Ok as you know Trolls are nasty critters in the game. Once time as an overlord I almost did a TPK on the PC's who were together and I threw a bash attack with Aim and suceeded doing like 20 damage with pierce 4 on all of them (for rolling four surges and with Sweep and Reach), killing three of them on the spot and one only surviving because he had Stealth active.

But when a Troll goes into the Silver and Gold range and use a Bash Attack, what sort of dice do they roll? Do they continue to roll black or do they roll silver and/or gold dice according to their color? There is no clarification either way for this. Sure the Bash rule says "Black Dice", but most monsters get silver/gold dice as they advance. Why not a Troll?

Great minds think alike. I was actually just about to post the same question, but I don't have the rules/cards handy (I left them at a friend's place last night), so I don't remember if the wording of the ability was changed for RTL.

I vaguely remember the monster card actually listing a level next to bash (for example "Bash 5" for the copper) in which case I'd think that would be the number of "upgrades" you could buy. I would argue, however, that you would need to be rolling all 5 black before you could upgrade any to silver or gold, to keep an appropriate risk involved in the ability.

I hope someone can clear this up for us, as my brain won't let this go now ;-D

Darkfire14 said:

Actually in the rules page 8 in the "Alter of Despair" rulebook it does not state "black dice" it states "Power dice". I also checked the reference chart on the back of the "Tomb of Ice" expansion and it says "power dice", it only says "Black" in the reference chart on the RTL.
If you were to say that it was always "Black" dice, and say the troll was a master troll upgraded to the silver level in the silver campaign level, and say he rolled max number of surges with max damage on the colored die but still had surges on them and he rolled no blanks. The max the Troll would hit for would be 25 damage and 8 pierce. Which would not kill our tank that has ironskin, 8 armor (against melee attacks), and 18 health (and he does not have the silver level special training yet). On the other hand if he rolled silver power dice once the monster class was upgraded to silver level and we assumed the max of everything as stated above. The master troll would be able to do 35 damage with 12 pierce which is a little on the high side since that is more than any character can get even in gold level. Let’s say that we took our tank mentioned above and fast forwarded him to the gold level. He would have 27 health and 10 armor max (one fist with 3x+4 health, dragon armor, parry skill, ox tattoo, and ice wyrm rumor reward).

In conclusion I would say that even at the gold level black power dice are probably sufficient for the bash skill of most hero parties. If you did upgrade to silver though it would make more sense because then he would not be forced to roll a "perfect" roll with all his die to actually do enough damage to possibly kill the tank. I think this should be FAQed to FFG though because it is really unclear.

Good question!

RoyalDirk

Osaka said:

Unfortunately the Cards do not have a bash number on them :-( that would be an interesting solution though.

~RoyalDirk

The description of the Bash ability in the RtL pdf specifically limits it to black power dice, so by RAW, I don't think the Bash ability allows you to roll silver or gold dice at any level.

Though an argument could possibly be made that if you get a power die "boost" from some other source (like the Doom card), that you can use that to transform one of the black bash dice into a silver die.

Doesn't the FAQ also state that black dice also include silver and gold dice if the abilities are used with RtL?

haslo said:

I don't see why you would apply that ruling if the ability in question has already been specifically updated for RtL; it's got a verbose description in the RtL rulebook that differs from the AoD version in that it specifically says " black power dice."

Antistone said:

It does indeed, but the FAQ also states that "If an effect adds a black die to a roll (...), it instead adds one "boost" as if the subject had spent one fatigue to enhance its attack." I don't see why this FAQ entry (applying to RtL and being in the RtL section) wouldn't apply to that particular part of RtL, and why Bash (which is also applicable to standard Descent) should be excluded here. That's the RAW thing, and for fluff - there, it makes even less sense that Bash should suck so much more than any other effect that uses or adds black dice.

haslo said:

Because the question being answered by the rules you quoted is asking specifically about non-RtL ("vanilla") rules.

it adds black die,and they are good enough like this. Throwing any other die would completely upset the risk vs reward balance (bashing with 2 silver dice is much better than using 4 black ones, as it significantly reduces the probability of missing).

I don't think bash needs to be scaled, because it actually makes the troll damages increase more consistently than most melee monsters (as they can make use of surges on yellow and green dice, they get a better damage upgrade than the most). If you really want to improve bash with levels, it would be much better to keep black dice and change it to 6 pierce 2 at silver, 6 pierce 3 at gold, 7 pierce 3 at diamond or something like that. Trolls should never be allowed to throw anything else than black dice (unless you want to completely change bash).

Hm, I guess that makes sense, yeah. It'd be clearer if they'd have included a sentence in the RtL skills overview, either "these black dice can't be upgraded" or "they can be upgraded"... as it stands, yeah, the FAQ explicitly talking about "vanilla" effects, while the RtL skills overview explicitly states that some skills were adapted for RtL, puts it into perspective. It's not entirely conclusive I think, though