Is there a group of heroes that work really well together? Or does it not really matter?

What about specific way to build each hero.

Tips and builds welcome.

Generally you want to have a good variety of attributes being high, along with complimentary skills and no glaring weaknesses. Mobility is important, as is a variety of combat options. There is a plethora of viable combinations, but my favorites involve the Runemaster and the Knight. The Knight has insane mobility and provides a large amount of durability while still doing good damage, and the Runemaster has blast and super high damage output, providing you options against single targets and groups while screwing with the overlord's preferred positioning. As for a scout, I think my favorite is the wildlander, but the treasure hunter is solid as well. The others are a little behind these two, but they work well. As for a healer, I think the disciple is the best healer class in the game bar none, but the bard is also good if used correctly.

Most synergy comes less from the classes however, and more from hero choices.

Most synergy comes less from the classes however, and more from hero choices.

Which choices would those be?

Honestly there are too many good combos to really even begin to count. Heroes with black defense dice pair well with augur grissom. Syn'drael pairs well with everyone since she has the best heroic feat in the game. Tomble pairs well with a hero who has a black die, especially as a ranged combat class like the wildlander. High Mage Quellen pairs well with someone with a low stamina cap. Elder Mok pairs well with any hero who passively regenerates hit points or stamina or any hero that enables it.

In general, focus on your class/hero combinations for maximum efficiency, then figure out which class/hero combinations pair best with others. For example, Trenloe the Strong makes a spectacular Knight, since the Knight solves his mobility issue and his hero ability fixes the Knight's slightly (and I do mean slightly) lower damage output. Since Trenloe has low stamina, he'll often be capped, meaning he pairs extremely well with High mage Quellen, who will get a ton of stamina regen from being near Trenloe. Since High Mage Quellen will consistently get stamina back from this, choosing a class that benefits from using a lot of stamina is nice: he is the best conjurer in the game in my opinion, and is also a spectacular geomancer. A bard which can regenerate stamina passively mixes in nicely: have him go after High Mage goes so High Mage gets double his stamina regen, then the bard regenerates another one for him afterwards. Make the bard Augur Grissom and have him run the song that makes people heal an extra heart every time they heal at all and suddenly everyone is regenerating 2 hp every time an attack fails to damage them. On Trenloe that's amazing because of his +1 to all defense, and as the knight he gets defensive abilities like shield training. Throw in Tomble as a ranged specialist (any scout other than Shadow Walker, I like Wildlander because of Danger Sense and the stamina regen this team has, so he can use it often). This group has a ton of power: Tomble can't die because he's next to Trenloe, Trenloe can't die, High Mage can proxy attacks at high distance allowing him a ton of map control, and Augur keeps everyone healed and can help fight at a distance.

This group is super super tanky and hard to kill, and isn't particularly immobile: Trenloe and Augur seem slow with their 3 speeds, but Trenloe has Knight abiltiies to move faster (Oath of Honor and Advance are incredibly good), and Augur can spend stamina to move since as the bard he doesn't need it to heal, and can easily take the occasional action to rest.

There are a ton of other really solid combos out there. This one is one of my favorites.

Trenloe The Strong and High Mage Quellen are insanely good heroes.

For the record: a grey die with a +1 bonus is slightly better than a black die. Black defense die is about .8 shields better than a grey die on average.

I'm using High Mage Quellen right now and he's such a power play kind of hero. The stamina boost is just so critical to so many missions...

I'm playing him as geomancer and we have a Trenloe as champion. I think Trenloe gets picked a ton (at least in our group he does) mainly because his base ability is just easy to understand no matter your experience with the game. People like free numbers.

I just got the Crusade hero pack and Tahlia looks pretty good. Kill and move is a really sweet ability... We'll see how she plays out, not sure what I would play her as just yet.

Tahlia as a knight with the new shiny 4 stamina (as opposed to 3) is a big thing, i have had her mow down 2 or 3 small monsters and scamper half a board with movement and abilities. Oath of honor to get a free move up and hit followed by advance still leaves another attack and 4 movement points that could potentially reach 6.

Obviously it slows down a bit against large monsters who will probably take 2/3 attacks to bring down but she can motor if given the chance,

Augur can spend stamina to move since as the bard he doesn't need it to heal, and can easily take the occasional action to rest.

Except that if the Bard holds on to some fatigue (4 to be precise,) between song of mending, concentration, cacaphony, and understudy the Bard can heal 2 wound and 2 fatigue from every hero every round, including an extra 2 wound on a hero of his choice.

He can, but he'd have to sacrifice mobility to do so. Still a powerful option for when you don't need to be mobile, thus showing one of the strengths of this group: it's versatile.

Except that if the Bard holds on to some fatigue (4 to be precise,) between song of mending, concentration, cacaphony, and understudy the Bard can heal 2 wound and 2 fatigue from every hero every round, including an extra 2 wound on a hero of his choice.

Hm, maybe I'm not using the bard correctly, but how is he healing 2 wounds and 2 fatigue from every hero, every round?

I'm assuming you are using Cacophony on Understudy. If so, at the end of turn, the Song of Mending heals the party 1 wound. Then Understudy heals them an additional wound. Then you exhaust Concentration to heal 2 more wounds from 1 person.

But where is the 2 stamina coming from? The bard can play the Lute for one party member, so sure, that recovers 2 stamina from them, but that costs a stamina for the bard too.

Except that if the Bard holds on to some fatigue (4 to be precise,) between song of mending, concentration, cacaphony, and understudy the Bard can heal 2 wound and 2 fatigue from every hero every round, including an extra 2 wound on a hero of his choice.

Hm, maybe I'm not using the bard correctly, but how is he healing 2 wounds and 2 fatigue from every hero, every round?

I'm assuming you are using Cacophony on Understudy. If so, at the end of turn, the Song of Mending heals the party 1 wound. Then Understudy heals them an additional wound. Then you exhaust Concentration to heal 2 more wounds from 1 person.

But where is the 2 stamina coming from? The bard can play the Lute for one party member, so sure, that recovers 2 stamina from them, but that costs a stamina for the bard too.

Have both tokens on song of mending. Use cacaphony on understudy.

The lute lets the bard suffer 1 fatigue to let someone recover 1 fatigue (but 2, because understudy.)

Harmony on song of mending gets everyone 1 wound (but 2 because of understudy)

Melody on song of mending gets everyone (but the bard) 1 fatigue (but 2 because of understudy)

Exhaust concentration to get a hero of your choice an extra 2 wound back.

Including the lute, this requires 5 stamina, which you've got from the skills.

So total that's:

The bard took 5 fatigue.

Everyone recovered 2 wound, someone recovered 2 more.

Everyone else recovered 2 fatigue, someone recovered 2 more.

If your bard happens to be Mok, using the lute with understudy active is actually "exhaust this card for a hero within 3 spaces of you to recover 2 fatigue, and you recover 1 fatigue," so the whole thing costs 2 less.

Wow, I was doing this wrong. Misread the rule book. I didn't realize the bard can have both Melody and Harmony on the same card!! Sheesh... Why play any other healer in a 4-man band? The bard is just so godly

The fact that he has to just pay the 4 stamina once per encounter to get consistent 3-square wide healing of hearts and fatigue before spending a single experience point and no action cost .. Urghgh... Compare that to Prayer of Healing, Stoneskin, Insight, Elixirs.. *facepalm*

Thanks for the explanation. XD

Really hoping the heroes don't play a bard next campaign, let alone Mok when I tell them this..

The disciple has more outright healing output than the bard does, and can cure conditions. Also provides other useful buffs. I prefer the Disciple to the Bard, but the bard is nifty in the right combinations.

The disciple has more outright healing output than the bard does

Except the Disciple does not.

With 0 exp spent, the Disciple is paying 1 stamina every round to heal one adjacent target between 1-3 hearts subject to randomness. The bard with 0 exp spent gets up to 4 hearts and 4 stamina of total healing every round up to 3 squares away for 0 stamina once the initial cost is paid on turn one with no randomness.

With 0 exp, neither the Bard nor the Disciple can cure conditions. Both can once they spec for it.

You might be able to say that the Disciple has slightly more single target healing potential when combining with something like Blessed Strike, but once the Bard has Cacophony and Concentrate, that is less the case. In fact, if you roll poorly, he heals even less than the bard to a single target!

You might also be able to say that the Bard's max output is only possible if the damage is spread out amongst the team, which is not what the Overlord should try to do. True. But the stamina is almost always going to be recovered. And the bard doesn't rely on dice.

The disciple is easy to shut down if you can immobilize him or mess with his positioning, screwing the whole team out of his healing. I've done this many times to disciples. The bard is harder to do this to.

Once specced out, the Disciple can heal two adjacent targets for 1-3 hearts, give them brown defense and yellow attack, and heal their conditions.

Completely specced out, the Bard can heal the entire party for 2 hearts and 2 stamina each, as well as one target for 4 hearts. He can also sacrifice his heart healing and some personal stamina for one turn to heal the entire party of conditions.

If he's Mok, he recovers tons of hearts and stamina and basically never tires. Crazy as it is, in a pinch he can even play the Lute to himself to recover Stamina with the way his ability and understudy work together.

I'm not saying the Disciple doesn't have his place, but he does not have better healing output. And the Disciple can't recover stamina for the party, which is incredibly useful.

The bard really puts the rest of the healers to shame in their primary responsibility of team recovery.

I'm not saying the Disciple doesn't have his place, but he does not have better healing output. And the Disciple can't recover stamina for the party, which is incredibly useful.

The bard really puts the rest of the healers to shame in their primary responsibility of team recovery.

After Overlording against an Avric Disciple in one campaign and a Mok Bard in another, I have to agree with Charmy. The Disciple is a much more rounded character- he can do a fair bit of damage himself, or buff someone else, and add a little protection- and when he's at the point of just removing conditions each turn by being adjacent and adding a yellow die to boot, that's maddeningly frustrating- he's clearly a very formidable healer- but virtually immortal/infinite stamina heroes are a whole different matter.

In the limited aspect of damage and fatigue recovery, the Bard is insane. For most of Act 2, the heroes' strategy was "Necromancer, use Army of Death once, or twice, summoning the Reanimate or moving if you have to." "Bard, recover all the fatigue the necromancer needs to do this." "Knight and Shadow Walker, complete objectives since there are no monsters left."

As a note about the Bard, I submitted a question to FFG a little while back regarding "Cacaphony" (because the Bard was using it at the end of his turn after the fatigue came back from resting, making it impossible to stop him just by fatiguing him out) and Cacaphony should have the text "Exhaust during your turn..."

Cacaphony should have the text "Exhaust during your turn..."

Huh.. I missed that too...

As written, Cacophony can be used at any time, which I suppose could include that End of Turn timing window during which stamina from Rest is recovered, but before the song effects occur.... Yeowch!

Definitely something that needs to be errata'd... I really hope FAQ 1.5 comes out soon or you receive a ruling on that one...

So Radiant Light is not a thing? What about the thousand upgrades to Blessed Strike?

Radiant light does a lot of healing and damage, as does the alternative: being able to heal 2 people at once with prayer of healing and remove 2 conditions. Given that the overlord shouldn't be spreading damage against a bard, the Disciple typically winds up doing significantly more healing. The bard has better stamina regen by far, but the Disciple provides some incredible buffs and some serious power.

So Radiant Light is not a thing?

I have never seen a Disciple with the 3xp to spare for Radiant Light. The Disciple would be crazy not to take Holy Power, Cleansing Touch, and Divine Fury first. After that I'd personally prefer Prayer of Peace or Blessed Strike over a middling 1-3 LoS heal/damage.

And the bard once again outstrips this healing for 0 stamina vs. a whopping 3, and does it without a huge XP investment, nor an action.

So no, in my opinion Radiant Light is really not "a thing". Its actually quite terrible.

What about the thousand upgrades to Blessed Strike?

The "thousand upgrades"? Can you clarify what you mean by this?

I have never seen a Disciple with the 3xp to spare for Radiant Light. The Disciple would be crazy not to take Holy Power, Cleansing Touch, and Divine Fury first. After that I'd personally prefer Prayer of Peace or Blessed Strike over a middling 1-3 LoS heal/damage. So no, in my opinion Radiant Light is really not "a thing". Its actually quite terrible.

I´ve experienced more than one encounter with the Disciple spamming Radiant Light EVERY turn. I think you vastly underestimate this skill. I´ll even go ahead and say it's the best skill for this class hands down.

The "thousand upgrades"? Can you clarify what you mean by this?

Sorry, I meant Cleansing Touch, not Blessed Strike. I mean the additional brown defense dice, the additional yellow power dice, the condition removal, the Holy Power skill doing the same for an additional hero and making them heal fatigue.. I mean, strictly speaking the heroes getting the yellow dice have more chance to get a surge to either get more damage through or heal one fatigue, so that can work either way.

Charmy - I think you're missing the fact that spike healing is generally (not always, but generally) better than healing spread out over the group. The overlord is rarely kind enough to distribute his damage evenly over multiple heroes.

I also think you guys need to bring Mok out of the discussion. Elder Mok is almost certainly the most overpowered character in the game, and it's hard to have a reasonable discussion about the power levels of various characters when your example character has infinite stamina :-)

Charmy - I think you're missing the fact that spike healing is generally (not always, but generally) better than healing spread out over the group. The overlord is rarely kind enough to distribute his damage evenly over multiple heroes.

I already addressed this point. I talked about the fact that spike healing is better and that the Overlord doesn't tend to spread damage out nicely. However, I also wanted to reiterate that the Disciple often does NOT have better spike healing either!

Unspecced, the disciple can heal 1-3 hearts from one target. The Bard can do 1 heart and 1 stamina from one target. So yeah, Disciple wins on the top end, but he actually loses if he rolls a 1.

Fully specced, the Disciple could do something like a Blessed Strike, followed by a Prayer of Healing, for top-end healing of 5 hearts, bottom end of 3 hearts. The Bard can consistently heal a single target for 4 hearts and 2 stamina!

No matter how you slice it, the Disciple loses. Spread healing Bard crushes the Disciple. Focused healing its either subject to randomness, or Bard flat out wins.

The Disciple has other useful utility, but I want to challenge the myth that the Disciple is a better single-target healer, because he just isn't.

And the vast majority of my discussion has not included Mok. Mok is just the icing on an already very delicious bardic cake.

I feel like I may be misreading some stuff in your thread. How is your theoretical non-Mok bard managing the stamina for cacophony and concentrate every turn? Is he resting constantly?

The odds of getting a 1 on Prayer of healing are 1 in 6: it'll happen, but the average is higher than 2. You can use prayer of healing and Radiant Light in the same turn to get significant AoE and single target healing: I've had a disciple who did that every turn and with his items and team was still able to get some movement. It was nuts.

I feel like I may be misreading some stuff in your thread. How is your theoretical non-Mok bard managing the stamina for cacophony and concentrate every turn? Is he resting constantly?

He can, since none of the healing the bard does requires the use of any actions.

Absolutely - but the fact that all the healing we're talking about comes with a cost of a full action is something that also needs to be factored into the equation. An Apothecary with Bottled Courage and Potent Remedies can heal an average of 6 per turn and get off three attacks; he may not be the BEST healer but that certainly makes him a fantastically efficient one.