I'm just wondering if there's anyone who has found Aim to be a worthwhile action for a Hero to take. In nearly every situation we've seen, any player thinking about using Aim would rather simply do a Battle.

As an Overlord, Aim is useful, since I can throw down the card as needed, but as a Hero, they're taking up one of their half actions with an Aim, so they're getting at most one Aimed attack.

It is possible to Aim and Move, but Aim goes away if you actually spend those movement points to MOVE with, or if you get hit, or if you reequip, and it only lasts for one attack, so even if you aimed, stood around drinking a potion or something, didn't get hit until your next round, THEN battled, you still only get one Aimed attack.

The only situation I can think of where a Hero would want to use Aim is alongside a Power Potion, but even then, I'm still not sure if the +2/3 power dice with a reroll is going to be worth giving up a full extra attack.

So what about your groups? Do your Heroes frequently use Aim, or do they never bother with it?

Off the top of my head, the only times I can recall the Heroes using it were very long distance shots against a key target. Otherwise, performing a Battle has the same chance of avoiding a miss against a crucial target, but probably without much (any?) more damage.

Can't see a way to edit my post - I did some checking, it looks like you can do a ready action, move, then declare the Aim, so it is possible to move and Aim and have it ready for the next turn, but you still have the problem of getting hit and losing it, vs moving and guarding/dodging. Heroes usually only rest if they are safe, if you move and aim, you're presumably lining up a battle, since you can't move after the aim is in place, which is probably putting you in harms way.

Aim is best when used against creatures with lots of armor that the majority of your hits might not get through. In that case, it's better to have one attack that does a lot of damage instead of two that do little.

A good way of using is to ready it when ending before a door, using only half your turn, but not wanting to go in yet (perhaps because you want to wait for the rest of the group to catch up?). You use the other "half" to ready the Aim. Then during the next turn when the door opens, you have your Aim ready to be used.

I must admit that Aim isn't one of the most used readies in our group, but it can come in handy once in a while.....

you may also declare a ready action place the aim then attack and use it right away. very stong on range characters because they roll the most dice (with a treasure weapon...they seem better than the others to make up for the weak attack die)

Uh...weapons all provide 2 dice at shop/copper, 3 dice at silver, and 4 dice at gold with precious few exceptions, regardless of melee/range/magic. In fact, it looks like there's only 3 exceptions, and they're all in the ToI expansion.

Corbon has argued at length that aim is worthwhile when using power potions in Road to Legend, which I haven't played, but in normal Descent, you are correct that aiming is almost never worthwhile. Even most boss monsters don't have enough armor to make a single aimed attack more effective than two normal attacks if you're using an axe, and if you're attacking something with insanely high armor using something less effective than the best shop weapon, you're doing it wrong. Stealth makes aim comparatively better, but battle still gives you more average hits per action than aiming, so if you're fighting multiple enemies or a single enemy that's capable of surviving multiple hits, battling is still usually better.

There are a few highly specialized situations in which aiming is better, but they're so rare and the advantage is so slight that they're seriously not worth worrying about. Similarly, aiming with your extra half-action when you're preparing to open a door next turn is sometimes useful, but there's no guarantee you'll be able to hit anything with it, and it's unlikely to actually make a difference even if you can, so placing a rest to recover fatigue or a dodge or guard in case of spawns generally seems to be preferable.

Aiming a Power Potion in RtL is pretty much the only good use of it.

Antistone said:

Indeed, but even then (power pots in RtL) not always . RtL has two significant differences with respect to Aim.
1. There are a lot more monsters with a lot more armour. Armour 6-7 is fairly common and armour 8-9 not at all rare. Against high armour often 'average' attacks do nothing at all and one really good attack is better than 2 ok attacks.
2. Power pots add 5 trait boosts (that is 5 full bonuses (there are silver and gold trait dice worth 2 and 3 respectively), not increase you up to 5 trait dice), so they are significantly more powerful, and extremely important when attacking a monster you can barely damage normally.
2a. Potions in RtL are a limited resource, much more so than in vanilla. There are often only 2 potions available for an entire dungeon, plus whatever you can get lucky with rolling surges in treasure chests (on average 3-4 per dungeon). So when you need to use 'em, you simply can't afford to miss. You only use them when they will be 5 clear damage on a monster that you are barely scratching for a few damage per attack otherwise (and often has 20+ wounds), so they are often worth a full attack or two on their own. So making sure they hit (with an Aim) can be critical.

As an example of RtL, I fought the final level of a legendary keep on Friday night. Being a Legendary keep doesn't necessarily make the final boss stronger though - usually there are some other wrinkles that do that, added to the fact you've had to fight through three levels with at least three other bosses just to get there.

The Giant on this level was Gold (Silver campaign level) and had IIRC, 34 wounds and 9 armour (maybe 8, but I think 9?). Worse, when you killed him he reappeared in the same spot as he died at the start of his next turn, completely renewed. To properly kill him the heroes had to enter three different rooms (off the same intersection) and in each room 'end their move' on three different ? markers. That is 9 'end turns' and the Giant (with Grapple instead of Sweep) holding the intersection and needing to be killed in order to move from room to room. At the same time, it is impossible to prevent spawning due to all the different rooms off the intersection plus another whole area downstairs that the monsters (if single space) can sawn in and come through the stairs.

My heroes are pretty pathetic, having not had the time yet for a single training week in silver level, so they have 2-3 skills each, starting trait dice and a single fatigue/wounds upgrade.
Thanks to Crushing Blow (twice, the OL was fortunate enough to have it reshuffled into the main deck between sessions, although I was lucky that 3/4 of his gold spawns were shuffled into the discard! And yes, that means an entire 4 level dungeon, with a 4 slot bazaar at Tamalir, resulted in a net -1 treasure for the heroes!) 2 of my heroes were completely unable to scratch the giant on their normal rolls, one hero could do 2-3 damage most attacks and one hero, fortunately, still had his Grinding Axe and was able to consistently do around 10 damage pierce 10 per hit (Karnon's 5 trait dice coming into their own!)
Without the Grinding Axe (fortunately the OL chose to go long-term and destroy the mage's silver breathe staff instead with the second crushing blow) I would have been restricted to a single hero trying to hurt the giant and taking 5+ turns of battling to kill it. Power pots would have made all the difference, and one aimed attack that did 8ish damage (approximate average) would have been around twice as valuable as 2 unaimed attacks doing 2ish damage each (approximate average, since 1/6 would be misses). This risk of a miss on that single important attack is just too much to justify not aiming it for morale purposes as well!

For those interested, a dodging Okaluk prevented the giant coming down the passageway at the heroes and when a monster ended in contact with the giant's rear the Mage used the flying +extra move feat to zip through okaluk, the giant and the beastman (thus avoiding grapple) to get behind the giant and activate a glyph. That let Okaluk through when the stealth+reroll failed once and the two of them cleaned out most of the ?s over several turns while Karnon managed to kill the giant once and let Silhouette run through to assist them. To get into the last room required Karnon to distract the giant on a corrner while the runners ran through his space to avoid the grapple. The OL's lack of good spawns was a significant factor!