Is there any purpose to the conquest tokens rewarded at the end of quests if you aren't playing Road to Legend? If so, what is it? Are they meant to carry over into the next quest if you're playing the basic campaign rules detailed in the vanilla quest guide?

I think it's so you can keep score and try to beat that score on a second run through the same dungeon. Or, it could be for the basic campaign variant in "vanilla" Descent--but I wouldn't know b/c I've never really read into that one.

Some people allow the heroes to go into the negatives just so they can keep playing, and if they finish the quest with a positive, they win. Otherwise, OL victory.

It's been suggested that those conquest tokens are there so that if a single attack kills both the boss and a hero, the heroes still win.

Another possible theory is that they just want all named monsters to give conquest as a matter of principle.

These Conquest tokens are only there to give the Heroes a "final score". FFG also have some kind of scoring system in Arkham Horror.

So if your players are really into it and playing a quest more than once after winning it, they can brag something like " Woho! We succeeded with 18 conquest tokens this time!".

Well, not for me...

Heartworm said:

your questions numbered...

1. In short, no. There are various possible purposes that others have suggested, most of which are essentially meaningless. My personal thought is that, like a number of other things, it is a relic left over from an earlier (pre-production) version of the rules and never tidied up after changes were made.

2. Definitely not! CT do not carry over, nor do threat, wounds, fatigue status, treasures/equipment, skills or traits aquired. Even the basic campaign rules are essentially entirely new quests each time.