We're about to start a RTL campaign and the dude is letting us pick our own characters. I was wondering from those of you who have played which characters are better for RTL. We have all the expansions so we have all the characters. For me, I was thinking of using Shiver (the mage with Aura 4) as her ability will keep just about any melee character away from me early or the dude that throws the 5 power dice. I would normally rather have the extra skill over the 2 extra power dice but being you only start with 1 skill anyway then buy more later, I think that's a pretty sweet trade.

thoughts???

Dirty Jerzy Boy said:

I haven't played with Karnak (I think that's his name, the 5 melee dice guy) but I've heard he's actually not all he's cracked up to be. The inability to add that one more dice with fatigue after you have rolled can make a big difference.

Opinions will vary on the best party, but here's what I've always considered a nightmarish party to deal with as an OL:

1) Nanok of the Blade: Yes, only 2 melee dice to start but he begins with 4 armor and if you buy him the Ring of Protection he's a 5. Extremely annoying for the OL to deal with.

2) Tahlia: Hands down (IMO) the best hero ability in the game. Being able to move during the Guard action is insanely good. Get her skills like Knight, Unmovable or Tiger Tattoo and she is awesome. It might sound strange, but Shadow Soul on Tahlia is actually really cool as well.

3) Kirga: Her ability in RtL dungeons extremely limits the OLs ability to spawn monsters due to their size.

4) Landrec the Wise: He just gets insanely strong later in the game when you are using silver and gold treasures, especially ones with Blast. He can just clear out whole sections of the dungeon. Get him Spiritwalker,and even with the nerfed 5 range in RtL, he can sit back and declare battle actions and just cut through monsters from a distance.

wait.. its better to throw 3 dice and add dice with fatigue than throwing 5 dice right away? what logic is that..

best party in my oppinion is:

thalia , tobin / laurel of bloodwood, kel the seer / landrec, laughin buldar / karnon / Okaluk and Rakash

thalia for obvious reasons: 3 meele, awesome guard order, 16 hp 2 armor

give tobin a good bow and the right skills.. his damage will deal with everything (promo)

kel the seer is by far the best mage (promo), landrec is quite alright as alternative

as 4. character you can either take an additional damage dealer or a runner. with basespeed 6 and stealth Okaluk and Rakash are very good to start with.

Turric4n said:

Never said it was logic, I was saying what I had heard. Consider this though: You are facing an encounter leader. He has 4 wounds left and 4 armor. You have 2 wounds left and are the only party member not dead.

Roll 5 dice: You get a surge, two enhancements, and 2 blanks. Your red dice gave 3 damage, and the green gave 1 damage. If you had another surge, your weapon would have added +2 damage and killed the leader but you can't add any dice with fatigue. Instead, he lives and kills you at the start of his turn and you get a TPK for the encounter.

Roll 3 dice: Same results for the Red and Green. Roll three black dice, get 2 enhancements and a surge. Add a dice with fatigue, rolls a blank. Add a second dice with fatigue...roll a surge. Encounter leader dies.

With rolling those 5 dice, you have no option for adding more dice to try and get that last little bit you need to kill him. Plus Karnak starts with one less skill, which I really don't think is a decent trade for starting with 5 dice and not being able to add dice with fatigue to an attack. Just my opinion.

starting with only 2 skills is okay for rtl.

i dont get it... you rather throw 3 dice and add dice later instead of rolling 5 dice and getting the SAME result without cost.

It's not adding dice that's the problem, it's upgrading them. Karnak cannot add upgraded dice after he rolls, any upgrades he does have to be beforehand, which means there's a good chance they'll be wasted.

Monster with 8 health, 3 armor:

If Karnak rolls 10 damage, he's done. Someone else rolls 8 damage, they can add upgraded power dice to finish it off.

If Karnak upgrades some dice to make sure the enemy dies, but then roll much more damage than he needed he spent fatigue for nothing. If someone else rolls more damage then they need, they never lose fatigue on accident.

It's not a massive disadvantage, but IMO there are definitely better melee characters out there. Nanok, Tahlia, Laughin, and Lord Hawthorne are all better options to me.

James McMurray said:

+1, especially the part about not being able to add upgraded dice.

Is there anything that says that Karnon has to roll all of his power dice at once? Can he roll a portion of them (say, 3 for example) then decide if he wants to upgrade either of the last 2 to silver?

Here's what we (me and my roommate) think about an epic party:

If using FFG printed characters only -

Nanok, this is a must since in RtL he can be incredibly durible without taking up armor from other characters. Spending the resources to upgrade his power dice increases his armor, it's a buy one get one free kind of sale in the oh so important early stages of the campaign. 45XP into the campaign he's a 16/4/7/4, its hard to find copper mosters that can do enough damage to effect him.

2nd String - Karnon, Thalia

Tobin - This guys is so broken it's not even funny, give him skills to increase range and see through obstacles. He's adding 5-8 damage to each of his attacks and isn't fragile.

Laurel of Bloodwood - This is the not quite broken version of Tobin. She can really rack up the damage, but you have to be more careful with her 8 health

2nd String - Ronan of the Wild, Kirga

Landrec the Wise - Those two extra surges are pretty good at th beginning of the campaign, but towards the end when he's sporting Flame Strike he becomes the ultimate crowd controller. 2 free surges + 5 fatigue + 12 health (good for a mage) = awesome

2nd String - Mad Carthos,

If you're able to use the FFG character creator there are some interesting things to consider:

Seer (9 point version) - This kills to ability of the OL to accumulate threat. Even if this character is otherwise useless, the party has expended 25% of there abilities to destroy at least 50% of the OLs abilities

Guardian (9 point version) - By taking a "nimble" character you begin as 8, 6, 0, 1 and 3 dice in Magic, 1 skill in each catagory. Spec the character out with fatigue upgrades, and Spiritwalker is essential, and ShadowSoul a great movement mechanic. At frist the 1 speed can seem cripling, but if played carefully, by the end game you can be a 8, 12, 0, 1 character that can effectively attack 15 times a turn (2 from battle, 13 from guard order) and each attack can come from any player within 5 spaces of you. Played right, this can be very versatile character that can protect the whole party or deal serious damage to a single target.

Sorry for the long post, but this is what we've found to be the best. Part 2 will cover some other characters that don't wall into the nice, neat categories.

GT_Entropy said:

pg11 of the Descent: JitD rules pdf

Melee Attacks: Melee attacks can only be declared against adjacent spaces. However, a melee attack only misses if a miss result is rolled. Range results are ignored during melee attacks. When a hero makes a melee attack, he adds a number of power dice to his roll equal to his melee trait.

Same wording for Ranged and Magic attacks.

which makes your point invalid

Turric4n said:

Whose point?

Big Remy said:

Ok, after a bit of rules lawyering, we agree with you. Thanks Remy!

but what point is now invalid?

Turric4n´s point

Big Remy said:

this one. karnak just rolls more damage than any other character to begin with.

Turric4n said:

It's not that the number of dice you're using matters - what matters is giving up a skill slot that you can't replace with fatigue.

5 Dice is 5 dice, but you always have surged IF needed - most of the time (94%) you kill any monster in one hit & all monsters in one round.

I'd rather have an extra skill and spend fatigue than over kill every round & be short a useful skill.

Turric4n said:

Yes, he does. But he can never roll any extra damage afterwards. If he wants to buy upgraded dice to make sure he kills something, he risks wasting a resource. No other character in the game does that. I'm not saying it makes him horrible by any stretch of the imagination but that, coupled with his fairly lackluster ability*, keeps him from being on my A-list.

* frost, fear, and ice are incredibly rare in Road to Legend. Frost only shows up once (maybe twice?) unless the overlord chooses for it to appear. Ice is only in 4 dungeon levels. Fear is slightly more common, and will be a factor in two of the legendary areas, but is still incredibly rare.

Turric4n said:

He has the potential to roll more starting damage than any other character to begin with. However, take any 3 dice hero and and give him the Mighty skill (+2 damage) and he just got the potential to do at least the same without having to add fatigue.

Again, I never said he was horrible. I said he wasn't as good as people thought he was going to be.

me neither. thalia is first pick by far.

he is however NOT short of a skillcard in RTL, you start with 1 skill. only downside is that he can choose 1 out of 2 instead of 1 out of 3. this gives him a headstart of 1000gold and 30 exp.thats his ability in rtl.fear and ice immun are bonus.

The new promo-fig Kerr is pretty good in Sea of Blood island maps. Her ability that obstacles don't block LOS gives her LOS for the entire island, which means no spawning for the overlord, period.

But, the island maps are just a small portion of the game (what, 10%?) so maybe it's not as great as it sounds...

-shnar

shnar said:

I thought it was just no obstacles block LOS when making an attack?

It just says Line of Sight, nothing about attacks or spawning:

"Obstacles and other figures do not block Truthseer Kel's line of sight. Kel ignores the Shadowcloak ability."

So she's quite the gal to have on those island maps...

-shnar

shnar said:

Christ they messed that one up. Hopefully they will errata her so she doesn't break the game worse than it is.

I have a feeling that's probably the proper fix for her, her ability is only when attacking..

-shnar

We just started two new Sea of Blood campaigns but it's the same idea - characters with strong abilities that translate well to the campaign game.

My choice was as follows:
#1 Varikas

Varikas is a death knight. That's enough for me right there. But if you want mechanical uses, his regaining 1 fatigue each turn means he doesn't have to stop for rest orders; he just keeps going. In silver campaign level he picks up MIthril Plate (Gain another fatigue at the start of each turn) and now he can pick up Ghost Armor. Nearly Unkillable. I lucked out and got Shark Tattoo.

#2 Vyrah the Falconer

Vyrah isn't that great on his own; nothing to write home about. But Skye is indipensable. Every fight will be either against a dungeon/encounter leader or a lieutenant. The OL will be saving all his dodge and aim cards for those big guys, and Skye shuts that down as well as making them one less armor. This means you can pop a power potion and use an Aim without fear of the stupid Dodge card.

#3 Runemaster Thorn

This guy is hilarious in the ocean and island encounters. He can teleport to the other ship and mess with their sails or battle their dungeon leader. On the island map he can teleport to the other rune and activate it. The rest of the party ports to town and comes in 2nd turn on the newly-opened glyph. On the first island encounter there's that stupid manticore you have to deal with - Thorn just releases it first turn.

#4 Anything, really

Tahlia has been mentioned quite a lot but I don't like her. It gets boring having her in every campaign. We chose Landrec the Wise, another sure bet. But I was going to go with Spiritspeaker Mok. His ability, over the course of the campaign, will really add up against the Overlord.

But I play to frustrate the other player(s) depending on which side of the table I'm on.

You don't follow the rules of the book and "draw 3, pick 1" hero? We decided that just letting the heroes pick whomever they want was too powerful, so we do the draw3/keep1, but we do allow redraws as a group. In other words, if the entire group is displeased with the draw, they can discard all the heroes, reshuffle, and every hero redraws 3 heroes to pick again. It's the same as saying, "We quit the campaign, let's start over." but it just happens sooner. This way, you'll most likely get the type of group you want, but it won't be a cherry-picked group of the best-of-the-best heroes.

Landrec is exceptionally powerful, probably the best magic user in the game, especially if you combine some of the other "free surge" abilities in the game. In our campaign, Landrec has Prodigy and currently a Copper Treasure that gives him a free surge on every attack. So he has FIVE free surges, in addition to every surge he rolls. The rune he uses the most has ~ +1 Range, ~ +1 Damage, so he basically gets +5 Range/Damage on every attack, making him a powerhorse.

-shnar