Hey all, I have some questions about our on-going Road to Legend campaign.

First, one of our Heroes is Corbin, with the special ability "Corbin takes 1 fewer wound that usual each time he is wounded." He is now equipped with a Gold Elven Cloak, which lets him roll power dice for each wound suffered, and reducing the damage by 1 for each power enhancement. Corbin is basically unkillable (especially with his wounds upgraded to 12, and soon 16). But we had a question about the interaction of these powers:

Say Corbin has an armor value of 5, and takes 10 damage. Does he roll 5 power dice, reducing the damage by 1 per enhancement, then reduce the damage by 1 more? Or does his special ability reduce the damage to 4, and he then rolls 4 power dice?

I also have a second question about another Hero, Tetherys. Her special ability reads: "Tetherys may change her target after rolling for an attack." How does this interact with monsters with the Stealth ability? Say there are two monsters nearby, one with Stealth and one without. Can Tetherys "target" the non-Stealth creature, then after rolling, change her target to the Stealthy one, to avoid rolling the Stealth die? Or, can Tetherys "target" the Stealth creature, and then if the Stealth die shows an "X", can she change her target to the non-Stealth creature and remove the Stealth die from the result? Or can she do neither of these things, and her ability is nullified in this situation?

Thanks!

Excellent questions. I don't think either of those has been specifically addressed by any official answers, and I can't find any rules that make the resolution clear, so I'm afraid I can only offer you extrapolation and conjecture, but here's what I'd say:

Regarding Corbin and the Cloak, the only precedent I can find for resolving multiple effects that occur at the same time (other than interrupt effects) is the FAQ answer regarding multiple effects that occur "at the start of your turn," and that answer said that the affected player could choose the order to resolve them. Generalizing this to any effects that would otherwise happen "simultaneously" seems pretty reasonable, so my suggestion would be to allow the player controlling Corbin to determine the order, which will of course be the order involving rolling more dice.

Regarding Tetherys and the stealth die, my inclination would be to extrapolate from the rules for attacks affecting multiple targets:

"When a single attack roll would affect multiple figures (for example, an attack using Blast, Breath, or Sweep), and any of those figures have Stealth, a single stealth die is included in the attack roll, but the stealth die’s result is used only for the figures that currently have Stealth." (ToI rules, page 7)

If we treat Tetherys' attack as an attack that potentially affects multiple figures, then it would be reasonable to say that she always rolls the stealth die (assuming there's any possibility of affecting a target with Stealth), but the result of the stealth die only affects figures with the Stealth ability, so she could choose to redirect the attack to a non-stealthy monster if it comes up an X, or to a monster with Stealth if it comes up as a blank.

Remember that attacks technically target a space, not a monster, and Tetherys could be attacking with an AoE weapon, and even a non-AoE weapon has been ruled to be capable of damaging multiple figures if they share a space (for example, if you use a guard order to interrupt one monster moving through another), so there will be some times that Tetherys' attack actually does affect one monster with Stealth and one without.

Antistone said:

I second the majority of what Antistone says.

For Corbin and the Cloak, I agree that doing it whatever order the player wants is probably fine. I would lean toward doing the Cloak first, and then having Corbin's power kick in if he takes any wounds but I can see it going either way.

I also agree about Tetherys being able to switch targets, but I'm not so sure about some of the points made. Say she targets the space of Monster A, that has steatlh. She rolls enough range to hit, but rolls an X on the Stealth die, so the attack misses. She redirects it to another figure within that range that doesn't have Stealth and it hits. To me, that's no different than if she started off targeting a space 5 range away, rolled 4 so the attack missed, and switches to a space 4 spaces away so she hits.

Back to Stealth: if she starts off targetting a space/monster that does not have Stealth, and she switches after the attack roll to one that does I would say she has to roll the Stealth die and if she gets an X the attack misses.

Big Remy said:

I lean more toward Corbin's ability first (he takes 1 fewer wound, whether due to agility or toughness), then the cloak, as it gives a chance to negate each wound suffered. (Wound total is reduced by 1, therefore that wound is not suffered.)

Daemnor said:

Neither do you suffer any wounds that are canceled by the cloak. By that logic, you'd have to retroactively lose one die from your roll for each die that came up favorably.

A more plausible line of reasoning is that you don't roll a die for the wound blocked by Corbin's ability if his ability is applied first, but you do if it's applied afterwards. Unfortunately, that doesn't tell us what the order should be, only how to resolve the situation after we determine the order.

This thread actually reminds me of a situation that came up early in our campaign. I have Ronan of the Wild (as you can tell from my avatar pic, I was quite excited about this!) and he got the copper cloak (cancels on a blank) which was slightly better than his leather, anyway (random draw, not bought). He had a shield equipped. Now, I know I'm gonna get told not to do things thematically, but we decided that damage would need to get blocked by a shield (reducing by 1) before it would hit the cloak (and potentially be absorbed by blanks). Now, of course, one only suffers (and can therefore cancel) wounds that get through armor, so...I guess this may be the wrong way to handle, but...I guess I'm curious what others think. I didn't have too much of a problem with it, but it was more the ruling of the OL and I didn't really feel it was worth arguing over since blanks are so unlikely anyway.

For me, that falls under the "multiple effect/player chooses the order" umbrella so do it anyway you want.

Without the exact wording of the text in front of me, I would probably do the shield first, then the cloak. Just using common sense, the shield is outside of the cloak so should be applied first. Tthe shield blocks the wound from happening, so it doesn't even get to the cloak yet. Then, any damage that got through the shield would then try to get through the cloak...

-shnar

Alright who is good at math? Give either Corbin or Ronin 5 wounds and tell us what the average is doing:

A) Shield/Ability first, Cloak second

B)Cloak first, shield/ability second.

And thinking about Corbin, I would say the same thing, Cloak first, then Corbin's innate ability. Basically, Corbin is "tough-skinned", so he reduces the wounds that are *dealt* to him by 1. If the cloak can negate wounds, you do that first. Then any damage that makes it through the cloak finally hits Corbin's skin, which is tough, so is reduced by 1. The attack has to first go through the cloak in order to his Corbin, right?

-shnar

Big Remy said:

Are you kidding? I have to use my hands to count when anyone makes an attack using more than 1 dice.

Me: "ok, looks like I take *counts* 18 damage off that attack. Right?"

Hero's: "It was an un-armed attack.... there's only one red dice.... and it was a miss..."

Me: "...oh"

Big Remy said:

Ok:

a) 5 wounds to ronan with an armor rating of 2 (one from the cloak plus one from his char sheet) means 4 would be taken, shield drops them by one, so he's taking 2 wounds. he now has a 1/3 chance (on two dice) of a blank...which means 1/3 chance of taking only 1 wound

b) 5 reduced to 3 by armor. 1/2 chance of a blank on 3 dice. so 50/50 chance he is down to 2 wounds, one of which is cancelled by the shield.

basically it's a difference of 1/3 vs. 1/2 chance of taking one less wound. It's always better to roll first if you can.

I like the argument that thematically the shield would come first, then the cloak, then corbin's ability...makes sense to me in that way.

For a second example, let's say an attack does 8 damage and 6 get through the armor of ronan...

a) shield reduces wounds to 5, then 5/6 chance of a blank on 6 dice.

b)6/6 (1/1) chance of a blank on six dice (technically, there's still no guarantee...but on average), then one more cancelled-4 wounds.

Ultimately, there is little difference here, but it's more dramatic with the gold cloak and with a bigger shield. Say you have the gold cloak and the gold shield (I'm pretty sure it cancels 4) and 12 wounds get through your armor.

a) 12 wounds reduced to 8 by the shield means 4/8 of the dice should be enhancements. so you take 4

b) 12 wounds should mean 6 are reduced by the cloak and then the shield takes off 4, bringing it down to only 2 wounds suffered.

It's not huge, but 2 wounds or even one can make a difference for sure.

"Cancels 1/2 wounds on average" and "50% chance of canceling 1 wound" are NOT the same. You also conflated 5 wounds with 5 damage. You also ignored the possibility of canceling all wounds with the cloak before using the shield, which affects the average damage canceled (because you can't cancel more wounds than you receive), though admittedly not very much in most cases.

(Wounds blocked by shield) * (chance per wound to negate with cloak) is a generally good approximation of the damage difference by changing the order. That's 1/6 of a wound for an iron shield and a tunic, or 2 wounds for a shield of the warrior and an elven cloak. Actual difference is slightly less, depending on the size of the attack (for 12 wounds versus shield of the warrior and elven cloak, it's off by about 0.07 wounds).

People who are arguing that shield must thematically be used before cloak: the cloak provides +armor. Armor is explicitly applied before the shield. Thematic argument fails.

Antistone said:

Not if they are all refering to the Cloaks ABILITY to cancel wounds that exists separate from the armor.

Thematic argument FTW.

Big Remy said:

You fail logic. I was refuting the argument, not the conclusion. The fact that you can draw a false conclusion from the argument shows the argument to be invalid, regardless of whether you chose to draw that particular conclusion in this particular conversation.

I like it when people try to make games no fun and seem to make arguments for the sake of nothing other than proving that everyone else isn't as smart as them.

You said:

People who are arguing that shield must thematically be used before cloak: the cloak provides +armor. Armor is explicitly applied before the shield. Thematic argument fails.

You said that the thematic argument failed, where it doesn't since the Cloak items give A) an armor bonus, applied before the shield and B) ability to roll to negate wounds (which happens after armor). Explain to me how a thematic argument about using the ability of the cloak to negate wounds with rolls being used after the shield "fails" because "armor is explicitly applied before the shield". Yes, the armor value from the cloak is applied before the shield, but no where that I can find does it say that you must immediately use the ability of the cloak to negate wounds before all other things. If nothing says that, then their thematic argument of using the shield before the wound reducing ability of a magic cloak doesn't fail because unless you suddenly own one of these things and get hit by a Beastman and can provide some objective evidence of when the cloak decides to absorb some wounds, you have nothing to stand on to say it fails. NO ONE was arguing that the armor value given by the cloaks should be applied later.

Done with this.