Disintegrate in Into the Runeforge

[Gedd]

Here's the setup, my wife (Kyra) and I (Seoni) are in AP5, Into the Runeforge. We're on the next to the last open location, Halls of Wrath. We've encountered the henchman in the deck several times, but have been unable to close the location because neither of us has the cards (or luck) to get by the Intelligence check. Then I draw Disintegrate.

On my next turn, I encounter the henchman again and this time I use Disintegrate to successfully defeat her, but I fail the closing check. Now the scenario says, "if you defeat a henchman, but fail to close the location, shuffle the henchman back into the location deck" but Disintegrate says "If you defeat a non-villain monster when playing this spell, banish that monster, even if it would otherwise be undefeated."

At this point we're getting a bit frustrated at getting hung up on the location closing *and* having to keep fighting the same henchman over and over, so I made the ruling that the Disintegrate card took precedence after doing a Google search for this particular circumstance and finding no posts on the topic. I took a look through the rulebook today and came across the Golden Rule, which basically states scenario cards take precedence over player cards when there's a conflict, but the wording of Disintegrate almost seems specially phrased ("even if it would otherwise be undefeated") to deal with this kind of situation. So what's correct?

[csouth154]

The Golden Rule hierarchy places scenario cards above boons, so the instructions on the scenario card win.

[jones314]

I think Disintegrate banishes the defeated monster (so back to the box) and thus not available to be shuffled back in to the location. But I could be wrong.

[csouth154]

jones314 wrote:

I think Disintegrate banishes the defeated monster (so back to the box) and thus not available to be shuffled back in to the location. But I could be wrong.

No, the scenario card gives an instruction that conflicts with the boon (spell), so you follow the scenario instruction.

[csouth154]

Actually, there really is no conflict. The scenario card deals with what to do with a defeated henchman. The Disintegrate spell has no special powers regarding defeated monsters. Rather, it allows you to banish a non-villain monster if you succeed at all checks to defeat but an instruction on the card keeps it from being considered defeated.

What would really be a pickle is if the henchman was considered undefeated after a successful check to defeat. In that case, it would probably be banished, because Disintigrate does not say to consider the monster defeated, it just says to banish it. Any henchman that is considered defeated would HAVE to be subject to the scenario rule, but a henchman that is undefeated but banished anyway because of Disintegrate would probably have to be banished...

[DirkSJ]

Gedd wrote:

We've encountered the henchman in the deck several times, but have been unable to close the location because neither of us has the cards (or luck) to get by the Intelligence check.

It's very important in the later decks to have the blessing that gives 2 dice on close location attempts if you are running a small party with weaknesses on certain stats.

I would consider rerunning some prior high blessing adventures to get those or rerun something that lets you banish out a blessing and make sure not to acquire any new ones so you can go to the box for it.

You should be fine with one of those and one random blessing from the other player.

[Gedd]

Thanks for the info. I think no matter what ruling I would have come up with, it went against the spirit of the scenario, but thought I would check in case the spell was just *that* powerful in this case.

DirkSJ wrote:

It's very important in the later decks to have the blessing that gives 2 dice on close location attempts if you are running a small party with weaknesses on certain stats.

Thanks for the tip. Kyra actually had one of those blessings in her deck, but it took a bit for it to get into her hand (after 3 prior attempts I think). Between that blessing and me (Seoni) playing a blessing of Pharasma with the feat that lets you add a d12 instead of the normal die, we did make it by the check (although I think we only beat it by a few, was a bad dice night).

[ryric]

I would also see it as Disintegrate not having an effect - it's not that the henchman is undefeated, but rather that defeated henchmen are shuffled back into their location deck.

I had a heck of a time with that scenario as solo Merisiel (d4 Int). Even with the Blessing of Gozreh and the +2 to close locations power it took me about 7 attempts to close it, spread over two runs at the scenario.

[Vic Wertz]

If you want more fun with this concept, consider disintegrating Jorgenfist Stone Giant in Jorgenfist.

You defeat him with Disintegrate, and:
A) the scenario says if he's defeated and you roll a 1, he's undefeated;
B) he himself says that if he's defeated, you get to attempt to close the location;
C) the spell says if he's defeated, he's banished;

A doesn't actually contradict B or C, so the golden rule is never invoked—instead, we just have Schroedinger's cat in a box, and the encounter cannot resolve until you do A. If you roll a 1, B and C no longer apply, so that's easy. And if you don't roll a 1, well, B and C don't contradict either, so you do them both, and the order doesn't matter. Meaning he's banished.

These are the kinds of discussions that your rules questions make us have on a regular basis.

[Mike Selinker]

Vic Wertz wrote:

If you want more fun with this concept, consider disintegrating Jorgenfist Stone Giant in Jorgenfist.

You defeat him with Disintegrate, and:
A) the scenario says if he's defeated and you roll a 1, he's undefeated;
B) he himself says that if he's defeated, you get to attempt to close the location;
C) the spell says if he's defeated, he's banished;

A doesn't actually contradict B or C, so the golden rule is never invoked—instead, we just have Schroedinger's cat in a box, and the encounter cannot resolve until you do A. If you roll a 1, B and C no longer apply, so that's easy. And if you don't roll a 1, well, B and C don't contradict either, so you do them both, and the order doesn't matter. Meaning he's banished.

These are the kinds of discussions that your rules questions make us have on a regular basis.

I liked this discussion very much.

[mlvanbie]

Vic Wertz wrote:

If you want more fun with this concept, consider disintegrating Jorgenfist Stone Giant in Jorgenfist.

You defeat him with Disintegrate, and:
A) the scenario says if he's defeated and you roll a 1, he's undefeated;
B) he himself says that if he's defeated, you get to attempt to close the location;
C) the spell says if he's defeated, he's banished;

A doesn't actually contradict B or C, so the golden rule is never invoked—instead, we just have Schroedinger's cat in a box, and the encounter cannot resolve until you do A. If you roll a 1, B and C no longer apply, so that's easy. And if you don't roll a 1, well, B and C don't contradict either, so you do them both, and the order doesn't matter. Meaning he's banished.

These are the kinds of discussions that your rules questions make us have on a regular basis.

Wouldn't A be an example of 'defeat[ed] ... but even if it would otherwise be undefeated'? C appears to cover all the eventualities of A since they trigger on the same condition and C explicitly mentions the exception that A might create. The golden rule is the only thing that orders choices in times of conflict (other than player preference).

Why would a player not assume that Disintegrate is supposed to deal with annoying critters that pop back from near-death, as opposed to just 'must have trait T' or 'must defeat by at least X'. The golden rule allows the Disintegrate to overrule the banes but not the scenario rules. However, it isn't clear that Disintegrate is ever in conflict with A, in that it seems to describe exactly that situation and tells you to banish the card.

[Vic Wertz]

Jorgenfist does *not* say "If a monster with the Giant trait is defeated, roll 1d6. On a 1, the monster is undefeated." It says "If you *would* defeat a monster with the Giant trait, roll 1d6. On a 1, the monster is undefeated."

We use "would" when we're talking about things that don't actually happen or, in this case, *may* not actually happen. (See this post for more on that.) He is neither defeated nor undefeated until you roll the die; if you roll a 1, he was never defeated, so the banishing part of Disintegrate never comes into play.