The heroes decided to attack Lord Merrick Farrow and I, as the Overlord, drew the encounter location card that has the Heavy Snow. This lead to an argument about the combination of rules between these two things.

Lord Merrick's card says that he can "spend 5 movement points to move to anywhere in his line of site."

The Heavy Snow description from the location card says that "No figure may move more spaces than its Speed."

Is Merrick's special ability actually considered moving, so that it would be limited by the snow? It seems to me that what is is doing is teleporting, which should not be effected, but the card does say "move", which is what the snow limits.

Thoughts, please?

nasost said:

First, well done on actually quoting the important text parts. It makes answering possible for those who don't have ready access to the cards.

As you point out, Merrick's text indicates the use of his ability is 'moving'. At first glance, that would mean the Heavy Snow text would rule out using his ability to 'move' further than his speed. Tough, thats the RAW.
I do agree that 'teleporting' may not be intended to be affected (OTOH, maybe it is restricted by limited visibility - after all, although you can see a figure through the snow (ie there is no LOS restriction), you probably can't see the 'terrain' that you would be landing on, so teleporting too far could be dangerous. Are bloodsquids snow-proof?) Thematically, it would seem that the restriction is due to heavy or dangerous footing rather than anything else - though thematic arguments are at best unreliable.

However it could be argued that the teleporter actually only moves 1 space, no matter the distance (because he does not move into any of the intermediate spaces) and is thus not greatly affected by Heavy Snow.
If there was a pit and a figure spent 3 MP to jump across it, would that count as one space moved or two?
How many spaces are moved when using one of the coloured end portals to move from corridor end to corridor end (in certain dungeon levels)? Or from one ? to another ? in Up and Down (IIRC the name).

I'd say it could be argued 'correctly' both ways and is thus ambiguous. A good one for FAQing.

Not only would this need FAQ-ing for Lord Farrow, but possibly also Runemaster Thorn,

Slev said:

Merrick Farrow, Thorn, jumping (maybe), Leaping (maybe) and any sort of movement portals.

I would think this would be similar to using Shadow Soul in the same situation wouldn't it? There would be no restriciton there. I've always read Merric/Thorn's ability to be that you are spending the movement to activate an ability.

Big Remy said:

I don't think it is. Shadow Soul is definitely not movement (it is swapping places before activation* and before any movement is even possible). Both Merrick and Thorn's abilities specifically state that the spend the MP to move to the new space.

So it can be accurately stated that they have moved more spaces than their movement (not allowed). It can also be accurately stated that they have only moved one space (allowed).

Since both are true, and it is purely a matter of interpretation/choice which way you wish to rule it, this is the perfect question for a FAQ.

*he says riskily, not having ready access to a rulebook on wife's PC...

True. I personally would go with the call that they can both move to anywhere in LOS but that's mainly because of a thematic argument on teleport not being affected by snow.

In my campaign, we have runemaster. We played this snow encounter and the heroes agreed that since you cannot move more spaces than your speed, that even Runemaster was limited to 5 spaces, whether teleporting or not. I guess you could argue that he has only moved from one space to another space, but I think really the wording implies you can only cover 5 spaces of distance. To be honest, given the small size of encounters, runemasters teleporting ability is potentially so powerful as it is.

Last night, we grabbed the encounter that says you must pay 1 extra movement to enter a space adjacent to water. This was an Lt. encounter with Merick. Since both of us would be affected, we just needed to agree. Our interpretation of the card was that while you teleport past any spaces on your way, if you teleport INTO a space adjacent to water, you need to pay 6. This can, of course, easily be gotten around with fatigue in Thorn's case and 2 of his 15 threat (plus whatever else you collect) in Merick's case.

If you can't agree since it only affects Merick, as the hero what they would do if runemaster were in their party, and maybe they'll decide they would've wanted to be able to teleport "1 space" to somewhere 5 spaces away.

Personally, I would say you're still moving and you still moved X number of spaces, so in this case merick should be limited to 5...which sucks for him, but sometimes locations suck for the lts...and sometimes for the heroes.

Thematically, as a person who drives in Michigan in the winter, I certainly know that snow affects the range of my LOS, so I don't see why that wouldn't be a logical reasoning.

Come on guys, use some common sense. In most cases of these letter-of-the-law cases, if you step back and look at the WHY of the rule, then determining an interpretation that makes sense is easy to do. If Thorn's ability is teleporting, and snow's ability is to make it slippery and so no matter how much you run, you're not going to get far, then Thorn's ability trumps snow's because he's not running! He's Teleporting! How is Snow supposed to limit a teleporter?

A simple application of common sense goes a long way...

-shnar

My opinion.

Option A as RAW because it says no more than your speed.

But this leads me too a question ? can you declare a run action and move twice your speed...?! (figuring what the card says)

But if some one probably looks at this they will rule that you could actually teleport, just like the encounter that says trees block movement, first time I played RtL, drew that and bane spiders...oh god...the memories...

StarBurn said:

Your speed is not affected by what order you place. Declaring a run action would give you twice your speed in movement points to spend as you wish. The encounter limits you to only moving spaces equal to your speed, and your speed hasn't changed (it's still whatever is printed in green on your hero card). Thus, with a speed of 4 and a run action you can still only move 4 spaces, not 8. The remaining 4 movement points cannot be used to move your character.

That doesn't mean you'd never use the run order in this encounter - moving into trees, for example, takes extra movement. You can certainly use extra movement to move into trees, as long as you haven't moved more than your speed in movement points. This way you could end up using more than 4 movement points, while still only moving 4 spaces.

shnar said:

Snow might limit a Teleporter because he still has to 'land' safely. He has to be able to see the space he lands (as evidenced by the requirement for the 'appearing' space to be within LOS) and possibly has to be able to see the ground he 'appears' on clearly. It would, after all, be rather embarrassing to 'appear' on a snow-covered, thinly iced over, water space and have an immediate dinner party with some very hungry (and cold) bloodsquids...

I'm sorry, but there is not always enough information for the application of 'common sense' to be simple.
In other words, thematic arguments are almost always worth diddly, because there is always a counter thematic argument.

In this case, there are two possible 'letter of the law' rulings, both of which would be correct and incorrect at the same time. There are also multiple possible thematic rulings, none of which we can know is better than any other.

FAQ it.

Feanor said:

I agree with your ruling in these cases.

Regarding the whole "logical" explanation that someone must be able to see the physical ground they're teleporting to in order to go there... I don't buy that. I agree with the ruling, just not the logic. Even if that were a true fact about teleporting in Terrinoth, the character in question could just teleport on TOP of the snow (which he can see) and subsequently sink in without too much difficulty. I think the main "logical" argument as to why teleporting should be limited by heavy snow is that if you're trying to go too far, you can't really see what's out there. There might be a pit in the space you're planning to teleport to, but you can't see it due to snow piled up all around. In other words, it's not that the teleporters CAN'T go farther than 5 spaces, it's more that they WON'T for fear of potentially injuring themselves on unseen terrain. Think of it as the character having a survival instinct that you as the player might not share since it's all just plastic to you.