Hey.

We are a group that are playing vanilla Descent, and we played around 10 times and so far they never killed the boss in any of the adventures. I thought it was because it they needed time to get used to the game and learn the rules and figure out the game mechanics. But it seems we never get to kill the boss since they usually never get over the armor-value of the boss even with gold-treasures. My group dropped the idea to try and play it anymore because the high difficulty. What are we doing wrong?

It has been my experience with vanilla Descent that the reverse problem exists: it's too EASY for the heroes. Without more details, it's hard to say what you're doing "wrong". It may be that you aren't doing anything wrong (or rather, against the rules), but just that you're not using all of the resources available to you. If the heroes really don't have enough 'attack power' to get through the boss's armor, then something isn't adding up. Here is what I would suggest you do:

1) Read and re-read the rule book. Then do it again and again. Boring? Yes, but that usually enlightens most major problems. Maybe the heroes weren't getting enough gold or treasure items. Maybe they didn't start off with the right abilities. Maybe the OL was playing cards at the wrong time or gaining too much threat each turn. Maybe the OL was giving Run or Battle actions to his monsters when they are only ever able to "Advance". If there is a major rule violation going on, reading the rule book should help.

2) If there aren't any violations going on, check to see if the heroes are using all of their available resources. Are the heroes spending fatigue and drinking potions? Do the heroes have appropriate weapons equipped (mele bassed heroes should have mele weapons and magic bassed heroes should have magic weapons, etc)? Are the heroes rolling black power dice? Are the heroes using surges ('~') to their fullest potential? Are the heroes getting to the end of the dungeon with thousands of gold remaining when they should be spending every penney on more gold weapons, skill and trait upgrades? Try to think "outside the box" while still within the confines of the rules. You may just not be using all of your resources.

3) If neither of these are the case, then perhaps the OL needs to try easing up. An aggressive and cut-throat OL can quickly sap the fun out of what should be an otherwise friendly game. Sometimes the OL can opt to not play a fatal trap card for a turn or two (or not at all) for the sake of letting the heroes get ahead a little. From personal experience, I can say that playing as the OL is the most difficult job in this game. The OL has the very difficult task of pacing and balancing the game as it progresses. No one wants to loose, but you can't make it too easy, either.

4) If this STILL isn't enough to keep the game going, then I would suggest making some friendly 'house rules'. The legalistic "That's-against-what-the-rules-say" type of players will not like this suggestion, but you're the ones playing the game and you're the ones trying to make it more fun. While first learning the game, I had a house rule to help out the heroes. During setup, I would allow the heroes to draw two cards at a time from the skills deck and pick one. Then reshuffle the cards to draw two more, etc. This enabled the heroes to have a better chance at getting better starting skills, which translates into easier game play for the heroes.

Best of luck to you. I certainly hope you're able to enjoy this fun game with friends who also enjoy it.

jboulton98 said:

Thanks alot for your long post <3 , I will take a peek at the rules again and see if I missed anything. The problems we are having is that they dont seem to get over the Boss'es Armor. (If they even get there, they usually die most of the time and run out of Conquest-tokens before they get to him) If they Boss got 8 in Armor (Boss on the first Mission) the best character in the party usually dont get a single hit in, even with good Silver / Gold-loot. If they are lucky they hit 1 or 2 hp but are usually forced to retreat due to the boss hits them so hard they almost die and when they get back the OL usually spawned a pack of monsters and they are back to Square 1 again with having to go back to heal up and stock on pots. And they hardly got any gold, since all money goes to pots.

Vargavinter said:

Vargavinter said:

That seems quite unlikely. Maybe you could describe the attack process in more detail, with example numbers and things, and we could see if it looks like you're making any mistakes?

Guessing randomly, you might check...

• If you're adding the hero's trait dice to the roll (if applicable)
• If you're remembering to use surge abilities more than once (if you can spend a surge for +1 damage, that always means you can spend 5 surges for +5 damage, if you roll that many; similarly, if you can spend a surge for Pierce 2, you can spend 3 surges for Pierce 6)
• If you're confusing gold treasures with copper treasures (gold-level weapons always have 4+ dice printed on the card, copper-level weapons usually have 2).
• If you're adding up all of the icons and numbers on all of the dice. Power dice have a special side called a power enhancement where you have to choose whether you want +1 damage or +1 range, but in all other cases you get everything shown on the die, and add up results from all of the dice rolled.

Also, what quest(s) are you playing? Some are harder than others, but being unable to overcome the boss's armor probably shouldn't be the major issue in any of them. (Though quest 2 does have this special case where you encounter a boss very early and the heroes have to do the right things to win, but since you're talking about attacking with gold treasures I assume that's not the particular problem you're having.)

Example:

Modrog attacks a master giant with the Frost Axe. The Frost Axe gives a red, two green, and one yellow dice for the attack. Also, Modrog has 3 dice in his melee trait, so he adds 3 power dice to the attack. Rolling his 7 dice, he gets 9 damage, 3 range, and 3 surges*, plus the Frost Axe gives him 2 free surges on all attacks, bringing his total surges to 5. This is a melee attack, so we ignore the range result. Modrog spends 2 of his 5 surges on the "~: Pierce 3" ability, giving him a total of Pierce 6, allowing his attack to completely ignore the master giant's 6 armor, so he spends the other 3 surges on the "~: +1 damage" ability, giving him a total of 12 damage. The master giant suffers 12 wounds, killing it instantly.

*I just made these numbers up and didn't roll for them, but they should be vaguely representative of those dice.

Vargavinter said:

Vargavinter said:

I would suggest re-reading the rule book just to make sure you aren't making any errors there (since I wouldn't know if you were or not). Assuming the rules are being played correctly, there are two things that come to mind with your description. The attacks themselves and hero tactics.

Attacks

Power dice, surges and fatigue are paramount. For power dice, a hero should really have no excuse for rolling less than 3 power dice on attack rolls at the end of a dungeon level. If a particular hero only has the ability to roll 1 or 2 power dice on every roll, then the party needs to make sure that hero buys some skill upgrades ASAP.

Surges should always be spent, too. Nearly every weapon in the game will have some sort of surge ability on it. "~~ = +3 damage" is an obvious boon to get damage boosts. Many traits and items grant free surges. If a hero has 2 or 3 gold items equipped and at least 1 or 2 good traits, a hero should be able to consistently deal 10-15 damage without breaking a sweat. If an attack roll yields 6 "hearts" and 4 surges, those surges should be spent to add the "~~ = +3 damage" (as the example) twice. That's 12 damage, which shouldn't be a problem late in the level.

Also, don't forget to use fatigue. Even heroes that don't have a unique ability that they can spend fatigue on (like attacking 3 times when they battle or making an additional attack when the deal the killing blow to a monster), heroes can always spend fatigue to deal additional damage or grant additional range (if needed). Keep some potions handy and those damage boosts will add up quickly.

Hero Tactics

The other possible problem is with the tactics the heroes are implementing. For instance, if one or more heroes need to go to town, they should go one at a time while the others make sure as many of the LoS areas are covered so the OL can't spawn monsters nearby.

There are also some tactics to consider, such as party make-up. A balanced party is always suggested. An 'all mele' or 'all ranged/magic' party will have some glaring problems with certain types of monsters. Heroes should only use weapons they are skilled with (mele use swords, ranged use bows, and magic use runes). Using your strengths should be a no-brainer, but some heroes will make the mistake of taking a shinny, new treasure item rather than the cash to go back to town and try for a better suited item. The mele heroes should be the first into the fight while the ranged/magic heroes hang back and clean up the straglers. Make sure everyone has sufficient armor ratings (especially your hard hitting heroes). A mele hero with 5 or 6 armor can charge into a room and do some damage and still live to tell the tale when all the monsters aren't able to penetrate that high armor. This also forces the OL to try to rush monsters to the back lines to try and pick at the less armored heroes for easier kills. However, that's usually easier said than done. Try to focus-fire and kill one monster at a time instead of wounding several. Be aware of dreaded abilities, such as Command or Reach/Sweep that can cause painful problems if left unchecked. Use Aim or Dodge if the situation arrises. The list could go on and on.

There are tons of tactics that you can play around with. Don't be afraid to ask the opinion of others here on these forums. You might get conflicting ideas, but you might also hear a suggestion that you didn't think of yet. The game will ultimately come down to luck (it's a dice game, after all), but you can do a lot to manipulate the odds in your favor if you know how.

Hey, thanks for your input Antistone. Well my wife was playing earlier today and had a Warrior and a Ranger-hero. Her Ranger had a Silver-bow and a Gold-Armor (+2 Armor). All in all she had 5 dices to roll (And that was the better character of them both). She had Pierce 2 on the bow and +1 Damage for 2 surges. The Boss had 8 in armor and after 3 rounds (6 attacks) the Boss had lost 2 hp of 14 and the Warrior had died over and over again since he got smacked around BAD from the Bosses Sweep and Reach. So the game was lost fairly fast on the boss, and usually this is the scenario when we play with other players aswell. Either the boss kills em over and over again until all Conquest-tokens are lost, or they get killed from Mobs in the dungeons and they spend all money on pots. We must be doing something wrong somewhere.

Edit: Thanks for your advice aswell jboulton98.

Antistone said:

A question if I may:

Can a character use more than 5 dice?

I thought the rules indicated that 5 dice was the most a character can throw at a time?

Thanks!

Lordpappanqui said:

I think the 5 dice limit was for the black dices. No more than 5 of those can you use even if you got surges or skills etc to boost it over 5.

Vargavinter said:

Correct. You're limited to 5 power dice, but you can roll many other dice in addition to those.

That silver weapon was probably the Bow of Bone (which actually has Pierce 3 according to my notes). I guess I can see how that would have problems with 8 armor; it's one of the lowest-damage silver weapons in the game (even worse than several copper weapons). If that's the best you have, certainly spend fatigue for more power dice, and maybe even consider *shudder* aiming (and you know you're screwed when aiming starts to look like a good idea). But if that's the best weapon you have after opening all the chests in quest 1, you're getting some pretty rotten luck; you should have about 4 total silver/gold treasures per hero even if you didn't buy any (IIRC), and about half the deck is weapons. Remember that you can sell less useful treasures to the shop for half and buy more treasures or trait dice.

So...yeah. Big difference between "can't overcome the armor with gold weapons" and "can't overcome the armor with one of the worst silver weapons." And if your melee hero was doing worse than that, I can only assume he was still using shop weapons, or that he was using the Bone Blade and had only 2 trait dice (or maybe the Shillelagh if you're using treasures from the WoD expansion).

Note that the number of heroes in the game makes a big difference to overall difficulty. There are scaling rules, but they're not remotely adequate; for example, with 4 heroes, you can attack the boss roughly twice as much as if you only had 2 heroes, and the only improvement to the boss is that he'll have 2 more health. You'll also get more total treasure draws, which substantially reduces the chance of everything you draw being bad. Frankly, the game is virtually unplayable with only 2 heroes.

I'm also going to disagree with some of jboulton's advice:

• I don't think that buying more trait dice is usually a good idea unless everyone already has an effective weapon (probably silver or higher). They're expensive, and you can't even theoretically get enough to make up for using a shop weapon.
• Depending on your draws, it's entirely possible to end up with a situation where equipping an out-of-specialty weapon is a good idea (2-3 trait dice is often worth less than the difference between weapons of different treasure levels, and there's quite a bit of variation even within treasure levels)--he may have missed the rules change in the FAQ that denies you the option of getting full cash value for a drawn item instead of keeping the item (you now have to lug it back to town and sell it for half if you don't like it).
• And if your armor is poor, there's usually not much you can do about it--armors are a very low percentage of the treasure deck, and unless you draw one, your defenses probably won't improve at all over the course of a dungeon. If you've already got effective weapons, I don't think it's necessarily worth blowing your cash drawing more treasures on the off-chance that you'll get a useful armor.

Oh I see. That is what I thought.

Very good!

Antistone said:

I see what I did wrong! I only gave money and treasure to the Hero actually picking up the chest och pile of money. *Slaps forhead* We are going to play another round today and see what happens. But i assume THAT was the big problem. I assume that every Hero gets the same amount of treasures as the Quest-guide tells me? The Manual only states 1 treasure per hero does that mean that the hero who picks up the chest get what the Quest-guide tells you that all others only get 1 treasure?

I was wondering if it was something like that. Yes, each hero draws a treasure card for every "Treasure" listed in the quest guide. If it says "Treasure 2", then EVERY hero draws 2 cards from the top of the respective colored treasure deck. With 3 or 4 heroes, you can burn through the treasure decks pretty quickly. Even if you sell off a good portion of the less dersireables, you can always buy more in town once you've opened up a chest of that color. The group I play with usually waits to really start buying/selling treasure cards once they hit silver. Since you can always give other heroes your equipment, every hero is bound to wind up with some good loot. Happy gaming!

We have had the same problems. The only time the heroes have ever won was when they had 4 heroes then they stomped the Overlord with some nasty gold tresures. Lately Ive been letting my 7 year old play as the overlord with his cards in the open so I can advise him how to play them and with me having only 2 heroes, the heroes have yet to win. To clarify Im sure we are doing it right giving the correct amount of treasures, 2 threat per OL turn based on 2 heroes playing, using the correct monster cards, only 1 spawn per turn. Heck the kid doesnt even use his hero turn traps very well. The monsters just rip the heroes down usually before they even get to the second half of the dungeon. Once I got to the last room because I had brother glir with some great armor but the OL just killed the wizard instead.

Currently I am looking at how to balance this game out as it appears to be unplayable. You should see how it goes when I play the OL against other real adults with the cards held secret and the traps used effectivly IVe killed them by the second room often, I even let them start with a random bronze treasure and they still get destroyed.

I think the game may be balanced for 4 heroes not so much for 2. I am thinking of reducing the monsters armor by 1 accross the board to see if that gives the heroes a chance. Seriously a gamer of 30+ years cant beat a 7 year old with his cards in the open and poorly used traps? Something is way out of wack my adult players dont even like this game anymore because of the perceved unbalance.

Vargavinter said:

That bow she's using actually sounds like the Copper Great Bow, the Silver Bow of Bone is, according to my notes: 2h Ranged B/GY Pierce: 3, s: +range, s: +dam

I have the Great Bow in my notes as B/Y Pierce: 2, surge: +range, 2 surge: +dam

There's a pretty huge difference in the power of those weapons, I could easily see a 6 damage difference there.

Vargavinter said:

Basically, everything listed in the quest guide as the contents of the chest is per-hero. If a chest says it gives out 3 curses, 2 silver treasures, and 100 coins, that means that the overlord collects 3 threat per hero (for example, 12 threat total in a game with 4 heroes), and each hero draws 2 silver treasure cards and gets 100 coins. (Page 18-19 of the rules, under the heading "Chest Markers".)

MaximumPain said:

Unfortunately, there is no handicap you can give the monsters in a 2-hero game that makes it work like a 4-hero game, because most monsters can already be killed in 1 hit in a 4-hero game. In a 2-hero, game, you'd have to somehow kill monsters in roughly half a hit, and there's not nearly enough AoE in the game for that (and such AoE as there is, isn't terribly balanced with the rest of the weapons).

I've got a mostly-done rebalanced version of Descent called The Enduring Evil that makes monsters take multiple hits to kill, and therefore can scale much better to different numbers of heroes. But it involves not only new monster stats, but new item cards, overlord cards, and quests, as well--it's not a quick fix to the existing game.

Hammerdal said:

Based on the description given, a character with 2 dice in her ranged trait was rolling 5 dice total, which means the weapon would need to have 3. Also, my notes say that the Bow of Bone charges 2 surges for +1 damage, like the Great Bow, so I take the number of dice and the player's recollection that it was silver as more likely to be correct than the number of ranks of Pierce. It's possible my records are in error, and I guess I'll check them, but I'm pretty sure that all the bows convert surges to range more efficiently than damage.

Not that this is terribly important anymore.

Thanks for the reply.

I found this and will try to share it with my adult players and test it out against my son to see how we do with some of these tips. I do think my players and my style tend to be a clean up before moving on and I can see how trying a bit of rushing especially in the brothers durnog scenario could help the heroes. Ill come back and post our results in a few days.

Duh and the link

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=26

With only 2 people playing I would recommend letting the players choose the heroes and pick at least one skill card and the others random following the rules. With fewer people the party really has to be just about perfect, especially if the players aren't experienced.

On my play though with me controlling 2 heroes and a friend as the OL I was able to win the first scenario. Now I already knew the scenario, picked two better heroes. Had good skills to use and a way to AOE dmg later through chest weapon.

I would just repeat what others have said if you don't have a good weapon from opening chests sell off the loot you don't need to buy new chests from town, the gold weapons will end the game. Other than that it is just managing LOS and spawn areas. Boggs the rat might not be a bad idea to take in a 2 person game for the extra LOS.

I might suggest having other people rotate in as playing the Overlord you learn what the OL is trying to accomplish and how to get around and best manage what resources you have.

The Advice For Heroes link has some good suggestions also.

Antistone said:

Seems my notes were wrong, after all; 1 surge for +1 damage. That's certainly an improvement.

Antistone said:

Yea, that can make quite a difference. That extra green die over the great bow is awesome too, although perhaps that was already being rolled in this case.