Rules Questions

[The Giant]

I disagree with this answer. On page 26 of the rules, under REMOVING TRAPS FROM THE GAME, it says "Do NOT put it [the traps] in the Loot Deck discard pile. If you do, then when the Loot Deck needs to be reshuffled, it will be filled with more traps than Loot!"

Additionally, not allowing the monster deck to be reshuffled will cause Xykon to be laughably easy, what with having no possibility of support!

I disagree with this too. Why waste so much loot in Xykon's room when it'll be the first to collapse? You can grab two loot out of it and then its gone. I would say fill loot from top-down, in order to give people a better chance to grab it!

My understanding, based on the rules, was that you DO reshuffle the Loot and Battle Decks, but not in the middle of a turn. So that if you run out of Monsters in the middle of filling up a high Battle Size, the deck is not reshuffled until the end of the turn. Same thing with the Loot, which would mean that when the Monsters vanish with Xykon's death, you deal out Loot into the dungeon until the current deck runs out, then you're done. This one will need further behind-the-scenes consultation, though.

You do, however, deal Loot from the bottom of the dungeon up when it collapses, to prevent people from hanging around the Entrance to grab free Loot while someone kills Xykon, then grabbing the bonus for being the first to exit, too.

- When can Durkon's healing schtick be used? Does it have to be on Durkon's player's turn? Does it have to be in a particular phase of a turn? Can the player use it when resting, before flipping up all their cards? The rules for schticks don't talk about timing for non-battle schticks, and the text on the schtick itself doesn't either give timing requirements or say "anytime".

Cure Additional Wounds can be used at any time. Note, however, that if Durkon is fleeing the dungeon, he cannot heal himself until after he has reached the Dungeon Entrance. He could still heal others, however.

Also, you can't flip the shtick between the time you learn you are losing your last Wound and the time you actually lose it, or any other silly ways of trying to retroactively prevent fleeing the dungeon. Use common sense.

- How many assistance-for-loot proposals can be extended by a player for a particular battle? The rules don't seem to say, but we thought we found some wording that implied that only one other character can assist in a single battle. However, the wording of one of the answers in the FAQ at http://www.apegames.com/oots/oots-dod/OOTSDoD-FAQ.pdf as of 10/25/2006 suggests that multiple players can assist.

You may ask for assistance from any number of players, except those who you are battling in Player vs. Player combat, obviously.

With regards to ranged attacks:

I played Vaarsuvias in our 1st game and noted that the Fireball schtick had a range of 4. I went to use this on a monster with a range <4. How does the monster defend?

We played it that the monster was effectively "fighting with no schticks" so therefore as monster's don't roll a defense roll, I would win automatically. The only monsters that had a chance when their range was <0 were any with the "Tricky" ability which then gave them a Defense score of "10" as per the "Tricky" ability to give them +10 (so 0 from lack of range +10 for "Tricky" = 10 total Defense.)

Is this the right way Fireball and any other ranged attacks work against monsters? Some players argued it was too powerful that I could automatically kill these monsters, my argument was that I had to rest after each fight of this type to recover the then flipped Fireball schtick

No, you are playing this incorrectly.

A Monster attacked at Range that cannot respond still has a Defense score, and you must still beat that Defense score with your die-roll-plus-Attack. The only difference is in what happens if you FAIL to defeat the Monster. If you lose a battle against a Monster without sufficient Range to fight back, you suffer no ill effects. You don't lose a Wound or get paralyzed or anyhting else; it's treated like a draw.

Incidentally, based on your question, I can see that you are playing the rules on battling without a shtick incorrectly, too. If a player battles without a shtick, they do NOT lose automatically. They still roll the die, they just don't get to add bonus to that roll. A win by a player without a shtick does not defeat a Monster, it counts as a draw.

What I'd like to know about area effects is if you can target monsters in more than one room. Lets say V has a boosted fireball that targets four monsters and there are two rooms of two monsters within range. In our games we have assumed that V targets a room rather than stacked targets.

No, you can only target Monsters in one room at a time. If you can taget more Monsters than there are occupants in the room, the excess are wasted.

Also turn undead is an area effect, when you use it do you need to find the highest att/def value in the monster stack or the highest att/def value of undead in the stack?

Just the undead.

If it's just the undead is Xykon included when attempting to remove his zombie support?

No, Xykon isn't targeted by Turn Undead.

Use of this area effect ceases combat? Even if there was only one undead targeted?

I'm not understanding this question, sorry.

1. What would happen if while a player is asking for assistance in battle i used dun dun DUN!!!! to flip the Battle Shtick they chose to use in that battle?

They can choose another shtick before they roll the die. If they don't have another shtick available, they must battle without one.

2. If i sucessfully use Poorly-Planned Illusion and choose to move the monster into the next room, if that room already has monsters in it does the moved monster go to the top or bottom of the battle stack?

Top.