Rules Questions

[apegamer]

Elven Senses... Tingling!

Since stairs are found on a low roll, would someone really want to use this as printed?

Heh, probably not. As I'm sure you've guessed, the intent was to add +2 to the roll needed, not to the roll itself.

So with one instance of the shtick in play, V needs a 5 or less.

[apegamer]

Another question:

The "Screw This" that lets me pick up all of the loot in the room after I defeat the last monster could be used in conjunction with Haley's Schitck that lets her choose which loot she takes, right? Then one could look through all the loot in the room an only take what they want?

You bet! The Screw This! card you're talking about is Gimme! Gimme! GIMME! which let's you take the entire stack of loot. Haley's shtick Greed is Good lets her look a a pile of loot and take only the cards that she wants.

Sweet, huh?

[apegamer]

In the rules it says that when two players battle, the defending player gets to offer loot for help to one player first, then the attacker and back and forth. Can the defending player offer one loot to a person, then after the attacker offers loot to another person, offer more loot to the first person they gave loot to?

Can the defender (or attacker) offer multiple loots at the same time to the same person?

When offering loot to another PLAYER, the player can hear offers from both sides before accepting.

The back-and-forth comes into play when offering loot to NPC's. Since each player (and NPC) can only accept loot from one player, and since NPC's aren't as good at discerning who is making a better offer, they will automatically help the first person offering them loot. The other player cannot offer more loot to that NPC, but the same player MAY offer more loot, if desired.

Haley's Schtick that allows her to look through the loot pile and choose which loots to take seems oddly worded. It says if there are one or more loots in the room she may do this, however it also implies that if there is a stack of only traps then a trap must be spung. However, the rules suggest that a player can choose not to take loot in the room after beating monsters. If you use this Schtick, do you have to take one or two loots from the room, or can you choose to take no loot? If you have to take loot than what is the point of specifically saying that you can use the card if there is one loot in the room?

Haley may choose to NOT take loot when using the Greed is Good shtick, if she sees that some of the loot are traps. She may take the traps if she chooses; but that's likely only going to happen if she's got the Disarm shtick, too.

The rules say that you cannot give an NPC a loot to help you if that loot is drooled over by a current player in the game. What if the loot is drooled over by me and an NPC, can I still not give the NPC the loot? The rules also indicate that I cannot trade a loot away that I drool over, which might make my last question moot. However, I bring this up because in your FAQ you say that a player can give loot to another player even if the player giving it away would drool over it.

You can give loot to an NPC if your picture is on it. However, giving it to the NPC essentially removes it from the game, and then it cannot be used to trade in for shticks.

The Schitck rules say that after you turn in monsters with enough XP for a new Schtick you take three from the top and choose one, while putting the remaining two at the bottom of the deck. Does that mean that you cannot shuffle the deck after you did this, since it seems the remaining two are supposed to be at the bottom?

The two unselected shticks go to the bottom of your deck, to be seen only after all of the other shticks have been cycled through. The shtick deck is not shuffled, but that DOES give me an idea for the expansion!

What happens if people use up all of the dungeon room tiles? Lets say people just arent able to find the stares down for a while on botht he first and second floors. And now all the dungeon tile shave been used, but they havent reached the third floor yet. What do you do when you move to a new room or do find the stares to the third floor? Should there be a maximum floor size to keep this from being a problem?

There can be up to 8 rooms on each dungeon level, though fewer if table space is restrictive. Note that you can search rooms multiple times (though only once on your turn.) If someone doesn't find stairs in a room, then the next person moving into the room can search again, so long as there are no monsters there.

[Madame_Zelia]

This might be more commentary than rules, so feel free to redirect.

I've played OOTS Adventure game twice now--each session with four players in the 'short' game coming in at betweeen 4 and 5.5 hours. We ended up with 2 players playing the same characters in each (even though we shuffled and randomized the draw) Haley and V being the recurring players.

We love it. And at the same time some things don't quite make sense.

Of our group's experience thus far, I think the loot rules have been a sticking point.

The person playing Haley won and was second in these games, she also had the most loot and loot getting abilities. I think loot is the root of all evil in this game (well everywhere really, if I may be so Marxist!). If you don't have loot you can't get as many schticks or assistance which then
prevents you from further schtick getting and thereby preventing you
from getting down to the later levels. Would allowing 2 loots instead
of one per room get us farther down the line? A thought.

One of our party members suggested that the loot rules be raised by +1 all around. Thus, you could pick up 3 loot after all mobs are vanquished, 2 loots if you are just 'looting' or resting. This would certainly speed up the game considerably. (Speed only being an issue when at 5 hours the player exploiting Ray's schtick flipping errata was just having too much fun).

Another question is whether the loot to schtick ratio in calculating the victory points is appropriate. Should they be equal or should schticks count for more?

[ElderGias]

The two unselected shticks go to the bottom of your deck, to be seen only after all of the other shticks have been cycled through. The shtick deck is not shuffled, but that DOES give me an idea for the expansion!

Yay for inspiring a card in a future expansion! Woot!

[caestepp]

...Would allowing 2 loots instead of one per room get us farther down the line? A thought.

One of our party members suggested that the loot rules be raised by +1 all around. Thus, you could pick up 3 loot after all mobs are vanquished, 2 loots if you are just 'looting' or resting. This would certainly speed up the game considerably. (Speed only being an issue when at 5 hours the player exploiting Ray's schtick flipping errata was just having too much fun).

Another question is whether the loot to schtick ratio in calculating the victory points is appropriate. Should they be equal or should schticks count for more?

Just to make sure we are on the same page, the rules say that you can:

• Pick up 2 loot if you clear the last monster in the room (by killing or displacing)
• Pickup 2 loot if you rest in a room that contains only loot (no monsters)
• Pickup 1 loot and then move to a new room and have the rest of your turn
• Move into a room and pickup 1 loot assuming that the room contains only loot and one or more other players so no new monsters are played.

During early playtesting we started out letting folks pick up larger amounts of loot. I don't really remember it speeding up the game, but it did make the game more imbalanced toward the stronger melee characters (Roy, V, and Belkar). It let them kill a bunch of monsters for XP and then immediately pick up a lot of the loot too. By limiting how much loot they could pick up, it gave the weaker melee characters a chance to walk in and share in the loot. We also liked the loot-gathering mini-game that would spring up whenever a large loot pile formed (especially in the lower levels). It also had the nice side effect of giving the characters another reason to stay close to each other.

To further help with the loot balance, Haley, Elan, and Durkon also have other ways to increase the amount of loot they collect in the game (Haley has a shtick that simply lets her pick up extra loot, Elan has a shtick that makes him more attractive when offering loot for assistance in battle, and Durkon can offer to heal other players in exchange for loot).

Because we felt we had balanced the loot gathering and the shtick gathering, we decided that they should contribute equally to the victory condition. At the end of the game, some characters tend toward having more shticks while others tend toward having more loot. We tried a lot of different variations and the rules we finally settled on seemed to hold up the best across numerous play tests.

If you happen to try out some rule tweaks, please post your results. We would be interested to hear how your change affected the gameplay (either positively or negatively).

[Madame_Zelia]

If you happen to try out some rule tweaks, please post your results. We would be interested to hear how your change affected the gameplay (either positively or negatively).

I see your point, as has been raised by another in our group. My Marxist ways are likely to be mediated a bit. =)

We're all bouncing around some ideas to see what would happen. The Haley-player pointed out that with some changes suggested, she'd only get more powerful. Maybe the issue is the loot to victory point ratio. Only time and tweaking will tell.

[ElderGias]

Okay, this is gonna be an odd question but:

How many of the promo cards is one "supposed" to play the game with? It would seem to me that it should be just one since each person at the GenCon booth got one, but I just want to make sure.

[caestepp]

Okay, this is gonna be an odd question but:

How many of the promo cards is one "supposed" to play the game with? It would seem to me that it should be just one since each person at the GenCon booth got one, but I just want to make sure.

There are no odd questions, only odd answers...

I would recommend only adding one of the Zombie Gamer promo cards to a game set. You may have noticed that the vast majority of the monsters in the battle deck are unique (ie. only one instance of the card in the deck). Only a few of the lower power monsters have multiples.

In keeping with this spirit, I would recommend treating the Zombie Gamers as more of a "named villain" that shows up once per game rather than as an "anonymous henchman" that shows up around every corner.

Also keep in mind that the Zombie Gamer card received less playtesting than the other cards so inserting a bunch of them into the game may yield unpredictable results.

[ElderGias]

Cool, thanks for the answer!

[ElderGias]

Got another two:

Lets say that on dungeon floor ends up with two stairs leading down from it (this would be possible is someone found the stairs, and also used the Screw This card that puts in a set of stairs). Now the dungeon is collapsing and we are removing rooms, which set of stairs gets the room below it removed, or does it not matter?

Some monsters say that you cannot use any sticks with are range 0 against them, which puts an odd possibility out for Haley. Lets say Haley has her bow and the Shtick that lets her use her bow at range 0 with +1/+1 (Sneak Attack I believe). If she just used her bow against the monster, she would get just the bonuses from the bow. She can't use a range 0 weapon on the monster, but the bow has a range of greater than 0. The Sneak Attack card says you get the bonus when making an attack at range 0 with the bow. So by a strict reading of the cards, I should be able to use my range 4 bow to attack the creature that cant be attacked with range 0 weapons, but also use my range 4 bow as a range 0 weapon to get the bonus from Sneak Attack since though I am using it as a range 0 weapon it is still a range 4 weapon. Im pretty sure that was not the intent, but by strict wording, that is the meaning. Should this not be possible?

[apegamer]

Got another two:

Lets say that on dungeon floor ends up with two stairs leading down from it (this would be possible is someone found the stairs, and also used the Screw This card that puts in a set of stairs). Now the dungeon is collapsing and we are removing rooms, which set of stairs gets the room below it removed, or does it not matter?

Some monsters say that you cannot use any sticks with are range 0 against them, which puts an odd possibility out for Haley. Lets say Haley has her bow and the Shtick that lets her use her bow at range 0 with +1/+1 (Sneak Attack I believe). If she just used her bow against the monster, she would get just the bonuses from the bow. She can't use a range 0 weapon on the monster, but the bow has a range of greater than 0. The Sneak Attack card says you get the bonus when making an attack at range 0 with the bow. So by a strict reading of the cards, I should be able to use my range 4 bow to attack the creature that cant be attacked with range 0 weapons, but also use my range 4 bow as a range 0 weapon to get the bonus from Sneak Attack since though I am using it as a range 0 weapon it is still a range 4 weapon. Im pretty sure that was not the intent, but by strict wording, that is the meaning. Should this not be possible?

I think both these have been answered before in this thread, but it's getting quite long, and since they're coming up again, I'll add notes for both of these into the Clarifications section of the FAQ (which one of the moderators really should make sticky.)

I'll try to get to that later today.

[ElderGias]

Oh, sorry, didn't see those in the thread before. Yeah, it is nice to have all the answer questions on the FAQ page (I check that often for updates), plus you can easily print it to add to the game box for future games, so its nice to have it all in one place.

[ElderGias]

Btw, can we get a list of the people that can give "official rulings" on rules questions?

So far it seems to be:

The Giant (Creator of OOTS)
Apegamer (C0-creater of OOTS boardgame)
Krago (Playtester and GenCon demoer)

Anyone else?

[apegamer]

Btw, can we get a list of the people that can give "official rulings" on rules questions?

So far it seems to be:

The Giant (Creator of OOTS)
Apegamer (C0-creater of OOTS boardgame)
Krago (Playtester and GenCon demoer)

Anyone else?

Good question. The three names listed here are the authorities. Trust No One Else! They'll only spread lies and rumors.

[Gorbash Kazdar]

Good question. The three names listed here are the authorities. Trust No One Else! They'll only spread lies and rumors.

Damn, there go my plans for the evening.

EDIT: There was a question that was going to go here, but then I re-examined the rules and realized it was a) already covered and b) pretty dumb.

[Ubeor]

We played last night, and a few issues came up.

1) How do you handle it when Haley uses her double shot schtick (roll twice, take the highest) against a monster with Multiattack (roll twice/three times, take the highest)? Do they cancel each other out? Or is there some other way to handle this?

2) Does anyone else find Roy's Great Cleavage schtick to be too powerful? We had one encounter on dungeon level 3 that, thanks to Redcloak, demon roaches, and a few well-placed Goblin Necromancers, soon turned into a battle-size 22 encounter! Included in the stack were 3 Linear Guild members (Nale, Thog, and Yikyik). By the time Roy got to them, his Great Cleavage (hee hee... Roy has boobies) was high enough that he didn't even have to roll. He got enough monster cards from the battle to receive 8 schticks just from the trade-ins!

We're now considering implementing a house rule limiting the battle size to a max of 10.

[apegamer]

We played last night, and a few issues came up.

1) How do you handle it when Haley uses her double shot schtick (roll twice, take the highest) against a monster with Multiattack (roll twice/three times, take the highest)? Do they cancel each other out? Or is there some other way to handle this?

I'll add this clarification to the FAQ as it is a bit confusing. Assuming the monster has Multiattack 3, then Haley would:

1) Roll two dice and remember the best result.

2) Roll two dice again, and remember the best result.

3) Roll two dice again, and remember the best result.

4) Use the worst of the three results.

2) Does anyone else find Roy's Great Cleavage schtick to be too powerful?

<Ruling on Great Cleavage forthcoming>

[The Giant]

We played last night, and a few issues came up.

1) How do you handle it when Haley uses her double shot schtick (roll twice, take the highest) against a monster with Multiattack (roll twice/three times, take the highest)? Do they cancel each other out? Or is there some other way to handle this?

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with Kevin here:

There is no conflict. Multiattack only works when the monster is on Attack, Double Shot only works when Haley is on Attack. Haley and the monster cannot both be on Attack at the same time.

This should still be in the FAQ, though, because it may not be immediately apparent.

2) Does anyone else find Roy's Great Cleavage schtick to be too powerful? We had one encounter on dungeon level 3 that, thanks to Redcloak, demon roaches, and a few well-placed Goblin Necromancers, soon turned into a battle-size 22 encounter! Included in the stack were 3 Linear Guild members (Nale, Thog, and Yikyik). By the time Roy got to them, his Great Cleavage (hee hee... Roy has boobies) was high enough that he didn't even have to roll. He got enough monster cards from the battle to receive 8 schticks just from the trade-ins!

There's an arguement to be made that if your players didn't want Roy to be able to cut through so many monsters in one round, they would have stopped feeding the Battle Size with more Goblins/Undead/etc. There's a point where the other players need to get together and say, "Hey, if we keep making this battle bigger, Roy is going to whomp all over it." And if it just happened once as a random fluke because no one had any monsters that weren't goblins, well, then it was a random fluke that went Roy's way. That's life, no one said the game was going to be fair every time.

We're now considering implementing a house rule limiting the battle size to a max of 10.

If this happens a lot in your games, then yeah, that would be reasonable.

[apegamer]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with Kevin here:

There is no conflict. Multiattack only works when the monster is on Attack, Double Shot only works when Haley is on Attack. Haley and the monster cannot both be on Attack at the same time.

Gah, you're right! This came up before, and I gave the same answer only to later figure out that each only works when they're attacking. The FAQ will be updated accordingly.

There's an arguement to be made that if your players didn't want Roy to be able to cut through so many monsters in one round, they would have stopped feeding the Battle Size with more Goblins/Undead/etc. There's a point where the other players need to get together and say, "Hey, if we keep making this battle bigger, Roy is going to whomp all over it."

As a suggestion, you can add speed bumps into a battle pile that Roy will have trouble with. Invulnerable monsters, for instance.

[Solution9]

Well my friends and I were playing the game for the first time and we were confused on a few things:

1) This has to be a silly question but it seems the loot can make it too easy to kill any monster when you have enough equiped. Is there a limit to how much loot you can equip? Also because of this do monsters get more powerfull as you go down in levels to balance this?

2) On the attack/deffence is there an auto fail roll (or would that just be a house rule)?

3) I don't know it seems Haly's ability to look at the loot is too easy and a bit unbalanced at times is there something else to the ability we just didn't pick up on? (Most likely not).

I think I have more questions but I can't think of them at this time so I'll have to rethink some more for later. Thanks.

[The Giant]

1) This has to be a silly question but it seems the loot can make it too easy to kill any monster when you have enough equiped. Is there a limit to how much loot you can equip?

I'm not sure what you mean. There are only a handful of Loot cards that grant any bonuses to killing Monsters, and most of them can only be used by one character. How does equipping a lot of Loot make Monsters easier to kill? Can you give an example?

Also because of this do monsters get more powerfull as you go down in levels to balance this?

Not inherently, but many monsters have Support abilities which are fueled by other monsters on the same level--and there are more likely to be those monsters there the further down you go.

2) On the attack/deffence is there an auto fail roll (or would that just be a house rule)?

It's a variant rule; check out the Variants on page 23 of the rulebook.

3) I don't know it seems Haly's ability to look at the loot is too easy and a bit unbalanced at times is there something else to the ability we just didn't pick up on? (Most likely not).

You need to flip the shtick in order to use it. That means that Haley cannot use it again until she rests or leaves the dungeon, both of which end her turn without gaining any XP or Loot. So if she spends all of her time resting to unflip that shtick, she will end up losing out in the long run.

[Solution9]

Darn you beat me to my own post I figured out a few things on my own once again but oh well.
But anywho about equiping loot cards, from what I understand in the rules that the more loot cards you have equiped that the character drools over adds bonuses to your attack/defence rolls. So if Elan had two equiped loots that had one face each is that not a +2 to attack/defence? So if thats the case having more of those adds a huge bonus which could inheritanly make you rediculas correct? Please tell me I'm not understanding that part correctly.

[apegamer]

No, you can give loot to other players to assist you in battle. For each of their faces on the loot, you get a +2 to your roll.

If loot has YOUR face on it, then equipping it will not give you +2. You should save this, and trade them in for shticks when you get enough faces.

[PrometheusRex]

Regarding a monster's Bloodlust ability, if I understand correctly, this ability would cause any schtick that causes a draw on result an automatic loser, correct? For instance, Durkon using Big Heavy Armor or Haley using Hide would be pointless, because even if Durkon/Haley wins, the schtick makes the battle a draw instead, and Bloodlust makes the draw into a loss. Or do the abilities not stack like that?

[apegamer]

You're right. If Durkon uses Big Heavy Armor against a monster with Bloodlust, and wins, then the result of the shtick (which says that the battle is a draw) means that he actually loses.

In short, don't use shticks that say the battle is a draw against monsters with Bloodlust.

[mikecyr]

You can give loot to an NPC if your picture is on it. However, giving it to the NPC essentially removes it from the game, and then it cannot be used to trade in for shticks.

I think this should be added to the main FAQ. Reading the rules, it's easy to come to the conclusion that you can't give loot to an NPC that both you and the NPC drool over, since you're still a Player.

[mikecyr]

We had one encounter on dungeon level 3 that, thanks to Redcloak, demon roaches, and a few well-placed Goblin Necromancers, soon turned into a battle-size 22 encounter!

Amateurs! ;)

My group just finished our first game the other night, and we ended up with one battle with a final battle size of 42. After the first dozen or so, I think we all wanted to end it, but a number of us were low on cards at that point and had no choice but to add monsters that increased the battle size. By the end, we had monsters that had the Hoard support ability for goblins (this was Redcloak on Xykon's level, who started it all), as well as kobolds, fiends, and undead. So demon roaches increased the battle size by 4, and we had 2 or 3 of them, plus the demon roach king (or something like that).

This all happened when one of the players decided to enter the last unexplored room on Xykon's level, even though we'd already found Xykon (who had a battle size of a mere 15). When he first showed up, Xykon's attack and defense were 34, but we managed to reduce them to 28 by eliminating some monsters in another room giving him support. But when Redcloak showed up, it raised Xykon's attack and defense to 52.

All told, our first "short" game was about 8-9 hours. This was after starting a couple earlier games, but not being able to finish them due to time, so it's not like we were still learning the rules when we played this time.

[mikecyr]

You're right. If Durkon uses Big Heavy Armor against a monster with Bloodlust, and wins, then the result of the shtick (which says that the battle is a draw) means that he actually loses.

In the same vein, the rules say that if you attack a monster with a ranged attack, and that monster doesn't have enough range to reach you, any result that would lead to a win for the monster is instead considered a draw. A strict interpretation of the rules would indicate that if the monster had Bloodlust, you would still take a wound, but I think this is one of those areas where one should interpret the rules in the spirit in which they were intended. But correct me if I am wrong.

[apegamer]

There has been a lot of mention about the duration of the game. While the game can go more or less as long as you want it to, it's also possible to finish the game in the listed time.

For instance, at GenCon, all 7 of the full games we played at the events finished in the alloted 4 hours, including explaining rules to people who'd not played the game.

I will say, though that in the games we ran, people pushed out going to the Xykon level as long as they could, for fear that Xykon and his minions would annihilate them. But in each case, Xykon eventually fell.