Any suggestions, clarifications, or help is appreciated:

1) The Knight Skill is WAY overpowered! I had Ispher with a 5-dice Magic attack, attacking 3 times a turn and the weapon with 2-surge = +3 damage. And EVERY turn he would regain his Fatigue. I couldn't keep creatures on the board. Unless I'm missing something, that is not a fun interaction.

2) When playing with 4 heroes, drawing only 2-cards a turn as the Overlord made it IMPOSSIBLE to keep up with threats or even actions. I was looking somewhere between 8-10 actions from the heroes, and then I'd draw two cards, MAYBE play 1 and pass while they wiped out every swarm, room, and beast. Again, it seems like more cards or more Threat is necessary to keep up.

Any insight from the players/designers would be appreciated, cuz right now my group and I are really disappointed!

1) Skills are highly variable in power. The Knight skill is up there, but it's usually not one of the first that people complain about (see: Leadership, Unmovable, Rapid Fire, Telekinesis, Acrobat...). I'm not sure what Ispher was doing with 5 magic trait dice (doesn't he start with 1 melee and 2 ranged?) or how he was regaining his fatigue every turn, but those sound like more unusual and probably more significant indicators.

2) The overlord's cards are not supposed to keep up with the heroes. In smaller games, they do , and that breaks the game .

The heroes are supposed to make progress towards actually completing the quest, and the overlord is supposed to delay them, but only as a means to an end: he's trying to kill them and run them out of conquest. You are not supposed to be able to spawn monsters as fast as they can kill them or stall the heroes forever. Not even close.

Descent is also a really deadly game and it is perfectly normal for heroes to kill 50-100% of the monsters in a new area on the turn they open it up, before any of those monsters gets a turn. If you don't like that, try my variant: The Enduring Evil . But despite that, the overlord still can and does win occasionally.

What quest(s) are you playing? The first few in the base game are designed for learning the game and are pretty easy; they get harder for the heroes. Are you using treachery (from expansions)?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want the Overlord to win, but I didn't even put up a fight until the final battle.

To clarify: Ispher (2 Range) with a Crossbow, and 3 Vitality potions, pretty much gave him the opportunity to move 3 and shoot 3 times (with 4 dice), and then he got handed that Chakra thing that gave him 5 dice, and 2 surges = +3 damage . . . the rest was just boring for everyone. One player with Knight, one player with Cleave and that left the other two just picking up the peaces every turn.

I still feel strongly that the Overlord has no chance to even make the game interesting if you play with a large group. I played with just 2 heroes, and at least that made it a challenge. It seems like, if nothing else, the Overlord should be able to draw some extra cards to even up the Hero Actions/Overlord Actions ratio. I guess we'll try some more quests, and hope it gets better, cause my players were definitely not impressed with the first 3 quests of the core set.

It would probably help to play by the errata'd rules where it says you can only use one potion per turn. :X

I find the game horribly balanced at 2 heroes, well balanced at 3, and a bit too easy for the heroes at 4.

I've got to say, Ispher with Knight and a crossbow is not exactly game-shattering power. In a 4-hero game, most monsters actually have a decent chance at surviving a crossbow attack with two black dice if he doesn't boost the attack with fatigue, even from point-blank range (a beastman has a 74% chance to survive, for example), which means a 3-melee-trait tank with an axe and no skills might very well expect to cause as much or more damage. Heroes drinking lots of vitality potions to kill things faster is par for the course, and it's a rare party that doesn't get a single powerful offensive skill among 4 heroes--Knight and Cleaving isn't bad, but it's hardly exceptional.

Most people posting on the forums have found that the game is essentially unplayable with two heroes, due to a general lack of scaling and specifically the overlord's ability to drown them in spawn cards. It wouldn't surprise me if two heroes could do reasonably OK in the first two quests, if they knew what they were doing (and especially if the overlord didn't), but I wasn't able to win quest 3 with two heroes even with fairly amazing draws (Unmovable, Vampiric Blood, Ice Storm...). I did win quest 8 with two heroes, but the overlord was a first-time player and we didn't use treachery (and quest 8 is certainly not the hardest in the book).

That said, I've seen several people opine that the base game is most balanced with 3 heroes (though everyone seems to favor 4 heroes for the expansions, at least).

But the overlord is supposed to win sometimes, and in most groups, he does--even against larger parties. Hard to tell what might be special about your group without more information. You could certainly experiment with quests 4 and 5, they're a significant step up in difficulty (or even jump to quest 7, widely considered the hardest in the base game). You could also try having someone else play overlord and see if that makes any difference.

And of course, the goal is for your play group to have a good time, so do whatever is necessary to achieve that, even if it's different from other groups. Letting the overlord draw an extra card per turn is a fairly easy way to make things generically harder on the heroes.

We tend to find the in the Quests that the OL wins 2 out of 5 games, so that fine as we have 4 players, and take turns as being the OL.

I do think that RTL is broken for the OL as the Heros are really overpowered, the OL is crippled in when overlord cards can be played small dungeons making it very difficult to spawn and the cost of OL upgrades.

See, it's stuff like this which makes me thing *i'm* doing something wrong.

In my games, I almost always end up as OL (cause I do the best job at it) and 9/10 attempts the Heroes will fail miserably. I have a feeling its a mix of be being fairly vicious and them just not playing to their best advantage. Quite often when I kill one, i'll end up killing at least a second one shortly there after.

Actually, my group quit playing Descent because even with 4 Heroes, I usually murdered them brutally. The OL's game really depends on resource management and clever use of what he is given. This is NOT a game with even sides. It's not straightforward, either. The OL is actually a guerilla who strikes at opportune times, killing a hero and then holding back until he can kill one more. The presence of monsters on the board is transient, most are only good for one strike - so make it count.

Our Group is experianced in vanilla descent, buit we play a lot of other board games as well, so we have a pretty good idea on game play. We played each quest in Descent unilt the Hero's won, or each player have been OL in the same Quest, then moved on to the next.

This is our first try at RTL, but I have to say being the OL is both hard work and extremely boring, there are long periods of play in which the OL has nothing to do, except sit there watching the hero's wander about the dungeon, because there are no spawning areas, or dont have the threat to pay for both flipping the reinforcement counter and paying for the spawn.

I would read again what Xandria said about the OL being a guerilla fighter. That's exactly how I play and I win more often than the heroes do.

I wish I could be there with you to see how the game went. But, here are some practical tips. I'm not sure if any of them are useful:

1. Don't waste cards & don't waste monster-spawns.

Meaning: Don't spawn monsters if they are just going to die. Wait until you have room behind or ahead of the heroes that you can actually build a swarm of multiple spawns. Don't use a "Rage" on a skeleton. Make sure you use it on a Master Manticore or couple it with "Charge" and actually get that giant over there fast enough to take advantage of Sweep/Reach and double attack the whole group. Don't turn someone into a Monkey with "Curse of the Monkey God" unless you have a swarm of monsters or a Master ready to take advantage of the situation.

2. The goal is not to Wound a hero, but to Kill the hero.

Don't use traps until you can couple them together with other traps and swarms. If all you can do is bring the 16-Life guy down to 3-Life, you just wasted every card you used if they have health potions or a healing rune. Save that Dark Charm until it's fatal! Throw it on the strongest, attack the weakest....then move in with monsters.

3. Don't be afraid to discard things for threat. Especially the expensive ones. Especially the ones that aren't going to be that useful based on when you can play them. (i.e. Hordes of the Things after the heroes have opened 2 of the 4 rooms) (actually, I never ever use Hordes of the Things except to discard)

4. Capitalize on Hero mistakes. They can be rare. Be alert for them.

5. Make sure the heros don't cheat!

No, you cannot shoot my master sorcerer while the ogre is in the way! No, you can't draw treasure cards because you haven't opened any! No, you can't share gold! No, it takes 2 movement points to open a door. No, you can only drink 1 potion per turn. No, you cannot Advance and place a Guard! No, you can't Battle me when you are Stunned. No, you can't use stamina to move while you are webbed! No, you CANNOT re-roll that!!!

LOL! Yes, I am evil! I want to kill you!! =P

I don't know if any of that helps. Maybe it will help someone with their overlording. Good luck, evil geniuses!

joshuapavon said:

You can't play Rage and Charge on the same monster on the same turn, because you can only play one event card per triggering condition (in this case, "a monster is activated").

Oh, wups! ROFL...my friends will be glad that you pointed that out to me.

Xandria said:

On the flip side, the Heroes need to make sure they are playing to their strengths and as a team. A lot of beginning Descent players play their Heroes as though they are playing Gauntlet. Each try to see how many monsters they can kill, thinking that's how they contribute to winning the game. Once you realize the tactics behind completing objectives and winning, you start to realize dealing damage is not what this game is about. Setting things up for maximum punishment is what wins the game.

Having 1 player playing multiple heroes helps open these eyes. They're no longer thinking what their one guy can do, they start thinking what can my *group* accomplish and how do I go about setting it up.

-shnar

Good points about the spawns being held back, not so easy in these dungeons to find spawning places. Doesn't help that the heros have blast weapons to getting all the monsters together being able to attack without them all getting caught in the same blast is hard sometimes.

shnar said:

Yeah, you should see my group play hero quest. Totally not fun for the dude running the game, because we powergame that shiat. At least here in Descent, when the players work as a massive team (counting out move points to maintain THE most efficient run and keep me from generating more threat), the OL can throw monkey wrenches into that plan. Generally, the players plot the entire round out before anyone takes a turn, and they're highly skilled powergamers.

First: GREAT POSTS! You've all convinced me to play on, and give the game some more chances. (We only got through Quest #3, so maybe then next few will even the score).

Second: RTL?

Now then, a couple more comments/questions:

1) Several of the posts above mention that the Overlord goal should be kills, but what does it matter? Next turn, the hero is porting back into the game from town, no worse for the wear, and smashing some face. It seems like there should be more downside to dieing than just losing a couple gold. Losing a skill, weapon, or heck, everything, seems more appropriate. My guys didn't even care if they were about to die, since they'd be right back in the thick of combat next turn.

2) Level 5 monsters were dropping like flies against the Knight/Ranged Attack combo. I'm not sure where the statistics were coming from, but the guys rarely miss (1-in-6 odds) and it took almost nothing to have enough wounds to kill a non-Master. In one game, one character got the Rat familiar AND Command. He pretty much stopped all spawning AND gave +1 Range/+1 Damage to everyone nearby. That game was a wash from the point of Overlord.

3) Can anyone speak to the benefits of the expansions? Are there Overlord cards that kill Skills or destroy Equipment?

WoahWoahWoah on #1!!!

When heros die they lose conquest tokens equal to the number on the hero-card in the corner. (2-4) When the heros are out of conquest tokens they lose the game! I wonder if that contributed at all to the problem?

I only have the Well of Darkness expansion, but I very much liked the addition of new cards for the overlord that I can swap out with the current deck so I have different tricks up my sleeve.

If you check:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=5&esem=4

There are dark relics where you can replace a heros treasure card with a dark relic. There are "cursed items" that make killing the heros worth more conquest tokens. There are new traps and monsters...etc.

I would recommend you peruse the links to see the rulebooks for Well of Darkness, Altar of Despair, Tomb of Ice...etc. and then you can see which things are in which expansions.

Well, I can see why you are having trouble being the overlord only being 3 quests in, The first couple are ridiculously easy, especially the second quest which is quite possibly the easiest quest in all of descent. If you want to give your heroes a good spanking, try out the quest with the soul-sword (can't remember what it is called).

Next, the reason you need to kill heroes is to drain their CT count. That's the only way you can win as Overlord in most cases. Kill the weakest hero repeatedly. Ignore the hardest to kill target, unless you have a sure-fire way of killing him (turning him into a monkey in a room full of skele-bobs, for example).

In later expansions OLs get a poweful new tool for their arsenal, called treachery. What treachery is are very good cards that can be subbed in for less useful cards in the OL deck, the number of these you have is determined by the quest. Also, most quests in the later expansions are much more difficult than the standard quests. Tomb of Ice introduces something called feats, which are super-powerful one-off cards for the heroes, which many suspect were added to balance out treachery.

RTL, or Road to Legend, is a campaign system for Descent that changes the way Descent is played a great deal.

Actually, if anything, the heroes should lose less when they die. If you kill a hero on the last room, they're still on the last room and there's no point in even letting them come back if you're going to cripple them to the point where they can't accomplish anything. Taking away "everything" when they die wouldn't break the game so much as dissolve it into its constituent atoms. Bad Idea .

The point of killing the heroes is that that's what wins the game . That's the only way to run them out of conquest, and running them out of conquest is the only way for the overlord to win (usually). If your heroes don't care about dying, that's only because they're confident they're going to win.

SamVimes said:

The relic is called Soulbiter. The quest is called The Black Blade, and it's #7. I think I already suggested trying that.

joshuapavon said:

Dark relics and curses are from the Altar of Despair expansion, actually. Either you switched context without telling us, or you wrote the wrong name at the start of your post.

joshuapavon said:

Oh, I know. It's just that, between the chests and the starting Conquest, it hasn't mattered yet. But like many have said, we're only 3 quests in, so it's time to bring the thunder!

1st game we played the OL won easily, then the Hero's won the next 3, therre is a learning curve for descent, also some dungeons suit the OL more and some the Hero's, keep at it, most of our vanilla games are pretty close.

To answer a question many posts back, there are no overlord cards that destroy skills, but there is one that destroys items: crushing blow (can't remember the expansion, but I think it's Altar of Despair). It's widely considered one of the most powerful Overlord cards in the game, to the point of being house-ruled out of the deck.

One more piece of advice I would give you: avoid playing power cards, and play spawns whenever possible (I actually disagree overall with the advice about saving spawns for when they will do damage: it sounds reasonable, but because you can play only one spawn per turn, if you follow it too carefully you'll end up having more spawns than you can play. If you have only one spawn in hand, it may be worth holding on a turn if it looks to be much more effective the next turn.)

Regarding power cards, the only power cards I would ever consider playing in the base game are Evil Genius and Trapmaster. And I certainly wouldn't always play the latter.