Stun in RtL

[Chimpy 194]

I recently started playing Road to Legend with 3 friends, one of which picked Ashrian to play. We have been using the stun condition on monsters as detailed in the core rules, but we just noticed in the RtL rules it states: "When a monster is Stunned, the next action it performs must be to discard “Stun.” "

 

Does anyone know, if an adjacent melee based monster is stunned, does it still get attack? I'm guessing it does, because it would still skip the "move to engage" action on the action list.

 

If this is the case, does this make Ashrian a bit underpowered for RtL?

[quartersmostly 51]

The adjacent monster would still get the attack as long as any actions before the attack action are skipped.  

 

I am pretty sure her ability is equally underpowered in standard descent.  

[Tintaglia 124]

No the monsters can't attack. as mentionned on the card the only action that you can perform is to discard the condition.

[quartersmostly 51]

No the monsters can't attack. as mentionned on the card the only action that you can perform is to discard the condition.

The only action you can perform is to discard the condition while the card/token is on a hero/monster.  Once it is discarded you are no longer limited by this requirement and are free to use your second action.  

[Chimpy 194]

No the monsters can't attack. as mentionned on the card the only action that you can perform is to discard the condition.

As quartersmostly said, in both regular Descent and RtL, monsters get two actions. From what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong) in standard Descent, they can normally only attack once, but could use one action to discard the stun, and the next to attack. Pretty much the same in RtL, but the monsters follow an action list. I think!

[Chaoticus 141]

Exactly. Of course it might happen that the monster is required to engage a different target than the hero in front of it. This means that it cold just run about without attacking. Depends on the activation text

[Alarmed 257]

Ashrian's ability, while it looks good on paper, is a bit underpowered in standard Descent but even worse in RTL.

 

Yes, the monsters have to use their first action to remove the stun, but they are free to attack with their second, IF their action list allows it. That said, the action lists for melee monsters very often include "attack adjacent hero" as their second action and "engage closest hero" as their top, so Ashrian's gonna get womped if she relies too much on her ability.

[Gendalm 26]

That said, the action lists for melee monsters very often include "attack adjacent hero" as their second action and "engage closest hero" as their top, so Ashrian's gonna get womped if she relies too much on her ability.

 

Indeed there are not so many "engage the farthest hero" or "engage the hero with least remaning health" (which, by the way, could be Ashrian). 

 

It could be used to force the monster to attack her (well defended) but in RtL you can simply put two heroes at the same distance from a monster (e.g. both adjacent to the monster) and, in most of the cases, you will be able to choose who is the monster's target.

 

It is a pity although since movement 5 and awareness 4 are quite interesting characteristics for a healer. 

[Luckmann 112]

While it seems reworded for clarity, it effectively works exactly the same as in standard Descent.

 

In standard Descent, I never found Ashrian's Ability underpowered, since it forced the OL to choose whether to attack or to move, allowing her to harry ranged units, especially. What stun does, what it always did, is to steal an action from the target it affects. These days, we barely hand out Condition cards/tokens at the table, and just count it as a lost action right away.

 

With action lists in RtL, I can see how it might feel underwhelming, since there's no OL to be manipulated and sometimes it effectively makes no difference whether Stun is there or not. In the real game, this is rarely an issue, and Stun can be super-frustrating for the OL.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Luckmann

[Alarmed 257]

The problem. the way I see it,  is that Ashrian has to let the monsters adjacent to use her ability, it only affects minions, and she only has 10HP (could be worse, she could have 8).

 

You're right, Luckmann, that she can probably be used to harass ranged monsters, but that requires her to move to the monsters, which to me is not what a healer should be doing. When I play a healer, I choose my actions on the basis of healing/buffing the party first. Ashrian's ability wants her to give priority to getting close to monsters, but if you choose her class thematically (Spiritspeaker, based on her quote) she'd end up with a reach weapon... which makes no sense based on the previous.

[JulianLeite 9]

I'm really disappointed in Stun in general. I think it would be much better if it was harder to obtain but took away the whole activation. Also, the wording is ridiculously misleading and I'm pretty sure 80% of people play it that the Stun takes away the whole turn.

 

It's good for ranged attacks because most of the time they'll have to move into range, eating up their second action..but using it in melee situations like Shield Bash is pretty useless and a wasted resource IMO.

[Chimpy 194]

I think my issue is that the ability is mostly used on melee type monsters, and they don't want to move if they are already engaged, they just want to attack, so they only need one action anyway.

Edited July 18, 2016 by Chimpy

[Alarmed 257]

Stun is best when used as part of a crowd control attack like blast, or fire breath or prismatic attack, or Carve a path.

 

Because then, for 1 action, you've removed (hopefully) many (single) actions from the enemy.