Commence rant...

My family and I have tried to get into this game on several occasions and up until today it's eluded me as to what puts me off. All the ingredients are there to make this a personal favourite, but there was just something off about it.

Well, today I realised what it was.

THAT GODDAMN BLUE CROSS.

We rolled it so many times that it became something of a joke. Why is it even in the game? If you roll it, there's a good chance you've just wasted half your turn and even if you don't roll it, there's still a likelihood that the OL's defence roll will soak some or all of the damage.

Aaaaaaargh!

End rant. Thank you for your patience.

Um...because sometimes heroes miss?...

The miss forces heroes (and the OL) to not be too sure of their plans, and to always prioritize objectives. If you go performing needless actions and leave killing the dragon blocking your exit to your two best damage characters, they might just miss 3 times out of 4. I've seen it happen. It provides a sense of urgency to the maps, I find.

Imperial Assault got rid of it, and I find it helps the quality of the game. That said, I don't mind the misses in Descent, as it improves the probability of failure on attacks. The purpose of it, mechanically, is to emphasize actions with guaranteed success rates, and to de-emphasize attacks and the combat slightly. The designers did not want this game being nothing more than a slugfest.

I miss a lot of attack and test in this game (often 1 on 2 dice rolls...). But even if I'm unlucky like hell, I wouldn't suppress the fact that we can miss at any cost ! What's the point of suppressing all random from a game like that , It's more fun with it.

As overlord it is very satisfying to watch the hero's balance everything on the warrior to kill some monster(s), and misses, then force them to scramble and change plans.

As overlord it is very satisfying to watch the hero's balance everything on the warrior to kill some monster(s), and misses, then force them to scramble and change plans.

As a player, it is very satisfying to watch the overlord try to win the quest by piling all his monsters attack on a single target, only to have most of them fail.

Too bad for our OL that the quest villagers were actually stronger than our healer!

I once was completely unable to damage any miners in Gold Digger... I swear they were wearing asbestos.

I like the way Imperial Assault does it. There is no miss on the attack dice at all. Instead, there are two different defense dice: the black die, which is the tankier of the two, and the white die. The white die has a side that has a dodge result, which means the attack misses entirely. However, the white die has far less defense on it than the black die, which does not have a dodge roll. In general, the white die is used to represent faster but squishier targets, while the black die is used for more durable targets. It works out quite well overall.