Hey guys, ran my first campaign and bumped into a couple of questions. First off how do you determine the level of the players? I was looking at the table on the quest guide and it gives benefits depending on level and such, but I could not for the life of me find in the rules where it mentions it. Also for weapons that have a status effect and a surge effect of the same name do they stack? For example, a mage in the group had a staff I believe that did Blast 1 with no surge cost, then below for two surge it does Blast 1. So would it be a Blast 2 if he used the surge or would it be two hits of Blast 1? Also one of the players had a sword with Pierce 2 and a surge Pierce 2, would it then be a Pierce 4 if he used the surge? Thanks in advance.

Assuming you are talking about the level of the campaign, i.e. copper, silver or gold, it's based on the total conquest points gathered by the OL and the heroes. It's very early in the rules, look at the explanation of the game week, first paragraph. < 200 = copper, < 400 silver, <600=gold, then OL battle.

Yes, the abilities stack. That's in the official FAQ.

RumDragon said:

Descent is not a campaign. It is a series of quests, each individual and unconnected (apart from a vague link in the fluff).
There are some optional rules for running the same party (same 2-4 characters with the same skills, though not the same upgrades or equipment) through more than one dungeon. I believe that you are referring to these. As they are in the quest guide, they are not in any download-able pdf, so I don't have access to check them. From memory however, I think that 'level' basically refers to the number of successful (as in 'won') dungeons/quests the party has previously completed (and resets to zero if you lose a dungeon?). It is not mentioned in the rules because it is not part of the rules, just an optional extra in the quest guide.

If you want to play a 'campaign', get the Road to Legend expansion. It turns Descent into a different game entirely, a true campaign.

Stacking
It would be a Blast 2/Pierce 4
From the FaQ pg 6
Q: Do special abilities stack?
A: Special abilities that require you to spend surges are designed to stack. So if you have an ability such as
“?: +1 Damage and Pierce 1,” and you pay 3 surges, you gain +3 Damage and Pierce 3. Some items may explicitly limit your surge spending/stacking, but those are the exception to the rule

Hero level isn't nice and linear on the chart at all, but it's close to 1 hero level for every 2 quests completed.

Feel free to use these rules as a basis of a sort of campaign (though apparently Road to Legend works far better for this), but whoever designed these rules never actually playtested them as near as I can tell. Until the heroes have beaten 7 quests, they get nothing but a little extra starting money (+100 for 1 quest, +250 for 2-3 quests, +500 for 4-6 quests); after that, they get +500 gold and 1 training token. in comparison, the OL at each of these steps up gets one more starting card than before and one more threat *per hero per turn* than before (and at the point the heroes get the training token, OL gets a free starting Hordes of the Things!). So after the first map (likely a hero victory), the heroes each get +100 starting gold, while the overload gets one extra starting card and (in a 4-hero game, which is how the game is balanced) 8 threat per turn. And it just gets more unbalanced from there. It's unlikely the heroes will ever win the first three, to get where the imbalance starts getting stupid, as these optional rules state that if the heroes die, you have to start from scratch with new heroes (which seems kind of silly, since the heroes always respawn when they die anyway).

Rajamic said:

I don't have the rules in front of me, but I'm 99% sure that's wrong. I recall the overlord gaining extra threat per hero, but not per turn . That would be completely ridiculous.