Hi all,

After getting almost no response on the BoardGameGeek boards, I’m going to post my RtL variant here in the hope of getting some feedback, criticism and suggestions.

Firstly, I have to acknowledge that the original seed of the idea came from Bleached Lizard, while I subsequently tweaked the mechanics of it.

Secondly, apologies for such a big post.

Here goes …

***HERO REINCARNATION HOUSE-RULE***

GOALS

(1) To make a big lead in CP for the Overlord mean something.
(2) To bring some ‘immediacy’ into the game by making hero deaths matter.
(3) To give the players some variety by allowing (actually forcing) them to play many different heroes.
(4) To limit certain overpowered heroes by making each hero’s participation in the game temporary.

Anyway, here’s how it works. At the beginning of the game, a pool of 30 heroes is selected by the players (expansions are required). The players may then choose four of these to begin the game with.

The first time each hero dies, he is resurrected as normal. However, the second and all subsequent times a hero dies, the player must make a Reincarnation Roll. A Reincarnation Roll is made with a number of power dice equal to the heroes’ Conquest value, subtracting two dice during the Copper Campaign and one during the Silver Campaign. (This means 2CP heroes automatically succeed on their Reincarnation Rolls in the Copper Campaign.) If no blanks are rolled, the hero is resurrected as normal.

However, if any of the dice roll a blank, the hero isn’t resurrected, but rather ‘reincarnated’ as a new hero. The old hero goes into the graveyard, and a new hero can be chosen by the player from the original pool and re-enters the game as per the normal rules for resurrection.

The reincarnated hero inherits the following from the dead hero:
* All equipment
* All attribute upgrades
* All dice upgrades, though they can be swapped into any categories
* All skills, though the player has the choice of swapping any or all skills with ones chosen using the procedure for initial skill selection in Road to Legend.

If the players ever run out of heroes, the Overlord wins.

Some things to point out:

(1) Heroes in Copper die more often than in Gold, so this variant compensates by making each death more likely to be permanent in Gold. It also means 2CP heroes automatically succeed in their Reincarnation Rolls in Copper. This keeps the runner/blitzing strategy viable in Copper (and means any 2CP heroes chosen in Copper will be around for a while).

(2) Mathematically, the whole reincarnation variants boils down to this: with average Reincarnation Rolls overall, the players will run out of replacement heroes if the Overlord manages to get about 350CP worth of hero kills (Overlord CP gained through other means doesn’t affect this). An Overlord has to have dominated throughout to have this kind of lead. See below for more maths.

(3) Passing on the dead heroes’ skills retains the sense of character advancement, and ensures the heroes will still want to visit many cities to get the best skills, as dead heroes will probably be replaced with similar ones so that their skills remain useful.

(4) Note that this variant would probably appeal more to experienced Descent players who would like some enforced variety.

(5) Although this obviously benefits the Overlord by giving him another way to win the game, the heroes could mitigate this by choosing heroes better suited for the current campaign level (e.g. heroes that give bonus damage in the early game, heroes that give bonus surges in the late game).

Now for the maths, and this is where input is particularly appreciated. Let’s call an average game one that ends with a CP ratio of 350-250 to the Overlord, and let’s assume that of the Overlord’s 350 CP, 300 is earned through hero kills. An average hero is worth 3CP, so that means that about 100 hero deaths is a ballpark figure for the number of deaths you could expect in a reasonably close game. Now your average hero (a 3CP hero in the Silver Campaign), rolls two dice during his Reincarnation Roll which gives him about a 30% chance (30.6%) of dying permanently each time. This means that a 3CP Silver Campaign hero can expect to enjoy 4.3 lives. Of course, he’ll actually enjoy two, three, four, five, six (if he’s really lucky) or some other whole number of lives, but the average is about 4.3.

For those who care, here are my calculations. To explain, the first row represents the poor schmucks who end up with only two lives by scoring the 30% permanent death chance on their first Reincarnation Roll (remember, a hero is automatically resurrected after his first death, only making the Reincarnation Roll on second and subsequent deaths). The second row represents heroes who pass the first roll and fail the second (0.7 x 0.3 = 0.21 = 21%), so ending up with three lives. And so on.

Lives..Frequency..Lives x Frequency
2........30.00%.....0.600
3........21.00%.....0.630
4........14.70%.....0.588
5........10.29%.....0.515
6........7.20%.......0.432
7........5.04%.......0.353
8........3.53%.......0.282
9........2.47%.......0.222
10......1.73%.......0.173
11......1.21%.......0.133
12......0.85%.......0.102
13......0.59%.......0.077
14......0.42%.......0.058
15......0.29%.......0.044
16......0.20%.......0.033
17......0.14%.......0.024
18......0.10%.......0.018
19......0.07%.......0.013
20......0.05%.......0.010
etc.

Now, if we multiply the frequencies with the number of lives and add them all up we get 4.3 which, to reiterate, is the average number of lives a hero rolling two dice during his Reincarnation Roll (a 4CP hero in Copper, 3CP hero in the Silver, or 2CP hero in Gold) will have before dying forever. It should hopefully also be close to the average for *all* heroes combined including those rolling four, three, one or zero dice. (F*** doing the maths on all of that though – my head hurts as it is.)

Oh, and I’m pretty sure my maths is right. Really I am.

So, if there are 100 deaths in a close campaign, and each hero can be expected to have about 4.3 lives, that means that at least 25 heroes should be available to the players (25 x 4.3 = 107.5). My feeling is 30 is a better number. Here’s why: 107.5 deaths = 322.5 Overlord CP in kills = a pretty good effort for the heroes = they deserve to have enough heroes to finish the game. However, 30 heroes = 30 x 4.3 = 129 deaths x 3 = 387 CP in kills, which seems like a fairly steep requirement for the Overlord, until you take into account the fact that after the 27th hero death, the party will be diminished in size with no replacements. In other words, 27 x 4.3 = ~116 deaths x 3 = ~350 Overlord CP in kills before the heroes are a man down permanently, and presumably headed for a loss overall. So, 30 heroes it is, and you may as well let the players choose them.

So, there it is. Discuss.

Cheers!

Dave

Seems like a playable variant to me, as it would give a little more reward to the overlord for killing the heroes a lot, and it can cause certain heroes that die a lot to be put out of their misery. A couple thoughts: I think it might be best if the same skills were kept from one hero to the next, it might get too complicated when each hero has bought various new skills, although that does pen in heroes to choose replacements that fulfill the same role, even though they will probably want to do that anyway. Of course, some skills will work much better with some characters than with others, so perhaps the heroes would just have to reevaluate which skills they want to buy, and get skills that aren't specific to the hero buying it at the time.

Also, I'm not so sure about varying the chance of reincarnation based on the conquest value. I can see where you're coming from on that, as the 2 conquest heroes are easier to kill and so wouldn't last as long otherwise, but in this case I could see the Overlord instead focusing on the 4 conquest heroes first early in the game to try to get them out, as they will be easier to take down, and then the heroes might end up strapped for tanks later in the campaign. Perhaps it would be better to just count all heroes as 3CP with your system, so 1 die at copper, 2 at silver, 3 at gold for all heroes? It would also keep Zyla from being the perma-runner, having only 1 conquest, she is guaranteed to stick around until Gold, and still be hard to get rid of then.

I like the idea though, it would add a new level of strategy to the game, with the Overlord having to reconsider who to try to kill, and the heroes to plan out when in the campaign they want certain heroes to be in play, like making use of Shiver's Aura 4 in copper, then when he dies a bunch, switch him out for someone more useful later in the game, such as Landric (not that he isn't also very useful early in the game).

Great idea. This is a further development of an idea we had here just last week or so (and which I have been chewing on since then). The main complaint of my players in my one campaign was that they got tired of playing the same hero over and over again. I never thought about limiting the total hero number or about reincarnation rolls - in my idea the heros simply were dead and gone, with retaining equipment and other stuff for the new hero, which was to be randomly picked (I think selecting each time would be very time consuming - analysis paralysis comes to mind...)

One question regarding skill selection for a reincarnated hero: Are skills from already razed cities still available, either to retain or to choose from?

The new victory condition for the OL sounds pretty interesting, though I can see some issues Hammerdal already mentioned.

How are the calculations for including all 38 heroes (39 to 42, if you have all the promos)? This could probably lessen the problems with thinning out certain hero types.

I am likely to test something like this in the next campaign or probably in the one after that (though we are playing Vanilla for the time being, having so many unplayed official quests).

Hello again,

Just to be clear (because my description wasn’t – sorry), reincarnated heroes inherit the same skills as their predecessor. They have the option of swapping out each one for one selected using the initial skill selection process (choosing one of four drawn from the three decks indicated on the hero card and one more of the player’s choice), but I don’t expect that that option would be used much. Instead, heroes would build up their skill-set as normal by planning out a powerful set of synergistic skills and traveling to the appropriate cities to get them. The only thing that would be changing would be the base perk of the hero as each died and was replaced. What this would mean is that a dead, say, ‘tank’ hero would be best replaced with another ‘tank’ hero so that the accumulated skills could be useful. In other words, heroes would collect a set of skills appropriate for a role rather than a specific character.

Parathion, hopefully that answers your question about skills from razed cities. Basically, once a city is razed the only way you could get one of its skills (unless you’d already bought it in which case it’s safe) would be to swap out an existing skill from a dead hero instead of keeping it as normal, and hoping it comes up in the “pick four cards and choose one” process. My feeling is that this would usually be a gamble not worth taking, especially in the mid-late game once you’ve already gathered some great skills.

Hammerdal, from my admittedly not particularly extensive experience as an Overlord in RtL, I seemed to kill the 2CP heroes far more than the 3CP heroes, and almost never killed the 4CP heroes at all. I think making them all equally likely to die would quickly lead to a glut of 4CP heroes and shortage of 2CP heroes. With the system as written, if Overlords want to really concentrate on nailing the 4CP heroes early, then they'll be missing out on a lot of CP from 2CP hero kills. 2CP heroes might not have any chance of permanent death in Copper, but they’re still worth all-important CP for Overlord upgrades. Also, I was a bit reluctant to limit the blitzing/runner strategy in Copper when heroes are at their weakest. Finally, I don’t have the Tomb of Ice expansion, but I completely agree that a 1CP hero like Zyla is a problem for the reasons you describe. I say just don’t use her in the initial pool of 30.

Parathion, having a pool of 30 heroes means that the Overlord has to get about 350CP worth of hero kills before they start running out. If you can bear reading the maths-y bit of my original post (and I understand if you can’t), then it’s all in there. If you wanted to add more heroes it would diminish Goal 1 of the variant (“to make a big lead in CP for the Overlord mean something”). With say 38 heroes, the Overlord would need to kill 35 of them before they were a man down permanently. (Maths mode: 35 x 4.3 = 150 deaths x 3 = 450.) So, the Overlord would need to score about 450 CP from kills alone to get close to winning this way, which represents an insanely big Overlord lead. Of course, you could still play it that way if all you wanted was to vary the heroes and not worry about introducing another way for the Overlord to win.

Thanks for the feedback so far!

Dave

By the way, for anyone interested in the thematic/story side of things (which, to be honest, I'm not particularly in a board game like Descent), the whole Reincarnation shebang could be something along the lines of the following:

(I posted this on BoardGameGeek and though it was pretty silly, but I have a friend badgering me to post it here, too.)

Millenia ago (when school children remembered Madonna's early hits the first time around) ancient priest-kings constructed a mystical artifact of power: the Obelisk of Journeys (as well as a prototype for George Foreman's Lean Mean Grilling Machine). Whenever Terinoth was threatened by great evil (like, say, a Phil Collins revival), the Obelisk of Journeys would summon the spirits of the greatest heroes of ancient times to fight in Terninoth's defence (and, in the case of Runewitch Astarra, to share the ancient secrets of her age-defying moisturiser – you'd never know she was 3000 years old). These ancient heroes could use the Obelisk for magical transport to ancient glyphs scattered throughout Terinoth and, more importantly, to restore their corporeal bodies should they fall in battle – or, if their connection to Terinoth grew too weak, to replace them with another spirit-hero from ancient times (like when they change actors for the same character in TV soaps). But now evil rises, and a foul Overlord threatens the land (and he's worse than Simon Cowell). Will the returned heroes be mighty enough to vanquish him? (with a stirring rendition of "I Will Always Love You") Or will the power of the Obelisk fail before Terinoth can be made safe once again? (from Reality TV)

(Somehow I feel I should apologise ...)

davep1234 said:

Hahaha, nice. Yea, pretty silly, but what the hey. I see what you mean with the 2CP vs 4CP heroes, I was thinking differently on the kills because in the current campaign I'm playing, There's no 2CP hero, just Zyla, who usually is more effort to kill than she's worth, so the OL is going for the 4 CP heroes, which are certainly harder to kill (not too hard when he pulls off a dark charm though, I've got some real heavy hitters), but much more rewarding.

And I think the skill rule you have should work fine, as it still is a bit of a gamble, but I could see sometimes when you switch heroes, the skill you had wouldn't be as good as before, or perhaps you got stuck with a poor skill from the start anyway and want to change it, or you just want to take that gamble to try to get that great skill you can no longer buy. And switching a skill midgame would add a little variety to the game

Hi again Dave,

One thing that struck me upon reading this again was the following: you claim that 'obviously' this is a big advantage for the Overlord, as it gives him a new way to win. I'm not sure this is true. Yes, the new way to win is potentially helpful, but in the rules as you've written them, you have also given the Heroes a HUGE advantage - namely, they are allowed to hand-pick their Heroes at the beginning of the game. Having the perfect set of Heroes off the start makes an enormous difference in the Overlord's early conquest flow in terms of 'getting off the ground,' and reaching the all-important Silver Monster upgrade.

Of course, it wouldn't be too hard to let the heroes pick their pool of 30 Heroes, and then just let them pick 'normally' (3-choose-1 times 4, but drawing from that pool of 30) from there...

Hi Jeff,

My initial feeling was that the players would be ill-advised to use their best heroes from the start, because the Overlord could concentrate on killing them lots before they could build up some decent equipment and upgrades in the hopes of them failing a Reincarnation Roll. Imagine if Nanok or Tahlia failed their first Reincarnation Roll and died permanently having had only two lives. In other words, it could be a big advantage, but it is something of a gamble, too. (Of course, any 2CP hero would be safe in Copper, so the players may as well choose at least one really good one of those.)

However, you might be right if, as you say, the beginning of Copper is disproportionately important relative to the other periods in the game. My gut feeling is that since it’s a new rule that gives the Overlord another chance to win, and I’m the Overlord in my games, I’d rather err on the side of the players. However, a play-test or two might prove you right in which case I’d certainly use the normal draw-three-choose-one system for the initial heroes, as you suggest.

Ciao!

Dave

Though I'm not certain of the long term effects, any early advantage in a game like this *usually* has cascading effects. However, I'm eager to hear how the first session goes. Sounds like a really cool variant.

Alas! We are planning to take a hiatus from rtl after our current session. This sounds really cool, and I would really find this fun from the side of the heroes, and a little variety in the "who" to kill is pretty cool as well.

My biggest concern still does lie with allowing heroes to be picked. I really don't see myself not picking zyla from the start, knowing I will have the ultimate runner at least through gold when I don't really need it as badly since I will be able to kill everything in sight. Certainly, I would force regular starting selection, and might let the heroes randomly draw their next hero from a pool of the appropriate type. (i.e.-if a ranged character dies, you can randomly draw your next ranged character out of a pool of the remaining ranged characters. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure you're gonna see a whole lot of Zyla early and a whole lot of Nanok late...and neither one of those is gonna be a whole lot of fun (for the OL)

I don’t have the Tomb of Ice expansion, so I didn’t know about Zyla, but I’d definitely say leave her out for this variant. The whole point of the variant is hero variety, and a 1CP hero would diminish that. Also, I house-rule out Nanok, but even if you don’t, as a 4CP hero he should die permanently after relatively few deaths, especially in Gold (though easier said than done, I suppose).

As I said, it may well be that the “draw three choose one” system should be used for the all-important first four heroes. Also, the idea of separating the heroes into sub-pools by role and replacing dead heroes with ones from the same sub-pool is an interesting one that would dent hero power significantly.

In the end, though, I’m going to err on the side of my players since it’s a new rule, and let them choose their heroes throughout. If it turns out that being able to choose the heroes is too big of an advantage, my feeling is that rather than randomise the hero selection – and therefore take away an interesting strategy/planning part of the variant for the players – I’d be inclined to just reduce the number in the total hero pool. Despite all of my maths-y carry-on, the figure of 30 is still fairly arbitrary, so I say give the heroes as much strategy and planning goodness as possible, and just reduce the number if you need to make it tougher.

In fact, the variant is quite customisable in that respect. If you have a clever and merciless Overlord, then you could add more heroes to the pool. If your players are tactical geniuses, then you could reduce it by a few and/or remove some of the overpowered ones like Nanok.

Sayonara.

Dave

Also just noticed that the heroes would have to be careful about their dice upgrades, for example, if they start with someone with 2 dice in melee and buy 3 more copper level dice in melee, then their next melee hero starts with 3 melee dice and gets the 3 upgrades, one of those melee upgrade dice would have to be pushed to another stat, and so be somewhat wasteful. They'd also have to be careful with too many silver upgrades, such as if they have some someone starting with 3 black in a stat, and buy just 3 silver upgrades, then switch to a hero with 2 in that trait, then again one of the silver upgrades is pushed off to the wrong trait. Or there's Karnon in ToI (yes, I know you don't have that yet, but for those who do), who gets 5 melee dice to start with, which could muck some things up pretty easily if he gets too many silver upgrades for the next hero to handle or just waste all the copper dice upgrades inherited from the last hero. Perhaps it should allow for the players to retrain a die upgrade level when they reincarnate (for the difference in cost of the die upgrade), or perhaps let the heroes pick their heroes through the campaign so they can try to limit the die upgrade waste.

That’s a very good point.

If the players can choose their heroes then they can plan their dice upgrades so none are wasted when reincarnated, as you say. By concentrating on doing more upgrades on fewer dice rather than having four or five black dice they should be able to keep their options open. Still, there probably needs to be a robust mechanic to explain exactly how to deal with the situation, especially if people decide to use some kind of random selection process for reincarnated heroes instead of letting the players choose them.

How about this. For each dice upgrade of the dead hero, the reincarnated hero may do one of the following:
(1) inherit it "as is" (if possible)
(2) swap it for a lower value upgrade
(3) “cash it in” by adding its XP cost back into his/her XP total

Most of the time the new hero should be able to just inherit the dice "as is", particularly if they had been upgraded sensibly by concentrating more on upgrades to silver and gold before adding new black dice, but this rule should cover situations when they can’t without penalising them too much. The main thing they’d lose is the gold value of the training if they “cash it in”. I suppose if you wanted to be scrupulously fair you could refund that to them as well, but huge piles of gold appearing out of nowhere would be too much of a thematic nightmare, even for me (and I normally don’t care much about theme in a game like Descent).

But well spotted, Hammerdal. I hoped my variant would be really easy to administer, but I guess there are always going to be hidden complications with changes like this.

Dave