SFR, Inc.

[UltimaGabe]

I was playing against some friends a few days ago, and I was playing Ferals. When making a melee attack, I rolled Double Strike. The game came to a halt for a moment as we tried to figure out what exactly happened.

In the current version of the rules, the text goes as follows: "During a melee attack or melee avoidance roll, Double Strike generates melee results; roll
this unit again and apply the new result as well." As far as I can tell, the only units that have Double Strike are Hydra (Monster), Cryohydra (Monster), Bear-Folk (Monster), Lion-Folk (Monster), Tiger-Folk (Rare), and Strangle Vine (Monster). As you can see, Tiger-Folk is the odd man out, being a Rare rather than a Monster.

When rolling one of the monsters, it makes sense that each Double Strike icon would generate four melee results and be rolled again (since each side on a monster only has one icon per side, yet it counts as four results). For the Tiger-Folk, however, there's still only one icon, meaning I'm inclined to think that Double Strike would only deal one point of melee damage by itself (in keeping with the most current rules text). While underwhelming, that's not terrible or unheard of (the Lava Elf Wyvern Rider has one side with a single Fly icon) but I'm a bit curious as to why the Tiger-Folk page on ChuckPint.com says it generates four melee results. Is that simply a matter of copy-paste from the other Double Strike entries on that site, or is that a holdover from an earlier ruleset where Double Strike may have been four melee results across the board?

For the game the other day, we ruled that it was only one point of damage and I rolled again. If that was incorrect, however, I'd like to know for future reference.

[cliffwiggs]

This is one of the few icon issues in the game, but it was a TSR mistake from a long time ago and there is no real way to fix it, so we do what we can.

This is from the rulebook near the beginning of the SAI section, which is a bit deep in the book.

[UltimaGabe]

Ah, awesome. Thanks!

[cliffwiggs]

Yes, some other 3pt dice has one icon, but they are balanced by 6 icons on the opposite side.

This one doesn't have that. That double strike has to be treated as 4 or it just kills the unit.

There are a few other dice that are 'mathematically' missing an icon and we tried having a special rule to add it back in, but it's too hard to remember to check and it doesn't make the die that much more playable. So we just leave those alone.
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[UltimaGabe]

Alright, one more question about this.

Since this is the only Rare unit with this kind of an exception, wouldn't it be simpler to change the Double Strike text to specify the number of melee results? If the text said, "During a melee attack or melee avoidance roll, Double Strike generates four melee results; roll this unit again and apply the new result as well." then wouldn't that be the case whether it's on a Rare or a Monster? I feel like that would be a lot more simple than including a specific exception for one die.

[cliffwiggs]

We've tried different things in the past.

At one point we had a rulebook that broke out the 3pt SAI's and the 4pt SAI's separately and did just something similar to what you describe the 'points' were built into the SAI description, but you doubled the length of the rulebook.

Take the Cantrip SAI as an example. There are 3pt units with 3 cantrip and some with 4 cantrip. So for those you have to say that the number of icons on the die are how many points of effect you have. There are also monsters with the same SAI and they count as for.

The SAI description has to be for '1' point of effect and the die has that sai 'x' number of times.

Then, It's simpler to say that all icons on a monster count as four rather than one.

If we built something into this specific SAI description, then it is still an exception and not better or worse than what we have now.
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Multiplayer Champion Gencon11/Battlefest Champion(tied) GenCon10/World Champion GenCon07/National Champion Origins05/Intermediate Champion GenCon02/Novice Champion Origins99

[TecnoSmurf]

But it would be easier to find and therefor better
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[shoesan]