I was just wondering if the were any people that have had any luck playing Descent with only two heroes? My gaming group is often limited to only three, and all of us think that having people run multiple heroes is lame. We gave up on being able to play RtL, but we are getting clown-stomped even in vanilla. We are not bad gamers, and even tried to meta-build or characters to suit the play style of the OL. It just seems to us that the handicap that the OL has vs. only 2 heroes(-2 threat/turn and all monsters have -2 health) doesn't come close to balancing for 2 heroes. Are we the only ones to have this problem? Are we going to have to give up on a great game, or is there some trick we don't know about to survive?

The Janitor

You are correct; the game's scaling mechanisms are woefully inadequate. It's not categorically impossible to win with 2 heroes, but the overlord definitely has a large advantage. The problem is that the monsters die so easily even in a 4-hero game that there is no handicap you can give them that allows two heroes to kill them fast enough. So while it's always theoretically possible to balance things in the sense of tacking on enough rules to give both sides a decent win chance, there's no way to make a 2-hero game play like a 4-hero game without a major overhaul.

That major overhaul is called The Enduring Evil, and I will hopefully be posting it some day, but I think I burned out my playtesting group. And it requires that you print a bunch of replacement cards.

For a rough quick fix, various ideas have been bandied about, but I can't vouch for any of them. Suggestions include:

• Use the reinforcement marker to make the overlord pay exorbitant threat costs if he wants to play more than 1 spawn card per area (that's actually often suggested even in large games...)
• The overlord draws one fewer cards per turn.
• Nerf the spawn cards by causing them to create fewer monsters, have higher threat costs, or just taking the good ones out of the deck.
• Give the heroes the same total amount of gold and treasures (across the party) as they would have in a 3- or 4-hero game, including starting gold, coin piles, and chests, and let each hero drink 2 potions per turn.
• Let the heroes take more actions per turn, or restrict the number of monsters that can be activated per turn.

As has been said, following the rules as written, the game is impossible for 2 heroes. Adjusting the rules is a must.

I totally agree. Impossible with 2 heroes. Monsters only have less Wounds, but they still have the same armor, deal the same damage and keep the same abilities they have. If there are 10 monsters in a newly revealed area, it stays the same as well.

We normally play with 3 players, 1 overlord and 2 players with 2 heroes each. It's a bit hard sometimes to keep track of all the items, skills and feats, but it's more fun than playing a game against all odds.

Changing the rules... Never tried, but probably doubling the threat cost of spaw cards and/or cutting down the number of monsters on the newly revealed areas by half.

Cutting monsters in half isn't ideal, because while the heroes can only kill half as many, the overlord still needs the full compliment of damage to earn conquest. Heroes get just as much conquest in a small game, which means the overlord needs to get as many total kills, even though they're distributed between fewer victims.

the point is ... considering that most times monsters die in 1 hit ... with 2 heros u can usualy kill 2 / turn each ... 4/round ... with 3 u can kill 6/round and so on ... so basicly even if you lower monsters life ... it still takes 1 attack to kill it ... and it is alot harder to kill all monsters in an area

Pretty much what i was expecting. I had a feeling that it was the numbers game that was killing us. Looks like we might have to discuss some house rules.

The Janitor

The Janitor said:

I think only one person mentioned it, but give having the hero player(s) control 4 heroes a try before you start messing around with house rules.

Yeah, that is an option, but we all think that controling multiple heroes is more lame then Greedo shooting first.

The Janitor

The Janitor said:

That's fine, I feel the same way about most house rules for Descent.

The Janitor said:

It's actually pretty fun. I often find myself caught between wanting to have a big tough melee guy, and a fast moving shooter or a mage. Running two heroes gives you the ability to do both. Inevitably, one hero in any game will end up sucking. Whether it's the combination of skills, the lack of treasure drops, or the shear fact that he is set up to be a runner and never gets to kill anything...this isn't always super fun. When you have two heroes to control, they generally won't both suck or lack treasure, etc. It may take some getting used to, especially if you are new to the game, but the alternative is a bunch of house rules that basically cause you to change the whole idea of the game around.

Nothing will ever be more lame than Greedo shooting first. Given the OL has a plethora of cards to play, monsters to control, and everything else, I really think that controlling more than one hero gives a little more balance to the play experience of those controlling the heroes. Is it great fun if you can actually get 5 people together for a game? YES! However, you can't always do that, but you still want a fun experience that has a chance for either side. 4 or at least 3 heroes is key for this. You really do want one melee, one magic, and one ranged character, so you can utilize whatever treasures you find...ideally with a 4th runner/utility character.

I'm sorry it doesn't work as well as one might hope with two heroes, but...it's pretty tough to do, especially without Boggs.

Id hate to see how bad 2 is, i cant get 4 people to get past the third quest following the rules (Jitd) I Think the game by its base rules is unballancing, and as much as i hate to do house rules, looks like im going to have to just so people can enjoy the game , not loose all the time to me playing overlord.

The last 2 games, we decided to let the players choose their heroes, not picking them randomly. They managed to win in extremis twice in a row. Game was really balanced and we play with AOD, WOD and TOI.

Party was formed of Nanok, Jaes, Shiver and Kirga. They also randomly picked 3 familiar skill cards so I had Boggs, Shar and Furr to deal with.

I reckon it is normal for the Heroes to loose the 1st time they try a new quest because they don't know what is waiting for them. They should learn from their defeat and adapt their strategy.

They picked Nanok? What a shock!

It may look unbalance for just 2 heroes but it's not so much.

In the core game (alone) there are advantadges for groups with only 2 heroes: the shop stock allows them to get whatever they want, and there is a mail armor for each. Also the more heroes the party has, the more potential weak points it has. The game seems to be designed for 3 heroes (4 players).

On the other hand, as soon as the expansions are added (it doesn't matter wich one nor what combination of them) there is no more any advantadge for 2 heroes alone. It's much better to play as two heroes each so that the party has 4 heroes. The expansions seem to be designed for 4 heroes as ye whoever buys an expansion does so because he/she has a large group of friends who like the game. Oddly enough I recall one adventure in WoD which is harder the more heroes you have.

Posible solutions:

• Play as 4 heroes instead of just 2. Don't do it if you are just two players (the overlord and the hero player) because it becomes too tedious.
• Have the hero players choose their heroes in a diffrent way: For 2 heroes they choose both. For 3 heroes do as in road to the legend (each player draws 2 or 3 and chooses one among those). For 4 heroes choose at random.
• In dungeons with a limit number of turns (like the colapsim mine in the well of the darkness) use a bigger number of turns (not the double but almost).

Oddly enough it is easiser to add a 5th (and even a 6th) hero without unbalancing the game than it is to remove the 4th and 3rd heroes. The proof of this is that there are home rules for 5 and 6 heroes that actually work, while the stated rules for 2 heroes don't seem to work out of the core game.

I tried to cover it all in a short article. Tell me what you think.

game balance in Descent

Nice article, and I like your site. Does it hotlink things like 'Nanok' for you automatically, or are you doing that manually?

I like your definition of balance meaning that each side has a 50% chance of victory. For me personally, my idea of balance is that the outcome of the match is very much in question. This seems to be something that happens rarely in Descent. You get far enough into a quest, and it often becomes obvious who will be the victor. That's quite possibly just the nature of boardgames, with the luck factor of good rolls / draws. But it does make the prospect of slogging through the last 2 hours of a quest when you know the heroes (or overlord) have it in the bag not very appealing.

I don't think that definition of balance is adequate. Consider the following house rule for 2-player Descent:

Before the game begins, one player flips a coin. If it's heads, he plays as the overlord; otherwise, he plays as the heroes. The other player does the reverse.

Now, ignoring any skill differences between the players, each has exactly a 50% chance of winning the game, no matter how many (or how few) heroes you choose to use. And unlike, say, replacing the game with a coin toss, we haven't removed any choices or complexities from the game--it's every bit as deep and tactical as it ever was.

Is the game's balance now utterly perfect?

My definition.

I mentioned this on another thread as well, but I find it funny to hear people talk about the game not working with two heroes. Descent (without and expansions) was one of the first fantasy flight games I ever played. There were only two of us available to play, an OL (with previous experience playing such games) and me, to run two heroes. Perhaps the OL wasn't playing as absolutely ruthless as possible, but we did not change any rules to my advantage either. I won just fine with my two heroes and had a good time doing it.

The only advantage I can really think that I had was randomly choosing Spiritspeaker Mok as one of my hereos, as his hero ability is that the OL's cost to play cards is increased by 1 threat token per card.

Otherwise, maybe it was just beginner's luck?

It may also be that you're a more strategic player than the other person. That he wasn't playing ruthlessly is also a sign. Also, one player vs. one player is an easier game for the overlord than one player vs. four players, just due to the brain power involved on both teams.

Overall, I wouldn't base a "it's balanced for two heroes" argument on a single play experience that might not even have had an overlord acting at full capacity.

I've seen one hero get to the boss of the first mission and lose by a hair. I've seen 4 heroes get hung out to dry in one of the Well of Darkness missions. Each mission has its own balance, I'd say, but the average appropriate hero count is 4, especially after the addition of treachery.

The first couple scenarios of the base game are atypically easy for the heroes. I'd still expect a newbie overlord to beat 2 newbie heroes in quest 1 most of the time, but there are a lot of factors that can influence the outcome, including random draws (particularly skills, which are extremely variable in power), dice luck, rule mistakes (Descent rules are complex and poorly-written), and the skill of the players involved. For example, part of the problem with 2 heroes is that they're especially vulnerable to spawning, but if the overlord decided to focus on other cards for his first game, that could easily mask the problem and make 2 heroes appear much better than it really is.

Treachery (from expansions) can also swing things further in the overlord's favor.

I've won at least one game with only two heroes, but it was on an easy quest versus a newbie overlord with no treachery. Playing a 2-hero test game against myself on a mildly easy quest (#3), the heroes got quite lucky skill and treasure draws and were still soundly defeated (and keep in mind that if I inadvertently allowed my planning to be affected by hidden information, that would only benefit the heroes).