I plan to, after finishing the quest that came in the box of Descent, to make my own quests. Is there a good site to go to about how to weight your encounters in terms of the number of monsters your adventurer should be fighting for the "level" they are? Has anyone done the maths?

Thanks in advance!

First, it is important to note that I have made no custom quests for Descent 2e. Having said that, there is a very nice tool for doing so on FFG's site.

Here is a link: http://tools.fantasyflightgames.com/

You may want to go through this site, as there already exist custom quests, and you may find some tips, advice, etc. on the site.

EDIT: Note that this site only supports Safari, Chrome, and Firefox browsers.

Building balanced quests is not a simple matter- in fact, I don't really think there are good calculations that will tell you whether a map is balanced, other than a histogram of the winners during playtesting.

If you're building a mini-campaign, that's probably the easiest- you know how much XP players start with, and the exact order they will play quests.

If you're building a full campaign, you need to consider the order that the quests will be played, and design them accordingly- every quest doesn't need to be just as balanced at the beginning and end of an Act, but it would be good for a couple to be balanced for the beginning, and a couple to be balanced for the end.

Standalone quests are the most difficult to balance, because the players could be playing anywhere from no XP, no gear, all the way up to 6 XP and a bunch of gear against Act 2 monsters.

Use the quest vault- and then test out the map. Get feedback, and be prepared to make huge changes. For example, I've made a mini campaign. The first quest , "Tidings of Gloom" ended up with 18 versions- and version 18 has a largely different map//mechanics than version 1- the result of a lot of feedback (and a good number of typos.)

There is only one way to make a really balanced quest... play it over and over and over again with modifications made along the way until you reach a point where there is a reasonable degree of balance in the objectives, win conditions, etc. I have dabbled in quest creation, and like Zaltyre it went through nearly 20 versions until I felt it was balanced enough for me to let it go. I only play tested it twice and I am sure if I tried again I'd find something to change. I assume the team at Fantasy Flight spends days play testing quests and I wish I had the time to devote to fine tweaking my custom quests.

But that's me, maybe other people are far more intuitive with what is OP/balanced.