Goblin difficulty increase

[Richard Edwards]

To borrow a question I also have from BGG:

"On the Scenario card for Approach to Thistletop it says that the difficulty to defeat goblins is increased by 1d4. Does that mean you roll a d4 at the beginning of the scenario (say, getting a result of 3) and then all goblins are +3, or does it mean you roll each time you encounter a goblin? I think probably the latter but it's a bit unclear.
Thanks!"

[Eric W]

I roll the d4 each time I encounter a goblin.

[ralsar]

I rolled each time as well. It works better that way.

[Richard Edwards]

I wonder what the designer's intent was? And what the official FAQ will say?

[Thazar]

For the most part whenever the game tells you to roll a die... they tell you to roll it for each player affected.( see below). I would say each character would be affected each time they face a goblin... so many rolls during the game and not just one.

Page six rule book sidebar: If a card describes a die roll that affects multiple characters (for example, if it says that each character at a location takes 1d4 damage), roll separately for each character.

[Eric W]

Richard Edwards wrote:

I wonder what the designer's intent was? And what the official FAQ will say?

I can't speak for the Mike or his team, but from a design point of view rolling for every encounter makes the scenario more predictable and less swingy. For example, if you roll just once, there's 25% chance that scenario will break hard (+4 difficulty), whereas if you roll for every encounter, there's less than a 0.1% chance of that happening (with four pcs, six locations, and five goblin villain/henchmen; 0.25^5 = 0.00098 chance to get five fours.) This added predictability lets the game designers better tune the scenario to its appropriate difficulty (or, to use rpg jargon, set the CR of the scenario.)

[J.R. Farrington, Esq.]

Roll each time.

If for no other reason than it would suck to roll a 4 in an early turn and have that screw everyone the rest of the game.

[Mike Selinker]

Roll each time. This applies to just about everything in the game.

[Richard Edwards]

Thanks!