KristoffStark said:

Wow. How is it not explicit. Page 7 states "Each round, the hero players decide as a group the order in which they wish to act. This order may be different each round. If they cannot all agree on an order, the proceed clockwise, starting with the player seated to the left of the Overlord." That seems pretty plain and straightfoward to me.

wootersl said:

"At the beginning of each round" would make it explicit.

Lacking that, I can find no reason that the decision cannot be made as each hero takes their turn. It's more natural, and it makes more sense to me given the context of the game.

If an agreement cannot be made who will act next (or first), then play moves clockwise from the OL's left, though of course, any hero that has already flipped their Activation card would not receive another turn.

Consider: Each round, the Overlord must decide in what order he wishes to active his monsters. This is a true statement, but he doesn't need to make it at the beginning of his turn. I don't see why this statement, made on behalf of the heroes, means they must.

KristoffStark said:

Because before that it states "A round consists of each player taking one turn, beginning with one of the heroes." So, the round consists of turns. And since the statement after that says "Each round, the hero players decide…" That entails that before any turns start, they must decide on their order of turns. Yes, that gives the OL a slight advantage if he has multiple groups of monsters.

It's not an issue of Los or movement, it's an issue of distance and counting spaces, for which there are specific rules.

Sythion said:

I addressed above how the counting spaces text on page 13 of the rules does not actually address the issue being discussed. In any case, in that section,they are referring to 'abilities', so it is not clear if that is meant to apply to player 'skills'. Abilities are defined as the top block of text on a player's character sheet. Skills are defined as the things that class cards allow you to do.

The word "ability" is used throughout the rules, not just for Hero Abilities. Search cards have an Ability section as well, and the word is used in both the Use a Skill section and in Combat Example when talking about abilities on a weapon, which is a Class Card.

Greedy makes no mention of movement. You can assume the Thief races to that spot on the board. Based on nothing specific in the rules, but just on my history as a paper D&D player, I think of Search actions in terms of "I will now search the room" with the tokens just as placeholders to limit where and how frequently you can do so. You can't just step through a door and declare a room search, you have to advance through the room to an area (on or adjacent to the token) that may not be convenient to your goals for the Encounter and use half your turn. As a greedy thief, that hero has a keen eye for hiding places and/or valuable objects, allowing them to sniff out loot more easily than others. D2E favors playability over realism -- just look at the LOS rules, the fact that diagonal and orthogonal movement has the same cost, or the reinforcements who teleport into encounters.

I had the same question about hero turn order. In the absence of a FAQ clarification, I decided on choose as you go. The rules make no mention of anything like initiative, but do make it clear that the order can change each round and that the whole group has to agree. There is no "party leader" who can dictate the order. If everyone agrees on who should go first (or last), but then start bickering about 2nd or 3rd place, you default to seating order for the remaining players. Although the heros are all on the same side, disagreements on tactics or priorities are bound to arise at times.

skullcap said:

The way I see it, Greedy doesn't specify the need to move at all, and therefore the ability cannot be stopped by things that block movement. I agree that doors and walls should stop it based on the "Counting Spaces" quotation above, but figures (even enemies) aren't "obstacles."

None of this is to say you can't play the game however you like, of course. Call it a house rule if you want to; the rest of the world doesn't need to agree with you in order for you to make rulings that keep the game fun for you and yours.

wootersl said:

The round consists of turns, yes. That does not make the statement "Each round" equate to "At the beginning of each round, before any turns are taken," so I don't see it as automatically entails that this choice needs to be made before turns start. The lack of "At the beginning of each round" or "During each round" makes either valid possiblities of intent.

"beginning with one of the heroes" does not equate to "beginning with the hero chosen first in the full order decided upon ahead of time."

I don't understand how you don't see that you're inferring meaning that is not explicit.

No doubt you don't see how I'm missing meaning that obviously (to you) is explicit.

This is why I suggested that we agree to disagree.

I really don't think this conversation is going anywhere.

Steve-O said:

I do not require that the rest of the world agrees with me, but I am interested in finding out if there are clues as to the intent of the game designers. Unfortunately no one has offered anything more than opinion on the matter.

The often referred to 'counting spaces' text from the rule book really does not clear things up. I wish it did, but it did not. It can be interpreted many ways. For instance… the part that talks about how abilities that effect figures do not require line of sight could be viewed as an exception. It's inclusion could be interpreted as a inference that abilities that effect non figures (such as search tokens) do require line of sight. My point is that the rules are not clear in this instance. When the rules are not clear, what I am left to work with is my own interpretation based in thematic elements.