RTL, ending a campaign: report and one last question

By Edo77, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

As stated in my previous thread, we have reached the end of our campaign, the 600 XP are finally gathered after playing for over a year by now. I would like to first give a small report on my experiences while playing as a hero, and then I have one last question. Feel free to read it or skip it :-)

After we have given up three campaigns meanwhile, we finally managed to gather a group that made a lot of fun and was surprisingly "strong" during the campaign. We decided on the following heroes:

Landric the Wise, Necromancy.

Runemaster Thorn, Inner Fire.

Kirga, Marksman.

Sir Valadir, Taunt.

We have always played with TWO tanks, but this time we decided to try out a fast group. This has proven extremely useful, Thorn with his teleport ability is one hell of a nightmare for our OL, who was playing the demon prince. The OL goal was to destroy the sun :-)

Copper

We did what heroes should do at the start, entering dungeon, looting gold, then flee. We managed to do that three times before the OL was able to upgrade eldritch to silver. Then the pain started, but we were able to get some good gear when first facing these upgraded creatures. The OL is an experienced player, so he was always leading in XP 2:1. But this time he was not able to get too far ahead, so for the first time we felt like we could make it to silver. We decided to not go to secret trainer or legendary dungeon, and instead managed to kill one of the OLs lieutenants. Sooner or later we reached silver...

Silver

We were trying to gather a lot of gold as there's so much to do... quickly getting some good silver weapons is necessary to survive these golden eldritch monsters... we managed to get this done, we even visited secret trainer and the legendary dungeon! By the way, without Telekinesis and Bear Tattoo we would have given up already. I still don't like the "new" FAQ for that... :-(

We felt that the whole silver level of the campaign was quite balanced, unlike the copper campaign where the silver-upgrade of the eldritch was a nightmare to us. Having fun playing we moved on to gold, meanwhile having some great skills but also four cities razed.

Gold

This was going on way too quickly, we didn't managed to get to a secret trainer, although this was planned. We didn't managed to get to the legendary area, and our trait dices were not as far as we hoped they would be. The OL was doing his plot, buying a lot of treachery and managed to kill us very often in the dungeons. When we realized that we will soon be at 600XP, we decided to run through the rumor "X marks the spot", at least this will get us some nice treasure :-) As planned, we reached the 600 (OL: 380, Heroes: 220) at the end of the dungeon, now awaiting the final battle with our fearsome OL, which still has to come.

Finally, I would like to state that we (heroes) never felt that in gold campaign the heroes are overpowered... the OL was very often able to kill our "tank" valadir with a bunch of skeletons or some dark priests. And we hardly managed to run through a dungeon level in one or two turns, although we were playing with telekinesis and grapple... our OL nearly always finds a way to block these skills (for example placing a big monster blocking the way, and a small monster standing behind it to block movement). In fact, the OL was killing us fast, so the gold campaign was over way too soon for us as heros. I still don't think the final battle will be an automatic win for the heroes, but I will be able to tell you more of it soon!

Anyway, we had tons of fun playing and will soon start another campaign, where I will play as OL ;-)

So here's my last question:

When we were starting a new week and counted over 600XP, the book says the heroes were transported to tamalir to get one last training. Does the OL get the chance to buy one upgrade too? If no, what happens to his unspend XP? If yes, is he also allowed to buy his last plot-card?

Hope you enjoyed reading,

Edo..

I just read the question:

KW stated on the earlier forums that the OL gets to buy one upgrade bevor the Final Battle starts. Unfortunately, this answer never made it to the FAQ or the GLoAQ, but I am 200% certain that he made this ruling.

All other unspent OL (and hero) XPs are lost of course.

Is there a final plot card that would end the plot by simply buying it? In Eternal Night definitely not, but I´m not sure for Ascension.

So I don´t see a reason why he shouldn´t be allowed to buy a plot card as well.

Bying the last plot card from Ascension won't end the game immediately - it will take some additional turns. So I see no reason why the OL shouldn't be allowed to buy a plot card instead of an avatar upgrade in his last "purchase" (as long as there is such a last purchase, of course - the rules don't mention that explicitely but my intuition says there should be such a last possibility to buy an upgrade and my group always handled it this way).