A common thread that I seem to come across more and more in this forum, and posts within it, is that players talk about picking a specific hero to play within a campaign. I am looking for some feedback as to how you and your group go about selecting the hero group.

When your heroes build their starting group, do they just pick who they want to play from the entire hero list you have available?

My group has never played this way. We have all the expansions, including all heroes from D1e. We put the entire deck together, shuffle it, and then deal three cards to each of 4 players. Those players are permitted to choose 1 hero from the 3 they were dealt. The group as a team is free to review what they have available to them, but they must make their choices from their own set of 3.

We prefer this random method for several reasons ...

1) The heroes don't get to pick some killer group (i.e. the best of each type of archetype).

2) Sometimes the heroes have to make difficult decisions as a group. In other words, sometimes, by the random shuffle and deal, they are dealt say only 1 mage, or 1 scout, etc. They then have to decide if that "forces" that individual to take that character or play without that archetype. While it is rare to only get 1 of a particular archetype, it does make my point.

3) It often leads to playing individual heroes that they have never played before, and/or leads to groups of heroes they have never played in combination before. This in turn leads to new knowledge, and often enlightenment as to how good a previously thought poor hero could be (or vice versa).

I guess our group just finds it more "exciting" and adventurous to do it this way. But from what I have been reading on the forum lately, it would seem that many of you just pick what you want to play.

So, I am curious, how does your group decide to pick their heroes?

We've usually picked at will from the list of available heroes/classes. I've only had 2 classes (and no heroes) get re-picked so far, and that was by different people. For the most part, my group seems to want to try new heroes.

We've usually picked at will from the list of available heroes/classes. I've only had 2 classes (and no heroes) get re-picked so far, and that was by different people. For the most part, my group seems to want to try new heroes.

Do you run into situations where the heroes that each of the player's pick have no synergy as an over all team, or do your players keep this in mind as they pick their heroes?

And good for your group that they show a willingness to try new heroes and classes.

I think not doing so could end up making the game stale very fast.

Simply put, we pick (both heroes and open monster groups) based on our favorite minis. Usually picked by how cool their sculpt is, but some are also picked based on their art or background/story.

We've usually picked at will from the list of available heroes/classes. I've only had 2 classes (and no heroes) get re-picked so far, and that was by different people. For the most part, my group seems to want to try new heroes.

Do you run into situations where the heroes that each of the player's pick have no synergy as an over all team, or do your players keep this in mind as they pick their heroes?

And good for your group that they show a willingness to try new heroes and classes.

I think not doing so could end up making the game stale very fast.

There have absolutely been picks that were solo acts. However, not long ago there was a team I faced off against who ended up with ridiculous synergy, and they didn't even plan it.

In the groups I've played with, people usually want to try something new, so we haven't had a major issue with repetitive compositions. A few players do tend to gravitate towards known powerhouses like Nanok and Mok though.

They also try to synergize amongst themselves so that they have complimentary abilities. I don't see a problem with that though, I think that is part of the fun. Working with a party that really 'clicks' and works well together is part of the magic of playing a hero. If it weren't for that, I'd pretty much want to play Overlord exclusively.

Given that, I"m not sure I'd be the biggest fan of full randomization. Perhaps make a house rule that a specific hero can't be played more than once per X # of campaigns?

We have several ways of picking a LT. One the OL just doles one out to each hero player, we make the most maxed synergy we can think of, or just a god awful group to see how long it takes the heroes to croak. Each type has its benefits and suits the mood of the play group. My kids on the other hand choose the coolest looking mini have me paint it and play with it for a month and pick a new favorite

I do like the fairness of three random to each hero and they get the option of wihch one we will give that a whack this weekehnd

I let them pick whatever they want.

I think it compensates for the fact that I pick quests for the whole campaign regardless of winner and the fact my heroes have virtually no idea or control of how I manage my skills as the Overlord.

EDIT: 200 posts. Do I win an extra threat token for it?

I let them pick whatever they want.

I think it compensates for the fact that I pick quests for the whole campaign regardless of winner and the fact my heroes have virtually no idea or control of how I manage my skills as the Overlord.

EDIT: 200 posts. Do I win an extra threat token for it?

Please take one slightly used Threat from petty cash ... spend it well !!!

I pick quests for the whole campaign regardless of winner.

That's one heck of a trade. I could not be trusted with such a house rule, as when playing the Shadow Rune, I'd always ensure that Ritual of Shadows was the last quest played before the finale- complete OL respec!

That's one heck of a trade. I could not be trusted with such a house rule, as when playing the Shadow Rune, I'd always ensure that Ritual of Shadows was the last quest played before the finale- complete OL respec!

Yeah, I actually expected somebody to comment on it at some point

I pick quests that I think are interesting to play, I don't really care about my chances of winning them as such. I would for instance always avoid quests that are typically unbalanced for the group. Because nobody enjoys them anyway. I just want to diversify our experience of the game. I pick based on cool objectives (quests with Influence are good too), how interesting the map is (the layout, or some interesting terrain features, like many hazard spaces, rifts etc) as well. I also like quests where one of the "mandatory" monster type is something we don't get to see often or at all in some cases. I typically don't pick the quest where the objective is too "obvious" or the same kind objective as the previous quest, like "saving all the villager tokens" etc. About picking based on the reward, I mean it doesn't matter a huge % of the case. I´ve picked quests with extra gold to the heroes, I picked quests with me getting a useless relic etc. I normally get an extra XP and that's where the fun is.

Interlude and Finale are still decided as per the rules. Act II quests (Shadow Rune) are also decided based on who won the Act I quest.

Now the reasons why we went for (read: I enforced) that "house rule":

- Preparation. I bring the game to people, one group is 250km away from my place, so if we´re in for playing multiple encounters then I want to bring just what I need for these. I prepare the tiles, I choose the open groups in advance, I have the list of quests I want to play for each act in advance. I bring just what is needed to cover the current quest and the next one, that's mandatory for me because of the context of me travelling.

- My players don't care, or accept that I do the job for them. They want the game unpacked when they arrive. They seldom ask about the reward of a quest, even if I bring it up. They just want to win whatever quest I suggest we should be playing.

And if we played the same campaign again, I would make sure we play quests we have never played before when possible, unless there was this really awesome one that everybody would want to play again.

So yeah, the only "trust" aspect in it is that my players hope I will be setting up the game to maximize their game experience. That's what it is in essence, if I deliberately chose this setup to favorize my odds at winning then they would see it very quickly and get tired of the system. So it's not even in my interest to do so. Most quests are close calls, I´ve lost many quests that I was going to win, and I´ve won many quests my heroes were supposed to win a few turns before the outcome, so there is probably still some balance in that game if you make sure you can avoid these marginal one-sided quests. The problem with those though is that it's often Encounter 2 of a quest that is one-sided based on the result of Encounter 1, so sometimes you play the quest and its first encounter hoping that encounter 2 will be quite even, but encounter 1 ends up being a total win for one side and it screws up encounter 2.

We used to pick which heroes we wanted to play. But after four campaigns, we felt it was time to get out of our comfort zone.

Now, each player picks an archetype. That player is then dealt three random heroes of that archetype and gets to choose one.

This forces us to try different heroes instead of always falling back on favorites.

My group picks whoever they want from the available list. I've only had one character/class combination repeated (Widow Tarha/Necromancer). Usually, they pick whoever they're in the mood for (three of my players are veteran first edition players and I blame them for getting me into this game to begin with).

If they give any attention to group cohesion, they do it telepathically.

I like your method and reasons, any2cards. I might propose it next time.

Old RPG players as my group is, they always start out planning dynamic group setups but end up with the characters they think looks coolest. Only exception to this is when they got so incredibly annoyed with the quests general focus towards movement that they picked the heroes they could find with the highest possible movement (also taking abilities into account).

We usually pick a thematic group. We're currently doing Nekerhall with a fully Orcish group - Mok, durik, tanishi and tarha as prophet, beast, shadow and hexer respectively. It's super fun so far.

I'm also an advocate of just picking a mini you really like. Mok as a prophet might not be exactly great but it's a fantastic mini and the class fits his story.

My group typically picks their own heroes. A lot of them have their favorites (Syndrael, Logan Lashley, and Varikas being among the top), so they usually pick characters they feel drawn to either thematically or mechanically. When I play as a hero, I do the same (with Shiver, Zyla, and Rendiel being my go-to choices).

If they put more time into finding combos and stuff I might consider changing up hero selection, but nobody ever bothers that greatly about finding heroes that work unstoppably well together.

My group typically has one to two players who just pick what they want and the others pick based off of the other hero picks to make a good group.

They'll go full random sometimes.