Thedremak has it right, she was at 0 fatigue, took damage from a monster as fatigue instead, then took a rest action on the next turn while moving around the map grabbing treasure. The amount of focus fire on her that was needed to kill her was insane in act 1.

**** nice combo!

Jain Fairwood can't use her hero ability to take damage as fatigue?

The way I see it she can and I can imagine that there is a communication problem: Griton might have taken Whitewing's statement like: 'She would take five damage instead of fatigue (to move) after she was already exhausted'

Could that be the case Griton?

Ah. Yes. That is precisely the case. The context was about her moving around a bunch, and I missed that there was an implied series of attacks involved. My apologies.

How can ffg efficiently playtest the encounters with so many open groups possibilities ?

Open group don't engage OL into monster diversity.

I would prefer there was no open groups in D2e

Cheers

If you balance monsters around a general balance point, within acceptable variance, then even the best monsters on the best map for them will still be within reasonable limits. It's when your design varies widely and you go beyond restraints that you get problems.

The monsters that aren't involved in the conversion kit are also much better balanced, and they are re-doing the balance for them for the new monster pack releases.

How can ffg efficiently playtest the encounters with so many open groups possibilities ?

Open group don't engage OL into monster diversity.

I would prefer there was no open groups in D2e

The consequence of using all fixed groups would be that expansion monsters never get used outside the expansion they came in. That's more or less exactly how it worked in D1E. Only here in D2E, the overlord doesn't even have the occasional spawn card to fall back on.

I love open groups this makes my game play as an OL worth living.

I love open groups this makes my game play as an OL worth living.

I'd go even further. As OL against three formidable heroes apt at exploiting every synergy their characters and class decks present, I think I'd be lost w/o open groups.

For example I can now decide whether to take a tank (at only one figure) or a group of goblins that actually come as a GROUP depending on what would best suit my objective. With only fixed groups that would too much sway the balance, methinks.

How can ffg efficiently playtest the encounters with so many open groups possibilities ?

They do it by having people who know the game inside and out who can see various combos, etc. So they do it efficiently instead of thoroughly. But when it comes down to it, you can get to a pretty solid point by knowing what combos (heroes and monsters) tend to cause what kind of issues and being able to test edge cases (instead of every internal case).

This is actually how most testing happens when you have a virtually unlimited set of possibilities, regardless of whether it's a computer program, board game, or anything else. You put people good at identifying edge / possible break cases and running through those.

Open groups are also mandatory for this kind of game design. Think about it this way: you have a group of heroes that the heroes choose for themselves. Their strengths and weaknesses are things you have no influence over. This means that the only thing you can do as overlord is react to their decisions. Your monster group selections have to be reactive, or they will be poor. If your opponent's party is filled with tough, hard to kill, but slow heroes that can do a lot of damage, you don't want to be rocking ettins every map.

Open groups allow you to react to the party's strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, certain quests will be hilariously easy for the heroes, and others will be around normal difficulty (compared to now) based on what monsters you are assigned, and you'll have no say in it.

They do it by having people who know the game inside and out who can see various combos, etc. So they do it efficiently instead of thoroughly. But when it comes down to it, you can get to a pretty solid point by knowing what combos (heroes and monsters) tend to cause what kind of issues and being able to test edge cases (instead of every internal case).

Agreed.

One should also keep in mind that there will always be new combinations with future expansion material that could not have been properly accounted for since said material did not exist when the core game was being designed. These items can be playtested and accounted for in the expansion they came with, but not in anything that came before.

So, if you're playing Shadow Rune with everything mixed in and finding it a bit chaotic, keep in mind that not everything you've got at your disposal existed when FFG was playtesting and balancing the Shadow Rune quests.

They can't very well go back and revise all the previously existing quests every time a new expansion comes out. Firstly, balancing quests is a time consuming endeavour (I believe Kevin Wilson, lead designer on D1E, once said it was the most time consuming aspect of the game design process.) Secondly, as we can all see, FFG is going to keep releasing expansions as quickly as they possibly can, so it would be a never-ending and, indeed, ever-growing problem to revise old quests all the time.

They do it by having people who know the game inside and out who can see various combos, etc. So they do it efficiently instead of thoroughly. But when it comes down to it, you can get to a pretty solid point by knowing what combos (heroes and monsters) tend to cause what kind of issues and being able to test edge cases (instead of every internal case).

Agreed.One should also keep in mind that there will always be new combinations with future expansion material that could not have been properly accounted for since said material did not exist when the core game was being designed. These items can be playtested and accounted for in the expansion they came with, but not in anything that came before.So, if you're playing Shadow Rune with everything mixed in and finding it a bit chaotic, keep in mind that not everything you've got at your disposal existed when FFG was playtesting and balancing the Shadow Rune quests.They can't very well go back and revise all the previously existing quests every time a new expansion comes out. Firstly, balancing quests is a time consuming endeavour (I believe Kevin Wilson, lead designer on D1E, once said it was the most time consuming aspect of the game design process.) Secondly, as we can all see, FFG is going to keep releasing expansions as quickly as they possibly can, so it would be a never-ending and, indeed, ever-growing problem to revise old quests all the time.

They do it by having people who know the game inside and out who can see various combos, etc. So they do it efficiently instead of thoroughly. But when it comes down to it, you can get to a pretty solid point by knowing what combos (heroes and monsters) tend to cause what kind of issues and being able to test edge cases (instead of every internal case).

Agreed.One should also keep in mind that there will always be new combinations with future expansion material that could not have been properly accounted for since said material did not exist when the core game was being designed. These items can be playtested and accounted for in the expansion they came with, but not in anything that came before.So, if you're playing Shadow Rune with everything mixed in and finding it a bit chaotic, keep in mind that not everything you've got at your disposal existed when FFG was playtesting and balancing the Shadow Rune quests.They can't very well go back and revise all the previously existing quests every time a new expansion comes out. Firstly, balancing quests is a time consuming endeavour (I believe Kevin Wilson, lead designer on D1E, once said it was the most time consuming aspect of the game design process.) Secondly, as we can all see, FFG is going to keep releasing expansions as quickly as they possibly can, so it would be a never-ending and, indeed, ever-growing problem to revise old quests all the time.

Shadow Rune seems designed around the beginner/new player anyway I don't think balance is necessary for it. It's good for tutorial sake. Every time we've played it we always learn a few more things and it's simple. Probably to simple but that's just me.

That's not the intent. They simply didn't know enough about their own system to design a really intricate campaign that's well done yet. That's no surprise, new game systems are always difficult to write for until people really get practice with it. It's the same way in any competitive game: it takes time for people to figure out how to play the game well, and trends develop. Then the developers can look at the trends of play and determine what needs to change and be improved upon in future writings. That's why a bunch of the encounters in LoR feature reinforcement rules that encourage more small monster choices, whereras in the Shadow Rune, you almost always reinforced a big monster if you could.

That's not the intent. They simply didn't know enough about their own system to design a really intricate campaign that's well done yet. That's no surprise, new game systems are always difficult to write for until people really get practice with it. It's the same way in any competitive game: it takes time for people to figure out how to play the game well, and trends develop. Then the developers can look at the trends of play and determine what needs to change and be improved upon in future writings. That's why a bunch of the encounters in LoR feature reinforcement rules that encourage more small monster choices, whereras in the Shadow Rune, you almost always reinforced a big monster if you could.

That doesn't mean that they couldn't have anticipated it with more / better playtesting. It may also have been the case that they realized that reinforcing a big monster was better and thought that it was fine and intentionally left it/designed it that way, but after hearing the same thing from players as complaints, decided to change it to give players more of what they wanted. Or they could have known about it and said "Yeah, we could do something more complicated, but lets save that for the expansions because the base game is already pretty complicated and we don't want to make it more so." Or they could've realized it and just didn't have enough time to work out a new system.

Simply put, there's no way to know what their motivations or design process was like, and anything on our end is just speculation.

Great inputs, folks. Thanks