snacknuts said:

Uh...are you trying to make some misguided point about how you don't physically deal out cards because the generator does it for you? That clearly shows a bunch of heroes with specific skills laid out next to them, which as I have repeatedly pointed out is NOT a choice that the players are supposed to have in any version of Descent.

Antistone said:

I'm not sure what you mean :-/

My group follows the standard vanilla descent way of generating a party. Shuffle and draw n hero sheets (usually 4) we then draw the skills for each hero as indicated by their skills. If desired each hero can replace 1 skill with a new, randomly drawn skill.

That web page does the same thing.

In RtL (not base descent) we shuffle the sheets, deal them into 4 piles of 3. Choose one hero from each pile. We shuffle each skill deck, deal the skills indicated by each chosen sheet plus one addition of any type. We then discard all skills except the one we want each hero to start with.

As i have stated previously, that is NOT what I or that web page does.

Are you thinking that I loaded that web page, chose hero A. Reloaded the page, chose hero B, etc.. I'm not sure what gave you that idea

EDIT: Ah HA! I did imply that I kinda did that, my bad

The point of this thread is now quite diluted. I suspect since all placement answers were both simillar and well justified, the differences people encounter are due to something else.

My first guess is playing under different rule interpretations. How parties are created, legal actions monsters and heroes can perform, how blast works, etc..

I may post more encounter strategy threads if i can think of interesting ones, I am curious how people handle the situation of the encounter with blocking trees and a incident with large, non-flying/soaring monsters.

Agreed the thread has become diluted. However, I'm still interested to hear what the 'best' min-max play is. My group has not devolved into a min-maxing group yet, so I think as an OL I could put that dragon anywhere and have fun w this rumor. I'd be happy if the heroes played it out, since I think they're not likely to perfectly optimize things like preventing a dragon from landing. So I'd probly take the route of trying to block their quickest escape, and sit in the northern passage, maybe if they run south I can get in a spawn and do a bit of damage. I would sit close up so I could hopefully hit them w the dragon. Since soar over a tree is not cumulative, I'd just take my soar and sit close up, not worrying about where the best tree was to sit on.

So what's the right answer? You posed the question like you were going to let replies trickle in for a day or two, then post the ideal spot, and why - then follow up w another training exercise / quiz.

snacknuts said:

Your web page spits out 5 heroes with skills. You implied that you are letting it generate several heroes and then picking a subset of them to play with--for example, picking which 4 out of the 5 on a page you want to use for the current game. Which means you can see the skill draws for each hero before you pick which hero you want to play.

If you actually play with all 5 heroes, or if you modify some parameter of the program to spit out exactly the number of heroes you need and not give you any choice, then the point is moot, but 5 is an incredibly bizarre default if that's the case.

You did specifically say that you chose Lyssa over Spiritspeaker Mok and someone else because of their "skill loadouts." I'm not sure what that could mean other than that you knew what skills Lyssa, et al were going to draw before you picked them, and that's not consistent with any version of the rules.

For the program to be authentic, it should generate just heroes (with no skills), then let you choose which heroes you want to use, then pick skills for those heroes.

I wasn't expecting there to be a "best" answer. Personally I would place him on either j4-l5 or k4-m5. That way the heroes have to get their feet muddy

I suspect my group would charge the melee heroes at Nova and dodge/guard to protect the two other heroes that can actually hit her. After a few rounds of making little progress I imagine they would flee, odds are after either lyssa or carthos died.

For background:

My group has a phobia for soaring creatures. The first time we encountered soar in RtL, it was the beastman avatar's Lt (Kratz I believe). We tried and failed to kill him 3 times trying to save a town (it wasn't Tamilir, I don't actually remember which one it was.) Because these first few battles were demoralizing we tend to fear soaring creatures now.

We did finally kill Kratz, a few game weeks after he razed the town he was sieging. Rapid fire + falcons claw gave him enough web tokens that we could hide in trees a few squares away from him (he couldn't move close enough to counter the tree's shadowcloak, and breath on us.) During this battle we also had improved weapons (breath/blast runes) weapons so we could attack him effectively.

It was a little nerve wracking each time Kratz rolled to get out of the web. We knew if he got loose we were in trouble. the overlord had a lot of threat built up, odds are he would either let loose a devastating attack (or attacks) or simply flee the scene.

generating hero website:

It actually generates n heroes, it's usually 4. It was 6 when I *generated* the party for this encounter excercise. It is now 5 because we're thinking about trying your variant ( The Enduring Evil - since it scales up to 5 heroes)

I admit it does not create a party following the RtL rules. I also submit that it can create a party of n heroes for base-descent. I did not use it in either manner when I created this fictional encounter excercise. To be honest it is a silly argument we're having. Descent is a very democratic game. If the players agree, they can use ANY method to create a party. I prefer generating 4 heroes at random with random skills, interesting combinations can appear, and "terrible" heroes will sometimes see use that way.

Interesting. Nice to know that you're thinking of trying The Enduring Evil , though you should keep in mind that I redid all the skill decks, so your current skill picker isn't compatible.