http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=800

Talks about some balancing rules...

"For every 25 Conquest Points that make the difference between the Overlord’s score and that of the heroes, each hero’s Conquest value increases or decreases accordingly."

I don't think that this is a good and balanced system. Both sides will be calculating with this "divine favor" for their own advantage and I'm quite sure that this will lead to some very strange situations. For example, from one kill to the next the OL will abruptly stop attacking a 2-conquest-hero because it isn't worth a conquest point any more. Then the heroes activate a glyph and the OL suddenly re-starts attacking that hero he has ignored for turns.

Another situation: Sometimes it will be more profitable to wait a turn or two before killing a hero because then his conquest value will have increased. Strange situation: Watching the heroes killing your leaders and activating some glyphs just to wait for the perfect "divine favor" that will raise your conquest reward.

To carry it to extremes: The OL will offer the heroes a glyph just to get them above the next 25-limit. And then he will try to kill many of them with one single blow because he will get more conquest points in doing so. Imagine: To maximise conquest, the OL will stop defending (!) a glyph and then he will try to force strange multi-kill-actions. (With blast or with bash/sweep). All this situations will feel strange, but I'm quite sure that they will happen because they offer more conquest for a calcualting mind that is willing to take some risks for the ultimate conquest-jackpot.

At last, I think it will slow down the game if you have to permanently check the "divine favor" and the conquest values of the heroes. Note that in some situations, it will turn from round to round.

A few thoughts:

1) Glad they got rid of the Tamalir raze victory condition.

2) Like the scaling bosses

3) Like the limiting fatigue upgrades idea

4) HATE the Divine Favor idea and think it will cause more problems than it is worth and will not solve the underlying problem of monster scaling versus equipment scaling (which maybe they have fixed but who knows).

Graf said:

One has to assume that FFG will make it playable from a game perspective. Just like we currently don't check after every kill if you go to silver/gold level of the campaign, one has to assume that they will write the rules such that you do not check for this "Divine Favor" after every kill. It is most likely set at the beginning of the game week. Give them some credit on being able to create a game that is not a bookkeeping nightmare.

I'm more interested in the thought that the game should be balanced conquest wise. It seems to be a standard assumption right now that RtL is "balanced" at a 2:1 ratio for OL to Hero conquest. If this new "Divine Favor" rule were in effect for current RtL campaign, I would not be getting ANY conquest from killing heroes right now as I am almost 200 points ahead of the heroes. (Yes, I have explicitly not gone for the Tamalir raze to see if I can win through the plot or final battle.)

I'm also really interested to see how many of these changes can be back ported to RtL. The scaling level leaders and no Tamalir raze seem to be things that might be retrofitted to RtL. I'm also curious to see if they have tweaked the monsters any.

I love that no single city can end the game. And without seeing the actual rules, maybe the divine favor works out in practice. For instance, maybe there is a minimum hero value. I find it hard to believe that you could kill a hero and literally get nothing for it. There has to be some motivation, even if it's hindering the other side; maybe the loss of some money is involved again.

I have to admit that I like the "Divine Favor" idea, but maybe I am not that much thinking of possible exploits of a rule but of the possibilities when I hear about it.

I would think that the "Divine Favor" will work, as said before, like checking for the change of the campaign level. And what good would it do the OL if he would give away conquest to the heroes? Kill them before they can earn anything. If I learned one thing from both vanilla dungeons and RtL then to NEVER give away momentum to the other side if you can avoid it. That is a hard learned lesson, and I as a OL would not step away from this for a potential gain of 1 or 2 additional conquest. The risk that by this the advantage gained for the heroes is too high (new equipment from a chest, a hero from town now able to get into the back and closer to my boss monster through the newly gained glyph, an easy new dungeon level for the heroes with many gold piles and chests if I allow a boss monster kill), at least for me.

Edit: Spelling...

Argur said:

This sounds better, but it won't prevent strange situations. Maybe the heroes will sacrifize some of them in the week BEFORE they will enter a dungeon (in an encounter or whatever non-dungeon-fight SoB will offer) to get above the next "divine favor"-limit and to decrease their conquest value in the following dungeon. What are 3 sacrifized conquest compared to all the conquest the OL will lose in the dungeon because of the divine favor?

Yes, of course, we have to see how this divine favor will work in practice, but all my RTL experience says that this system won't improve the game if you are playing with calculating players (and who does not?).

All in all, I agree to Big Remy's thoughts.

And yes, to end with a friendly statement, I'm glad as well that there isn't one home-town any more that ends the game.

I'll probably getting this Lieutinant depending on how the mini turns out...

Getting rid of single city raze condition is great, but I'm also not so sure of that divine favor rule, I see what graf says about the potential for exploit. I don't think that should be the way to balance the game. even if you put a minimum conquest value on heroes at 1, then it gets retarded when Zyla is worth just as much as Karnon, and the overlord decides he might as well just pick on Zyla, so Zyla's player has a **** time as she just gets the stuffing beaten out of her repeatedly. Perhaps a better way to make an adjustment would be to raise/lower the armor and/or hp of all the heroes and/or monsters some amount based on the conquest difference. Or just find some other changes you can make that would make it less likely to have such vast differences in conquest between heroes and overlord. Then also balance the game so that equal levels of conquest actually means each side still has a close to equal chance of winning, not how the OL needs a huge conquest lead to have a chance.

I'm loving what I'm hearing about the LTs. This Kracken, only moving on water, sounds like when you fight him, he won't have a "miniature" to represent him, but rather will have multiple tentacle markers moving independantly, each trying to engulf and destroy your ship! This really sounds cool!

The other tweaks sound interesting. I wonder if they've done a cap on Fatigue, or just lowered it to +1 instead of +2?

And I wonder how the no-town is going to work in dungeons. If you "respawn" at your boat, does that mean no potion/treasure shopping while in a dungeon? What about temple healing?

-shnar

More thoughts on Divine Favor:

I do feel its unfair to already be trash talking the system based on the little we actually know about it, but it does seem inherently flawed somehow.

That said, in my experience, the problem has never been that the CT scores were uneven. It was like I said before the scaling of the monsters never kept pace with the scaling of the heroes damage output. That and the fact that in a given week, if the heroes go and Train, all four of them could gain either new skills (which can make a significant difference in some cases) or increase their dice resulting in more damage potential. On the flipside, the OL gets to buy one and only one upgrade per week and at times some of them aren't even worth it.

I'm hoping that along with this they upped the OL purchase limit to 2 a week and increased the growth rate of the monster stats to keep up with the damage output of the items. Otherwise, nothing has been fixed from what I can tell in terms of the balance issue they appear to be trying to address.

1) Razing any 5 cities as a victory condition instead of a specific one: EXCELLENT!

2) Reduction of the amount of Fatigue one can add with experience: EXCELLENT!

3) Bosses scaling with campaign level: EXCELLENT!

4) The Kraken: EXCELLENT!

5) Divine Favor: EXCELLENT!... If the heroes are ahead. If the OL is ahead, however... NO NO NO NOOOOOO!!!

Here's why.

What follows is, by the way, also the reason why some OL Dudleys out there complain, "Bejeez, I am 200 points ahead and I CAN'T WIN!!!"

In RTL, all the conquest the heroes gain, except for a very few points (namely the Tamalir upgrades), translate into an enhancement of power (skills, dice, fatigue, life points) that is useful in all areas of the game: in the dungeons, on the land map, as well as in the final battle.

The OL, however, has to spread the use of his conquest for power enhancement in three different areas: 1) the dungeons (monster upgrades, treachery), 2) the land map (monster upgrades, but usually not the same categories than those in dungeons, treachery, lieutenants, effects like Lawlessness, one shots like Gem of Transport or Big Trouble), and 3) the final battle (Avatar upgrades).

Obviously, from a game theory point of view, it seems evident that the OL needs MORE conquest than the heroes to keep up in all three areas simultaneously. As a matter of fact, most of the time, he doesn't and has to concentrate on one, maybe two of the three areas, making it ridiculously easy for the heroes in the other one or two.

Thus, preventing the OL to get such a necessary advantage (and Divine Favor would make it near impossible for him to get more than a 50 conquest advance) should spell his Doom! for his chances of winning.

Of course this is just theory and the rule must be given its chance, especially given that maybe now the heroes will have to spend more XP on their ship than what they did have to spend on Tamalir; but still, this is what I would have said at an FFG R&D meeting. And I think that the argument would have convinced a lot of people.

The fact that the overlord has to split his points between several categories doesn't necessarily mean that he needs more points, because the upgrades he buys are completely different from the upgrades heroes buy. Theoretically, prices for OL upgrades could be set so that the game is balanced with an even conquest split. One might even go so far as to say that the prices should be set in that way.

Whether they actually did that, either in Road to Legend or in Sea of Blood, I personally have no clue. But if I was in the R&D meeting, your argument wouldn't convince me without an analysis of that possibility.

shnar said:

Maybe you have to upgrade your ship to do so: hire a priest (who would stay on board) in your crew for healing, an alchemist for potions... Would be cool.

Antistone said:

+1

...And your very sensible reply in such a meeting could have led the development team of the game to reprice the OL upgrades so that the game stays balanced with an even conquest split, which would in turn make Divine Favor a very good new addition.

OL upgrades are obviously not thusly balanced, otherwise the heroes wouldn't be running away at gold and avatars wouldn't be crushed in final battles (no personal experience for the avatar battle though; but this is what I read).

Now let's hope such an exchange of views took effectively place in a Sea of Blood development meeting.

Ispher said:

I don't know, I've seen a lot of min/max fixes for Descent. JitD was easier on the hero so said, so along comes Treachery for two expansions. Then people complained that the OL was too powerful now, and along comes ToI and Feats to start swinging it the other way.

I like all of the changes but the "Divine Favor" change, for all of the concerns posted above and many more.

I would also like a RTL balancing and game change update to make the game playable. They can start by removing victory for razing Tamalir. They also need a way to prevent the OL from endlessly assaulting the party with a flow of Lts, where hew hits the party with overpowered trechery in the first few battles and flees with the Lts, then, later in the same turn, easily polishes off the weakened party with the last Lt. They need to adjust how treachery cards are obtained. Any sensisble OL usaully only picks from the ~5-10 powerful cards and the other cards never see play. They need a system that makes the cards used in a combat random, so all of the cards will see play, not just the ~5-10 best.

I would also like to see FFG update their online pdf manuals with all the FAQs and rule updates they issue. Their games become very hard to play after several FAQ releases. It's hard to find rule updates in the FAQs.

PS: Why can't I paste my text buffer into this (crappy) forum?

z22 said:

I think you need to enable pop ups to paste stuff into their forum. Annoying, I know