So a question about Annen's ability and the resting rules in Mists and Original Runebound game came up.

Annen can always roll 5 movement die regardless of wounds and exhaustion. In the original Runebound game it states 'To rest, simply roll fewer than 4 movement dice. For each die a player chooses not to roll, he may immediately discard one exhaustion counter.' (i.e. rolling 3 die removes 1 exhaustion counter) In the Mists the rules have changed 'To rest, a Hero simply removes any of this movement dice and discards one exhaustion counter per each die he removes.'

The question is when playing the Mists. If Annen chooses to rest 2 exhaustion, does he roll 5 dice and then choose which 3 to continue with or does he roll 4 dice (as per the original rules) and choose 2 dice to continue with?

Breezie said:

He's never forced to roll 4 Movement dice when wounded/exhausted, but can always roll 5. Still, he might need to discard Exhaustion counters to take more (i.e. to use Items, etc...) and he simply removes one die per each Exhaustion counter that he wants to remove. The difference between the base game and MoZ is that in the first he has to forfeit dice before rolling, in the second he can remove dice after rolling and seeing the result.

Annen's ability is even more clear in the Mists of Zanaga context than in the base game. In MoZ he surely will roll 5 dice because he never has to roll fewer, then removes as he wishes; in the base game, he removes the desired number of dice from his standard pool, which is always 5 (that's an oddity because no other Hero has this possibility), then rolls the remaining. This is a good example how special rules are meant to break standard rules.

Follow up question, since I haven't tried MoZ (yet)...

Has anyone tried using the MoZ "resting" rule in the base game or other expansions? Were there any noticeable problems, such as rules conflicts or too easily ditching Exhaustion points, etc.? The alternative MoZ rule sounds like an advantage, or maybe it just seems that way, in being able to ditch Exhaustion for a die you can't use.

We always assumed the number of die rolled is the amount of effort. If you didn't get enough usuable terrain, it's because you didn't find a clear enough route but still made the effort to scout and search. The idea of resting for a die one can't use (but rolled) seems to flout that notion. Maybe MoZ has a higher rate of fatigue build up, like SoAK?

JCHendee said:

The MoZ Resting rule has been introduced for balance issues, mainly because of the Rituals and Roaming Monsters that can actually make your journey more difficult. There are also lots of Forest Spaces on the map and it is quite common to roll a result that doesn't allow you to advance in the desired direction. At least you can recover Fatigue in an easier way.

I don't recommend this rule in another setting or in the base game. It has not been introduced for realism or to improve the existing mechanic, it's only a rebalancement which is restricted to MoZ. We can discuss whether it was really needed or not, but I find really few people who actually played this expansion around.

Got it. Thanks, Warlock. Pretty much as suspected. We play a lot of SoAK and actual amount of Fatigue over time is that bad but the amount of upkeep of changing Fatigue so much was making use NUTS! So I was wondering... but sounds like it isn't the same issue between these two big boxes.

We've house ruled that no matter how much Fatigue comes up on the movement dice you only take 1F for the role of any Fatigue... and any discard of Fatigue on story dice is also limited to 1F per turn. It's working okay.