TRAINING QUEST Rogar's Hall

[wallydubbs]

Yeah, too bad about the fireburst traps on the second play-though then, huh...?

What Fireburst trap?

[Oftkilted]

Yeah, too bad about the fireburst traps on the second play-though then, huh...?

What Fireburst trap?

“The one that you didn’t see when you snuck a look at the map in advance.” so says the evil Wizard.... “Muhahahahahahaha ...”

[lestodante]

Unless you've got a Pixie with you... right?

Good point!!
Also on a second play the heroes already know about the secret passage and a wizard may use pass through rock to get into the corridor and open the passage for the others

/facepalm ... No, because you can’t open the door from the center room.

G. This secret door can only be found by searching for secret doors in the corridor.

And the Wizard is likely to get smacked by the multiple monsters in the passage because they can’t search to open the door... and doesn’t have a pixie.

Facepalm???
It says it can't be FOUND, not that it can't be OPENED from the other side. I don't try to open what I haven't found yet.
I guess the Pixie can reveal it (if a Druid character is in play). If not...: the Wizard (or Elf) can cast the Pass Through Rock spell on the Barbarian, the Barbarian go to the corridor and slay the monsters, then he can search and open the secret door! Not that there is a valid reason to do so, but it is an option. The purpose of this paassge is to allow heroes to come back to the stairs faster and is hidden to avoid they meet the gargoyle and room F too early (Mentor will disappear in that case), so it will be more difficult.
If all Heroes die too early (even with Mentor's help) because they are newbies, I guess you may allow them to re-play the quest. Usually I don't skip to the next quest if everyone died in the previous one.
This is a training quest, so it can be played as many time as you want until you feel ready to start (especially if you play with kids, it is helpful for them to "learn from your defeat"
I remember the first time I tried to play with my nephew, he didn't want to meet a monster because afraid to die. And he refused to finish the quest.

[wallydubbs]

This is a training quest, so it can be played as many time as you want until you feel ready to start (especially if you play with kids, it is helpful for them to "learn from your defeat"

I think that's part of the problem, though. Learning from defeat is valid when it comes down to the player's fault for separating him/herself from the group or making a stupid move, like ending in stone with Pass Through Rock, or opening a door when you haven't cleared the previous room.

This quest, however, is designed so you will fail with no fault of your own. And I do think it would dissuade a new player, because if they think all other quests will be this hard, then what's the point? Though, yes, all quests aren't nearly this difficult, but they don't necessarily know that. So presenting this for first experience is something I'd highly advise against.

[Oftkilted]

Facepalm???
It says it can't be FOUND, not that it can't be OPENED from the other side. I don't try to open what I haven't found yet.
I guess the Pixie can reveal it (if a Druid character is in play). If not...: the Wizard (or Elf) can cast the Pass Through Rock spell on the Barbarian, the Barbarian go to the corridor and slay the monsters, then he can search and open the secret door! Not that there is a valid reason to do so, but it is an option. The purpose of this paassge is to allow heroes to come back to the stairs faster and is hidden to avoid they meet the gargoyle and room F too early (Mentor will disappear in that case), so it will be more difficult.

The pixie “can only reveal secret doors in areas that you can see.” My take on the spell is that the pixie is revealing the sliding panel or pivoting brick needed to open the door. (Or whatever the trigger mechanism heroes needed to open the door.)
Because the secret door access panel is on the other side of the wall, and the opening mechanism location that the heroes need to use is not visible to the Druid the pixie would reveal nothing.

So the reason that the door can’t be found when in the center room is that there is no opening mechanism on that side of the wall.

[lestodante]

Pixie is not revealing traps that you can see, but traps situated in LOCATION you can see. You can see the room ewhere you are in and the door is there too.
it is not an electronic mechanism, just a pushable wall. But it can be ok to set some kind of block from the other side of the wall. So even if revealed it can't be open from one side.

[Oftkilted]

There are no rules in the core game to address a ‘secret door that you can’t open’. If a secret door is discovered a hero would move next to it and be able to open it.

According to the rule book “Secret doors are hidden portals that cannot be seen when you, as a Hero, “look” into a room or down a corridor. These doors are concealed in a variety of ways, including sliding panels and pivoting bricks. You will not discover a secret door unless you search for one.”

The rules on the secret door in the corridor state “This secret door can only be found by searching for secret doors in the corridor.”

Your argument would imply that the pixie can potentially find traps and secret doors that would be otherwise ‘unfindable’ by players. (IE Magic Traps, or wandering monster traps that are only found moving over a square, or by searching in a location on the map that would reveal nothing per the location description)

My personal take would be that ‘if a player can’t discover or detect the trap or secret door by searching for themselves that a pixie wouldn’t be able to reveal it to the players.’

Here, in that center room, they wouldn’t be able to discover it because the ‘secret brick to unlock the door’ or the ‘sliding panel to open the secret door’ or ‘other form of concealment’ isn’t accessible/findable from that side. The pixie merely has really good eyesight and can show the heroes the opening mechanism for the door or that a particular spot that is potentially hazardous. Obviously some secret doors such as the ones that can be found from either side of the door have an opening mechanism on both sides.

That being said, the player running as the Evil Wizard can interpret the map and rules surrounding the map, and how the spells of the heroes interact with the map as they see fit.

As for the “this isn’t an electronic lock” ... I’m a fan of the statement “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Perhaps this secret door is a special secret door that is hidden by a spell and the ‘secret’ is a magical brick that when pressed unlocks and opens the secret door, but that brick can only be found from within the corridor?

Either way, setting secret doors as only findable from one side of the door is an interesting mechanism to use when map making. It allows “shortcuts” by heroes once they’ve completed a given area so they can move forward to finish the quest faster. It reminds me of ‘teleport mechanisms’ in video games or paths that allow heroes to bypass a long walk back when a game mission begins and ends in the same location.

[lestodante]

It make sense, there can be a lot of interpretations on this. I would like to give that pixie spell some good use of it, this is why I prefer to "interpretate" in the way I described before.
I often use secret doors that can be opend ONLY from one side in my custom quest, but I specify this appositely (blocked by a monter, a furniture or a rock from the other side)..

[whitebeard]

Just played through this quest. I took the message from Mentor very seriously and pulled out all of the appropriate tactics. And with my group of beginner heroes made it through using only 1 of mentor's potions.

Short Summary:
- Knowing that Mentor had the Potions of Healing from the treasure deck, the heroes never searched for treasure in rooms unless they contained a treasure chest per the quest objective. Fearing any additional enemies might be the factor that kills us.
- I did not look at the map in advance and I suppose I got lucky choosing to open the door with the 2 Orcs and continue in that direction?
- The Elf took the water spells, and the wizard cast stone skin on himself on the first turn.
- On Zargon's first turn the heroes were immediately ambushed by the 4 orcs from behind after stacking the door with the 2 Orcs in the hallway. The wizard immediately lost his Stone Skin AND the elf took a few hits.
- When the ambush was all over, the elf had just 1 body point and continued that way until he was killed by a goblin and revived by Mentor (scoring only 1 BP on a red die!
- For the rest of the game, the dwarf seemed to roll 2 shields in defense just about every time he needed them! He also disarmed the 2 pit traps we encountered.
- The heroes then opened the door to the room with 3 fimir (abominations) and immediately retreated back to the main room where they stacked the corridor for a 3 way ambush. The fimir are not stupid and were able to rotate their attacks so that they got 2 attacks to the heroes 3. This was an efficient exchange with the barbarian getting knocked down to 5 body points.
- The next room held the Wizard's staff which would allow the Wizard to participate in more combat. And the heroes continued into the back hallway.
- The wizard used Veil of Mist to allow the barbarian to attack the hallway fimir from the back but it ended up not mattering as the dwarf scored a great hit.
- The Chaos Warrior was dropped by the barbarian and a Wizard Fireball and the heroes continued all the way around the outside of the board to fight the Chaos warrior guarding the second treasure chest. With 4 heroes surrounding him, he went down fast and no spells were used.
- This 2nd treasure was the Spirit Blade which gave the dwarf 3 combat dice! Yay!
- Sensing a symmetry in the map, the heroes did not exit through the secret door and instead backtracked to the paths which led to the Gargoyle. The Tempest spell stopped him (but he did cast Fear on the elf who did not overcome it before leaving the dungeon, but he did use his healing spell to bring himself back to 5 BP for the first time since leaving the main room). Ultimately the gargoyle was felled at the very end of the second full turn of attacks by the Dwarf... So he never got to attack.
- When mentor left (taking 2 potions with him!), we did the smart thing and backtracked through the dungeon so as not to encounter any monsters. Mentor basically told us we were going to die, and that didn't happen... I feel cheated. Mission accomplished!

[Kurgan]

So a few more rule clarifications from re-reading the Instruction booklet.

In the EU version, you can open Secret doors from EITHER SIDE. NA version makes no such clarification.

In the NA version, you can search for secret doors as long as no monsters are VISIBLE TO YOU (in the NA version, "visible" means "line of sight") but it specifically says Treasure searches require the room be "not inhabited by monsters" (explicitly says no searching for Treasure in corridors.. this was only something you could do in the Premiere Edition).

I also missed that indeed all four Heroes can each search a room ONCE for Treasure in the NA version. In the past I played either unlimited searches or each room got searched once (much easier to keep track of). Oops.

Treasure deck gets shuffled before each Quest (which is how we always played it). It is also implied they are shuffled before each draw too. The EU version says you shuffle each time a bad card is returned. It says "random card" which could mean top card (as in EU version) or could mean "pick a card, any card" from the deck, I suppose.

It will be interesting to see how the NA rules are interpreted this time, I'm guessing more or less verbatim.

After all these years I realize now you could have a sneaky way to protect yourself from Wandering Monsters. Position yourself in the room such that you are boxed in, so there are no open squares for a Monster to attack you. So you need some Heroes to be there. Remember, the Wandering Monster only attacks the searcher this turn. So yes, still be ready for the attack on Zargon's turn, but the Searcher can be defended! You don't have to be right next to a chest to search it in the NA rules, but you can use furniture to your advantage, to further block possible Wandering Monster attacks. Cover!

Edit: As I read the NA rules, when you open a door, everything is revealed in the room. So what is the point of "looking through the doorway"? I guess just to see if you can target an enemy with your ranged weapon or spell (or a friendly with your spell).