I have been playing Descent for quite a while now, in different groups and with different campaigns. And I love the combination of a competitive game with quite some atmosphere. We are often using different expansions, with all the rumor cards and we are using agents as well. In all these combinations, there is a potential for unbalances. Together with the “spiral downward”-effect in Descent, where the winner gets more XP and better goodies, it sometimes leads to a situation where one side keeps loosing on and on.

So I thought about a system of dynamic balancing, something like an Overlord-handicap: If the heroes win the handicap goes down by one. If the Overlord wins, the handicap goes up by one. (Maybe there could be some more mechanics for going up and down. Handicap ist not used in the finale)

Before a quest starts there are the following effects (group of 4 heroes):

-5: The Overlord draws 8 Overlord cards, the first two search markers are empty, the overlord get an extra group of zombies or spiders
-4: The Overlord draws 7 Overlord cards, the first two search markers are empty
-3: The Overlord draws 6 Overlord cards, the first search marker is empty
-2: The Overlord draws 5 Overlord cards
-1 to 1: no effect, the overlord
2: The Overlord draws 3 Overlord cards
3: The Overlord draws 2 Overlord cards, heroes start with an extra search card
4: The Overlord draws 1 Overlord card, heroes start with two extra search cards
5: The Overlord draws 1 Overlord card, heroes start with two extra search cards, monster are same as in 3-player game

Have you ever tried someting like this? What do you think about this system?

I hope there will be no discussion about if Descent is balanced or not. I am just searching for a system in the form of a “hard” rule, that helps to keep the game fun for all, even if a “spiral downward”-effect happened – maybe just by bad luck in rolling dice for two or three quests.

One problem I see with modifying the number of search tokens (aside from it overwhelmingly throwing the balance to the OL's favor) is that there are quests which depend on a certain number of tokens existing which may be the unique search token. In my opinion, your handicaps scale too dramatically. Just the change to the number of OL cards would be enough, in my opinion.

We have not thought of doing anything like this, because the balance shifts very quickly in this game at the transition between acts- the handicap would need to reset at the interlude to be any kind of accurate. Also, don't forget that in a 2 hero game, the OL only draws 2 cards- currently, your scale is only doable for a 4 hero game.

The idea was not to change the number of search token, but for the first search token searched there is no search card drawn. So the mechanics of the quest will not get mixed up.

Could you explain, why do you think that one less search card is such an overwhelming change in balance? My calculation was as follows: The campaign started and the overlord is loosing 3 games in a row. So we are at the third quest after the prolog. Now the heroes seem to be quite strong: First just by tactics but now aswell by extra XP and extra loot from winning. In a world where every Descent quest is balanced it will get quite hard for the overlord to win. Mostly it will get even harder since the heroes can now chose the quest and they might select one that is easy to win. So it will get even harder. Two more overlord cards and one less goodie (stamina/health potion) is in my opinion just the right way to help.

In contrast if overlord was loosing the first and third game, while the heroes lost the second the handicap is at -1 one and the next game gets no extra effects.

Mayby a system so that the pullback to handicap zero is faster will suit better. And a scaling for less then 4 heroes is needed. But right now I am just searching fo a prototype for our next weekend, where we will start "labyrinth of ruin" with agent belthir and all roumor cards from all expansions.