Need some advice regarding extra decks of cards

By Ergocorp, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone could help me. I'm planning on running my own version of a descent campaign that incorporates all of the expansions, controlling hero power creep by having it that a hero must miss an adventure if they are knocked down more than once in a single quest (and then an additional quest for every further knockdown in that quest).

This helps control power creep of the heroes as they will by sheer attrition not be able to play in every quest.

So I've decided that we are going to play with a 'Guild of Heroes'. The players will start with the 8 heroes out of the starting box, and at the end of a quest they will have the option to hire new heroes to add to their roster from the pool.

There's a lot of more modification and home brew I need to do to ensure balance, and scenarios I need to design (say the heroes lose the final mission of The Shadow Rune campaign when it involves Gryvorn it implies the castle explodes, the next mission would be the remaining heroes investigating the ruins to see if they can find their now trapped/dead colleagues, or allowing experience to be spent to upgrade attributes, say 3 to 4 on an attribute would cost 4 exp, and 4 to 5 would cost 5, with attributes capped at 6).

I'm locking heroes to classes at the onset, so when my gamers pick a hero it comes as that class. As the core box ones and the expansion ones are pertty obvious as to what class goes with hero that's not a problem. Until we get to the hero and monster packs.

Out of all the ones available I've currently only ordered Oath of the Outcast, but I'm struggling to assign an class to Shiver as there aren't really any icy spells for mages, so I'm torn between Runemaster and Geomancer.

What I'm looking for is copies of the relevant decks for that very reason. While the base game implies that you can't have 2 of the same class, my campaign might call for that if they run out of heroes etc. While last resort is just writing down what they have, if I can get hold of some cards that would be better.

There's a chap on ebay that seems to be selling some but he only has 7 of the base classes, and no expasion ones, plus shipping from the US is 3 times the price he's charging for the deck (I'm from Manchester, England), and I've tried and failed at scanning them in and printing on card, flipping it to get the back.

Any ideas?

My idea is not to allow 2 of the same class in any single quest. That's quite an overhaul you're performing, it's basically a different game with Descent pieces. How are you planning to manage XP? If a hero is only gaining XP from a quest he plays, by the time you get to Act 2, the heroes will be laughably, pathetically underpowered. My advice would be to think very carefully about how you deal with the heroes.Perhaps each knockdown after a certain number causes them to go to the next quest with a certain number of wounds, rather than sitting out entirely. In my mind, your model goes leaps and bounds beyond power creep control, but in your defense, I haven't seen the whole picture.

Edited by Zaltyre

Thanks for the reply.

Yeah I have a LOT of play testing to do :)

Could be that as it's one giant campaign that I delay the transition to act 2, but im also expecting possibly more than 4 heroes in a session. The swappable roster will allow for people to drop in and out as our personal schedules allow for it.

I'll be playing the overlord so I can also look at buffing monsters etc as I go along if I'm getting guffed at somepoint or conversely debuff them if I'm smashing them. Maybe even an act 3!

Lots of play testing. Lots and lots of play testing :)