We encountered a Monster in the Closet, and my wife and friends seem to think the card is "backwards". I tend to agree, so I wanted to get some clarification.
Logic would say that if you FAIL the barrier's check, you'd have to fight a monster. And it seems counter-intuitive to have to fight a monster when you succeed at the barrier's check.
Confusion aside; based on the card's wording, I think these are the possible outcomes. Please correct me if I have this wrong:
1. You fail the barrier's check. Nothing happens. Shuffle the barrier back into the location deck.
2. You succeed the barrier's check. Evade or fail to defeat the summoned monster. Shuffle the barrier into the location deck.
3. You succeed the barrier's check. The summoned monster is defeated. Banish the summoned monster AND the barrier.
Option one seems like the least risky outcome, where you might actually want to fail on a bane's check. The worst that happens on failing is you don't clear a card from the deck.
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The barrier represents a situation where a goblin is hiding in a hole inside a closet. If you fail the Perception check, the goblin is still there, you just haven't seen him. If you come back to the closet later, you'll still need to find and kill him. If you succeed, then you need to kill the goblin otherwise, there'll still be a goblin hiding in the closet the next time you come by.
Chief Technical Officer
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Mike told me about this card before I actually saw it, and he did it in the form of a little play that went something like this:
Kid: Aiee! Scary monster in my closet! Help!
Heroic Fighter (failing Perception check): There's no monster in your closet, kid. Go back to bed.
Kid: Aiee! Scary monster in my closet! Help!
Heroic Fighter (succeeding at Perception check): Ohhhh... that monster. Stand back, kid—I'll take care of it!
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Chief Technical Officer
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While we're at it, here's the Monster in the Closet encounter from the RPG:
Alergast and Amele Barett are a typical Sandpoint family, with two children (little Aeren and baby Verah) and a loyal family dog named Petal. They were present at the Swallowtail Festival, where Aeren saw a goblin light a cat on fire and then caper around the burning remains—the poor boy really hasn’t been the same since. Every night, his howls of terror send Petal into a barking fit, and when his parents investigate, Aeren claims a goblin came out of his closet. Alergast checked the closet dutifully but found nothing, and ever since, the kid’s complaints about the “closet goblin” have grown more and more tiresome to his parents. Yesterday, Alergast threatened to make Aeren sleep in the woodshed if he couldn’t learn to “be a man” and sleep through an entire night without crying and telling stories.
All of this is told to the PCs by a tearful Amele Barett several evenings after the goblin raid; she approaches the PCs in a panic, clutching baby Verah to her chest with one hand and clinging to the back of Aeren’s shirt with the other. She goes on to say that last night Alergast didn’t go to soothe Aeren when he had his night terrors. But then, a few moments later, they heard poor Petal cry out in pain and Aeren’s screams turn shrill. This time Aeren wasn’t just having nightmares. Amele pauses, takes a breath, and then shows the PCs Aeren’s arms. They’re covered with fresh goblin bites.
When Alergast burst into the room, he found a goblin crouched on his son’s chest. Petal was dead, a knife deep in his ear, and the goblin was frantically trying to chew off Aeren’s arm. Alergast attacked the goblin and chased it back into the closet, where it clambered into a hole it had cleverly hidden under an old fur. Alergast flew into a rage, and as he started tearing apart the closet in an attempt to get at the goblin, Amele panicked and fled the house with her children to seek out the PCs for aid.
CREATURE: The goblin in the Barett house is a commando named Gresgurt who sneaked into the building after the raid turned sour. He found a loose floorboard in the closet, frantically hacked an opening large enough for him to fit into the enclosed crawl space under the house, and pulled a fur over the hole to hide it. He only intended to stay there for a few hours until things died down outside, then planned on sneaking out of town, but the exhaustion of the raid caught up with him and he fell asleep. When he woke the next night and tried to sneak out, he woke Petal and Aeren. As frightened by the dog as the kid was of him, Gresgurt fled back into the crawl space, visions of the hateful and frightening dog filling his little goblin mind. It seemed like every time Gresgurt peeked out, that dog was there, ready to bark. Unable to escape for fear of the dog, Gresgurt subsisted on spiders and worms plucked from the dirt floor of the small crawl space for days, and over those days, his fear turned to anger. His driving desire shifted from escape to a burning need to kill the dog. And yet, he had no real weapons; he’d broken his horsechopper in his efforts to get into the crawl space below the house. All he had left were fragments of the blade, one of which he used to build a crude knife. Tonight, he emerged, killed Petal, and in his nearly starved state tried to eat Aeren alive.
When the PCs arrive at the Barett house, they find it disturbingly silent. Upon reaching Aeren’s room, they find Alergast Barett on his belly, as if he had crawled into the closet. In truth, he did just that. In an attempt to kill the goblin, Alergast underestimated the creature. When he reached down into the hole to try to grab Gresgurt, the goblin jumped up and cut his throat. Ravenous, the commando tried to haul Alergast’s body into the crawl space to eat it, but the body got stuck once he got the upper torso through the hole.
If the PCs pull back Alergast’s body, they find him to be quite dead, the flesh of his face and upper torso eaten away. An instant later, the insane goblin shrieks in rage at its stolen dinner and leaps up out of the hole to attack. By this point, Gresgurt’s long captivity in the crawl space has left him almost feral with hunger and fear, and he’s come to view the entire house as his.
DEVELOPMENT: If the PCs kill Gresgurt, Amele is thankful until she learns of her husband’s fate, whereupon she has a complete breakdown. The PCs might be at a loss as to what to do with the situation, but fortunately the commotion quickly summons Sheriff Hemlock, who takes in the scene with his customary grim expression. He thanks the PCs for helping and arranges to have the Barett family stay at the cathedral for a few days. Amele’s sister from Magnimar soon arrives in Sandpoint to take the distraught family back south to live with her. If the PCs are present when she collects her sister’s broken family, she shoots them a cold glare and mutters, “Too bad you heroes weren’t a bit more thorough in your ‘heroing.’”
While we're on the topic, if you kill it with a Thieves/Masterwork Tools, do you have to fight the monster? IIRC, you don't "succeed at the check" when using tools, you "defeat the barrier." We've been playing it as you don't have to fight the monster, is that correct?
But the Monster in the Closet says "if you secceed at the check," does it not? The check is never made.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I see Thieves' Tools "defeat a barrier" as shorthand for "succeed at a check to defeat a barrier," in which case playing it lets you succeed at the Wisdom/Perception check and go straight to summoning the monster…. but I certainly don't want to revert "defeat an X" to that much longer thing on every card that uses it.
This might be the first potential FAQ entry that I don't think should have a resolution, and that kind of troubles me.
I see Thieves' Tools "defeat a barrier" as shorthand for "succeed at a check to defeat a barrier," in which case playing it lets you succeed at the Wisdom/Perception check and go straight to summoning the monster…. but I certainly don't want to revert "defeat an X" to that much longer thing on every card that uses it.
This might be the first potential FAQ entry that I don't think should have a resolution, and that kind of troubles me.
Just add the following to the FAQ (or something similiar)
I have a power that says it defeats a bane. What exactly does this mean? Does it let me avoid powers on banes that happen only if I succed at the check to defeat?
Cards that defeat banes actually mean "you automatically succeed at the check to defeat a bane." So anything that the bane tells you to do after you succed at the check to defeat it you still have to to. Also, don't forget that you can never succeed at the check for another player.
Maybe give an example - I think the thieves tools vs monster in the closet is a good example for this (obviously, lol)