That's an awfully long rant.

The Taskmaster's Ring is a great relic for the OL. Why? Same reason that you like Dash. Movement points are key, especially many times for lieutenants who are trying to race somewhere. What do they have to do to use it? Get a surge. Not terribly difficult. And it's the reward for 2 of the 3 Act I rumor quests for Trollfens, which are under the OL's control when and whether to play. The Act II relics are better for the heroes, especially since they can always use them whereas the OL is limited to just when he has a Lieutenant in play, but the Omen of Blight isn't bad.

The Secrets of Flesh is a very good OL card. There's a lot of times that I would prefer to see that to a Dash. Healing every monster on the board 1-3 health? Crazy good. The OL can also gain up to 6 threat from each rumor quest; that is nearly worth the 150 gold they may get out of it.

The LotW rewards are pretty heavily skewed towards the heroes. Heroes using Valyndra's Bane every encounters is much, much, much better than the OL having the option to use Her Majesty's Malice with a lieutenant. Similarly, Aurium Mail is much, much better than Valyndra's Gift.

But that's why Trollfens is better balanced than LotW. And that's why I would house-rule LotW and not Trollfens. But that's based off of the actual and specific things of each quest, not some diatribe on how things sit generally in some theoretical balance between the OL and heroes.

While i agree that 1 extra xp for the OL is not nearly as useful for a hero, id just want to say that the addition of extra XP for the OL can be a good thing. There are a certain few very powerful combinations of cards that can be played with one another that require ALOT of xp which dulls their utility, the addition of XP makes these combinations much more viable play options and thus gives the OL more of a bite.

The extra shopping steps in combination with the extra gold however far outweigh any return from some extra XP even if it does make these OL card combinations more viable. In 2 rumor quests an extra 10 act 2 shopping cards are made available to the heroes before the finale - a 66% increase of act 2 shop item cards in combination with a 36% increase in gold is HUGE . Sure the heroes will not get all the extra gold in every quest, but if you make 36% more available search tokens in a campaign you are still going to get a roughly 36% increase in the amount of gold available for the heroes.

Its the state that the heroes and OL are in going into the finale which is the most important thing here. Its also worth mentioning that the utility of relics is increased in the finale because there is an increased amount of lieutenants on the board - that utility is not as great as it is for the heroes but it is important to factor into any house rule that could be made.

I agree with all of your points.

About the OL XP points, I also believe the re-spec OL reward you can get in some quests is probably under-hyped, as it allows you to get rid of some cards that either have been acting poorly or have lost their relevance through a change of context (heroes upgrading themselves mostly). I think it looks like a powerful tool (I haven't used it yet), but maybe some other OLs here will say that it's more of a desperate thing to do, given the fact you would define your skills roadmap beforehand and keep focus on it so technically speaking a re-spec would attest a failure in either planning or capacity to adapt. I don't know. Also, I believe the same re-spec reward is available to the heroes, and it feels far more useful since they can suddenly afford a more expensive card at the price of unused skills without having to deal with a class 1/2/3 system like the OL.

And about the Finale, it's true that Relics may be more viable for just these particular quests than I would have thought, however this is still assuming the lieutenants haven't been killed (which is far from given) and assuming that you are not playing Gryvorn Unleashed since its second encounter has Zachy alone.

I used the respec in the last campaign right before the finale to change classes. I had been a basic 2 punisher, and I sold all of my low level punisher cards and bought warlord cards to replace them- I kept Blood Bargaining and Trading Pains, as they would be useful in the finale, but otherwise it was an opportunity to tailor my deck specifically to the finale- incredibly useful. Playing that quest earlier in the campaign would have been significantly less useful, as I didn't have the large pool of XP to customize.

That's an awfully long rant.

The Taskmaster's Ring is a great relic for the OL. Why? Same reason that you like Dash. Movement points are key, especially many times for lieutenants who are trying to race somewhere. What do they have to do to use it? Get a surge. Not terribly difficult. And it's the reward for 2 of the 3 Act I rumor quests for Trollfens, which are under the OL's control when and whether to play. The Act II relics are better for the heroes, especially since they can always use them whereas the OL is limited to just when he has a Lieutenant in play, but the Omen of Blight isn't bad.

The Secrets of Flesh is a very good OL card. There's a lot of times that I would prefer to see that to a Dash. Healing every monster on the board 1-3 health? Crazy good. The OL can also gain up to 6 threat from each rumor quest; that is nearly worth the 150 gold they may get out of it.

The LotW rewards are pretty heavily skewed towards the heroes. Heroes using Valyndra's Bane every encounters is much, much, much better than the OL having the option to use Her Majesty's Malice with a lieutenant. Similarly, Aurium Mail is much, much better than Valyndra's Gift.

But that's why Trollfens is better balanced than LotW. And that's why I would house-rule LotW and not Trollfens. But that's based off of the actual and specific things of each quest, not some diatribe on how things sit generally in some theoretical balance between the OL and heroes.

Yeah I have difficulties keeping my rant short so please bear with me, lol. Anyway, I'm not going to re-expose again why I think relics and plot cards are overhyped, but it has never been a question about what's printed on the card and how good it looks, my point has always been about how you practically use these things in a game of Descent to increase your odds at winning. Because I am not questioning Taskmaster's Ring is a good relic, it's just that it would be very hard for me to actually use it at all. I'm okay with the whole idea of collecting nice gear "for the future to come" but more often than not you sit with a quest and only a % of all investment/rewards available to you. Heroes have 100% of that in front of them. That's why I'm ranting. If you played this quest, got this relic, got to use it in a quest and it did great deeds then good for you. I'm just trying to say that your situation is not that common from what I've experienced so far. And even if you disagree with that, you can still see the assymetry between the OL mechanisms and the heroes mechanisms. Now if it was made like this to prevent the OL from becoming too powerful, fair enough. My only reality is that the present state of these rules makes it very hard for the OL to run a campaign with decent odds of winning quests.

About the OL card, are you serious? Far from me to say the card is worse than any others, but are you actually saying it's a better card than Dash? If your heroes leave monsters alive whether it is at 8 or 1 life - it doesn't matter - you still get two actions per mini during your turn. (okay, barring eventual conditions on them but also barring OL cards you could play to remedy that) and that's the only thing that should matter. Monsters are your tools and you need these tools alive as much as possible for them to perform actions. But +3 life? When you have one hero dealing 15 damage a turn how can a +3 life be relevant at all? I mean sure, it has some utility, at best buys you some time, but when you look at Dash and see what it can do for you there is no comparison. Dash wins you games, Secrets of Flesh just messes around with the heroes.

I used the respec in the last campaign right before the finale to change classes. I had been a basic 2 punisher, and I sold all of my low level punisher cards and bought warlord cards to replace them- I kept Blood Bargaining and Trading Pains, as they would be useful in the finale, but otherwise it was an opportunity to tailor my deck specifically to the finale- incredibly useful. Playing that quest earlier in the campaign would have been significantly less useful, as I didn't have the large pool of XP to customize.

Yeah, nice to hear that some OLs actually are using this re-spec, that's quite a nice and cool little reward but as always it might pay off sometimes and sometimes not.

About the OL card, are you serious? Far from me to say the card is worse than any others, but are you actually saying it's a better card than Dash? If your heroes leave monsters alive whether it is at 8 or 1 life - it doesn't matter - you still get two actions per mini during your turn. (okay, barring eventual conditions on them but also barring OL cards you could play to remedy that) and that's the only think that should matter. Monsters are your tools and you need these tools alive as much as possible for them to perform actions. But +3 life? When you have heroes dealing 15 damage a turn how can a +3 life be relevant at all? I mean sure, it has some utility, at best buys you some time, but when you look at Dash and see what it can do for you there is no comparison. Dash wins you games, Secrets of Flesh just messes around with the heroes.

I guess it's just possible that you don't know what it does.

Secrets of Flesh doesn't heal 1 monster with 1-3 health. It heals all of your monsters 1-3 health. That could add up to 15 health. And crucially, it could be the difference in keeping a key lieutenant or monster alive. Between defense dice, monster abilities, and other tricks, it's extremely unlikely that I'll let heroes do that much damage a turn to a key figure. So healing them up 3 health could be half a turn's output if not more.

Take Aurium Plating from Valyndra's plot deck. Give a whole monster group immunity to pierce. That makes the damage that they take from heroes significantly less each turn. So they finally manage to do 4 or 5 damage onto one of them, and then you heal 3? While you also heal some of your smaller monsters which they thought that they were almost done with? And you would rather give 1 monster group 1 extra move action? No. Not unless you have a specific reason that you need to move a specific monster or lieutenant somewhere as a win condition.

And even if you do, Dash and Frenzy can only be 4 cards in your deck. You need to populate it with others. Not only is Secrets of the Flesh a really good one to do so with, it also is 0 experience points so you can spend your XP somewhere else.

There's also a number of times that I'd prefer any variety of OL cards to Frenzy.

Bloodrage over Frenzy in many instances. One more attack and get a weak monster back fully healed in somewhere that might be even more useful.

Trap cards that pick on heroes weak attributes. If they don't have great might, Web Trap is great. It can cost them most of a whole turn.

Reinforce? C'mon.

I think you're vastly overrating Dash and Frenzy. They're situationally nice, but so are many other cards which you might want to play as you tailor it to the encounter, monster groups, and hero attributes.

About the OL card, are you serious? Far from me to say the card is worse than any others, but are you actually saying it's a better card than Dash? If your heroes leave monsters alive whether it is at 8 or 1 life - it doesn't matter - you still get two actions per mini during your turn. (okay, barring eventual conditions on them but also barring OL cards you could play to remedy that) and that's the only think that should matter. Monsters are your tools and you need these tools alive as much as possible for them to perform actions. But +3 life? When you have heroes dealing 15 damage a turn how can a +3 life be relevant at all? I mean sure, it has some utility, at best buys you some time, but when you look at Dash and see what it can do for you there is no comparison. Dash wins you games, Secrets of Flesh just messes around with the heroes.

I guess it's just possible that you don't know what it does.

Secrets of Flesh doesn't heal 1 monster with 1-3 health. It heals all of your monsters 1-3 health. That could add up to 15 health. And crucially, it could be the difference in keeping a key lieutenant or monster alive. Between defense dice, monster abilities, and other tricks, it's extremely unlikely that I'll let heroes do that much damage a turn to a key figure. So healing them up 3 health could be half a turn's output if not more.

Hmm I edited my post prior to seeing yours, feel free to check if you like.

No, I know what the card does, I know it's a gain for all monsters. I agree 3 life on a lieutenant is more solid than 3 life on a zombie, I can give you that. Then whether this +3 life will require more actions from the heroes to defeat your lieutenant or not, I mean there are so many factors involved that we cannot say that Secrets of Flesh always lives up to whatever expectations you may have of this card. If you have played it and think high of it, by any means. I'm not here to say people's favorite toys are crap and how wrong you are, to each his own metagame and experience. From MY perspective though based on different situations when I look at some monsters being severely injured, I don't think I would have wanted to draw this card ever. I would have wanted to draw and play Blood Rage instead. Like I said, every monster to me has an unprinted "number of actions required to defeat this monster" value on the card. If your +3 (again, taking the highest possible result) means a great deal with regards to this value then sure, but then it needs to be put into perspective of the damage output of your heroes. Maybe it is more useful if your heroes are not completely geared up. Mine are and +3 is a nothing.

Take Aurium Plating from Valyndra's plot deck. Give a whole monster group immunity to pierce. That makes the damage that they take from heroes significantly less each turn. So they finally manage to do 4 or 5 damage onto one of them, and then you heal 3? While you also heal some of your smaller monsters which they thought that they were almost done with? And you would rather give 1 monster group 1 extra move action? No. Not unless you have a specific reason that you need to move a specific monster or lieutenant somewhere as a win condition.

And even if you do, Dash and Frenzy can only be 4 cards in your deck. You need to populate it with others. Not only is Secrets of the Flesh a really good one to do so with, it also is 0 experience points so you can spend your XP somewhere else.

About the first part, I mean sure there will be situations where this card will be more effective. But you need a specific reason to keep these monsters alive and heroes need a specific reason to want to kill these monsters (rather than say meet the quest objectives). Dash is useful even outside of the race quests - which are a vast majority of the quests mind you - as you can use it to put a monster into range. Even better, move a monster into range, attack, perform action ability.

About the second point, well yeah you need 11 other cards in your deck and maybe you will put SoF in there if you think the card deserves it, I'm fine with it.

There's also a number of times that I'd prefer any variety of OL cards to Frenzy.

Bloodrage over Frenzy in many instances. One more attack and get a weak monster back fully healed in somewhere that might be even more useful.

Trap cards that pick on heroes weak attributes. If they don't have great might, Web Trap is great. It can cost them most of a whole turn.

Reinforce? C'mon.

I think you're vastly overrating Dash and Frenzy. They're situationally nice, but so are many other cards which you might want to play as you tailor it to the encounter, monster groups, and hero attributes.

Both cards in your deck, period. Blood Rage still requires a target you're willing to sacrifice. If your heroes know you play this card they will have more incentive to take out monsters completely instead of keeping something with low life since that's a free ticket for Blood Rage pwnage. I agree that Blood Rage is great to get rid of injured monsters you can respawn afterwards, especially master monsters or even Zachareth in the interlude missions.

Trap cards are great. Anyting that can waste the heroes' actions.

I just purchased Reinforce for the first time in one of our campaigns and have zero experience of the card, so I'll take your word on this one.

About the last sentence in your post, most quests are race quests or "take position" quests. I don't see a quest where you wouldn't be able to use Dash to great effect. At worst, keep it for the next encounter. I cannot remember how many encounters I have won thanks to Dash. Feels like cheap wins to my heroes for sure. Then yeah card is "less cool", "basic", "straight forward" (as opposed to convoluted effects that seem uber powerful although they´re not). Frenzy, I don't know, what do you do with your monsters aside from running if you're not attacking? You really want to make sure you connect an attack with condition on top of it? Frenzy! I mean, I don't know in which quests these two cards would lose a % of their relevance. Other OLs are welcome to comment. You disagree, fine, but do you actually side them out or do you keep the original set in your deck?

Secrets of the flesh definitely is a game winner, along with the universal card that lets you roll 2 red dice and heal a monster for that many hp - it slows the heroes down for sure. In the last encounter when its a race to kill each other it can also let you live a little bit longer which is good. Secrets of the flesh is also useful when there is a runemaster or some other aoe class thats smacking a bunch of monsters at once - its not something i have obtained personally but i have had it played against me.

Frenzy and dash are both awesome cards too. I try to reserve Frenzy for monsters that can hit more than 1 hero at once to gain maximum effect from it.

We seem to be straying from the original topic however.

Drawing 1-2 great piece of equipment out of 5 cards every turn that the heroes can afford to buy is not game changing? Drawing the freaking search card allowing you to draw a random item in the shop deck is no big deal? Sounds liike you're playing in magical Christmas land and Santa is the OL.

Sounds like you're basing a lot of assumption on everyone playing a 4-hero campaign. Both of these are far less likely to happen as you reduce the number of heroes. (Fewer choices / usable gear to spend gold on, which delays buying equipment, which reduces chances of winning further, and fewer search tokens = fewer chances at Treasure Chest)

a 66% increase of act 2 shop item cards in combination with a 36% increase in gold is HUGE .

The extra shop choices are probably one of the biggest benefits, especially to parties with fewer heroes in them.

Reinforce? C'mon.

I just purchased Reinforce for the first time in one of our campaigns and have zero experience of the card, so I'll take your word on this one.

Keep in mind that Reinforce has been nerfed in the Errata and not everyone uses the new version, so YMMV.

Drawing 1-2 great piece of equipment out of 5 cards every turn that the heroes can afford to buy is not game changing? Drawing the freaking search card allowing you to draw a random item in the shop deck is no big deal? Sounds liike you're playing in magical Christmas land and Santa is the OL.

Sounds like you're basing a lot of assumption on everyone playing a 4-hero campaign. Both of these are far less likely to happen as you reduce the number of heroes. (Fewer choices / usable gear to spend gold on, which delays buying equipment, which reduces chances of winning further, and fewer search tokens = fewer chances at Treasure Chest)

Yeah, but it's just hard to talk about balance considering a variable number of heroes in general, although many mechanisms do remain linear in this game so it's probably not as much of an impact as you think it is. I mean, statistically speaking you obviously don't get the same odds for obtaining cool gear off the shop deck the fewer heroes you have, however the % of these odds your heroes are losing by being fewer is somehow compensated by the OL getting access to less resources as well (monsters and OL cards, even threat tokens). It can go either way, but again, between getting a good equipment from the shop deck and getting one more OL card for the next encounter, the heroes have everything to gain. So you are correct Griton when you say that it changes things, but I will claim that the result remains the same (more or less, I guess you can always dispute that, but I'm not going to split hairs).

Oh and I think everybody should be playing this game with 4 heroes to get the best experience. 4-heroes seem the commonly agreed standard for playing the game, so I'm not going to preface every assumption I make with the number of heroes considered unless it's relevant for the said assumption. That's because I'm lazy, lol.

Back on topic (apologies to the OP) I would actually try and not play the rumor quest mechanism especially if you intend to run the mini-campaigns anyway. The only solution I see is heavy house ruling. I don't think you can get away with a minor change on this one, but we saw some people here who reckon +1XP to the OL is the only required change. I disagree but if people can test this and say it's good as it is then why not. I'm much more enclined to buff the OL a fair bit on a global level, and then (only then) play rumor quests with some interesting rewards. What I think eventually would be the solution is a Descent 3.0 with even capabilities between heroes and OL. I know exactly what mechanisms I would put in there, but it's too much of a stretch to even suggest as a house rule.

I've been away from the forums a bit and wow... this thread is still alive

We've actually house ruled the crap out of the rumors. Here's what we're doing:

- Quests are decided randomly throughout the campaign (to prevent snowballing)

- At the start of the campaign 3 rumor quests are added to the quests that can randomly be played (so Campaign Act I quests + those 3 rumors). The OL is given 3 rumor event cards into his hand. If they state a rumor card has to be played then another rumor quest is added to the available quests pool. No threat is gained from played rumors this way. This is also a way to provide the OL with a bit more power, having those 3 events in his hand right away.

- We then draw a random quest from the pool. Can't play two rumors in a row.

- Regular campaign quests are played with the standard ruling.

- Rumor quests provide the heroes with the full gold at the end. The OL gets 1 threat token at the start of every hero turn, ignoring the start of the game turn. We've capped threat gained this way up to 10. He still gains threat through other normal means.

We're still at the start of our campaign so I can't really provide proper feedback to these rulings. We've only done the Intro and a Rumor right after that so far. I'll come back and provide feedback once our campaign is finished. This ruling requires an Agent deck tho, not sure how I would do it if threat wasn't an available resource.

1 threat per turn seems excessive! You could buy most of the Plot cards in one go, even if you capped it at 10 + normal means.

1 threat per turn seems excessive! You could buy most of the Plot cards in one go, even if you capped it at 10 + normal means.

You are being played by your heroes, mate.

I can accept that your metagame is different than mine, and that you think plot cards are more valuable than I do, but that's a hell of a house rule you got. No way I would have accepted such deal, even with booze involved in the bargain.

Firstly, unlimited currency supply makes no sense, otherwise like the above poster said you may just purchase your whole deck with no notion of saving said currency for it. Your crazy +12 threat per quest completely tears this rule apart, tramples it with iron boots and throws the remains into the fires of Mount Doom. But even more importantly, what do you do with this billion threat tokens? Play enablers and weak versions of OL cards in exchange of extra actions and rerolls to the heroes? No wonder why your heroes are okay with that. It's Vegas, baby [for them].

I realize that you have only played a few quests with this rule, and maybe you are putting a lot of faith into these plot cards. I don't think you'll find what you seek but maybe you'll have tons of fun doing it your way.

The OL gets 1 threat token at the start of every hero turn, ignoring the start of the game turn. We've capped threat gained this way up to 10. He still gains threat through other normal means.

Do you mean at the start of every round (one round = 2–4 hero turns + 1 overlord turn)? Otherwise in a 4-hero game, The OL threat gets maxed out pretty quickly.

That house rule seems insane. Personally i think a house rule to fix the issues stated should do as little to disturb the game as possible. That rule just creates all sorts of other head aches. If it works for your group and you all enjoy it, by all means go for it. I personally would never play with any variation of that however.

I think the best fix will come from something that does not require any expansions to fix (other than the expansions that put the rumors in the game in the first place).

That house rule seems insane. Personally i think a house rule to fix the issues stated should do as little to disturb the game as possible. That rule just creates all sorts of other head aches. If it works for your group and you all enjoy it, by all means go for it. I personally would never play with any variation of that however.

I think the best fix will come from something that does not require any expansions to fix (other than the expansions that put the rumors in the game in the first place).

I'm not of the opinion that the Rumors really need tweaking, but if you're looking for something simple to throw a small advantage back to the OL, how about "regardless of who wins a Rumor quest, the next quest is chosen by the OL." This does a few things:

-Reduces risk for an OL to choose to play a Rumor quest, as even if he loses, he won't lose control of the campaign direction.

-Increases cost for heroes to choose a Rumor quest, as they lose control of campaign direction.

Thematically, I think it also makes sense- the Rumors are supposed to be "side-quests." This change confines them to that status by not letting the outcome determine the overall direction of the campaign (beyond the effects of rewards.) If the heroes are deciding to temporarily abandon the mission at hand to go hunt treasure, it makes sense that the OL's plans will move ahead without them- this is in line with the mechanic in Shadow Rune that an unplayed quest is treated as if the heroes just didn't have time for it, and the OL succeeded because they didn't interfere.

I think that meets your criteria, and adds a sufficient tilt to the scenario. (Even if the heroes wait until just before the Interlude/Finale to play a Rumor, if they would be forced to pick one if there were multiple cards in play, since the OL could then progress the campaign immediately.)

Thats not a bad idea at all, its subtle which makes it a good starting point to work from and its believable in terms of theme. The idea that the heroes have been distracted by the side quest has certainly been something that has played though my mind.

There are issues to address however, like if the quest is played before an interlude then does that mean the OL picks the interlude quest even though the heroes won the majority of the act 1 quests ? Or does that just give the overlord the choice to pick the first act 2 quest ?

The same goes the quest being played before the finale.

i am waiting to get my copy of the heroes and monster expansion (any day now) to check out the latest rumour reward. From what i have read on here the rumour in favor (not sure about the actual win/loss chance however) of the overlord which makes creating a fix for the previous rumours just that little bit more difficult.

The bonus of choice would be mitigated if the rumor was played immediately before an interlude/finale.

However, in the cases where there are rumors from multiple expansions in play, it would prevent the heroes from playing multiple rumors in a row and stacking the gold/rewards from them, as after the first, the OL would have the opportunity to move onto the interlude (or finale.)

I think this could be exploited by the overlord.

If the overlord plays a series of plot cards just before the start of the third quest in act 1, the heroes would only have the opportunity to play a single rumor despite the trade off that the banes they had from the plot cards made more quests available to them.

I am not sure if that exploit is necessarily a bad thing or not, but its some food for thought.

I think this could be exploited by the overlord.

If the overlord plays a series of plot cards just before the start of the third quest in act 1, the heroes would only have the opportunity to play a single rumor despite the trade off that the banes they had from the plot cards made more quests available to them.

I am not sure if that exploit is necessarily a bad thing or not, but its some food for thought.

Good point, except why would the OL play quest cards that he doesn't intend to play? If his goal is to limit the heroes to a single Rumor option (and assuming we're in a situation where he hasn't been forced to play any Rumors yet and it's right before the Interlude) why not just play the card he'd prefer the heroes to pick? No sense in giving them choices if he can avoid it.

I think this could be exploited by the overlord.

If the overlord plays a series of plot cards just before the start of the third quest in act 1, the heroes would only have the opportunity to play a single rumor despite the trade off that the banes they had from the plot cards made more quests available to them.

I am not sure if that exploit is necessarily a bad thing or not, but its some food for thought.

Good point, except why would the OL play quest cards that he doesn't intend to play?

If using Plot Decks, the OL gets a threat every time he plays a Rumor Quest card, so that could be a reason to play more than one.

I don't use plot decks, but additionally I was trying to provide a solution that fit BentoSan's criteron of not requiring additional expansions. When other expansions are considered, a threat token does seem to be a nice small incentive for the OL.