I've been playing this game since the week it originally came out, and I'm starting a new Road to Legend campaign next week. In this past week I've been programming a number of utilities to assist in my overlording and it's surprising how many silly little questions arrive when you try to pass these rules through the infallable logic of a computer.

Although most questions are resolved with common sense. I've been having a real doozy with this one:

Is it possible for a hero to equip two shields?

It sounds silly, but there's nothing in the rules that specifically forbids it, in fact, making shields specifically a 'hand item' and not making Shield a loaded keyword makes them just as capable of dualwielding as weapons.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't know why anyone would want to do this, unless they were playing a heavy armor tank character that lived to do nothing but deflect blows. But, I really want to hear people's thoughts on this.

Thanks,

-CriBolouf

We allow it. The only restrictions for equiping an item, are the types (armor, other, runes, etc..) and the number of hands. As long as a hero has two hands (sorry one-fist) he can use them as he sees fit (two 1 handed weapons, two shields, or one of each. As long as it's not a rune-shield (and you're wearing rune prohibiting armor), there aren't any other restrictions that could apply.

I'm not sure if there are rune-shields or not... next expansion maybe?

Also, in our current campaign, my hero uses two shields. We're in copper level, and I'm a 1 dice in each trait character (lyssa). Because my damage output is so dissmal, I've found it's better to run around the level with two shields.

There are significant balance and abuse issues here. Tread lightly.

I would not allow it by it's abuse potential.

I think it's a definate.

I recall there was a level in the original descent where i had to get across a dungeon i think i was holding a princess or something so i couldn't use a glyph. I put on two shield and ran i think.

We also used it quite a lot in rtl, if you end up standing at the front and your going to dodge why not use two shields it makes sense.

I dont think it unbalances it at all.

If players keep doing it and you feel its unbalanced start using deep elf's and frost them, then they wont want to use their shield, or use something that spawns lots of models, like kobolds or something.

There are many things that are ambiguous in Descent, but this is not one of them. By the rules as they stand, it's definitely perfectly legal, and indeed, I discuss it as an extremely viable starting build for non-RtL Descent in my equipment guide on BoardgameGeek.

cribolouf said:

As long as the hero doesnt mind not being able to attack, Id allow it. Heck, if I coudl find two great shields then thats all ID do too! Save alla the money for the other three heroes to maximize thier damage output, and then dump hvy armor and HP upgrades into me and Ill carry 2 shields all day long.

Teamwork at its finest

for some ranged players it could work verry easily while fighting you dont often move alot you could just advance and requip to 2 shields

there is a skil where if you battle you stil get 4 movement points you could use 2 of those points to reequip after hiting twice

I would agree if the trade off for the two shields in fact was that the player would not be able to attack the build is less prone to abuse. There are still some balance issue but they mostly require specific skill and that is manageable.

However, once your players realize, remember, read, or otherwise find out that they can reequip during their turn for movement points the door to abuse is opened. Now weather your players ignore the door, walk slowly through it, or run head long screaming YES! YES! YES! will determine you mileage with the two shield build

I can see this getting some errata soon enough.

granor said:

I don't understand why you would think that having two shields means you can't attack even without re-equipping; unarmed attacks don't require that you have a hand free, and in fact saved my butt once when I had a blast rune equipped and unexpectedly found myself pinched between a crushing block and a bane spider.

But I also don't understand why you think it's "abuse" to be able to re-equip dual-shields mid-turn. Spending a couple movement points to cancel a couple points of damage isn't exactly an earth-shattering ability--compare, for example, to the Ghost Armor shop item. And you're giving up two of your three backpack slots to hold the shields, which is a meaningful limitation. And your ability to make guard attacks. And there's only two shields in the shop, so no one else is using one, or you're using shields you found as treasure draws, which means you're giving up a fair bit of cash you could've had by selling them, and frankly finding creative ways to get mileage out of your random treasure draws is a significant part of the game's strategy. But in any event, you're unlikely to be able to have more than one hero dual-shielding, so we also can't forget that the Overlord can always focus on killing someone else if it's really that important.

I think that shields don't see enough use in my games. This is a tactic with fairly stiff preconditions, meaningful drawbacks, rather mild advantages, and nothing in the rules (that I can find) that would even hint it is against the designers' intentions. You very frequently can't use this tactic, and even when you can, there's lots of legitimate reasons for you to choose to do something else instead. What's with the smear campaign?

Yes two shields not that abusive - you have to remember that most (but not all) shields do not work if the damage ignores armor. In addition I think there are some 4-6 shields all total in the treasure decks so one person having both of them means that the other tank is usually going without.

In the scope of players being able to throw 20+ points of damage on a single melee swing, teleport to anywhere in their line of sight, or have 5 Armor points without wearing armor, equipping two shields is a pretty minor thing and not unbalancing.

I don't see much of a need to FAQ this one really - it has its own balance factors.

Antistone said:

Quesodog was the person that stated that by taking two shields you can not attack. I was saying if that were true the trade off is manageable but in fact a hero can attack in several different ways that have been stated here.

The usefulness of the two shield build is highly dependent on skill, equpiment, and party tactics. The potential abuse requires some combination of these things. Now in RTL some of these combos are far easier to get. I would agree that using two shop shields is not too difficult to handle by itself but I would be socked if your heroes do not find some of the combos. I feel that simply stating that the OL can attack a different hero is a gross simplification of the tactical nature of the game.

I stand by my statement There are significant balance and abuse issues here. Tread lightly.

Fimarach:

Armor ignoring damage is only done by traps, bleed, and aura as far as I can remember were you thinking of some other damage source? These sources seem infequent at best.

The total number of shields in the decks is a good point. This does suggest that getting an abusive combination would prove difficult. I could be paraniod here but the effort seems worth it to me. As far as the other tank going without, I have found that heroes tend to do well with one more heavely armored hero that takes most of the damage instead of several middle armored heroes.

I agree with Anistone and fimarach. I'm not really afraid of a party that includes a two-shield-bearing hero, who will most likely be using unarmed attacks, at least some of the time. It is perfectly legal. And I'm fairly certain I could devise some strategy to cope with him in the event he builds a killer combo (with the help of my fellow OL's on this great forum, I'm sure!). I would be curious about what sort of combo you might have in mind.

I disagree with granor's statement that simply attacking another hero is a gross simplification of the tactical nature of the game. The OL butters his bread (evil bread, mind you) by picking at the weakest link. Relatively speaking, there will always be a weakest link in the hero party. Concentrated fire and traps will help the OL determine which hero will fill that ignominious role.

granor said:

Would you care to list a few of these alleged "significant balance and abuse issues?" I've listed a bunch of specific considerations and examples, and you have thus far countered with vague allusions to unspecified combos that trouble you for no explicit reason. That's really quite unhelpful.

You are also writing as if you held the default position and we were proposing some radical new change. Actually, the rules-as-written allow heroes to equip two shields. You are proposing a house rule , and the burden is on you to demonstrate that this rules change will significantly improve the game, not to warn us to "tread lightly" in following the rules that actually currently exist.

The combos that immediately occur to me include:

• The Ambidextrous skill--but blocking 2 extra wounds/round (best-case scenario) does not strike me as exceptional for a skill card
• Combining several high-level shields--but a combination of several synergistic high-level treasures is generally expected to be powerful. This is an unlikely draw, and I'm not convinced it's actually better than other, more plausible high-level treasure combos.
• Hulking out your tank character and using normal tank tactics--but the problem to overcome with tanks is generally getting the OL to waste more resources attacking them, not making them tough enough to withstand more attacks.

It's true that attacking the hero of your choice isn't always simple, but repeatedly killing the weakest hero is the default Overlord tactic and explicitly endorsed by the game designer, so you really do need to take that into account in evaluating the power of defensive tactics.

Admittedly, I don't own and haven't played RtL; maybe that makes everything different. But if so, you should specify that you're assuming RtL. You also should actually present an argument, rather than expressing vague fears and ominous warnings.

Antistone said:

Antistone:

You are correct I did not give any examples that should be required.

I play RTL exclusively the last few months so my statements apply to that. I also own all the expansions.

Armor generalities:

Armor in descent is controlled by avalibility most of the time. This means if you have a hero in chain mail that means one of your other heroes will not have chain mail. This creates the weak link you mentioned and gives the OL a target. This target must then be protectedby the party using placement and guard orders. One of the main reasons the hero that has armor equal to his dice rating is broken is because he frees up a chain mail to be distributed to the other heroes in the group making the group as a whole more difficult to damage.

Party movement:

The party generally moves into rooms and creates a bubble of protection. This is generally done by having the high armor heroes in the front with the lower armored ones in the back. The lower armored heroes then move up to attack and then retreat. This slows the party down as they have to keep close to the weaker members. When an important object is in a room (read dungeon floor in RTL) a single hero can run for it. This hero is usualy either the highest armored hero hoping to survive the counter attack. This of course makes them one of the slower ones so they may not be able to reach the object. Or it is one of the lowest conquest points heroes with the assumption they will die once they get the object (this is important in RTL) I will call this over-extending.

Skills that help this situation:

Grapple, Taunt. Often time these skills force a monster to attack certain heroes or at least not be able to attack the weakest link.

Telekinesis is most useful to over-extending but is mitigated by the fact that the hero attached is often weak.

rapid shot: This skill is most useful if you can get into the center of a room but you risk leaving yourself open to counter attack.

Things I feel two shields unbalances:

Weak back hero. With the addition of the armor ring, the specialty armor, and the two shield build a weak mage hero can increase their armor by 5 for ranged and magic attacks, making them difficult to damage unless you are able to get a melee monster there.

Over extending hero: Now a fast moving hero can over extend with a low conquest value and still have a high armor value for the potential to withstand the counter attack. Adding the fly feat makes this tactic almost impossible to stop.

General:

The average armor value of the party going up is the most difficult issue I feel. This adds the fact that you can now convert one of the usually weak links into a low priority target for the OL and reduce his options of heroes to deal damage to. This will in general increase the number of low damage attacks the OL makes as if the party is moving correctly the weakest heroes should be protect from attack at least some of the time. A party almost always needs a runner. This runner is usually a weak charater with a low conquest vaule. Now this charater can have a low conquest value but not suffer from the weak armor value.

I understand that is is well within the rules to allow. I am just concerned that adding skills, feats, speciaty armor, and the fact that this hero can still attack will remove the weakest link from one hero and move the priority target to a different hero. This new weakest link is tougher than the old weakest link thus increasing the party's entire robustness.

Is this tactic worth the effort? Maybe it isn't.

OK, if you're not sure if it's worth the effort, then I really doubt you should be complaining. That's pretty much the exact power level you want everything to have, where sometimes it's a good move and other times it's not and you're not always sure which is the case. And Descent has such large random factors in the game that the window of acceptability is pretty large.

Of course dual-shielding will provide you better defense than other options. That's the entire point. If it wasn't good for something , we wouldn't even be talking about it. But it's an incremental improvement with real trade-offs, which is a recipe for an interesting tactical choice that improves the game, not for "abuse." You have to measure the benefits against the drawbacks, not simply observe that benefits exist and therefore it could maybe theoretically be better than the alternative sometimes.

Regarding your specific points:

• Shields are not the same as armor, because you can be (and almost always are) attacked more than once per round, so your "mage with +5 armor vs. ranged" example would be bogus even if you could afford all that equipment with your starting gold, which I'm pretty sure you can't. It's not even surprising if the weakest hero gets killed in a single round, in which case a shield is a lot closer to +1 health than +1 armor.
• Much of your discussion has no obvious relevance. Yeah, telekinesis helps with party mobility and rapid shot helps with clearing a room and those are nice things to have, but what bearing you think that has on whether or not dual-shielding is overpowered is beyond me. I don't see any particular reason those things would specifically synergize with having lots of shields--in fact, if you're spending extra MP to re-equip in order to use those shields, one could argue anything else with a movement or fatigue cost is anti-synergistic, because using one makes it harder to use the other. I'm also not sure the "bubble of protection" works the way you think it does in a typical game, but even if it did, I'm not sure how that helps your argument.

Hmm... just a funny hero build I thought up while reading this thread. It might not even be good, but funny and annoying I suppose (it works best for RTL, since Karnon would like a Subterfuge skill, but I guess it could work for vanilla too without)

Karnon

with: Ambidexterity and Bear Tattoo.

He carries the Mirror Shield, and the Skull Shield and a Chainmail (or better)

He can now can cancel 6 wounds a round (besides his 4 armour), 3 of which can cancel anything.

He is immune to all effect tokens.

He has 9+ Armour vs. Breath, Bolt and Blast.

He attacks with 1 Red and 5 Black (or better).

Bottomline, I think he's got a decent attack due to his many powerdice (though he can't spend surges). Obviously, this is probably only a viable build in copper level, and perhaps some of silver level (mirror shield is silver, so in copper would have to be crystal shield). In gold, his attack becomes too weak I think to be decent anymore.

granor said:

I dont mean to pick on you granor, and as such I should have clarified my statements regarding dual shields back on the first page.

I dont feel that dual shields are illegal but rather a tactic that has limited application to the underlying goals of descent. Under the proper circumstances dual shields makes a great tactic that could allow a party to withstand fantastic amounts of damage. But the proper equipment, skills, and situation for this tactic to be useful is rare.

I have presided over many descent games, both in RtL and out, and feel that the #1 thing that will kill heroes is a lack of progress. The OL has the ultimate benefit of time with his building threat, drawing cards, and earning conquest, so in order for the heroes to stay competetive (or live) is to keep moving and keep hitting those small goals (get the keys, unlock the doors, kill the boss, escape) to accomplish the bigger ones (aquire conquest and gold, beat rumors, get phat lootz, beat the avatar).

When a hero decides to sacrifice almost all offensive potential by equipping two shields, he becomes reliant on his buddies to make up the offensive difference. And even with the best of skills available to the heroes (knight, leadership come to mind), the number of attacks (and thus the amount of overall offense) that 3 heroes can contribute to a fight will always be sub-par to 4 actively fighting heroes. And when you arent hitting as hard as you can as a party, monster 'waves' take longer to cut through, bosses live a few more rounds, and all the while, more traps monsters and dark events are piling up to slow the heroes down even more. Its called the 'snowball effect', and it leads to some insane lopsided dungeon results (~45 OL conquest vrs ~12 hero conquest, an actual in game result from a single three level dungeon)

• Fighting skills Knight, Unmovable, Furr, Able Warrior, and Leadership (and Cleaving, Rapid Shot, Quick Cast to some degree) increase the overall number of attacks (including ones gained from placed Guard orders) that a party can dish out per round, but usually in order to utilize these the best, a party must come to a halt in the dungeon (or at least gain very few MPs) or spend fatigue (which requires slowing down to replenish with rest).
• By standing around fighting instead of moving forward through the dungeon, they give the OL threat and allow him to dig further through his deck. Most traps are cheap, and even as little as two to three turns is enough to draw/discard enough threat to flip the spawn marker and drop another beastman horde in. And if the heroes are having any trouble whatsoever, they can easily get bogged down and killed. Ive seen games where it is literally a crawl trying to get through rooms, each one taking 1-2 **hours** each. As soon as the heroes felled the last monster of a 'wave', another one was right on top of them again.
• Through the use of traps and special monster abilities (flying most notably), one can get around the 'wall' of tanks to the squishy guys in the back. Hogging the shields will not help a 8 HP, 0 armor mage that got jumped by a razorwing flying in from 4 miles away.
• Dual Shielding becomes an 'issue' when the wielder has Taunt (and even more so with Ambidexterious or Grapple). A high armor hero (Nanok comes to mind but hes already been proven to be broken) combined with two shields can taunt any enemy trying to attack other heroes towards it. But this comes at a sacrifice as well; eventually the armor and shields will run out, and (even worse) if the heroes become overwhelmed by monsters the taunter may not be able or willing to take anymore blows. On top of this, a melee attack with no green/yellow dice and no way to spend surges normally is not an attack that will have any real results beyond the copper level (and likely even during the copper level).
• I recall it being a good idea to encourage heroes to carry two weapons/etc. (This is relevant in regards to the re-equipment of weapons). Not just for countering broken CB cards and Frost, but to handle different situations. For instance, in the very first sessions of Descent, the tanks would frequently carry a sword/shield combo with an axe/dagger in the backpack for those times when more offense was needed. The mage carried Blinding Light for large monsters to give the party a small breather, and Sunburst for groups. And the ranger had the bow for armored beasties and the crossbow for short and heavy damage. Weapon diversification is a key tactic that I feel is vital for heroes to get down. It really makes fighting heroes difficult when they have weapons for horde control, large monsters, anti-melee units, sniping, armored foes....

These are just some things that I and my group have noticed. They have joked in the past about dual wielding two shields, but have never done it; the temptation to deal ~14 damage per blow is apparently just too juicy to pass up.

Quesodog:

First of all I know I live in America but I have far thicker skin than to assume simply because you disagree with me that you are picking on me. I know this is the internet and all but feel free to disagree with me on any point I bring up I will not take it personally.

Antistone:

a shield is a lot closer to +1 health than +1 armor. This really got me to thinking about how I was evaluating the two shield build. If you compare this to a healing potion it is worse in every way except for the fact that it can be re-used.

I will have to say your arguments have presauded me. My thoughts on this were wrong. I do see all your valid and well articulated points and I agree with them.