So I ordered Descent and I unveiled it to my friends today. There is one problem that has struck and if it is true it will probably just shelve this game for me and my friends. That problem is difficulty. It seems WAY too easy on the players' side. After only one death the party pretty much stabilized to a point where I could no longer deal damage to them except with traps in the overlord deck of which the point was pretty mute at the time. Just not being able to deal damage at all is just ridiculous but on the otherside, every single monster at my disposal was pretty much one shotted. The mage could one shot a master dragon.

So I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong here. I have a feeling I must have missed something in the rule book or maybe only the expansion has buffer creatures. I was playing with three heroes and I accidentally used the monsters for 4 player games and it was still ridiculously easy.

The first quest i insanely easy for the heroes and is really meant as a training exercise. The quests do get harder.

But yeah, many of the monsters can be one shot but a mage doing that to a Master dragon seems a little off to me unless he has an insanely good gold weapon.

I didn't know the name of it but what it did was something like pierce 4, Surge: +1 damage and Pierce 1.

Then he had a rune I think that was +2 range and +2 damage. and his character gave him a free 2 surges.

Which means that on any given attack roll he had a guaranteed 5 damage, pierce 6. as well as rolling 3 power dice since he had three in the magic skill. Every turn using battle to kill two enemies every turn makes it very hard for me to do anything.

All the players were doing 11 - 15 damage an attack.

Phlip45 said:

The hero ability sounds like Landrec the Wise, who is indeed one of the better mage characters in the base game. However, based on the above comments it sounds like you were letting him use a Rune AND a weapon, which may or may not have been correct. Basically all of the attack runes I'm familiar with require two hands to use, which means no other weapons can be equipped at the same time. Remember to pay attention tot he number of little hand symbols at the bottom of a given card.

That said, monsters do die quickly, especially once the heroes get gold weapons. Play the first two quests (which will be easy for the heroes) and then, if quest 3 is still a rollover, try playing something further in the book (like 5 or 6). There's little in the way of sequential story between quests so you won't be missing anything really by playing them out of order. I think there are only two that are connected at all, really.

Phlip45 said:

He pulled a strong character (Landrec is one of the best casters), a good gold weapon (Curse of Rot is great against heavily armored foes like dragons), and the Ring of the Arcane (an excellent gold Magic booster for his other slot). Mediocre heroes are beastly once they get a gold item, it's no surprise that a great hero becomes unstoppable once he gets two that zoom in on his specialty.

On the flip side, he's slow, has 0 armor and 12 health, so he should have been killed a few times before getting anywhere near the final room and its gold chest.

Typically games are won or lost by that last chest. If the heroes haven't been destroyed or brought within one death of loss and they get even the tiniest bit of offense inside the chest, the Overlord has lost.

Landrec is in our campaign right now, and his starting skill: Prodigy. He's found a Copper "other" treasure that gives him a free surge, so now he gets FIVE free surges every attack. He also picked up the Gauntlets that let's him use 2 surges to regain 1 fatigue. He's becoming unstoppable at Copper level!

I take that back, he's still very squishy so very stoppable. He's just got a lot of power when he's on the offense

-shnar

Well I can see how he got so buff, but the warrior was using only town equipment and was easily tearing apart everything. He played Mordrog, and had chainmail, which meant 4 on defense, and he had weapon mastery, mighty, and unmovable as his skills. Wielding just a sword and a dagger he had a base damage of 6 which easily killed almost everything in the first parts of the dungeon while the others just followed and collected treasure, where as I could hardly deal one or two damage two him max, when he had 3 healing potions at the ready and most the time used a battle action to make sure the beastmen couldn't touch him because it allowed him a free guard. Also the spell caster had Boggs, so it was very difficult to use my spawn cards.

Did I mention the mage had the mist shield thingy where he can spend fatigue instead of damage?

I should ask, which quests have you played? Just the first one? That one is notorious for being very easy on the heroes. The latter ones get much more difficult, and the first two expansions are *very* difficult on the heroes...

-shnar

I must admit that I am also quite new to the game but have already played a few quests as the overlord. I have noticed a few things about the balance myself.

When I was playing my first game we were using only the basic game, without expansion packs. We were playing the first quest and ,indeed, the game was easy for heroes. However, after implementing treachery rules from Well of Darkness and new overlord cards from Altar of Despair, the game balanced much better. For example, new spawn cards are much stronger. Spwaning a single master troll or 2 master blood apes changes a lot, even for a 4-hero team. They need some time to deal with such monsters, which allows you to spawn some more monsters. Always going for the weakest link (weakest health and armour) really works, even in the first quest, and makes the game much more challenging. We also use some home rules, taken from the German edition(available on boardgamegeek in pdf). For example, for a 4-hero party, they take 4 cards from the treasure deck and choose 2 (when the chest says e.g."1 copper treasure". Besides, some traps are really tough for players, especially using trapmaster card.

One thing I cannot understand are 8hp heroes, especially dwarfs, which in all other universes are rather tough. When you happen to randomly pick such a hero, the hero players are quite screwed, I guess.

I also have a few questions but I didn't want to start a new topic, so I decided to use this one.

Playing descent I have noticed a few small problems that distract a bit. First of all, using mentioned treachery cards makes me feel too powerful as overlord sometimes. For example, using boulder trap after a move from a second/third/fourth hero makes it really easy to kill the hero that already has moved in one shot. Moreover, in some dead end corridors heroes can't escape from this trap when it's rolling towards the end of it! Or am I misinterpreting smth with this trap? It allows to place the boulder 3 spaces away from any hero in any direction you want, right? Monsters are also very strong: spawning mentioned master troll and storming 8health hero often ends in a one turn kill! Especially when used in conjunction with traps... Moreover, my players didn't get it yet that Descent is kind of race game. In effect, they spend a lot of time resting and preparing for the next exploration, which allows me to spawn enormous numbers of monsters. All this makes me feel a bit unfair, especially considering my previous gamemastering experience, which in effect mutates our games toward a rpg game in which I try not to kill them too much... It looks that way sometimes at least.

Of course, monsters are rather 'soft', in most cases they can be killed in one action. However, some of them can also deal loads of damage. If players allow me to spawn for a few turns in a row, they are really finished.

I suspect that Enduring Evil is the answer in some respects, but I'd like to wait with implementing it. The reason is simple: I didn't spend 180$ to print all cards myself! I would really like to play all the quests from bought expansions and stuff without worring so much about the balance...

I would appretiate comments.

I kind of wish the Treachery rules were a little more randomized, otherwise you'll get an OL who uses his favorite 3 or 4 treachery cards all the time...

-shnar

I've also new to descent, and I've noticed that ranged combat seems a bit underpowered to me. Are there ane stratagies to use to make subterfuge better? Or is it just big creatures that they are bad against.

Thanks

Ranged combat is definitely weaker than the rest. It's longer range is usually unnecessary, so it just ends up dealing less damage with no upside. However, some of the best utility skills are in subterfuge like Cautious, Acrobat, and Shadow Soul. Unfortunately "pick the right skills" isn't much of a strategy unless you're playing a campaign.

Phlip45 said:

That's not a mistake; the monster stat cards with a "4" on them are for a game with 3 heroes (+1 overlord = 4 players total). It's kind of misleading. Also note that "2 players" and "3 players" are identical, since the hero player is supposed to control 2 heroes in a 2-player game (though I recommend 3 or 4).

Though the monster scaling really doesn't work, because, as you observed, heroes tend to kill things in one hit. Sounds like you had some extreme cases (melee hero with two offense-boosting skills, magic hero with an offense-boosting ability and gold other item), but most monsters die in 1 hit regardless, even in a 4-hero game (stats for 5 players). Which means things get easier the more heroes you use. People generally recommend playing with 3 or 4 heroes in the base game, and only with 4 heroes in the expansion quests, but, as noted, the first couple quests tend to be very easy for the heroes. I'd play a bit farther before you get too concerned.

I recommend you take a look at my Enduring Evil mod if you're concerned about the scaling.

"I was playing with three heroes and I accidentally used the monsters for 4 player games and it was still ridiculously easy."

this isn't an accident, this is correct. The Overlord counts as a player, so when playing with 3 heroes there are 4 players.

What about that boulder trap in a dead-end corridor? Isn't it too powerful if the heroes can't avoid it?

It is indeed very powerful if played right. The heroes do get one turn to run away though, because the boulder only starts moving at the beginning of your next turn. That's why you should probably try to block the heroes with monsters, like a ton of kobolds or play it in a dead-end like you said. Otherwise they have a pretty good chance of outrunning it, getting to and closing a door to destroy the boulder etc. It's very expensive in terms of treachery and threat, but it can be very cheesy/unfair. It was after all banned from the road to legends expansion because it was judged too powerful. I tend to avoid playing it.

_Loki_ said:

Except that the card is played when a hero enters an empty space, not during the overlord's turn, so you can play it on the last move of the last hero and have it start rolling immediately. (Well, potentially. You don't necessarily know when the hero moves if it's his last.)

When I've drawn it, it's been difficult to find an opportunity to play it with the heroes in a singularly bad position. The heroes can do some things to guard against it if they're paranoid. And it does cost 3 treachery. Still, it's rather volatile for my tastes; it doesn't look too difficult to have a situation where you could either get a TPK or completely waste the 3-treachery card (and the threat used to play it) depending entirely upon a single die roll. And expecting the heroes to significantly adjust their positioning or other tactics to guard against the possibility of the overlord having one specific card seems excessive.

You're right, I totally neglected the fact that it's played during the player's turn, probably just before the Overlord plays. To get a tpk on the first turn you'd need the heroes to form a neat 2x2 square at the end of their turn, and then to roll 5 range for the boulder movement, which is probably the maximum on red/yellow. That's pretty unlikely. After that, it's up to the map and the setup, because any hero can outrun a 2-5 move per turn boulder, or simply step out of it's path. Are they in a dead-end, did you spawn a ton of monsters behind them and they can't kill them all before the boulder gets to them, is there a door to close or a pit to jump in nearby, is there even enough space in front of them for you to be able to place the boulder? That is a lot of ifs which make the tpk unlikely in most situations, but doesn't rule out a death or two for such a massive treachery investment. The threat cost isn't worse than some door or chest traps, but is still considerable. It's the kind of threat your players might see you build up and wonder what you're up to. I played it once in the collapsing mines map of WoD. They had the choice between the cave-in or the boulder, and a ton of kobolds to slow them down. They hated my guts after that because it was the perfect situation for a Boulder and there was nothing they could do. So yeah, I think the players should be aware of the danger of such a card, especially in some maps with long corridors and 3+ trap treachery, and my players know the maps because they own the game. The main problem with this card is that it causes instant death and the players can't do anything against it in some rather specific situations. There's no ''roll a blank to avoid death'', just one roll in the hands of the Overlord. Like you say, it's extremely situational, either useless or a guaranteed tpk. If it's useless (i.e. 0-1 death), then you wasted a LOT of resources on it. If it's a TPk, the players hate you for it because it's rather unfair. You didn't outplay them in their eyes, you had a ''rocks fall, everyone dies'' card in your hand.

The moral of this story is : it's not worth its threat and treachery cost in most situations, and it's no fun for the players when it does pay off, in my opinion.

I’m new to the game too. I’ve been eying it for about 2 years now wondering if it was worth that mush cash. I couldn’t find anyone in the area that played it so I had no idea what I would be getting for that much money. However, if you’re a bang for the buck kind of guy, you can’t beat all the stuff that comes with it and its all made and presented very well also. The cards look great, sculpts are better than I thought they would be too and the map and numerous tokens are all printed on great material that feels really durable. I was very pleased with the games components compared to the cost of the game the moment I was unpacking it all.

The rule book proved to be pretty easy to understand and it has a nice flow and organization to it, but some things like the dice for instance aren’t explained real well. I could see how younger players or players that are relatively new to gaming could have trouble figuring out some of the smaller details. But…all and all; good job on the rule book too.

I’m an RPG player from the first days of D&D, Top Secret and Twilight 2000; all good and fun games in there own right. I’ve tried a few other RPG games over the years too, and have looked at the umpteen thousand that are now out there on the market at least once; all of them look very imaginative and fun in there own right but the thing that was catching my eye about this game from the first time I saw the box was the idea that the Overlord is SUPPOSED to kill the players. The idea that the game was a competitive game and a tactical strategy game AND had the potential to be a “streamlined RPG game” was the thing that kept catching my eye about it.

Granted, I’ve only had time to play the first dungeon, but the competitive play between the Overlord and the players is AWSOME, it’s THE thing that I love so far about this game. It’s about time that a fantasy “RPG game” came out that the DM can be as mean and aggressive as the rules allow because “it’s how HE wins”. No more holding back with a creature or trap because you’re “afraid of killing the PC’s”; so great job and idea on that.

As far as the first dungeon being easy, I would have to agree that it was a little disappointing to have so many of my creatures die with a single blow from a hero, but I found that was just a minor thing because like someone else has already said on this thread, the game is as much of a race as it is a fight. The guys that I took through the first dungeon, they kept slowing down to heal and rest and shop or train in town, buying me lots of time to go though the deck and accumulate what I needed to spawn creatures to my hearts content. The game boiled down to me winning by one move and one roll and one card that let me move one monster at double its speed. It was just what I needed at just the right time to change the game to my favor. So, so far…cool game! Well worth the money and time to play it.

Well enough of the commentary…I too have a question.

When determining movement and line of site diagonally between to squares that meet at the corners and each square is filed with an object like rubble that stops movement and line of site…can you look and move diagonally those squares.(for example… if you are wanting to move or attack diagonally to your left and the square to your left and the square in front of you is filled with an object that blocks movement and line of site (if you moved straight forward or straight left) can you move or get line of site diagonally between them)?

If you can…that seems kind of…unfair and…well…odd and …well…unrealistic. Yes I know this is just a game…but come on, how could you expect a monster or hero to get through such a small space? I could understand if you wanted to move diagonally to your left and the square directly in front of you was filled with an object that blocked movement and line of site BUT the square to your left was empty that you could “look and or move around the corner” of the object directly in front of you. But to think you could squeeze through the slit between two objects that “touch at their corners” is kind of…well…lame (IMO).

So can you do that like I understand the rules to say? Or can you not? If you can…I can already feel a house rule coming on.

builder_chris said:

Absolutely yes, and definitely do not houserule it! It is a critical part of the game engine, and you will massively change things if you mess with this - far, far more than you realise.

Check out DJitD pg9, the movement example and pg10 the LOS example. In both cases Silhouette is doing exactly what you are asking about.

Firstly, from a game mechanics POV this keeps things simple and consistent. Every space touching another space, even only at corners, is adjacent, and nothing can block between adjacent spaces except walls/closed doors. The mechanics for Movement and LOS are really very simple (although a lot of people don't seem to be able to 'get' the LOS algorithm - once you do you can very easily look at any map situation and tell more or less instantly which spaces are in and out of LOS without needing any measurement device), and this is important for a tactical boardgame to flow smoothly .
Secondly, from a 'unfair' pov, it can hardly be unfair if it is the same for all sides. The rules work the same way for the monsters as for the heroes remember...
From a 'odd/unrealistic' pov, nothing personal but that is simply limited imagination. Each space is an area maybe 2-3m square. An obstacle of some sort in that space may prevent you from 'occupying' or 'seeing through' that space in general, but that doesn't mean that you can't see or move around the fringes of that space, especially when combined with the fringes of another space. That is both logical and realistic. But from a boardgame mechanics pov you need simple, 'clean' rules that give you clear indications of what you can and can't do with each space.
IMO the rules are just about perfect* in this area. They are clear, clean and play smoothly, yet allow 'fringe' activities while maintaining general 'blocking' principles. Genius really...
*I am definitely not a rules apologist in general for Descent. Despite what you write about the rules being easy to follow etc as you play further and delve deeper you will find that they are very badly written, inconsistent (especially with terminology) and riddled with flat out errors. But its a brilliant game despite these problems! (possibly because here are some wonderfully simple yet subtle mechanics like this movement/LOS thing we are discussing.

In general, I would strongly advise against too many houserules too early (we play with 1 main one, and another very minor technical houserule where we think it is very clear that rule A doesn't interact perfectly with situation B from expansion C purely because situation B was impossible before expansion B and a very minor change in rule A keeps it substantially the same but allows some heroes to use their special abilities as 'obviously' intended but technically prevented by rule A's original wording (Laughlin Buldar and One Fist with off hand bonuses). There are a few truly 'odd' situational rules in the game (Soar is the main one) but that is almost always a product of keeping a mechanic simple and the balance good. Usually changing them to something more sensible upsets the game balance in unforseen ways and often the people who complain the most loudly about something that 'doesn't work' or 'isn't fair' are either playing a rule wrong or have some houserules that change things in ways they didn't understand.

Hi all,

Yes, I am a newbie playing Descent (Journey into the dark, no expansion). I think its awesome and my sister and cousin also love it! we are finding the rules slightly hard to follow (as we've never played a game like this before) but we work through them systematically and double check our actions each turn...yes it took about 6 hours to finish the first dungeon but it was worth it. We love it!

My question is that I was the OL and I had 2 heroes against me. The first time we played the heroes died. They took their time I think and didn't use their weapons properly. So I cycled through my pack twice

The second time we played the first dungeon I survived as OL by using the trap cards all the time and a few good spawns. The trap cards helped me out greatly.

1) My question is regarding the Power card that allows me as OL to reduce my threat cost for all trap cards and adds additional wounds against the hero. When I use this card does it sit in front of me for the rest of the game allowing me to always use one less threat to use a trap and gives me 2 additional wounds? Otherwise it doesn't seem worth the threat cost for one trap?

2) Also, when I use a pit card against a hero and they fall into a pit and get wounded etc. What happens next turn? Do they actually fall in a pit and can't see? Do they have to use movement points to get out of it? Or because they've already taken damage when the card was played, its a normal square for them next turn i.e. they attack move etc like normal without extra penalty?

3) Sorry last question With the shield cards and armor cards is there a sequence in which they have to be used when saving wounds. For example a hero had a +4 armor that gave him a free power dice roll for each wound taken to see if he can negate it. He also had a shield equipped which gave him the ability to exhaust the card and stop 4 wounds for that turn. Now can the hero, try and roll the dice to stop the wounds and if that fails can he then say he is using the shield to get rid of the 4 wounds? or does it have to be one or the other? it just seems to give him a lot of chances to stop damage.

Apart from that, this game is awesome and i can't wait to play quest 2

1) My question is regarding the Power card that allows me as OL to reduce my threat cost for all trap cards and adds additional wounds against the hero. When I use this card does it sit in front of me for the rest of the game allowing me to always use one less threat to use a trap and gives me 2 additional wounds? Otherwise it doesn't seem worth the threat cost for one trap?

Power cards stay in play for the rest of the game.

2) Also, when I use a pit card against a hero and they fall into a pit and get wounded etc. What happens next turn? Do they actually fall in a pit and can't see? Do they have to use movement points to get out of it? Or because they've already taken damage when the card was played, its a normal square for them next turn i.e. they attack move etc like normal without extra penalty?

A pit trap doesn't end their turn. They can keep moving and finish their turn. Leaving a pit costs 2 movement points. If they stay in it they only have line of sight to the adjacent squares, but all monsters still have line of sight to them. It's in the rulebook (p. 16) with the line of sight change in the FAQ.

3) Sorry last question With the shield cards and armor cards is there a sequence in which they have to be used when saving wounds. For example a hero had a +4 armor that gave him a free power dice roll for each wound taken to see if he can negate it. He also had a shield equipped which gave him the ability to exhaust the card and stop 4 wounds for that turn. Now can the hero, try and roll the dice to stop the wounds and if that fails can he then say he is using the shield to get rid of the 4 wounds? or does it have to be one or the other? it just seems to give him a lot of chances to stop damage.

The armor stops wounds from being allocated. The shield stops wounds from being applied. So the armor happens first, then the shield. It does give him a lot of chances to stop damage, so you'll probably want to kill other heroes instead.

I highly recommend reading the FAQ thoroughly for every expansion you own, as the base rules for the game are sometimes vague or unbalanced, and the FAQ answers many questions and fixes several balance problems. I also recommend that if it's you and two other people they either run 2 heroes each or have one hero they share. The game has stats and rules for having just 2 heroes, but the actual play experience for 2 heroes is highly unbalanced in favor of the overlord because of action disparity and the inability to stop spawns. The one or two fewer wounds per monster doesn't actually change the game enough to balance things, as most monsters get one-shotted anyway.

To further answer part of 2) The space on which the pit trap was played becomes a pit space, and anyone entering it (deliberately or not) suffers one wound ignoring armor, and has to pay 2 MP to leave it.

Thanks so much guys, makes sense I appreciate your replies!