Hi there everyone,

I have just purchased Descent and have quickly run into a bit of a problem. It appears i have more players than spaces in the game.

Are there existing rules for or does anyone have any experience with playing Descent with 5 or 6 Heroes ??

Thanks.

Because of the way the scaled creature cards work and (an at least perceived by the person who first read the rules) ambiguity as to whether the Overlord is supposed to count for the creature scaling, my group has played with 5 before. It's still fairly balanced with 5 heroes, partly because they tend to get in each others' lines of sight. Just be ware that the creature power scaling doesn't really work at all, so it works best at 4 heroes and quickly slides to near-unplayability at 2 heroes (and I would figure 6 as well).

There are plenty of mods that people use to play with 5 players. I would suggest playing with normal rules and playing the hardest quests first (I believe boardgamegeek has quests ranked by difficulty per expansion in some fan made lists that seem to be popular opinion).

There are only a few quests in the base game that will really provide enough challenge, but some Well of Darkness quests could conceivably work for 5 heroes.

Mod ideas I've seen or tried include allowing the OL to draw extra threat each turn (players +2/+whatever feels right for your group), allowing the OL to start with an larger hand/max hand size, allowing the OL to start with a power card in play, limiting the heroes to 1200 gold for starting equipment as a party, limiting the heroes to starting skills -1 each, etc. There are a ton of ways to mod Descent very easily. Pick one and see which way feels right or make up your own - always share with the community though if you hit a new idea or find that one works better than another.

I personally prefer this method, as board size actually influences difficulty much more than you would imagine, though new players might have difficulty seeing the advantages right away: in between every board piece on the map insert a 2x2 extension piece (or sub a 4x2 in long halls where more than 2 joins occur) until you are out of extension pieces or until the map is filled up with them - this probably requires expansions for the proper amount of extra pieces, but allows the OL more room to spawn, makes the heroes take much longer to get things done, and overall really helps put things back in balance.

I truly believe that the size of most of the Well of Darkness quests is one of the things that make them harder.

pinkymadigan said:

That sounds like a pretty good idea. I wouldn't have come up with that one myself! It is indeed not the first thing you would think of, since it appears to give you no bonusses (no extra cards/no extra treat (although you DO get 5 threat per turn, since there are 5 heroes)). But with the more turns that the heroes need (thus more times you finish your OL-deck) and the more room for spawning will give some extra strategy to the game.

Definitely something i need to keep in mind the next time we have a person "extra'.

Thanks for the replies, i was already giving myself (as the OL) 1 extra threat per turn on top of the 5 generated by the hero count, but the extra tiles idea is very interesting, I will try that next session, this may give me a bit of help as the also have Boggs the Rat as a familiar too.

pinkymadigan said:

Among other variants I haved seen, this one is really intersting. It would also make the game easier for 2 heroes if the opposite was done, so it seems quite clear that it should work. However I wouldn't use it for 5 heroes but for 6. The reason is that 5 heroes isn't so different from 4 as 2 heroes is. Also if playing with the core game only, remember that the aviability of potions and armor will give larger groups more trouble.

Another variant I saw used the following stats for the monsters (all changes are made to the monster cards for 5 players, or 4 heroes):

2 heroes: -2 wounds

3 heroes: -1 wound

4 heroes: No change

5 heroes: +2 wound

6 heroes: +3 wounds

7 heroes: +4 wounds and +1 armor

8 heroes: +5 wounds and +1 armor

I played it with 6 heroes and it worked about right (a bit easier for the heroes). The lack of armors and potions balanced their LOS. With 8 heroes things change a bit, they have it too easy in normal quests. The WOD ones however wouln't be so easy however. I think the OL should be allowed 2 spawns per turn in this case, after all he'll have a hard time spawning anyway.

Another idea is to go with up to 8 heroes, but allow only 4 heroes to have an action (or half if stuned) on each round. Effects like fire or bleed still apply every turn. Treat everything as if only 4 heroes were playing. The lack of potions and armors should compensate the wider line of sight. This would also work for 2 heroes: if each has two actions per turn, the OL can see it as 4 heroes.

You might also want to consider giving the OL bonus treachery (assuming you have at least one of the expansions).