Ye Olde Inn

So we were playing Fortress of the Ogre Lord the other night and there's the one small room full of skeletons and a pit trap.

The Elf was armed with a crossbow and fired the first shot from the secret doorway. The Wizard entered next, as skeletons are no big threat, but he fell into the pit trap. Over the next two turns the Wizard ran out allowing the rest of the heroes to clear out all the undead.
The Elf was standing in the doorway square and drew a Wandering Monster from the treasure deck. The only unoccupied space next to the Elf was the pit trap.
Ok, no big deal, Ogre in a pit, attacks with 1 less attack dice.

But then this happens:
Wizard runs in to assist the Elf and casts his Spell Scroll Ice Bridge over the pit!

This is just a regular pit trap. If this was just a Mummy or Goblin in the pit I'd just reason that they're trapped in the pit with an ice Bridge blocking their escape. But considering the size of the Ogre I'd wager half of him is already out of the pit.

I just reasoned that the Ogre couldn't move as the ice is holding him in place. So I used the rules of Ice Wall, giving the encasing ice 2BP with 6 defense dice and the Ogre can't move until the Ice is broken. He can, however attack adjacent targets in the meantime.

I'm just curious to see how other players might play this situation.

I would rule the spell fails as the space is occupied and return the card to the player.

Ice Bridge slices the Ogre in half... the bottom half is trapped, while the upper half loses 1 body point and has only half movement. Also, other monsters may pass through him now since he's smaller.

You think I'm joking? Okay I am, but this situation is so wild and funny I had to think of something to honor it.

I wouldn't be in this situation because we haven't played the expansion with those spells yet. If I recall, Wizards of Morcar comes after Against the Ogre Horde.

This particular situation wouldn't normally arise unless you happen to play the quests in that order (the spell scrolls never appear in the EU expansions, only NA). Some oddities exist when using say, the Phoenix conversions of these quests that put them all under the same ruleset (and you could be playing them in any order).

However, the general thought should still apply because Ogres also exist in EQP, and the spell could be used there, so long as there happens to be a pit within reach of any of these (even more powerful than ATOH) Ogres. After all, you could have played Frozen Horror first and saved the scroll (or continued to use it in your deck as an "unlock" perhaps and happened to draw it later on in your adventures).

Kurgan wrote:Ice Bridge slices the Ogre in half... the bottom half is trapped, while the upper half loses 1 Body Mind Point and has only half movement. Also, other monsters may pass through him now since he's smaller.

You think I'm joking? Okay I am, but this situation is so wild and funny I had to think of something to honor it.

Corrected it for you

I forget, dibt traps not affect monsters?

Monsters don't trigger them, but a monster voluntarily entering a sprung pit, for example, while not taking damage like a hero would, does attack and defend with one less while occupying that square. The oddball situation above is another question!

I think the "real answer" would be that if a monster is in a pit, your hero can fall into the pit with the monster as well (one of the few times two figures can "occupy the same square." And the person wanting to put the bridge over the pit simply isn't allowed to do it.