grapple making the creature immune to all attacks and sounds like it was a quick thought fix to the Flame issues.

Well, for sweep vs. ironskin i'd say that if there is only one 1 figure in range of the sweeping monster, then only 1 space is affected. Since only one space is affected, Ironskin doesn't kick in... Now if you had 2 heroes with Ironskin, you could do the blocking scenario where neither hero is an eligible target.

I am not aware of anything ever granting the hero group more than one Ironskin ability, the idea of this alone unnerves me. However this is actually a good option. I can see how it would work, but I can also see other issues with it that could come up. I'm not sure if the good outweighs the bad... I think I'd prefer to see a change to Sweep, making it optional like Breath or Blast if it is to be included in the immunity to Ironskin. I will however bring this up as another option for a temp house rule till FFG makes a call.

I have no idea what just happened to that post...