This came up on BGG. Interestingly I'm going to have to reverse the way I've played for years I think.

The question was exactly when the OL gains threat for surges, effectively important only as to whether the OL can spend that gained threat for additional dice added to teh same attack (during AC outdoor encounters).

The OL does in fact gain threat for surges at the same time as heroes would be spending theirs, not at the end of the attack as I had thought (and I think previously has been the general agreement here).

Its on pg 10 DJitD rulebook, under Step 5: Power Enhancements, Power
Surges, and Fatigue of the combat sequence.
During that part of the sequence hero players may spend surges or power enhancements to boost the results of their attack.
And the OL may spend surges for threat.
And the heroes may add extra dice using fatigue (as a fourth subheading at the same level but immediately after the using surges subheadings).

Since the AC rules for using threat to add or upgrade a die specifically say "like a hero using fatigue on an attack", it therefore follows that the timing options are the same as for a hero.

So, clearly, dice can be added or upgraded both before the roll and also after the roll during step 5 (though a rolled dice can't be upgraded).

And since dice can be added after the surges are spent for threat, therefore the newly purchased threat can be used to buy more dice and add them to the roll.
Which we've always ruled out!

DJitD pg10
Step 5: Power Enhancements, Power Surges, and Fatigue
If the attacker has not rolled a miss result, it is possible for the attacker to modify the rolled range and damage through one or more of the methods described below.
- Using Power Enhancements (Heroes or Overlord):
The black power dice have power enhancements on several of their sides. For every power enhancement a player rolls during an attack, he may increase either the range or the damage of the attack by 1.
- Using Power Surges (Heroes): Many of the dice have power surges on them. A hero player may use his rolled power surges to trigger a variety of special effects, depending on the weapon used.
snip...
- Using Power Surges (Overlord): For every two surges the overlord player rolls during an attack, he gains one threat token. Any unused surges are lost.
- Using Fatigue (Heroes Only): or using threat in encounters (Overlord) After the dice have been rolled for an attack, hero players may also spend one or more fatigue tokens to add additional power dice to the roll. However, an attacker may never roll more than five total power dice for a single attack. See “Spending Fatigue for Attacks,” page 18, for further information.

Have I missed something? Probably...

When using a strict reading, the OL probably should be allowed to do that.

However, imagine e.g. an attack on a hero that has a Dodge order readied. As we know from the FAQ ruling, all purchases and upgrades of dice have to be done prior to the Dodge roll.

What happens if the OL has spent surges on dice for threat (even added new ones with the fresh threat) and the dice with the original surges get re-rolled and don´t come up with enough surges for the purchases made?

Would the additional dice and/or purchased threat get removed afterwards? If only a part of the new dice or upgrades would be removed, how to choose which ones? Would all dice, upgrades and threat stay, effectively countering part of the Dodge effect?

I guess I will still play it as you did for years, spending surges for threat as the very last thing of an attack, after applying damage. Just to steer clear of more fuzz.

Besides that, Dark Priests (which already are pretty strong) would become pretty nasty in outdoor encounters, although I am not sure whether any Incident card exists that lists them as minions or as a leader.

Parathion said:

We already know that dodges must be played before Step 5, don't we? Ie, once we get to step 5, it is too late to play a Dodge - if surges and enhancements are actually being spent, then any opportunity to play a dodge has already assumed to have been passed.

I think they screwed up the FAQ ruling.

You mean that even after the Dodge reroll, the hero/outdoor OL should still be allowed to spend fatigue/threat to buy upgrades/dice to add to the roll, meaning you´d have dice in the final attack result that had been subject to the Dodge reroll and dice that were not?

I think the attack sequence in general has some loopholes and needs a general overhaul. Obviously, we missed that in the FAQ proposal...

I think that any die re-rolled cannot be changed by a dodge action

What about a dark priest? Could he add more dice when he rolls two surges, AND obtain the dark prayer benefit at the same time?. It sounds overpowered...

The attack sequence is incredibly sloppy and in some cases obviously wrong; notice, for example, that it tells you to check whether the attack has sufficient range to hit in step 4, but doesn't allow you to spend power enhancements or surges until step 5, which (read strictly) makes it impossible to spend enhancements or surges on range in order to turn a missed attack into a hit. Show of hands: how many people actually play like that?

In fact, I believe if you look at the summary of the attack sequence on the cover of the quest guide, the steps are listed in a different order!

Spending surges and adding dice are both listed in the same numbered step, so that's ambiguous even if we trust the order in the rules. But suppose that we decide that the substeps occur in the order listed. OK, you spend enhancements and surges, and you might gain fatigue or threat from that, and then you might spend that same fatigue or threat to add more power dice. But the only things you can roll on those power dice are enhancements and surges...which you can no longer spend, because you're already past that substep! Your reading for opening a loophole also removes any benefit you could get by exploiting that loophole.

The only way the attack rules actually work is if you add extra power dice, then spend enhancements and surges, then check to see whether the attack hits or misses. Yes, those things are listed in the reverse order in the actual rules, but if you resolve them in the order they're written, all that happens is that you render a bunch of options completely nonfunctional. What can I say? The rulebook sucks.

The FAQ ruling on Dodge timing is not the only way it possibly could have been ruled, but it's definitely the simplest, and it's completely consistent with the way the rest of the attack sequence obviously has to work. The only FAQ ruling I can think of that arguably screws up the attack sequence is the one saying that you can't spend surges if the attack doesn't hit anything, because you obviously can't determine whether the attack hits anything until after spending surges (despite the rulebook instructing you to do so), but IIRC the FAQ explicitly says you're supposed to go through the process of spending surges and then retroactively cancel them if nothing is hit afterwards, so they are at least aware that this breaks the sequence. Which is better than they did when actually writing the sequence in the first place.

Antistone said:

I'm not sure I agree with that.
Sure, it's very badly written.
But it doesn't actually say that the attack misses outright if the range is not sufficient. It says the attack fails and no damage is done unless the player can increase the range to the minimum required range in step 5.
So as far as I can see it does not prevent you from moving to step 5 due to insufficient range, just tells you that if you still have insufficient range after step 5 then the attack will fail and no damage will be done.
So step 4, we only 'stop' if there is an X. Insufficient range, we just not that there is now a conditional on the attack (it fails if range is not sufficiently increased during step 5) and move on to step 5).

No?

Antistone said:

Again, I disagree (not that the rulebook sucks of course).

There is another way that the rules there work perfectly well. In fact, I think you are actually misapplying them to create the difficulty (not deliberately of course).
The four sub-headings inside Step 5 are not apparently ordered, numbered, sequenced or sub-stepped.
If the attacker has not rolled a miss result, it is possible for the attacker to modify the rolled range and damage through one or more of the methods described below.
They are just a list of methods that can be used to modify the attack result (which is X range, Y damage, Z specials). So why can you not use them in any order so desired, even intermingling them?
I don't see anything that stops you using the first listed method to add some range, then the second listed method to add some more range, then the fourth listed method to roll additional dice, then using the first or second listed method to add more range from the newly added dice.
It's not like these are substeps a, b, c and d, or i, ii, iii and iv.

Antistone said:

What would be simplest would be to allow the Dodge (or Aim) to be played, or resolved, at any time before step 5. At the time of the Dodge/Aim, any or all dice are rerolled. Then the Dodge/Aim has been resolved. Any dice added after the Dodge (or Aim) is resolved are no longer affected by the Dodge/Aim because it has already resolved.

I think that is simpler and more consistent. The main thing it does is eliminate the little guessing game of whether to throw in more dice before any roll is made just in case.

However, the FAQ says that you may not add dice after a Dodge/Aim is resolved. That is all.
So it seems to me then, that a Dodge/Aim simply removes that option from Step 5. I think you can add more dice before step 5 (pg 18 says after the attack is rolled, which means step 3 onward), but you can also explicitly add more dice during step 5.
I think we agree that a Dodge/Aim should be played before Step 5 - otherwise you can spend stuff you end up not having.
So I think that it all still works together, just barely.
If you play/use a Dodge/Aim, it must be done before step 5. If you do that, the option of adding dice is removed from step 5. If you do not play/use a Dodge/Aim before step 5, then the option of adding dice with fatigue/threat during step 5 remains, but of course the option of using a Dodge/Aim has gone because it's window is past.
The messy bit is the sentence in the FAQ " Once all dice are done being rolled, the Overlord may play the dodge card."
If we read this as being 'all dice to that point (up to step 5)' - (because we know that extra dice can be rolled in step 2s 3 and 4 if desired, and we also agree that Dodge/Aim must be played before step 5, but dice can explicitly be added during step 5) then it still works.

In summary, I think, you can spend surges for threat and that threat for extra dice (in an encounter) on any attack that is not Aimed or Dodged. And all rules are being followed, even the FAQ.

The 'difference' for me, was that I never noticed that adding dice was actually explicitly available during step 5. I always used the pg 18 reference as 'after rolling the attack' and assumed it was anything from step 3 onward (well, before step 6, and actually I always thought of it as before step 5).

As to Dark Priests, no. The GLOAQ states:
Threat and Surges
Q. Do the surges used to generate Threat for an Overlord get spent, or can they be used to activate effects? eg, the OL rolls 3 surges and has the option to use 1 Surge for 1 damage. Can the OL gather 1 Threat and +3 Damage, or only 1 Threat and +1 Damage? Clarified: Can surges used for Threat also be used for abilities?
A. Technically, you spend the 2 surges to gain 1 threat, so you can't use it for both things. With the Dark Prayer ability, you spend 1 surge to gain 1 threat, +1 Range, and +1 Damage.

Parathion said:

Not after a dodge/aim re-roll, the FAQ makes that clear. But I don't think it should have, though I understand (or think I do) why it did.
I think the attack sequence could have been thoroughly overhauled, but it would be an enormous amount of work for a very little gain and was abandoned extremely early in the process (ie I never brought it up).
I think the attack sequence is not well written at all, but is perhaps less weak than many people think. It just needs some clarity, rather than major changes.
See my answer to Antistone.

Corbon. Could you do a complete example with a dark priest attacking in an encounter and a hero dodging (an another one with same case but aiming and dodging)? So maybe I could understand you. Thank you.

I think Corbon is right here when it comes to RAW. The requisite for moving on to step 5 of the attack sequence is only that the attacker does not roll a miss result. A lack of range is never actually referred to as a miss result. Only an X on the die is considered such.

As far as encounters are concerned no timing is specifically laid out as to when an overlord can or cannot spend threat besides that he ALWAYS has the ability to spend 2 threat for 1 movement, or for dice additions/upgrades. That implies that there is never a time that he cannot do this.

While the attack sequence order is listed differently on Pg.9 the way the rules are written would suggest that is the misprint, and not the rules themselves. They follow each other logically as written.

There is no numerical order to the sub rules of Step 5, but Corbon has already covered anything I would say about it. To reinforce it I would add that everything else I can think of (though feel free to prove me wrong) always numbers events that must be taken in order when there is an order to be followed.

Corbon said:

Exactly. There is an instruction in step 4 that is explicitly dependent upon the result of step 5. That means that you cannot finish resolving step 4 ("the attack fails unless...") until you have resolved step 5.

That means the steps are out of order! It is literally impossible to finish step 4 until after you have finished step 5, per the rulebook's explicit instructions .

I don't see how this could possibly be any more clear-cut. Seriously, if this does not convince you the steps are in the wrong order, what conceivable evidence would ever convince you?

Corbon said:

So now you're interpreting a vague comment in the fatigue rules as being more authoritative on the topic of the attack sequence than the attack sequence rules? That is ten flavors of animal feces.

Any halfway sane standards of rule priority would give priority to the actual attack sequence in the event of a contradiction (whether by specificity or print order or, you know, being the only one of the two that is actually about that issue), except that they aren't even contradictory , the rule on page 18 is just vaguer than the one in the attack sequence rules. If you say that you can only add fatigue dice during step 5, then both rules are completely satisfied!

Corbon said:

Happy fun paradox time!

The overlord rolls a Bash attack and gets 2 surges. For some weird reason, he spends those 2 surges to get a threat, and spends that threat to roll another black die. Uh oh, that black die is a blank, which means the attack is now a miss! That means the overlord never got the threat, which means he couldn't have added that black die, which means the attack is NOT a miss, which means...

Heck, we don't even need to involve Bash . Overlord spends 2 surges for a threat, spends the threat to roll another die, but now the attack fails to damage any heroes (maybe it was never going to, maybe a card was played, doesn't matter). The FAQ says this means the surges now retroactively cannot be spent on threat! The overlord has now spent threat that he (retroactively) never had.

Antistone said:

The bash example is one that requires intentionally bad play to occur, on multiple levels.

As far as the undamaging roll I brought up the same on BGG

"However rereading (read: searching the text for threat lol) the FAQ I caught this

[q]Q: Under what circumstances can the overlord receive
threat for rolling surges on an attack roll?
A: The overlord may spend two surges on each attack roll
to gain one threat. He may do this on any attack that hits a
hero. This represents a change from previous FAQ rulings
on this subject.[/q]

I really need to print up the FAQ and become more familiar with it rather than the once thorough read I gave it, and a few cursory glance overs.

What this ruling suggests though is that you could not collect threat and then add more dice in an attempt to gain more range if you are already short of range.[/q]
"

It complicates the situation but doesn't negate it entirely.

Digitality said:

You actually don't know that, because whether a given play is good or bad depends on what happens when you make that play, and since these suggested rules for resolving that contingency are self-contradictory , we don't know what happens, and therefore we don't know whether the outcome would be better or worse than other available options.

But I don't really care whether it requires intentional bad play, because it's just an example illustrating the fact that these suggested rules are self-contradictory.

Antistone said:

Meaning there is no reason to roll less dice than you wanted to begin with in some attempt to later add an upgraded die.

gran_orco said:

I'm not sure what is difficult to understand? Spent surges are spent and can't be used for any other purpose. Dodging or otherwise makes no difference to this.

But here goes anyway.

Abbreviations used: W = White dice, Ag = Silver dice, b = black dice, E = Enhancement result, ~ = surge result, XR= X range result, XD= X damage result, - = blank result

Silver DP attacks a dodging hero with W, Ag, Ag, b, b, b. OL spends 2 threat to upgrade one b to Ag
Roll is: 3D1Rs, 2E, 2s, 2E, s, -

Hero instructs OL to reroll W, Ag with Surges and b with surges. OL can't add any dice before the reroll because he has already rolled 5 and can't upgrade a die after it is rolled.

reroll is: 1D3Rs, 2s,E

Final roll is: 1D3Rs, 2E, 2S, 2E, E, -
Total: 1D, 3R, 3s, 5E
The surges are spent for +1R, +1D and +1threat each using Dark Prayer. The enhancement are used for damage.
Roll result: 9D, 6R, +3 threat.
I'm not even going to bother writing up the option of spending 2 surges for 1 threat, instead of for 2 threat, 2 damage and 2 range. I guess if a hero was heavily weighed down with effect tokens you might not actually want to kill it so may be minimising the damage you do deliberately, even when it costs you threat.

Nothing in this discussion changes this in any way.

Same case but OL plays Aim.
Aim cancels Dodge.

Therefore the first roll cannot be changed. OL still cannot add dice with threat after the roll for the same reason.

Final roll: 3D1Rs, 2E, 2s, 2E, s, -
Total: 3D, 1R, 4s, 4E
The surges are spent for +1R, +1D and +1threat each using Dark Prayer. The enhancement are used for damage.
Roll result: 11D, 5R, +4 threat

Again, nothing in this discussion changes anything here.

Digitality said:

Yes there is.

The Bashing Troll rolls, say, RGbbb

Result is 4 damage and 3 surges. that means the attack is effectively doing 9 damage pierce 2.

But a single extra surge, will make it 14 damage pierce 4.
That could easily be the difference between killing 2 or 3 heroes and not killing them. And if you don't kill them the chances are high that you won't get another attack as they will clean off the troll in their turn (and probably heal in a temple before you get another chance against them).

So it is quite clearly in your interest to add an extra dice - twice as much chance as one or more hero kills vs a total miss with no extra chances anyway.

And it's not like you knew what the roll would be before you rolled it, so guessing the number of dice you want to use would not have necessarily been 4 black dice instead of 3.

EDIT: oops, I missed that Antistone was suggesting spending surges to get the extra dice.

I challenge Antistone to provide a case why the OL would do this.
Note that heroes do not return from death during an encounter, so it is not beneficial to leave an almost dead hero alive to die in his turn due to effect tokens etc.
Not that I am sure actually, whether any outdoor encounters contain Trolls! Although I guess a Lt could have the Lone Troll Treachery card.



The fact is, it has always been an option to do that. It is right there is black and white in the rules, and nothing anywhere in the FAQ or dodges or anything else changes it. There is no suggestion anywhere that spending surges for threat is done at the end of an attack, only that it is done during step 5.

Antistone said:

I'm sorry, were you attempting to convince me that the steps are out of order?
I was under the impression we were discussing the options within steps, not which way round to do the steps.

And I'm not sure how the steps being out of order changes the point that step 4 only tells us to stop if there is an X. It places a conditional on step 5. Step 4 does not require step 5 to complete, contrary to your implication.

Just out of interest, do you play step 5 before step 4?

Antistone said:

Thank you for at least keeping the tone out of the human toilet.

I didn't claim it had higher priority.
And as you say, they aren't even contradictory.
If you add dice in both step 4 and step 5, then both rules are completely satisfied - the Step 5 rule doesn't make any attempt to be exclusory>
And the AC rules allow you to upgrade dice, but only before they are rolled. Therefore you can clearly upgrade, which is classed the same as adding, during step 3.

Antistone said:

Yep, Bash is something of a problem.
But it is right there in black and white. You can add dice during step 5. Nothing about dodges, Aims or rerolls makes any difference.
And frankly, the Bash isn't really a major issue anyway - the OL has screwed himself and has come off very much worse by 'cheating'. Fine, he;s much worse off, lets move on.

And I'm not sure that the not-Bash is a problem. FAQ says you can't spend surges on threat if the attack fails to hit a hero. Therefore unless you have ensured the attack is going to succeed (in other words, passed the step 4 conditional already) you can't spend the surges on threat anyway.
I can't see how adding power dice will ever cause an attack to fail where it would otherwise have succeeded, outside Bash.

Congratulations, you have once again proven that it is not worth trying to explain stuff to you.

You have to admit, his bluntness is pretty awesome.

No offense to anyone of course.

Corbon said:

You have used a SILVER dark priest. I wanted an example with a normal dark priest aiming. If he rolls 1W and 3b dice, and he rolls 2D, 1s, 1s, 1s, then he could add a dice spending two surges, and after that, he could reroll all dice because he is aiming, so now he could roll 1W an 4b dice (1 free dice). Even if the hero is dodging, he has one more die. How do you explain that?

gran_orco said: