Rules Questions

[The Giant]

- The stuff you can do at the start and end of your turn, can they all be done both start and end of your turn, multiple times each? This, of course, excludes loot picking and stairs searching.

Yes, excluding Loot-picking-up and stair-searching, you can do any of the others as often as you wish. Meaning you can trade in Monsters for shticks at the start of your turn, then kill three Monsters, then turn in another three at the end.

- If you fight without a Shtick against a creature with Bloodlust, will you then _always_ lose?

Yup. Sucks, eh?

- If you drop down to no health and start fleeing, but is forced to miss your next turn (for example, if the fight was in the restroom), What is the procedure? My guess is, that you drop a loot, flee three rooms, end turn, drop a loot, end turn, [drop a loot, flee three rooms, end turn] (repeat stuff in brackets until at dungeon entrance).

Well, the issue here isn't the missing-a-turn-while fleeing, it's the use of the Restroom. According to the rules on "Missing a Turn", when something causes you to miss a turn, you put your character on its side IMMEDIATELY. That means that when you reveal the restroom, you don't fight any Monsters in it. And only the first character to reveal the restroom misses a turn. So really, the situation you are describing cannot occur. EDIT: Whoops! Turned out I didn't know what I was talking about there, just ignore that paragraph.

Now, if you miss a turn because the Monster has Paralyze, then you are basically frozen in place. You drop the Loot, put your character on its side, and end your turn. On the next turn, you stand your character up, drop a Loot, and end your turn. On the third turn, you drop a Loot and move 3 spaces. You never move 3 spaces on a turn in which your character begins or ends on its side.

- If you're in a room full of loot, can you then get 2 loot in any other way than resting (not counting shtick's like Haley's and such)? I mean, if you don't want to suffer the defense loss when resting, but still wants to miss a turn while getting two loot?

Nope. You need to take the risk in order to grab two.

- Unique monsters.. I'm confused. I hear Redcloak is a multiple, but is he the only one (I don't want to check the stack, I want to be surprised at the things I find)? Specifically, is the rule about unique monsters leaving if they appear somewhere else very rarely used? Or is the sentence about it on page 5 actually supposed to apply to all monsters with the same name, so no two equal monsters can exist at once (yes, the sentence can be read like that)?

It is a rarely used rule. We have plans for expanding the game, which may include alternate versions of key characters like Nale, Thog, etc. Right now, Redcloak is the only Unique monster to actually have two versions.

- Poorly planned illusion. When you move a monster into a full room (of monsters), is the moved monster(s) placed at the bottom or top?

Top.

- The Giant posted that used Turn Undead in a battle with Xykon was a good idea, even though it didn't hurt him, as it could remove all other undead and thereby weakening Xykon. In the sidebar on page 18 though, it is stated that even though monsters can't be hurt by an area attack, they still count when determining the greatest defense modifier to fight against. Was the (not so) flawless Giant wrong?

No, but it's a subtle distinction. The rule says that if the Monster is targeted and has an ability that would normally exampt it from being battled with as shtick, such as Enchanted, it still counts for determining the highest Defense Value.

But Xykon does NOT have an ability that exempts him; it's the Turn Undead shtick that does the exempting when it stipulates its available targets. Thus, you can use it against any Undead under Xykon without counting his Defense Value.

In the same way, you don't count the Defense values of non-Undead when using Turn Undead, because they cannot ever be targets of that shtick. Only those Monsters that COULD be targets, but are not because of a MONSTER ability are still counted for Defense value. An Enchanted Undead, for example, would still count for highest Defense Value; a Goblin, Enchanted or otherwise, would not.

Is there going to be a ruling on the fleeing rule? It seems like just about every other question gets answered, but for some reason this one hasn't been. Does your character flee immediately upon losing his/her last hit point whether it's your turn or not, flee immediately only on your turn, or always wait 'til your next turn, or what? Please respond to this even if it's just to say that it has not been decided. Thanks.

OK, I thought this had been answered by apeagamer, so I'll look at it now.

The rules are 100% correct; the Example is slightly backwards.

To elaborate: You should drop the Loot and then flee on each turn, including the turn in which you lose your last Wound. The example correctly has Elan drop Loot immediately, but fails to have him flee. After that, it incorrectly puts the fleeing before the dropping. The intent was to have the player drop his first Loot under the Monster that beat him, so that the Monster would have to be killed in order to recover it. Both the and the example rules reflect this, but the Example then screws up the order after that.

As a rule of thumb during play, assume the rules trump the examples unless we've FAQ/errata'd something. Feel free to keep asking, though, since its the only way we'll see mistakes.