Spike & Amulet of Retribution: Conclusion?

[donnbobhardy]

I remember seeing several threads about Spike and the Amulet of Retribution, but I can't find them anymore. I think my forum settings remove old threads from view.

Anyway, at the end of my last play session (2-player), my opponent bought an Amulet of Retribution for his Spike and I was wondering if there was ever an official ruling, or a "best" house rule or anything. I'm not sure how he'll take me nerfing his combo, since he's already mad at me for telling him that the Boost that he bought after the 1st scenario that gets used with Bow attacks is only good for Attacks with Bows and not attacks that roll the bow symbol on the dice.

 

[zwergfell]

How is the English text of the Amulet of Retribution?
I have the German version of the game and there the translation says: The attacker suffers a wound for every blocked hit. I think that's not so powerfull...

 

[odinsgrandson]

How is the English text of the Amulet of Retribution?
I have the German version of the game and there the translation says: The attacker suffers a wound for every blocked hit. I think that's not so powerfull...

At level 2, when you can first get the Amulet, it isn't a big deal. The trouble is, it scales up super well, and by the last scenario, it is easily the most powerful object on the board.

Basically, the character who has the amulet gets all of the armor buffs the guild has, and walks around making monsters off themselves. We didn't have Spike in my last campaign, but my Lord Fang got up to 18 defense dice, and everyone else had to watch me walk around making monsters take free strikes.

He could be far more efficient than any other character on the table (he could kill any monster without actually using an action to take an attack, and often killed many in one turn). And this is when we were at the point where monsters were super tough, and took most heroes two attacks to kill.

On top of that, his turn would take forever, since he was making so many rolls with so many dice.


The Amulet is just broken. Our group's solution was to destroy the card and never speak of it again. That might be your solution if you play through the whole campaign with him.

 

[zwergfell]

Thank you for the info. But could you poste the english text of the Amulet, please.
Because I don't really understand the OP with the german text. It doesn't matter if you have 100 defence rolls - the monster could get at most as many wounds as the monster rolled hits... (the monster gets only wounds for BLOCKED HITs).

 

[donnbobhardy]

Yes, but most monsters roll almost as many dice as they have hitpoints. This gives the bearer of the Amulet several free attacks per turn that at least have the potential of killing a monster. Not to mention the fact that with three movement points, you could trigger three Guard Reactions and a Payback Reaction against a single monster in a turn. And if you're in an area that is dense with monsters, having 4 or 5 monsters attack you for each movement space that you take can cause a lot of kills without doing anything except move. Then, if you add to that Spike's ability, which does NOT cap but only triggers on crits... are you starting to see the problem yet?

 

[rrrrupp]

We finished our first campaign and are now starting our second.

We added a single house rule for our second campaign. The amulet of retribution only works on crits instead of all saves.

 

[Apolyon]

My house rule for both Spike and the amulet, is that to activate the power you must self inflict a wound. This way you have to decide when to activate and when not. It also scales pretty good, so at higher levels you can activate them more often, but not unlimited.

 

[zwergfell]

are you starting to see the problem yet?

...yes, now I see it. Thank you for the info!

The amulet of retribution only works on crits instead of all saves.

I think that's a very good idea. But the amulet is very rare and expensive and after looking through the upgrade equipment IMO it could be fair if the crit-rule only applies in the 5th and 6th scenario because only then there is the possibility to have many many defense dice?!

 

[odinsgrandson]

I think that's a very good idea. But the amulet is very rare and expensive and after looking through the upgrade equipment IMO it could be fair if the crit-rule only applies in the 5th and 6th scenario because only then there is the possibility to have many many defense dice?!

The Amulet is totally fine when it is low-level gear. The trouble is absolutely when it come up later (at first, people just think twice about attacking you, and you have a chance to off the monster that you almost killed with your attack).

The second large problem that we had was the length of time that the character's turn took. Because he had to roll his stupid huge pool of dice every time he walked past a monster, and no one else at the table was having any fun with watching the futility of those monster attacks. The 'crits instead of all saves' might help that out a bit, but you might still have a character who is trying to maximize the free strikes the boss gets against him (and that hurts game flow pretty bad).

 

[Arydis]

Nerfing the item does complicate play with non-group members - you could key it to a number of things, once per activation, exhaust, only on crits, or up to the number of hits, but that interpretation only holds within the group.

Removing the item only adds the issue of having less than 24 cards for the level 2 draws (if you don't have any expansions). In future expansions, the thing I want to see most is additional item cards, or more interesting ways to distribute them.

 

[Carrots]

My plan is to house rule it a boost card, so that it gets exhausted. So it's still quite good, but no longer game breaking.

 

[zwergfell]

The second large problem that we had was the length of time that the character's turn took. Because he had to roll his stupid huge pool of dice every time he walked past a monster, and no one else at the table was having any fun with watching the futility of those monster attacks. The 'crits instead of all saves' might help that out a bit, but you might still have a character who is trying to maximize the free strikes the boss gets against him (and that hurts game flow pretty bad).

...so what's about limiting the defense dice (as the only houserule)?! But how many...? 10 or 12 (double of the hardware)?

My plan is to house rule it a boost card, so that it gets exhausted. So it's still quite good, but no longer game breaking.

...and what to do with Spike?!

 

[Carrots]

...and what to do with Spike?!

House rule to make his ability an exhaustible power too. Spike uses it, kills whatever attacked him, and you place a guild token on the ability so he can't use it again until he rests or drinks a refreshing potion.

 

[hithero]

Dealing with it?
Queen of Thieves can kill Spike without attacking.
There is equipment that does not allow a defence roll.
Umm.. thats about it from me.

 

[joakim.backryd]

Dealing with it?
Queen of Thieves can kill Spike without attacking.
There is equipment that does not allow a defence roll.
Umm.. thats about it from me.

true enough, but i don't think that most people feels that the problem is when another player tries to kill Spike [or model with amulet], that can be dealt with without to much problem

i think most people see a problem when Spike [or the model with amulet, or Spike with the amulet] uses their movement to kill 3+ monsters in a single turn [and get gold for the kills and completing quests]

 

[rrrrupp]

Another possible houserule could be to make monster attacks when you move past them optional.

 

[jak7890]

My method of dealing with it would be to tell the player controlling the monster to just not Attack. I'd have to go back and look at the guard reaction rules, but I know that for payback reactions the attack is optional and up to the player on the right. Then Magic the amulet wearer to death with Seth.

EDIT: Whooops, nope, not written as optional. I guess you could house rule it as optional as suggested above or house rule it as AmRet only works against heroes.

 

[rrrrupp]

I don't think it would break the game if you made the guard reactions optional. Personally, I was surprised to find in the rules that payback attacks ARE optional but guard reactions weren't. I wonder why they were designed that way.

 

[Arydis]

I think payback reactions are optional because it allows the controlling player greater tactical options when reacting instead of having to respond with a move forward and attack. Maybe this change was done later when the original intent was to have both as mandatory and the guard rule just remained so?

 

[Untoldmyth]

I've had this problem before so we made it a house rule that it has to be exhausted.