The Hunt ability from the Hellhound's monster card read as follows: Question 1: If the attack missed, it still resolved, correct? EDIT: Yeah, no surge can be spent upon missing, so obviously Hunt cannot trigger. Question 2: Can you perform Hunt if the hero has been KO:ed by the attack? E.g. move the hero token? Thanks by advance EDIT: I guess the same can be asked about Knockback ability. Once the attack has resolved it means damage has been dealt and the hero is already KO, therefore there is no legal "target" anymore for the ability to carry out? There used to be a valid target though and that's why I´m asking.

I´ve always played Wither as if it could be executed despite the attack has been fully blocked (not a miss). Unless the monster card specifically says that the attack needs to deal at least one point of damage, I always consider surge abilities as available to me unless I roll the cross.

I´m curious to see what kind of reply you will get, because to me balance in Descent is generally a very subjective notion. Some playgroups will tell you how Heirs of Blood is "broken" because they got steamrolled by the OL, what they don't say however is how poorly they´ve selected their hero party, what poor choices they've made at critical moments, etc. Likewise some OLs may tell you that they played the campaign and it was heavily in favor of the heroes, but what the OL doesn't say is that the heroes got a treasure chest into a big deal item in quest 1, and that the OL rolled very poorly etc. Quest balance will always lean towards a side, but you can only measure that based on all the facts, which comprises of your playgroup's choices made in game, and you need to add luck to that. I think the best way to find out is to play it.

It's how many they are. Winning a quest as the heroes in Descent relies on how many actions are required to get to your objectives - versus the same for the Overlord. Movement is key in this game, and if you don't get to the place you need to be in fast enough, then you lose. It's kind of an oversimplified statement, but that's really how I perceive it all factors involved. With Kobolds and no AoE damage at disposal, heroes have to waste tons of actions having to hack through this living wall that is Kobolds. That's a big deal in many quests. Now it is true that the OL cannot use Kobolds in every quest, because of monster traits, and heroes can always get these AoE abilities. If they don't then they´re weak in essence against that type of strategy. But you could say the same about any type of strategy, really. I don't think they need nerfing at all. They just force the heroes to consider getting a proper defense against them. It's about pressuring the heroes, which I think is good for a change (I´ve mostly been adapting myself to the heroes rather than the opposite)

While I agree H&M packs look more appealing in terms of mini quantities, I have to say that Lieutenant packs make a HUUUUUUGE difference on the table. These are the campaign's big bosses! The presence of a threatening character on the board has a heavy psychological impact on the players (OL included)and increases in-game immersion. Defeating a token has never felt anything else than anti-climatic. This is not a hex game. Some LTs are massive and players tend to respect that. If you buy an expansion to get a new campaign, then I strongly advise that you buy the related LT packs as well.

For what it's worth, I wish game publishers considered "conversion kits" more often for their games, in order to port characters/tiles/objects from other similar games into it. So yeah, I´m no longer talking about the previous version of a game, but about plain other games. I´d be more than happy to design a D&D adventure game conversion to Descent, and vice-versa, so these classy D&D heroes could be used in D2E and these weierd monsters as well. Descent could benefit from that huge Demon figure, all these elementals and so on. I'm fully aware game publishers cannot quite design extra-licence material to provide such crossover, but at least the numerous fans of these games could certainly come up with something nice and artistically professional to use in our games.

So... any suggestions as for what proxies to use for these familiars?

This all said, the CK was a GREAT product when D2E got released. That kind of move from FFG needs to be encouraged so owners of previous game versions get a smoother transition to the newest installment and don't feel robbed by FFG for all money and investment spent on the previous iteration. The CK is only useless now to those who consistently buy H&M packs, otherwise it's still great value for your money, and like I said earlier you could change the wording on some cards to the new version without having to buy all the H&Ms.

It seems you can. I had two notifications of your "like" on one of my posts: http://imgur.com/xnv1dbY Ha. <you_tube_mode> Smash that like button, guys. If we ever reach 500 likes I´ll send out some D2E giveaways. </you_tube_mode> EDIT: Andrew, maybe the reason is that Zaltyre first liked your post, then thought it was a poor choice and clicked "unlike", then had regrets and re-liked again?

Yes sorry, I´m happy in general with FFG's support to rules question, but huge amounts of partial answers from FFG lie currently scattered around the web, BGG in particular. Even the FAQ is hard to use in my opinion, as I wish they could release full rules/quest books with version history that we could download. Or heck, even purchase as an add-on, if they ever reach a certain stability in the versions. Otherwise the amount of printed/online documentation that is necessary to have with you when you play is mental. Justifications are provided from FFG (but not always, I must point out), but they keep the response in the same scope as the question. If multiple persons are asking about the effects of death in the game, maybe posting a clarification on these forums or in an article (or a new revision of the FAQ) might be a better solution than answering each question individually. Visibility is not great atm, and you can't trust anybody in their interpretation (although you Zaltyre are probably the exception )

Yes that's right, with Tetherys, Tahlia, Astarra and Andira Runehand. Thanks

Just reacting on the "wife/daughter prefers female characters" For some reason I still chock people when I say that I played Fable II as a female Dark Elf with evil alignment who was married to another female human and had three other female lovers on the side, plus one man (I had to try that). The question I got was, surprisingly, not about why my characters had so many lovers and why I was playing on my various relationships, but why I did all this using a female character Joke aside, my daughter (6.5 yo) also tends to go for female characters, but tell yours that Durik has a Wolf pet with him and see if she is interested. Anything involving animals, or funny looks, can well work as well. Descent as many of these strange weirdo characters. By the way I think there's a H&M pack out there featuring 4 female heroes, that's probably the one you should look into getting.

Yes but that last part of your sentence is a assumption we´d make based on a short reply to the question "does skill X apply or not". My point being that it would help if FFG could extend the scope of their response so that no doubt is left as for how similar skills work in practice. Otherwise they leave the job to us as for qualifying every skill in the game, often using non-official terminology, or even thematic reasoning (like the bond to a familiar being destroyed), and deduct what rules should be covering them based on a subset of official replies from FFG. I personally don't think that's enough. For example: Q: Can Elixirs be used even if the Apotecary is KO A: Yes. -> We can only assume the same is valid for Valor tokens, which has probably 99.9% chance to be true, but who knows if all types of tokens can be covered by this ruling. I find many rules questions on BGG where the answer from the community is basically "We don't know, but FFG said <this> about a skill that looks similar to this one". If people are happy with that then fine, I personally think some effort could have been be thrown to fill the gaps in the rules in a more efficient manner rather than having to repetitively compare situations and make an informed guess as for how FFG would have thought that through and simply assume it's their official understanding of the rules. Even worse, consider it official and spread it to players asking on the forums. I'd prefer the following: Q: Do tokens created by an ability still apply even if the hero who owns the source of the token is KO? A: Yes -> All tokens in scope, end of discussion. Or: Q: Does the +4 health apply to the Wolf familiar even if the Beastmaster is KO? A: Yes since it's a passive ability and passive abilties always apply for all in-game effects linked to it. Passive abilities are effects that always apply as long as the condition described on the card is fulfilled. -> We now have a new concept called "passive ability" with its own definition, which can apply to many other skills. FFG's answer tends to be just "Yes", unless there's already an explicit reason in the rulesbook stating why it's "No". I think some areas of the rules for that game deserve a more comprehensive answer.

I´ve also been playing with full transparency as for my OL/plot card purchases. Like annoucing what new card I just bought and handing it over to the heroes so they can have a peak at it. Pushing this further, do you let your heroes have access to which OL cards you have set aside upon building your deck? Because I don't

Do you guys tell your hero players about your OL card purchases, or do you let them find out when you actually play the card? I initially did the latter, only to realize it might have not been completely fair. What's hidden is the card draw itself, but purchases should probably be open to all? What's your view? Otherwise I´ve witnessed hero players trying to force my hand, hoping to make me use a problematic card (Web Trap for instance) in a situation they would fake as being key to their strategy while it's actually not. It can go quite deep, like splitting the hero party, making it look like 1-2 heroes are going to grab the objective while they´re just acting as a diversion. Similarly, a hero moves and asks me if he/she can move one more square, and so on until the full move is performed. Psychological warfare, lol. If this movement action is vital to the heroes then they never ask me if I want to play a card In that case I have to be quick about it.

For what it's worth, and bearing in mind my background in terms of other games I´ve played in the past, I agree with Zaltyre on the fact that a general rule should be stated covering all skills and abilities, even if it comes at the price of introducing new game notions. I´m not very interested if one or several skill/ability kick in/apply or not, I want the rule covering them all, and stating the exceptions (like skills requiring the presence of the hero on the map). I can live with specific rules covering a couple of really tricky skills that would require a special rules segment, but I would really want to avoid having to look up every single skill in the game for FAQ entries and unofficial BGG entries just to verify if common sense can solve the situation or not. Otherwise we´ll have this conversation over again every time new skills are being released. That's why I didn't ask FGG for their answer concerning specific skill cards but to provide a rule of thumb for all of them. I personally don't see this as being a much daunting task, only they can clarify how skill cards source in-game effects and the effect of their owner being KO on these. I honestly don't believe FFG has a convoluted answer to this.

I don't think there is any clear rule giving a straight answer to all of these questions currently. Maybe some of them have already been clarified on BGG, but I´m too lazy to check that out, and then truth is that I don't really trust any clarification made years ago which lead to no entry on the current FAQ. So I went ahead and asked FFG to clarify some of these points. Maybe they´ll get multiple queries from different persons but hopefully the demand will make them consider releasing more clarifications regarding this, especially since the "KO-topic" has become more actual due to the latest product releases. But on the other hand, I mean... how are people playing this on a normal day? Because the theory is one thing, like explaining passive and triggered abilities (whoses notions aren't even referred to in the rules, but we do make anologies to other games we know that seem pretty close in order to explain the technicities of a game whenever there is no rule to cover these specific cases).. It can be a can of worms too, because the mindset of the people designing Descent may have been totally different. I play as the OL exclusively and I have never denied a hero using a Valor or Elixir because the Champion/Apotecary was lying dead at the time. But I have also been wrong on multiple instances before and I don't claim to have the ultimate answer to everything, this said I am expected to have it as the rulesmaster in my playgroup. I guess misconceptions of the rules can be called house rules until the house rule in question gets ruled out upon consensus from the players. But there are tons of situations that are not crystal clear in the rules that we handle very easily with help from common sense. The health potion situation is a good example. It doesn't mean we´re necessarly correct, but Descent is a heavy game and we cannot stop looking for rules every time we come across a situation like this. Then some situations never occur in practice because they require very specific combinations of skills/abilities which seem contradictory. But let's say that between saying: 1- Class cards are as if they were returned to the box, none of their effects apply anymore, and any token/effect/bonus generated by them are ignored while the hero is being KO. and 2- The hero cannot use any skill while being KO while he's off the map, but the effects from these cards still apply in the game for all relevant parts referring to them. Number 1- feels like a hell of an interpretation and leads to situations that make no sense at all, and 2- while technically split between the passive versus triggered ability seems like the closest guess by a fair mile, and a decision I´d be taking over the first one in a vacuum. Then of course you´d need to add the rule that any skill referring to the hero figure, like the ones that define a range or an area from the hero, cannot apply because the hero is not on the map while being KO. But even that... A hero is normally killed during the OL turn, unless a OL card was played which made an attack or dealt damage, which is not a huge % of the kills situation. It means heroes start the heroes turn with X heroes being KOed, and they can sequence/tailor their turn depending on that. So if we said the Elixir token would not apply and this Treasure Hunter absolutely needs it this turn, the heroes would plan for reviving the Apotecary before the TH taking his turn. If I said to my playgroup option 1- above is the way the game should be played, then they would come around that restriction very easily for most situations. Heroes are normally revived the next turn unless there's carnage going on. But it wouldn't make any sense.

Maybe the Reanimate should keep his yellow dice after all, and the Wolf his +4 Health. If the familiar card doesn't state that the familiar is removed from the game upon death of his owner, then any skill card affecting them should still apply. I can see that now (not that it has happened in the past). Otherwise about the health potion issue. The health bonus is relevant whenever the hero is alive. If the hero is revived then he/she is alive by definition, so his full health should be taken into account. Anything else makes no sense ibn my mind. I still believe skill cards stay in-game even when their owner has been knocked out, and any effect in game (token for instance) should still apply to other heroes. However any effect requiring the presence of the hero ("within X squares of the hero" and the likes) should not apply as the hero is not on the map anymore.

I personally don't see such card as having a passive ability such as sourcing each token generated by it. A passive ability for me is the +4 Health to the Wolf. This +4 health is not an object and is subject to the status of the class card atv any point in time. If the OL disables it during a quest then the +4 goes away. Rather, I´ve always interpreted Brew Elixir as "Create An Elixir token. This token has the following abilities: <insert all skill effects>". To me the token has all rules imprinted on it and is no more correlated to the cards that has granted effects to it. It has these effects, period. The token IS the passive effect, not the card, except it's not convenient to write it all up on a piece of cardboard.

"A hero cannot use skills or abilities while knocked out, unless an effect specifically allows it." The hero is knocked out, so he/she cannot use skills, that's crystal clear. But the skills are not just "gone", they´re just unavailable to the KO hero, which makes sense. But I don't see any reason why other heroes who are not KO at the time wouldn't be able to use the effects described on the skill cards of the dead hero. Like drinking an Elixir, or use a Valor token. I don't see why these objects would suddenly lose their properties. The skill card is still there to qualify what the actual object is. The fact the KO hero cannot use it is not relevant in that aspect. I would think familiars are different and I would totally get behind the idea that they lose all bonuses when the hero dies, because they are owned/activated by that hero, who is dead, and who has no access to any skill card. So yes, the Wolf loses 4 life, the Reanimate loses its yellow dice etc. But Hero lambda should still be able to use an Elixir or a Valor token.

Lifethirst sounds definitely like it would stack, when triggering from different monsters. I would be VERY surprised if it didn't. The question however is if you could give Lifethirst ability to a monster (through a card) who already has Lifethirst, would both abilities stack I´m not too sure anymore.

Thing is, I´m not too sure anymore there is such thing as monster groups supporting each other in Descent. I wish there was, but in practice your monster groups often start being scattered around the map, and heroes normally get their numbers down by the time they can unite. I don't think Crow Hags will be an exception to that. Moreover I´d say less than 40% of all quests (just a guess, I haven't counted them) allow 2 open groups and even if they do it's often the case that one of them don't get to start on the map. You have a few quests allowing you to combine open groups, but it's pretty rare. OL card support, however, can be a thing. Enchanter class, even plot decks. This can be used to palliate some of the weaknesses of these monsters.

No Basic deck in Nerekhall, unfortunately, It was just Labyrinth of Ruin.

They do roll a blue die, but I would have liked to see at least a B+Y+Y ranged attack in Act II. After some thoughts I think these monsters are very weak. The ability is nice, but I don't see how I could ever pick these as an open group. Otherwise the master has a nice ability, yes, but: - We don't know if the Act I variant has the ability. - She will be shot on sight by the heroes, leaving you with two minions who can certainly run but they don't do anything else and don't tell me Lifethirst 1 will destroy the heroes' healing capabilities... - Heroes with standard healing capabilties can usually take 2 damage without any problem. As a hero player I would gladly pay 2 life out of 3 remaining to avoid getting Immobilized, Stunned, Cursed or Doomed. What's the Act I version then I ask? Attack can't be worse than B+Y so my guess is that the only difference is the surge into 1 additional damage instead of 2 on both minion and master. Then Lifethirst stays there, as said above maybe not Death Omen, defense gets a single gray dice, maybe an aditional brown dice for the master, and HP around 4 for the minion and 6 for the master. This is far from being stellar. You look at this and then you check the number of monsters you get.. I would pick 4 Changelings instead of 3 Crow Hags all day long every day. EDIT: Monster traits as well. Dark-trait monsters seem to offer a lot more punch, resilience, numbers, and utility. I fear Crow Hags are very subpar compared to many other Dark monsters I can pick from my collection. When it comes to Civilized trait... I don't know, quests with this are quite rare in comparison, and like I said Changelings are a thing. Water would have been nice on top of Dark to give another option for this underpopulated categories, especially considering the fact these are small monsters. So yeah, nice from FFG to give us a new monster. Nice touch on the utility ability. But extremely niche in my opinion, unless you mix them with a bunch of other monsters maybe.

Plus you only get three of them. I would have expected 4 models to be fair.