Bleached Lizard said:

You are welcome to presume whatever you wish, of course.  But the rulebook doesn't say that, so either it wasn't intended or its omission from the rulebook is a significant error.

Bleached Lizard said:

In fact, it's not safe to draw any firm conclusions about the gameplay without seeing the actual content, and probably trying it out.  But this seems to indicate that the game's philosophy was either "customization isn't important" or "the campaign mode is the real game and everything else is minor", either of which I would find worrisome.

The "epic play" rules look suspiciously like the "basic campaign" rules from 1e - i.e. tacked-on and generally unbalancing.  But I could be wrong.

Antistone said:

It give you an example of how it works. it's preatty clear that you cant use wounds to pay for fatigue stuff. ( No blood magic allow ).  I'm  assuming that the fighter class will have a skill for this thou. 

Sausageman said:

1st Edition didn't have death either. They called it death but it wasn't death. Death is when you cease to exist and stop to act forever. Since heroes could resume doing stuff after they supposedly "died" by coming back from the temple, they simply were not dead. It was also just a form of knock-out, which was falsely called "death".

Don't let yourself be fooled by words.

As for the penalty, I'd wait to play to see if it is really negligible. I can imagine the possibility of heroes being knocked out two or three turns in a row, especially if they roll low numbers when they revive, and the OL drawing card after card for each knock-out and his monsters merrily accomplishing his evil goals while the heroes are busy standing up or reviving each other and suffering all the OL's new cards.

Antistone said:

Since there is no rule specifying what happens for other "optional" fatigue use, I would suppose that the almost never written out but always implied "if you can't pay for it, you can't do it" rule applies:

- in Monopoly, if you don't have enough money to buy a property, you can't do it;

- In Magic, if you don't have enough mana for your spell, you can't cast it;

- in Descent, if you don't have enough stamina to pay for something, you can't do it.

…Unless specified otherwise, which is the case here when a game effect (= something happening because of the rules of the game) forces (= not something decided by you) you to take fatigue beyond your stamina.

Reading the rules, it's nice to get a fuller sense of how FFG streamlined this game more than 1e.  I've read every update throughout this, and now the rules.  Everything I read makes me want to play it more.  I just wish my local game store was holding a preview.  I can't wait to crack this box open and get in that first playthrough.  1e was already one of my all time favorites, an improved version could make it my number one game!

Ispher said:

You don't "have stamina" and use it to "pay" for things.  You start off with 0 fatigue and count up whenever you "suffer" fatigue.  If there were no rule specifying otherwise, the logical default would be that you can continue to accumulate fatigue without limit.  I've actually played games where that is exactly how fatigue worked (they also had rules that made it undesirable to walk around with a ton of fatigue all the time, naturally).

And you're reading an incredible amount into the word "force".  In fact, since the rules say "if any other game effect forces…", the rule authors obviously believe that moving and skill use are "game effects" that "force" you to suffer fatigue.  Otherwise, the word "other" wouldn't be in that sentence in the first place.  So they are specifically NOT making the distinction that you're trying to make.

But this is fairly academic.  If the intent was really that you can't "pay" fatigue above your stamina and that "forced" fatigue above your stamina is converted into damage, then they should have said that you can't choose to exceed your stamina, not that you can't exceed your stamina "when using skills or moving".  Whether you can twist the RAW to somehow mean what you think it should mean or not, it's indisputably not what they should have said if they meant that.

I don't have any particular problem believing they'd do that by accident (this is FFG we're talking about), but it's still a mistake.  That makes it a completely legitimate thing to complain about, and something that FFG ought to fix before release if there's still time.

Antistone said:

So when you teach the game to your gaming group, what are you going to tell them?

Woah seriously, what's going on in here!!?!?

Can you guys simply enjoy a game as it is…a game?  It's not even out yet and already there's between the lines debating and over analysing of every words in the rulebook…

I might be a stupid F but instead of trying to overthink stuff and words and rules i'll simply enjoy the game with a huge smile.

Enjoy the games! :)

The only rule that really bugs me is the one about group gold and shopping.  Sure it looks like a good idea, but when you have the group decide what to buy then you have a problem.  Well, at least in my gaming groups.  For the most part I play with a bunch of glory gamers that only care about themselves instead of the group.  For the first edition I would be right 99% of the time while my group would just fall into the traps set by the OL.  I basically play with idiots, and I do not want to share my gold with them and have them decide what to buy.  What happens if you group of heroes can decide on what to buy in the result of a tie?  If some people get the chance they would only buy for themselves while leaving others out to dry.  Not a fan of this rule at all. 

I really need to find some different people to play with.  Maybe some who understand what a group game is all about…Teamwork!!!

IronRavenstorm said:

I've always wondered where the groups were who didn't know how to cooperate in a co-op game.  I guess they're where you are.

You'll have to institute a house rule from the very beginning saying that if the heroes can't decide as a group how to split the cash then they have to roll a die or something to decide.  Or during each shopping phase, one player is considered the "leader" who arbitrates all decisions for the group, and the leader changes each shopping phase.

Bleached Lizard said:

In this sort of situation, I generally explain the issue and ask them how they want to play it.  Getting everyone on the same page is more important to me than which page we're ultimately on; I really hate it when someone discovers half-way through executing a strategy that a rule they were depending on doesn't work like they thought it did.

Of course, first I would try to look through the cards and see how much it matters.  It may be that there aren't any items, hero abilities, etc. with fatigue costs, at least in the base game, in which case I wouldn't even bring it up during a teaching session.  And if there are, then looking at them might provide further clues as to intent, or reveal that interpreting the rule one way or the other would lead to major balance problems (for example, if there's an item that says "suffer 1 fatigue to heal 2 damage, as often as you want").

Not that I'm certain I'm going to be explaining the game to anyone in the first place, since at this point 2e is solidly on my "try before I buy" list.  I'm still  worried that the strategy may always boil down to either "kill everyone, and keep killing them as they stand up/reinforce, so they can't do anything while one guy slowly completes the actual objective" or "just do the objective and don't make a single attack the entire quest", and even if that isn't the case, I'm not sure it really does anything better than 1e.

But if it comes down just to me making a decision based on current information, I'd cap fatigue for movement and skills only.  The "movement and skills" vs. "all other effects" distinction seems pretty clear to me (they even make it multiple times, IIRC), and the counter-arguments sound (at least to me) like post hoc rationalizations from people who made up their mind that "you can't use something if you can't pay for it" before even getting to that paragraph.

It's not the intuitive split, and I could imagine they meant something else, which is why I brought it up in the first place. But sometimes rules actually do something counter-intuitive intentionally.  If you always go with your intuition instead of the RAW, then you can get the rules wrong even if the designer did his job right.  If I go with what the rules actually say, then the only way I can be wrong is if the designer screwed up.  As a game designer myself, I work hard to avoid screwing up, and I know that I, for one, prefer it when players give my rules the benefit of the doubt.

Antistone said:

Yes you have. Read the example just below the fatigue rules text (p. 13): Example: Tomble has a Stamina of “5”. If you have a Stamina value, you have Stamina, just as you have weight if you have a weight value.

And yes you use it to pay for things. Same example: …this skill has a fatigue cost of “2”… When something has a cost, the cost must be paid to get it. Basic economics. It is not because you receive something (in that case, fatigue tokens) that it can't be something you pay. Receiving debt, for instance, is a form of payment (as with credit cards).

Antistone said:

Seems that I am the "people".

I do not disagree that this part of the rules is not very well written, but I tried to address the problems you mentioned with an interpretation of the rules that would prevent any future gaming problems (you mentioned the "suffer 1 fatigue to regain 2 health" possibility). It has nothing to do with having a made-up mind, it is a question of interpreting an unclear rule in a problem-solving way.

At least I won't have to look at all items (including those of future expansions) to see if my interpretation of that rule still works.

Ispher said:

I may have phrased that badly.  Your stamina is not a pool of consumable resources that you deplete.  You obviously have a stamina score - you also have 4 trait scores, but that doesn't mean that you "spend might" when you make a might check.

Ispher said:

You've just quoted a cost that is in "fatigue" (not stamina).  And you can receive debt even when you don't currently have enough money to pay it off - that's more or less the point of debt.

I fail to see how either of these examples supports your position.

Ispher said:

And if I declared that you can't suffer fatigue to gain movement points, I wouldn't have to check cards to see whether there's a "spend 1 movement point to heal 2 fatigue" card.

Removing options that the rules say you have just because those options might be part of a game-breaking power loop that the designers might have included in the game is madness. By that logic, you shouldn't let anyone do anything.

So far as we currently know, the only "problem" with the rule is that it's counter-intuitive.

I would love to understand the version of the english language that Antistone speaks. They way he interprets words is to me as if he views them all as having a single definition with no room for error.

As a native born American I have always had always had a problem with the idea of one word meaning exactly one thing, though I do run into people that disagree with me. I've never been able to wrap my head around the phrase "It doesn't matter what you meant, it's not what you said."

I'm a native-born American.

Many words have more than one meaning…but still only a handful.  If every word could mean anything at all, we wouldn't be able to communicate.  Lots of sentences have more than one possible meaning, but that doesn't mean that any arbitrary meaning you pull out of your sleeve is a valid interpretation.  Even when there are multiple correct readings, there are still lots of wrong ones.

And when you're writing a technical document - such as a rulebook - you generally define several pieces of jargon to have a single, clear, and specific meaning in the context of that document. For example, in the context of Descent, "skill" has a special meaning that is different from its normal usage in the wider world.  It doesn't matter how many different things "skill" can mean in English, Descent is using the word as a term of art with exactly one meaning.

Sometimes people make mistakes.  You could say "up" when you meant to say "down".  That doesn't imply that "up" and "down" mean the same thing.  Nor does it imply that everyone will magically know that you really meant "down" if you actually said "up".

If you still don't understand the difference between "what you say" and "what you mean", try writing computer programs.  Computers do exactly what you tell them, 100% of the time, no matter how crazy it sounds.  And they will not listen to arguments about how your instructions ought to be interpreted in some weird way in order to conform to your "obvious" intent.