From: woods@colossal.Eng.Sun.COM (Don Woods)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: Re: Wizards
Date: 20 Nov 92 18:08:10 GMT
Distribution: all
Organization: Sun Microsystems
NNTP-Posting-Host: colossal

Jeff Goldsmith writes:
| Demons often take over the Dragon's Lair.  Sometimes we even run out
| of demon counters.  Therefore, players try to stay away from the Lair.

All well and good to "try" to stay away, but you still have to deal with
Mandatory Task markers in the Lair, plus the occasional trap or demon who
sends you there.  I'm wondering if you ever reach a state where a player's
turn never ends, because he lands on a stack of 3-4 demons, and at least
one of them transports him to another Lair space where he meets 3-4 more
demons, etc., and of course most of the time he generates 2-3 more demons
before being transported to the next stack...

| We prefer to have the possibility that you lose your unicorn, etc.  Adds a
| little spice to watching the clock.  

Different strokes.  Watching the clock isn't much fun when there's nothing
you can do about it.  I.e., you want the random encounter anyway, so you take
it, and wow, it's a Unicorn.  But you don't get to use it.  Mucho frustration.
Whereas we don't object to clock-watching to avoid being on Water when the
demons are about to strike.  But anyhow, diff'rent strokes and all that.

| >| 	4) Druids can walk onto the sacred circle.
| 
| >Yep, we added a rule like this too.  At 1st rank (and thereafter), Druids
| >get a spell that lets them transport from anywhere on the Sacred Circle
| >tile into a random stone of the circle.
| 
| I like ours better because I think the ability to teleport out of the 
| Dragon's Lair, for example, or to get near your mentor from anywhere is
| a very powerful spell (about third level, I'd say.)  As to the risks of
| landing on a demon, at 2nd level, druids get demon dispelling, so it doesn't
| really matter much after that, and at 1st level, why handicap them further?

But who said anything about escaping the Dragon's Lair?  Note that, until 4th
Rank, the Druid transport into a Stone works only if he's already on the
Sacred Circle tile.  At 4th Rank he can do it from anywhere, just as in the
original rules.

Also, in our spell-tweaking, Druids don't get Demon Dispelling until 3rd Rank.
They get Animal Summoning at 2nd (which feels more Druidic to us), and Wizards
get Demon Dispelling.

| A few sleaze-guards that I remember:
| 
| 1) You get a pegasus for n movement periods (turns,) not days.  Flying
| to Starcrest and getting a bunch of turns spent flying all over the board
| doesn't work.  

Yep, we made this ruling too.  Ditto for Winged Horses and Events that do
similar things.  Also, we ruled that the ABILITY to enter Star Crest does
not imply PERMISSION.  E.g., a Unicorn can take you there, but they still
won't let you in unless you have an excuse for entering.  That cuts down the
Star Crest frolics a bit.

| 4) If you try to teleport, that's your movement.  You can still get 
| encounters that turn, either where you started (if TP failed) or where
| you ended up (if it succeeded.)

By "encounters" do you mean random encounters?  We rule that if you teleport,
you don't roll movement dice, so you can't have a random encounter (since
that's determined by the second movement die).  And since you're not eligible
for a random encounter, you can't use Animal Summoning either.  That cuts
a little into the power of teleporting, though it's still plenty nifty.

If you teleport onto a new space, you can certainly encounter that space if
there's something to do there.  If you fail to teleport, you usually can't
have an encounter where you are, since you can't encounter the same space
twice in a row.  The exception is at Hamdrel, since she permits multiple
encounters; if you fail to transport, you can meet her again (up to the
limit of three consecutive encounters).

If you do play that movement via teleporting (or for that matter, winged
horses or unicorns) still lets you have random encounters, then maybe I
ought to add the opposite rule to the "rules clarifications" portion of
my reference sheet!
--
--	-- Don Woods.				[*** Generic Disclaimer ***]
--				    ...!sun!woods.eng -or- Woods@Eng.Sun.com