I'm struggling to deal with the balance of a few abilities, hoping I'm understanding them wrong!

Beastmaster's "Shadow Hunter" Card reads:

"Before activating your Wolf, you mach choose to perform an attack with it, rolling the dice shown below. Then your Wolf is defeated."

The attack is Red, Red, Green, Green for guaranteed huge damage....

Does this really mean a hero can pop this skill, then, because the wolf wasn't activated yet, Activate his character, pop "Bound by the hunt" to bring the wolf back, finish his turn, then activate the wolf to attack again?

There was a debate similar to this about the necromancer, but in the necromancers case the reanimate was being activated then attacking and then being summoned and activated again which is clearly BS. (You can only activate a familiar once obviously)

In this case though the Wolf has technically never been activated...

I don't own Labyrinth yet, so I don't know the exact text of "Bound by the Hunt," but yes, that sounds legal based on what you've written here.

I think it may be a case of poorly worded rules, though. Usually when FFG writes "Before doing X..." they mean "immediately before X occurs, do this." Which would imply you are about to activate the Wolf and then do this first. But doing this will clearly remove the Wolf from play and therefore the Wolf doesn't actually get activated.

I wouldn't be surprised if the intent was for this ability to count as the Wolf's activation for this turn, but you'd have to get official clarification from FFG on that one.

FFG got back to me on this, and Yes you can use the ability to kill you're wolf without activating it. You can then activate your beast master, pop the wolf and activate the wolf when the beast master is finished it's turn. This is a pretty potent combo...

The E-mail I got from FFG is posted below:

Hey, M.

Good to know.

Instead of starting a new thread, I thought I'd hijack this one since "Labyrinth of Ruin questions" seemed like a good catch all title.

Anyways, can allies be used in Lair of the Wyrm sidequests? Since the set-up obviously doesn't state "The heroes control their ally" I'd be wont to say no, but I also think it'd be weird if the heroes didn't have their ally once gaining them.

According to the rule book you cannot use ally in LotW sidequests.

Thanks! I'll probably still houserule it for heroes to have the allies, and just be more relentless with my hybrid sentinels to makes up for the heroes having an extra character to boot.

Now, something a bit more challenging: can anyone explain what the hell is supposed to happen in the Pilgrimage interlude? The whole concept of finding the entrance and exit tiles and how they relate the the unconnected alcove is flabbergasting me to no end. Anyone mind rewording that quest for my benefit? I obviously own the quest guide, so don't need anyone to copy+paste the text verbatim. I'm just looking for a nice step-by-step breakdown of it. If anyone would be willing to do that, I'd be VERY appreciative

The text for this interlude appear to be very confusing. From my understanding, The white and green guardian cannot be destoryed. It will remain on the map even they suffer hearts equal to their health but it remain non active. Red and Blue guardian can be destoryed since it is a victory condition for the OL. So basically Heroes have to keep healing the white and green guardian till they are revealed. And you may not know which guardian since the objective token are facedown in the beginnining. After they are revealed, the entrance and exit tile will replace the corresponding map tile to the Alcove as indicated on the quest map. There is a black line linking between the objective token and the tile. While they are active, the hero could use the action available for white guardian to spend 2 mp to move to the entrance tile in the alcove and if green guardian is also active. The heroes may move off the map from the exit in the alcove too.

Does anyone else see this ability as a little overpowered? For the cost of 1 fatigue I can pop the wolf out beside the beastmaster, choose to use shadow hunter instead and get a guaranteed hit for 2-8 damage (+ possibility of pierce 1)? Seems like no other ability quite equals the XP = benefit ratio of this skill. Plus if the wolf is already out I get the same as above but can resummon and activate it again for another swing (or not resummons it and get the above killer hit for no action / no fatigue). I can't believe FFG gave the ok on the interpretation outlined above (I usually OL but sometimes play as heroes too).

Does anyone else see this ability as a little overpowered?

It's powerful, sure. I'm not convinced it's over-powered though. I'm not convinced it isn't, either, mind you. I'd have to play with it for a while to see how it impacts the heroes' win ratio. Lots of things sound awesome on paper, but wind up either not being so cool in practice, or they just don't happen that often.

This one can be used fairly frequently, but as to how much it actually changes the dynamic, I haven't seen enough of it to say for sure.

I have not had the chance to see the Beastmaster in action. But I have seen the cards and the Beastmaster relies alot on the wolf to use his skills. Since the wolf is defeated after using "Shadow Hunter" card, the Beastmaster would find himself in need to summon the wolf to benefit from his other skills. (Some of them are passive if the wolf is adjacent to a heroe)

So that could be taken as a price to pay for using that skill, 1 Action plus fatigue.

Some other classes have skills that uses 1 action and can target more than one monster figure and deal damage without the need to roll the hit dice. So "Shadow hunter" may not been as OP as you think.

On 19/07/2013 at 3:39 AM, JBouthietteJr said:

Thanks! I'll probably still houserule it for heroes to have the allies, and just be more relentless with my hybrid sentinels to makes up for the heroes having an extra character to boot.

Now, something a bit more challenging: can anyone explain what the **** is supposed to happen in the Pilgrimage interlude? The whole concept of finding the entrance and exit tiles and how they relate the the unconnected alcove is flabbergasting me to no end. Anyone mind rewording that quest for my benefit? I obviously own the quest guide, so don't need anyone to copy+paste the text verbatim. I'm just looking for a nice step-by-step breakdown of it. If anyone would be willing to do that, I'd be VERY appreciative

Always nice to bring old posts to life again!

Actually my OL have a question about Pilgrimage. He just felt very frustrated to not be able to move Ariad out of the Alcove. There is a specific rule regarding about how Ariad can move out: by making 2 guardians with '0' health remaining. After we (heroes) manage to activate the green and white statues, and saving the blue statue to a certain death, the remaining of the quest was pretty much a walkover, no risk at all.

So, did we play right? Can Ariad get out of the Alcove since the OL just broke 1 statue?

Appreciate in advance any help!

You are correct in what you said.

In Pilgrimage, the Overlord wants to destroy the Blue and the Red guardians specifically. If he manages to destroy 2 guardians and still hasn't won, Ariad teleports next to one of the dead guardians.

Other than that, the only time Ariad can do anything useful is when the heroes enter the alcove Entrance tile through an active Sage guardian token (White). She can attack them while they're in there. It only takes 9 movement points to go directly from the Sage guardian to leaving the map though the exit though, so this isn't easy to do without traps or something.

Also note that the heroes can only leave the map while there is an active Pathfinder guardian (green). Thus, it is possible to trap heroes in the Alcove by letting them enter through the white Guardian and then destroying the Green guardian. They have no way to go back and heal the green guardian once they enter the alcove.

If you're sneaky about it, this can result in a win, or at least a stalemate.

Personally I'm not a big fan of this interlude at all. It is basically a guaranteed win for the heroes unless the Overlord gets the Blue and Red guardians on his side of the map and rolls very well in the first two turns or so. This is the Interlude, so the Overlord should get lots of monsters to counter the fact that his Act I stuff is really getting weak by this point.

The Overlord only gets a single Arachyura as reinforcement every turn and mostly can't use Ariad unless things go well for him early on and he manages to destroy two Guardians. The heroes also get guardian buffs once they reveal them. Its pretty one-sided. Its also not well written.

The guardians are not figures. They do not block movement, and they do not block line of sight. But yet, they can be affected by attacks. In almost all other cases, attacks only affect figures, so it leads to rule headaches. For example, Arachyura probably can't use their pincer attack on guardians, because they aren't treated as heroes. Lame!

Also, if guardians don't block movement, can you attack a guardian you are standing on? Not clear.

Interlude 2, Fortune and Glory is a more enjoyable quest for both sides, in my opinion.

Thinking about it more, I think the only way to salvage Pilgrimage into a semi-playable state would be to do a few things like:

- Guardians are treated as hero figures but can only recover hearts and move around through the quest-stated methods.
- Fixed placement for the statues -> Green in top left, Red in top right, Blue in bottom left, White in bottom right. This turns the quest from an RNG mess of "Does the Overlord bash the right two statues in the first two turns, or autolose?" into a struggle to have control over both sides of the map. Heroes will want to march Green guardian over to White, but still need to protect Blue and Red.
- Overlord gets 1 Arachyura on the pond or 1 member of his open group on the Rocky Path every turn.
- Ariad can be placed next to a dead guardian as soon as one guardian is destroyed.
- Figures can move off the entrance and place themselves adjacent to the White Guardian whether its active or not (Stalemates where the heroes get trapped forever are dumb)
- Monster figures can spend 2 movement points next to the White guardian to place on the Entrance tile whether its active or not.
- When Ariad is defeated she is knocked out. She can perform a single action to standup on her turn, recovering 2 red dice worth of health.

Even after all that, I still think this one is hero-favored. Just two monster groups is tough against decked out Act I heroes even with rapid reinforcements.

Charmy, I like that breakdown.

For the record, my opinion would be "no, you cannot attack a guardian you're standing on".

On 10/2/2018 at 8:31 PM, Charmy said:

Personally I'm not a big fan of this interlude at all. It is basically a guaranteed win for the heroes unless the Overlord gets the Blue and Red guardians on his side of the map and rolls very well in the first two turns or so. This is the Interlude, so the Overlord should get lots of monsters to counter the fact that his Act I stuff is really getting weak by this point.

The Overlord only gets a single Arachyura as reinforcement every turn and mostly can't use Ariad unless things go well for him early on and he manages to destroy two Guardians. The heroes also get guardian buffs once they reveal them. Its pretty one-sided. Its also not well written.

The guardians are not figures. They do not block movement, and they do not block line of sight. But yet, they can be affected by attacks. In almost all other cases, attacks only affect figures, so it leads to rule headaches. For example, Arachyura probably can't use their pincer attack on guardians, because they aren't treated as heroes. Lame!

(Sorry for the split post, the quote function in this forum is broken. It wouldn't let me add text after the quote, even in edit mode)

@Charmy We played Pilgrimage last night and what you said totally resonate with our experience. This is one of those quests where reinforcements are insufficient and become a challengeless joke once the heroes defeat the non-reinforceable monster group.