Hello All,

At first, I would like to say that I am pretty new in Descent world. So please dont hate me for my questions, which could seem strange or silly to experienced players :-)

Me and my brother ( who plays OL role ) are trying to read rules carefully and explain them to other players but we experienced situations which were not covered by rules and sometimes it ended with pointless quarreling which only kills the nice feeling of game-play. Thats also the main reason why I decided to find - professional help - OK. Lets start.

1. Skill cards - like Marksmanship or Mighty - which give you certain bonus for ranged or melee attacks. Does it mean for each attack ? Or can this ability be used only for one attack per heroes turn ? If it is only one attack - and OL uses 'dodge' card - does the effect still apply after re-roll?

2. Guard Order - I am not sure if I understood it correctly - but with guard order - hero can immediatly interrupt OLs turn to attack new appeared monster - if it is on adjacent field for melee. What about a range hero - can he/she attack any monster which is in LoS ? Can he possibly attack different monster ? ( ex. OL will open a door with beastman and right behind the door is hero with guard order - hero will discard guard order and he also sees that there is also a hell hound which was not activated this turn yet - can he attack this hell hound ( as he is more dangerous with breath attack ) ?

3. Acrobat Skill - if the hero with acrobat skill is dropped to uncovered pit as the result of knockback attack - does he fall to pit and receive 2 wounds damage or can he avoid damage and move to nearby empty adjacent field ( as the skill says ) ?

4. The last question is related to treasure looting rules.

The guide says that when heroes open a chest - the treasure is immediatly distributed among them - even if one of them is in town. Our OL did not like this fact - and he altered this rule so : treasure will be distributed only to hero who opens a chest and all adjacent heroes. We said ok as we saw that this way is much more realistic but soon we really regreted it. The problem is that for heroes who have 3 moving points is not always easy to get to chest as they are ussualy guarding, also this offers unfair opportunity for OL to utilize some of traps so they hit entire party ( which would otherwise hit only one hero ) and last thing - one time we lost 3 items - ( treasure said 2 treasure card for each hero ) which could not be looted as looting hero had only 3 spaces in bag.

What do you think ? Shall we emphasize to keep written rules or is there any chance of compromise so the OL would feel that game is more realistic and heroes would not be 'deprived' of items ?

Thanks in advance for your answer and sorry about a bad english.

1. Modifiers to attacks are permanent and works during every attack and even during a dodge.

2. yes, yes and yes. He can interrupt the OL at any time and make any sort of attack he wants.

3. What the skill says.

4. If you're customizing the rules then it's difficult to help. Descent you'll find is VERY MUCH not about logic. As you will soon discover as other situations arise.

Castielo said:

1. Skills are usable on every and any attack.

2. Guard orders can be used to attack any creature in range / adjacent, etc. It doesn't matter what kind of attack, or if the monster has ever activated.

3. I don't think the hero would take pit damage from the fall but I do believe he would fall in the pit.

4. The OL is dead wrong here. Use the rules as written, and remember that the Overlord is NOT the DM. He doesn't get to interpret rules as he sees fit. He is merely a 1-man team vs. the hero team.

Acrobat: You may move through enemy figures. In addition, you may enter and move through obstacles (but not other props,such as scything blades or boulders) without effect. You may not end your movement or make an attack from a space occupied by another figure or an obstacle that blocks movement.

So in the case of knockback, you are not the one doing the moving of the figure. The attacking monster is so IMO you would land in the pit and take the damage.

As for the treasure, DO NOT continue to play with that rule as it breaks the system. If the OL doesn't like, it basically too bad and go get another OL.

I really have to agree with number 4. Changing this rule really does break the game. The teasure system is backwards compaired to most RPGs because it was designed that way. This is not a mistake but instead an essential part of gameplay. You MUST play this rule as writen.

Regarding the treasure question, it is absolutely not fair to only give the heroes near the chest treasure. This will greatly disrupt the balance of the game, even if he hands out the same amount of treasure and expects the heroes to pass it around. Also, as others have already mentioned, the Overlord in Descent is NOT A DM. Descent is NOT AN RPG. The OL is bound by the rules of the game just as the heroes are, and he does not have the right to adjust or ignore rules as DM normally does in an RPG. If everyone at the table agrees to a house rule, that's one thing (your game, your fun) but the OL cannot arbitrarily change rules because he doesn't like them.

Perhaps more importantly, there are a LOT of nonsensical rules in Descent (if your OL doesn't like the treasure looting system, wait until he sees the outdoor flying rules in Road to Legend...) If you try to make house rules to account for everything that doesn't make sense you will firstly be systematically destroying game balance and secondly you will find yourself spending a lot of time adjusting rules instead of just playing. That's not to say don't do it, it's just to say don't come back here in two months complaining about game balance issues when you've rewritten half the rulebook to "make sense."

Allright, thank you all for your comments, opinions and advices. I will certainly speak to OL and try to explain that looting system as it is designed got some purpose and i am sure he will understand.

Treasure can't be modified because if only one heroe gets the money/treasure they will blow past all the other heroes and throw the game out of wack.

500gp can be traded in for one skill level. So money alone would give that faster treasure-seeker an advantage.

Then there are the Copper, Silver, Gold treasures. It would also be quite unfair if only one hero gets to draw those as these are usually better armor, items, weapons. So when treasure seeker fights he is effective while everyone else using their paltry gear from town is getting KO'd.

You will see what we mean as you play the game.

My suggestion would be to play the giant twins quest. This quest really is dependent on running for a chest and getting the treasure THEN killing the giants. Of course any OL that just wants to win may not see this. Just remember do not measure your victories in number but by the strength of your opponent.

You could have him play a hero maybe?

Hello there,

I have got couple of questions which I'd like to discuss with you guys.

1. Swaping Treachery cards

The explanation in rule book really confuses our OL - especially this sentence - Power cards are paid for event, trap or monster treachery as well, depending on the color of treachery gem . So how is it ?

OL will spend treachery according the number in tha hexagonal gem and then swap treachery card for the card from basic OL deck - has it to be power cards or is it power card for power treachery cards ? Any advice with example would be much appreciate.

2. OL Dodge card

The card says : Play after a hero has attacked a monster. The monster dodges the attack. Can this card be played after the roll ? Or it should ( has to be ) played before roll - right after declaring the target of attack ? We are playing it as formere - but that gives OL opportunity to calculate with miss - which seems a little unfair to me.

Thank you in advance for responses.

1. You pay for treachery power cards with treachery that matches the color of the card. For example, you use green (event) treachery for the "Guiding Force" power, red (monster) treachery for the "Wrath" power, and purple (trap) treachery for the "Greed" power (assuming I'm remembering all the card names correctly).

You can swap out any card from your deck for any treachery card; they don't need to be the same type.

2. You play the dodge card after the hero has rolled, and even after the hero has spent fatigue to add extra power dice to the attack, if he chooses to do so. You have to play it before the hero rerolls an aimed attack, though, because dodging prevents the reroll.

That is potentially pretty powerful, but it's just one attack. In Enduring Evil, I actually changed Aim to also be played after the attack roll, to try to make it similarly useful (though I guess mostly that just means it gets played after an X has been rolled).

Antistone said:

Acknowledged. Thank you very much for your answer, Antistone.

Hello,

My next question is regarding the using of portal glyphs.

We played quest 2 - Twin brothers - last night and we had some discussions about using of glyphs. I am pretty sure there is some restriction about using of glyphs ( like u can't use same glyph to port from town and back to the town - in the same hero turn ) but can you possibly use one glyph - lets say one which is in the center of quest 2 map - go to the town and return back to any of the 4 glyphs in corner rooms.

This was quite essential in the last quest as it gave us good opportunity to be flexible with giant hunting.

If anyone could give me straight answer on the above or refer me to F.A.Q explaining this - I would be very grateful.

Thanks in advance.

Castielo said:

You can exit the dungeon and reenter the dungeon through any activated glyph on the board. The only restriction is that a single hero can't use glyphs twice in one turn. So if you wanted to you could enter glyph A on your turn, then return through glyph B on your next turn.

Also, be sure to read the section in the rules about glyphs in the dungeon. They operate differently than those in vanilla descent in that you can't just run over to one and dive in. Also, town functions differently during a dungeon as well.

James McMurray said:

This strikes me as potentially very confusing. If you're going to give advice specific to Road to Legend, especially to a player who is playing vanilla and hasn't specifically asked for it, you should probably say "Road to Legend" somewhere towards the beginning of the advice. The term "dungeon" is used in both vanilla and RtL, and "vanilla" is hard to understand without context if you're not a regular poster.

Ok, thank you very much for your help.

This means that we actually played it wrong. We have used glyphs in corner rooms to port to town and then to port back to center room within a one turn several times. This helped us lot in this particular quest.

If I take into consideration that we spent incredible 9 hours on this quest - I really wonder how long would it take if we played it right ... :-/

Sorry for any confusion. I saw the reference to a quest about Twins and assumed it was the RtL rumor, hence my response about Road to Legend rules.

Hello Again,

I am reading through Descent Merged Rulebook ( someone posted the link to pdf version - Thanks for that ! ) and I have just noticed a serious thing.

Its under sections Revealing New Areas :

3. Markers and 4. Monsters : It is said that both of them are - quoting : put on the board for the area as shown on the quest map .

Correct me If i am misinterpretting this sentence but does it mean that : Overlord should put all markers and monster figures in particular area right after it has been revealed ? - regardless if heroes got LoS on them or not ?

We are not doing this at the moment - OL is adding markers and monsters after heros have LoS on those objects / figures - but it is not being done on purpose - we have just missed this paragraph and OL is now a bit confused.

Thanks in advance

Once the heroes reveal an area, you put EVERYTHING in that area on the map not just what is in LOS.

pg13-14 of D:JitD

Whenever a hero has line of sight to a previously unrevealed area of the map, it is immediately revealed by the overlord player. The overlord places monsters, items, doors, and other markers as indicated by the Quest Guide. Once the new area has been set up, the overlord player reads a bit of text from the Quest Guide that describes the new area. Play then resumes where it left off. For a more detailed description of this process, please see the cover of the Quest Guide.

The RAW says you immediately reveal the area and place all monsters, items, doors and other markers in that area on the board, not just the ones in LOS. The LOS part in this paragraph simply means that as soon as a hero can see into a previously unrevealed area, it becomes revealed.

Allright, thats clear now.

And what about spawning ?

OL has to spawn monsters where heroes don't have LoS but do OL actually put figures on the board - ( even if heroes dont see them ) or are they hidden until some of heroes has LoS on them ? Right now - we put figures side away of board - so everyone knows that they are in play but no one except OL knows where exactly they are ( untill one of the hero has LoS on them ) Is that right ?

Castielo said:

Sorry, but no. When you spawn, they have to be out of LOS (and remember that other monster figures do not block LOS for spawning) of the heroes but the heroes know they are there and they are not hidden.