Hi there,

last night I played my first game of Descent ('First Blood') with a bunch of Descent (1st ed.) 'veterans'. I, being the overlord, lost the Ettin when I had rescued about 2 and a half goblins. We all agreed that the game ends with the fall of the ettin. Is that correct?

After that the heroes wanted to draw 'treasures' for the tokens they had not searched yet, because in the old version you could do that for free after you freed a dungeon. That doesn't seem right or suiting 2nd ed.'s mood, but the rules only say that you draw a card after perorming a search action. Strictly speaking you could search after killing the ettin.

So can someonme please help me... and maybe in a concise and very rule-like fashion so I can print it and show to my #1 rules-warbler.

(there might be strange words in my post which is because I try to translate from the German rules)

They're more than welcome to take a peek at the treasure, but they cannot search unlooted treasures after the encounter ends. In this case, the encounter ends when Mauler is defeated.

When the encounter ends, that's it, the encounter is over. You must search before the encounter ends to get the loot.

When the encounter ends, that's it, the encounter is over. You must search before the encounter ends to get the loot.

Thats correct ! This plays a huge part of the game, sometimes it can be easy for heroes to win a quest, but if they want to get all the search tokens it really puts the quest objectives at peril in the favor of the overlord.

Allowing the heroes to take search tokens after a quest (even if they won) would highly disturb the balance of the quests.

It also takes some of the heart racing fun out of the game too, putting the objective on the line to grab the search tokens can be a risky move that adds a lot of fun and strategy to the game - i definitely would not house rule it any other way.

As the heroes, sometimes it's actually in your best interest, strategically speaking, to decide not to pursue the quest objectives (if the reward isn't particularly important) in order to guarantee you get the most treasure possible.

As an example, one campaign when I was overlord, the heroes lost death on the wing as the first quest selection, giving me the shield. I chose Cardinal's Plight for the next quest, as I figured with the group makeup it would be an easy win. The heroes decided the staff of light/shadows wasn't important enough for them to go after given the likelihood of them getting it (they were a slow group, so not likely), and that I already had the shield, the staff wouldn't be that much of a power boost for me. So they got all the treasure on the maps, and the gold boost gave them some solid items that more than made up for the lack of the staff of light (they didn't even have a party member that would really use it anyway) and the gain I got from having the staff of shadows (not my favorite relic tbh as the overlord).

The bearded axe they got was rather brutal for the rest of act 1 though.

Thanks a lot!

Another Question...

If an ability says that creatures in three squares of the hero are affected (without LOS being mentioned), does that including counting through tile walls, like into a parallel room on anpother tile with a one square gap?

The rules say when counting ignore all terrain but impassable. What does this mean? Could I count squares 'around' the corner but not through the wall? Puzzled...?

Doors and walls does always stop, but you can count round corners.

If an ability says that creatures in three squares of the hero are affected (without LOS being mentioned), does that including counting through tile walls, like into a parallel room on anpother tile with a one square gap?

The rules say when counting ignore all terrain but impassable. What does this mean? Could I count squares 'around' the corner but not through the wall? Puzzled...?

Correct. Counting spaces ignores everything except obstacles, doors, and tile edges (which includes tile gaps that are "0 spaces wide"). So you still have to count around those, and you can't count through closed doors.