I think this illustrates why the new companion app will have alternating turns:p Dealing that much damage is very insane and just ridiculous when the shortcomings on the defense side don't get penalized.

And having the option to deal conditions is very useful, just like blast, or rerolling abilities. Playing without them is like bringing a knife to a gun fight in my opinion. The game includes these effects for a reason

And I think there have been plenty of games where Belthir gets killed in the first hero turn:p The statistics from the campaign tracker speak for itself. Well okay they are not the strongest stats, but still.

Back on topic,

I, too, look forward to a way to alternate or split turns. I was considering how one could re-balance the game around 1 action per turn instead of 2.

As for the option to deal conditions, I agree it is very useful, though perhaps less useful than blast/whirlwind effects which give damage multiplicative scaling. The problem is very few classes can reliably bring this utility. A quick rundown:

Beastmaster: ---

Berserker: Immobilize

Champion: ---

Knight: Stun

Marshal: Anything to the monster attacking the Marshal

Skirmisher: Bleeding

Conjuror: Stun only on the class weapon

Geomancer: Stun, Burn, Immobilize on the class weapon

Hexer: Anything

Necromancer: ---

Runemaster: Anything

Bounty Hunter: Doom

Shadow Walker: Bleed on the class weapon

Stalker: Weaken, Poison, Immobilize on the class weapon

Thief: Stun, Immobilize

Treasure Hunter: ---

Wildlander: ---

Apothecary: Poison on the class weapon

Bard: ---

Disciple: Stun on the class weapon

Prophet: Weaken on the class weapon

Spiritspeaker: ---

Now about that. Anything but Immobilize and Stun can pretty much be ignored, as these have the largest impact on the game. Stun or Immobilize on class weapons also come with a huge sacrifice to endgame damage potential, but can be worked around with the equip phase. I don't count Marshal here because conditions can only be applied as a reaction so the Overlord has real control over its application. So without a Berserker, Knight, Thief, Stalker or Disciple, the Mage hero is practically forced to take Runemaster, because who plays Hexer or Geomancer? And the Runemaster has to buy the rather expensive 2 exp Runic Sorcery and work around Rune weapons. If "the game includes these effects for a reason" why aren't they more ubiquitous? You cannot rely on buying/finding gear that provides these effects.

The campaign tracker is a pretty unhelpful tool considering its very small amount of data. Considering the huge variance in play-skill and approaches to encounters it wouldn't be scientifically significant until each encounter had at least a thousand submissions.

Just chiming in here, I love the geomancer. The hexer isn't the most powerful mage, but is tons of fun with the right party composition. So, whp plays those classes? This guy.

Yeah, Hexer is pretty fun too, and our geomancer won us quite a few encounters last campaign! Blocking with stones, teleporting to stones, doing A LOT of damage,.. It was great

Geomancer's rock!

(see what I did there? )

The stones act like a shield, blocking line of sight and movement and one of them (at the basic level) can attack.

The Geomancer hits the sweet spot between utility powers and attack powers, imh.

The Runemaster's plan of attack is, to quote Ironman "Attack". He can't get you around a pit of lava or a portcullis and if he misses his attacks, or rolls poorly, the monsters roll right over you.

In our current campaign we have Aurim as a Bard. He's a powerhouse. Not only do stamina and healing potions go into OP mode when he uses them, he gets one free search card per encounter.

Being a Bard, he can heal 2 health and 2 stamina every round (later in the campaign) and heal one additional person for 2 more with concentration. All the stamina regeneration is what can power any group of heroes, to stardom.

-Cursain

In our current campaign we have Aurim as a Bard. He's a powerhouse. Not only do stamina and healing potions go into OP mode when he uses them, he gets one free search card per encounter.

Being a Bard, he can heal 2 health and 2 stamina every round (later in the campaign) and heal one additional person for 2 more with concentration. All the stamina regeneration is what can power any group of heroes, to stardom.

-Cursain

Heroes who don't need to rest to recover stamina can power through almost anything the OL throws at them. This is why the Bard is Yuuuge!

I see my statement was controversial but that wasn't really my point.

My point was that if encounters were balanced with status effects in mind, they need to be more accessible. I happen to be of the opinion that status effects aren't weighed when balancing an encounter: damage is. First of all, status effects seem to be designed mostly for the Overlord; their implementation for hero use seems like an afterthought. Status effects are complimentary so as to provide unexpected results.

Heroes who don't need to rest to recover stamina can power through almost anything the OL throws at them.

This is why the Runemaster is huge, too. A reliable Blast+2 ❤ that refunds the 2♩ (<-can I use that as fatigue?) is too good to not take. Unless you brought a Barbarian, the class just provides too much crowd-control.

It is also why the Apothecary is heavy.

I see my statement was controversial but that wasn't really my point.

My point was that if encounters were balanced with status effects in mind, they need to be more accessible. I happen to be of the opinion that status effects aren't weighed when balancing an encounter: damage is. First of all, status effects seem to be designed mostly for the Overlord; their implementation for hero use seems like an afterthought. Status effects are complimentary so as to provide unexpected results.

Heroes who don't need to rest to recover stamina can power through almost anything the OL throws at them.

This is why the Runemaster is huge, too. A reliable Blast+2❤ that refunds the 2♩ (<-can I use that as fatigue?) is too good to not take. Unless you brought a Barbarian, the class just provides too much crowd-control.

It is also why the Apothecary is heavy.

I think that status conditions are more for the heroes actually. heroes have a way of getting rid of them by skill checks or performing a special action. It has happened to me that a hero gets poisoned by spider 1, spider 2-5 can only use that one surge because the hero is already poisoned, the hero passes the strength check. If heroes are immobilized this also doesn't need to be the end if you are a Knight (or have other abilities that allow for movement not based on move actions or fatigue, carve a path comes to mind), use a familiar, or to a lesser extent have a good ranged weapon.

A monster is stuck with poison (= disease) chipping away health that is much more significant because monsters generally have lower health. A monster also can't get rid of the weakened condition because it can't perform a rest action. Monsters also don't have the easy access to surges ( Rune Mastery and other abilities of that kind) to get rid of surge-based conditions.

I do agree with you point that there are few classes who can reliably inflict those conditions, but there are shop weapons which can do that.

I see my statement was controversial but that wasn't really my point.

My point was that if encounters were balanced with status effects in mind, they need to be more accessible. I happen to be of the opinion that status effects aren't weighed when balancing an encounter: damage is. First of all, status effects seem to be designed mostly for the Overlord; their implementation for hero use seems like an afterthought. Status effects are complimentary so as to provide unexpected results.

Heroes who don't need to rest to recover stamina can power through almost anything the OL throws at them.

This is why the Runemaster is huge, too. A reliable Blast+2 ❤ that refunds the 2♩ (<-can I use that as fatigue?) is too good to not take. Unless you brought a Barbarian, the class just provides too much crowd-control.

It is also why the Apothecary is heavy.

I'd say the Conjurer is a bit stronger using Prismatic Assault and can do far more with the various skills that have continual effects. In the current campaign we have Astarra as the Conjurer, and a Bard running around. The only thing I need to be concerned with is staying within three spaces of the bard. The fact I can leave image tokens all over the board, as well as easily place them where I want with Refraction, we're throwing tons of damage around. It's at the point where we're feeling bad for the OL.

Astarra/conjurer is handa down my favorite hero to play. She is great. With a bard on the same team, I fell bad for your OL, too.

I think that status conditions are more for the heroes actually. heroes have a way of getting rid of them by skill checks or performing a special action. It has happened to me that a hero gets poisoned by spider 1, spider 2-5 can only use that one surge because the hero is already poisoned, the hero passes the strength check. If heroes are immobilized this also doesn't need to be the end if you are a Knight (or have other abilities that allow for movement not based on move actions or fatigue, carve a path comes to mind), use a familiar, or to a lesser extent have a good ranged weapon.

A monster is stuck with poison (= disease) chipping away health that is much more significant because monsters generally have lower health. A monster also can't get rid of the weakened condition because it can't perform a rest action. Monsters also don't have the easy access to surges ( Rune Mastery and other abilities of that kind) to get rid of surge-based conditions.

I do agree with you point that there are few classes who can reliably inflict those conditions, but there are shop weapons which can do that.

My rationale that Conditions are designed mainly for the OL is that creatures come with conditions hard-wired. Zombies Immobilize. Wraiths Doom. Spiders ⚱ Poison. It's flavor and inconvenience for the players to play around. Most of the effects Heroes bring to the table far outweigh the benefits of applying conditions to monsters with the exception of Stun and Immobilize due to the inherent action and mobility limitations monsters suffer. You don't want to bother poisoning/disease/cursing a monster with a ⚡ if you can do 2 ❤ instead. Monsters die too easily so it is always more efficient long-term to maximize damage and just remove sources of incoming damage. Some exceptions are Doom or Weaken on bosses, but you still wouldn't do this to trash mobs. Disease/Curse don't even work as intended on monsters so it seems pretty clear they were designed to mess with the players, not monsters. Furthermore most characters just don't come with Condition application built in.

The potential for heroes to apply certain conditions should make some encounters easier but they should never be required to win an encounter, ever, IMHO.

While I agree that conditions certainly have more flair with heroes (poison and disease are the same thing to a monster) there are absolutely uses for applying certain conditions to everyday monsters.

Stun and immobilize are obviously nice, but sometimes it can be useful to hit a monster with them instead of killing it, especially if the reinforcement rules favor the OL (immobilizing a master merriod who is in one location may be a better option than letting a mobile one respawn on the entrance).

Curse is one of my favorite conditions to apply to monsters as a hero. Turning an elemental into a normal ranged monster, or disabling the grab of a master zombie can be a really good time an save a lot of (hero) frustration.

While I agree that conditions certainly have more flair with heroes (poison and disease are the same thing to a monster) there are absolutely uses for applying certain conditions to everyday monsters.

Stun and immobilize are obviously nice, but sometimes it can be useful to hit a monster with them instead of killing it, especially if the reinforcement rules favor the OL (immobilizing a master merriod who is in one location may be a better option than letting a mobile one respawn on the entrance).

Curse is one of my favorite conditions to apply to monsters as a hero. Turning an elemental into a normal ranged monster, or disabling the grab of a master zombie can be a really good time an save a lot of (hero) frustration.

Certainly there are exceptions, but these aren't very frequent. I'm inclined to agree with your respawn idea if and only if reinforcements arrive at the start of the Overlord turn and if heroes are somewhere those reinforcements could be a threat or if you know with some degree of certainty the Overlord has a card like Rise Again. Even still, you are leaving a body in the room that is a lingering source of future damage and you don't know if the OL has a card that can capitalize on your "tactic" (Blinding Speed, Reinforce, Dark Remedy, Dark Resilience, Splig's Revenge, Exploit Weakness, Secrets of Flesh, Offertory Affliction, etc, etc).

I guess I can see casting curse with a ⚡ surge if I had nothing better to spend one on, but I would almost always take 2 ❤ if I could get it instead. Dead monsters are the most convenient monsters.

Most of my games have been very close, but it heavily depends on the gaming group I play against.

The tricky part about Descent is that your party has to be capable in every category: Damage, Movement, Conditions; if the heroes don't get this, you are bound to come across a few quests that seem imbalanced, because the hero party either excells in the category that is the most important in the quest or totally lacks in this category. The result is a game that seems unwinnable for the OL or the heroes.

Your example is typical for that: The heroes needed to stop Skarn, but appearantly hadn't invested in stun or immobilize. Like your list shows, nearly every mage has access to these conditions (the Conjurer has a skill to stun, which is not on your list). Spending XP on these skills or getting weapons that inflict conditions has to be a priority, or else the heroes will be destroyed in quests where they have to stop someone.

My worst expiriences with this game was against a gaming group that only maximized damage, because it thought everything else is just weak. They lost every game and trashed the game hard on every occasion ("I can't believe this sh*t game is from FFG") even when I told them why they lose, they didn't believe me and said something like "ok so if we immobilize him the game would have lasted maybe one more turn, but that wouldn't make a difference." It seems like this undervaluation of everything that isn't boosting damage is quite common. If the hero-party thinks that this is the only fun way to play dungeon crawlers, I would recommend Imperial Assault that has a much more one-dimensional approach to it, has more emphasis on combat and is much less puzzly.

Most of my games have been very close, but it heavily depends on the gaming group I play against.

The tricky part about Descent is that your party has to be capable in every category: Damage, Movement, Conditions; if the heroes don't get this, you are bound to come across a few quests that seem imbalanced, because the hero party either excells in the category that is the most important in the quest or totally lacks in this category. The result is a game that seems unwinnable for the OL or the heroes.

Your example is typical for that: The heroes needed to stop Skarn, but appearantly hadn't invested in stun or immobilize. Like your list shows, nearly every mage has access to these conditions (the Conjurer has a skill to stun, which is not on your list). Spending XP on these skills or getting weapons that inflict conditions has to be a priority, or else the heroes will be destroyed in quests where they have to stop someone.

My worst expiriences with this game was against a gaming group that only maximized damage, because it thought everything else is just weak. They lost every game and trashed the game hard on every occasion ("I can't believe this sh*t game is from FFG") even when I told them why they lose, they didn't believe me and said something like "ok so if we immobilize him the game would have lasted maybe one more turn, but that wouldn't make a difference." It seems like this undervaluation of everything that isn't boosting damage is quite common. If the hero-party thinks that this is the only fun way to play dungeon crawlers, I would recommend Imperial Assault that has a much more one-dimensional approach to it, has more emphasis on combat and is much less puzzly.

Well, that is certainly true, but sometimes even conditions don't help... I am talking about some of the Shadow Rune campaign Quests which are only determined by "can the Heros kill one/two Monster groups in one turn---> they win"

But one of the Heros in my group has the same opinion like most people seem to have: damage is everything. He sometimes even says he wants to play with all heros being dwarf characters (the ones with more health and less movement) and only "damage dealers" because healer and scouts are not needed, as they don't do as much damage...

I would like them to play like that... it would do my job as OL much easier

Though I have to admit, a dwarf-party sounds funny.... with a bit of roleplaying added it would be a pretty cool gameing session

Though I have to admit, a dwarf-party sounds funny.... with a bit of roleplaying added it would be a pretty cool gameing session

My friends though about this and they used last game:

Corbin - Knight

Ulma - Discipline

Raythen - Wildlander

Grsiban - Benserker (I think there's not a Dwarf mage)

Then, they realized they could play a more themathically party (I want to see if someone recognize it)

Griban - Benserker

Tomble - Thief

Elder Mok - Prophet

Lindel - Wildlander

In our games the quests are often very close.

Some quests the overlord or heroes makes some error, and then the quest can feel unbalanced. We have noticed that a few miscalculations or "lost turns" for either side can tip the scales in the other sides favour and make the quest feel impossible to win for the other side. The best example are the search tokens, they often feel like they are so close, and as a hero you want to loot them, but often you're giving up at least an entire hero turn (moving to the token + searching) per token you go after, not to mention that it often splits the party up. Trying to go after most or all search tokens on a map often seem to spell doom for the heroes.

After a quest that feels unbalanced we often discuss what went wrong for the loosing party (and what the winner did right as well). That way the loosing side learns and can adapt to the next quest. It's often possible to pinpoint at least a few bad judgement calls that could have made the quest more balanced.

Interesting. For our group, victory (for one side or the other) rarely seems the fault of judgement. It seems to hinge entirely on equipment availability and Dash/Frenzy-like mechanics.

Last campaign the heroes constantly received powerful weapons but never any armor. During the Finale only one person had chain mail but the players were so armed to the teeth with weapons, abilities and accessories that boosted damage output that every single one of them was one-shotting every Act 2 Creature. We all had a good laugh at the Scout that was doing 9 damage+penetration from 11 spaces without line-of-sight (Heartseeker). In the Finale, I tried my damnedest as OL to get as many players dead in one turn from Gryvorn with good use of OL cards, but it just didn't happen. Not like it would have mattered; one player took down Gryvorn in the finale in one turn. We all knew that campaign was weird because of damage, but that wasn't the first time that damage made entire encounters trivial. The OL who ran Manor of Ravens needed to play the entire game around my Barbarian or else the whole thing was a joke.

This campaign we are having terrible luck with gear, which is only presenting the other problem: conservative play and focusing on the objective still cannot stop the OL in particular encounters (Which still happened in quests where heroes were overgeared). Most often these are mobility-related or "escort missions."

In every roguelike there're gonna be moments that you just weren't prepared for and never could have been. In our particular game, no one in the group could Immobilize and I can say with some confidence that Stun wouldn't have mattered. One fewer move action would have only given the heroes hope, since I still had plenty of reinforcements to meat-shield and only one hero was in any position to do anything to Skarn. If an encounter necessitates the heroes bring a mechanic like Immobilize or lose, that doesn't really seem like a problem with judgement, but design. I'm looking for ideas to maybe present a less volatile, binary experience.

Speaking of Death at the Wing, that second encounter is pretty clearly stacked for the OL. Only poor luck for the OL will result in a win for the heroes. Luck and not skill. Again, poor design.

I think this illustrates why the new companion app will have alternating turns:p Dealing that much damage is very insane and just ridiculous when the shortcomings on the defense side don't get penalized.

And having the option to deal conditions is very useful, just like blast, or rerolling abilities. Playing without them is like bringing a knife to a gun fight in my opinion. The game includes these effects for a reason

And I think there have been plenty of games where Belthir gets killed in the first hero turn:p The statistics from the campaign tracker speak for itself. Well okay they are not the strongest stats, but still.

I just started the game but I play alternating turns right now.

Its more fun and makes the game more interesting.

I am an Imperial Assault player and I guess that affects my viewpoint.

They should just FAQ change the rules to be alternating turns anyways.

Alternating activation has its advantages, but I'm of the opinion that there is a huge amount of synergy between different figures (heroes and monsters alike) that gets lost when activations alternate. I'd be incredibly disappointed if Descent were retroactively changed to make alternate activation the standard.

It also creates some complications for the activation of certain NPCs.

Alternating activation has its advantages, but I'm of the opinion that there is a huge amount of synergy between different figures (heroes and monsters alike) that gets lost when activations alternate. I'd be incredibly disappointed if Descent were retroactively changed to make alternate activation the standard.

It also creates some complications for the activation of certain NPCs.

Out of curiosity what are some examples?

Want to know if I should house rule alternating turns or not.

Alternating activation has its advantages, but I'm of the opinion that there is a huge amount of synergy between different figures (heroes and monsters alike) that gets lost when activations alternate. I'd be incredibly disappointed if Descent were retroactively changed to make alternate activation the standard.

It also creates some complications for the activation of certain NPCs.

Out of curiosity what are some examples?

Want to know if I should house rule alternating turns or not.

I think that is hard to say because it completely changes the game you are playing. Most importantly the blocking strategy. I would like to try a good house ruling on this though. So if you figured it out nicely, let us know!

Alternating activation has its advantages, but I'm of the opinion that there is a huge amount of synergy between different figures (heroes and monsters alike) that gets lost when activations alternate. I'd be incredibly disappointed if Descent were retroactively changed to make alternate activation the standard.

It also creates some complications for the activation of certain NPCs.

Out of curiosity what are some examples?

Want to know if I should house rule alternating turns or not.

Opening quest of LoR would be more difficult for OL since it would be a lot more challenging to move the goblin carrying the lady.

Using knock back to move a hero next to another hero so you could get an effective blast with another monster group....etc.

Tracking reinforcements since you could have 8 or more activations before reinforcements arrive.

Just to name a few.

Most of my games have been very close, but it heavily depends on the gaming group I play against.

The tricky part about Descent is that your party has to be capable in every category: Damage, Movement, Conditions; if the heroes don't get this, you are bound to come across a few quests that seem imbalanced, because the hero party either excells in the category that is the most important in the quest or totally lacks in this category. The result is a game that seems unwinnable for the OL or the heroes.

Your example is typical for that: The heroes needed to stop Skarn, but appearantly hadn't invested in stun or immobilize. Like your list shows, nearly every mage has access to these conditions (the Conjurer has a skill to stun, which is not on your list). Spending XP on these skills or getting weapons that inflict conditions has to be a priority, or else the heroes will be destroyed in quests where they have to stop someone.

My worst expiriences with this game was against a gaming group that only maximized damage, because it thought everything else is just weak. They lost every game and trashed the game hard on every occasion ("I can't believe this sh*t game is from FFG") even when I told them why they lose, they didn't believe me and said something like "ok so if we immobilize him the game would have lasted maybe one more turn, but that wouldn't make a difference." It seems like this undervaluation of everything that isn't boosting damage is quite common. If the hero-party thinks that this is the only fun way to play dungeon crawlers, I would recommend Imperial Assault that has a much more one-dimensional approach to it, has more emphasis on combat and is much less puzzly.

I like your reply. It opens up more discussion.

To clarify, in my example that I describe, I believe a hero did have the ability to apply a condition but Skarn was only open to a single attack, and it wasn't from that hero. After Skarn's turn noone could reach him much less suppress him.

Damage, movement and conditions as you have pointed out are all important factors. Movement is easily hindered with warm bodies, altering the movement problem to a damage one. Conditions largely rely on doing a single point in damage, which partially makes the condition issue a damage one. This trifecta is heavily weighted to damage, so much so that most players recognize damage trivializes most encounters. Were there more of a "puzzle" element, as you describe, this trivialization wouldn't occur quite so frequently, or even at all.

Many here have mentioned alternating turns as a source of balance but I'm not actually convinced that is the issue. I see the problem more stemming from the fact that monsters and heroes take two actions on their turns, possibly even three. This makes for really swingy "activations" that cannot be countered by the opposing side. It would be like if, during a game of chess, each player was able to move a single piece two or sometimes three moves on their turn instead of one. Throw in a rule that if you manage to check the opponent and you still have a turn, that is checkmate.

One solution might be reducing all turns to one action, but that slows the game down and increases the power of extra-turn effects. Another rule might simply be treating Descent more like D&D or other RPG's and requiring one action always be a Move action, but this hurts the players more than the Overlord. Quite frankly, I'm not certain there is a good way to solve this with such small maps and uncreative win-conditions.

Most of my games have been very close, but it heavily depends on the gaming group I play against.

The tricky part about Descent is that your party has to be capable in every category: Damage, Movement, Conditions; if the heroes don't get this, you are bound to come across a few quests that seem imbalanced, because the hero party either excells in the category that is the most important in the quest or totally lacks in this category. The result is a game that seems unwinnable for the OL or the heroes.

Your example is typical for that: The heroes needed to stop Skarn, but appearantly hadn't invested in stun or immobilize. Like your list shows, nearly every mage has access to these conditions (the Conjurer has a skill to stun, which is not on your list). Spending XP on these skills or getting weapons that inflict conditions has to be a priority, or else the heroes will be destroyed in quests where they have to stop someone.

My worst expiriences with this game was against a gaming group that only maximized damage, because it thought everything else is just weak. They lost every game and trashed the game hard on every occasion ("I can't believe this sh*t game is from FFG") even when I told them why they lose, they didn't believe me and said something like "ok so if we immobilize him the game would have lasted maybe one more turn, but that wouldn't make a difference." It seems like this undervaluation of everything that isn't boosting damage is quite common. If the hero-party thinks that this is the only fun way to play dungeon crawlers, I would recommend Imperial Assault that has a much more one-dimensional approach to it, has more emphasis on combat and is much less puzzly.

I like your reply. It opens up more discussion.

To clarify, in my example that I describe, I believe a hero did have the ability to apply a condition but Skarn was only open to a single attack, and it wasn't from that hero. After Skarn's turn noone could reach him much less suppress him.

Damage, movement and conditions as you have pointed out are all important factors. Movement is easily hindered with warm bodies, altering the movement problem to a damage one. Conditions largely rely on doing a single point in damage, which partially makes the condition issue a damage one. This trifecta is heavily weighted to damage, so much so that most players recognize damage trivializes most encounters. Were there more of a "puzzle" element, as you describe, this trivialization wouldn't occur quite so frequently, or even at all.

Many here have mentioned alternating turns as a source of balance but I'm not actually convinced that is the issue. I see the problem more stemming from the fact that monsters and heroes take two actions on their turns, possibly even three. This makes for really swingy "activations" that cannot be countered by the opposing side. It would be like if, during a game of chess, each player was able to move a single piece two or sometimes three moves on their turn instead of one. Throw in a rule that if you manage to check the opponent and you still have a turn, that is checkmate.

One solution might be reducing all turns to one action, but that slows the game down and increases the power of extra-turn effects. Another rule might simply be treating Descent more like D&D or other RPG's and requiring one action always be a Move action, but this hurts the players more than the Overlord. Quite frankly, I'm not certain there is a good way to solve this with such small maps and uncreative win-conditions.

I think the problem is only a problem because of some hero abilities and heroic feats.... I mean they had to keep them in mind when balanceing the missions...

Because of that some groups have problems and some seem overpowered... for example every missions in which the heros have to move to a certain point (token, monster, exit or something like that) heros with more speed and abilities to get extra movement seem overpowered.... But you can't make Quests which take both into account... heros with more AND heros with less speed.

Also for the Scarn example: in some quests he's not allowed to get more than one move action, with the new golden rule that quest rules are "stronger" than card rules you couldn't play Run on him anymore to get a second move action.

I don't know which quest you meant, but would that be the one in which you thought Scarn was not reachable by the heros?

(Though I agree some Quests ARE almost not doable without certain abilities /heros and so on.)

(Though I agree some Quests ARE almost not doable without certain abilities /heros and so on.)

This seems to be a natural occurrence within any game where there is "special exceptions/abilities". I see it quite a bit in CCGs like Magic. A card is published and the publisher didn't see some odd synergy with an older card. Next thing you know, you have a killer combo.

The idea that a game like Descent has some complex synergies between Heroes/cards/quests that make particular combos more powerful or weaker just seems to be inevitable.