RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
|
1) When you defeat a villain that ends the game, do you get to do the When Closed step on the location first before the game ends? Or does the game end instantly upon defeating the villain if that would end the game?
I believe the game ends instantly, so you don't do the When Closed stuff for the final location. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on what that When Closed power is.
2) What do you do when there are non-blessings in the hourglass? My example is in scenario 2C of the Core Set, there are four henchmen proxies in it, plus another Story Bane. When a character draws one at the start of their turn, they encounter it (as per the scenario instructions). Does the character get to do their normal exploration after the encounter? I would assume yes, because it doesn't say you end your turn. If so, is there no 'hour' for that turn because the proxy or the Story Bane would be on the top of the blessings discard pile? Or would you banish the proxy/Story Bane and the blessing that was discarded by the player on the previous turn would still count as the current hour?
You do get your normal turn, and the hour becomes the previously-discarded hour from the previous turn. The only exception to this is if the henchman proxy ended up being the very first card flipped from the hourglass... in that case, there is no hour for that turn, but you still continue as usual.
1) Pg 10 of Core Rulebook makes it clear that you do perform "When Closed" effects prior to winning.
"Villain Step: If you defeated a villain, close the villain's location"
"Villain Step: Determine whether the villain escapes"
"Villain step: if the villain has nowhere to escape to, you win!"
This actually means that it's possible to die after defeating the villain in some locations, for instance if the "When closed" effect has you draw and you have no cards to draw. Theater of Corruption from Skull and Shackles, for example, has you bury 1d4 cards, then draw 1d4 cards.
This also means that you can avoid death if you are out of cards in your deck and you manage to corner and defeat the villain without a bad "When Closed" effect. This is because you would never have a reset hand step to kill you (by not being able to draw enough cards). You'd simply do whatever the "When closed" effect is and then you'd win.
2) Agree with Cartmanbeck
No Problem!
It doesn't directly spell it out, but under "Advance the Hour" on pg 6 Core rulebook it specifies "The top card of this pile is the hour."
So in this case you're flipping cards from the hourglass and come across one that is a bane and gets fought instead. You fight it, and it gets banished. Now no new card was added to the discard pile so the hour power is still the one that is on top of the pile (from last turn).
Similarly, you can use Sacred Candle to draw the top card of the blessings discard pile, at which point the hour changes to what it was the previous hour. Have a "bad" hour that makes it so if one person suffers a scourge, everyone local suffers it? Well, sacred candle is one way you can get rid of that hour.
Outside of that, everything in your turn still remains the same. Nothing in the rulebook tells you that you skip to the end of your turn if you don't get a new hour, or lost your current hour.
So in this case you're flipping cards from the hourglass and come across one that is a bane and gets fought instead. You fight it, and it gets banished.
I believe Ithaqua47 was referring to the fact that nothing seems to instruct you if you banish the bane encountered from an Hourglass, or you just discard it in the hourglass (assuming the scenario only instructs you to encounter them, and not to summon and encounter them).
In fact, the Rulebook does instruct you... partially. Even though encountering from the hourglass seem mechanically closer to (and probably should have been) a summoned encounter - it is not, and so the normal encounter rules apply, from p10 Rulebook:
"If the encounter is with a bane, and you succeeded at all of the checks required to defeat it, it is defeated; if it is not a villain, banish it"
Granted, it may be more confusing if you did NOT defeat the hourglass bane, as the rules then are:
" If you did not succeed at all of the checks required to defeat the bane, it is undefeated; ...then shuffle the bane back into its location."
Now, 'shuffle into its location' is an impossible instruction, and would normally be ignored... but there's no actual default rule to fall back on for encounters that are neither from location, nor summoned.
So, my solution here would be to look for intent - and given that I have never before seen an encounter thta's neither from location nor summoned - I'd assume the intent to be to treat this encounters as summons, i.e. - you banish them regardless of if you defeat them or not.