I already have RtL and I'm thinking of purchasing SoB. Do you think it is really different and worth your money if you have RtL? What are the differences and which one you' d rather have?

I am in the same boat. I have all expansion except SOB and have not yet decided to ever get SOB. The idea of the ship combat does not excite me (just personal taste, especially after reading all the comments about the fault mechanics of it). Other than that, there are ALOT of indentical/duplicate components in that box that you would already have from RTL.

I personally like RTL, but would also like to use some of the streamlined rules from SOB in RTL, which I can just get from online here.

Most likely though I will eventually break down and purchase SOB for the new dungeons, rumors, heroes, etc...

Actually there's very little in the way of duplicate components in SoB and RtL. The Silver/Gold power dice are the same, but who doesn't want more dice to share around the table? RtL has a LOT of extra dungeon tiles with outdoor tiles printed on the back, SoB has only 2 (the two tight corners). Most of the tiles in SoB are boats and their supporting tokens. Most of the tiles in RtL are the outdoor encounter tiles.

Note, there are NO new heroes in SoB, unless you buy the 1st print and then you'll get the special promo figure Nara of the Blade (she deals an extra damage for each space the monster occupies above 1, so she deals +3 damage to spider, +5 to dragons, etc).

There are a bunch of new skills in SoB, most of them replace vanilla skills that were seemingly over-powerful in the Advanced Campaign, but a lot of them are not useful outside of the sea setting.

I haven't played SoB to know if I like it yet or not, but from reading the rules and looking over the components, I am definitely excited to try

-shnar

Ask me again in 6 months after we A) finish our current RtL campaign and B) have time to play some SoB.

edroz said:

Same for me!

Looking at the rule sets, Sea of Blood is what Road to Legend would be if the latter could have gotten as much playtesting time as it's gotten real-world playtime. For that reason alone I'd rather have SoB. However, the sea battle aspect of it is new, and I haven't played it to see how well it works (or doesn't). It looks like fun, but that really depends on the encounter location cards and how the battles get set up.

Personally, I can't wait for SoB.

When I looked at the SOB rulebook, one of the things I noticed was that they included a new set of monster reference cards. For those of you who have this expansion, are those different than the ones in RTL at all? This was the main thing I was referring to in my above post. I dont have the expansion yet so can not confirm what components are the same.

Bravo McWilley said:

I haven't sat down to examine the cards yet, but I did notice the new monsters cards as I was pulling stuff out of the box. The one I saw at a glance (Beastman) looked like it was exactly the same as the RtL card. I would imagine you get all the same cards as RtL, which is in keeping with FFG's philosophy of making each expansion independent. They need to provide a new set of Advanced Campaign monster cards in case the consumer does not already own RtL. By the same token I would be surprised if they included ToI monsters as an update, since ToI supplies it's own RtL/SoB cards.

The answer the OP, the major difference is (obviously) the sea combat/swimming rules. Instead of having overland encounters like in RtL you have sea battles (including an encounter to land on an island before most dungeons.) Beyond that, the dungeon mechanics are the same. If you like the idea of adventures at sea, definitely get Sea of Blood. If you only really care about new and potentially improved rules to incorporate into Road to Legend, you can backwards engineer those by reading the SoB rules online and taking what you like back tot he RtL table.

I was on the fence about buying SoB myself for a while. I decided to cave in and buy it for a couple minor reasons: 1) I wouldn't mind having Nara the Fang, 2) I can see myself using the ships and ocean components in future D&D games, even if I never get around to playing SoB itself and 3) I had extra money in my pocket from Christmas. =) This logic might not hold for you, but it's how I came to my decision. I'm not saying SoB is definitely worth it, but I ultimetely decided it was worth it for me.

Bravo McWilley said:

They are basically the same with a few minor changes:

1) They fixed the misprints on the Hellhounds

2) They added the Swim ability to a few monsters.

Other than that, the stats appear to be the same.

I believe the SOB monster cards have updated hellhound cards as per the FAQ changes.

Beat me by a few seconds edroz.

What's the misprinted Hell Hounds?

-shnar

shnar said:

Page 9 of the FAQS (about RtL):

Hell Hounds

The Hell Hound Silver and Gold-level stats are in error. For the Silver Hell Hound, decrease speed to 4 and increase the Pierce rating on the Master Hell Hound to 4. For the Gold Hell Hound, increase the speed to 5.

A group of my friends started a SoB campaign last week. As stated above the monsters are pretty much the same as in RtL with the exception of some having the swim ability. The ToI monsters were not included in the set. Unfortunately (or fortunately for our heroes) we did not get into any sea battles. Hopefully when we gather next we will get into one. Game plays pretty well, no complaints so far. The Island battles are pretty fun. The scrub rules are a pain if your playing a ranged character. Trees treat the figure in it as having the shadowcloak ablilty. Over all, pretty fun.

We played quite a bit of RTL, and we've just started a Sea of Blood Campaign.

Many of us love Pirates and ships, so the idea of adding this to Descent made Sea of Blood a no brainer.

I agree that the advanced campaign is cleaned up a bit with SoB, esp with the "grace" rule and some other small tweaks. The overlord has also had his early game toned down because he can't start with an Lt, and can't bring out more than 1 before silver level. (at least Cpt Bones can't, the Avatar I'm playing as OL)

The ship combat is a bit abstract, but we had a BLAST with our first random sea encounter (Plague Ship) and our first island assault. One of the big differences you'll notice in SoB (besides all the ship stuff) is that range combat REALLY comes into its own in Sea of Blood. The ship and island combat feels absolutly wide open compared to the cramped dungeons of normal Descent.

This adds a nice bit of variety to the encounters and forces both players and Overlords to re-think common tactics.

Another re-think for expert hero players are the skill changes. SoB requires that many of the commonly loved skills (acrobat, taunt, and many others) be removed from the skill deck and be replaced with new SoB cards. For veteran Descent players this is a nice change, esp if your getting a bit board with constantly seeing certain skills being used.

Another core Advanced campaign mechanic change is the treasure map. If heroes get through all three levels of a dungeon, they score a treasure map token. Collect 4 tokens, and they can recover burried treasure worth big money or nice boosts. I like this as it makes the decision to bail on a dungeon at the end of the 2nd level a little tougher.

Which is better? They are different. SoB does have slightly cleaned up rules, but you can buy RTL and just read through the SoB PDF to fix that. I wouldn't buy SoB just for the rules tweaks.

I'd say SoB is a bit easier for the Heroes in the beginning, mainly because of the Lt restrictions on the OL. Also, the Overlord can't win by destroying a single city in SoB as he can in RtL. But over the long run it may prove trickery for the heroes to balance spending money on their ship vs themselves.

It really is going to come down to what like. If you don't like boats, pirates, and cannons, then SoB is not for you. There are less dungeons in SoB (no legondary dungeons, for example) in favor of Island adventures. If you prefer more dungeons and land adventures, and more Lt's on the board for the Overlord, then RtL is for you.

What is neat is now there are two campaign settings for Descent, kind of like Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms of old D&D fame. Both settings are cool, and work well. It's really up to you.