Right now my group is knee-deep into our first RTL game with me as overlord, but we're already talking about our next adventure. The only problem is that we have another player who wants to join (for 5 heroes). I've read a number of suggestions on how to handle 6 players (most of which turn into having a shared overlord approach which has already been rejected by the group), but nothing I have read feels right yet.

An idea I had was to allow the overlord two silver at copper, two gold at silver, etc. That's it. It's simple and direct, but would it work?

SamVimes said:

Nah. Go back to core Descent. Look at each of the baddies, and look at how they progress from 2-5 players. There's almost certainly a formula in this. Movement never changes, it looks like armor rarely does. Look at Beastman. HP goes from two to five players as 2, 2, 3, and tops out at 4. Looks to me like 5 heroes could bump up to 5 health, maybe 6 if they crop easier than before. Same with reds. Six player would be 4 move, six health, 3 armor. There's your copper template. Now look at the jump from copper to silver for beastman. Copper is 4, 4,2 for a common, silver is 4, 8, 3, gold is 4, 12, 4, and diamond is 4, 16, 5. See a pattern there? Add 4 health, give an extra point of armor. I'd just apply the same formula to the "new" copper, and maybe an extra single health at each level of the game if they seem too weak. Special abilities scale extremely linear, so that's not an issue. See? I just finished Beastman. Now you get to do the rest.

Basically, you're going to need a spreadsheet to draw up new monsters for the entire game. It's a lot of detailed work, and some basic math/pattern recognition, but it's easily doable. I bet an afternoon with your cards, a piece of scratch paper, and Excel (or Google spreadsheet) will do the trick. Don't forget to increase the XP thresholds from copper to silver to gold by 25% since you're adding a new hero (which means what 250, 500, and 750?) since they'll be getting XP 25% faster. The OL will generate more threat, so that's not an issue. The Avatar and Lt's that you can recruit will need to be buffed, and that's the hardest thing to do. The Avatar is simply a diamond whatever with some buffs, which may need a little extra oomph due to the extra guy, but be conservative in buffing your Avatar. The Lt's are the hardest part, since they don't have any real reference to pre-existing characters. Use your judgement, and again, if you have to, err on the conservative side, and tell the players that with their help, you may be statting up any of the NPCs if they seem particularly weaker than they should be.

The only other thing I could possibly think of is to throw in one extra white mob for each spawn. Otherwise there's not a lot of threat in the spawns any more.

TheFlatline said:

Just an alert, this part is a serious error.

CT and XP are not the same. Be aware of the difference between the two.
Both sides (OL and hero party) accummulate CT . They then have individual XP pools that they can spend up to the current CT value.

Hero XP is largely irrelevant for campaign level. The campaign level is calculated from combined CT , which will not be affected by adding an extra hero.

I would strongly recommend actually changing very little. The major advantages for the heroes are 25% more actions and extra spawn prevention. They also have more options available to them.
The major disadvantages will be a lack of resources (need to spread the same amount of cash, treasures and potions through 5 heroes) and the extra threat the OL will accumulate.

You could get past the extra actions and spawn prevention part by making a rule that one hero must be in town at all times (in a dungeon). A hero may only enter a dungeon through a glyph if there is a second hero in town (killed, glyphed out at the start of the turn, whatever, kind of like a tag team).
This gives some advantage to the heroes in that they are much more able to send heroes for healing etc without losing anything in the dungeon. I think that might balance the extra threat a little, probably still to the heroes advantage, so keeping their resources thin is still probably fair.

Obviously that won't work in encounters or the Avatar fight and I would suggest that you have all 5 heroes in play then but each turn randomly turn 1 hero into stone (place a rubble marker underneath the hero) and while stone the hero is treated as though a piece of rubble.

TheFlatline said:

That would work if the original scaling built into the game works, but it doesn't, and has been shown to be awful at 5 players.

Plus, it means you can't use the cards and will need to reference a cumbersome sheet all throughout the game.

The best mods keep it simple. I suggest using the increased limits you proposed - 2 silver at copper, etc. It might not work, but it's simple and it might be perfect.

I had a lot of success by treating the heroes as a group of four for all rewards (400 gold piles, 4 dice per treasure, etc). It meant they couldn't level up near fast enough, and inevitably one lagged behind and was easier to kill. The main issue with this is you do have to rely on a board win because 5 actions to one Avatar action just doesn't work.

TheFlatline said:

So your suggestion is to change well over 20 different things, some of which there is nothing to base those changes on, one of which seems completely random (threshhold change) and make a ton of cards useless, vs. a simpler change. While the change I suggested may not be the right one, changing that many different things all at once would almost certainly screw something up.

SamVimes said:

So wait, you asked for homebrew rules for something that has already been obviously decried as being a bad idea, and then turn your nose up at someone who offers you an honest, thought out answer like I insulted you?

I'd insert some choice words in here towards you but I've made a promise to be more civil on these boards. Instead, I'll just make a note never to offer you any constructive ideas in the future.

*thumbs up*

I didn't mean to seem insulting or make anything personal of it. I just don't think your suggestion is a very good idea, especially as I'd indicated that I'm looking for a simple fix. It doesn't need to be perfect, but I would prefer any suggestions to be simple. The rewards as if there were 4 players is a simple and interesting suggestion for example.

Another one of my favorites, though admittedly more complicated and involves a certain level of trust between you and your heroes is to add in 2x2 sections between board sections if possible. This increases the dungeon size, which is very important for mitigating the party size/LOS advantage, and increases the amount of time it takes for the heroes to get through the dungeon levels. I maintain my assertion that this is one of the reasons that WoD is consitently rated the hardest expansion- the dungeons are HUGE.

Any way, this is possibly my favorite fix, as the heroes are usually much more apt to agree to it as they inevitably fail to see how powerful it is, and will often maintain that that is not the reason that you are able to keep up with them with them playing five heroes. Word to the wise though, be open and honest about using this if you intend to do it. No group likes to find out someone is intentionally changing things on them without their consent, even if it is to balance an obviously broken situation (which 5 characters is, if you simply add +1/+2/+3/+4 health, which would be the normal scaling in most cases).I firmly believe that fixes like this are more important than an almost meaningless health bonus.

I'll suggest that to my group as well. It seems easy enough to me, but as I won't be reprising my role as overlord in this next campaign, and the guy who's going to be taking over has never been an overlord before, he may not be able to take full advantage. That said, I think it's a pretty good suggestion.