The rules for 5-4C (Inahiyi's Nightmare) state:
During This Scenario: When you encounter a monster, roll 1d6 then:
1–2. Summon and encounter the henchman Animate Dream.
3. You are dealt 1 Mental damage which cannot be reduced and the monster is evaded.
4. Discard a random card.
5. Succeed at a Constitution or Fortitude 10 check or bury the top card of your deck.
6. Succeed at a Dexterity or Acrobatics 10 check or you are dealt 1d4+1 Ranged Combat damage.
For reference:
SS Henchman 4
Type: Monster
Traits: Outsider Incorporeal
To Defeat: Combat 17
Before you act, succeed at an Arcane or Divine 12 check or you may not play spells that have the Attack trait. If the check to defeat does not have the Magic trait, Animate Dream is undefeated. If you fail a check to defeat the Animate Dream, shuffle a random blessing from your hand into your location deck. If defeated, you may immediately attempt to close the location this henchman came from.
The issue: If you roll a 1-2 when encountering a monster, you encounter the Animate Dream - which is itself a monster. So then you have to roll 1d6 again. This is intended? Just checking to see whether the intention was to roll for the original monster, but not the summoned Dream.
Otherwise fun stuff like this happens:
If you encounter a monster, you roll a 1-2 and then another 1-2. Nothing happens on the second 1-2 roll, since cards can't summon copies of themselves.
You encounter a monster, roll a 1-2, and then roll a 3. You encounter the original monster, summon the Dream, unsummon/evade the Dream, and take 1 mental damage.
A spellcaster encounters the villain, rolls a 1-2, and then rolls a 6. The spellcaster has to: take 1d4+1 ranged combat damage (probably), pass the Dream's BYA check, fight the Dream, and then double-fight the villain (THEN combat).
Anyway, thanks for your rules input.
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I can't speak to the main question, but...
If you encounter a monster, you roll a 1-2 and then another 1-2. Nothing happens on the second 1-2 roll, since cards can't summon copies of themselves.
Actually, RAW I'm not sure that rule applies here, since it's the storybook, and not the Animate Dream card, that's doing the summoning. It may just be able to keep summoning more Dreams.
(I'm not sure the rule doesn't apply either, though, since it could be argued the card is "causing you" to summon even though it's not the source of the text. I don't believe that's how it works, but I don't know for certain.)
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Just indicating a thread for this question exists.
There's varying opinions on that thread shared, and no final consensus. However, I personally believe that RAW doesn't stop Animate Dreams from triggering a summon of Animate Dreams... both because the scenario rule isn't a power, nor a card (it's a storybook rule, which are not covered under the rules for either of those terms), and because Animate Dream - or any other card or power - is doing the summoning.
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When I played this scenario somewhat recently in PbP (last July), it was ruled at the time that the Animate Dreams can indeed loop and cause you to summon more copies of themselves, and that's how we played it. In practice, it didn't cause all that many issues playing it that way, we still won the scenario handily.
Keep in mind another thing for 5-4C: the Pirate Shade Haunts you summon at Wishing Well are monsters, not barriers. This means that each of them cause the scenario power to trigger and make you roll 1d6.
Edit: need to disagree with Yewstance on one thing above. The storybook rule is most certainly a power.
Power: A paragraph on a card or in the storybook that affects the game in some way. See Active and Optional Powers on page 10.
...it was ruled... that the Animate Dreams can indeed loop and cause you to summon more copies of themselves, and that's how we played it. In practice, it didn't cause all that many issues playing it that way, we still won the scenario handily.
We have a 3-character party, and two of us are spellcasters. So infinite monster looping would not be great for us. Especially monsters that potentially disallow Attack spells!
An official ruling would be nice, either way. And thanks for the help, as usual.
A quick follow-up. We did successfully complete 5-4C, but the BR ruled that an Animate Dreams couldn't cause another Animate Dreams to be summoned.
This was a good thing, as - in retrospect - there's a good chance that 1 or more characters would have died otherwise. I'm also not sure that any players found this scenario to be particularly enjoyable.
Our spellcasters took a ton of damage, and only survived with massive amounts of healing. And that was with the BR ruling, above.
An acquired Pearl of Wisdom was also an MVP, as it allowed one mage to occasionally pass the painfully high non-combat checks. (In this case, the new 1-blessing limit wasn't ideal.)
Anyway, the chaining d6 encounter rolls aren't great for spellcasters, and I'm curious if they were actually intended.
Regardless, thanks for listening. :)