Mission: Chamber of Bones An Arcane Sprite cast Mind Drain on my human cleric, who had a Block card in hand. The only card attached to the cleric is Holy Presence (i.e., no Bad Luck in play). She attempted to Block the Mind Drain, and rolled a 5, which was dropped to 3 with the "-1 die roll" sound effect twice, even though nothing on the card indicates that it's Hard to Block and no other mitigating factors are in play. On Gary's next turn he hit the cleric again with a Sorcerous Attack, which also got the -2 effect applied for a miss, though no such effect was applied to the armor roll. Not sure what could be causing this.
Did you have a card in your hand like "Massive Chop" (from the Giant Skeletal Arm) that reduces all block rolls by 2?
Aha, good thinking! I do have the Giant Skeletal Arm with the Massive Chop card, and it was my cleric who had this effect happen. I don't know if it was in my hand or not at the time, but I'm betting that was the problem. I didn't get a screenshot to confirm one way or the other. In which case, I guess the bug is "no indication given why the penalty is being applied." But that becomes more a suggestion than a bug, since I don't think any penalty cards announce their presence when subtracting from the die roll, nor do "Hard to Block" cards. But at least with cards like Bad Luck or with Hard to Block, it's the active card or it's a card attached to the character so you have some sense of the effect. Massive Chop is hiding in your hand...
We do get visual notice for all (or most . . . ) cards that affect damage: for instance, that 7-damage attack which makes YOU suffer 3 more damage if anyone hits you while it's still in your hand. Pops right up. It would be nice to get visual cues for the things that affect rolls. Bolt spells (and anything else Hard To Block) tell you on the cards themselves, so that's nice; but otherwise it's tricky to remember what's happening.
I just noticed that Massive Chop's little drawback is not separated out into a black box unlike, say, Raging Strike's drawback. That is a (text) bug and would explain some of the problem.
Always flirting with danger, I did a little thinking. Right now cards that activate by reaction pop up as if played on top of the original, "active" card. This has problems for die-rolling feedback since it would cover up the die. So what if cards that affected the die roll show up to one side? For that matter, why not show all reactions side-by-side instead of overlaid? You can watch each card come up and change the play. Perhaps with an arrow for graphic blandishment: Code: ------- ------- |Chop | <-- |Block| | | | | Attempt to Block Chop card ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- |Chop | <-- |Block| <-- |Bad | | | | | |Luck | Bad Luck reduces roll ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- |Chop | <-- |Block| | | | | Block succeeds or fails ------- ------- Cards that change die rolls or similarly alter reactions because of their own nature can have an arrow pointing the other way while that portion of the rules is applied: Code: ------- ------- |Spark| <-- |Block| | | | | Attempt to Block Spark card ------- ------- ------- ------- |Spark| <-- |Block| | | --> | | Hard to Block reduces roll ------- ------- ------- ------- |Spark| <-- |Block| | | | | Block succeeds or fails ------- ------- Following through on the idea, other kinds of effects, such as increasing damage with Frenzy, or adding the Free Move instruction to a plain movement, could be shown actually changing the original card -- if there's enough ambition to build more dynamic cards. (Maybe later, don't push release to do it!)
