Is Klak's Infernal Artifact affected by powers that move monsters?

Question

Adventure 3 in the Castle Ravenloft Adventure book has this special rule for dealing with Klak's Artifact:

Attacking Klak's Artifact will destroy it. When attacking the artifact, treat the artifact as a Monster.

How does this work with powers that move monsters? For example, Tide of Iron?

The artifact is represented by a 2x2 marker. Markers don't typically move, but I didn't see any rule explicitly stating this.

Answer 1

I found the following entry at the D&D Adventure Systems Wiki:

Attack one adjacent Monster.

If you hit, place that Monster (if it isn't destroyed) on a tile within 1 tile of you, and you can move to any square on your tile.

So you could use Tide of Iron to attack it (since its treated as a monster), but Klak's Artifact states:

Attacking Klak's Artifact will destroy it.

So what happens when something is destroyed? Page 10 of the rules, under Destroying Objects (empahsis mine at the end):

An Adventure might specify that an object needs to be destroyed to win a particular scenario. If the object has an Armor Class and Hit Points, your Hero can target it just like a Monster. If your Hero has a power that attacks all Monsters on a specific tile, it can also attack an object on that tile. Once you deal damage equal to its number of Hit Points, you destroy the object and remove its marker from the tile.

So you can attack Klak's Infernal Artifact with Tide of Iron, but then there's nothing to move afterwards, since attacking the Infernal Artifact destroys it, and destroyed objects are removed from the tile.

Phew.

Answer 2

Actually LittleBobbyTables, Klak's artifact has 5 hitpoints, so attacking it with Tied of Iron may well not be enough to destroy it, in which case I reckon it would knock it to another tile.

In fact, my kids were playing and this ended up being the exact situation. The Ranger had just reached 0 hps leaving only the Fighter and Klak's artifact- it needed to be destroyed this very turn or else it'd come back to the Ranger's turn and they'd lose (no more Surges left). Problem: the artifact had 3 hps left.

The Fighter hit it with Tide of Iron. Result: 1 point damage and knockback to an adjacent tile. He chose a tile that had a Dart Trap on it. In my role as DM, I decided that anything entering that tile would trigger the trap (hell, I figure if you, as a character, threw something big at a trap you'd set it off). The trap hit, did 2 more points of damage: artifact shatters into a zillion pieces, and the Fighter drags the Ranger back to the surface to be healed.

Now, hey, some people may say "Nah, Monsters don't set off traps" or quibble; but to me, it was a brilliant idea to blow it back into that space. A heroic idea. An mad adventuring idea. And so the story of that (which to me is the whole point of games) won out- a last second win due to a tricky move...

Answer 3

Yes, Tide of Iron affects Klaks Infernal artifact since it's treated as a monster.