The Knight

Reading the Knight's Hero Card

Every hero card uses the same four numbers. Here is what they do at the table:

• Attack is how many combat dice you roll when you attack. Every skull is a hit.
• Defend is how many combat dice you roll when something attacks you. As a hero you block one hit for every white shield, and two of the six faces are white shields, so each die blocks a third of the time.
• Body Points are your health. Every unblocked hit costs one, and at zero you die unless you drink a healing potion or cast a healing spell on the spot.
• Mind Points stand for wisdom, intelligence and resistance to magic. They matter when one of Zargon's Dread spells tries to put you to sleep, frighten you or take control of you; the spell card says how you resist.

For comparison, these are the four core heroes' starting numbers. Put your Knight card next to this table and you'll see at once where it is stronger or weaker than the Barbarian, the usual front-liner.

What Armor Is Really Worth

A hero blocks on white shields, which come up on two faces of six. So every extra defend die, whether from the hero card, a helmet, a shield or armor, blocks one more hit a third of the time. That sounds small, but over a long fight it adds up. The chart below shows the exact chance that a single monster attack takes at least one Body Point from a hero.

Read it this way: an Orc rolls three attack dice. Against a hero with two defend dice it draws blood 62.5% of the time, and on average it takes 0.96 Body Points per attack. Add a third defend die and that falls to 50.9% (0.75 Body Points on average). Add a fourth and it falls to 40.7% (0.58 Body Points). Armor doesn't make you untouchable, but it makes every attack against you about a fifth less damaging.

Holding the Line

The rules hand a front-line hero a big advantage. Monsters can't move or attack diagonally, can't pass over heroes and can't share a square. A hero standing in a corridor one square wide can therefore be attacked by only one monster from each direction, however many are queued up behind.

• Pick the square first. A corridor mouth or a doorway turns a crowd into a queue. On open floor up to four monsters can reach you, one on each side.
• Let the others pass. Heroes may move over each other, so a wounded Knight can step back and let a fresh hero take the square on the next turn.
• Remember doors stay open. Once a door is opened it can never be closed again, so open doors only when the party is ready for whatever comes through.
• Mind the other end. A corridor has two ends. If monsters can reach the far end, someone else needs to hold it.

The Knight's Turn

The turn rules are the same for every hero:

• On your turn you move, then act, or act, then move. You can't move part of the way, act, and then finish moving.
• Heroes roll two red dice for movement and may move up to the total (an average of 7 squares). There are no diagonal moves, and you can't move through monsters or walls, but you may pass over other heroes.
• Your action is one of six: Attack, Cast a spell, Search for treasure, Search for secret doors, Search for traps or Disarm a trap. Opening doors, drinking potions and picking things up don't use your action.

For a front-liner the choice between "move first" and "act first" is the heart of the turn:

How Hard the Knight Hits

Monsters block only on the single black shield, so each of their defend dice stops a hit just one time in six. That's why heroes can cut through rank-and-file monsters while the big ones take several blows. Find your Knight's attack dice on the card (counting its weapon) and read off the matching bar.

Monster numbers in the chart are the 1990 North American monster chart, which the Avalon Hill game follows according to fan sources; check your Game System's monster cards. With 3 attack dice the Knight kills an Orc outright 75.0% of the time, but a Dread Warrior (4 defend dice, 3 Body Points) only 6.0% of the time in one swing and 32.5% within two. Big monsters are a job for the whole party, not a duel.

The Knight in the Party

• With the Wizard: the Wizard has the fewest Body Points of the core heroes (4). Keep it behind you, with line of sight past you, so its spells land while you take the hits.
• With the Dwarf: the Dwarf disarms traps without a tool kit and fails only on a black shield. Let it clear the corridor before you plant yourself in it.
• With the Barbarian: two front-liners can hold both ends of a corridor, or take turns at the front so neither runs out of Body Points.
• With the Elf: the Elf carries one school of three spells. Ask before the quest which school it took and whether that includes a healing spell.

Rise of the Dread Moon Notes

If you're playing the Knight through Rise of the Dread Moon, the pack adds a few things that matter to it:

• Alchemy: the heroes can brew potions. Healing potions are what let a front-liner survive a bad roll, because drinking one doesn't use your action and can save you at zero Body Points.
• Mercenaries can be hired to fight alongside the party, which gives the Knight extra bodies to share the front line.
• The Underground Market lets the heroes sell items for half their price, so unwanted treasure can become armor.
• New enemies include Dread Cultists, Specters and a Dread Wraith. The pack concludes the Elethorn story that began in The Mage of the Mirror.

For the quests themselves, see Rise of the Dread Moon and its lore page.

Try It at the Table

• Before the first quest, set your Knight card beside the table above and write down, in one line, what the Knight does better than the Barbarian and what it does worse.
• Set up a corridor with three Orcs in it and fight it out twice: once from the corridor mouth, once from the open room. Count how many attacks the Knight takes each time.
• Use the Dice Roller with the defender set to "Hero" to see what one extra defend die does against the monster you fear most.

Where Next

• Combat & Tactics for line of sight, doors and fighting in groups.
• Treasure & Equipment for the armor and weapons a Knight will want to buy.
• The Rogue, the next hero in this guide.