Any time we uncover a card with the gambling trait, we picture an old wizard called not-this-Mike buried under tons of puzzles' grimoires, dropping his pen with an evil smile. Sorry, we do :-)
So took us a while to understand the subtility of the "otherwise" word in the Garrote weapon (Goblin Fight and MM), rather than just adding the bonus upfront and then checking whether any die rolled a 1. Definitively, the sharks still can come up with tricky ideas. :-)
What is the wording on the card?
For your combat check, discard this card to use your Strength or Melee skill +1d4. If proficient with weapons, you may add another 1d10. If the value of any die is 1, the bane is undefeated; otherwise add the scenario's adventure deck number to the result.
Usually you would expect a weapon to say :
For your combat check, discard this card to use your Strength or Melee skill +1d4 plus the scenario's adventure deck number. If proficient with weapons, you may add another 1d10. If the value of any die is 1, the bane is undefeated.Took us a while to see how the "otherwise" changes things. Funny.
For your combat check, discard this card to use your Strength or Melee skill +1d4. If proficient with weapons, you may add another 1d10. If the value of any die is 1, the bane is undefeated; otherwise add the scenario's adventure deck number to the result.
Wow. Pure designer evil. "Hey, you want to use this mega-powerful weapon? It only has a 25% flat chance of failing to defeat the bane!"
What really sucks is - if you manage to beat the check, but you roll a 1 - you don't get to use "If you fail your check to defeat a bane, you may re-roll the dice" powers.
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For your combat check, discard this card to use your Strength or Melee skill +1d4. If proficient with weapons, you may add another 1d10. If the value of any die is 1, the bane is undefeated; otherwise add the scenario's adventure deck number to the result.Wow. Pure designer evil. "Hey, you want to use this mega-powerful weapon? It only has a 25% flat chance of failing to defeat the bane!"
What really sucks is - if you manage to beat the check, but you roll a 1 - you don't get to use "If you fail your check to defeat a bane, you may re-roll the dice" powers.
It's worse than 25% - and oddly, gets even worse if you add the d10. With, say, a d8 Strength, your chance of auto-fail is 34.4% without the d10, and 41% with. It gets even worse if you add a blessing or a Lem or Valeros bonus d4.
For those who don't see the distinction Frencois is hinting at, you don't add the AD# unless you avoid rolling any 1s, so in addition to auto-failing you risk legit failing the check and taking extra damage.
Here's an AD2 example:
Difficulty 12 monster, character has d8+3 melee, uses extra d10 for proficiency:
if d8+d4+d10+3 rolls 4, 2, 7, get total of 16+2(AD#)=18 success!
if roll 3, 1, 4, get total of 11, auto fail and 1 damage.
You don't add a d10. You add 10 - at least if you're proficient with weapons :)
HOLY. F-... 0_O
So, it's basically "reveal this card to defeat pretty-much-any-non-villain-non-henchman-monster... unless you don't".
EDIT: Hey, what the heck, Keith Richmond's post! Get right back here!
Damn, I didn't delete fast enough. There are some odd differences between the pdf versions of this card / the version I'm used to, such that I wanted to duck out of commenting on, at least without physical cards in hand to look at and possibly let someone like Vic or Mike weigh in on.
Got the card right here--the MM version reads (at least in my set), "If proficient with weapons, you may add 10 to your result." So, not a d10, but an optional flat 10. So it's a different gamble on that--the possibility of auto-fail vs. the likelyihood of over shooting the target-which can have consequences in MM.
Yeah, it has the Gambling trait for a reason :)
I can confirm my physical Goblin Fight's card "may add 1d10", thus an additional chance to roll a 1.
So the card is different in GF and MM?
Wonder if it's on purpose. Or if I just won the weekly FAQ-worthy can'o'worms contest.
As I said... evil smile.
OK now I have both physical cards in front of me and indeed they aren't the same so...
"On Behalf of the Great Goblin Nation and its part-time King of the Hill AK"
We goblins hereby ask that the much needed FAQ on Mummy's Mask Garrote be such as to replace the infamous 10 by a real true goblin 1d10.
As the Garrote indeed is a Goblin weapon of choice.
And as any truthfully goblin item it has to work badly.
It must fail.
Cause its ours.
Thus should the evil smiling sharks decide not to give us our blessed holy d10 we would invade their home.
And burn everything.
And eat the rest.
The whole divine goblin rule asks for as many dice that could roll 1 as possible to make it a real goblin gamble.
Else we take back our big big d20 dice and never surrender it again.
We be goblins. Our garrotes them they roll 1s!
... Until the FAQ our team has decided to rename the GF card "Goblin Garrote" and to replace all instances of Garrotes by Goblin Garrotes in MM. Just for fun!
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Ha! That's a great catch, Frencois. Like Keith, I'm used to seeing a 10 there, so didn't even notice that the goblin-y version was a 1d10. This will probably be FAQ-worthy one way or another. I would personally prefer to keep the 10 as opposed to the 1d10. OR, just rename the version in the Goblins Fight! deck "Goblin Garotte". LOL
Of course if you have a character power or other card that allows you to reroll dice, this becomes a much nicer item.
As long as they aren't triggered by failing the check.
Cause rolling a 1 is like using a non-magical weapon against certain undead - they are undefeated regardless.
Though I suppose you could reroll because you failed the check (you did roll a 1 after all; your total might be low enough to also fail) and hopefully not get a 1 the second time.
I don't think the roll is final until you are done re-rolling. A 1 you reroll to not be a 1 was never a 1, so to speak. All reroll powers say you take the final result.
I agree with you there. Just thinking that if I max all of my dice except the d4, which produced a 1, I have not failed the check. I have not defeated the bane, true, but only because the garrote... broke? ;)
Again, it all depends on the re-roll's trigger.
More than once in MM already, we've had people want to re-roll a combat check that was too good (so it was only successful by one or two for certain effects) but realized they could not because they hadn't failed.
Anyway, we need a FAQ to secure whether the right wording is the GF or the MM one, and REALLY I'm in favor of the Goblin version.
Anyway, we need a FAQ to secure whether the right wording is the GF or the MM one, and REALLY I'm in favor of the Goblin version.
I'm generally in favor of cards that maybe-kinda-theoretically have at least a marginal chance to be included in a deck, so I prefer the MM version.
The Goblin version's statistical numbers for failure just don't add up for me.
OK let's do the math for a standard character with 1d8 in Strength in AD1.
Average scimitar : 1d6 + 1d6+1 if discarded, mean value 8 / 100% of times
Goblin Garotte : 1d4 + 1d10 (+1) if discarded, mean value 8 / 60% of time and mean value 7 and undefeated / 40% of time... so clearly no interest except fun
Garotte : 1d4 +10 (+1), mean value 13,5 / 67% of time and mean value 12,5 and undefeated / 33% of time...
So clearly for game balance you need the MM version and to FAQ the GF one, agree with you. It's reasonable, obviously what will be done, but I feel bad for poor goblins.
Average scimitar : 1d6 + 1d6+1 if discarded, mean value 8 / 100% of times
Goblin Garotte : 1d4 + 1d10 (+1) if discarded, mean value 8 / 60% of time and mean value 7 and undefeated / 40% of time... so clearly no interest except fun
Garotte : 1d4 +10 (+1), mean value 13,5 / 67% of time and mean value 12,5 and undefeated / 33% of time...
You omitted the Strength die, which will raise the mean even higher; however, it also increases the outright failure chance.
If the Garrote damage (with d8 STR) has a mean of 18 (in AD1) - this just *might* be worth the 33+% chance of failure.
If the mean is 12.5 for the same chance to fail... yeah, I'm not *that* gambling. I wouldn't count on this roll even against Black Fang, and he's not even AD1. (though, to be fair, I can get behind garotting a Dragon for the sheer coolness of it...)
EDIT: That being said, the wording "If proficient with weapons, you MAY add..." seems to point that it's intended to be 1d10, not a flat 10. I just hope they reconsider, as there's no much point in card being "original", if it's also "useless" (I realize your mileage might vary on the term 'useless', but most of the players posting here strike me as very tactics-oriented rather than "take about 40:60 chance of failure for marginally improved odds in combat"-gambling-oriented)
