Preview: Spoiling for a Fight

By Unclechawie, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Sausageman said:

Am I the only person that doesn't like tracing line of site between diagonally places blocking terrain? I've always looked at those as a continuous wall (despite the fact you can walk between them - which also doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me).

What if they're not continuous? What if they're supposed to be piles of boulders? Those usually taper towards the top. Hence the view in between two distinct mounds not orthogonally adjacent, and the ability to step between them.

Columbob said:

Sausageman said:

Am I the only person that doesn't like tracing line of site between diagonally places blocking terrain? I've always looked at those as a continuous wall (despite the fact you can walk between them - which also doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me).

What if they're not continuous? What if they're supposed to be piles of boulders? Those usually taper towards the top. Hence the view in between two distinct mounds not orthogonally adjacent, and the ability to step between them.

So with those same piles of boulders, why can't you see/walk between them when they're orthogonally adjacent?

Bleached Lizard said:

Columbob said:

Sausageman said:

Am I the only person that doesn't like tracing line of site between diagonally places blocking terrain? I've always looked at those as a continuous wall (despite the fact you can walk between them - which also doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me).

What if they're not continuous? What if they're supposed to be piles of boulders? Those usually taper towards the top. Hence the view in between two distinct mounds not orthogonally adjacent, and the ability to step between them.

So with those same piles of boulders, why can't you see/walk between them when they're orthogonally adjacent?

Maybe because it's then supposed to be a single large/long berm.

Columbob said:

Bleached Lizard said:

Columbob said:

Sausageman said:

Am I the only person that doesn't like tracing line of site between diagonally places blocking terrain? I've always looked at those as a continuous wall (despite the fact you can walk between them - which also doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me).

What if they're not continuous? What if they're supposed to be piles of boulders? Those usually taper towards the top. Hence the view in between two distinct mounds not orthogonally adjacent, and the ability to step between them.

So with those same piles of boulders, why can't you see/walk between them when they're orthogonally adjacent?

Maybe because it's then supposed to be a single large/long berm.

So single large barriers only ever exist at right-angles to the dungeon walls…?

You see where the problem we're having with this comes from now?

My favorite mind game in this whole strange fifth dimension descent world:

Looking/moving diagonally through the boulder: You can see through it fine, but it takes one extra movement to get to the other side.

Looking/moving straight through a boulder: You can't see through it, but it doesn't disrupt movement in the least.

That's pretty trippy, don't think about it too hard.

-Bubba

Sorry to detract from bickering about LoS, but I feel there's something else worth bickering about. cool.gif

Anyone else take a look at how the stun condition works now? It completely cancels the next round of action. And in the case of this sling, it only takes one surge to activate. Seems to me a no-brainer tactic to turn enemies into helpless punching bags until they're dead. Anyone else think this could get old quickly?

Also, if characters can't actually die (they just keep standing up endlessly), and there are no conquest tokens to lose, how exactly does the OL win?

steveg700 said:

Sorry to detract from bickering about LoS, but I feel there's something else worth bickering about. cool.gif

Anyone else take a look at how the stun condition works now? It completely cancels the next round of action. And in the case of this sling, it only takes one surge to activate. Seems to me a no-brainer tactic to turn enemies into helpless punching bags until they're dead. Anyone else think this could get old quickly?

Also, if characters can't actually die (they just keep standing up endlessly), and there are no conquest tokens to lose, how exactly does the OL win?

Stun takes one action to remove, not two. Once you remove it, you can perform one more action.

The OL now has his own objectives to achieve. For example, in one quest revealed so far (one of the first quests of the campaign), some goblins are trying to steal crops from a farm. The objectives are based around how many crops the goblins manage to steal, and how many the heroes manage to save.

Is line of sight that intricate and/or complex?

I mean, in WHQ if a wall or obstacle is in the way you can't shoot through it, otherwise figures in combat are judged to be in constant motion so an elven bowman for example can fire through any other model on the board… really do not understand what all the fuss is about - either from FFG trying to micro manage the issue or gamers tending to over analyse / complicate a pretty straight forward rule…

Do people's games of Descent really degenerate into line of sight battle of wills between heroes and the overlord?

Doesn't common sense prevail or is common sense still a house rule in some peoples games?

Or maybe it's just me…

and yes, I probably posted this over at the geek also.

According to the Terrinoth's Bravest preview you only get two Actions per turn. So the Stunned card modifies that rule by saying "this is the only action you may perform on your turn while you have this card or token". So when stunned you have one action and that is discard this card or token.

Malicain said:

According to the Terrinoth's Bravest preview you only get two Actions per turn. So the Stunned card modifies that rule by saying "this is the only action you may perform on your turn while you have this card or token". So when stunned you have one action and that is discard this card or token.

However once you remove it, the stun text no longer applies, so you have your second action to do whatever you want, same with monsters.

khula said:

Do people's games of Descent really degenerate into line of sight battle of wills between heroes and the overlord?

I wouldn't say the game entirely degenerates into LoS arguements, but they did used to come up pretty frequently. Our group was mostly formed of rational, mature players, so we just made a judgement call and got on with things, but the questions still arose a fair bit, yes.

khula said:

Doesn't common sense prevail or is common sense still a house rule in some peoples games?

In first edition, common sense only lead to more rules debates than it solved, in my experience. Hopefully things will be different in second ed, but the rules in 1e were atrociously illogical and trying to make them "make sense" just lead to endless house rules. We quickly learned to accept that the laws of physics were clearly different in Terrinoth than they are here on Earth.

Again, hopefully that will be different in 2e, but in 1e I pitied the fool who tried to argue "common sense."

--

For those who dislike the new LoS rules, I'll just take this opportunity to point out that LoS is probably one of the easier things to house rule, if you're so inclined. I doubt they appear anywhere on the cards, so if you want to go back to the old "center to center" rule, or come up with something entirely different, I don't think it would take much more than a common agreement about how to go about measuring LoS, and everything else should just fall into place.

Malicain said:

According to the Terrinoth's Bravest preview you only get two Actions per turn. So the Stunned card modifies that rule by saying "this is the only action you may perform on your turn while you have this card or token". So when stunned you have one action and that is discard this card or token.

Hmm… I really think you're not interpreting it correctly.

Bleached Lizard said:

Malicain said:

According to the Terrinoth's Bravest preview you only get two Actions per turn. So the Stunned card modifies that rule by saying "this is the only action you may perform on your turn while you have this card or token". So when stunned you have one action and that is discard this card or token.

Hmm… I really think you're not interpreting it correctly.

I agree with you on just about everything. On this I think we will agree to disagree. I do not see how this can be interpreted any other way. It is just like the only thing a knocked out hero can do is stand up, a point which was emphasized in the last preview.


"Unless a knocked out hero is revived by an adjacent ally, he can perform only one action on his turn, and that is to stand back up (to be clear, this constitutes a knocked out hero's entire turn)."


How is the wording for the standup action different from the stunned condition?

Sausageman said:

Am I the only person that doesn't like tracing line of site between diagonally places blocking terrain? I've always looked at those as a continuous wall (despite the fact you can walk between them - which also doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me).

I'm leaning towards playing at least a few games where you can't move or shoot through the corners of obstacles like the preview shows just to see what kind of impact it has. I doubt it will be a huge change.

I agree with Malicain. They went to a lot of trouble to add the line, "this is the only action you may perform on your turn while you have this card or token."

I bolded the section that's most pertinent. It doesn't say, "Use an action to dicard the Stun token" which is what I would expect if it worked the way some of you are interpreting it.

My group clearly understood 1st ed's line of sight rules. On rare occasions where there was some disagreement, I would get out the breath template and use the long edge of it to draw a line from center to center. It was always quite clear if it intersected any occupied squares.

And, yes, monsters block line of sight to their own rear corners. I'm sure somewhere in the rulebook it will tell you that all figures block line of sight, just like they did in 1st ed. This is not a difficult concept to understand, and it will be fixed in the errata.

Always keep in mind that if you try to apply logic to Descent your head will implode.

MasterBeastman said:

I agree with Malicain. They went to a lot of trouble to add the line, "this is the only action you may perform on your turn while you have this card or token."

I bolded the section that's most pertinent. It doesn't say, "Use an action to dicard the Stun token" which is what I would expect if it worked the way some of you are interpreting it.

You bolded the wrong part. You should have bolded the part that says "while you have this card or token".

If all it said was "use an action to discard this card or token", it wouldn't be a disability now, would it? lengua.gif They need the other part to indicate you can't do anything else while you hold the card/token. Once it's gone, you can perform other actions.

And it *does* say "use an action to discard this card/token" - that's what the little arrow at the start of the ability means.

I thnk the best way I'm going to tell my group is to treat the cornes of your hero's like how use can see. Look at it from this point, for all you Star Fleet players out there. The hero's attack has an acr in this case it is an FX arc or 270 arc. the only thing is you measure from the corners. So at an angle you will have 3 cornes and straigt on you will have 2 cornes. This is true for both a monster in front and the the monter behind your hero. Now mind you, if there is a monster in front of you and behind you this is where the "chose any corner to any monster corner" come into play. The "any" is what is throwing most people off. You can chose any cornes to corner but you still need to have the LoS to attack the monster. The arc is just and area where you can draw your line(s).

this is how I look ar it.

With reguards to stun, I don't have promblem with it as if they can do it to my monsters then I can do it to them. I'm looking froward to gettin my copy, which I perorderd months the months ago ( plus the converg. kit). Besides if a hero with a stun weapon becomes a problem, I'm the OL I'll just take care of that hero. PLus we know nothing of the healers alilities, they any be able to remove negative effects besides healing, just a thought.

Ps. Yeah! We got Zombies and Bezerkers!!!!!

The use of one action to discard the stun token is pretty bad in my book. That's half of your actions.

I see what you're saying. Surely you see what I'm saying too. If it works where you just spend your first action to discard the stun, and you still have a second action remaining, then why even include the line, "this is the only action you may perform on your turn"?

I was hoping they would clean up the wording of the rules in 2nd Ed and we wouldn't need fifteen pages of errata but I forgot we're talking about FFG. I should apply to be a technical writer. Then none of us would have this problem. cool.gif

Bleach is right the stun card say "while you have this card" the 1st of 2 action is discarding the card "THAT IT", then you have your 2nd action still. It saying it the only action you can do beacuse a player may try to attack or move before removing the stun. it's acting at a 1 action penalty that has to be resolved 1st. that how it read it.

MasterBeastman said:

The use of one action to discard the stun token is pretty bad in my book. That's half of your actions.

I see what you're saying. Surely you see what I'm saying too. If it works where you just spend your first action to discard the stun, and you still have a second action remaining, then why even include the line, "this is the only action you may perform on your turn"?

Because that's not what it says! You're cutting the sentence off half way through! :P

I concede the point.

The first time I read it, I had it right. Then I over-thought it by asking myself why they worded it the way they did. I thought it was to clarify that you got no actions on your turn.

I see how it works now (thanks to PBnJ), and I see that they worded it that way in case you have multiple stun tokens.

Still, I think they worded it much more clearly in 1st edition.

Yeah, the wording on stuff is a bit odd. I'm guessing with the wording they chose, they're trying to make it so that the player must deal with stun before anything else. Without really thinking about it, maybe something along the lines of "you must use an action this turn to remove this card before performing another action." I can certainly see debates rising if you have multiple cards, but i think they'd be much less. They definitely need a strong technical writer along with their creatives. These debates alone are proof of that. Either way, it doesn't matter. The cards are printed, it says what it says. But here's to hoping there are more clarifications in the full rulebook. And i will say that while i might criticize and nitpick about rules and wordings and such, i don't think i've ever been more excited about a board game's release.

I think the clearest wording would have been: "you may not perform any other actions while you hold this card."

I would think that if a monster is affected by a condition that takes away a fatiuge, then they would lose a wound insted just like in 1st ed. when a hroe no long has fatuge to lose then lose a wound.

Other people were trying to say once you standup as your only action for the turn after you have been Knocked out you are no longer Knocked out and can take your second action because your are no longer Knocked out.


That is why they emphasized that it is the only thing you can do on your turn when you are knocked out in a later preview.


The Dazed card says the same thing. I can admit that the wording is terrible on the card, hence the debate. I totally understand your argument and concede that this could be the intent of the card, I just wish that it did not have the "on your turn" part.


You have strong Jedi powers Lizard, but I remain a holdout. Unless some other revelation is made clear in future previews I know FFG rule folk's will get an email from me to clarify.


On the line of sight question. I have been following the debate on BGG and I agree with Bleached Lizard in all that he says in that regard. I think that this issue has been blown out of proportion. If you read the preview and look at the example given they are only showing what I posted in the BGG forum:


"Both corners are of the attacker’s choosing"
In the example given the attacker (Jain Fairwood) chose two corners with no line of sight to each other.
That’s all that example is showing.


All of this debate is just part of the anticipation for this game. I can't wait to get my hands on it.