I've played multiple games as the heroes in RtL and get to a dungeon with a leader with undying in it and he just never wants to die. My worst time was having undying activate five times in a row. Meanwhile the OL got to spawn again and went through he deck, while im just sitting there hacking away for the fifth time. This just seems to break the game when it happens with a leader of a dungeon.

Does anyone have any good house rules for undying with leaders or undying in general?

Some of the ones i've came up with:

1. Extra damage carries over when he respawns.

2. Every time he successfully respawns he needs to roll an additional dice and get surges on all of them.

3. First time he needs a surge, every time after he needs a blank to activate undying.

4. For leaders, a blank must be rolled everytime; all other monsters a surge.

5. Leaders don't get undying.

6. Remove undying from the game.

7. If undying activates the monster doesn't get full health, but remains at what he was before the attack. (basicly the attack would miss) Status effects would still come off.

8. Remove undying from the game. (Did i mention i'm not a fan?)

Comments?

If Undying is such a problem, then you should start using weapons that ignore Undying. I believe there are also Feats and maybe skills/hero abilities that do this.

I don't think removing or even house-ruling is necessary here. We've never had a problem with Undying, and in fact one hero in our group ALWAYS carries the "Ignores Undying" cursed weapon just in case he meets one, cause he hates them so much. But no one wants to remove them, they add a great tactical element to the game.

Of all your house-rules though, I'd only consider the #1 and #2. #1 because that's how it works in Vanilla Descent (just not RtL) and #2 sounds plausible from a thematic stand point, making undying harder and harder after each resurrection.

-shnar

Doing something like making the 2nd and later revivals less likely strikes me as ineffective. Presumably, you don't think they're too powerful in the typical case, only in pathological cases where they revive many times, and those are already unlikely. Making them more unlikely means that your game won't break as often , but it can still break just as badly as before.

The most obvious change would be to say that major monsters with Undying can revive the first time on a power enhancement (instead of a surge), but never revive more than once. This keeps the overall average number of revivals the same, but make the pathological case impossible, rather than merely unlikely.

That will of course change tactics somewhat, but I assume you wouldn't have started this thread if you weren't willing to live with that.

I have never considered house ruling undying. As the OL I would love it if I had a monster come back several times, but I can hardly get them to come back once. It's a 33% chance of coming back and I bet my successes would be less than 33%. (I have not kept track, it's just a feeling.) I don't think we have ever had one come back twice in a row. (We are on our second campaign.)

Personally I would never remove Undying from the game. The only thing I would consider is one of the house rules to make it successively harder to come back. One I heard that I didn't see above is changing the roll needed for undying to Power Enhancement on the first try, then Surge on second and then Blank from then on out.

We've suffered through several bad rolls for undying in our campaign as well. At one point a leader master skeleton stayed alive through 5 attacks. We've gotten pretty lucky since the OL upgraded eldritch, but I'm not looking forward to drawing the undying ogre who auto-succeeds once and can reroll for 10 threat.

shnar said:

The Staff of the Grave is only an option if you 1) own Altar of Despair and 2) find it or get it to pop up while you're shopping in town. There's a gold item in Tomb of Ice that can also help (again, if you own the set and find the item), but you've suffered through two tiers of the monsters.

shnar said:

Why hasn't your Overlord used Crushing Blow on the staff? Once he does that at Silver tier, it's gone for good.

We houseruled it so that a monster can't come back more than 3 times and it seemed to resolve the annoyances.

We kind of went to a "progressive system" on all tests if things "linger" for a while.

Undying / Stealth Potions:

1. kill Enhancment= it stays alive,
2. kill roll: Surge=it stays alive,
3. kill blank = it stays alive,
4. kill: it stays dead.

Web / Burn:

1. round: blank= its gone,
2. round: surge =its gone,
3. round: Enhancment =its gone
4. round: gone for good, no roll.

Felt more realistical to us, keeps the same overall-%-Chance, and limits effects 3 times maximum.

It surely has its up's and downs, but makes it all a lot more calcuable, which i prefer both as player and as OL.

Before you shout "but it's hard to track" we just place Black dice on the effect markers and beside the monsters, the side thats needed to be rolled face up. Takes about 3 seconds longer.

The only two "sustainable options to kill undying" the heroes got is the Smith-rumor to make a "Staff of the grave" or "Star of Kellos" indestructable.. which is probably removed at lvl 2 of that rumordungeon by a crushing blow, and the promo "Jonas" hero.

Sinso said:

If you mean that the effects remain equally powerful on average, you're completely wrong.

The only thing I can think of that you might mean that would be correct is that if you take the die rolls listed in your house rules, ignore all context, and average together their probabilities, it comes out to 1/3. But that's an arbitrary mathematical exercise that has nothing to do with gameplay, so I don't see why anyone would care.

Sinso said:

Assuming you have a bunch of extra black dice sitting around that you don't need to actually roll in the intervening time...

James McMurray said:

We've houseruled that when drawing items the heroes can choose campaign-level or less (i.e. Silver campaign can draw from Silver or Copper chests, Gold campaign can draw from all three).

-shnar

Ah, cool. Yeah, a house-ruled game definitely has less to fear from undying creatures, though if I were the OL I'd still break it every chance I got, just to force you to give it up or go digging through the copper deck for it when you could more generically useful treasures.

As the OL I don't mind it so much, at least currently (Silver level campaign) since it's a Cursed Item. It forces that hero to be near the Undying one *and* to give the final blow, which doesn't happen all the time. And that extra CP is definately worth it

-shnar

Succeeding an undying roll 5 times in a row should happen to less than 0.5% (1/3 power 5) of the undying monsters you encounter.

This should happen once, maybe twice in a campaign. When it happens, it becomes something memorable (that, like legends, soon gets exaggerated: 5 regenerations become 6, 6 become 8...). Why miss the chance on such a memory?

The best strategy is to laugh about it instead of letting it frustrate yourself. After the 5th regeneration, hope that it becomes 6 to set a new record!

Ispher said:

+1

It's like our first RtL campaign where the heroes resisted my Dark Charm 5 out of 6 times. Or those times where the OL or a hero misses 3+ times in a row.

It's a dice game. Learn to live with it.

Why should someone "learn to live with" something they can easily make more enjoyable? What's the point in playing a game that isn't fun for you?

James McMurray said:

Having the grace to take your licks when its fun for the other side?

That boss that undies three times in a row is merely making up for the last 6 times when they didn't undy even once.

Who said it was fun for the other side?

I agree that the entire group's enjoyment should be considered, but "like it or lump it because it's fun for someone else" jumps to the assumptions that a) it actually is fun for someone else, and b) the group can't handle that issue themselves.

And your position assumes that it can easily be changed in a way that will increase the enjoyment of all parties, an equally dubious assumption. Firstly because, based on this thread, a lot of people don't understand probability and don't have any idea how to change it without making it significantly stronger or weaker. Secondly because there are a lot of upsides to the way it works currently, and which may not be foremost in the mind of someone motivated to make a change.

The point isn't that suffering through RAW is somehow morally superior to playing an objectively better game, it's that Ispher and Edroz (and others, I'm sure) believe that leaving the rule unchanged is the most satisfying option in the long run for most players, even if it doesn't look that way right after you've been burned by it.

Antistone said:

+1

A.N. Other

Antistone said:

+1

**** skippy!

@ Antistone et al:

I understand your argument of probability, as I studied it myself. But from both my nearly 30 years of RPG and board gaming experiences rolling several ten-thousand die rolls, I have come to an empirical conclusion:

Ditch the theory of probability (and note: it is still a mathematical theory, not proven to be exactly so).

It does not work!

It is disproven by (my) empirical stats. (I know, I know, I only rolled a few thousand dice in my life, not an infinite number -haha)

I also had an undying monster respawn 5 times in a row (yes, it was the dungeon leader, too).

But then it contiued:

The heroes rolled for nine (!) chests (or chest equivalents) (ie. total of 36 dice rolls), and did not get even ONE (1) blank for treasure determination.

A total of 4 attack rolls (plus two rerolls) in a row coming up X's.

All of this happened during my last two Descent gaming sessions. And I am the OL. Most of the bad stuff happened to my hero players. I only succeeded in doing the 4 X's for attacks in a row (4 skeletons, with two Aims).

Therefore, I can understand the argument why such a 'random' determination might be considered 'bad' and 'not-fun' for both sides. I as an OL-player did not have a lot of fun seeing my buddies get their rears kicked like that.

I see the idea of making it happen more often on the first try (power enhancements, and then less often by using surges and blanks) as only a partial remedy.

@ WWU343

Why not try this:

Use the Power Enhancement/Surge/Blank variant for the respawning, but do not go to the automatic kill unless the hero delivering the killing blow pays surges or owns the Staff of the Grave (see below for both), next, keep any excess damage of the killing blow on the undying monster, even if it respawns (like in vanilla RtL),

plus

allow the hero killing the Undying monster to spend 2/4/6 additional surges (for copper,/silver/gold campaign levels) to move the probability one category up each time they spend the surge cost? I.E. from power enhancement to surges to blank to defnitely killed.

This would change the chances a bit AND allow the heroes a margin of control about these chances, thus removing a bit of the frustration edge.

OT: this could be a balanced rules change for the Staff of the Grave: allow it to move the category of Undying one step per current campaign level up instead of making it ignore Undying.

OK, quite a few cents here.

A lot of ways to go on this one. We're coming to the end of our campaign here, and have been using undying as written, although it doesn't come up as an issue much as the OL is playing the spider queen and upgrading beasts, which have no undying monsters, so if anything were to make an undying roll, it's simply a matter of making another attack and seeing if you hit. Not that it has come up much anyway as the heroes very quickly found the staff of the grave and later the gold one hander that works similarly (and lets him equip a shield!).

However, for our next campaign, I think we may try out using the power enhancement to surge to blank to auto kill method, and have weapons that ignore undying simply up the difficulty one level (such as power enhancement to surge). Makes sure Undying doesn't get wasted due to Staff of the Grave, and limits the ridiculousness of it (No one wants to stay up all night while the heroes beat up a master skeleton/sorcerer who just refuses to go down, a few lucky rolls and the game drags on forever. Or, what should be an added dificulty to an otherwise weak boss (such as the skeleton boss who gets two dice to roll for undying rather than 1) becomes a joke with staff of the grave. I'm not saying everyone should play this way, you gotta find what your group thinks is most appropriate/enjoyable, but I think this will work well without letting the game break too hard in either direction. And I don't feel too bad about reducing the power of Staff of the Grave, what with it being a cursed weapon, as it still has insane surge efficiency for a staff.

RustyDust said:

Horse puckey. Probability theory has been overwhelmingly confirmed by empirical evidence by countless people for far longer than you've been alive. When casinos all go out of business, I'll reconsider your claim that probability doesn't work like we think it does.

Even if you had detailed documentation of your thousands of dice rolls, you'd be in a miniscule minority. But it's far more likely that you didn't even keep track and you think your results are exceptional because of a selective memory and poor mathematical knowledge (this happens to tons of people constantly; I read of one teacher that told students to either flip a coin 500 times and write down the results or just make up 500 results, and then went through all the lists students handed in and picked out which were real and which were fakes, because actual random distributions look completely different from how most people think they should look).

If you want to reduce the amount of randomness in the game, that's a defensible position. But don't start ranting and raving about how millions of people with far more evidence than you all got basic probability theory completely wrong and justifying it with some sob story about how you saw someone get lucky/unlucky a few times. Your argument would be more credible if you hadn't ever seen those sorts of things happen.

Yahoo. Antistone.

Sorry if I riled your horse there. Thought I had put in the winky there.

That was to be taken with a grain of salt.

But in my personal experiences, I have seen so many totally unlikely dice rolls actually happen, that I _personally_ feel something has to be wrong with it.

RustyDust said:

It's selective memory. We are all guilty. No one remarks on the nights when the heroes miss once all night (out of 50+ attacks). But when they miss 5 times in a row, it's a major memory moment.

There is a very well known (in that scene) ancients tabletop wargamer who was legendary for his bad luck (or talking about it at least). So much so that he began to record all his dice rolls. In the game played there are often something like 500-1000 D6 die rolls per game. Tournaments are 4-6 games, and being a regular in the heart of the UK tourney scene he may have been playing 30+ tournaments per year. Say, around 50-100,000 die rolls per year, not counting club games or practice games.

After two years of statistics he found that his die rolling was almost exactly average.
It apparently motivated him to look more closely at his game and he won the world championships a few years later.

But if your dice are too consistenly 'off', change them. They aren't doing their job!

Well it is possible that his dice are skewed or defective, favoring one result over another. And let's admit it, FFG dice are not made according to casino standards. However, that's fairly hard to prove, and the selective memory thing is equally likely. That, and both sides use the same dice, so it should even out.