Dear all,

Our group is having difficulty in quite grasping how the stones are to be employed.

Terracall:

Does this mean that when the card is tapped is the only time stones may attack? Or does it mean that when the card is tapped any stones in play receive an extra attack?

The wording is quite vague. I don't have the card in front of me, but it says something like "while this card is exhausted one stone may attack"…

I have assumed that each turn, each stone (playing subject to the rules for familliars) may have one movement and one attack. The attack is made using a magic weapon.

One more question, can I use terracall to bring a stone into play (within 3 spaces of Quellen) even if: my stone max has been reached? I.e. can I destroy a stone into play in order to bring another into play (thus meaning I can exhaust the card and attack with my stones)…

Basically, I'm not 100% sure how Quellen is supposed to be used. If anyone else has used him (Husker949!?) please advise.

Rules page 17: When activated a familiar may perform a move action following the same rules as heroes… …The familiar may perform additional types of actions during its activation, as noted on its Familiar card… …If no such other actions are noted, then all the familiar can do on its turn is move up to its Speed value.

So a Summoned Stone can only move on its turn, since there are no other actions listed on the card. When you exhaust Terracall, ONE stone may perform an attack during its activation.

According to the text on the necromancer card Raise dead, you may discard your reanimate at any time during your turn. The same text is not on Terracall. So based on that I would say, that you cannot discard summoned stones, unless you use an action that tells you to do so. However it could be that the text have been omitted because of lack of space or other reasons. So if you want to be 100% sure, you have to write to FFG.

wow, I was playing it totally wrong. Thank you!

i think somewhere in the rules of the lair of the wyrm it reads that you can discard summoned stones like the reanimate at any given time during your turn.

Lair of the Wyrm, page 4:

A hero player who is playing a Geomancer may remove one or more Summoned
Stone familiar tokens from the map anytime during his turn. If the Geomancer
uses an ability to summon a Summoned Stone on the map while he is at his limit
(initially one), the hero player may first discard a Summoned Stone from play before
resolving the ability. If a Summoned Stone is defeated, remove it from the map.

So basically, you can choose to get rid of a stone whenever you want. As such, you can "tap" Terracall every turn if you want to, in order to allow a stone to attack. As long as you can afford the fatigue cost.

One of the cool skills of the Geomancer is the ability to use the stone for extended reach (I don't recall the name of the skill). Basically, range is calculated from one of your stones.

Okay, so the stones are still badass enough.

Question: I can summon my stones within 3 spaces. Can this be on the other side of a door? Or, can it be accross non-board space? Or do the three spaces have to be measured accross accessible space only?

There is no LoS required for summoning a stone, so behind a closed door is legal. As for your second question I count the spaces as an adjacent path, but it wouldn't hurt to ask FFG. I, personally, am weary of playing across negative game space and always discourage it. But, if the intent is to drop a 3x3 template around the geomancer and allowing any open space to be used, then so be it. Let us know what the devs say.

I am waiting for their reply. Will update.

I think the answers for the following two questions from the FAQ can be used on "terracall" too.

FAQ versíon 1.0

LINE OF SIGHT AND ADJACENT SPACES

Q: When counting spaces for skills and abilities, such as the Thief skill "Greedy", do other figures block the path? How about doors?

A: When counting spaces like this, players ignore all other figures on the path. Unless line of sight is specifically stated as requirement, figures only need to be in range for these skills or abilities to work. However, doors do block this path. A Thief cannot use "Greedy" through a door because he cannot count spaces through the door.

Q: Should gaps in a map (areas where there are no tiles) be defined as blocked spaces when considering other rules, such as line of sight?

A: Areas between map tiles do not contain any spaces because they are not on map tiles. In addition, the black borders found on the edge of the map tiles represent impassable walls that block line of sight, movement and any path when counting spaces.

Response from FFG:

--quote--

I believe this was clarified in the FAQ, but I shall attempt to expound.

--unquote--

Haha! So many tweaks and rules. Makes you wonder if anyone outside of FFG has played a game as it was intended. At any rate, we have learned that doors are god and "within three spaces" doesn't make the target ethereal.

Rico said:

If you think this is bad, you should have seen first edition. =P

2E is much cleaner and better explained than 1E was. The biggest recurring issue I see in 2E is large monster movement, but that was always a sticky situation in 1E as well.

With regards to the OP's question, this sort of thing is covered by the "Counting Spaces" section on page 13. Anything involving range or effects "within X of Z" are subject to Counting Spaces.

There are some really tricky things that you can do with the Geomancer. The summon stones gave me so many troubles when my group first used them as well. I was entirely unaware that the stones were capable of their own movement activation until about a month ago, proves how much I can pay attention to some things. However, there are a few things about the stones that work amazingly and at the same time really limit you. It is great that you can summon a stone around a corner (given proper space counting) then attack with the stone. The thing being at that point, the stone doesn't get the bonus surge that it grants to the Geomancer and you trade off one of your own attacks or other actions to summon said stone. There is the is a skill that you can get for 1 xp, can't remember it off hand, but it allows you to make a blast attack with your stone as the target entirely ignoring range and LoS restrictions that destroys the stone but nails everything around it. The advantage to this is that you gain your surge for the surge to your attack because the monster is adjacent to your stone (you only gain one surge based on following the rules for "Do Shadow Dragon Abilities Stack?") and usually can then kill a whole monster group in one go.

A good tactic to use is to be the first player to go, spend your heroic feat, fatigue move 5 spaces, summon your stone, then blast attack with it. You can usually open the road for your team while having a fully cleared stamina card. It also works well if you pair it with a double move for a total of 16 spaces of movement. Agreed this does put you at a severe disadvantage because you are left on your own, but hopefully you moved where the OL can't reach you and attack in the same turn. When you start off next, you summon up a stone and block off passage from the OL while making your attacks. Again, another disadvantage is how it will block your LoS, but that has come in handy more times than I would care to count. Moving them in front of doors before opening them is really clutch, too. Take, for example, the Castle Daerion quest or Cardinal's Plight quest. You place the stones so that it forms a wall that the OL has to break through before he/she can actually attack the heros. In the First Blood quest, my OL had the two Ettin's stay in the Fire Pit, staggered so that the Master was in the back. I just summoned the stone behind the front Ettin, attacked it, and then used the stone attack on the Master.

I wish you could make attacks with the stones at every activation, but I honestly understand the balance problem with them being able to do so. I now understand that I have entirely changed the topic of this discussion to a strategy one instead of the understanding of how the stones themselves work, but I guess on the flip side it is still keeping in character with the topic.

Husker949,

Thank you so much! I always find it so funny playing Descent, how during the course of the games we play our fundamental understanding of the rules change quite significantly. We almost always finish a quest and say, “hey, wait a second, not all those doors required attribute tests…” or something of the like…

Quellen is proving an interesting character. He has a special kind of ranged attack, which can go around corners, or attack a group from behind. Or block creatures in. I’m not sure I follow you when you talk about surges though… Do the stones grant Quellen an extra surge on attacks or something? I guess that is a later skill…

Discussing strategy is slightly more fulfilling, I find, than rule interpretation (though I must say if you don’t like wading into heavy discussion on “what you think some rule really means” you’re probably not going to be a big fan of Descent.

I try to help when I can and give my advise at the same time. As far as the surges thing, on the Terracall card it states that when a monster is adjacent to at least one of your stones (the at least might be my own wording, at work so don't have the card infront of me) you gain 1 surge to your results. This can only be applied to attacks made by the Geomancer, and give rise to the viability of his starting rune having 2xSurge: Immobilize. You are guarenteed a Surge when you attack something adjacent to the stones, so your best bet is to activate them first, unless you summon one then activate them after your actions, move them adjacent to the monster and then do a double attack against the one or use the 2xFatigue skill to destroy your stone and do a blast attack with it. Keep in mind that blast attacks do hit friendly figures as well as enemy figures, so make sure your attack happens first or summon the stone behind the enemy line and then blow it up. His ability to always regenerate fatigue when someone else within 3 spaces of him is also huge! It gives you the ability to at least use your blast attack every other turn without suffering a net fatigue loss. Plus, the stones really allow you to jam up the hallway the same way that the OL will use the smaller minions to jam them up as well. Trust me, the OL will hate it when half of his actions are spent taking out two things that don't give him any reward . They will also stop placing all of the monsters in a group in a hall or around an enterance because you can easily punch a hole through the ranks or just soften them up enough for the others to finish the job. The later on skill of, I believe, Way of The Stone isn't the best ability, but when you have to make your way to the enterance of a level it is clutch. All you need to do is summon it, move it every turn you can, and keep moving it trying to ignore the OL minions on the board. After you get it where it has to be you just use your ability and, boom, you just won the encounter for the party. This mostly works on levels like The Shadow Rune, or other such encounters where a hero must escape with an item, or just keep it as far away from the OL as possible.

It is a versatile class with many, many tricky abilities that leave the OL frustrated while still being able to hold their own. I have destroyed Shadow Dragons because of the bonus surges and imobilize while the rest of the party just rains sweet hot elecric magic death on them from range so they don't have to spend their surges.