Well...following to walk along the path I've start yersterday.... my today question is a little bit similar: wich is the best treasure (item/weapon) in the copper deck, in your opinion?

In our group we've Shala (I'm not sure it's written this way...), who found a Rune with Breath and Burn (and with something else that I don't remember..). I think that's a good stuff for the party, don't you?!! But...is it the BEST one in the copper??

If you are playing the RTL expansion, bag of holding is the best one. But for a regular one I'd say Scorpion Helmet gives good bonuses.

The best coppers are the "other" items - most of the time you won't find better replacement "other" items for your copper ones; gauntlets of power, archer's charm, bag of holding, etc. Even the movement item, since often times the party will want as many of these as possible (one from each deck is ideal).

All due respect to the fellows above, I have to go with The Staff of the Grave, especially in RtL. You can use that thing all the way through the game if you can keep it from getting hit with Crushing Blow. Its the only weapon (not sure if there is one in ToI) that ignores Undying. Yes, you get a curse token but that's what those shop dolls are for.

Yeah, that's true. That's the one Cursed Item that everyone agrees is worth the curse through at least the Silver age of the campaign. I believe there is some Star weapon that makes figures within 6 spaces loses undying at the gold level though, so that is perhaps from TOI, and more useful as well as no curse.

pinkymadigan said:

Star of Kellos. One-handed rune that is not cursed and does take away undying within 6 spaces. Really hoping to see this one now that our campaign hit gold since we deal with a lot of eldritch fighting Mr. Sorcerer King. Not to mention giving a shield to Jaes would be nice. Though this thing will probably only exist to prevent something else from being destroyed and take one attack and 12 threat away from the OL.

Staff of the Grave is pretty well awesome, and was very handy until destroyed. I do like ring of quickness, especially when you want to chug that fatigue potion and still be able to battle, etc. I never really find myself keeping so many items (since money is so hard to come by and you can still have backups in your pack) to feel the bag of holding is really that awesome. The breath rune is really nice since one surge=one damage and can really make your mage a force to be reckoned with early on.

@maruk:

Scorpion helmet is a silver treasure. Archer's charm (+1 range, pierce 1) is the ranged "other" you get in copper.

The thing about the Staff of the Grave or any other cursed item, at least as I understand it...is that once it's equipped, you can't un-equip it unless you die. Then at that point you either re-equip it or discard it, for no compensation.. The problem with that is you lose the flexibility to use any other magic attack type of weapon, such as Bane for instance. You're just locked into the Staff of the Grave as your only magic weapon. Or am I misunderstanding something? I checked out the rules regarding cursed items in the Altar of Despair rulebook and that's the way it reads to me.. Has it been FAQed? (If it didn't work this way it would probably be overpowered, at least in RTL..)

Schmiegel said:

I am unable to find any such rule, unless you mean "can't" in the sense of "shouldn't." Lots of people seem to assume that "cursed" stuff can't be unequipped, since that convention has been used in lots of role-playing games, but in Descent the only disadvantage is that you get a Curse token each time you equip it. That means that if you keep switching between a cursed item and some other item, you accumulate yet another Curse token each time you switch back to the cursed item, so switching frequently is generally a bad idea, but if you think you're going to die multiple times before you need it again, it's legal and reasonable to swap it out.

Antistone said:

Very true. The only limitation that I'm aware of is that if you die, you have to choose to equip the cursed item immediately or discard it. Other than that you can equip and re-equip it at will.

Guys, thanks much for the responses! I apparently was making some type of intuitive leap to the way I personally think this quality of a cursed item should work. IMHO, that particular ruling makes the Staff of the Grave overpowered, at the least in comparison to the way it scales to vanilla Descent. Compare it to your other basic Copper level weapons...(Remy, it's no wonder it's your favorite.) I believe it's an oversight on the part of the game designers, but I do understand there are seemingly infinite details to convert from basic Descent to RTL, and some are going to be missed or altogether ignored just to keep the rules from getting completely out of hand. Or maybe not...but if the Staff of the Grave (just by way of an example) is scaled exactly the same in vanilla Descent (where you're dealing in maybe 20-35 CP increments per game...it's been awhile, forgive me if that number is off) as it is in RTL (where you're working with 600 CP before you finally hit the Overlord's Keep, or about 20-30 times more CP over the duration), does that seem right to you guys?

For that reason, we play this rule the way I originally described it (incorrectly according to the rules), which makes it a house rule, but perhaps what could be considered an exceedingly appropriate house rule that should be officially changed by the game designers, down the road. What are your thoughts? That's the way it seems to me.

IMO they should leave the cursed item rules as they are, since apart from the Staff of the Grave the rest of them aren't too overpowered. But I did make the same mistake you did about the equip/unequip rule for them.

Feanor said:

AH! Thanks, been a while since we played last, some of my players are kinda busy with not being in the country, hehe.