I don't mean to be "that guy" and scream "broken rule!" but has anyone else run into the issue of having the OL purchase Death Head at the start of the game and proceeding to completely run over the party? In the first dungeon, with just town deck treasures, we couldn't drop a skeleton in one hit, so between the piercing shots and the exploding skeletons that ignore armor, there were between 3-5 party deaths per dungeon level. After one dungeon and two encounters, the OL has managed to upgrade one category of monsters, buy a Lt., complete one siege of the Leivithan's shackles. It goes without saying that Divine Favor has already kicked in.

We've been playing Descent for years, and we ran through RtL, and in all our games we've never seen anything this unbalancing. Maybe it's just me, but it seems way under-costed at 13 points. There's no question that it's a cool ability, but should it really be available to the OL at the start of the game?

What exactly does it do?

All non-master skeletons gain the ability to explode at any point in their turn, dealing 1 red die damage that ignores armor.

Between that and Pierce 2, it's a guaranteed 4 points of damage per skeleton and usually closer to six. Since the OL has "Hordes of the Things" in play, and there is always a skeleton option in the monster list, there's anywhere from four to six skeletons on each level, meaning 2-3 hero deaths JUST from skeletons. Not including traps, spawns, and other nasty-ness on the level.

I suspect it wouldn't be as much of a problem if we were geared up to quickly deal with the skeletons, but fresh characters with town treasure need really good dice rolling to a skeleton in one shot. The speed he was able to kill us with, over and over again, allowed him to upgrade his monsters on the third game week, so just when we got a couple of copper treasures and were starting to be able to deal with the skeletons, they're silver and dealing a lot more damage. It just doesn't make sense to me that this upgrade can be purchased at the start of the game. This is more of a 20 or 25 point ability than it is a 13 point ability.

I really don't like to complain about a rule this much, but it's one of those things that has tipped the scales so far in the OL's favor that the campaign is very quickly becoming not fun to play in.

Can you please post the actual text? That seems to vague to understand the rule properly.

I would assume though that "exploding" kills the skeleton, removing it from the board. With as squishy as skeletons are, I don't see this as game unbalancing as you think it is. Rarely do our skeletons get within 5 spaces without dying almost immediately. In fact, I like this ability since it gives the skeletons something to do and the heroes now won't just ignore them.

-shnar

I found this elsewhere on the forum...

"Upgrade (Captain Bones only): Death Head (13)

All your normal (i.e. non-master) skeletons gain the ability to explode. They may do this at any point during their activation for free, dealing one red die of damage (ignoring armor) to all enemy figures in adjacent spaces. Skeletons that explode are instantly killed and cannot be prevented from dying by any means."

I dunno, maybe we don't have enough missile weapons, maybe it's bad dice luck, maybe we don't have the right mix of heroes. But whatever it is, facing 4-6 of these grenades in every encounter has only meant the death of our heroes and not a whole lot of fun. Eliminating them all at range would be ideal but with so many on the board, we're always subject to a few making it in close to explode before we can get rid of them. Remember, these are really low level heroes we're talking about here...we're only on the third game week.

Any help would be appreciated.

Issue guard orders to ranged if you can't two skeletons with a Battle action, and watch your distance since Skeletons can only walk 5 spaces?

I only played one RtL campaign so far, but Skeletons quickly became "the maybe annoying things you don't care about nevertheless", I don't believe they ever really hurt any of the heroes That was with a high-armor Nanok with Taunt however.

Assuming the heroes spread out or stay back such that a skeleton can't hit more than one of them with a single explosion (which may not always be possible), that means the skeleton is inflicting ~2 wounds in exchange for likely saving the heroes at least one attack trying to kill it on a future turn (though maybe not if you've got effective AoE). So...probably noticably worse than simply giving them +2 damage on their attacks, since it's harder to use (shorter range) and saves the heroes time if you use it.

That certainly doesn't sound trivial, and I could see it being brutal in levels where heroes are forced to clump together for one reason or another, but it doesn't sound obviously game-shattering. Of course, I say this without having ever played RtL or SoB, let alone played with this particular upgrade.

In my experience each new expansion brings new abilities into the mix that throw people for a loop. Once these abilities are found they can make the next couple of games easy wins for the heroes or the OL, but in time the opposite side learns how to deal with it and then it's not so bad. This sounds like one such ability in SoB. It is admittedly very cool for the OL, but proper hero tactics (many of which have bee suggested here) should make it manageable without breaking the game. Despite all the rules concerns this game presents, one good thing about it is it's always making us think, always making us adjust our tactics. Keeps things fresh.

I agree these new "cool" powers can be annoying when they first crop up, and perhaps in an extended campaign the effect is worsened by the fact that things don't reset after each dungeon, but I don't necessarily think this card will break the game as it is. The effect it has had already might lose you this campaign, but I would like to remind you that the OL does get to win on occasion. The idea that the heroes will always come out on top is not a foregone conclusion in Descent. Next time you'll be ready, and I think you'll find the ability not quite so bad as you thought.

danno said:

sorry you lost me there.. you cannot kill the most fragile unit ever in descent with a single attack unless you get lucky? what are you using.. nerfguns?

besides.. this screams for a sunburst solution.

I actually think the Sniper upgrade for the Sorcerer King in RtL is harder to deal with than this. This the OL has to at least sacrifice the skeleton to get it work, and it doesn't scale* with the Eldritch upgrade.

*and by scale here I mean that the Sniper upgrade gets more and more useful as those Skeletons get more range and pierce bonuses from the Eldritch upgrade.

Which would take priority: A guarding melee hero spending his guard order to attack a skeleton that has stepped next to him, or a skeleton exploding? It may be a moot point since the skeleton could poke the hero two steps away to make him lose his order.

As far as countering this OL skeleton suicide bomber strategy..

Shields will help. Giving melee heroes a magic/ranged weapon with a green dice (crossbow), should let them kill a skeleton a step away, with little to no fatigue to add power dice. A walking stick will also allow an attack against a skeleton before he can explode. Depending on which expansions you're using, you may not have a walking stick though.

This won't cancel his strategy, but it should help.

My question would be is your OL using Captain Bones or being a cheater and just using the ability?

snacknuts said:

Only the cursed shield will help, as the explosion ignores armor.

I haven't played SoB yet, but we've done a lot of RtL. This looks like an ability that will be great at first but rapidly lose its luster as skeletons get upgraded. Increased health, speed, range, and pierce means they're highly likely to survive for a second shot, so blowing them up for a couple of points of damage is usually going to be a bad idea. It'll be a useful parting shot for skeletons that survive the first barrage, but that should only happen against ranged characters or unlucky rolls.

snacknuts said:

Guard orders can explicitly be used at any time during the overlord's turn, and by precedent can be used in reaction to a declared action (such as an attack) to force the overlord to "rewind" to before he declared it, as long as dice haven't been rolled. Unless this explosion ability has rather specific instructions that would prevent the use of a Guard order in reaction, I would say the Guard order definitely has priority.

True, but guard orders are lost when you're damaged, so all the OL has to do is use the skeleton's attack first, outside of the range of the attacker. Melee guard orders will be pretty useless against this ability except in situations where you can set it up so that they have to get within your reach to have line of sight.

snacknuts said:

The guard order definitely takes priority. Not only because of precedent on other ruling, but also because the melee hero can interrupt the OL's turn as soon as the skeleton steps within range, even before he declares if the skeleton will be exploding. So yes, you could wait until the explosion is declared (but before dice are rolled) to use the guard, but if your OL has problems with that you can just hit it as soon as it enters an adjacent space. After all, there's very little other reason a skeleton would get that close to a guarding hero, so its a safe bet he's about to explode

And I disagree that melee guard orders are useless. Their effectiveness is admittedly reduced, but the skeleton might just as easily miss when it shoots from two spaces away, and then it would need to try to explode or else run away before its activation finished. If it tries to explode it might get cut down by a melee attack (or the guard might miss too), if it runs away the heroes might catch up and kill it before it gets another chance to activate. These are the decisions an OL must make...

in our campaign. I bought this ability. It is something the players had to always be on alert far. I saw a lot more gaurd orders, and they were always concerned about the skeletons

My players have always walked over skeletons in previous RTL campaigns, so its interesting when they are actually concerned about them.

Steve-O said:

Me too. They're not useless, just highly ineffective without luck or good placement.

I happen to be the OL in question here (who is perhaps taking a bit too much pleasure in Captain Bones' ability for hordes of suicide-skeles), and I really have to admit, that from my end, it feels a bit harsh, hell sometimes I think I am doing something wrong. I mean, honestly, I get to shoot them, and then I get to move in and blow them up (or I get to move them, stop one square away...just outside of guard range, and shoot them, and the move one guy in, let the guarding character have his shot, and them move them in for a sweet Palastinian inspired undead suicide attack). The shooting isnt much of a big deal (well except for the PIERCE), but where this end up being uber-harsh is in the encounters, since the skeles have SWIM, and their little sloop starts feeling a bit cramped.

Part of me wants to "go easy on them", but then the other part of me is like "No way, until this campaign goes silver, this is all I get!"

One person did hit on this, that at the beginning of the campaign, copper skeles (of the non-exploding variety) are basically ignored as being a non-threat. But with Death Head, they become a huge threat, and the heroes fear them. However, as the campaign advances, Skeletons are going to be much less likely to commit suicide since their ranged attacks eventually outstrip the damage potential of blowing up, and blowing up will only be saved for special occasions, like two (or more) heroes clumped together, or as a guaranteed "finishing move".

If you're feeling that bad about it, just house-rule that you cannot Explode if you've Attacked that turn. In otherwords, the exploding *is* the attack. I think that will balance it for you...

-shnar

Trust me, he doesn't feel THAT bad about it.

CanadianPittbull said:

He is indeed using Cap'n Bones...he has not, as yet, engaged in THAT level of a ******-baggery.

Out of interest, what's the hero setup in that campaign by the way? I was thinking about it the other day, and realized that (also in part due to all the encounters with flying monsters, and the way cannons work) it might be better to have three potentially ranged (subterfuge or magic) heroes and only one brawler/tank type. I guess that would make sniping skellies before they explode easier, too.