I have two questions that came up in or RtL session today.

1.) If a hero is asleep can he/she still use his/her familiars.

2.) Can the heroes chose to buy from the copper deck in the silver campaign level?

1. Yes, he can. The hero is only prevented from using movement points and may not attack, according to page 31 of the RtL book. As the hero still gets a turn, they may still use the familiar... just can't do anything else.

2. Heh... apparently not.

Visit, Train, or Restock
When the first hero visits a given Market in a given game
week, a number of cards equal to the city’s Market rating are
drawn from the treasure deck that corresponds to the current
campaign level.

So you are not able to choose... they're just drawn according to the current level. Might be a good house rule, though.

Thanks for the response. I'm not sure why the heroes would want to buy copper treasurers once they have reached silver but my group wanted to know if they could. They have strange ideas that I'm not quite following. There are a few items in copper that don't have better versions in silver or gold but since you have to draw randomly it doesn't seem worth fishing for them.

Certain items in the copper deck are better than some items in the silver deck

Staff of the Grave with certain characters or skill for instance.

Don't forget the Gauntlets of Brokenness and the Plate Mail... often, there will not be enough good suits of armor to go arond; also, the movement-enhancing items like Ring of Quickness stack with their silver and gold counterparts.

Xandria said:

Agreed that's why the question came up. They never got the "Gauntlets of Brokenness" and they were wondering if they could still buy from the copper deck to get them. The problem is that with all the expansions the copper deck is quite large so they could be wasting a lot of time trying to get them when they could be looking at more usefull silver items.

I think I am going to go ahead and let them do it as I think it will hurt them more than help and I am done trying to be the nice OL and steer them in a direction that will help them. When I crush them and we start again maybe they will have learned from there mistakes.

quartersmostly said:

This. FTW.

I always let my players decide if they would like to amend the rules if I don't think it will help them. On the other hand, if you haven't met some concessions with each other on the gauntlets already, just be careful.

They are very reasonable as am I as the OL about not trying to exploit situations that don't seem like the original intent. For instance we had an outdoor encounter with a ton of Razorwings. They have 2 melee characters and 1 magic and one ranged. The encounter had only one exit and not only were they ambushed but I also got the first turn as per the special instructions for that encounter. Well this meant all I had to do was kill there ranged and magic character which wasn't going to be hard to do at all and then park two Razorwings and the exit and just slowly wear down the melee heroes by spawning reinforced RWs and attacking with them. Even if they put guard orders on I would be able to wait until I got a few of them in and then swoop in take a few hits and just attack with the rest. It would have been boring and not in the spirit of the game.

As with the gauntlets I explained to them that if they are used with rapid fire they are absurdly broken and need to be fixed. They agreed and if that combo came up we would decide on a fix that we felt was appropriate.

As with things like Crushing Blow I haven't used it yet but plan to soon. I didn't want to just start breaking their copper items as they got them because that isn't fun for anyone. So I used different Event Treachery that helped me in other ways. Now that they are in silver and have drawn some pretty great items I will start to use it when I feel the balance has shifted in their favor a little more than I am comfortable with. I think that crushing blow is a necessary tool for the OL to keep the Heroes on their toes. Make them hang on to some weapons in case it comes and I have pointed out to them that I have the ability to use it so to plan accordingly.

I learned from playing the base game that although surprises are great if it's just devastating to the other 4 players and takes them out of the game then that isn't fun for anyone. In spoiled brat I caught them in one of the long hallways with a boulder trap and killed them all for the win. I thought it was great but they were not pleased. Especially since they didn't even know the boulder was an option for me. I think a little sense of fairness and fun can go a long way in this game. I don't pull any punches when I'm in a dungeon trying to kill them, but i don't feel I have to destroy them by putting the most optimal cards in my deck every time. It's fun to see a bit of variety in the game.