AGAINST THE OGRE HORDE discussion

[Kurgan]

It's also possible to ask the designer intention on the Avalon Hill discord. Doug Hopkins (aka WanderingMonster) has been pretty forthcoming with confirming (or clarifying) fan interpretations of the various rules. I'm pretty sure this one was asked but I'd have to do some digging to find it again.

If not, it's probably time to ask him for clarification on these spells!

[HispaZargon]

Sorry I couldn't analyze yet the issue with the rules, but If something is clearly confusing in the AtOH spells, please I encourage somebody of you to also write a post in the Errata thread describing the problem to have it tracked.

[Kurgan]

We have some official clarification on how the ATOH dread spells work after all!

Thank you wallydubs. That is the kind of helpful response I was looking for. The instructions for Mind Burst are very clear in the quest book, but the other two spells less so. It was unclear if the defender had to roll skulls or white shields. It seems from your explanation that “each skull scored” is the difference between both rolls in all the spells, not just Mind Burst.

With this new understanding then, I would argue that with Dominate the attacker would have to roll at least two more skulls than the defender. This would give some purpose to the defender’s dice roll. So if the Bad Guy rolls 3 skulls and the Barbarian rolls 2, the spell should fail according to the same mechanic comparing skulls in the other two spells. So that is how I will play this particular spell, unless the designers actually said the defender’s roll is pointless. I could try and see how the app handles it too, I guess.

Thanks again, for the explaination.

I looked back, and WanderingMonster (aka Avalon Hill lead designer Doug Hopkins) did respond to discussion of these very issues on the Avalon Hill discord. Snapshots of the conversation follow:

Note his response "This was the intent," which one might interpret is only Doug commenting on whether "creatures" and "figures" are the same as saying "heroes, allies, and monsters..." but he goes on to state "Functionally we didn't intend to alter the mechanics of the spells from their original printing."

Hence, however the spells worked in ATOH 1990, is how they work in ATOH 2024, according to AH's intention.