Do they go back to the 'bank' so they can be purchased again? Or do they get returned to the 'box' and are now unavailable.

We've been playing where it returns to the 'bank' but they almost always go back to town and repurchase them. I've read that people normally play the 'box' way, but can't find solid evidence for this, I just want to show to the group so they don't think im trying to gimp their potions. (I'm the OL)

thanks!

Adonai said:

Where did you read that people have the potions go back into the box? I haven't seen any evidence for that anywhere. Best of my knowledge, the potion markers go right back into the town to be purchased again. The only limit on how many you can buy is the number that came with the game.

On boardgamegeek i asked a similar question and the response was that they played it went to the box instead of being available for purchase again.

I personally would think this would be a good change, as it keeps the rushing tactic down somewhat. Makes the potion use more strategic instead of always using one each turn. If all 4 heroes use a potion each turn to move/attack, then in two turns they would only have one left to purchase/use. Which then would make the health potions (or the others, power invisibility invulnerability) the only other options.

I'd really like to hear an official ruling though or something. Right now it's just 'how the group wants to play it' I'm seeing.

The putting potions back into the box is a houserule. There is nothing in the RAW that says you do this. Once potions are used, they go back into the pile of available potions in the town.

Heh, on that note, theres nothing that says they go back to the bank either. If theres a page in the rules or something please point me to it and I'll gladly accept that.

thanks!

Adonai said:

You're quite right, the RaW only says that used potions are "discarded." I can't find any explicit definition of what "discarded" means. That being said, equipment, money and other tokens are also "discarded" when used, dropped or destroyed, so if you choose to play by rules lawyering, then all equipment that is lost or dropped is put back in the box, never to be seen again. If you're playing regular Descent that probably won't create an issue, but if you're playing RtL it could well lead to heroes not having any kit to buy by Silver level (or money to buy it with.) That said, I do believe it was the intent of the rules that discarded items be recycled to the town store.

I'm not saying you're wrong to play by putting potions back in the box. If that's how you want to play and your group is cool then go ahead and have fun. I wouldn't want to sit at that table, however, either as the OL or as a hero. I find that when the heroes run back to resupply in town, it often gives me precious time to spawn more monsters, pick on the heroes still in the dungeon while they have reduced numbers and otherwise get ready for the coming assault, so I really don't mind.

Bottom line, as long as everyone is having fun, that's what counts!

Adonai said:

NO , you did not. I responded exactly thus :

"Interestingly, I can't find any rules about what happens to a potion token after you drink it (I can't even find any rule that specifically says you don't keep it and use it as many times as you want, though I imagine we can all agree that you can't). It's always been my impression that used potions are returned to the bank , but that may just have been an assumption." (Emphasis added)

Steve-O said:

Antistone said:

Sorry, I must have mis-interpreted you're response. the ' (I can't even find any rule that specifically says you don't keep it and use it as many times as you want, though I imagine we can all agree that you can't )' - meant to me that you agree that you can't keep the potions around, meaning they were returned to the box. I must have skimmed over the rest of your answer and missed the ' bank ' part on the last line.

Perhaps since it may just be a 'play how you want to play' rule, does this seem un-balanced to do this?

It would seem to me that since fatigue is an integral part of the heroes movement/actions that limiting them to 9 may/may not be a big deal. It would only seem to be a big deal on larger dungeons or if they constantly used it for adding power dice. They can still take rest commands instead of going back to town, so I can see the disadvantage of limiting them there and perhaps to the OL not gaining threat for the wasted turns of town travel, but to take it the other way, they have to declare a rest action, which means they can't really do much except move and rest or attack and rest. And then they'd be out of fatigue again soon and have to rest after a bit, and would probably want to go to town anyway on larger dungeons to sell/train.

I do recall a rule about equipment being put back into the deck when using Crushing Blow, so, perhaps that kind of leans it more towards the side of going back to the bank instead of box.

I did have one last question, we were playing, and the group had two warriors, both wanted to train, but we were out of melee training tokens, what do we do at that point? substitute or not allow the extra training?

We have always played you are only limited by the # of actual potions available in the game and you only cannot purchase more if they are all already possessed by the heroes. We will allow, much like an overlord taking a monster off the board to spawn one in a different location or an obstacle being taken off the board to play a trap, for the heroes to take a potion off the dungeon floor so that they can buy one in town. That is a house rule, though, and probably up to your party/overlord's discretion.

As for training tokens, there is something (I think in the list of answered questions from the old forum) which does state that you are limited by the # of training tokens. So...if you have two tanks with only 2 starting melee dice one of them will not be able to reach his max of 5 dice since there are only 5 melee training tokens.

Adonai said:

I meant that I think we can agree that the potion doesn't remain in your inventory after you drink it. As in, you buy 1 potion at the start of the game, and drink it every single turn until game's end without ever acquiring another one. As far as I can tell, that would be completely consistent with RAW, but I don't think anyone will seriously argue that that was the intent.

Antistone said:

In the paragraph just before it starts describing the individual potions in the main rulebook (page 18, I think?), there is a paragraph that describes general rules for all treasures, of which potions are defined to be one. One of those general rules says that treasures are "discarded" after they are used up. I could not, however, find a more solid definition of the word "discarded" as pertains to putting things in the box/bank.

Adonai said:

While what happens to tokens when they are discarded may be up for debate, there is no quetion that the game limits the number of tokens in play to those supplied. That has been an FFG rule for pretty much every game of theirs I own. (Notable exceptions include fighters and ground forces in TI3.) Since training tokens really can't be taken out of play after they've been gained, once they're gone, they're gone. Other players have to live without.

Hrm, I never thought about that with Training Tokens. I've always assumed that for Potions, but not Training. I wonder how that applies to RtL? I was just thinking you'd discard the token once you upgrade it to the next stage, i.e. discard the black Training Token once you bumped up to Silver, so that way it wouldn't be confusing as to how many dice you really have (i.e. if you kept the token and had a silver token, you might think you had both available, since it's entirely possible). But I guess we're not supposed to do that?

-shnar

shnar said:

Correct. A gold or silver upgrade merely shows that you have upgraded one of your existing dice to the appropriate color. So..to determine dice pool, you look first at starting traits and then at training tokens to determine # of dice. After that you look at gold/silver upgrades to see which of those are silver and/or gold.

Let's say you have Nanok. I'm pretty sure you've saved him 3 training tokens so his armor can be 7. Nanok with 3 training tokens means 5 dice. Now let's say you also have one silver and one gold die. You would have one counter for each. If you have 3 blacks and 2 silvers you would hve 3 training tokens and two silver tokens. If you upgrade those silvers to to golds, you don't keep the silver, but trade in for golds, lest you be confused with having 2 silvers AND 2 golds. Of course, if your OL is paying any kind of attention, I think he'll know what kind of dice you are rolling, but that seems to be the only way to keep it all straight.

If your second melee hero is say...one fist, his max dice will be four. So..after he gets up to four blacks, he's probably going for silver and gold. Heck, you may want to keep just three dice, leaving more room to add dice with fatigue. But I think in cases of anyone but Nanok and Karnon, you never really want more than four dice regardless, so you have room to add up to at least one more gold die. The only time don't want to leave some room for "after the fact" dice adding is if you already have your first 4 dice at gold...which seems unlikely.

Steve-O said:

I am unable to find any such statement either in the PDF or in my physical rulebook. The section on page 18 previous to talking about kinds of potions says the following:

Treasure
As the heroes explore the dungeon, they will find treasure that can aid them in their quest. This treasure may be new weapons, armor, potions, or other special items. The following rules apply to all treasure tokens and markers.
• Only heroes may pick up treasure tokens and markers.
• During his turn, a hero may automatically pick up a treasure token or marker in the space he is occupying (it does not cost him any movement points to do so).
• During his turn, a hero may give items to heroes in adjacent spaces at the cost of one movement point per token or card given. A hero who receives an item from another player may immediately equip it, place it in his pack, or drop it (see “Equipping Items, page 13).

The word "discard" does not even appear in that passage, unless you're looking at some modified version of the rules.

Feanor said:

Really? I guess I was more right than even I knew. I actually wasn't thinking about RtL upgrade training when I posted my previous comment, and we've always played replace with those just to keep clutter down. I guess the subtle point of making lower tokens "available" again never occured to us since nobody buys black dice after they get access to silver. Of course, our hero parties usually do their best to spread out the hero attack strengths - which is very easy with RtL's "draw 3 pick 1" rule - so most of the time there isn't any in-fighting over training anyway. There are at most two heroes in the party with 3 dice in the same trait, so 4 tokens in enough to get them both by, and the others focus on different attack types. Needless to say, the heroes who don't have 3 dice in one type don't get used very much by us.

Currently, we've had no problem with used potions returning to the bank to be purchased again. Granted, we haven't played that much (3-4 of the basic quests, and I think something from WoD), but even in the quest with Soulbiter (wielder gains wounds each turn s/he doesn't kill something), it just wasn't feasible to keep returning to town to restock on potions more than once or twice.