My group digs RtL, but we miss playing the big dungeons, and prefer the dungeon crawling aspect of Descent to any other. Therefore we've been kicking around a mod/variant idea and wanted some feedback; it's based on the idea of the basic campaign rules, but allows for more persistence in the heroes from dungeon to dungeon, and attempts to balance the OL with that.

The rules so far;

Goal: To create a well tuned mix of Descent and its expansions, including elements of RtL, that allows both the heroes and the overlord characters to advance throughout a series of dungeons while ignoring the broader themed elements that RtL introduces that do not involve dungeon crawling.

Victory Conditions: The goal for both the heroes and the overlord is to score more wins in a series of games that last a predetermined length, usually the length of one expansion set.

Basic Advancement Concpet: Each player is allowed to keep one Advancement they have acquired from a previous dungeon and list it on their character sheet. When an Advancement is marked in this way it becomes permanent, resetting with the character at the beginning of each dungeon.

Hero Advancement: Each hero character can make one of the following things permanent at the end of each dungeon in which they win: Any one equipment card, subject to normal carrying/pack conditions; any one skill; any one die upgrade; any health or fatigue upgrade, subject to the limit described in basic RtL. All feat cards and potions are traded in for an additional 25 gold each at the end of a dungeon in which the heroes win. In the event that the heroes lose a dungeon, they retain their entire character's inventory, save for regaining any lost permanent items. The heroes may choose to redraw any non-permanent skills after a loss as well. After any dungeon, whether won or lost, the heroes always get the starting amount of gold added to their character for the new dungeon as well. Note that permanent items may still be the target of Crushing Blow, but this does not stop the item from returning at the beginning of the next dungeon, provided the hero had made it permanent in a previous dungeon.

Starting Skills: A hero retains their full complement of starting skills to draw from, and may choose which skill(s) is/are added to their character each level, provided they do not exceed the characters normal starting limits. This means if a normal character (other than Karnon or Arvel) has two skills listed as permanent, they draw their drawing hand, may replace one, then pick from the three skills which to add as their third skill. (provided it does not break their template). Example: Jaes has made one Fighting and one Wizardy skill permanent. When he draws his hand at the beginning of a new dungeon, he cannot take the fighting skill, because it would push him beyond his normal starting capacity. He may draw his third skill from the two available Wizardry, however.

Overloard Advancement: The overlord advances by retaining one power card in play after any dungeon in which the heroes win. In addition, for every conquest the heroes have at the end of a dungeon they win, the overlord gets one additional threat to start the next level with. If the overlord makes a treachery power card permanent, it no longer counts against the overlord's treachery totals. Treachery resets after every level the heroes win, but the OL must keep the same deck if the heroes lose. In the event that the campaign is scheduled to last more games than the amount of power cards the overlord can possibly bring into play, the overlord can start the game with +2 cards in hand per advancement after all power cards are in play.

Basic Rules: Unless noted, the rules from the base game take precedence where conflicts between RtL and the base game rules occur.

Town Turns: Glyphs and the act of taking a "town turn" occur as per RtL, with the heroes needing to start near a glyph prior to using it, and the turn in town taking an entire turn. The "town turn" occurs slightly differently however. At the start of each town turn, roll a power die - on a power enhancement pull one copper treasure, on a surge pull one silver, and on a blank pull one gold. This is what is available the entire turn (any hero in town may access this item if they like throughout the turn, paying its normal market cost to acquire it). Each hero in town rolls once for searching the market. At the end of the turn the market is reset. After the market has been decided, A hero can attempt all or none of the following actions: visit the Alchemist, visit the Temple, visit the Training ground. For each action the hero attempts, roll a power die, on a surge the action is not available to that hero this turn.

Alchemist: On a successful trip to the Alchemist, roll a further power die to determine stock available for this turn (this stock is available to any hero who shops): on a power enhancement, one potion is available; on a surge or blank, two potions are available.

Temple: On a successful trip to the Temple, a hero may spend 100 gold and roll one power die for each missing wound - on a power enhancement it is restored.

Training Ground: On a successful trip to the Training Ground, a hero may purchase all or none of the following; new black power die (500), upgrade to silver power die (750), upgrade to gold power die (1000) (all subject to normal RtL limits); a health or fatigue upgrade (subject to RtL limits, only one copper, silver, or gold upgrade available to each hero) (500, 750, 1000 in cost); or the hero may buy a new skill from a random draw of skills akin to the starting draw for that hero (and that hero only) - the cost is based on the number of permanent skills the hero has- (750 if none, 1000 if 1, 1250 if 2, 1500 if 3, so forth...) a hero can not buy a skill if they have 5 permanent skills already.

That's the idea in a nutshell, so far. I'm sure there are holes I haven't fleshed out properly, so please give feedback/opinions/etc. The two instant strategies that occurred to us are: heroes keep one gold item, OL keeps Evil Genius from dungeon 1. Both very powerful starts. Unsure as to any balance issues as of yet.

I like the idea. I might steal it and play with it myself.

Here are some ideas for how I might mess with this:

1) heroes begin with one skill (like RtL) and keep everything they find as they progress.

2) all treasure chests in a dungeon become copper at the start. Some pre-determined condition will determine when the campaign upgrades to silver, at which point all chests become silver, etc. Treasure is also rolled as in RtL instead of using the numerical charts from vanilla.

3) monsters would need to upgrade accordingly (using RtL stats). Not sure how to determine that right now.

4) relics do not carry forward from dungeons they are used in. (As much as I'd like them to for continuity, keeping relics would quickly break things I think.)

5) I don't know exactly how it would work, but I wouldn't mind using the Runebound overland maps to have the heroes move from one dungeon to the next. Maybe the possibilty of hitting outdoor encounters while up there, but no significnat gameplay would occur generally speaking.

Ah yes, Relics - we had attempted to integrate rtl with the base maps and already ruled that they don't carry over, so probably why I omitted that item.

Sounds like heroes all get permanent gold equipment after quest 1 and balance is probably shot for the rest of the campaign, but that's just my intuition.

Reducing heroes' starting skills whenever they make a skill permanent, but not reducing starting stats or equipment when they make an item or upgrade permanent, seems a bit odd. Not necessarily unbalanced, given that skills vary wildly in quality and the best ones are very powerful, but still weird.

Having never gotten 8 power cards into play at the start of a dungeon myself, I'm not quite sure what this does to the OL's power, but I'm pretty sure if I started with EG and Urgency in play I could deck the heroes to death in some of the larger quests pretty quickly. But then again, the gold item permanents are my biggest concern with this variant as well.

I think the balance would be in the heroes favor pretty early, but after a few quests shift back slightly... just not sure if it's enough. But there are some heinous combos the OL can throw together too... EG, two trapmasters, two dooms, one horde, brilliant commander and urgency would probably be my dungeon nine setup...

I dunno. We probably wont be testing this ourselves for several weeks as we are mid silver in an extended heavily modded RtL campaign we're trying out (diamond level, each phase is 250 CT, etc, with an attempt to shift power towards the heroes early, but back to the OL late, to keep the continuity of the campaign more like the flow of the dungeons themselves).

Ack.

I note that I've failed to mention a level is repeated when lost, so that the heroes always end with a score equal to the number of unique dungeons.

pinkymadigan said:

I'd take a look at wrath and guiding forces. With all that extra threat, etc. you should be seeing from cheaper traps and extra cards, I'd want to be aiming a lot more of my attacks. I'd also enjoy making those aimed kill strokes be worth an extra conquest every time on every hero.

pinkymadigan said:

And do you consider this a success if it results in the combats all being trivial for the heroes, but the heroes frequently losing on time?

I assumed the goal was to have gameplay that was tactically similar to normal Descent, not just to keep the win ratio the same.

If I recall correctly, there are no power cards that really pose an effective counter to gold treasures; there's a power card that gives all monsters +1 armor, but that's a joke when heroes' weapons are one, two, or even three tiers higher than they should be for the monsters they're fighting. Getting Pride immediately would probably be very useful for preventing heroes from getting good items to the heroes that can actually use them, but that probably just means that things come down to luck of the draw.

And if you know that you're giving heroes a big boost early on and the OL will only catch up slowly (if at all), then at best this will only be balanced for a specific campaign length, and that campaign will include some games where you know with high certainty that one side or the other is going to win before you even start. That doesn't sound worth it to me.

Antistone said:

I'll bet those quote tags are all sorts of broken...

I wouldn't feel bad about it, as my heroes are known to lolligag and "mop up" some times, usually to my benefit. But that's not necessarily the end objective.

The goal is as stated; to incorporate what we feel are the better parts of RtL into regular Descent - upgraded dice, some sense of ownership of a character and their "development".

If it needs tweaked, it needs tweaked, but I'm all for self balancing while playtesting new ideas (to keep things fun), so the system allows for wins to be traded back and forth if things get a little out of control for one side or the other, at which point, things will be tweaked.

It is likely that even a few gold items to start a dungeon is too powerful (and it's the thing we are worried most about), however, until we test a few games we probably wont know. But we've also played games where Evil Genius is out turn three and the game becomes a cakewalk for the OL, so it's tough to say.

I'm intending to simulate a few levels and test some things on the side (seems like a good programming project to keep my AI skills sharp), but I am looking for any initial feedback for things I've left out/etc that might need tweaked before beginning. I've attempted to think about ways to limit the heroes power early on, but I don't want to impose artificial limits as to what may be kept/etc, and don't really want to use upgraded monsters so much as play the quests as they are written, with both sides experiencing some sort of boost throughout the campaign.

Alternate ideas are to allow the OL to gain some small boost for winning, but I intend to keep things relatively balanced session to session. One of the big issues with RtL is the landslide that happens as conquest begets conquest, which leads to one side ultimately not having as much fun after a few weeks, and depending on frequency of play, RtL games can last several months easily.