This page deals with all the rules questions that you might have about Dungeon Saga. Please read the comments below to see if your query has already been answered. If not, please free to ask in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
If you have any questions on the game rules, or if you see a post on a forum somewhere that does, then please direct them here so that I can deal with them all in a single document. That way questions get answered consistently and everyone gets the benefit 🙂
The first printing of the Adventurer’s Companion has some layout errors and missing page references. The corrected version was sent out to Kickstarter backers, and is included here for reference.
To keep things tidy, comments and questions will be deleted from this page once they have been addressed in the FAQ.
Quirkworthy 
Hi, great game, IO works wonderfully well, but a couple of quick questions. You only use the invisible overlord cards in the deck, never the normal ones? Do you limit the card numbers as the normal ones? And when you play a card that cant be used e.g. support against spellcaster/weakest when the only model is a skeleton warrior in front arc of dwarf. why would you move it and allow free attacks?
Traditional Overlord Deck is still Probably needed as a timer.
The Stock IO deck is 24 cards so drawing 5 a turn vs a 4 hero group depletes the cards in 5 turns. Reshuffle and continue.
In general I would say never move a skeleton in a Front Arc. Raise a New one, if he is the only he would default to attack.
* Feat question….
Earning a feat is a rare type of experience boost. The number of feats a Hero can know is based on their current level:
Level 1-4: 1 feat
Level 5-8: 2 feats
Level 9-10: 3 feats
Choosing Feats:
“a Hero’s new feat can be freely chosen from either his racial feat or the general feats”
Question; Hero’s don’t have feats at level 0?
———————————————–
*Raise dead:
Is Overlord spell: Raise Dead different than necromancy card spell: raise dead?
in Adventure “journey from the west” if Overlord give 2 command per turn… they can be used in two raise 2 piles of bones in a single turn?
From rulebook
“The player may give Commands to his followers, allowing to move and Act with several models and/or Raise SEVERAL piles of bones within a single turn.”
“Several piles of bones” would indicate that you can use Raise dead more than once when using commands points?
Heroes do not start with a feat. If they did the character creation system would include it and neither the rules or the example mention it.
Overlord Cards are different from spell cards. Spell Cards are used by bosses using the standard spell casting rules when they are activated by the overlord while the Commands and Overlord cards are used by the overlord player.
The overlord player can raise one skeleton per command point he wants to spend. If he has 3 command points he can raise 2 skeletons and have a different model perform an action. He can also raise more skeletons using the raise dead overlord card or by using an extra command card to give more commands to turn into raising skeletons. Remember that a raised skeleton cannot act the turn it is raised. Skeletons can also be raised using the command points from interrupt cards. Those count as mini turns so those skeletons can act normally when the overlord turn comes around iirc.
Repost from the DS hub:
Some rules questions, since we dont have an FAQ page yet, Ill leave them here:
1) The demonhunter can choose “Speed of a Bullet” as his 3rd level skill. If he does, he cant take the +1 ranged die, making the skill useless unless he chooses +1 die at level 5. Im not sure if this is intended?
2) Leveling up a ranged stat: If a character starts at 0 ranged dice, does he get 1 dice when he chooses that as his improvement, or does he gain three dice (since you never roll less than 2 dice)?
3) Leveling up stats: Do extra dice stack? Ie, could I get +1 combat die twice, or does that count as duplicating an ability? What about ranged dice, what happens if I choose +1 shortranged and +1 longranged? Are these seperate, ie I would have to choose either long or short range and roll the using the relevant stat? Or do they stack, ie Id get an extra die at short range?
4) Break Ward: As it is, it seems to be a random spell, making lots of dungeons unbeatable if you dont draw it. You mentioned that it would be available to every spellcaster, but currently, similar wording is only available in the petty magic fluff text, and even then, the chance of drawing break or dissolve ward is pretty slim, considering petty magic seems to have the largest amount of spells. Any clarifications here?
5) Bestiary entries, any ranged units: The entries do not contain information about wether the attack is long or short ranged.
6) IO rules: What rules do characters (ie, bosses) use? They dont seem to have their own personality, do they always default to Warrior?
7) Uncharted Dungeon: Some cards put the entrance arrow between two tiles, how do you decide which side you place the tiles on?
These are more guesses taken from my FAQ:
1.) Demonhunter probably started with Shooting Attack Dice 2 (Short) along with all the upgrades being (Short), if not I would swap the Tough for the +1 Shooting Attack Dice (Short) but leave the one Long advancement for use with elves.
2.) RAI +1 Ranged Attack Die (Short or Long) should be treated as two distinct ranked abilities with a minimum level of 2 for advancement purposes. So you can take it as many times as you want with the first time yielding 2 dice and each extra one yield one more die.
3.) RAW Only Ranked Abilities can be selected multiple times as per the last column on page 72. So you cannot take two +1 combat dice advancements. RAI That is why +1 Ranged Attack Die needs to be treated as two separate ranked abilities so they can be taken multiple times.
4.) RAW Break ward is pretty hard to get with only the Wizard able to make sure he has it at first level. The standard spell learning mechanism even after 1st level makes it hard since you draw the 6 cards from every spell you could know not just in a single school. Another good question here is how to treat the unique expansion spell cards. At what point should they be added to the spell decks for the learning of spells. Adding them might make it even harder to get break ward.
5.) I have not started trying to figure these out yet myself. I do not know my KOW range well enough to know what some of these things are.
6.) Warrior does have no modifier but any could apply to certain bosses. I think Bosses should probably be almost outside the IO system. The players should really think about what is best for them using the discretion allowed at the end. Might need a list of Boss character for the published scenarios.
7.) I would first figure out where the next door is supposed to go and use which ever square provides the most space for the next undiscovered zone on the playing surface. If it does not matter roll a die to choose.
For 5.) KOW Breathweapon=short Bow/Crossbow=Long
Abyssal Dwarf Decimator 3 Shooting Dice (Short)
Basilean Crossbowman 3 Shooting Dice (Long)
Dwarf Crossbowman 3 Shooting Dice (Long)
Dwarf Rifleman 3 Shooting Dice (Long)
Elf Archer 3 Shooting Dice (Long)
Elf Scout 3 Shooting Dice (Long)
Ogre Shooter 3 Shooting Dice (Long)
Ogre Boomer 3 Shooitng Dice (Short) (He might need a ability so he is just not a worse version of the shooter at the same level)
Goblin Archer 3 Shooting Dice (Long)
Goblin War Trombone 4 Shooting Dice (Short)
Orc Archer 3 Shooting Dice (Long)
Skeleton Archer 3 Shooting Dice (Long)
Wizard can make sure he has it at 0th level. Other Casters have a better shot at their first new spell which can be selected at first level with a maybe 1 in 4 chance.
Maybe the advancements from Leveling up for Shoot dice shouldn’t have a type. They should just affect whatever Shoot dice range you already have available. So if you had a Shoot (Short) it would increase it if you hadn’t already selected +1 Shoot from the experience level table so far. If you had Shoot (Long) it would affect that instead, and if you had both, then maybe both values go up. (Though probably highly unlikely most of the time, or just not as practical for those who start with some dice in Shoot (A) and zero dice in Shoot (B).
Long range shooting dice are more valuable than short range as far as I can tell so if you can get Long range at a reasonable level and do not start with short range I would always try to take the long range.
I go into a lot of detail on how the shooting dice advancements were supposed to work in my FAQ on my blog and the reasons we are in this situation now but I was trying to keep the answers short here.
I am 100% certain on the Range dice advancement. The Demonhunter starting with 2 short dice is more of a toss up. The Heroes of Mantica are special characters that are not exactly matching the AC buildable versions. I would guess it is because they were written and testing in their missions while the AC which probably got less testing was written later and it was to late to change either to match perfectly.
Then what of Thesilar? She is more or less the same as Madriga starting out except for Hail of Arrows being swapped out for Trick Shot, and she has only 3 dice Shoot (long). That extra dice for Shoot Madriga has to have come from somewhere. Not like the Heroes of Mantica are Dreadball MVPs. Everyone else seems to be able to be created using Adventurer’s Companion other than Arianya the Demon Hunter card version and the afforementioned Madriga.
If more of the Heroes had builds not achievable by AC construction it’d be easier to just nod and say ‘Ah, Special Characters.’ but just two that we know of?
No it does not. The core characters were written long before the AC and not given specific levels. Jake had probably written all the core game missions and tested them before he started the AC and decided to lower the base archer stat. He then did not want to go back and redo the balance for the core campaign. Seems reasonable to me.
Arianya in the Crypts expansion could be special also and the demonhunter not have those two dice. The profile is not horrible without them. She is tougher than the thief and has Null. I cannot really say but the two pieces of evidence are the crypts Arianya and the Speed of a Bullet advancement. I did not see any other cases of advancements that were in fact uselss until later outside taking a new school of magic which does not mater until your next spell.
For the advancements we know that Marksman(*) and Deft Throw(*) ranked abilities were formally the names of the Long and Short shooting attack until after the beta test. They were the names late enough to make it onto a card text. So they could be selected multiple times in the advancement rules. We also know that there is a currently still a specific rule for Ranked abilities with minimum values more than 1 and that in those cases the first selection yields the minimum value while each additional selection of the rank ability yields another point. None of the other ranked abilities have starting values higher than 1 so this rule was in the book specifically for Marksman and Deft Throw. At some point layout probably wanted to change those to characteristics to make the overlord panels or the hero cards easier to read with less abilities to list. The probably asked Jake what to change and he emailed them the changes but did not think deep about the advancement table issue of only one +1 of a type allowed and needing 2 at the start to be useful.
We can see the errors caused by this late change from the card, to the broken advancement, possible missing attacks on heroes or professions, and all the missing ranges in the monster section and the elves even have the combat and armor dice labels messed up.
“If you have any questions on the game rules, or if you see a post on a forum somewhere that does, then please direct them here so that I can deal with them all in a single document. That way questions get answered consistently and everyone gets the benefit”
— lots of questions without official answer —-
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/124728/unofficial-dungeon-saga-faq
😉
He stole my answers. 😉
Ok here are the two questions erio was unable to cover since he has not the game yet. Again thanks to erio for his great work and to you Jake for your help.
1) Campaign Play (basicly in the end of every questbook)
a) Question: Do you tell the heroes what their Task Goal is or do you not? Additionally, do you tell them the reward beforehand or after they achieved it?
b) Question: Do you tell the heroes what their Timed Goal is or do you not?
Is any level energy crystal supposed to allow you to cast a higher spell level regardless of the gap. That is what the crystals seem to say.
I would say that you have to let them know the goals as some of them would be nearly impossible to guess. Don’t want to post any spoilers here, but you’d have to get super lucky to get some of them without knowing about them ahead of time.
I would also think that knowing the time limit ahead of time would add a far more interesting tactical element to game play as opposed to just always wanting to rush through everything.
I’m also confused as to whether or not you do downtime at the end of each adventure or at the end of an entire quest book.
I’m confused by the rules for trading items during the game. First, the rules state that “During a game, Paraphernalia can be traded between Heroes. Other types of magical item must remain on the Hero they began that adventure with.”. Later we can read that: “A Hero that moves adjacent to another Hero during his Turn can give, receive or swap eligible items with that Hero.”. What are
*eligible* items, only the Paraphernalia? This doesn’t seem right, why shouldn’t the hero be able to lend someone e.g. a weapon or a shield?. Also probably most of the items will be unusable by the hero who found them, so rule prohibiting sharing seems very limiting.
Maybe heroes in the time of crisis do not really have time to figure out what each item is and who is best at using it. The rule is pretty limiting but it is also pretty specific. My guess it was included for the core game missions so heroes could find the items they use later for better narrative but not having to count them in the balance for that mission.
This sounds plausible, but I’d like to have such intent confirmed by the author. Especially that this does not fully convince me. I haven’t checked the Quest Book yet (as I hope to play the first time as one of the heroes), but I expect the scenarios to explicitly list the items which can be found in the chest, thus eliminating the risk of breaking the balance (furthermore if the item is so strong that it can break current scenario it probably will break the next…).
Also, crisis or not, in most cases it is not hard to figure out who should receive an item. If Rordin finds a bow he knows he can’t use so it should be best passed to Mardiga, right? 🙂
I general go with the rule that if it is clear and does not break other rules or the game you go with the rule as written. Obviously Jake will answer as much as he can in his formal FAQ/Errata. I am just trying to help people trying to play while we wait not to get hung up on stuff that is actually clear or give them advice on how to handle it in a reasonable way while we wait.
(currently worn) Armour I could see as ineligible for swapping during a mission, especially one where the Heroes are on the clock so to speak, but Weapons and Shields, as well as Paraphernalia shouldn’t require a ‘Come see me when this is all over.’
WHAT IT MIGHT LOOK LIKE:
Madriga asks Rordin to give her a Bow found as loot.
Rordin: ‘Later, we’re in the middle of a quest.’
*no undead in sight, barring freshly destroyed ones in same tile*
Madriga: ‘But its a Bow. And I’m the archer… and no one else here… can do archery…’
Rordin: ‘Well, hand me that rune encrusted armour that only works for Dwarfs, then.’
Madriga: ‘NO!’
*grasp*
Madriga: ‘MY SHINY!’
Rordin: ‘…’
There is a real question about when items are traded during campaigns. I put item and gold trading at step one so the heroes can divide up the item before getting to the patron who might take some even for completed quests. The down side is that you shop with your own cash in the marketplace and cannot try to borrow money from people if something you want shows up for you.
For me the trading items rule is not clear at all. At first I understood it that paraphernalia may be traded freely at any time (imagine one hero tossing a potion to another 😉 ) and the rest of the items only when heroes meet (are adjacent during a movement). I’d be really happy if Jake could clarify on that.
I see what you mean the rules seem to be about items you start with not found items.
Related question: can heroes change the item they are using in the middle of the adventure (e.g. one sword for another)? If yes, is it free (without any limits?) or does it count as an action?
Again, the rule seems to clearly prohibit it, but it seems artificial when it comes to weapons and shields…
preswritten adventures do not come with a value for lockpicking?, or use a random lock token?
Until we get a list of all the locks values I would go with random also.
The line of sight is supposed to be very liberal. I have a figure on my blog which shows several examples including your first (shooter is just farther away). The line you are testing can can touch the corner of a blocked square it just cannot cross it. So both of those shots are allowed. Dwarf Kings Hold has a tougher line of sight system always measuring from the centers and it specifically allows the shots like the first one in a figure.
Green line clear shots. Red line marks the line the which would have to cross the shooter square (not hit its corner) or the shooter would have to be past to get that shot.
In DKH there is no line of sight and hence no shooting across a blocked diagonal. In DS we’ve been playing that you you only have LOS through a blocked diagonal if you are adjacent. Be great to get an official clarification.
I read the rule straight out of green menace. It checks center to center for the elf shooting and allows for shots that cross the corner explicitly in a figure.
I think everyone is hoping for something in the promised friday update.
Hi Erio. We must have different versions of green menace!! P10, the notes accompanying diagram G of mine clarifies shooting blocked to Y by model at Z…
On further reading you are correct. Maybe they should not mark that one with the same letter and line color as the allowed shots and instead use the X and the darker line they use for the blocked ones. Ofcourse that graph is also inconsistent with the stated text in the main part of the line of sight rules as the diagonal blocking based on the movement blocking is only called out in the little italics.
I updated my line of sight rule and explanation to fix my mistake. I extended LOS blocking to the edge of occupied squares instead strictly inside. Solves the issue to get the no shooting between two LOS blocking objects you cannot walk through without having to write that all out as a special case in the italics of a figure drawn by someone I think trying to say the opposite.
Interesting discussion. I thought this was simple enough, though I’m afraid this will have to wait till I’ve got access to some extra reference materials. Don’t want to guess.
The problem you run into is the base LOS rule in the AC says the exact opposite of what it means so cannot be used as a reference point to decide things.
Exactly. I’ll go back to my original manuscript and work from there. Not got that to hand at the moment though.
I am pretty sure the LOS rule is supposed to be you just have to find one clear path from any one point in the shooters square to any one point in the defenders square. Then the next question is do you block line of sight by touching a occupied square or does the line have to cross the square. Cover is granted by touching the occupied square so I think using touching here is probably the most consistant. Since you cannot find a line from the elf to the orc on the right that does not touch the corner or the nearby elf it is blocked. If the blocking elf was not there plenty of clear lines would exist so it becomes necessary to touch the board corner so it no longer matters.
The corrected adventure companion still has some mistakes including one xxx reference. A list of known/not corrected errors here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1464918/post-your-adventurers-companion-book-errors-here
Maybe you could look those through with Mantic.
Sort of funny they could mess up looking XXX in the pdf. You could throw Jake a bone as he is busy and list them here and the correct reference page,
Sure. I think the “xxx” on page 16 should refer to page 25 (recharging).
Thanks Nakano, I want Jake to be able to focus on stuff that is really only stuff he can do at this point since he has the experience of writing and balancing all the missions.
Errata for the second Keldan mission: On the first map, the enemy models are not labelled. The three in the central room are Thugs. The two far out left and right are Bruisers.
From Matt Mantic Forum
Are these those green dot things on the map with no explanation of what they are? If so excellent stuff. Cheers for posting up. Also cheers for all the work you are doing around your blog. Really mantic should be sorting this stuff out though 🙂
I really do not know. I do not have that book at this point but that was posted by I one of the rules committees guys who I think do some of the missions. He is the guy writing the adventure book things.
“A model may change its facing freely during movement. You may not change facing at any other time”. Can a move action be just to change a facing?
“A Hero that moves adjacent to another Hero during his Turn can give, receive or swap eligible items with that Hero”. A similar question. Can trading be done without moving anywhere (or immediately when moving away from an adjacent hero)?
“-1 for the shooter if the line of sight crosses a piece of furniture that is not adjacent to the
shooter”. Is this penalty cumulative for each furniture or only for the first?
Yes the list includes changing facing without moving. The only place this matters I know off is with feats where you do not get a move and the rules there specifically says you cannot change facing unless the feat says so or it allows movement. For example during an unstoppable feat you are allowed to move 1 square so he could at this point change facing to get a model from his rear to front arc to be a target.
The note says it can happen during the movement and does not end it so as long as one of guys is in their movement phase of their activation, beginning, middle, or end they can trade.
No, it says a piece of furniture. It does not say each. So it is just a blanket -1 like outnumbered is just a blanket -1 regardless of how outnumbered.
Thanks Eriochrome!
Eriochrome is correct in all 3 cases. Well done!
I have a doubt on Adventure 3, DKQ book:
It states: “When a single Hero has all four pieces it recombines itself magically into one piece”.
So:
1) One unique hero must collect all 4 pieces
2) Banshee’s heart pieces can be traded among heroes (rule says only paraphernalia items can be traded)
Which option is correct?
I would assume they can be. I think the mission would be impossible if one hero had to collect them all. I do not have the cards currently but they might have the paraphernalia symbols on them.
thanks @eriochrome, it makes sense. I think there are no cards, just the four tokens.
2 is correct. I’m not sure it’s possible with option 1.
The hero is on the corner of a 2 steps wide tile and there’s a skeleton on the corner of a 4 steps wide tile. Tiles are centered.
Does the front arc of the hero include where the skeleton is?
I’ve found an image as example: http://s135.photobucket.com/user/Virral/media/Descent%202e/WestMap3_zps997e60ef.jpg.html
1) Are the skeletons in the front arc of the heroes?
2) Is the barbarian on the front arc of the skeleton?
Corners have no affect on arcs. So if the corner was a normal tile square instead if you are in the front arc or rear arc you are still in that same arc when the corner is there.
I tried to look at your picture but could not tell the facings for the markers clearly. If in your example the two skeletons are facing into the hall from the alcove they have 3 front arcs squares each on their sides of the main hall and the heroes each have 1 skeleton in their front arcs assuming they are facing in the direction of the doors.
Ok, so a hero must stop its movement on a corner if there is a skeleton just behind that corner. Thanks!
Focus and In Tune with Nature need different added to the text, unless you want people casting the same spell multiple times.
My current FAQ covers:
How do I Use Custom Heroes in the Core Game?
How Far do I Build the Dungeon?
Overlord Powers, Commands, and Raise Dead
Corners and Arcs
When Can You Change Your Facing?
Shooting Adjacent Models and From Behind?
Line of Sight Rule
Do Cover Modifiers Stack?
Does Injury Affect Spell Casting Attack Dice?
When and What Items can Characters Trade During a Scenario?
What Activates a Lock Trap?
Large Model Attacking From Rear
Large Model Outnumbering
Hero Creation Feats and When they can be learned
Hero Shooting Dice Advancement Rule
Demon Hunter Shooting Dice
Petty Magic and Break Ward Access
Druid Advancement: Element Ability or Magic School
Wizard Advancement: New School Access
Max Dice in Test is 6
Relentless plus Unstoppable
Hammertime Plus Smash!
Null vs Fire or other spell like affects
Campaign Rules: Glory, Feats, and Item Trading
Focus and In Tune With Nature Different Spells Errata
Uncharted Dungeons Insights and Suggestions
Invisible Overlord Insights and Suggestions
Invisible Overlords of Uncharted Dungeons
Missing Bad Guy Shooting Ranges
Elf Minion Stat Line Corrections
Great FAQ, thanks for the time you are spending to get the list together. I have a question though, did Jake outsource you the task to answer all the questions which arose here and on other sources or is it just an initiative of yours? In other words do your answers represent the designer intention?
Just me. I think I do a pretty good job. Jake honestly is sort of busy and some people just want an answer from an authority and I think I know the book now as much as anyone other than Jake.
I do not think Jake could official outsource to me even if he wanted since I am the person who documented that Mantic shorted people 21 missions currently.
good point 😀
I do not question that, you’re doing a hell of a job and again I am thankful for all your efforts. Without your FAQ I would be lost on many grey areas. Still it would be great if Jake popped up every now and then giving you some kind of acknowledgment, or guidance where needed, as at the moment I am applying your pearl of wisdoms when I stumble into doubts and I would like to avoid re-learning them should Jake come up with different interpretations.
Jake commented on a couple of the posts in the Ashes since I have been answering ones here so he is around. I am sure if one of my answers was game ruining he would jump in. Most of this stuff is just slight nudges in the right direction anyway. Other than the complete rewrite of the LOS rule that is.
@eriochrome
I would like to see a PDF version of your FAQ/Errata. Also for the quickstart guide.
You did a really good job. Sadly there is nothing like this for Mars Attacks.
If someone wants to do that they can. I do not care. Just a link back printed as to the source. I prefer to maintain them this way as it is easy for me to update when new questions show up without having to worry about versions and such.
How do you select spells when the character knows more than one lore? Do you take the two random spells from your base lore and the chosen spell from any you have access to (petty magic and other glory earned lores)?
As written only mages draw the 6 cards from both petty and choosen lore then pick 2 of those and then pick one spelll from all the spells available. Druids and clerics draw and pick from just there primary school for their zero level spells. I changed this in my version to allow the cleric and druid to take the free pick from their school or petty but rules as written this is not the case.
but how is the spells seclected when gainning lvls?
Draw 6 from all spells they could learn the pick 1. So paladin and clerics divinity plus petty. Druid is druidism plus petty plus elementalS if they take any of those schools, wizard primary plus petty plus all aditional schools they have learned
Petty magic granted to all spell casters pg 66. Rules for spell learning after 0th level bottom of page 34 red box. Why petty later for non wizards, I do not know but the initial spell choice rules are clear for what to do on each profession page and repeated that wayin the example. As I noted I changed it in my unofficial faq.
Hi here!
I’ve got two thing to ask about the AC.
I’m a DM for my group of player, playing mostly with advanced heroquest (yep the old ancestor with an awful lot of table and dice throwing). I’m searching for a more straightforward game as we get less and less time to play these days so DS seems to be the right game as the rules could be reminded in a matter of a few minutes.
What – at least for me- is missing from the AC, not to mention typos and errata, precision on the rules and so on, is a guidance to build a dungeon from scratch. A kind of frame that could serve as a fundation like with a X levels party of heroes bring in X levels of monsters. Right know I can figure out a certain amount via the event cards but we have’nt got any scaling. It could be OK to do it by testing again and again but it basically become impossible if you want to play 2 or 3 dungeon in a row because the heroes will become stronger during that one game session and so the DM is let by himself to figure out how to adjust the game. I see why this kind of balance isn’t effective but well something to start is better than nothing. Let say we take X amount of figure tyou can then change position, remove one or add one in this particular zone of a dungeon but without any guidance it will take way more time to figure it out.
The second thing is what about playing the official campaigns why your own party of heroes? Do we need to tweak each scenario or could it be “fairly” balanced. The idea is that we ca make our first games with our own heroes and have a nice first impression of the game and say : “hey it’s quite a good game, let’s get deeper in it”. And it won’t happen if we only have the impression of the game is wrong aoutside the frame of the play-as-written.
I don’t know if it’s clear or not…
Let’s say to have something shorter : the AC is great but quite difficult to handle for now, mostly , I think, because of the lack of space. If it could be a better explained tool I could think to collect more minis and have this as a “hobby game” instead of a one shot dungeon from time to time as the classic heroquest is.
Cheers,
PS : I’m indeed the very same guy that did some of the heroes for the game…
I expressed a lot of those concerns to jake in earlier posts. There is some guiddance about using your own heroes in the core campaign with suggested levels but I think that good magic items appear to be worth essentially levels without accounting for that properly it will be hard to use there numbers.
Also if you have done work for Mantic maybe you should email your contact about your feelings. They seem to surprised that we have issues with the content.
I’ve spoken to Rèmy about this elsewhere, and while I understand that it would be useful (and will do another article on this to explore it further) there are very big issues with any attempt to provide hard and fast rules on balance.
The example I used with Rèmy was this one – an example I have seen played out for real a number of times.
Let’s say you have a wizard. He has a few spells and an item or two. In two games of the same scenario this same wizard is played by two different players.
The first time the player is really into being a wizard. He knows his role within the group, loves the additional resource management of the magic, and understands the synergies of the different spells and items. He proves to be a powerful hero.
The second time we play with an identical wizard in the same scenario, the player controlling him is less happy. He is more of a barbarian in temperament, and the fiddle of spells just annoys him. He really wants to be in the thick of the fight, and focuses on his simple attack spells to the exclusion of all else. Here, the wizard proves much less effective, possibly to the extent of getting himself killed and losing the game.
So how do you balance this? What varies is not a single stat, spell, item, placement, or anything else I cannot provide a simple cost for. Yet this variation is probably more important to the overall game balance.
This I fully understand from your point of view as the designer who’s rules are to be published and hard-coded in players Rules As Written mindset. If it’s not quantifiable in a way that most players are going to get, then it can’t really be included… it’d be like an Advanced-Advance Rule that only 10-15% of the player base would use.
I’ll not labour the point as I’ve asked for it further below and you’ve kindly said you’d look at it for us, but suppose we step back from the AC as a published, hard & fast ruleset that we can no longer alter.
Guidance on an area like this sis something able to be published on your blog as a purely optional piece of game-building discourse 🙂
Getting us up to the point of balancing a mission/dungeon zone on pure stat costs will allow us to then throw in our own interpreted gameplay variation/deviation cost to balance the dungeon based on whatever whims we then have.
You can’t account for this and I certainly wouldn’t expect you too, otherwise you’d be constantly shielding yourself from “broken rules” cries from players who just want a hard & fast, Goodies = 100pts, Dungeon = 100pts ruleset.
e.g. When creating a mission/dungeon for a new batch of players, we would lower our variable cost, sticking closer to baseline stat points values until they learn about how characters, items and spells interact.
If it’s an experienced group with custom character builds, we would then increase our variable cost to swing the balance/difficulty to suit their expected level experience and min-max potential
To touch on our analogy further below – you provide the plank (baseline costs etc) and we provide the “jump” (variable cost).
Regardless, I look forward to further info and putting some of this into practice with my imminent pledge.
There are some other tricks we can use too, such as bidding.
Good idea for bidding, that was the way Claustrophobia was modifying the balance between the two players : the player who was bidding the lesser was the one who had to select a human squad with these points.
And honestly I fully understand why they are. The Ac is pretty good as it stand, the only thing that is obvious to us is that we want from the begining using the AC to build your own stuff. It’s more likely something that you should bring on the table after playing the game for a while, knowing the strength and weaknesses of the whole game.
I personnaly think that the people that buyed the AC are the ones that want to make some quest ala heroquest, nice and simple without to much care about balance because the game is still fun. It seems that an unbalanced game of DS couldn’t be that fun, because the necromancer is a player not a real DM.
With advanced heroquest we have a kind of loose frame to use while playing. It worked pretty well because it was minor things like adding some more monsters or traps into a unknown dungeon. Here we have a “tactical” dungeon crawler and this is exaclty why we need to know how is built this tactical side. There is some references to a “level of threat” as a rule iof thumb to brings minions to the dungeon. Well, no further explanation.
The AC seems to be made for experienced DM only and marketted as a tool to add more depth to the base game without any requierement. The lack of place in the AC could be the main factor of this looseness. Not the actual content. But it’s quite difficult to appreciate what elements are in balance to what other one.
As you said the item are as powerfull as a new level for a character, you might gain glory in the tavenr and others locatiosn to levelp up more quickly, you can gain more gold to spend. The “all included” game with campaign custom heroes and the like could be well “balanced in a non competitive play, aka brings some fun around the table ala heroquest. But the AC keeps telling you that you need to keep things balanced but without giving any useful tips to do it.
It only leads to frustrate the newcomers, you buyed the AC but you have to go though the whole base game to know how you could use the AC.
I fully understand the tricky thing about bringing all this stuff directly into the core box, assuring more coherent thing with all the content directly made in relation with the box. But with a stand alone expansion that could be played without even the core game things have to be looser.
Well i think AC at this state is a crap. I’d pay 30$ for it and its not what was advertised and lots of people are saying that theres enough good elements in DS as it is.. for some that might be true but i and lots of other people bought it for co-op no Overlord mode and main element of that is not looking well at all. Minis and printed content looks awesome, basic rules are ok but its not what i was after. I was promissed lots of content that AC is missing like fluff and adventures and rules that ive mentioned are in hot mess. I wonder if we get any help and update from Jake as he is awfull quiet this subject. Hope its cause official info/update its happening tomorrow 😉
One reason I’m quiet is that it’s my daughter’s wedding at the weekend. Plus I’m moving house.
Regarding what’s missing, I think there was some confusion about what was going to be in which product. Mantic told me that one of the final graphics allocated stuff to the wrong book, and then once the KS ended they couldn’t change it. So perhaps some of the things you’re missing are part of that – I don’t have a detailed breakdown.
Congrats on the wedding. Hope it goes smoothly for you.
Guy check out my blog for all sorts of complaining about DS kickstarter.
Thanks Erio.
I would watch repeating Mantic’s line on the Hardback issue. They sent out the figure 3 times without correcting it during the drive. They had 6 months to inform people of error before the pledge manager and another 2 months for a second opening of the pledge manager. They never told anyone it was an error until the books started showing up on peoples doors.
The project had a nice 175 dollar level (base plus the 3 expansions) and by placing that bonus at 200 level got a lot of people to drop a few extra dollars on stuff to get up to that level. Even if it was not possible to make the book I and a lot of people think they promised they needed to devise some type of proper response long before now.
“Guys we messed this up. If you ordered it lets see if we can shift that to other add ons. If you got it as the bonus why don’t you pick a bonus resin mini or something.”
In this regard I am simply the messenger (so please don’t shoot me). I’m just passing on a message as requested.
I only shoot orcs through unallowed diagonals not my friendly not local game designers. I am just informing you of the facts from this side of the street so to speak.
On the lighter side I told my daughter she cannot date until she is thirty to which she responds that my wife and I got married when we were 23.
You should have seen that one coming 🙂
Congrats daddy ^^
@Jake – in the absence of any new content being provided in an updated Adv Companion, could you proffer us with a value-based guideline for balancing DIY dungeons and minions?
I know you’ve said previously in development that there are just too many variables in the DIY dungeon section to be able to create something hard & fast that wouldn’t end up unwieldy or overly complex for players if published – so I’m not asking for hard & fast rules.
Think of it more akin to your designers build notes to balance a story mission and how you built bosses and minions to compare against hero levels.
You must have had some sort of base points value to get you up to a point to begin finer balancing with certain items & spells etc in character builds.
It’s an advancing jumping point into the DIY arena that I think many of us who visit the blog are really after (we are quite heavily invested in crafting our own adventures sooner rather than later)… so instead of diving in from the rocky shore, you’d give us a diving board that we could then build our Olympic pools from.
And I promise to share some of those crafted missions with you, with facets of custom semi co-op gameplay included! ( i notice there are no side-quests from patrons made it into the Adv Companion and this is an area you had particular personal interest in as a gameplay preference)
Cheers
That would be great !!
I’ll have a think and see if I can get a sturdy plank together for you to jump off 🙂
Would be greatly appreciated Jake – look forward to seeing what sort of plank you can fashion.
Oh and congrats on the wedding and good luck with the move, just moved 4months ago and still pulling stuff out of boxes!
My current plan is to empty all the boxes in the first week so that I can at least see everything, even if it’s in piles waiting for new shelves to be built.
But we all know what happens to plans…
A better plan is to LEAVE it all in boxes. Just take out anything that you need to use. Anything that’s still LEFT in a box after a year is clearly not needed. So just leave it in the box and take the whole box to your local charity store.
Not that I’ve followed this advice at all in the last three moves I’ve done. I found it’s just a lot easier to move stuff if it’s STILL in a box, no matter how many years it’s been in there.
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Couple of card questions:
DEADFALL trap. What happens if there is no empty space for the hero to move into?
The should always be an empty square because the hero has just moved from one in order to set off the trap. If you find a way to move there without an adjacent clear square then the Hero can’t dodge so will be squished. What do you expect when a massive stone block falls on you? Game over.
THIEVES’ DEN location. What happens if a Hero can’t or won’t pay to be healed after he gets beaten up?
The Hero starts his next adventure with 1 wound.
Further question for dead fall if a dead fall trap drops on a player orthagonal to a single width door (also being the only ect from zone) does that mean game over as you can no longer use that door.
New PDF dropped. Not much help with most things. Does the Demonhunter have shooting dice to start or not? The character does and the table suggests that they should but it does not include it in the stat line.
Exactly what I was thinking. Where is the demon hunter stat. I hope that gets sorted before it gets printed. Really annoying when you know the stats of a model are wrong in a book. Makes you lose all trust in the book
The issues on my very quick 5 min flip through new version
1) LOS still needs clarification
2) progression for shooting
2a) first gain ? Dice
2b) how many levels can you gain (please specify exempt from selecting once only )
2c) interaction when model has have both long and short range
3) Lock level conversion table for base campaign
4) Either stop listing petty magic on wizard profile or list on all spell casters.
Seperate issue provide errata on components is madriga now only 3 dice shoot? Deft throw, marksman, shield bash etc.
Probably more but still not awake
Maybe I’m wrong but I see that’s pretty straightforward
1) LOS is base to base
2b) Up to ten
2c) you cannot shot adjacent models
4) Is listed on the Spells page, and it says that Petty magic is available to all Spellcasters
Are you trolling? I cannot tell.
Hehe, no:) not trolling… obviously for your answer I might be wrong. I’ll re-read and come back
1.) Forget what you think you know and actually read the rule as written. Since you are trying to find a line that is block and can pick any point in either square to do it, shooting becomes pretty hard.
2.b) 10 seems a bit excessive for shooting advancements. You can only roll 6 dice so I think 8 would allow you to be injuried and shooting through cover and still roll max dice.
2.c) Check the rule again. According to the AC, It says you cannot shoot while in an enemies front arc. While that implies you cannot shoot that particular model it also prevents you from shooting any model. Also note that if you are instead in the rear arc not only can shoot the adjacent model you get a bonus.
4.) I think the point here is the wizard profession and wizard hero of mantica specifically call out petty magic and allow access to those spells at 0th level all the other spellcasters do not list it in their profession pages or on their hero of mantic character. There rules do not give them an chance to get it at 0th level so no one can get break ward at the start of the campaign other than the wizard which is sort of an issue if you go off on a quest. I also note the Danor does not list his initial magical school.
Now, I am awake I will explain my question more fully. (I actually think I know the answers but I feel the book should be clearer for everyone) I don’t think you are trolling I just think you are making assumptions, which I, Eriochrome and everyone playing the game is doing as well, some of use make different assumptions due to the wording.
1) the text reads “A model can only Shoot things in front of it. When measuring
the range, use the straight edge of the range stick to see if there is anything blocking the line of sight between any part of the shooter’s base and any part of the target’s base. Line of sight is blocked by any square that contains a miniature or a wall (a blank space not taken up by tiles). If the line of sight is blocked, or the target is behind the shooter, then they cannot shoot.”
I understand the rule as if any line can be traced the shot can be made, if any line can be traced that doesn’t cross and item of furniture no penalty applies if the only lines that can be traced cross one or more items of furniture (not directly adjacent to the shooter) the shot has a -1 penalty.
In addition regarding any lines crossing corners it would need to be possible for a model to move across the diagonal (ignoring low furniture) (so no shooting through an infinitely small gap between walls or between two models positioned diagonally to each other)
2 a/b) I believe both shooting short and shooting long are ranked abilities with (2-5 or 6) so the first time you take the skill you get two dice, the next time 3 etc to 5 or 6? definitely not ten. the rules prohibit this as shooting is not listed as a ranked ability.
2c) I suspect they do not add so a hero with 4 shooting long and 2 shooting short, the hero could shoot at long or short range with 4 dice, and the 2 dice short would never be used, while a demon hunter with 4 shooting short and 2 shooting long would use 4 dice at short range and 2 dice at long range
3) I think it is 2/2=1 3/3=2, 4/4=3, 5/5=4, but others have given 2/2,3/3 =1 4/4,5/5 =2
4) It is consistency:- yes it is said in the description of symbols but not under the classes other than the wizard which implies (I suspect incorrectly) that only the wizard gets it at start, where as if the description of spell caster included access to petty magic and then the wizards class didn’t include it, or conversly the other classes did there would be no misunderstanding. This is very important as break ward is required to complete most scenarios. So it should be made clearer in the spell selection section as well as the counter section.
LOS: When playing, I’ve saw that LOS rule is ok. Not difficult to shot base to base. It also allows to protect your wizard against the skeleton archers
Shooting: the rule says that shooting is not allowed when in the front arch of an enemy and that you cannot shot an adjacent model. The problem with this is if “adjacent” includes the rear arc. I interpret that as yes, it is included.
Shooting short is for thiefs and demon hunters, due to the weapons they have.
When adjacent to a model, the hero must fight with its combat dice (no shooting). And finally, can a hero have shooting short and long? I believe not, is one or the other.
Petty magic: all magic is for spellcasters, and I agree that Petty magic ability on the wizard is misleading… when it says then that petty magic is known to all spellcasters… does it mean that the wizard can specialize on petty magic? There’s no explanation for this on the rulebook. I think the petty magic ability on the wizard is an error
Shooting works in a very similar
way to Fighting, except that the
attacker and defender will not be
adjacent.
I guess this must be the text. Will not is not necessarily cannot. Maybe that is attention but again clarity especially since it talks about being in rear arc which is defined at the 3 squares directly behind the model. Ofcourse that could be where the rules issue is or it could be both.
You can totally have both a long and short shooting attack. It is just probably not worth getting both as you do not get so many advancements and have so much to spend them already that it is best to pick one or the other based on your tables.
If the heroes encounter a piece of furniture with hidden compartment, how can they find it? Is it the Overlord’s duty to tell them about it or do they have to find it themselves? In any case, under what conditions can they find it (Overlord tells them as soon as new part of the Dungeon is set up, it requires line of sight, hero needs to be adjacent, hero needs to sacrifice an action to search etc.)?
so the deamon hunter can get Speed of a Bullet on lvl 3 or +1 shooting dice, but Speed of a Bullet only works on shooting, and this is the first time the deamon hunter can get a shooting dice, is this right?
It is possible to learn the shoioting attack at a location for first or second level but it does seem wrong to have an advancement at 3rd that will not do anything until you take another advancement next available at 5th Without a specific location result.
There’s 2 possible answers:
1) Based on the current rules and stats for the Demon Hunter in the AC, that is correct. It’s a powerful ability so you have to make the choice of selecting it but waiting to gain another couple of levels before being able to use it. Good things come to those who wait.
or
2) There’s an error in the stat modifications of the Demon hunter. The Demon Hunter starts with +2Shooting (Short). So at level three you can choose to get you racial ability option, Speed of a Bullet, or move your shooting dice up to +3shooting(Short)
At the moment everything points towards answer 2 and is how I’m playing it, but there has yet to be an official clarification, errata etc on this from Mantic or Jake, but I’m sure they’ll address this at some point.
My FAQ says your option 2 also. I think Mantic did address it at least sort off by not fixing it in the PDF update. Missing shooting dice would certainly be a typo.
Missing shooting dice isn’t a typo as such, it’s an error in GFX’s which is why I imagine this may have still been missed. Time will tell!
Well they pretty much only fixed what was listed at the very top of the BGG Adventurers companion list so maybe they missed all the discussions about it. It is a tough call since the Demonhunter is not a bad class without it. The character concept art was probably done before the class was figured out and she has a hand crossbow but maybe Jake did not want to make it a standard class feature. Another option is to just swap Tough and the +1 Short Shooting die so you can get that at 2 and then speed of a bullet at 3.
is the Goblin Mincer, not surpose to have wounds?
The mincer has a lot of combat dice at like 4 and a very high armor of 5. It might not need wounds since it is only hurt on sixes without a Armor reducing attack.
true, just seems wrong, if you put more armour on a zombie, it dose not lose wound, so why would a gobling if he is put into a mincer 😉
Zombies do not have wounds. You are not fighting the goblin you are fighting the mincer which I am guessing just needs to have one hit in the right place and it flys to pieces.
I know zombies dont have true wound it was ment as an exaple, and you might be right about the mincer, but do the goblin then just die with it, in the end only Jake can answer this
Yeah, but you’re not ‘putting more armour’ on a goblin, you’re giving control of a mine cart with spinning blades of doom TO a goblin who needs his hands to operate the thing rather than move about like he would on foot. The Armoured Zombie although it’s attack dice are still abysmal, still gets some agility going for it as it is still “infantry” rather than someone riding something about.
Is there a way to loot what bosses were wearing (when playing with homemade heroes) ? For example the Forgebreaker, the Book of Valandor… 😀
Jake, thank you. This game is brilliant. Epic finish tonight. Hogger was slain in the last attack of the last turn.
The game did throw up a couple of queries/suggestions…
1. I can’t see any impact on line of sight for large creatures. Shouldn’t a troll spell caster be able to see over puny heroes?
2. Just to check we did the regen correct. Say Orlaf hits the troll twice, but as a boss he only takes 1 wound. The regen is applied to the wound and not the hits?
Also, while I’m on. Danor’s feat allows 3 major spells to be cast, but he only has 2. Is this deliberate, or can he cast 2 major plus a minor?
Cheers
Kev
Spell question : is it possible to have 2 heores of the team that get the same spell ?
It is said to keep only 1 copy of each spell, but there’s a spell that comes in 2 copies with the Adventurer’s Companion : what’s the point ?
How to deal with this ?
Do the players take the cards from the spells they learn or do they stay available for everybody at anytime and you only have the card for reference ?
For uncharted Dungeons Event cards please define “last tile”. Is this meant as last Zone or is it one of the tiles that the final zone would have placed its out going door.
If I’m playing uncharted dungeons and invisible overlord how do I do the following…
Place enemies
Place bosses
Work out the time limit of a game
Cheers
I have some suggestions for how to deal with those issues while we wait for some clarifications on the whole AC at my personal unofficial and completely heretical DS AC FAQ.
http://twilight40k.blogspot.com/2015/11/dungeon-saga-adventurers-companion.html
I think I spotted something wrong page 82 : the paragraph Calculating Threat states there are 3 things to deal with, but there are only 2 bullets –> it seems the last statement (about proximity) should be the 3rd bullet.
Jake, could you tell us what was your intention here ?
You are correct. Proximity should be the third bullet.
I could not find any rule regarding selling of items in campaign mode. Is it possible to sell items during downtime, and if so, how much money does one get?
The question came up during our first game session, but I could not find it (or an answer) anywhere in the rules, or searching the web. Did I miss the relevant section in the book?
I’ve had this problem as well – again, in the very first gaming session. Even more so, I was asked about whether the mage could sell their power crystals. To this I had to say “no”, as it would render the character pretty much broken money-wise – as far as I can work out they would be able to keep/sell any they created (they aren’t “found in the dungeon”, so the ‘keep 1 item’ doesn’t apply), essentially giving them stupid amounts of cash…
Page 81, Order, Attack :
” Where there is a choice of model within a type of attack, choose the one with the highest Threat. If this is a tie then use the one that needs to Move furthest to perform the action. This brings models into the fray.”
–> The choice of model with the highest Threat is talking about minions ?? Minions have a Threat level ?
Same thing with the paragraph page 82 “If not defined”.
He uses threat in the design your own dungeon section also but it is bad keyword form. He means levels from the monster tables which should really have its own term “challenge” to keep it from being confused with Hero and Boss Levels.
Thats what I thought. I would talk about minion level instead of threat.
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Thanks Jake !
Do you have a recommended Boss level for 1 or 2 bosses for Uncharted?
Firstly: thank you Jake for the game, I loved Dwarf King’s Hold, and am glad the mechanics haven’t been abandoned.
I’ve been able to work out the answers to some of my initial questions, and a couple are in this blog awaiting answers (eg re: selling items), so I’ll not duplicate the questions, but I do still have one:
Lockpicking seems to be either horrendously underpowered or altogether useless…unless I’m reading it wrong: having to take an action per level of lock vs. smashing the lock open (for which you only need to inflict 1 point of damage!) is fine if it’s a level 1 lock, but having to take several turns when the adventure is timed? Have I go the mechanics of this wrong, or is there something I’m missing – otherwise I can’t see it ever being an option taken by a player…
Something else I’ve just remembered: Blessing vs. Blessed Aura…
Neither are racial feats, and there doesn’t seem to be any restriction on which classes can take which feats, so why would someone take Blessed Aura? Blessing has exactly the same result, but at range, making it FAR more useful and versatile…
I know you could argue that it’s ‘roleplaying’, but realistically I doubt many people will look at it that way, particularly those who only play boardgames and not table-top roleplaying games…
I wroted those questions on the Dungeon Saga section, but they are better placed here, hehe. Thanks to eriochrome and to other gamers i’ve found answer for some of the questions, that i’ll still post here answered
1. The halfling race is weaker than the other ones. I know they are smaller and all that but… who would like to play halflings then? All races start with 6 movement, 2 combat, 1 defense, and 1 armor as base, and then they have all some bonus… except the halfling. His feat is also not really great. It’s fine if u are a thief, but useless if u aren’t (until level 8)
It would be better to play a human or a dwarf and say “it counts as a halfling”. I would sugest giving them 2 bonus instead of one, (or the backstabb hability that the goblin hero has in dungeon journal)
2. Some professions have “+1 Shooting Dice” as option to learn. How does it work in a profession which has no long range, like the barbarian? Does it mean you have 1d6 to roll in a ranged attack, that is converted to 2 dice because it’s the minimum? Or are they added to a minimal 2 shooting dice? But then, options like ranger would have a much higher value. Is it a typo? It’s not wrotten on the rules.
3. The demon hunter character has no ranged benefit and some habilities that work with ranged attacks. Arianya character has “2 Shooting dice” on his sheet. Having some benefit seems logic, since demon hunter seems a “hybrid” between close combat and ranged. How does the demon hunter work?
4. Fighter Ranger: +3 Shooting (long).
Madriga in adventurers companion has only 3 die to shoot, but Madriga’s sheet says she has 4 die. Which one is the correct one?
I would guess the of 4 is the correct one. It’s the one which was on the beta rules and on the main campaign. Does the ranger have only 3 dice to shoot? Seems a bit underpowered, and it would make dkq basic campaign much harder.
5. In therms of stats, Paladin is exactly the same than a tank warrior… but with the extra “holy, spellcaster – healing spell”. Habilities to pick are more or less the same, in different orders. How is it compensated?
6. The thief has +2 shooting short hability… but Ally McSween, the halfling thief, has 3 shooting long as stats in page 59. Does the special character have more dice because it’s a special character? Or is it a typo on the AC? The same as with the ranger… if the quests are already difficult with a shooting+3 thief, they will be much harder if he/she has only 2 shoot dice. Having so many mistakes on the book makes me have doubts about everything. Is it done on purpose? or is it an extra mistake?
7. The spell of opening doors is a “must” on every team, but it’s not a free spell, you have to pick it. Does that mean that the wizard has to spend his “chosen starting spell” on that one if it’s not included on the 6 possible spells to pick? Isn’t that a bit weard and unintended? I would sugest some change (getting that open-door spell instead of crystallise, or as an extra-spell, and having 2 extra spells to choose from). That change could allow also that cleric and druid could pick it.
8. On the rules, it says you can pick your feat when u are at least at lvl1, instead of leveling up. How does it exactly work? -> I readed the rules bad. You don’t need to choose between leveling up or getting a feat. The choice is between “shopping and going to town” or getting the feat
10. Valandor expansion is started with 20 levels in total. Ok, we can see on the stats that the starting characters also have lots of extra habilities and equipment. What happens with the infernal crypts expansion? it also says “start with 20 levels in total”. Is that correct? Why then the starting character sheets are have 8lvls only? Should the errata say “start with 8 levels, like the rest of campaigns?
11. The DKQ adventure doesn’t have a table with level starting of each quest. at what level should we start if we want to play with our own characters? -> page 12 of AC
12. Shield bash… this hability is not listed on the book. Is it the same as Slam? -> Yes
1. Everything does not need to be perfectly balanced. Its an rpg addition so you are playing a halfling because you want to play a halfling.
2. Shooting dice advancement is treated a ranked skill of that distance with a minimum of 2 (so first pick gets you 2 dice each extra pick gets you another die).
3. The Demonhunter characters concept art had a ranged attack but maybe Jake did not want it as a standard feature but if that is the case the advancement table is a little screwy.
4. 3 Shooting dice does not cut it against undead especially if you get injured so she got a boost. The other ranger in one of the expansions does start with only 3 dice.
5. Paladin is just better to start but has less advancement options. The character paladin does start with one lower armor so maybe that just did not get transferred properly to the AC.
6. Not sure there. The characters are all a little different than what you get making them. Maybe she got the extra boost to compenstate for your point 1.
7. Break Ward access is a fundamental flaw in the rpg system as is.
8. The feat picking rules need a little clean up but the idea is correct that you have to decide to go get the feat before you even see the downtime locations.
9. No Nine. Do you edit for mantic?
10. The other 3 expansions start with different characters at a near the starting points of their careers. I think their level tables like the one in the AC are in the quest books.
11. Not sure what you mean here. DKQ is the page 12 but maybe you mean DKH from the dungeon journal?
12. Mantic in an update noted that Shield Bash means Slam.
I lol when I got to 9
There should have been an XXX one 😀
Thanks for the answers eriochrome, and for your blog, I’ve enjoyed all your DS posts 🙂
A few comments about some questions
1. Everything does not need to be perfectly balanced -> I would play a dwarf if I like them, even if the gladewalker race had extra “earth” and same stats, because i like dwarfs… but halfling stats are weak, and have not rly nice choices. I don’t see any interest on picking the halfling race even if you like halflings. I will houserule 2 bonuses for halflings instead of one to make this option nicer (Probably Frodo houseruled that option too, and that’s why he started with a nice movement and with the ring ;P )
4. … I’ll simple houserule 4 dice for the ranger 😛 If i play the main quest with a 3dice ranger OL will win even the tutorial quests XD
By the way, Madriga has his own stats copy in AC, and there she has 3 dice, like the other elf archer. I guess it’s a mistake (or maybe it’s a younger version of Madriga, who knows… :P)
8-9 Those were questions i wroted on the ds main post, before writting here. When i copypasted I mixed the two quests in one, because it was not an errata, but a mistake I did at reading. Question 9 had no sense and I deleted it XD, but I agree, it woult have been much better to write XXX
11.It’s one of the answers that have already been answered. Expansions have their own table with recomended starting total levels for each quest inside his own rulebook. DKQ doesn’t have it… but it’s writen in page 12AC
I think the Salamander race pretty much shows the race balance issues. Just make your whole team salamanders with the +1 move bonus and everyone is better.
1) Uncharted Dungeon : when drawing an Event card to determine if there’s a lock, do you keep this card for treasures or do you draw another cards when accessing the treasure ?
–> do you know the treasure you will find when breaking the lock ?
2) Random Magic Item : what do you put in the item deck ? How many of each item ?
For example potions and crystals do not come with the same number in basic game or in AC expansion. Do you recommend to mix all ? What is the set of cards you playtested ?
Uncharted Dungeons, Page 76 :
” Each time a new tile is laid down you need to determine what you can place and where it can go.
Turn over the top Event card. This will tell you how many levels of models the Overlord can place.
All of the models he places must be the same type (the same line in the Bestiary), and he cannot place more than 4 from a single card.”
1) when talking about a new tile, does this in fact refer to the entire map shown on the Uncharted Dungeon card ?
2) placing no more than 4 from a single card : single card of what ? Event or Uncharted DUngeon card ?
Uncharted Dungeons : is there a way to get traps on furniture(moslty chests) / doors ?
The event cards already list it the lock (and hence the door or chest) is trapped. They just do not say what type so you I guess pick randomly out of the trap deck if it goes off.
OK, so the line Lock Trap always goes with the Lock design ? this should have been made more intuitive by regrouping this specifically on the card.
Funny. Doing the layout to make sense. Have you seen the Hero race pages? They are not even presented in consistant orders.
Well I’m working on my rules synthesis and there are lots of misplaced things here and there, repetitions… too much chat and not enough technical documentation. And sometimes informations aren’t where I would be supposed to find them !
Shooting : “-1 for the defender if the shooter is completely within its rear arc”
It seems to be a cut/paste from the Fighting rule : how to estimate you are completely in the rear arc as you’re shooting ? Should this be the ruler which should cross by the rear arc only ?
Plus there is some weakness in the Fighting rule “completely within its rear arc” : it should state the base of the attacker cannot be part of the front arc of the target to get this modifier.
Shooting rules certainly need a look through, LOS, Rear Arc, Point Blank Shooting when actually in the rear arc, etc.
Yesterday we played our first uncharted dungeon vs. an invisible overlord. It was great fun, we made a couple of mistakes, but it works fine. During that game a few questions came up:
1) Ability: Fire – The third effect says it requires LoS, the minor pyromancy spell does not require LoS. Is that correct? The same applies to Air, Earth, etc.
2) Ability: Air/Fire/etc. and Power Crystals –
a) can a spellcaster boost his ability with crystals? (We said yes)
b) can a non-spellcaster boost his ability with crystals? (We said no)
3) Campaign play Step 2) b. (Page 69 AC) –
a) The Heroes keep one magic Item, so they have to return all energy crystals the mage made during that adventure?
b) If the heroes found magic items but used them all up (potions) do they get an extra gold?
I am aware that these questions are nitpicking, the game is very much fun.
Pingback: DS Commands & Command Cards |
Large/Huge models : ” The Large model will only get the bonus for attacking from behind if it is fully within its enemy’s rear arc”.
Does this mean a Large model has to have 2 squares of its base in its enemy’s rear arc or does this mean it can have 1 square of its base in 1 square of the enemy’s rear arc (without having any square in its enemy’s front arc) ?
Since the large or huge model can never be fully in any arc the logical reading is the second that it cannot be in both to claim the rear attack bonus. This piggy backs on the rear arc shooting question being poorly defined.
As soon as one part of the large models base is in the frontarc of the attacked model, you do attack from the rear, the same applies to shooting. As soon as the large model is in line of sight of the attacked model, you are not in the rear arc.
That is the way I understand it.
Raise Dead Command card : I feel the rule lacks precision about how it works.
What’s intended is to play it like the Raise Dead spell, with the same pool limitation but without having to rotate the spell card, right ?
Raise dead overlord card is essentially the same as an extra command overlord card except that only command it allows is the necromancer special command raise dead. So the pool you are drawing from is the same as your normal raise dead commands. I would guess this is also the same pool that the raise dead spell which a boss can cast when activated but would have to check the language on that card.
Raise Dead Command card wording is simple : “The Necromancer may Raise 1 (2 or 3 depending on the card) Pile of Bones in addition to his Commands allowed for the turn.”
There’s nothing that tells you it acts like the Raise Dead spell and that you have to take models from your allocated pool. As the scenarios limit your minion pool, it’s obvious but when creating your own adventures, you can raise undead trolls with this spell if you make them available in your pool.
Wording is important and there should have been more precision about what the Raise Dead Command card really does.
Page 95 has more rules for raise dead and piles of bones for creating your adventures.
The Command card Raise Dead works without considering any range or LOS, this isn’t printed anywhere.
Now you are not actually confused by any of this right. Just trying to get precise rules. Here is the easiest solution change text on page 15:
Instead of Moving and Acting
with a model that is already on
the board, a magic-using Overlord
can use his Commands to use overlord powers – for example in the case
of Mortibris the Necromancer he
may use the Raise Dead power.
It is not a really a spell in the same sense as others so using the terminology might be confusing. Call it an overlord power as that is what the section is titled anyway.
Thank you for the game it has awesome missions and rules. But when we decided to play with advanced rules from the Adventurer’s companion, we saw that metagame part of game is not so good as missions..
We are now at adventure 6 in base campaign. Heroes are lvl 3-4, and overlord bosses are at level 2. And they are very weak. They can’t cast good spells, they can’t wear good items. They cant do nothing against very strong heroes. For example barbarian with 6 dice atack, 3 armor, frenzy(1), hammer time and Relentless can solo kill 2 ogres in a round. He is overlord’s nightmare =)
We introduced some home rules for example, if heroes didn’t succeed their advanced task goal in adventure, overlord can use 2 traps in next adventure. And it works, traps are awesome instrument for overlord. But i want to use them as my instrument in campaign on ‘legal’ base, not homerule =) How it would be better to use them? Maybe something like that: I can use command to prepare a trap for next revealed zone of adventure or something like that. Or maybe to print some overlord cards that will allow to place, for example, 2 traps.
Or the next example, heroes are too strong, and last 2-3 rounds i have no pile of bones but have many commands that i cannot use. Can i as a command put a pile of bones?
Are you playing with the campaign rules on page 31 of the DKQ quest book?
I’ve done a little article to answer some of your thoughts: https://quirkworthy.com/2015/11/30/balancing-ds-campaigns/
Tells us a little more about your heroes and how you ran the campaign. Did they start as 0th level heroes or did you use the provided ones and then the leveling system? How did the mage get his break ward? What other spells did he get? How did the ranger deal with starting with only 3 long range dice? Did they miss the feats initially? Did they buy different magic items by pooling their cash at the market?
Hero creation :
when creating a Gladewalker/Naiad/Salamander/Sylph, do they immediately get their elemental ability ?
Yes, You get them to start. Now the only place you can find a reference to it is in the example character creation for the salamander cleric.
Edit : found further in the rules –> yes inherent abilities
Do you have a page number?
Page 53 ^^
I didn’t see your answer but you remebered it well !
Jake, this one is really more of a clarification.
On the Energy Crystal Cards, a portion of the text says;
“…, or to cast a spell of any level higher than the caster’s own.”
Assume I am a Level 1 Caster and I want to cast a Level 4 Spell.
Does a single Energy Crystal allow me to cast a Level 4 Spell,
OR,
Do I need 3 Energy Crystals to cast a Level 4 Spell (Level 1 Caster + 3 Energy Crystals 1+3=4) ?
Rule says any. Maybe that is not what he meant but it is at least clear.
Danny – Yes.
Anwsering either/or questions with yes is less clear than the rule being discussed. Is this some more of your humor Jake?
🙂
1 energy crystal buys you the ability to cast a single spell of any level above yours.
Note that this is 1 crystal per spell, not 1 per level. Also note that you need to spend an energy crystal to do this each time you want to cast a spell higher than your actual level.
so how does this Work in the campains, since your chars dont really have level?
This is more to deal with the semi random spell learning where characters might only learn spells that they are not high enough to cast with a bad card draw. The premade campaigns already assign you specific spells that I assume you can cast normally unless it is noted in the scenario rules.
Thanks for this answer and the further clarification down below, much appreciated 🙂
Spells :
say I have a team created on my own :
– 1 Cleric which can draw 3 spells
– 1 Paladin with Healing minor spell
– 2 more characters
How to deal with the case where the Cleric gets the Healing spell when drawing and the Paladin becoming unable to get his starting spell ?
Play the rules as written as they are clear as to what set the player is drawing from. Do not restrict the AC content to pure boardgame mindset as it is a hybrid. The rules say for the cleric to draw the spells from all divinity spells that he does not know. Not that are not know in the party. If you need two copies of the card and do not have it then just proxy it with another spell card upside down to keep track of the tapping action. The important thing is just to make sure you have no more than 1 copy of any single spell in the draw pile.
OK, it’s a fair way to deal with this specific case.
I’ll try to write this in my synthesis.
Green Rage ability, AC page 63 :
“The Green Rage gives the model +1 dice and +2 movement as they rampage around the battlefield”
It seems there’s an information missing…
–> +1 dice = combat dice ? May it be a shoot dice ?
Always read the book as +1 dice means combat dice. Shooting dice did not exist when the majority of the books were written.
Just something I noticed when looking through all the card decks today, which is no biggy, but it may be worthwhile mentioning somewhere in an errata/FAQ.
The 6 x Invisible Overlord Cards from the Tyrant of Halpi Expansion have the icon from the Warlord of Galahir Expansion on them…the text makes it obvious which are which, but it may confuse people new to gaming or new to the game.
Danny, maybe you should read this page : http://twilight40k.blogspot.fr/2015/11/dungeon-saga-adventurers-companion.html
There a all know errors we found here and there in the AC.
DS The Return of Valandor Questbook :
Page 24 : Mortibris paragraph title is wrongly called Morbibris
Page 24 : Valandor paragraph : “as well as help prevent Mortibris from bringing”
I honestly tried to stick more to the rules errors. Did not really worry about the typos unless it did in fact matter to the game and was not obvious what it should be.
What our discussion here:
https://quirkworthy.com/2015/11/11/dungeon-saga-faq/#comment-263421
Was not clear enough. 😉
well, in fact it is not clear at all (at least to me)… :S
I am not able to follow your reasoning there… and also I would like Jake to come up with some comment on this too.
That was the joke. I actually changed my FAQ ruling in that conversation since I was reading a background source figure incorrectly since it was itself confusing. A figure would have been a great addition to the rule book certainly. This is probably how the rule should be written:
A model can only Shoot things in front of it. When measuring the range, use the straight edge of the range stick to verify that you can find at least 1 straight line starting inside the shooter’s square and ending inside the target’s square that does touch a square contain a line of sight blocking object like another model or a bookcase or edge of the tile set. If that single clear path exists, line of sight is not blocked and the Shooting attack can proceed.
“does not touch a square” My mistake in transcribing.
I’ve had a look, and may have missed it, but I can’t seem to find what levels the heroes are in the Dwarf King’s Quest Quest Book, specifically Danor. He must be somewhere from levels 1-4 because he has a Feat. I’m wondering because in Adventure 3, he gains the spell Brisk Work, which is a Level 4 spell. If he is Level 1-3, he will need an Energy Crystal to cast it, if he is Level 4 he will not.
Can someone kindly point out to me where the heroes levels are indicated in the Quest Book, thanks 🙂
The premade heroes in the prewritten quests do not have levels listed. Assume that unless told otherwise they can cast the spells they know or use the items they have normally.
Just so.
Hi Jake, hopefully an easy one for you to answer: Can you confirm whether or not a wizard loses a dice for spellcasting when he becomes injured. Cheers!
He does not AC page 26:
Magical attacks are never
modified by any standard
modifiers. However some
game effects or magical
items may affect the roll,
such as Energy Crystals.
Feat : Focus
“The Hero must be a Spellcaster to use this feat
The Hero can cast up to 3 Major spells, they may be cast even if they are currently Recharging”
Are these spells are rotated even if they are already recharging ? (this would make them being recharching even longer)
I would rotate them back to the 180° point, so that they will be ready again in two turns. The other option would be to rotate them 180°, which would bring them to 270° degree. This does not fell right and would weaken the feat considerably.
Just my 2 cents, Jake is the hero 🙂
I agree that you would set the cards to the position they would normal be when cast from the normal state. The rotation mechanic is more of a helpful guide to keep track of stuff than a fundamental game mechanic.
Invisible Overlord Orders : do the Minions only attack when an Attack Order is drawn or if the Number hasn’t been reached with models able to attack ?
For example, I draw a Support Order and I have models able to follow the order : they come close enough to be in contact with the target : do they attack immediately the target ?
Invisible Overlord : specific Overlord card “You are in my power”
– if the card needs a target, how to choose as there is no Overlord ?
– the target misses his turn next round : will he still draw a IO card for interrupt ?
Raise Dead card : which Pile of Bones to choose ?
Delay card : which effect with IO ?
Jeez… I just opened the Valandor cards and I understand now the IO specific cards are distributed in expansions, none with the AC decks… so my questions about Necromancer Command cards played with IO have no sense ^^
There’s nowhere I could find this information in the AC… So people who bought base game and AC won’t be able to play IO mode correctly ?
Items : is there a way to sell Items to the market or elsewhere ? Which price ?
I was literally about to ask the same question! 🙂
No, I don’t think so.
Over campaigns, Heroes tend to accumulate lots of wealth, and the problem in terms of game design is always taking this off them rather than adding to it. Not allowing them to sell stuff achieves this end, encourages them to swap stuff within their group (and thus encourages cooperation within the group), and also feels more heroic to me. Flogging your second best sword on eBay just sounds a bit tacky for a real Hero 🙂
Ok I totally agree !
Other questions about Items : Paraphernalia are “illimited”, so the material limitation is only a matter of printing stuff, players may have lots of potions or crystals of the same type. About the other Items, can we say it exists only 1 copy in the world of Mantic so only 1 Hero may have it ? (kinda “legendary weapons”)
As some Items are scenario specific (Troll staff, Dwarf Hammer, Book of Valandor…), are they available aprart from a specific adventure like some locations that provide stuff by drawing in the Item weaponry ?
HMmmm, I was going to get around to asking this question as well because on page 33 of the Hard Cover Adventurer’s Companion, bullet point 3 under the heading “Choose a Bonus”, says that magic items can be sold. Did you at one stage have thoughts of allowing items to be sold and this is a hang over from that, or perhaps the sentence is supposed to include the word “to” after the word “sold”, which would then mean you can only sell the items to heroes?
Also, I think it is perfectly acceptable for a hero to sell the treasure he has found during a quest, especially so the likes of a thief hero…
You can sell them to your teammates it seems.
Yes, you can sell MI to other Heroes. From the examples given I thought you were talking about selling them back to the game (and therefore generating cash from thin air). Moving gold around between the Heroes isn’t a problem.
Danny – yes, I can see that argument. However, partly for reasons of balance, partly for simplicity, and partly because we’re ignoring all the day-to-day expenses the Heroes have, I was ignoring this too. You can rationalise this a number of ways. A thief’s profit from pilfering could be restricted to smaller things which are subsumed into paying for his unaccounted-for expenses. You could also argue that a thief who was heroic enough to be in the game was also a cut above the normal brigand, and would recognise that such powerful things were not to be sold to pay for a night at the inn. Or you could argue that there are so few people with this amount of gold lying about that there isn’t a big market. Or any number of cultural taboos, expectations, or obligations. It’s not hard to see why even a thief might keep the really important and cool stuff for himself (or his mates). As mentioned above, he could sell it to the other Heroes, thereby keeping it in the game.
In the end, I think the general ban on selling back to the game is nice and clear, reasonably supportable within the background, and helps to slow the runaway economy problem that often besets such games.
Invisible Overlord : just to be sure
1st Hero
Draw 1 IO card for Interrupt
2nd Hero
Draw 1 IO card for Interrupt
3rd Hero
Draw 1 IO card for Interrupt
4th Hero
Draw 1 IO card for IO turn resolved with adventure Number
Draw 1 IO card for IO turn resolved with card Number
–> there is no Interrput after the 4th Hero, right ?
Once all heroes ended their turn, there is nothing To interrupt
What is the default for using items or spells granting ranked abilities. Some are specific (bindings of the insane use higher value, furious shield appears to add to the value as it is asterisked but the evil twins is unclear.)
Invisible Overlord – Threat mechanics
1/ The first step is to define general Threat of Heroes generated by the Threat line on the card
2/ The second step is the Minion’s perception of the Threat (which will increase for some of them) : this will modify the Threat a Hereo represents for these specific Minions only
3/ The last step is the proximity effect which will double the Threat a Hero represents for Minions that are Next to this Hero : this will modify the Threat a Hereo represents for these specific Minions only
Am I right ?
Sometimes it generates weird things with low level Heroes : doubling the Threat doesn’t result in attacking this Hero because another one got some modifiers and is still more threatening –> Minions will move and will take a Free Strike in the face… maybe this is intended ?
When Minions move, do they take the shorter path taking the risk of being in an enemy’s front ar( which is not their taget) and stop here or do they take longer paths to avoid this ?
Invisble overlord Support order “Move models that are more than a single Move from any Hero towards the action.”
What does this really mean ? Which is the targeted Hero ? Towards the action… which action ?
XP grind : When a Hero chooses a New School of Magic for their level advancement does this include gaining 3 new spells or just the knowledge to choose spells from that school on a later advancement ?
Just the knowledge.
Thanks !
No answer about my previous questions ?
10 days till we move house, still got builders in most of the rooms…
Working on it.
A balltlezone kit house ? Didn’t get the Ruins one I hope 😉
Lava and large models : if a large model has only 1 square in lava, does it roll
– when moving ?
– at the end of the turn ?
Furniture :
is it possible for a Minion or Boss to destroy furniture ? What happens if they destroy a chest or hidden compartment that wasn’t already opened ? (they can’t smash doors)
Chests/hidden compartment furniture : if the furniture is smashed to access its stuff, is the furniture removed from the game (as it has been smashed) ? Or does it need to be smashed once again to be removed from the game this time ?
Smashed = removed. No need to do it twice.
Not actually an FAQ thing, but still relevant: The link to the document is dead atm.
Both work fine for me. The AC link is slow as it’s a big file.
Anybody else got a problem?
I do. Link for the FAQ leads to the ‘WordPress: 404 error’ page. The one for AC works fine.
Hmmm. OK, had a tinker and uploaded it again. Better now?
Whatever you did it helped, it works fine now 🙂
Cool.
Yep, fixed it for me as well. 🙂
Playing Feats : is it possible to play 2 Feats during the same turn ?
Wouldn’t have thought so, seeing as using a Feat counts as the character’s activation.
The Rules state ” Instead of taking a normal Turn, a Hero may instead decide to use the Heroic Feat(s) detailed on their Hero Card. Each Hero may only use each Feat once per game.”
I don’t know if “to use the Heroic Feat(s)” means you can play them all during the same turn, if not I wouldn’t have written the rule this way…
Neither would I.
One Feat per turn is correct.
Thanks Jake !
Map Traps : when a map trap is triggered, does it stay on the map and triggers again when a Hero walk through it ?
Danse macabre: do minions have to move from one square to another in order to make the free attack, or can all the minions that are already adjacent to an enemy make an attack as well?
Crystallise: are the numbers of cards for crystals intended to limit the number of each type of crystal? If so, if you roll a result for crystals you’ve already maxed out, can you take a lesser result?
Quick question regarding the oozing blade (causes damage target cannot act)
Does it affect heroes that way?
Personally I think it shouldn’t (or to a lesser extent only effect them for one turn) otherwise a supposedly all powerful warrior/wizard etc… is reduced to a frozen stone as everyone beats it to death
Flamespitter ability : is it a Shoot or a Magical attack ?
Seems clear it is magic to me. Not only does the corrected PDF list it as a magical attack, but the enemy with it has no shooting combat dice.
What bothers me is the wording : Fire ability isn’t written the same way but it is technically the same thing with long range for Flamespitter.
As Magical attacks don’t suffer standard modifiers and Shoot does, this can change the way the ability works.
…and we don’t know if it’s a minor or major spell…
It should have been written : “Flamespitter is a long range Pyromancy Minor Magical attack wit 4 dice”, we don’t care about the shooting part if it’s a magical attack. The simpler the better.
By the way, how do work elemental Magical attacks ? They are Minor spells, but as they don’t have cards to represent them, they can’t be tapped to show recharging –> is it possible to use them twice in a turn with the same model ?
I think the wording is to get around the no card issue. It’s a shooting attack, so it can be done in lieu of a normal attack every turn, but execute it like a magical attack: 4 dice, no modifiers. I think that is the distinction the rules are trying to make.
I don’t know about elemental Magical attacks off the top of my head, but I’ll have a look and see what we can come up with.
I think the elemental attacks are just like all other spells, once per turn. All spell casting rules say “different” spells, so I believe the intent is once per turn max for all spells.
– Null capacity : is a disrupted spell tapped ? (important for Major spells)
– Petty magic, from the rules : “Petty Magic: simple magic, known to all spellcasters” –> does it mean any Spellcaster has the Petic Magic school from the beginning ? (that would be great)
– Slam/shield Bash : does it trigger Free Strikes when a model is pushed into the front arc of another model ?
– Small : shouldn’t the ability states the model doesn’t block LOS ? (this would make other actions than Shoot work, like Magical attacks, Spells…)
– Smash & Hammer Time : why two different abilities ? Only to get 2 bonuses ? Why not a ranked ability ?
Pretty sure you only invoke Free Strikes if you move your model yourself, not when an enemy forces you to move with regard to Slam/Shield Bash. At least that’s how it used to be for Dwarf King’s Hold.
Good point on Small.
Equally Good Point on Smash and Hammer Time, but then there’s the likes of Move (Short) and Sprint (Long) in Deadzone Redux… That probably could have just been rolled into Move Action with the difference between doing it Short or Long clarified in the same section, now that the version 1.0 Fast special rule has been folded into the Speed stat.
Focus Feat : as Spells may be cast even if recharging, is it possible to cast the same Spell 3 times with the Feat ?
Is it limited to Spells or also elemental Magical attacks for example ?
Don’t think you can cast the same specific spell in the same activation, even with Focus. Would be cool to be able to do it with the elemental Magical Attacks. Wondering if they should have had cards to represent them.
Racial Feats :
– None shall pass : all kind of Wound or only Fight Wounds ?
– Trick Shot : no need of LOS, only a 2x long range perimeter ? (a magic bullet ?)
Racial Feats :
– Firestorm : is it a Pyromancy Magical attack ?
– Halo of Flame : does it work when the Hero attacks or does it work only when he’s attacked ?
Invisible overlord question-
Clarification on which model acts would be nice. with a few examples. Specifically in relation to ties, and how this plays out with undead.
(bear in mind the undead modifier of “if there is a draw when deciding which model to act with, all models act)
Firstly, “all models” I assume refers only to all models tied to act.
Secondly, how does the apply to pile of bones and raising them with IO cards/support, if all piles are equidistant from the action (say 5 squares from a character).
Thirdly, how do ties play out with multiple commands available. Say you have 7 models available and 3 of them are tied to act on the IO CARD. Do i go to activate 1 see a tie and use all 3 as my one action and then have 2 more actions to use, and what if it then have 2 models tied to act (5 moves away from getting into range with the highest threat hero) do they then get to move even if this move isnt specific on the mission card (say it’s an attack card).
Overlords specific cards – (specifically when drawn as the first card in the overlords turn) when you are unable to complete anything on the card (ie raise pile of bones) do you recommend a) doing nothing, b) skipping the card and drawing another, c) defaulting to base level activations and attack rules?
Overlord specific cards (2) – if playing through base campaign with them do you recommend using the cards as written, only using the specific cards that allow you to raise dead that mission activates, or treat each card as just close to what you are able to complete. What about reaching maximum raise levels? Do you raise the next closest thing? Skip the card? Activate only the models written on the card?
I think that’s all for now, the game must go on.
Discrepancies between questbooks and AC bestiaries :
Can we assume Dwarf’s king Quest’s Ghost the same thing as AC Undead’s Wraith ?
it seems that Jake lost momentum…
When can we expect a further update on the FAQ list?
I think he is supposed to be moving right about now but saying he lost momentuem is probably being generous. Still really needs to get started after the game has been in some backers hands for like 2 months.
Jake, I’m just putting some time into making my own scenario and I just wanted to confirm that the Ghoul is correctly presented in the AC as having no special rules, not even Wounds (2)…they are identical to a Goblin Warrior, but seem to take one less hit to kill…but are still “Level 2”, the same as the Goblin Warrior?
Please confirm, thanks 🙂
I personally like how the mummy has the same stats as the revenant but has two wounds which is worse than skeletal and is two levels higher.
Looking at the Dungeon Journal the ghouls from DKH have effectively 2 wounds so I am guessing it is another typo error.
First, this is an awesome document and I appreciate the people taking the time to keep this site up.
Quick question about downtime in a campaign. With the printed adventures do you take downtime after each adventure or after the entire booklet ends?
In the Dwarf King’s Quest booklet, for example, there are six adventures. Do you take downtime after each one, or do you take downtime after you finish all six?
Thanks!
You normally do downtime after each individual adventure that make up the quest book but I think there is one group of 2 or 3 adventures in one of the expansions that specifically does not allow the heroes to heal so in this case no downtime but you would get the amount of gold and glory equal to the total number of adventures inthat sequence.
Page 69, 2nd paragraph. The normal process is to have one downtime session after each adventure in a campaign. However, as Eriochrome says, a specific series of quests might change this to better fit its story.
Thanks for the super quick replies. Very helpful!
Two more questions:
1) On item cards there are three symbols. The one on the left is item type and these are pretty clear, including paraphernalia. What does the locked chest symbol mean? What item type is that?
Also wondering what the star like symbol on the right of item cards is? Experience? Glory?
2) What miniature is the orc standing behind Blaine on p.7 of the Dungeon Journal? Holy cow that orc is menacing looking. I imagine it’s a Mantic model and I would love to add it to my collection.
Thanks!
I think it is magical furniature which is something you fing in a dungeon but cannot loot. The star is the minimum level a hero has to be if using custom heroes to use the items.
I think it is an ogre from the mantic kings of war range.
eriochrome is right, it’s an ogre:
http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/kings-of-war/ogres/product/grokagamok-ogre-captain.html
It seemed to kill my last post but I discovered the Ogre Captain as well. Thanks for the info!
I was going through the core quests and plotting the character levels. It seems like danor has way more experiences than the other heroes. Even ignore spell schools he has a lot of spells like he gets 2 per advancement or 1 when he learns a new school.
It also seems lie the level table in infernal crypts expansion is wrong. The premade heroes are very similar in starting abilities as the other expansions but it says to start with 20 levels which is essentially the legendry line.
Seems like the rules need definitions for a models front area and rear areas as opposed to just arcs as it will clear up many of the rules involving large creatures, shooting, and spells. For example LOS says you can only target things in front without defining this well.
How exactly do monster levels work in the Bestiary? I think the total number of levels of monsters should match the total number of levels of players. Is this correct?
No, the minion levels probably should have their own keyword like points or something. The zombie troll is pretty similar to the initial dwarf fighter from the campaign but he is listed as 9th level and the dwarf fighter is like 1st level. The hero level structure is pretty nonlinear as just being a hero is a big deal while each individual level gained is generally a small improvement. A second level hero is not twice as good as a first level hero. He is probably about 10-15% better as he picked up one new ability which comes into play some of the time. Ofcourse some gains are more valuable than other like picking up a combat die is great as it helps you on defense vs everything as well as when you fight. While the system has some really nice features, quick balance estimates does not seem to be one of them.
I did some more reading after asking this question, and it seems like Uncharted Dungeons are supposed to similar to this. You get a bunch of levels worth of monsters per dungeon sections. I guess you’re saying this doesn’t directly correlate to character levels.
A level 9 Zombie Troll should be able to take on four level two characters if I’m correct. Do you think he can? If not, is there a balancing system that could work without event cards? Also, it seems like event cards won’t necessarily match up to the warrior levels you have at hand. Is there a system of scaling the levels in place for Uncharted Dungeons?
It depends on what you mean by take on. The zombie troll can probably take on 1 hero but if all 4 are able to bring their attacks to bear on him he is not going to last long enough to be more than a 2 turn road block at best. Certainly not going to be able to cripple a single hero in that time. The zombie troll has some nice stats but he lacks the zombified ability which ignores the first 2 hits so many attacks would not take a normal zombie could give him a wound and those add up pretty fast.
New question: How do you kill a pile of bones token?
You cannot attack them. You can stand on them which prevents the from being raised or you can place them in your front arc to get a free strike if the necromancer tries to raise them.
Thanks. Could have sworn that I saw someone kill on the BoW videos I watched. Probably remembering wrong,
They did not exactly play by the rules in those. I suggested to jake to wtch them and use them as the starting point for the basic rules faq but that never happened.
At the location Venerable Scribe you can get a Promissory note worth 3 gold for 2 gold. Is it considered 3 gold for all intents and purposes or is it a paraphernalia item worth 3 gold? Is it an item that is tied to your character or can you trade it when someone is making a purchase? If I buy an item with it that costs 1 or 2 gold do I get change?
My personal opinion would be that it is a paraphernalia item worth 3 gold and you would get change on purchases but in our campaign the GM thinks otherwise that you cannot trade it or get change so feel free to chime in and give an opinion if you are not the game designer.
The whole purpose of the locations and downtime structure is that you do not need a game master to control the world. That part of the campaign is supposed to essentially run very mechanically. The rule says “you can spend it just like money”. So trading it to other players and getting change from spending it are all standard things you can do with money.
Tsunami Spell: What is the range for this spell? It lists tile which is usually used for spells targeting the tile the caster is in but this does not seem like a spell to cast on your own tile. It also does not say the caster’s tile like many other spells with tile as range.
As it reads, this spell would be a great spell if friendly models were not effected, as it would be very useful for the Wizard when surrounded…but it doesn’t specify if friendly models are effected or not…
Including the caster.
Shuffling Horde Spell: the text needs “All Zombie models (of any kind) within long range under the casters control …
The text is also not clear if the models get to attack if they move into position where an enemy is in their front arc.
I think this spell is perfectly fine as it is. It says Move, not Move and Attack, and it states Long range at the top of the card.
The skeleton spell that is similar does Reference the range and the fight ruling in the text.
Inferno spell is worse than burn with adjacent instead of short range and 3 dice instead of 4 but is still a major spell and a higher level (2 instead of 1).
Yeah, it’s as though their required casting levels should be swapped around.
Or maybe it is supposed to work on all enemies in front arc or all adjacent.
Seems like the irritation spell is not going to be very useful for bosses without using an interrrupt since the effects wear off before the heroes would attack again.
Similarly with Rising Dread.
Bleed spell. As written requires a hit not a wound so a successful nimble would still generate a zombie. I assume the new zombie since it is not raised is not free striked if placed in a front arc and may act normally in this turn where they appear.
On page 19 of the AC (towards the bottom of the middle text column), it specifically states that Zombies ARE free striked when placed by the Bleed spell.
Thanks for the info. Ofcourse you can just place it the rear arc.
Are energy crystals pulled from the items deck when created or do you use markers? I am also assuming that if energy crystals are paraphernalia then you can trade them and take them out of the dungeon if they are the one item you plan to keep.
Do energy crystals allow a minor spell to be cast twice in the same turn? Page 19 of the rule book states a spell caster may normally cast up to two different minor spells as part of his or her action. Does the use of a an energy crystal to recharge the just cast cast minor spell allow it to be used immediately thereafter on the same turn?
Jeff, it doesn’t say that the spell caster may ***normally*** cast two different minor spells, it actually says that he can cast up to 2 different spells, with the word different being in bold. You adding the word ***normally*** in there, kind of suggests that there are some circumstances where this may be different…but that’s not what it says.
To me, it’s pretty clear that each spell he casts has to be different from any other spell he casts in that turn, regardless of the conditions.
Can the wizard use a crystal when casting crystallize?
I can’t seem to find anything to say that he can’t.
hi, Dan. What do you mean? Do you want to use a crystal to power up Cristallize?
If so, it is useless, in my opinion. When casting cristallize, you must throw a single die to know which type of crystal you obtain. Using a crystal don’t add any inprovement to this spell.
Technically I think the idea is as written you would roll 2 dice and pick the one you wanted so you could be trying to power up crystals but I think this is not intended.
In the adventurers companion. It states to use the IO cards you use mix overlord specific cards with the standard ones. Where do the overlord specific ones come from?
From expansions only (Warlord of Galahir, Infernal Crypts, Valandor and Tyrant of Halpi)
there are necro in the main game, orc ones in WoG, abbyssals in IC and then there are the dragon ones in ToH
there are only necrosis overlord cards not necro IO cards.
does this mean I can’t use the IO cards at all until I have purchased the expansions. as it says you need IO and overlord specific IO in tie deck.
The return of valandor expansion has necromancer IO cards in it. The overlord specific IO cards add a little more character but are not required. The standard IO cards will get you by fine in the base game.
Rules state that “A Minion that is raised from a Pile of Bones counts as having made its Action, and cannot do anything else in that Turn.” AC also adds “Piles of Bones can be raised into either Skeletons Warriors, Skeleton Archers, or Revenants. A Minion that is raised from a Pile of Bones in the Overlord’s Turn cannot do anything else in the Round.”.
Do the Ghosts follow the same rule – despite they are not raised from piles of bones but summoned by Elshara through ‘Faithful in Death’ ?
Large models: “Large models always count as outnumbering single square models even if they are the only model in contact, and even if they are in contact with multiple enemy models. In this case
they will also be outnumbered themselves.”
So this means that, for example, if i have a large creature facing 2 or more Heroes, all attack/defend with a -1 penalty?
Yes. Both sides are at minus 1 but this a common situation when lots of models get grouped together as the requirement for the -1 is to just to be in 2 opponents front arcs with no other references to people on your side.
Hello,
If the overlord uses an interruption card on a boss/minions during the hero turn, can he plays with that boss/minions again during the bad guys turn ?
That makes a lot of spells per turn for Mortibris…
He should be able to but I might not consider it a turn for spell recharging so he could not use the same spell over and over again.
An Interrupt Card can only be used **between** Hero Turns, so a Hero has to completely finish his Turn before the Overlord can play an Interrupt Card…the Overlord **cannot** play an Interrupt Card **during** a Hero’s Turn.
Yes, a model that has moved and acted by the use of an Interrupt Card **can** move and act again in the Overlord’s Turn. They can even move and act multiple times through the use of multiple Interrupt Cards and then move and act again in the Overlord’s Turn.
Mortibris could **NOT** cast his spells multiple times through the use of Interrupt Cards and the Overlord Turn, because spells do not recharge until the end of the **ROUND**.
Whoa, calm down Danny. I think it was implied by the question that the interrupts were between the Hero’s turns in the Hero half of the round. Good to know that the spell do the recharge clearly at the end of the round so that is not a question. I noticed though that a lot of the spells as written suck for the overlord’s bosses to cast since they stop at the end of the round making them often do nothing to interfere with the heroes which probably requires some adjustment outside the premade stuff.
Ahahahahaha…re-reading my comment I guess it could be taken as coming across aggressively. That’s not the case though, I used the capitals and asterisk to emphasise points, not yell or aggressively push them…sorry if it appeared so 🙂
Agreed on some of the spells available to the Overlord not being particularly effective.
Danny is correct. Funnily, I didn’t read the post as aggressive at all. Glad that’s the way it was intended 🙂
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Imagine a t junction a single square wide.
In the ‘stem’ stands a hero. In the cross stand 3 zombies.
ZZZ
XHX
Can all three zombies attack the hero? Or can only the zombie in front of the hero attack (or be attacked)?
I believe the zombies on either side can’t because…
The movement rules say movement is blocked by the corner of a wall and a model diagonal to each other.
SZS
XSX
S=space, Z=zombie
The shooting rules say line of sight is blocked in the same situation and therefore shooting is blocked. The game promotes claustrophobic tactical play. It just seems a little odd that the exception, which is neither confirmed or denied, is models can fight at full effect through a gap too small for arrows.
Overlord has an interrupt 2 card. So activates zombie, moves up and attacks with it, then activates it a second time and attacks again.
Is this allowed?
The interrupt text on page 10 does say the the overlord acts with the number of models listed on the card. Then says ‘models may move and act again either by using extra interrupt cards later in the round or during the overlords turn’.
Does this mean an interrupt 2 cannot be used to activate a model twice? Unlike other parts of the rules where things are bolded and states ‘different’ it doesn’t do so here.
Can a mundane lock be affected by non-attack spells?
The rules state mundane locks may not be smashed by magical attacks (AC p. 28), and magical attacks are defined as requiring an attack and defense roll (AC p. 26), so may non-attack spells such as corrode be used to weaken a mundane lock’s defenses?
We are playing as it has stats it can be affected by those sorts of spells. If I can corrode armour I can corrode hinges!
what are the stats for undead overlord bosses? they are not mentioned in the adventurer’s companion
another question: in uncharted games what are the winning conditions for the overlord?
When using a healing potion during overloards turn does the healing potion remove 1 would and still prevent the incoming wound?
Does it mean one wound is removed during a heroes’ turn and if used during a overloards turn I get to remove one wound as the item does and also prevent the next incoming wound. For a total of 2. My friend is saying its 1 wound regardless when it is used.
It is one wound. Either used in your turn to remove a wound or in the opponents turn to remove the wound caused as soon as it is caused (to prevent crippling which would not allow an action later to use a potion you have).
Jake, this thread has an enormous amount of questions unanswered by your document. Is there any chance that you will finish the FAQ, which was last updated 10 months ago (and I must say that its contents deal with rather easy questions)?
While I find Dungeon Saga to be a great, superbly balanced game it is not without flaws and a lot of special rules (i.e. spell or ability related ones) need clarification.
A good point Grzegorz, and I’m very sorry for the situation we’re currently in with this. To explain: I am currently in dispute with Mantic. I don’t want to discuss details which is why I’ve not mentioned anything publicly till now. I had hoped to have it sorted months ago. Unfortunately, it’s taking a very long time, and until this is resolved I’m not going to be doing any more work for them on this or any other project.
I’m sorry to hear that and not only because of this FAQ, I hope that you’ll sort it out soon. I guess this explains why your name doesn’t appear anywhere near Star Saga…
In the meantime, I’m not sure how much of sentimental person you are, but is there any chance we could convince you to answer a few questions by appealing to your “sense of designers responsibility” or other similar tricks? 😉 Mind that willing cooperation might be preferable to alternatives, after 10 months some of us are desperate enough to try kidnapping your garden gnomes 😉
Mantic has decided to set up a rules committee for the game. Maybe they will give “official” answers to the questions.
Sorry to hear of your problems with Mantic, Jake. Hopefully they can be resolved.
If it was just a matter of taking half an hour here or there to deal with the odd question, then it would be doable. Unfortunately it would take a couple of days to get sufficiently up to speed to answer the complex queries which remain unanswered as I haven’t played the game in many, many months. In fact, not since well before it was released.
A “rules committee” will at least get you an answer, which is a start.
Hard for freelancers to devote time to old projects since they need to be working on new ones to keep a roof over their heads. There is a lot of like with DS and most of the issues are sortable and probably would have been sorted with just a little more time on the table/open testing before shipping but sometimes sales people do not really understand the work involved in what they have already sold to backers in a kickstarter.
Amen to that.
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If you role a 6 in your combat phase do you role an additional dice and if you role a 6 again do you get roll another?
Nick, what part of the rules makes you think that?