WotR - Is errated Heart of the Fane making sense?


Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion


I'm starting AD4 and I'm looking at the errated cards. I feel there's a mistake in the correction made to the villain Heart of the Fane.

Original Heart of the Fane's last power wrote:
If undefeated, and if the location Grinder is open, the villain does not escape; instead, shuffle this card into the Grinder's location deck, and all characters there are moved to a random other location

then it's been corrected to change "is open" by "has not been banished and is not temporarily closed":

FAQ about Heart of the Fane wrote:

Q:Heart of the Fane says "If undefeated, and if the location Grinder is open, the villain does not escape." What if the Grinder is temporarily closed?

A:Normally, temporarily closing a location doesn't do anything other than prevent the villain from escaping to that location, but we do want this power to apply when the Grinder is temporarily closed.

Resolution: On the villain Heart of the Fane, change "if the location Grinder is open" to "if the location Grinder has not been banished and is not temporarily closed".

As I understand it, the correction made to Heart of the Fane should have been: "change "if the location Grinder is open" to "has not been banished" period.

Adding "and is not temporarily closed" to the correction completly defeats the purpose of having "this power to apply when the Grinder is temporarily closed" and is exactly te same thing as saying that the location is open, but it just uses more words...

I've read the whole thing 5 times just to make sure I was not pointing out a mistake in a correction of an error... I hope I'm right....


MuffinB wrote:
I'm starting AD4 and I'm looking at the errated cards. I feel there's a mistake in the correction made to the villain Heart of the Fane...

Yours was not the only eyebrow raised by this, as we questioned the FAQ back in October here:

http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lhwb&page=2?Whos-the-Outsider-Now# discuss

We're still waiting for Vic to "get back to us", so this thread might serve as a good reminder (I guess the issue fell into obscurity since it was first raised in the Blog and not the forums).


Its kind of confusingly worded, but normally a power that said "If [LOCATION] is open" would ONLY apply if that location was not permanently closed. He's saying he wants the power on the card to apply if it is permanently closed (or banished in this case) or temporarily closed. In this case, the result of the power applying is that Heart of the Fane escapes rather than going straight to The Grinder.

Without the errata, temporarily closing The Grinder is completely pointless as Heart of the Fane would always just go straight there until you permanently close it.


I don't think temporarily closing the Grinder is pointless. Let's say you encounter Heart of Fane at another location than the Grinder, it's still usefull to have someone temporarily close the Grinder, because if you manage to defeat Heart of Fane, things go as they usually do, and you would see if there's an open location for the villain to escape. In that case, you'll be happy if someone temp closed the Grinder.

That part has nothing to do with the errata (whatever it is), since Heart of Fane's last power only triggers when he's undefeated.

The way I see it is: When you defeat Heat of Fire, it behaves like any other normal villain. But when you fail to defeat it, the intention was to have it automatically *hide* in the Grinder. i.e. Defeated = normal escape; Undefeated = The Grinder (unless it is banished, then it's a normal escape)

I understand that the errata was meant to see this power in application even if the Grinder was temporarily closed. Thing is that's not what "Resolution" in the FAQ says...


It is what the resolution says.

Without the errata: You fail to defeat HoF and if the Grinder is not yet banished, the HoF goes there. The HoF did not care if you temp-closed it or not, as powers that trigger based on closed locations do not trigger on temp-closed locations (otherwise that scenario with the Harvester would have been nearly impossible).

Post-resolution: You fail to defeat HoF and if you temp-closed the Grinder, HoF escapes like normal instead of going to the Grinder. They modified the trigger so that the power now applies based on temp-closure.

If they wanted HoF to always go to the Grinder if undefeated, they didn't need to issue any errata.


nondeskript wrote:
If they wanted HoF to always go to the Grinder if undefeated, they didn't need to issue any errata.

Are you suggesting that a temporarily-closed location counts as an open location?

My understanding is that a "temporarily-closed location" is not an "open location", and when in thee FAQ it said : "Normally, temporarily closing a location doesn't do anything other than prevent the villain from escaping to that location, but we do want this power to apply when the Grinder is temporarily closed." it meant they wanted the HoF to go to the Grinder even if it was temp-closed...


"This power" that is referred to is the Heart of the Fane's power that prevents the undefeated villain from escaping. They want the Heart of the Fane's power to care about the Grinder being temporarily closed, namely to prevent the undefeated undefeated villain from going to the Grinder via that power.

A temporarily closed location only does one this: prevent a villain from escaping there.

WotR Rulebook p16 wrote:
Temporarily closing a location only prevents the villain from escaping there during this encounter; it does not trigger any of the other effects of closing a location.

A temporarily closed location counts as open for anything that cares about open locations, escape for the escaping villain.


Does a temporarily closed location count as closed for anything that cares about closed locations? Can I play Safe Harbor on the temporarily closed side of the Abyssal Rift? Er... should I have been able to play Safe Harbor on the temporarily closed side of the Abyssal Rift?


Rebel Song wrote:
Does a temporarily closed location count as closed for anything that cares about closed locations? Can I play Safe Harbor on the temporarily closed side of the Abyssal Rift? Er... should I have been able to play Safe Harbor on the temporarily closed side of the Abyssal Rift?

I am surprised you are asking this with the rulebook quote right there in Hawk's post preceding yours. A temporarily closed location is not closed in any way,shape or form, except that the villain can't escape there. You can't play Safe Harbor on the Abyssal Rift.


We took the habit to not say "temp closing a location" when a villain is encountered but "guarding a location".
Not using the word "close/closed/closing" avoids many confusions.


I'm still amazed by the fact that a temporarily closed location, is an open location.

I find this super intuitive!!! ..... . . . . . of course, this was sarcasm.

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder Adventure Card Game / Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion / WotR - Is errated Heart of the Fane making sense? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion