Well, there we were, liking the Basic Descent we decided to do the jump, and go for a Campain.

And, scrolling over all the Addons, we decided to get those too!

Now i'm here, sorting decks, sorting _Contents to "player box" after actually runnign a first test-run of the increased amout of rules, with 4 heroes, in the "ToG" dungeon of Jitd.

Hrmm,a s Overlord i kinda disliked it, and so i ask myself if i did somethign wrong, if we play somethign wrong in the rules of question, and if the Campain will have the same "problems.

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Balance:

As Overlord one quickly learns : the Mobs that ar einside the room as the heroes open it, won't be there at the end of their turn.

Thats a rule, thats something you get used to.

YOU(OL) win your game by

-exhausting their resources and slowly starvign them with traps (ya right, forget about that, in vanilla they have enough resources and time to go buy health potions and laugh about that spiked-pit-damage)

-killing them with spawns: Kirga,Thorn with spiritwalker, a breath-rune, and a guard order. Feat Cards that just slay whatever gets trough that, or hands them extra armor so you can not kill them.

-killing them with evil plans that seperate them: ambush as the last hero gets activated: Move the Oger. Now he is in Range to, in my round, be raged and "Knock back" two heroes into Rang eof my beastmen. [which will be breated down anyways next turn as we all know] Again, a featcard-attack killed my ogre before he even came to a swing. Wasted 9 threat and 2 cards.

-killing them in the final encounter as your endencounter has enough extrahp/armor to stand the 3 Attacks (after they have killed their way through the monstershield (nordes of things), didn't reach him (Spiked pits), and had 1 hero less (Paralysing Gas). Both traps where canceld, the Breathweapon killed the shield in 1 blow [the Blastrune i destroyed before with a crushign blow), and the final encounter was done.

-Dumb Hero mistakes: which will decrease in quantity.

Looking at that new treasures, new Heroabilitys, and especially feats, took 3 ways of killing Heroes from me, only leaveing Traps. Which they can now disable. On top of that, with them slaying my spawns instantly and not every dying or gaining damaged, there is hardly a way to slow them down. So they gain more than 1 feat per round per player [1 glyph 1 treasure per room.]

To Counter that, i as overlord, how have gained:

treachery, to:

-change runes, which they don't need, as i can not kill them.

-Change in cards: which are worthless as they can counter them easily

-especially the spawns with killign the full horde with the higher quantity of available mage-area-attacks. [might be only spiritwalker+Guard]

migthier monsters:

-*cough* they still die as the heroes notice them, as far as i came to see them in action.

-the heroes get immune to them "ghost my ass!"

13 "new cards" for my OL deck without Treachery cost:

-oh joy, 13 new cards to decrease the possibility to draw what i need

-oh great, more than 4! more rounds till they loose 3 conquest because my deck is at end! [Do i always scale down to 36 Cards? I can not find a rule stating that anywhere, please! tell me i did overread it.

It would change things a lot gettign rid of 13 of the most useless cards, leaveing only 36 "sometimes usefull" ones.

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So, looking at that mess, i found:

-descent a balanced game before the expansions. [We had a solid about 1/1 statistic through 20 sessiosn, outside of "the heroes got to learn the dungeon"]

-it utterly broken with all expansions, when outside of the campain, but that was just 1 sole game .

-no chance to see how "bad" it was for the heroes. [With Altar and/or Well only]

Did we play feats wrong? [1 per Glyph, 1 per treasure inside Jitd dungeon, 3 at start]

What of my experiences will change while in the Campain?

How should we try to compensate those feats outside of the campain in jitd, or are they actually nessecary and i'm just a whiny bastard with a bad day?

Some chests (from Tomb of Ice) specifically state that they give the heroes feats, but I can't find anything to suggest that they should be getting feats from the chests in the JitD quests. So if you were giving them twice as many feats as they should've had, that might make a difference. If you're considering going to Road to Legend, you should also know that there are no official rules for using feats in the extended campaign, though various posters have tried using them under various house rules and have mostly reported that they work.

I'm also not sure what you mean by the "ToG" dungeon--no JitD quest has those initials, though quest #6 "The Eternal Guardian" is the closest (and widely considered the easiest quest in JitD). Regardless, you should be aware many of the quests in the base game (especially the first few, and #6) are considered easier than most quests from the expansions.

Other than that, it doesn't sound like you're obviously doing anything wrong, just that the heroes had too many feats and had enough luck and/or skill on their side to beat you that game. You might try playing one of the notoriously hard quests, such as Quest 4 from the Well of Darkness ("A Small Problem"), or Quest 7 if you want to stick with the base game quest guide ("The Black Blade"). If you still can't beat them, then I would definitely look for a key rule you might be playing wrong, or at least try switching overlords.

An Update and a Plea for Help :

Feats in general and RtL:

-Feats can actually go wrong, my players went really lucky ont hat first session where they impressed me that much.

-It becomes much less a hassle with them not gainign feats from chests, thank you antistone for pointing it out. We decided to use them in RtL.

We started the campaign *cough* .. it was a slaughter, so here i got a few questions once again, and hope to find a few answers. Questions will be marked. We are pleading for help here!!!

Conditions: From the start, my heroes didn't get that lucky skillwise:

Brother Glyr +knight, Zyla +Furr, Kirga +Lucky, And Astarra + command went against the Sorcerorking [+1 traptreachery: Dark charm in Deck, focused].

In dungeon level 1 [The Mine] they fought the altered beastmen, razorwings (is their dice-change in RTL a missprint or intended? Green to yellow and viceversa. We like it!).

And noticed they often need two Blows to kill almost every bronze monster, which seemed much harder to them.

They tryed to block line of sight to prevent spawning, but Zyla, the lookout, accidently killed herself(Dark charm),
making some room for a few Ferrox. They did eventually kill it all. The named spider giving them a very hard time with 2 extra armor and some extra Hp.

So this lvl they ended 12(me killing em off) to 7 (2 conquest for them for the Spider, 3 for glyph, 1 for treasureless box, and 1 for actually seeing a dungeon from the outside)

But i got Evil Genious out.

They decide to go deeper, and i slaugther them in the Ancient library with the returning Mad sorceror.

They kill him, gain their 3 conquest (sorceror, 1 chest without loot) and Return to the surface with their treasure, but i return the blows twice as hard.)

Standings at that time:

-2 Bronze treasures from treasurebox.

-Boxloot of 600 gold, 200 gold mined, 3 Gold piles.[ Q: Goldpiles do mean 400 gp for the players, right? I could find nothign in the manual]

As they decide to leave it stands 24 Exp [slaugthering the fleeing Zyla with traps as she trys to leave] to 12 [7 from before +2 sorceror +3Glyp]

Q1: Should they have fled earlyer? When? why?

Q2: T hey went to shop and found two weapons upgraded their shop gear, they didn't train. What should they have trained and why?

Q3: Should they have shopped by Towngates before going to the next Level? (i think definately, the two potions and a lot of random shop tiems would have made quite a difference).

Q3b: if they did, they can only buy shopgear while in dungeon, but that they can buy, correct?

At the next turn i start with +1 Conquest, and upgrade to eldritch silver [exactly 25]. Sir Alric moves towards to the Cleric-City [lower right of the map]

The Heroes decided to train and shop once (Bronze Blast rune, bronze hammer, Bronze greatbow, and something i forgot] and train nothing. and then decide to follow alric to hinder him from razing..

They slay an outland encounter for 2 conquest and some gp [spiders ambush them and deal sonme serious wounds.]

Inside the dugneon downward spiral they find out they don't deal enough damage to the giant, and that they need 2 shots to kill those silver skeletons, and about 3-4 for sorcerors/Dark priests, , but they want to go some deeper and stay.

On top of that with sorceror king and a fast Evil genious, i can spawn about once ever 2 turns, and always choose to spawn something eldritch.

Q4: Is that allright? [sorcerorking = 5 conquest per round, and 5 Cards to discard for 1 spawn )= 15 to turn the token and 5 to slaugther them again]

Q5: should they have slain the initial watchmen and grab the treasure and fled? [would have resulted in me gaining 5 conquest, killing the wounded Kirga and astarra with those sstarting silver skeletons and sorcerors.]

Q6: Is there anything to hinder me to always pick the group of initial guardmen that holds the biggest number of silvers.. resulting in them hardly ever seeing any monste rnot silver. [outside from the land encounters].

Q7: Wouldn't that mean they actually should onyl do landencounters for Exp, and only venture dungeons for their cash?

As they stayed inside it was aslaugther, with the Ol endign with 53 conquest. [25 from earlyer +2 for 2 rounds, + 24 for slaugthering], and them finally fleeing without killing trhe giant with its 6 armor because they can not possibly hit him really hard.

Leaving them otuside with 2 more goldpiles, an open chest without treasure, and an activated Glyp [18 :12 +2 from overlandencoutner +1 for seeing the dungeon, +3 for glyph.

BIG Q8: is that all as intended?

Q9: Did i get something wrong on those rules so far?

Q10: What should they have done diffrent? [Apart from noticing they can not harm the Giant [2nd dungeon] enough and are actually handing me exp for free, so goign in, loose conquest in heroes [5-9] openign the glyp, looting the chests and goldpiles, and leave. Still giving me better exp than they receive.

Q11: Is that campaign won for me already, or do they have a fair chance? I actually think they had soem bad Luck in the first dungeon and gave me a too huge advantage by staying inside the second one. Where they could have left with 3 easy conquest and two goldpiles with me only gaining minimal kills.

Q12: Can Zyla the flying thief loot goldpiles and treasurechests while there are monsters on top of it?

As said, i hope to find an experienced player with a lot of patience and some time, as right now i am a bit surprised how much "more comfortable" the game is as Ol inside the Campaign, and my heroes are quite disappointed, pointing out they have and never had no chance.

Q13: And Pointing out that even with bronze treasure and 1 skill, they have no chance to kill of those silver bestialitys, let alone nameds with extra armor and Hp, without me still gainign the double of their experience.

Q14: Especially while i raze citys and they see no chance to stop that with their gear and the stats of Sir Alric and his two silver sorcerers, and his silver sorcerer reinforcements.

Q15: Can i use treachery-bought Monsterspawns in Leutenant battles? ["Legions of the dead" would rob their last chance of ever stopping me from razing i think]

Q16: What should we do to enjoy RtL? I Think the best thing would be to reroll the whole Campaign and do a more thoughtfull approach to it Hero-wise.

I speak under correction here, but the following are my thoughts:

Q1) Flee if you are dying too much. "Too much" is rather relative and up to the heroes. I think the rule of thumb is if each hero dies once (or equivalent CP) it is time to flee. Why? Mainly to minimise CP to the overlord.

Q2) Train your main stat. But early game you want to get loads of money and get loads of copper items so that you can survive the dungeons. Heroes should not look for much XP in the first few weeks of the game, but rather look for money. Money piles give a total of 400 coins. Collect them.

Q3) If you have enough money, why not? Send one/two heroes to go shopping.

Q3b) you can shop at the market I believe (little sketchy about multiple visits to town in a single week)

Q4) You mean 5 threat per turn, right? Unsure if sorcerer king gives you an extra threat per turn. 1 threat per hero per turn (plus bonus). Anyway. Silver eldrich hurts alot. I think the heroes gave away too many CP's too early and now they hurt more. See Q1.

Q5) its already a too late. But yes, grab the loot and scoot.

Q6) Nope. Its just not always possible.

Q7) No. Some dungeons give loads of money. You want these early.

Q8) Yes. Pretty much. Heroes should flee when they have lost about half the amount they did to prevent the OL from getting tons of CP and upgrading faster. This is one of the harder Avatars for the overlord to be. Try a different one next time.

Q9) Does not look like it.

Q10) Better part of valor! Better part of valor!

Q11) Sounds like they gave a large advantage in the first dungeon.

Q12) No.

Q13) I agree with the heroes. I was OL in same situation. Sorcerer King with silver eldrich = total annihilation.

Q14) These questions are actually one question, arn't they?

Q15) Um. Use the lt. reinforce ability to get more monsters. I am unsure about buying overlord cards for outside encounters, offhand.

Q16) This is the actual question you want answered: Restart. Take a different Avatar (I believe the Demon is the other tough cookie, don't take that one). Heroes should runaway if they are dropping like flies. Early dungeons should be spent digging for treasure. Also XP and coins is awarded to the party as a whole.

Hope this helps a little bit.

It helpes a lot! :-)

Thanks a lot for your answers and opinions.

As far as the feats go, I'm finding them very powerful in the campaign I'm playing, and we're thinking of house ruling them a little bit. I've seen some other people go with some house rules that look a little ridiculous to me, requiring spending conquest/money to train in them or something, but I'd go with something a little weaker, probably either giving the OL 1 threat each time a feat is played, or giving him 1 card each time a glyph is activated (handing out feats). Might also lower the # of feats the heroes start with to 1 or so.

Sinso said:

Agreed, not a great selection of skills. Knights is quite useful for Glyr and Blessing is ok, but Furr is a total waste of space and Lucky is rather marginal at best (unless coupled with Laurel-the-CT-fountain of course).

First apparent error: You cannot purchase treachery with your 'free starting XP' as an OL. It is an easy error to make as the naming conventions are inconsistent in the rules (bad editing, a frequent problem). That first purchase is limited to "Avatar Upgrades" (pg8). On pg 24 OL upgrades are split three ways into Avatar upgrades, Treachery upgrades and Monster upgrades. Thus Treachery upgrades are not part of AVatar upgrades. Neither are Monster upgrades (though they are too expensive for the 15 starting XP anyway). Further, it has been clarified the Lts cannot be purchased with this starting XP either (FAQ pg 10).
The confusing part is that there is a paragraph in the Avatar Upgrades section on page 24 that appears to be a remnant section covering all OL upgrades as it includes monster upgrades in it's description of things Avatar upgrades can do (and does not include 'other' effects such as Focused removing cards or Seige Engines reducing city defense ratings). I think this is simply bad editing (yet again) and this particular sentence should be removed entirely from the rulebook, or fixed and put under OL Upgrades near the top of the page.

Q? Yes. There are no change to goldpiles so, as directed on pg 5, basic ('vanilla') Descent rules remain in force. The heroes get 100gp each. As there are no individual treasuries, only a party treasury, the party treasury receives 400gp.
Also, yes the altered dice for razorwings and beastman are deliberate. Razorwings are now actually not ignorable and beastmen are about the same since their damage bonus increased to compensate for the yellow dice.

Q1: Yes, definitely. When exactly is less obvious. However it is absolutely critical to flee before the OL gets to 24! This is because, with his weekly 1CT the OL will have enough CT to upgrade monsters. Far, far, FAR better to run now then enter another dungeon and get up to three more full levels of all-bronze monsters instead of running into Silver nasties so early (especially Silver Eldritch, who are particularly nasty). Typically a party should only do 1 level in the first 2-3 dungeons, with the second level being a loot'n'scoot (send one runner out to grab as much loot and/or activate a glyph (Astarra is ideal) as possible. Gain + loot? + 3CT for glyph, loss = 0 or 2 CT) before fleeing. Of course, situations vary... However, the appearance of Evil Genius is a huge warning marker for the heroes. 3 cards per turn is a huge boost for the OL and can really make subsequent levels dangerous.

Q2: Training is only possible if you spend an entire week in a city (party does not move). Early on training is difficult, if not impossible, as the heroes shouldn't have enough cash and XP available for significant training. The first few weeks the heroes will probably be purchasing bronze items, gathering additional shop gear (Ring of Protection, Ghost Armour, party upgrades for faster movement, boats for river movement etc). Once you can afford to train, a secret training is by fat the best - mostly extra fatigue, though the odd hero like Glyrr really needs the extra wounds instead. After that you have a choice of going for critical skills (Acrobat if you don't have Zyla, Wind Pact, Rapid Fire, Leadership, Cleaving, Quick Casting, Spiritwalker, Boggs, Unmoveable (only because you have Knight), Tiger Tattoo/Swift) or trait dice (remember you can upgrade two dice at a time).
IMO Glyr would be worth upgrading dice, because he gets only 2 to start with and can get a cheap (both Black) double upgrade to give you some high end hitting power. Zyla should probably forget dice for now and concentrate on being a 'gatherer', so look for Swift or Tiger Tattoo. The others are a six of one, half a dozen of the other choice IMO, although against Eldritch dice are probably better except for multi-attack skills. FWIW in my solo testing Eldritch campaign (Demon Lord) I upgraded dice before skills for the most part - a reverse over other campaigns, and it has served well I think.

Q3: Difficult to say (in general), but given the bad situation they put themselves in, probably (ok, almost certainly) yes.
Q3b: They can buy shopgear while in the dungeon (when glyphing back to town (market)) and also any treasures that are drawn for that week in the market. See page 22, (visiting) the Market.

Q4: Sorcerer King has lots of threat - dungeons are his thing. 5 per turn is correct. However I think 5 cards is an extraordinarily bad error (#2?)on your part unless I am misreading you. Evil genius allows you to draw 3 cards per turn instead of 2, not 3 as well as 2! 5 cards per turn + lots of threat (and Eldritch creatures tend to generate a lot of threat as well) is simply a ridiculous amount of resources to totally screw things. I'm not sure if this is what you are saying (5 cards/turn) or you mean discarding approximately 5 cards for 15 threat to flip the marker.

Q5: Yes, see Q1.

Q6: No. This is particularly easy for Eldritch who are by far the most common creatures in dungeons - one of the reasons why Eldritch are such a dangerous upgrade path.

Q7: The fundamental gainer of CT, cash and treasure will still be dungeons. However, you just have to accept that you will take a lot of punishment if you push hard. The Sorcerer King is particularly strong in dungeons, far more so than most avatars, but is correspondingly weak in mapboard gameplay (bad Keep location and not great Lieutenants with limited Eldritch support and not a great Treachery breakdown) so less likely to be able to beat the players there.

Q8: Well, 2 possible errors on your part thus far - purchasing Trap Treachery with starting XP and possibly 5 cards for Evil Genius. And certainly the heroes have blundered about making all the wrong decisions so far. Otherwise, pretty much yes, it all seems as intended.
It is worth stating the the Sorcerer King is by far the hardest Avatar for newby heroes to take on due to his great prowess in-dungeon. However, on balance he is one of the weakest OL Avatars as good hero parties can limit the damage and know that if they can get through the pain in the dungeons the eventual demise of the OverLord is almost assured.

Q9: See Q8

Q10: Well, Furr is a very bad choice (best of 4 possibles? well, it does happen...) and Lucky is also rather limited. But sometimes you have to take what you can get. I am not a fan of Glyrr, but there are worse heroes and it is a well balanced party (in fact against a Humanoid based avatar it would be a very nasty party indeed) if slightly slow.
The main thing the heroes need to do is learn to pay attention to what is on offer and figure out what the possible options are. Basically learn the game - not Descent dungeonplay, but RtL the campaign game. Know what the OL's likely options are for purchasing (the monster upgrade at 25 is the real biggie) next turn and take that into consideration. Know what is on offer (CT, Cash, Treasure) in each dungeon level and what you will have to face to get it. Know what your damage capabilities are - and what the OL's typical spawn capabilities are (in this case, what will a spawn of Skeletons of Sorcerers do to us, damage wise, and can we prevent them spawning). Be able to estimate returns and concessions from doing a dungeon level. Understand that for the most part the concessions increase as you go further through a dungeon due to accumulated threat, extra cards in hand and importantly, Power Cards in play.
There is a lot to learn, and more with Lts on the map and plots in play too.
The learning curve for heroes is massive. The learning curve for OL relatively shallow.

Q11: The campaign is still winnable for them (a lesson hero groups are slow to learn) but it will be uphill, painful and largely unpleasant. There is a LOT of gaming to go through paying for some early inexperience. I would advise restarting with a different Avatar and probably different heroes.

Q12: coin piles yes (see GLOAQ under Acrobat). Treasure chests no (DJitD pg18).

Q13: Is this a question? Power potions (5 extra dice/upgrades) come in handy here. But it can be very difficult, especially against upgraded bosses.

Q14: Again, no question? Getting some upgrades themselves and good equipment will make a significant difference. And some power pots. The heroes should have around 10 weeks or so before Alric can seriously threaten Tamalir. The loss of 1-2 other cities is to be expected and is relatively minor, although it can be rather inconvenient to lose critical skills (which can later be gotten through the Silver Legendary dungeon anyway) and the lovely Riverwatch Market.

Q15: Yes absolutely. Note the different spwning mechanic though (they still come on as reinforecements.
Also note (and this relates to Q14 as well) that trees give Shadowcloak. Which means all those long range nasties have to come to point-blank to hit you. Which makes a very big difference indeed.

Q16: Absolutely. It is a very deep game IMO. The learning curve for heroes is very sharp, and the penalties very high (and looong). But the game favours the heroes IMO once they learn it. The learning can be hard work though...
Vary the Avatars you choose too. Sorcerer King is best I think for a mid-experienced hero group - their 2nd/3rd campaign. The Demon is nasty, so leave him for now. The Spider Queen is one of the OL's best options for the long game - she can play effectively right through into gold level, unlike many of the other avatars, so maybe also best left till later.
The humanoids are the weakest avatars, though they can do a great deal on damage (and the Titan is quite nasty on the mapboard), as their strengths are most easily negated by the heroes.
IMO try the Dragon. He is weakish in the dungeons (so the heroes can feel like they are doing ok), yet has nice little in-dungeon bonuses (chests and coinpiles) that keep things rolling for you early on. He is stronger on the mapboard, though has a bad keep position so that strength is not apparent early on.