Hi

Just about finished playing The Shadow Rune and still trying to get my head around it..

We have been playing only with the dice that came with the game. Under the impression that you can only use those dice, if extra was needed you lost it as can only roll what exists - reading some posts im starting to think that you can roll the dice again if you need extra dice... is that correct?

ie i needed 2 brown and one grey, as there was only one brown ive been using 1 grey and 1 brown - could i be rolling the brown dice again to make (2)?

Yes, you could have been!

You either roll again for the extra dice you are missing (and remember the old result and add everything together) or you buy an extra dice pack!

There is no rule restricting you to the amount of dice on the box.

The rule you are thinking of may be the rule about tokens, like the image tokens, which you cannot deploy more than what comes in the box.

One day I will pick up some extra dice. It's not the most exciting. purchase, but there are times when more dice is handy.

I actually have ... I think ... 4 extra sets. Some of my players are a bit ... let's say PARTICULAR ... about rolling their "OWN" dice. Of course, I keep telling them that all of the dice are mine, but I don't think they really believe it ...

We all know of course that it is just bad mojo to be superstitious about anything ...

We all know of course that it is just bad mojo to be superstitious about anything ...

Tell that to our skirmisher who once missed on 7 out of 12 rolls in a single encounter! (It was at that point I did an analysis of the weight of each face of the blue die based on the volume carved out of each side to determine if it was naturally loaded.)

We once played an encounter where maybe one out of two attack rolls gave the cross. From both sides. Combat was just ridiculous. We play with an extra dice set and kept swapping all the time, but nothing worked. I looked around and thought I saw agent Mulder looking through the window but nobody believed me.

Note I am notoriously unlucky on the dice roll. I'm the guy missing 5 attacks from goblin archers in the same turn, lol. On the other side we have the guy playing the scout and somehow he keeps getting the treasure chest card. It is ALWAYS in the top three cards. It's insane as I'm shuffling that deck myself as the overlord. We're all pragmatic people with scientific background and beliefs, but we actually believe in curses, damnation and paranormal activities the time of a game session every week!

Speaking truly, wherever we play there is always a blue dice that we put aside cause we suspect it to show us systematically its cross side. i have even one that we never use, knowing it as a lost cause. So spare sets of dice are mandatory.

and now that you mention it i always get the treasure card

Believe it or not, there is a even worse dice in the world of gaming, I tell you. Try playing Dead of Winter... It's a D12 so you only have 1:12 chance of getting bitten. Don't worry, you won't roll bitten during the whole game..., until that very moment where you fight at the colony, or rolling for that crucial kill.THEN you get it. Always, like a predator waiting for it prey. And then? Yeah, bitten = you die immediately beyond salvation, and the next guy at same location chooses to either die which stops the infection (you lose two morale in the process, you start at 5-6, at 0 you lose, lol) or roll the dice and get a 1/2 chance to die and carry on infecting the next guy, losing lore morale in the process. We've lost once on turn 1 as some dude got bitten when trying to move and killed every other character at the colony.

The cross in Descent is a Gummi Bear compared to that, lol. Try googling up the DoW exposure dice unbalance and look at all the threads

I...don't allow the blue X to become ridiculous anymore. If it shows up too much, I will allow re-rolls with the intention that tge other side gets one as well. Works for everybody.

We had one game session where I would swear 1/3 of all rolls were the blue X... on both sides.

It was a ridiculous session, where the monsters kept missing, the heroes kept missing again and again...

But I have a solution.

Put some tape on the X side, to even up the odds...

A mechanic I don't like too much in descent is that blue die. I cant imagine being so easy to miss no matter if you're a fighter or a cleric, to say so. In my opinion, some classes should roll a custom d8 or even a d10 with only one "X". I know that after all it's just a matter of luck, but I like the way D&D works around it better.

oops, thanks so much guys at least we arent too far into the battle lol

We once played an encounter where maybe one out of two attack rolls gave the cross. From both sides. Combat was just ridiculous. We play with an extra dice set and kept swapping all the time, but nothing worked. I looked around and thought I saw agent Mulder looking through the window but nobody believed me.

Note I am notoriously unlucky on the dice roll. I'm the guy missing 5 attacks from goblin archers in the same turn, lol. On the other side we have the guy playing the scout and somehow he keeps getting the treasure chest card. It is ALWAYS in the top three cards. It's insane as I'm shuffling that deck myself as the overlord. We're all pragmatic people with scientific background and beliefs, but we actually believe in curses, damnation and paranormal activities the time of a game session every week!

But have you ever heard of a cursed maptile?

We were playing some Trollfens quest. All rolls were fine, no X results, except when a figure was standing on tile 6A (actual picture of that game), then EVERY. SINGLE. ROLL. was a miss!

All of the maybe 20+ attack rolls that were done on that tile, by either heroes or monsters, just kept rolling X's. It was both sad and hilarious We also switched dice, but nothing worked!

We all know of course that it is just bad mojo to be superstitious about anything ...

Tell that to our skirmisher who once missed on 7 out of 12 rolls in a single encounter! (It was at that point I did an analysis of the weight of each face of the blue die based on the volume carved out of each side to determine if it was naturally loaded.)

What was the scientific result of this research? I am generally curious as some of my players have muttered about this over a few games.

This is slightly off-topic, but when looking at pictures showing an on-going encounter, I see that the tiles barely show any sign of damage after all these plays. That's surprising because despite I do take care of my Descent games (although I´m not pedantic at all and still consider them being "things"), most of them show some signs of weariness. Rounded corners, connectors are slightly damaged. the tiles lost some of their color contrast etc. Yours are in pristine quality in comparison! Obviously the core game tiles are most prone for this.

I guess I just store them well..? Not that I'm saying you don't, but in my custom solution for the tiles there is less space from them to move around than I guess they have in the standard game box?

So yours might be more prone to bumping their corners into the side of the box? I don't see how they would lose their contrast though, unless you left them in direct sunlight for a couple of days?

I do have some of the puzzle edges that are showing some wear. Like the print coming loose from the cardboard (or whatever) center of the tile, from connecting/disconnecting from other tiles. Not all those tiles fit perfectly together and so can't always be avoided.

Maybe you also played a lot more games than me!

Despite the common hatred against that cross, I think it does provide an important element to the game, which is that you cannot guarantee that an attack will automatically connect, regardless of how strong the attack is. Considering it as a blank seriously boosts attacks like RRB where the damage on the blue dice is irrelevant compared to what you get on the red dice. It's just an example.

Your seasoned hero may be missing his blow because the goblin was fast enough, or because he got blinded by some light. Even an expert in arms makes mistakes if you get my meaning.

I think the rule you suggested is interesting but it would have a very strong negative impact on the game overall.

I also hate that quests resolve around that cross, but the problem resides elsewhere in my opinion. The big issue is combat in general. You need actions to spend in order to fulfill your objective, but you cannot spend these actions if you re defeated in combat. Therefore combat stirs the game, and the cross has a huge impact on the game in these critical moments when you have planned a sequence of actions and are suddenly unable to carry out that plan.

Has someone experimented with treating the X as a blank? Because that X is very often game winning or losing:p. If you treat is as a blank, attacks will do less damage and roll substantially less range, especially early in the game. And similar to what Leewroy said, it is kind of weird that a seasoned hero still doesn't know how to properly wield a sword or to aim after many slaughtered monsters.

If you do that, just remember to take out Golden Mask from the shop deck, since the players will essentially have that built in.

As for why they X, thematically it's not just the characters missing, but you can play it as the enemy successfully dodged outright, the OL had a stroke of magical luck or treachery, or any other story based explanation. But I wouldn't recommend taking out the X mechanic altogether. There needs to be some severe element of chance in dice rolling.

And it may not be a fancy purchase, but buying extra dice helps. Especially in Act II when everyone is rolling big.

You can always play as Silhouette!

I still can't help but feel the dice system could be more elegant than it currently is. I think the difference between a bad roll and a good roll is in most cases smaller than the difference between a bad roll a complete miss. For example, if a bad roll doesn't do any damage you can still spend the surges. Maybe this is because the effect of the X is concentrated on a single die.

Not sure exactly about your definition of "elegant" in that context, but the dice system in D2E is quite rich in my opinion. Besides the obvious effect of getting the cross, you can still miss an attack due to range requirements or better defense roll and still be able to do something (like writing off a fatigue token). Damage is the expected "product" of an attack, but not always (conditions), and I´ve seen heroes firing off an attack hoping they would get a surge to get enough stamina to launch a second action for a skill requiring that extra fatigue. That cross is the element that forces you to re-think your sequence of actions. You have tons of abilities allowing you to reroll it, and I personally consider most of these to be quite powerful. Being able to ensure an attack will connect opens many doors tactically.

Rat Swarms don't roll the Blue die, and that makes them very interesting to both sides. The presence of the Blue die throws a doubt in every action you take relying on it and one of the things that makes the game thrilling and tense in my opinion.

This is also "amerithrash", you roll dices and dices can screw you up. It's random by definition. I have another game, a children's one, with a D6 and three possible values on it: 1, 2 and 3. These are movement points, but whatever. I find that dice completely flat because there is only a marginal difference between the 1 and the 3. While not being "fun" directly to implement a "0" face (nobody likes to do nothing on his turn), having a "-2" side would have been more interesting, as the guy keeping getting these 2s/3s could potentially be caught up by the guy getting 1s. Not sure if that's the perfect example here, but maybe you got my point.

I still can't help but feel the dice system could be more elegant than it currently is. I think the difference between a bad roll and a good roll is in most cases smaller than the difference between a bad roll a complete miss. For example, if a bad roll doesn't do any damage you can still spend the surges. Maybe this is because the effect of the X is concentrated on a single die.

Not sure exactly about your definition of "elegant" in that context, but the dice system in D2E is quite rich in my opinion. Besides the obvious effect of getting the cross, you can still miss an attack due to range requirements or better defense roll and still be able to do something (like writing off a fatigue token). Damage is the expected "product" of an attack, but not always (conditions), and I´ve seen heroes firing off an attack hoping they would get a surge to get enough stamina to launch a second action for a skill requiring that extra fatigue. That cross is the element that forces you to re-think your sequence of actions. You have tons of abilities allowing you to reroll it, and I personally consider most of these to be quite powerful. Being able to ensure an attack will connect opens many doors tactically.

Rat Swarms don't roll the Blue die, and that makes them very interesting to both sides. The presence of the Blue die throws a doubt in every action you take relying on it and one of the things that makes the game thrilling and tense in my opinion.

This is also "amerithrash", you roll dices and dices can screw you up. It's random by definition. I have another game, a children's one, with a D6 and three possible values on it: 1, 2 and 3. These are movement points, but whatever. I find that dice completely flat because there is only a marginal difference between the 1 and the 3. While not being "fun" directly to implement a "0" face (nobody likes to do nothing on his turn), having a "-2" side would have been more interesting, as the guy keeping getting these 2s/3s could potentially be caught up by the guy getting 1s. Not sure if that's the perfect example here, but maybe you got my point.

The miss for range is far more 'elegant' than the X in my opinion. As a ranged character, you are making a choice: moving closer and increasing the chance of a hit? Or fire from a safer position? Missing for not rolling enough range feels more like your own fault while missing from the X (a couple of times in a row) can be frustrating. The X also completely ignores every other result while not rolling enough range stills lets you do something in most cases (as your already pointed out). And reroll abilities do exist, but it is not something every hero will have access to.

I agree with you that attacks should not be certain hits and that risks should be real. But I don't know if the X is the best way to play with that. The game is still a lot of fun with it tough and it can be hilarious to miss an attack in some cases.

Just to add a precision : miss because of and X or miss for not enough range (after trying to use surges to have more range and only for this purpose) are both considered misses and have the same result
-> you cannot use anything else from the dices

On all other cases (hit or enougth range - using surges for it or not) even if you don't do damage of course you can use the surges on powers that can have a result (like recover [fatige] )