Road to Legend is a Nietzschean game.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before I start exposing my point, let me first tell my tale.

I am Ispher. My adventure started when, in a small Tavern of Tamalir, I barely passed the admission test to join a band of heroes resolved to defend Terrinoth against a terrible Beastlord plotting the enslavement of the whole continent. I suspect I was admitted not because I was particularly Skilled (although, funnily enough, I actually was), but rather because my competitors, Lyssa and Red Scorpion, were even worse losers than I.

I was such a weakling compared to my companions Nanok the Cautious, Tahlia the Weapon Master and Prodigal Mad Carthos!... While I kept having to use half my fatigue to kill even the weakest servant of the Beastlord, my friends were cleaning up left and right with power to spare. Soon, I was asked to stop wasting my efforts in combat and instead do errands like opening chests, activating glyphs or getting spare change.

That's when I resolved I would, one day, become more powerful than any of them.

Meanwhile, the Beastlord wasn't easy on us. His lieutenant Sir Alric Farrow had teleported right at the beginning of the game on Tamalir, and we had but a few weeks to scramble for better weapons and maybe new skills to face him. We even hoped to find something to face him in the Caverns of Thuul, but all it got us was a 30-point lead for the Beastlord! While Alric was sieging, we built the walls of Tamalir as high as possible. Just before the city was going to crumble, with new weapons and new dice, we attacked and, because Alric foolishly believed he could still crush us, we killed him!

Early silver saw the Beastlord raze places left and right, making us despair because all the good skills were dissapearing into oblivion... But then, in the Fool's Rapids, came the turning point...

Fast forward to the Gold Age...

I am Ispher. I am a Knight, burn of an Inner Fire, have the Eye of an Eagle, Fire my attacks with the most incredible Rapidity. With my equipment and one potion, I am able to fire 10 attacks a turn at a minimum of 6 range, +2 damage, Pierce 3, Sorcery 2. I AM ISPHER, THE MOST POWERFUL LIZARD ON TERRINOTH!!!

...Was.

I had become too powerful for our OL's taste, so he house ruled that Rapid Fire is exhausted like Quick Casting. Only 6 attacks then. Oh well.

However, our OL also complained that the game had become too unbalanced and proposed a series of amendments that would indeed make the dungeons and encounters more balanced during the gold age, but that would have been too harsh if applied at the beginning of the game. Besides, the game as a whole is still balanced: the OL is indeed gaining less conquest in dungeons, but since he is gaining 4 CP/week for razed cities, our sessions end up more or less even, and the OL still has a 40-point lead over us. The game in terms of CP progress is still balanced; it is just the combats that are not.

Now I come to the theory.

In a campaign game, there are three possible structures:

1) Flat, where the two opponents' strength evolves at the same level;

2) Uphill, where it gets more and more difficult for the heroes;

3) Downhill, where it gets more and more easy for the heroes (or more and more difficult for the OL).

We are quite used to games with a flat or an uphill structure, and maybe we think "that's the way it should be". Road to Legend obviously has a downhill structure, which is very unusual (I cannot think of another game like it). But such a structure also has its advantages:

a) It reduces the danger of ending the game "shortly before the finish line", which can be quite frustrating (not knowing what could have happened in that final keep - oh, the torture!...)

b) It maximizes happiness in the sense that in longer games (those that count emotionally more), the greater number of players (the heroes) win

c) It allows for spectacular "rags to riches" stories like mine, which is, I assure you, a great experience to have! That's why I started by writing that Road to Legend is a Nietzschean game: you can indeed become a Superman! And here I want to praise the ingenious setup of the game which, when you reach this level, doesn't last much longer: since the dungeons are cleaned up much faster during gold than during copper, and since the OL also gains more CP per week, the gold age lasts about three times less longer, in actual time, than the copper age... So the game doesn't give the players enough time to become boring.

d) It is, in a way, fitting that the evil OL is squirming with fear in his keep near the end of the game, afraid of the heroes that are coming. Think of Hitler in his bunker. Think of Saruman in his tower of Orthanc. If you are not prepared to play this role after having slapped the heroes around for two thirds of the game... Just don't play the OverLord.

Road to Legend has something very original; I am not sure it needs as much fixing as some people say. To make it a game more like other games, sure, it would need fixing. But do we want it to become more of the same? Do we want to turn it... Flat?

Well said.

The more, longer, campaigns I play the better the game works.

Even once the campaign hits gold and dungeons are easy for the heroes, the OL can be putting on a lot of map pressure and still be creating problems and chances to win the game through a Tamalir raze or a plot victory. With a full, or near full, hand of treachery even by Gold stage Lt fights are tight. In fact, even encounters can be very tight right till the end (though most are not). Try taking a gold hero party up against a diamond Razorwing/Manticore/Demon encounter! (basically anything that flys and is either very very fast, has lots of fear, or can attack twice - it can be done, but is no walk in the park, and an ambush can create a TPK quite easily).

The only thing I haven't really tried yet is deliberately setting up an OL for a final battle.

+1.

I experienced the game going not really downhill but in a series of ups and downs. In the beginning, the OL is superior, but then the heroes gain good copper weapons and beat his stuff around. With the beginning of silver, the advantage of the heroes declines, since they have to lay hands on better stuff while the OL can directly upgrade what he likes. The cycle repeats itself then to the gold level. But you're right, in the end the heroes tend to get very powerful.

-1

In my comments I assume you've not played through till the end of a campaign, and that you haven't entered the avatars lair. When you've done this you'll understand how boring it is to kill an avatar with a one-shot through 5 speedy levels that also pose no challange to you.

Ispher said:

How exactly is the game going to "end before the finish line", as long as the game is unbalanced the heroes will kick away any lieutenant with ease, not allowing them any chance of razing Tamalir.

Ispher said:

As an overlord I guarantie you that it is 2-3 sessions of mindnumingly boredom that seem to take no end. Posing a bit of interesting challanges when you succesfully kill a hero (which at gold becomes rare).

Even my players complained that this was boring as it was no challange for them, and a feeling of "get this over with" was all around the table.

Ispher said:

Players still discuss and take their time to do things right and make sure that they make no mistakes. When you've tried to be an overlord during this, knowing there is almost nothing you can do even though they make some mistake, come back and tell me "it was soo much fun".

Ispher said:

Unbalancing is never original, especially when done on purpose.

There is a reason why other companies spend hour, weeks, months on playtesting and balancing. One of the greatest examples i Blizzard. Their rate of customer satisfaction is very high and for a good reason. Diablo and Starcraft are great examples of this.

I for one like a game that is balanced for all sides of play, good FFG examples of this are Fury of Dracula and Battlestar Galactica.

Waiting for several session for a game to finish because the fun goes away with a loss of balance is not fun.

If after 2 hours of killing everything with rapid fire, beserk, 9 fatique, 5 move Xyla is still fun for your group, then you're very different from our group.

A comment from one of my players: "Is this really supposed to be this easy? This is ridicules!"

NoNamium said:

To me these comments smack of an OL that has gone the route of dungeon dominance and neglected the mapboard game, the Avatar or both.

My experience as OL through gold level so far is that dungeons become a cakewalk but that the mapboard pressure is still very strong. I had 4 dice rolls for a surge to raze Tamalir during gold level (2x2, all failed) and a Lost draw when playing teh draw 3 choose 1 encounter would have resulted in an autowin with the Always Succeeds Raze rolls Lt arriving at a fully seiged Tamalir.

The OL has to move his focus away from the dungeons and allow the heores their fun while focusing on small vioctories in dungeon and big victories out-dungeon.

Lt battles are still tight in Gold with a hand full of treachery.

Corbon said:

To be a bit provocative.

You smack of an OL that has weak players that do not focus on the correct thing in the game.

On a more serious note Corbon. I know everything you mention. Last campaign I had the Spider Queen, 4 trap treachery, 2 event treachery for the lieutenant maps. Still I lost the battles and with gold it just got worse as they upgraded their weapons.

Example: No Overlord can do anything against a level where he does not even get a turn.

This was the avatar dungeon level 3 "The Arena". Xyla moved 18 spaces, killed the Ogre and and went out the portal. All in one move. The other heroes simply took the TG out. No turn for the overlord. How? Rapid fire, 5 move, fly, 9 fatigue, beserk.

I would say that as players/overlord we are about equal in our playing skill. So EVEN if we are worse players/OL than your group, then the game should still be equal for all. Not as unbalanced as this.

So trying to prove to you that my play was good/correct remains a mute point, but someone dealing 45 points of damage to your FULLY upgraded avatar and one-shotting it is still stupid.

If you cannot raze Tamalir (and with players playing correctly and not having bad luck, you cant), then the remaining hope for the OL is the avatar battle (except for one plot). This Avatar battle cannot be won.

And before you go "But i once read about someone who won the Avatar battle as an OL". Yes, true, but rolling three surges in a row for "Brother against Brother" while fighting with the Sorceror King and still only squeezing out a win with 3 life remaining, is in my opinion "stupid luck".

If someone has another example of an avatar battle with a win for the OL without giant luck factors/stupid plays by the players, then by all means, write it and maybe I'll learn something about the mistakes I've made.

NoNamium said:

Indeed. We are not there yet. I am not so sure about the boring though. We'll see.

NoNamium said:

That's what I am saying. The game isn't going to end just before the finish line because it is unbalanced, which is one of the benefits of being unbalanced.

NoNamium said:

Then for heaven's sake stop playing! Nobody forces you to play. An RTL campaign is not some kind of clerical work that needs to be finished!

I am talking about a campaign in which four players out of five still have lots of fun, and the last one (by his own admission) also, only that he would like to change the rules to be able to "last" a little longer in dungeons.

NoNamium said:

The path that leads there, the slow building up of your hero, is fun. And once you're there, it's fun to experiment your superhero for a while. But yes, it shouldn't last too long, hence the accelerating of the game, with the gold age passing much faster than the copper age.

NoNamium said:

Then I am sure you can give me lots of examples of successful unbalanced games. Actually, one just came to my mind, and it is one of the most successful new games of the past 20 years.

NoNamium said:

I think that customer satisfaction is high enough with RTL, too.

The unbalanced game I mentioned above is Magic: the Gathering. With overpowerful rare cards like Black Lotus, the Moxes, Ancestral Recall, etc. the game was very unbalanced; lots of people complained, too, so one could have thought customer satisfaction was low... And still, it was selling like hot bread!

If it sells, it means the game is good, no matter how much people complain (which doesn't mean the makers of the game shouldn't listen to the complaints of course, and I am sure future versions of the game will be at least slightly more balanced - I am just arguing that it doesn't need to be totally balanced).

If after 2 hours of killing everything with rapid fire, beserk, 9 fatique, 5 move Xyla is still fun for your group, then you're very different from our group.

A comment from one of my players: "Is this really supposed to be this easy? This is ridicules!"

I'll give a recent example of a dungeon level in our campaign. The leader, a Sorcerer named Debilus, controlled a powerful giant who got destroyed if Debilus died. On the first turn, after a 30-second reflection, I moved about 15 squares to get within reach of Debilus and with my remaining fatigue Fired him into oblivion, as well as a couple of other monsters around. My companions killed some monsters too, and there was only a Dark Elf and a Beastman remaining... Then the Beastlord spawned a Treachery Kobold Swarm (9 of them!) and swarmed me to death to punish me for my brashness. In the second round, we decided to leave through the open portal without taking the chest now guarded by the 9 Kobolds to hurry to the next level. At the end of it, we all were awed and said "Wow! A level completed in two turns!" And it took less than 10 minutes, while in copper we would always need more than an hour to finish a level. The difference is spectacular, and not a single one of us thought it was boring or ridiculous.

We indeed seem to be different from your group. I hope you don't mind that I am relieved about it.

NoNamium said:

6/9 treachery, in only 2/3 types is not well prepared for the OL map game by gold level.
Few OLs are behind by the start of gold, so we can safely assume 200CT spent, often more.
3x25 to upgrade main type to Diamond. 10 for the Farrow siblings. Say 20 for a special Lt. 4x10 treachery, 2x15 treachery, 1x20 treachery. Thats 195. More often than not there should be enough for another treachery by then.
If you wnat to win on the mapboard then you must plan your investments accordingly.

Yes, dungeons are a cakewalk. Hero parties can go through entire dungeons (3 levels) with the OL getting only 5 turns or less. Yes, this gets frustrating for the OL.

And yes, the Avatar fights aren't very even - the heroes can only win this way, and the OL has two other ways to win, so they shouldn't be all that even IMO.

But you can raze Tamalir, you can still work on your plot. You should have razed at least 3 cities so you should be getting 4-10 CT per turn - less than the heroes but enough to still be doing things.

To still be effective in Lt encounters you want at least 7treachery with at least 1 of each type.

2-3 event treachery. Crushing blow, 1-2x Danger, and some charge/rage/enraged.
2+ trap treachery. Both Dark Charms and some bits (usually expensive door/chest traps to discard for threat, unless the spider queen dumping pits and blocks on the heroes for lots of damage).
1-2 spawn treachery - this enables you to bring on some monsters that can really dish out the damage - and you get to select which ones. A Beast spawner can bring on 2 master Razorwings (good damage and Stun) or a Master Manticore (really good damage and 2 attacks, 4 with rage) , for a single treachery point. Or a normal razorwing spawn and a normal bloodape spawn. These all fly, so are immune to melee heroes and harder to hit with range/magic - though they should be used as disposable one-shots anyway,

The Dark Charms prevent the heroes from guarding - if the heroes don't unequip they are usually perrfectly capable on one-shotting themselves or each other - sometimes more than one of each other if you have a good blast mage or similar.

The Dangers allow you to do stuff on your first turn - you are likely to lose most monsters on your first two turns. On your second turn one or more spawns should be hitting the heroes HARD. And focusing on the ranged/magic heroes.

The actual Lt is usually hiding near the back.

It is still no guarantee of a win against a gold party, but the heroes certainly should not have things easy. For my dragon special Lt I ended up fleeing with one hero left only because I rolled 1 ~ out of 15 or so to get rid of burn tokens and 1-2~ out of 12 or more to get rid of Daze tokens (over 2 turns). And that is a Lt with no monsters!
The heroes narrowly forced Alric to flee, again this time with 2 heroes left after I had several critical misses.
After I added another spawn treachery the heroes were leary of a refight and just managed to complete the campaign on time by going through the gold legendary dungeon (actually, they gave me another roll to win the game first and if I had of drawn the Lost rumour out of 3 draws on the way to the final dungeon the dragon Lt would have arrived back at tamalir and won the game automatically. As it was the heroes only escaped a Manticore swarm encounter due to one hero having the fly gold item and escaping with a long distance run/fly.
So it was very close, very tight, and could of gone either way.

Naturally, having invested heavily in the mapboard game my Avatar got creamed. Fair enough, that wasn't my winning strategy and had nothing invested in it so I shouldn't have much, if any, chance.

Thats the same argument a player of a computergame would say when using "cheat mode" and being unable to die.

Ispher said:

So because the game is unbalanced I should stop playing, how then is unbalancing benificial?

And why would your overlord change something that is so "wonderfully unbalanced"?

For my part, if I'm ahead in the game wether I'm a player or not, I am of the belief my chances of winning should improve. As is, they don't.

Ispher said:

ahm, ok?

Ispher said:

Don't get me wrong, I love the game, and I agree with you that magic has a lot of popularity. But that is not what this thread is about, you're applauding the imbalance. I'm one of the "complaining people" about this issue.

FFG is not one for balancing games, nor writing good rules. Many hideous examples of this exist, they do have great ideas, but sometimes horrible execution.

As far as the game not needing to be balanced, nope maybe not, but right now its more like "totally unbalanced".

Ispher said:

Look, I've had even better ones turn out at gold. I've killed én massé, and racked up some wonderful scores at the beginning of gold. But what is the point?

All these points go into either a futile attempt at razing Tamalir or a futile attempt at winning an Avatar battle. If this conquest could be used for winning the game for me, especially when I'm in the lead as I am right now 304 to 136, then I'd see some point to it. Luckily I've made 4 modifications to the game, and these should hopefully rebalance the game.

In any other game, if you lead by twice as much as your opponents you would win.

FFG had to make a rule about booting heroes if they took too long in a dungeon, simply because they could just stack up a total of 600+ conquest in the first copper level dungeon, and they would still win the avatar battle. This is an example of how imbalanced the game is, and still not in a good way.

Corbon said:

This is not very well argued Corbon. First you tell me that I've have not gotten enough treachery, then you give me an example where you don't even have the same yourself.

Besides, thats kids stuff up there, I'm working with a bit more advanced tactics than that. What you've just told me is what you know after just playing one game.

Right now in my current campaign I have eldritch at gold, humanoid on silver, beast at silver, 3 event treachery, 3 trap treachery, 1 monster treachery, 4 cards out of the deck, 2 cities razed. The party is in a dungeon scraping up money to defeat the two lieutenants about to raze Tamalir. I've gotten 1 roll on Tamalir and will certainly get another. We should be in gold, but the party is still in the dungeon at silver.

We've used 2 modifications so far, feat cards cost gold and I've gotten a card that gives +5 life to all my creatures at silver. This however needs to be modified to +3 life and then it is more fair.

Last campaign it was no rolls on Tamalir throughout the campaign, but I was still way ahead in the game conquest wise, I didn't advance humanoid but I had the same amount of treachery.

The current game is much more fairly balanced, but I'll admit a bit more in the favor of the overlord than it should be. This will be adjusted and balanced for the next game.

Corbon said:

If only in the last campaign I got 5 turns in a dungeon. Tsk tsk, Then it would have been fun. I don't mind the fustration, I mind not having anything to look forward to.

Corbon said:

"Aren't very even" is an understatement. They are ridiculesly imbalanced. My players argued over who got to kill my avatar (again the avatar was fully upgraded, albait very few bonus hitpoints because of "easy gold levels"). "Brother against Brother" never came into effect as not all players had to activate in order for my avatar to die.

Corbon said:

No and no, in order to have razed 3 cities we are talking silver, which is they only point where there is a slim chance of the overlord getting a roll on Tamalir. Any party knowing what they're doing will use "Wind Pact" to remove DotMG or AW, then keep power potions/fatique potions and Feat cards like "Disarm" ready for lieutenant removing battles.

If the plot should ever be a winning condition, then your players are weak and don't know what they're doing. These take far too long, but I do want to try the titan and blotting out the sun.

Corbon said:

nope... what you want is (1+3+3 in my case)

Merrik Farrow:

1 dark charm + crushing block, Animate weapons, Weakness x2 and Crushing Blow and Skeleton Legion.

Alric Farrow:

same but substitute a Weakness for Danger.

The heroes will always unequip their weapons/dodge as long as you have good players and a Dark Charm/AW in hand. They're only used as in hand cards to slow them down.

Corbon said:

Let me give you an example from a player in another campaign in which I'm not involved:

The lieutenant starts in the opposite end of the map, the one player flies with an advance action using the gold item wings down to him, knockbacks him with the gold hammer to the other end of the map, into a crowd of guarding heroes. They the kill him at the start of the overlords turn, thus ending the encounter.

Could this have been avoided? yes, the overlord should have positioned monsters on all spaces adjacent to the lieutenant to avoid the first attack, this however leaves the monsters succeptible to sweep feats. The monster were blocking a bit further ahead which was the overlords mistake.

This was good tactics on the players part, and not so good tactics by the overlord. However, the overlord quickly runs out of options trying to safeguard against any tactics by the players.

This is the imbalance I'm talking about, yes its fun to watch the first time and it feels brilliant, but when things like this becomes "everyday" it's just imbalanced and not fun.

I see that RTL seems to be very different in difficulty when you play it for the first time than when you play it for a second time or more, when you actually know the dungeons, the possible strategies, etc.

What it probably needs is levels of difficulty, like computer games. Rules for a beginner's level (could be the current rules), for people who play for the first time, and rules for an advanced level, for people who've already played a campaign.

I am aware that as we are winning now even though we are beginners (although our OL is too, so I guess it balances out), if we play a second time with the same rules, it could indeed become too easy.

Not sure what the fuss is about.

I read several posts here that state the avatar was killed almost immediately. I have played through twice and have not seen this happen.

Yes, the gold level moves rapidly and the heroes are not really in danger from a lt. at this level, but that seems proper, and you could always attack with two in a row, hit and leave.

My last avatar was the sorceror king, at the final battle he has an additional 115 wounds, +1 armor, and +2 gold dice. He takes no wounds until each and every mirror is destroyed. Each has 30 wounds and is immune to pierce and other effects with ironskin. Thier are eight mirrors, and four players. They must move into the room to attack. There is NO WAY the players can kill the avatar in 2 or three turns. The weakest character should be targeted first, killing him/her off with a socerous energy blast. Add the possibility of controlling with tatoos and it is in no way a walkover.

Many of the unbalancing skills listed can be eliminated prior to thier use by destroying cities. One of the plots even allows for the destruction of cities by simply paying for it. Combined with a few Lts. I managed to have almost all cities razed and a special trainer killed by the gold level.

I would like to add a few points here...

First of all, I am the infamous aforementioned Overlord who has been complaining and trying to fix some of the unbalanced game features.

Secondly, what Ispher hasn't mentioned is that, in order to keep the game varied and interesting, we use randomized treachery. Now the problem with this, is that the most useful card for crippling the heroes (Crushing Blow) hasn't appeared once in any of my draws, thus I have been struggling with a Staff of the Grave equipped on Mad Carthos since the beginning of the Campaign ! Granted, for the moment I only have one Event Treachery (at 20 XP for the Beastman Lord it is quite expensive). Still this variant is very interesting but does weaken the Overlord.

Of course we haven't finished the campaign yet, but I can easily foresee what is going to happen in our next few sessions and though I admit to really love the Descent, I do strongly believe that the game does need some balancing to keep some kind of tension, even with a "downhill" type structure.

The two main issues for me are the following:

Fatigue abuse: The rules as they are written are broken. As someone else mentioned somewhere else, originally the purpose of fatigue was to give a slight boost to heroes when needed: Do that extra damage to kill the monster, move that extra space... Now with so much fatigue at the heroes' disposal AND the ability to drink a fatigue potion, which in effect practically doubles the amount of fatigue that can be used, the heroes have the ability to wipe out a dungeon level without the Overlord even being able to react...which leads me to the second point...

Monster toughness: Mid to late game, the Overlord should have a chance to use at least SOME of the monsters on the board to represent at least SOME sort of menace. The only way I manage to kill a hero now is just through surprise spawning. Any monster on the board at the beginning of a dungeon just gets in effect wiped out in one turn, without even being able to act. They might as well not have been on the board in the first place.

Globally speaking, with a fix for these two issues, I believe you have a balanced game that remains interesting for everybody and still doesn't prevent Heroes from getting very powerful, but at least permits the Overlord some means of pressure in dungeons or encounters and most important of all keeps the tactical side of the game alive !

And for the most part I support the interesting comments and suggestions of our friend NoNamium here.

PS : About eliminating the overpowered skills by razing cities, this is unfortunately totally negated by the Fool's Rapids, so it doesn't work. It just delays the heroes for some time, but that isn't really a big deal.

What if the Fatigue upgrade was +2 instead of +4, do you think that would be sufficient?

And considering the "abuse" of this by the Heroes, why not stop the random treachery and just pick Crushing Blow every time now? Seems like the Heroes don't need any kind of bonus...

-shnar

The fatigue upgrade already is +2. +4 would be broken beyond all reason.

Oh yeah, sorry, was thinking it was +4 Fatigue and +2 Health. It's the other way around, huh?

So, what if the Fatigue upgrade was +1 instead of +2? Or what if there was a cap to fatigue, i.e.no more than 6 fatigue for a Hero?

-shnar

Patmox said:

AAAAGH!!! THE OVERLORD!!! GET INTO COVER!!!!!

Patmox said:

If only we had known how much... Still, there was tension enough in the game 'till exactly one moment: Fool's Rapids. I was so sure that we could only get something that wasn't already destroyed there that I had already resigned myself to get... Alertness. Not as spectacular as Rapid Fire, for sure!

It kind of made your Obsidian Shackles plot meaningless. At the time, I'd almost have proposed house ruling that we can only get something that's not already razed. If we had, dungeon and lieutenant fights would still be interesting for you too and you wouldn't have needed to look for other ways to compensate.

Patmox said:

The rules as they are written were written for vanilla Descent, and they are not broken at all there (most of the quests seem to be hard enough already). With the smaller dungeons of RTL and the fatigue upgrades however, you indeed get overpowerful heroes.

I agreed a long time ago that limiting the heroes' use of fatigue was an acceptable solution, a solution that would be implemented in the most simple and elegant way with just one additional rule: being able to drink a potion only either at the beginning or at the end of one's turn. If you cannot use fatigue, drink and use your fatigue again, every fatigue-related problem is solved. Since all else that was proposed was more clunky and involved bean counting (the latest proposed solution would have made us play with fatigue spread over three stacks, sheesh!), I opposed it.

Patmox said:

I don't think monster toughness is the problem. Except for me who was very weak at the beginning, everyone else in the group has been one-shooting monsters since the beginning of the game, and it wasn't a problem at all then.

The big problem is that now we can reach all of your monsters in the first turn. Since we still one-shoot them and we have more attacks, they get wiped out.

Limiting the use of fatigue would already lower first-turn monster casualties by quite a lot I think.

Patmox said:

OF COURSE! OVERLORDS SHOWING SOLIDARITY WITH EACH OTHER! BUT EVEN THE MOST POWERFUL OVERLORD OF ALL, SAURON OF THE ONE RING, HASN'T BEEN ABLE TO STOP THE MOST OVERPOWERED HERO EVER, GANDALF THE WHITE!!! HIDE INTO YOUR LAIRS, OVERLORDS, FOR WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU!!!

Patmox said:

In my opinion, that's what was the main problem in our game. The rest was just a consequence of it.

But anyway, the game is still great. See you soon for the continuation of our adventures...

We have been playing Vanilla Descent, and now moved to RTL, I have to say that I find the hero's are walking through most of my dungeons, usually cos there is no where to spawn, and if I do get a chance am paying 15 thread + spawn card, which is a bit much. Also the heros get to attack and use guard, which makes getting monsters in to attack hard.

So far after 2 dungeons and 2 encounters the heros have 42-xp the overlord 30xp. Having read the posts here, the heros get a lot tougher in silver and gold so I can see the heros getting XP a lot faster than me.

Treachery far too costly 20xp for 1 treachery. (red) 10XP for 1 (green)

But the biggest problem being the overlord is boring for long periods in the dungons, there is nothing to do, no monsters on map, no spawn points, and the maps are so small that even having a few traps is not going to kill a hero.

They need to make the maps bigger, or reduce the spawn reinforce cost to allow the OL to actually have something to do.

shnar said:

+1 fatigue seems like it wouldn't be worth it compared to 4 life. Maybe make it +1 fatigue, +2 life for everybody. A 6 Fatigue cap would make all the 5-Fatigue heroes (Silhouette, Astarra, Glyr etc.) ineligible for the skill Skilled (+2 Fatigue), which would be a pity...

I think that limiting the use of fatigue by forbidding the drinking of a potion in the middle of a turn is a better solution.

My comprehensive house rules fix, available here ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/403388 ) is intended to address all the usual complaints, many of which have been mentioned in this thread.

Randomized or semi-randomized treachery is one of the main things our group wants to keep, as it allows more variety to the game and avoids über-combos or seing the same card every single time (Crushing Blow).

Great list of fixes from The Immortal which we will strongly consider for our next campaign. I would like to add to this the fact that we will probably also use some means for reducing fatigue abuse, namely the one Ispher mentioned: allowing the use of 1 potion per hero turn but either at the beginning or the end of his turn (as opposed to being able to drink a potion at any moment). Does anyone have any thoughts on this, as opposed to using the "delayed fatigue" system suggested by bleached_lizard (if I am not mistaken) ?

According to the latest update on Sea of Blood, the fatigue problem seems to have had been addressed by some other means however.

I would like to add that we have also made slight modifications to Grapple and Telekinesis, similar to the updated rules for Knockback and Web; generally speaking the efficiency of these type of skills is dependant on the monster size/type. Thus for Grapple, a monster could break free by rolling a number of power dice proportionnal to its size in order to obtain a blank to be able to break free. For Telekinesis, the fatigue cost to use the skill increases depending on the targeted monster's size/type. All of these modifications have been suggested many times by deifferent people around the forums.

To The Immortal: Have you sent your suggestions to FFG ? They could really build on those for a second edition of the game.

I'm afraid I can't say that I have. Frankly, I rather doubt they want to hear from every fanboy who has his own 'pet' list of house rules, although I do contend that mine are backed up with better testing and analysis than most. I probably should post them in the Variants area of this board too, but I've been too lazy (and plus didn't want to have two separate lists as I make minor tweaks and changes).

Delayed Fatigue Recovery (indeed, from Mr. bleached_lizard) is a concept I like in general, but would require some rebalancing near the beginning of RtL, where the Heroes really need every advantage they can get. Your potion rule is practically the same thing anyway. I've toyed with the idea of 'you can't spend more fatigue than twice your speed for movement' (to make the Speed stat maintain its relevance in RtL, which at the moment it kind of loses as Heroes upgrade their fatigue) but haven't actually tried it out or anything.

Concerning the fatigue-discussion: Wasn`t there a consensus on this board that the number of fatigue tokens coming with the game is limiting the number of fatigue the party can have in total (like it is with the training tokens)? So having two fatigue upgrades on Zyla or Ispher will almost always lead to 1 hero not having a fatigue upgrade at all (except all other heroes only started with 3 fatigue).

Maybe Fatigue potions should work more like Healing potions, return a fixed amount of fatigue instead of returning maximum fatigue? Say, 4 or 5 Fatigue (so in the base game, this would retore all the hero's fatigues, but in RtL with max-upgraded hero, it would only restore about half).

-shnar

shnar said:

Not a bad idea. For RTL, I'd even go as far as equaling Fatigue potions with Healing potions, with both restoring 3 points each. In that case, you wouldn't have to limit Fatigue at all anymore.

Still, I'll suggest the following (very simple) 3 changes for our next RTL campaign (since our OL is reading this...):

1) Skills in razed places cannot be obtained anymore by any means;

2) Potions can be used only at the beginning or the end of a turn;

3) The bosses' life bonus scales with the campaign level (as in Sea of Blood).

I also proposed to the group that the chooses his treachery, but they refused; it seems we are going to stick with semi-randomized. Sissies.

On the other hand, I understand them because it could get a little repetitive... Still, it should get a little harder and we should have fun, which is all that matters.