Hi! After running a few games, my players and I have come across some odd situations that aren't directly addressed in the rulebook (at least, I couldn't find them when doing a quick scan-through).

1) I forget the names of the exact abilities, but one of my players had both of the following:

a) when you declare an advance action, you immediately recover 1 fatigue

b) when you declare an advance action, you can immediately spend 2 fatigue to make an extra attack this turn.

In this scenario, can I use the 1 recovered fatigue from a) and spend it for the required fatigue to activate b)? Or are these abilities both resolved simultaneously, thus disallowing me from using the newly generated fatigue to make the second attack?

2) If a player opens a chest, and I play a trap card on that chest, which resolves first? the trap or distributing the contents of the chest? (note: this is for traps other than 'mimic', which clearly species the order of operations).

More specifically: if my trap KILLS the player (i.e. exploding chest), and he's thus sent back to town, does he get the contents of the chest, or will someone else have to run over to the chest to collect its contents?

Even more specifically: if in the above scenario the hero DOES collect the contents upon dying: if the chest KILLS the player, thus causing the overlord to take the last of the heroes' remaining conquest, BUT the chest contains conquest, are they swapped simultaneously, or does one happen before the other? i.e. if the trap 'resolves' before the contents are collected, then the OL immediately wins. But if they happen simultaneously, the heroes' are still in it.

3) When an undying creature rolls a surge, does he "die and come back to life" or does he "not die and regenerate health" ... ?

More specifically, upon rolling a surge after reducing an undying creature to 0 wounds, do status effects (burn tokens, specifically) get removed from the creature, i.e. he "died" and then "came back to life" without the burn? Or do they stay on the creature, i.e. the creature "never died" so he's still burned?

Furthermore, the rules state that if an undying creature is restored to full health, any leftover damage from the killing blow can be dealt to said creature. Does this extra damage have to get through his armor again? i.e. if I have a '2wounds 2armor undying thing' and I make an attack for 5 wounds, that means I reduce it to 0 health (2 blocked by armor, 2 wounds taken) with 1 extra wound to inflict. The undying thing restores to full health by rolling a surge. Is my 1 wound now blocked by his armor, i.e. as if it were a separate attack, or does he take a wound, leaving him at 1 health?

Thanks guys! Responses / Deliberations appreciated =)

1) To my knowledge, this isn't specifically addressed, but the FAQ says that when multiple effects occur "at the start of your turn," the affected player can choose the order in which to resolve them; absent other information, I think it's reasonable to extend this precedent to other simultaneous effects, and so I'd say that the hero can choose whether he wants to restore or spend fatigue first.

2) This looks like the most direct answer to your question available:

"For each curse, the overlord immediately gains threat tokens equal to the number of heroes. The overlord player may spend these tokens to help pay for a trap card triggered by the chest being opened. After the overlord has resolved any curses and played any trap cards, the heroes may distribute the contents of the chest. " -- JitD Rules page 19, emphasis added

This says to me that the overlord receives the curses, then trap cards are resolved, then heroes receive the treasure (even if the hero opening the chest died, unless the trap card says otherwise). If the trap reduces their conquest to zero, I say the overlord wins.

3) It's my impression that you only have to get through armor once, though I am presently unable to find a rule supporting that, so it's possible I just made it up.

Regarding lingering effects...pardon me, this is a little convoluted...

The Road to Legend expansion changes how several abilities work in various subtle ways (these only apply to the extended campaign, not to normal Descent games). One of the changes is that, in RtL, a monster that is revived by Undying always comes back at full health and extra damage does not carry over.

The RtL version also specifically says that lingering effects are removed. But the original version does not.

Since we know the RtL version is intentionally different, I'm inclined to view this as a change rather than a clarification, and so I believe that the original version of Undying should not remove lingering effects.

But that obviously involves some conjecture, so if someone has a better precedent, feel free to raise it.

In regards to the last question about armor and lingering effects on undying monsters:

My group has always played with the monster dying and being resurrected in full healthy form. That means full armor and no lingering effects. This was the subject of much debate.

Additionally, we've debated whether surges could be held over until after the undying monster has resurrected. The consensus is no, they must spent upon the attack. The reason it is an issue is the case of lingering effects or pierce. Imagine a monster with 2 armor up against a hero with a weapon that has +1 damage OR pierce 2 for 1 surge. Suppose I roll 2 surges. I'm probably best served using pierce 2, seeing if kill the monster, then using the remaining surge on the reborn monster.

I have no idea if any of the rules are documented more clearly, but these are our interpretations.

pincus said:

I'm confused as to how this makes any difference, unless you're using some house rule that causes monster stats to be hidden, or something like that.

1. First off, I believe the "gain fatigue" skill is called relentless and the "spend 2 for an extra attacks" is called able warrior. Battle cry/Knight would be pretty much the same issue with battle actions.

Now, this is by no means is the "official" answer, but I will tell you how we play it:

a)If a hero has full fatigue, we rule that he cannot immediately gain a fatigue that turn, so that prevents him from using relentless. Since you cannot spend fatigue (for movement, etc.) until after your action is declared, we say you have to be down one to gain one.

b)if a hero has only one fatigue before he declares his action, he may use relentless to recover up to two, but he cannot use it to activate able warrior. Once again, upon declaring his action, he could not immediately spend the fatigue because he did not have enough fatigue to do so immediately, it was not until after the effect of relentless resolves.

c)if the hero has less than full but at least 2 fatigue (for example, tahlia has 2 of her 3 fatigue available at the start of her turn), they may do both because either could be done regardless of the other (continuing the example tahlia has a fatigue missing which she can recover and she also has enough fatigue to spend to activate able warrior, independently of each other, so both happen immediately...putting her at 1 fatigue while granting her the ability to make two attacks this turn instead of one. On her next turn, however, we would say she can gain the advantages of relentless, but not able warrior--putting her up to 2 again.)

I will see if we can get this resolved in the faq. good question.

2. I agree that the order goes a)chest opens-chest # determined. b) overlord collects threat from curses, possibly using said threat to play a trap on the chest. c)damage done by chest trap resolves. if this results in a hero death, conquest is lost by heroes. If heroes run out of conquest because of this death, OL wins. d)if heroes still have conquest left (i.e. nobody dies or death does not drop their conquest to zero), the hero contents (treasure, potions, feats, gold) are distributed.

Obviously, mimic and killer chest (the ogre one) have their own set of rules for how and when contents are distributed, but threat from curses always are given to the OL immediately per the faq.

3. Don't really have an opinion, but will say that we play where the undying figure goes to full health regardless of vanilla or rtl and that no damage rolls over. It seems weird to bury in axe in something, have it crumble to the ground, then reform itself and get up, and then have it say "man, that axe really hurt...I think I'm gonna die again..." but that's just how we do it. You can house rule however you want, but I'd tend to say any effects should go away when something is being restored to full health, because it's like it never died. Take that as you will.

For Undying:

Descent: damage definitely rolls over, but to the best of my knowledge it doesn't not have to penetrate the armor again. I can see a potential argument for the armor being applied again, since the description says "damage" and not "wounds" but we've always played that it didn't have to get past the armor again. Which has of course lead to comical situations where a melee fighter hits a Master Skeleton and you end up rolling 5 times for the Undying.

And no, you can not "hold over" surges for after the monster has made its Undying roll. I agree with Antistone's statement of why this make a difference, especially in vanilla Descent where the damage rolls over presumably without having armor applied to it again.

Descent, Road to Legend: Damage does not roll over. Monster comes back at full health.

As for lingering effects, I would put forth argument that they stay on the monster. Since an Undying creature is not actually killed until it fails the Undying roll, any effects that are only removed by the figures death would stay.

My support for this viewpoint is this statement from the description of Undying:

An Undying figure must stay dead in order for effects that take place when it is “killed” to actually occur.

Since you don't get the gold for killing an Undying figure until after it fails its Undying roll, it makes sense that other effects that can only be removed by death or a die roll such as lingering effects would stay.

My Idea on why damage passes over, imagine:

a) Axe in the gut, regenerating itself.

b) Chops of his head...yep...thats gonna need a bigger save.

Feanor: So, you play that you always resolve the skills in whatever order is most unfavorable to the hero? That seems like it's potentially a difficult precedent to extend.

And if you have a reason for that other than "our overlord is evil," it would be interesting to hear.

In response to the OP for the first question:

Yes, to the best of my knowledge of the RAW you can use the fatigue gained by declaring the advance using Relentless to trigger Able Warrior. This definitely, IMO, falls under the "multiple events at the start of a player's turn" ruling mentioned by Antistone. They both have the same trigger, and there is ample precidence in Descent to support doing exactly that.

Big Remy said:

If I'm correct, the RaW state that all lingering effects are removed when the monster is 'regenerated'.

I see an undying creature more as an undead or a die-hard. It doesn't crumble to death and rises again. It simply wouldn't die when it should have died.. and then it makes sense that the more damage you do, the bigger the chance that he actually dies..

Siebeltje said:

I double checked and you are right for RtL Undying but not vanilla Descent Undying. There is another big difference between vanilla and RtL for Undying I guess.

The description of Undying in RtL specifically says that lingering effects are removed. However, that line isn't present in the description of Undying for vanilla Descent.

I really wish they would just have Undying work the same between vanilla and RtL.

I believe my reasoning is clear: in either case if the other skill did not exist, the character would not be able to immediately spend or gain the fatigue in the respective instances. I pointed out that this is how we play as a group.

In my group, I am not always the OL, nor is anybody else (just the opposite, actually-before I our rtl campaign, I would say I was a hero 70% of the time), As a result, we have rules that we-AS A GROUP-discuss and agree upon. The fact that things that sometimes benefit one side (in this case, I suppose the OL benefits...) means that we have to agree because we know it will affect us if we are on the other side of the coin. Everyone in my play group decided this was the way to handle.

I believe the one time it came up, I was the hero with the skills in question. I thought this was a fair ruling, but I will also enforce it if I am OL since that's what we decided. I think that "at the start of your turn" is different from "immediately." Immediate means you have to be able to do it right then, whereas the start of your turn is a more vague amount of time. If you are full on fatigue, you can't gain one right then. If you lack two fatigue, you cannot spend it immediately. I think both have to resolve at the same time and this can only happen in the instances I've previously described. Once again, this is my interpretation (and my group's) and all are welcome to ignore it or to just gain perspective if they so desire.

I'm not (currently) trying to argue that your rule is wrong, I'm just trying to figure out precisely what your rule is. I understand how you resolve this one particular special case involving these two exact skills, but you keep saying that this resolution takes place because both skills have to be resolved simultaneously, and that description isn't sufficient to uniquely identify the resolution you gave. It's entirely plausible that someone could say something like "the skills resolve simultaneously, so as long as the net change in fatigue from both skills is legal (in this case, -1), you can use both, and fatigue maximums/minimums only apply to the net change." Same justification as you, completely different ruling. "Simultaneous resolution" isn't a rigorous description of what happens in either case.

So either you've got some general principle you used to rule on this special case that you haven't actually stated yet--like "the overlord gets to choose the order of resolution" or "you can only use multiple skills with the same triggering condition if the order of their resolution will have no effect on the final outcome"--or you just pulled a rule for this specific special case involving these two exact skills out of thin air, and you'll have to make up some independent arbitrary answer the next time a similar question comes up.

So I'd like to know what your principle is (if you have one), if you don't mind telling me.

Wouldn't the whole thing fall under the general principle of if two things trigger at the same time or use the same trigger that the player chooses the order in which they resolve?

QUOTE efidm=94831]
Wouldn't the whole thing fall under the general principle of if two things trigger at the same time or use the same trigger that the player chooses the order in which they resolve?

It could. But that isn't how we've played it. Let me reiterate that I'm not telling anyone else they have to do it this way.

However, it seems my method is still not understood. Perhaps this example will help:

1. Imagine you have relentless, but do not have able warrior: If you have full fatigue and declare an advance action, you cannot gain a fatigue, because you can never have more fatigue than your maximum. The only ways you can spend fatigue to have one to gain are by using one for movement or adding a power die. You cannot do these things before declaring your action per JitD p. 8:

Step 3: Take an Action
A hero player must choose one action from the four listed
below. A hero is not allowed to do anything except
refresh and equip before he declares the action he is taking.
After the hero has resolved his entire action, his turn
is over and play passes to the player on his left.

And since you can only immediately gain the fatigue the fact that you are full and have no fatigue to gain means in this instance you cannot utilize relentless.

2. Imagine you have able warrior, but do not have relentless: If you only have one fatigue at the point you declare your action as and advance you cannot afford to activate able warrior. Once again step 3 prevents you from doing anything until your action is declared and so you can't use movement gained to drink a fatigue potion to activate able warrior because you can't spend movement until after your action is declared. We take immediately to mean "at the moment your action is declared." i.e-before you take your action (or any part of it).

Now then, in either case your ability to in 1. gain a fatigue or in 2. spend 2 fatigue would never be questioned unless you have both skills. Now I know some people will say that's the point, and that both skills give each other an advantage. I think we decided that allowing one to feed the other is getting around the rules and we just don't play it that way. I think the way we do it is more of a compromise because unless you have one or less fatigue or maximum fatigue, you can use both in conjunction. Sometimes it works for the hero, sometimes for the OL. You don't have to agree with me. I'm not asking you to. It makes perfect sense to me and all the people I play with. We'll continue to do it that way unless the faq says otherwise. You can do it however you want. It really won't affect my gaming experience.

I would argue, however, if you are allowing heroes to a)have full fatigue, declare an advance action, spend a fatigue to move, then gain one from relentless or b)start with less than 2 fatigue, declare and advance, use one of their movement points from the advance to drink a fatigue potion, then spend 2 of those fatigue to activate able warrior...that this is unequivocably incorrect. I agree how the two go together is questionable. I offerred my group's handling of it. I hope it offers perspective rather than confusion.

"I think we decided that allowing one to feed the other is getting around the rules and we just don't play it that way."

That is the only sentence in your post that even comes close to offering a direct answer to my question (that is, why you ruled it the way you did). And it could be read either as meaning that you don't have a reason ("we just don't play that way") or that you previously came to the conclusion that it was illegal ("getting around the rules") but that this sentence doesn't give any indication as to how you reached that conclusion.

Maybe you're trying to say that your rule is that you have to meet the prerequisites of all "simultaneous" skills (including paying for them) before any of them take effect? That would be a clear and succinct reason for saying that the extra fatigue from Relentless can't be used to pay for Able Warrior...however, it doesn't give any reason that you can't benefit from both when you're at maximum fatigue, since Relentless still activates when you're at full fatigue, it just doesn't normally accomplish anything.

What I'm trying to figure out is, if FFG publishes two new skills that have the same trigger, and order matters, how are you going to decide how they interact? Are you just going to make up an answer that feels intuitively reasonable to you based on exactly what the skills do, or do you actually have some general principle or process that allows you to generate consistent answers?

Do you see the distinction I'm trying to make?

Antistone said:

I don't think it's worth discussing anymore. You clearly don't understand my point or the logic behind it. I've wasted way too much time on this topic and have already pointed out that it's something we chose to do. I think the reasoning is sound. The fact that you don't seem to be able to grasp it or can't understand why we made the decision seems to be an inability for you and I to communicate.

If you take the skills seaparately, you couldn't gain a fatigue at full or you can't spend 2 fatigue if you don't have two fatigue. So, if using your wording helps, you have to meet the prerequisites of all the skills before they take effect, sure. In the case of relentless ,you must have a fatigue to gain. In the case of able warrior you must have 2 fatigue to spend. If you fail to have these things at the time you declare your action, you cannot use the skill that turn. If you meet one, you may do that one. If you meet both, you may do both.

My general principle/process to generate consistent answer is to...DISCUSS WITH MY FELLOW PLAYERS WHAT WE AGREE IS A REASONABLE ANSWER BASED ON OUR INTUITION...CONSISTENTLY. You make this sound like it's just crazy, but...guess what? It's what we all do when we don't know the answer to something but need an answer to continue playing. We say, "hmm..what sounds reasonable to me? Gee, fellow player...what do you think? Oh really? Well that's another way of looking at it...how about this? Does that work for you? Good...then we're all agreed that the rule will be X." Since I don't have Kevin Wilson's phone #, I cannot get official answers right away, so I talk with the other people I'm playing with and we agree. Sometimes it's really easy because we all agree right away. Sometimes there's a compromise. Sometimes, we call my buddy Mark who lives out of town and get his opinion if we just can't agree on something.

The faq will never answer all questions, sometimes you have to go on intuition. If everyone you are playing with can agree, then there's really no reason to go to the faq for an answer. It only matters if you're playing with someone you don't normally play with in which case you establish a rule ahead of time or you address something unforeseen when it comes up. If the faq later answers something and you find out you were wrong, then you go with the faq. If the faq laters says you get to determine the order of able warrior and relentless, then I will be even more excited if I get those skills at the same time. As it is, being able to pay a net of 1 fatigue for an extra attack in all cases but when I'm already full or when I'm down below 2 fatigue still sounds pretty awesome to me.

Calm down. I'm not insulting your gaming group or trying to change your mind, I was just asking whether you had a general reason or only a special-case rule. If you think you already answered that several times, then yes, there's a rather massive communication breakdown. Maybe having something to do with the fact that you feel the need to pontificate about game balance and FAQ authorship and player dynamics when I ask you a simple rules question.

If you don't have a more general rule and just deal with things as they come up, question answered, that's all I wanted to know.

What it looks like to me is that Feanor is saying that his group does the check on fatigue cap and balance before either of the skills actually take effect, then resolving them, meanwhile Antistone is apparently looking at it as check then resolve one, then check then resolve the second.

You really don't get it, do you?

You tell someone to calm down then say that they "pontificate about game balance and FAQ authorship and player dynamics when I ask you a simple rules question"? You really said that to a person?

Well, now that I'm justly insulted for not understanding that I've tried to answer your question 3 times without you undestanding my answer, I'm very calm. Are you kidding me? Refer to an earlier post on a different thread. Please do not ask questions about my posts because you are impossible to answer. If I do answer, you will merely insult me and tell me I have not answered. It leaves me frustrated and clearly you're getting nothing out of anything that I post. We read the cards and ask what they mean. The key word in this case is "immediate." Our interpretation of what that word means guides our interpretation of the rule, which I have now described far too many times and in far too much detail. I have also tried to point out merely that this is what we do since there is not an official ruling, but that I would respect one if it controverted our interpretation.

But now you are only going to tell me how this is wrong is some way. I will ignore it. Good luck with your Descent playing. Try to have some fun.

Feanor said:

You repeatedly waste my time with obviously irrelevant verbosity and "SHOUT" at me, and when I remark upon it, that makes me the villain. Sure.