Reply: Betrayal at House on the Hill:: Rules:: Re: Music Box and "mesmerized" state

by Maginomicon

Sappington wrote:

Think I'm answering my own question with a little bit of Googling. Sounds like a dropped open music box essentially becomes a trapped room:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1155531/music-box

What I don't like about that explanation is that reading the card strictly as-written, it only triggers when an explorer or monster "enters or starts its turn" in the room with an open music box. As-written, you can only do one thing with the music box per turn of the options "use, drop, pick-up, steal, or trade" (manual page 11)...

For each item, an explorer (or monster that can carry items)
can perform only one of the following actions with that item
during a turn.
• Use the item.
• Trade the item to another explorer.
• Drop the item.
• Steal the item (see “Special Attacks” on page 13).
• Pick up the item.

...meaning that if we count "opening" the music box as "using" (which I would think we should) you can open the box or drop it, but not both in the same turn because its required roll to "for free" drop it hasn't triggered yet, because the "start of your turn" hasn't happened yet, and since you opened it you didn't enter the room of an open music box.

This means it's not quite a trap. A hero could open the box once they get to the room with a monster, but then they have to wait a whole other turn to drop the music box and move out of the room. Of-course, in some ways this is more fair than it being a trap, because if the monster in question turns out to not have a sanity trait (or succeeds at not being mesmerized and leaves the room), the explorer can on their next turn (assuming they also succeed against the music box) spend the turn "closing" the music box (another "use" of the music box) and then fighting the monster (or leaving it open and moving to where the monster fled, to try to mesmerize it again), rather than dropping it anyway and potentially leaving a powerful item in the hands of the enemy. Explorers are probably more likely to have a high sanity score than a monster that has a sanity score anyway.

Of course, this all hinges on whether your table considers opening or closing the music box to be "using" the music box. I think based on the verbiage of other game components, strictly-speaking it should, but the glossary and FAQ are silent on it.

All that said, the music box only stops your turn. If someone else starts in or enters the same room as an open music box, and they succeed against it, there's nothing that stops combat from happening, and as-written there's nothing stopping the defender from doing damage in the attack.