Ye Olde Inn

Goblin-King wrote:The genie has the advantage (if you REALLY want to waste it on discovering a room) that you can point at any room on the board - where PTR is limited to the roll of the red dice.

Wait... Did I screw up here? You got to have a discovered door to have a target for the genie, right. But once a door has been discovered you don't need LoS to it to make the genie open it.

Goblin-King wrote:Gotta join the chorus here. There are several threads on how to improve the wizard. Punishing spellcasting is not the way to go.

The genie has the advantage (if you REALLY want to waste it on discovering a room) that you can point at any room on the board - where PTR is limited to the roll of the red dice.
Speaking of the genie... Has anybody ever created quests where there are optional rooms with locked doors that can only be used by a genie spell?

"Wizard Wards" is one of the quests here... http://forum.yeoldeinn.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=3223&hilit=dungeonsdark. There are three locked doors which must be opened by a Genie or from the other side. If you don't have multiple Genie Spells / PTR spells or a scroll then you cannot get into the bonus treasure room.

I searched for this thread seeking clarity and have ended up watching a can of worms open, that said I have enjoyed the journey!

Pass Through Rock

This spell can be cast on any one Hero, including yourself. That Hero may then move through walls on his next move. He may move through as many walls as his dice roll allows. Caution! There are shaded areas on each Quest Map which indicate solid rock. If a Hero ends his move in one of these areas, he is trapped forever!

I think that the purpose of furniture in the game (apart from its undisputed aesthetic appeal) is to change the shape of a room that is otherwise fixed so “realism” aside I personally don’t allow Heroes to move through furniture in normal play as its purpose is to enhance gameplay by blocking movement. Walls also block movement.

I treat the name of the “Pass Through Rock” spell as thematic, much like the image on some spells and equipment cards, and use the spell description as my guide to its effects, so for me the spell effect is to allow you to pass through walls that usually block movement so I would allow you to also pass through furniture that would usually block movement.

Whilst I agree that wood is not rock, to my mind the HeroQuest world is based on elemental theory, everything is composed of varying proportions of the four elements so wood must have some amount of the earth element and it is the presence of that solid element that prevents a Hero from passing through it, if it was composed solely of air for example then the spell wouldn’t be particularly useful.

The more interesting challenge with this spell for me is around if this spell was originally intended to you to move into undiscovered areas, which the last clause suggests, then why doesn’t it clarify how the “reveal” rules are supposed to work in these circumstances.

If you say that under the influence of this spell the Hero can move through walls (possibly including furniture) but cannot move through unrevealed squares (which incidentally is the simplest resolution to this problem although not particularly satisfying) then it would not be possible for him to end his turn in solid rock and be trapped for ever so why mention an impossible option! The only reason I can think of, and it is tenuous, is that the warning is there to explain why you can't use this spell to travel through solid rock...because it could kill you.

So, if he can move to and through unrevealed/undiscovered squares as part of his movement under the influence of this spell then how do you best handle the revealing, after all and this has been pointed out already, he isn’t blind. As the spell doesn't mention the "reveal" rules, I would assume that they remain the same. As you declare that you are moving through a wall, you pause to allow the Evil Wizard player to place the room contents as usual, that way there is no need to allow or disallow the user to pass through monsters, normal rules apply.

Under normal conditions a Hero stood on a square adjacent to a closed door (a traditional entrance) may choose to open that door which reveals the room contents, even before he enters the room, or even if he decides to wander off in a different direction and never enter the room, presumably he pokes his head through the entrance and takes a gander.

Bearing this in mind I would suggest that a Hero under the influence of a pass-through rock spell must reveal the contents of a room or corridor by simply being in an adjacent square to it and declaring that he is passing through the wall as the wall that would normally prevent such an event from occurring is just another possible entrance for him, in the same way as an open door.

Unfortunately, this results in quite a spoiler event (especially if you combine a potion of speed and the swift wind spell with a good roll then you can reveal a fair proportion of the dungeon and ruin a quest) and potentially leaves monster marooned in a revealed/discovered room behind a closed door that they cannot open. This could be resolved by allowing monsters marooned in this way to open doors, but then they would have to be able to open all doors necessary to reach the Heroes, again a potential Quest spoiler.

One option to resolve this is to go with the Japanese rules and not allow movement through unrevealed/undiscovered squares and use that last clause to justify the restriction as below;

This spell can be cast on any one Hero, including yourself. That Hero may then move through walls and furniture on his next move. He may move through as many walls as his dice roll allows. He can cannot move into undiscovered squares including the shaded areas on each Quest Map which indicate solid rock. If a Hero was to end his move in one of these areas, he would be trapped forever!

Feel free to toggle the furniture piece on or off to suit your preferences

Interestingly this seems to be the interpretation used in the App.

It was a fun discussion... If they are wanting to pass through monsters they need to have Veil of Mist on as well.

Turning the furniture on or off is basically a cheat/debug feature in the new App, not the function of a spell. A room with intangible furniture is like a room with no furniture. Otherwise furniture might as well be stone blocks taking up space.

I mean if you really want to allow heroes to pass through furniture in certain circumstances, you just can. Zargon can make the call to resolve the issue and always could. For me in situations where they give me some plausible action request that is technically outside the rules, I will let them roll for a 50% chance to do it.

Sorry having just reread my last post the final line is completely and unintentionally ambiguous!

My mention of the App was around it seeming to follow the interpretation of the rules in its implementation of the pass through rock spell, in that I think having used that spell a couple of times, it only allows you to pass through walls not solid rock.

Yeah sorry to be needlessly nitpicking. I think some of us (including myself) would-be rules nerds were hoping to get some extra clarification out of it but it was not to be... the app is almost up to par with the rulesbook but has a few quirks left last I heard (only tried it out the one time which was before the latest patch update).

At least one person on the forums flat out interprets Pass Through Rock as only allowing passage through walls (the white lines on the board) but to me I question why even have the "inside solid rock" danger warning if there's no chance of that happening in the first place. The rules aren't spelled out but it does say end their movement there, implying Zargon could warn them "by the way, you're inside solid rock" giving them the chance to turn back, as opposed to just instant death. And passing through single or double block squares with the spell seems perfectly in line with the intentions. Pass Through Rock could be used as a shortcut to get to a specific room sure (hopefully it's a real room and not solid rock) but is also useful for escaping from a situation in which a falling block trap has cut you off from the others (possibly 'forever!').

I think I will go with the version below for my rulebook (I don't dare even utter the phrase "final version")

This spell can be cast on any one Hero, including yourself. That Hero may then move through walls, furniture and fallen block / blocked squares on his next move. He may move through as many such obstacles as his dice roll allows. Caution! He cannot move into undiscovered squares including the shaded areas on each Quest Map which indicate solid rock. If a Hero was to end his move in one of these areas, he would be trapped forever!

Well if Pass Through Rock let's you go through walls and Veil of Mist let's you pass through monsters, neither say anything regarding furniture. Veil of Mist is already underutilized as is, so I wouldn't let Pass Through Rock give heroes the option to move through monsters.
When it comes to furniture I think the options are either that both spells allow a hero to move through them or neither spell does.
Though I completely understand the argument if one wishes to say Pass Through Rock is an Earth spell and wood comes from trees, which grow out of the Earth. But let's not kill Veil of Mist any more then it already is.

Yeah passing through furniture is never officially defined... sometimes furniture moves or disappears in the quest notes but that's it. So it's Zargon's call whether he wants to allow it in certain circumstances or never.

If you want, you could patch it with a general homebrew rule that the Hero pushes the furniture aside as he comes into the room (or any hero already there can move it), if you don't want to say he magically phases through a wooden bookcase or whatever. Or you could just be strict about it and say "sorry, that square is occupied, you shall not pass..."

I always played it as the square is “occupied” by either monster or furniture. If a Hero wants to gamble going through shaded areas, then that’s their choice. Gambling doesn’t always pay off. Hope you rolled high enough to keep going.