OK, this is a dumb, and very embarrassing, thing to say, but here goes - I am terrified of spiders. I'm not terrified of the little plastic ones, but I certainly wouldn't enjoy playing with them in Descent. But the game looks *really* tempting to me.... So, if I were to buy Descent and throw away the spider figures, would the game still be playable? I mean, I know you can house rule just about anything in any game, but I don't want to toss out the spiders if it would "break" the game. So, when I buy the game, what's the verdict? Throw away the spiders and sleep easy at night or man-up and play with the spiders?

I can't help but chuckle a little. Sorry

As for breaking the balance of the game, most OL players *hate* the spiders in the game, because of how large they are. a 2x2 creature that is as squishy as the spiders are kind of sucks. They don't do a whole lot of damage (Web is kind of cool, but only from Masters IIRC) and they die almost instantly from any attack, and being 2x2 makes them soooo unweilding and getting in the way that whenever I get a Spider Spawn card, I usually discard it for threat.

The biggest problem you will have is on the individual quests that have Spiders on them. Some are just for fluff, you could probably replace them with Sorcerors or Razorwings. But some quests are designed for spiders specifically, and so you should probably just not play those quests.

You could always picture them as large Ticks instead of Spiders

-shnar

Keep the spiders.

Consider it immunotherapy.

Get rid of your fear of dragons too.

Learn to fear gold weapons...

Personally, I'd recommend not being weirded out by by playing with fake spiders.

If that's not an option, tossing out the spiders is fine. They've got almost the same stats as skeletons, and you could just replace one with the other and things would probably be about the same balance (at least outside of Road to Legend and Sea of Blood, where creature category matters). You could pick up some large D&D minis on ebay that aren't spiders. They'll have the same base size and you can pretty easily get sets. Then a quick visit from a sharpee would remove all trace of spiders from the stat cards as well.

Or man up.

For reals? Please send me your spiders. I have arachnophobia myself, but I draw the line at Bane Spiders in Descent.

OK, OK, man-up it is. I'm not *that* afraid of the toy spiders, I'd just prefer not playing with them, if that makes sense. I may go the route James suggests and use skeletons and/or D&D miniatures. It's not a make or break thing, I just over think stuff, like - what if I buy this game and for whatever reason can't handle the spiders?

@The Warp - It's encouraging to hear I'm not the only one with arachnaphobia! And hey, if you can do it and ask for more spiders, then I feel much better about purchasing this game!

Wallabee_Champ said:

One of my friends who occasionally plays Descent with us is creeped out by the spiders too, so you're not alone in that feeling. =)

The game would still be playable without the spiders if you chose to get rid of them, but I wouldn't recommend it myself. You can just ignore/remove the spider spawn cards and agree to replace the spiders printed in the quests with something else, but to me it would be a little like blasphemy. =P

There are also a couple of quests centered around spiders (exploring giant spider tunnels and what not). It's not impossible top lay those scenarios without the spiders, but it would lose a lot of its atmosphere, imho.

they look better fully painted... in detail Muwahahahahahah!!

Oooooh, that's so cuuuute ! A spider fearing duckie !

Me get nastily kwaky but hey, listen to that : if you play the Overlord, you'll get use to the spiders at the point you will actually LOVE them : spawn three then three other spiders in the time of two of your turns, and you'll see the yelling and complaints of your players. Spiders getting crashed on the floor after that ? who cares !!! they had the time to poison and web everyone, and man, as an Overlord, I can tell you this is one of my biggest time in Descent

Yup, you said it "man-up and play with the spiders"
It will be a good chance to adjust to your fear.
Definately do not pass up on this game because of the plastic spiders. You'll really be missing out.

Steve-O said:

Hold that thought. So as Overlord, you can actually spawn spiders to freak out the players and make them play badly for fear of the not-exactly-very-useful spider-like plastic thingies?

I'd definitely suggest getting the game and seeing it as a kind of exposure therapy If that doesn't work out, you can still toss the spiders and use other minis with the same or even different stats in their place.

HellBoundOL said:

Painting mine right now! squeee squeeee (is that a spider noise?)

well i have a good solution to your problems... feel free to follow my instructions : step nr.

1. go buy about 1 kilo of scampi and a bottle of good red wine. ( if you ask me Chardonnay should do it). And something for the sidedish (tomatos,vegetables rice...whatever suits you)

2. ask a friend to dry brush your spiders red-slightly pink.

2.1 in the mean while invite your girlfriend over for dinner.

3.Cook the scampi using this recepie http://www.dishbase.com/recipe/shrimp-scampi/ until they turn the same color as the brushed spiders.

3. Remove all the claws from the scampi before serving.

4. Ask a friend to glue the claws onto the spiders, and to put a sticker over the bane spiders stats card with a photo of a furious scamp.

5. the dinner is ready (maybe add some candles to spice up the atmosphere).

6. wuola the bane scampi are ready and you might even get laid.

haslo said:

You can certainly try. Unfortunately for me the one player who's squeamish about spiders is reigned in by the other three who aren't, so using them doesn't lead to very many goof ups. Also they usually die too quickly to have any psychological effect. =(

Still, your head's in the right place. The OL can make a lot of distance by messing with the players' heads. =)

Just use other minis for the spiders and don't show the players the spider monster card.

Let's be honest the REAL scary monsters models in decent are the moving piles of poo. You know the ones that say they are really nagas, but are, in fact, mobile cleveland steamers.

hhiiii,

curently i'm playing with a group a friend, one of them, (a girl ^^), is so dam scare of them, even just hear the word spider in french or in english freak her out, so guess about those plastic creature..... , so i don't have choice to replace those nice spider by other creature, though i like the web ability .

No choice for me...

i'm a SAD OL ^^

I don't care about the spiders.

But, does anyone else consider it wierd that I have a strange fascination for the well-developed glutes of the Blood Apes or the gumdrop-like nipples of the trolls?