Feats in RtL: How should they work?

By Rwakelin, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Picked up Tomb of Ice, love the expansion.

We're currently in the middle of a great Road to Legend campaign and would like to just fold in the elements of the new expansion.

For most stuff this is no big deal, new dungeon cards, new encounter cards, new overlord cards, treasure, etc. Just add it to the decks.

But how are feats suposed to work in Road to Legend? Do the heroes get the max feats at the start of each dungeon? i.e. They draw their feat cards as they enter level 1, then only replenish them by activating glyphs etc. as they work their way to level 3?

Does this preserve game balance? Should heroes have 3 feat cards at, say, the copper level of the campaign? Or should feat cards initially dealt in a dungeon be limited by campaign level? Maybe one at copper, 2 at silver, and 3 at gold?

What does everyone think? What do you think is the 'official' ruling?

I don't have ToI yet, so this is just my opinion based on reading the rules pdf and playing RtL.

I'm off the opinion that they get their three or whatever at the start of the 3 level dungeon, and get one for each glyph they activate. They keep cards between dungeon floors, but once they exit the dungeon they lose the cards. Encounters would work similir, except you wouldn't get any for the glyphs.

I'm hoping it will be resolved in an updated FAQ.

I've recently bought tombs of Ice and have noticed that a lot of rules have been left out about incorporating the new stuff into Road to Legend games. Some concerns include:

1. One of the new characters has 4 skills and only 2 dice in stats. This causes a problem because since the character traits a stat for an extra skill they get jipped because you only start with one skill in a Road to Legend campaign. Possible Fix: Allow the character start with two skills instead of one.

2. One of the new characters has 5 stat dice and two skills. This causes a problem because the character gets two more stat dice than everyone else for practically no tradeoff. Possible Fix: The character picks NO starting skill. Having 2 extra black dice should be considered a skill in itself!

3. There is no rules to include Feats in a Road to Legend game. Here is a possible solution.

1. Every PC gets a single feat draw as allowed (Except the character with the feat special ability which they draw two starting feats)

2. All PC's draw a feat every time they hit a glyph

3. All PC's also draw a feat as a reward if they clear a dungeon (Clear as in finish ALL 3 levels of the dungeon)

4. Feats DO NOT refresh after every dungeon! You keep your feats between dungeons and they can be used in overworld encounters and battles with Leutenets. Any expended feats are put aside and if all the feats are drawn, the PC's cannot draw any more feats of that type until the feat decks refresh

5. The feat decks refresh 2 times during the campaign. Once at the start of silver and again at the start of gold. This means that PC's have to be careful of when they use feats because they are in limited supply and any expended feat won't be available again until the next phase of play. Still any feats in the character's hands are kept between changes in phase so those feats unused are not resuffled into the deck.

Frankly, I don't think Feats are supposed to be used with RTL. When describing Feats, the rulebook specifically compares them to the base game rules for skills. Until FF tells me otherwise, I won't use them with RTL.

Thoughts on Feats in RTL in case you must use them:

I would initially distribute them like skills- draw X+1 and choose one to start with.

For glyphs, I would only give a feat to the hero that activates the glyph, not to each one. This will cause the party to reconsider always sending the same hero to activate the glyphs.

Just my thoughts of the morning

We incorporated the feats into our current RTL campaign. Yes, they do give the heros a certain advantage. As the overlord, I can say that these feats are a pain in my evil trap playin ass. There are ways to defeat them though.

Take for instance the session we played last night. The heros were on their way out of the dungeon and one of them had just a few wounds remaining. My overlord hand a treachery stack were low and I desperately needed to draw a juicy trap card. Didn't happen. So I cleverly put a card in my hand and acted excited as though I was holding a trap card and as about to play it. The hero with few wounds saw this and played a feat card allowing him to remove some cards from my hand. He removed the card, only to discover it was a spawn card for a copper level monster, and NOT a trap. Hence a wasted feat. He survived(grrrrr) but was one excellent feat card shy. TA DA! gran_risa.gif

I would play the feat cards on a per dungeon basis.

I get the impression that the feat cards are meant as kind of an overlord deck for the hero's. So feats should not be used in outdoor encounters, just like the overlord deck is not used. For dungeons, the hero's draw feats just as if playing basic descent, and at the end of the three level dungeon, unused feats are shuffled back into the deck for the next dungeon.

This will probably bump up hero power substantially, but overlords can get some downright mean treachery cards to deal with the hero's.

I say let them use the feats, and show them no mercy.

This got discussed a while back on the old forum and the consensus was that, following the letter of the rules, heroes started with 3 feats at the start of the campaign (except Karnon and Arvel) and then simply picked a new one per glyph thereafter, carrying them over between dungeons and encounters.

My personal house rules for dealing with these on a dungeon basis, with my reasoning, are here: http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=4&efcid=1&efidt=13069

I strongly disagree with the idea that the number of feat cards should increase with level since it is at Copper that heroes currently need the boost and at Gold that they need reigning in.

Our house rules:

Players draw the same ammount of Feats as they would at the start of a normal game at the start of the advanced campaign. They gain them at the same rate, and carry them over throughout the entire game. This allows them a get-out when they need them.

I would also rule that they must be discarded for the final battle with the Avatar.

To cover varient skill numbers, we have all Heroes discard three skills atthe start of the campaign, rather than keeping one, again as a house rule. This wording is sufficiently upon to allow future oddness as well.A first skill in training costs 500 gold and 10 XP.

Well, just for kicks, I sent a question about Feats in RLT to the "rules questions" section of the new website. We'll see if anything comes back :)

Oboewan said:

Well, just for kicks, I sent a question about Feats in RLT to the "rules questions" section of the new website. We'll see if anything comes back :)

Oops... RTL.... what.. no editor on the new forums? And slower too!