Hi,

our group of six players started our first RtL campaign, and inspired by some excellent diaries on BGG, I decided to write one myself as well.

Yeah, it's the Sniper Sorcerer King again, but it's our first campaign so to us it's not boring. What might make this diary interesting to you as well is that we play with five heroes using some custom rules to account for the extra hero. This has been asked for and discussed several times on the forum, so here you can read if this works.

Additionally, the heroes are created using the Create Your Own Hero rules by Kevin Wilson - there had been some discussions on that in the past as well.

The diary can be found on my site:

www.compoundeye.net/descent/

Comments welcome!

-Kylearan

Kenor:

There is no way a character could have 4 armor. The base traits can be raised only once. Also if you see the table to determine the conquest value, you simple can't find it. In the case 12life / 4armor would be there, should said something like: "Either 4 (Costs 2 BPs) or 5 (Gives you 1 BP)".

Moreover, 12BP - 3 (3rises - 1lowered, see in the table ) - 6 (mele dice) - 3 (starting skills) = 0. I cand find any way so he could have a rank 2 ability. Indeed if you add the "costs 2 BP" for the conquest value you havent enough PB even to make the hero.

Vrajitoru:

12BP - 6 (magic trait) - 4 (starting skills) = 2. So he can't have a rank 2 ability.

Six player rules

We sometimes are 6 player also but we havent played with five heroes. Im not very friendly about adding custom rules. I saw a post in this forum about the same topic and i think its very dificult to calculate all the impacts of adding a new hero. Did you add 1 armor or 1 life to the monsters?

Anyway after reading your diary im a bit more convinced to add a new hero the next time we are 6 people

Sorry about my spelling and

by3z!

No, those characters are actually all legal (assuming a reasonable ruling on a minor ambiguity in the construction rules). Kenor has 4 armor because the Barbarian ability adds bonus armor (without modifying conquest value). Vrajitoru has just enough BP if you start with the "nimble" race (15 BP; -1 from raising 3 traits and lowering 2; -6 dice, -4 skills = 4 BP remaining for a level 2 ability).

The ambiguity is that the rules actually say you get BP based on the number of traits you lowered, rather than the amount by which you lowered them, so a technical reading doesn't allow you to claim more BP by lowering traits twice. But their example in the exact same paragraph is "if you raised 2 traits and lowered 4 traits...", so since there are only 4 traits total and you can't raise and lower the same trait, I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that this is OK.

Not that the custom hero rules are in any way balanced in the first place. For example, you can create a hero with 6 fatigue and the a level 3 guardian ability, which is an easy 7 attacks/turn (with movement points left over) with vitality potions or a friend with Leadership.

Sorry Kylearan, I was wrong. With Kenor i didn't consider he was adding the ironskin armor on the trait. With the mage I just assumed he was a human because of the picture, but it could be a nimble character so its properly build.

That character you describe looks a bit imba, maybe i will give it a try

By the way, i'm a bit confusing now about the BPs balance for the races.

by3z!

bomber said:

Basically, if it is theoretically possible to get your stat array with a race that starts with more BP, you want to switch to that race. Beastials are the only ones that can have 20 wounds, but any bestial without 20 wounds is strictly worse than a human build, so you only ever want to be bestial if you really want super high wounds. Same with elves and 6 speed, and almost the same with dwarves and 3 armor (dwarves also have high fatigue, but nimble equal or beat them in everything but armor). And humans are really only better than nimble if you want 16 wounds and/or 2 armor.

Which means that almost any character worth less than 4 conquest tokens wants to start with the nimble race. The only reason not to be nimble is the restriction preventing you from raising a stat more than once.

Hi,

EDIT: This forum is driving me CRAZY! It breaks the quote tags or simply ignores them, so after 4 times I gave up and used "" instead to quote. Now it doesn't contain a single quote tag, and still displays most of this post as one?!? Argh. Also, why does it send me to the forum overview page every time I edit a post?!? This is the worst forum software I've used in years.

Sorry for the garbled format of this post, I seem to be unable to fix it.

Bomber said:

"Im not very friendly about adding custom rules. I saw a post in this forum about the same topic and i think its very dificult to calculate all the impacts of adding a new hero."

"Anyway after reading your diary im a bit more convinced to add a new hero the next time we are 6 people "

Hi,

just a quick note that my campaign diary has a new entry, describing the events of exploring another two dungeon levels.

Additionally, my site now has an RSS feed to notify about updates. If your browser won't find it automatically, there's a link on the top of the Introduction page .

In order not to spam this forum, I'll post my next note about an update only once our campaign has reached silver level. Note though that the diary will still be updated roughly once per week until then. Comments are welcome anytime of course.

-Kylearan

Hi,

another quick note: Our campaign has reached silver level now! Conquest tokens at the beginning of silver were Heroes: 99 , Overlord: 103, and we've already played the first dungeon on silver.

You can find direct links to the individual session reports on the introduction page on the diary here: www.compoundeye.net/descent/

If you don't want to read all the details, you can find a weekly summary and a XP spending table on the "aftermath" page here: www.compoundeye.net/descent/aftermath.html

-Kylearan

Quick rules note from your last game report...

Unless you are playing a house rule you were done on the middle level (#7 The Graveyard). When you start a new level the heroes do not 'remain' in town. All of them are placed adjacent to the starting glyph as normal (see page 17, Dungeon level setup) - regardless of whether they were in the portal or in town at the end of the previous level. Thus they should not have been able to do the "run to middle glyph, new hero (from town) run from newly opened middle glyph to end glyph and remaining heroes leap out amid the monsters from the end glyph" play before you even get a turn. That was seriously bad!

If you were playing a houserule no problem, but no sense getting screwed by a mistake again in future just because of a minor reading error...

Even though they have Acrobat and Knockback you might consider placing sacrificial starting monsters on top of glyphs as well, just to make them spend more resources for similar syle plays in the future. Monsters can't end the turn or be spawned on activated glyphs, but unactivated are a completely different story! Given the play levels in the reports you've probably already considered this and dismissed it, but just in case...

As another aside, did you save CT and immediately upgrade (Eldritch?) to Gold? Its not mentioned in your report anywhere. I would have thought the Master Demon on the last level would have been Gold, which would have made him even tougher...

Hi,

after this wonderful forum has eaten my reply four times already, I have to resort to non-standard quoting, sorry...

Corbon said:
"Unless you are playing a house rule you were done on the middle level (#7 The Graveyard). When you start a new level the heroes do not 'remain' in town. All of them are placed adjacent to the starting glyph as normal (see page 17, Dungeon level setup) - regardless of whether they were in the portal or in town at the end of the previous level."

That was not a house rule, but a mistake on our part - we had overlooked that rule, as others have pointed out as well. Thanks!

"Even though they have Acrobat and Knockback you might consider placing sacrificial starting monsters on top of glyphs as well, just to make them spend more resources for similar syle plays in the future. "

That's a very interesting idea! More often than not, I have a spare beastman or two to place who I know are insta-kills anyway, so I will try this out.

" As another aside, did you save CT and immediately upgrade (Eldritch?) to Gold? Its not mentioned in your report anywhere. "

No I hadn't (it can be seen in the table on the Aftermath page). I had saved some XP for that purpose but not enough, counting on the heroes' usual habit of exploring all three dungeon levels. That they explored only the first to bring the campaign barely to silver, so that they would be able to draw silver treasures earlier, surprised me. I have bought gold Eldritch now, but it allowed them to play a whole dungeon with silver Eldritch only, and unfortunately, Trial by Fire was among the levels.

Actually I had even thought about upgrading Beasts to silver first, seeing that gold Eldritch get only a minor damage boost. I have bought gold Eldritch now anyway because of the extra wounds, hoping some of them will survive a hit now and then...

Thanks for your comments!

-Kylearan

Kylearan said:

Thanks for your writeups!

Regarding the particular play with the monsters on glyphs, that can be extended to treasure Chests, coin stashes and even level specific markers (usually ?s).

Acrobat just ignores the creatures sadly (although the Acrobat must still have an extra MP to get off the space afterwards, which is a small extra cost to the hero (and is sometimes critical). The Knockback guy though will be unable to run to a space, but will have to waste an entire attack, usually meaning lots of spent fatigue.

My current party have Telekinesis instead of Acrobat, which can result in some interesting plays. Last night a weak runner dashed ahead along a long stretch towards a new glyph (too far to make in one turn, he is not a very good runner actually). Luckily he'd drunk a stealth potion and had a dodge on, because after a Poltergeist effect he was in range of a Bronze Named Sorcerer with Command 1, a gold Hellhound and 4 Silver Kobolds, and no longer in easy range of the Glyph. After only 2 of the attacks hit he was very low on health. There was still another kobold sitting on the Glyph too! My Telekinesising mage had to shift 3 of the kobolds around the runner (because they blocked the LOS to the Kobold on the Glyph, deliberately - and since the mage was around 15 squares from the action along narrow rooms, he couldn't move wide enough to see around them), the Kobold on the Glyph (off the Glyph!), move to a new location where he could (nearly) see the runner, shift the last kobold away to get LOS to the Runner and then shift the runner forward so that he could still reach the Glyph with Fatigue in hand (to prevent traps etc stopping him just short). While he was at it he shifted the Guarding Talia (already completed her turn) forward onto a bench so that she would be able to reach the boss sorcerer with her guard movement for a smackdown.

Talk about both sides continually rearranging the dungeon!

Hi,

Corbon said:
"Last night a weak runner dashed ahead along a long stretch towards a new glyph (too far to make in one turn, he is not a very good runner actually). Luckily he'd drunk a stealth potion and had a dodge on, because after a Poltergeist effect he was in range of a Bronze Named Sorcerer with Command 1, a gold Hellhound and 4 Silver Kobolds"

Named sorcerer with command 1, and a monster option of hellhounds and kobolds? Talk about coincidence: That sounds very much like the same level we had played yesterday! Only that our runner has actually deserved the title and made it to the glyph in one turn, even though he needed a fatigue potion. More about that in a couple of days...

"[...lots of telekinesing and poltergeisting...] Talk about both sides continually rearranging the dungeon!"

Awesome!

-Kylearan