I know that IA is basically a reskinned version of Descent, and I'm wondering to what extent we can look to Descent's development in predicting the future of IA.

Are there any concepts from Descent that have yet to make their way over to IA? What about heroes? I'm willing to bet there is a Barbarian type hero who has abilities pretty similar to Gaarkhan, and a Healer type that's pretty similar to MHD-19, and a ranger or wizard that's pretty similar to Mak. What are the other types that have been covered, and what other heroes does Descent have that don't have an IA counterpart?

One of the key differences - and in my opinion, a rare occasion where Descent does it better - is in selecting your character class.

Descent has four types - warrior, scout/ ranger, healer, wizard. The hero you choose is automatically from one of these types, and you then search the type to decide what subtype you want to be.

For example, the warrior could be a knight, or a skirmisher, a beast master, Marshall, etc.. each has completely different skill pathways.

I prefer it because you can replay the hero and see him develop in a different way based on what type you choose to play. IA just doesn't have that flexibility.

One option for IA would be a set of generic skill upgrades, that anyone could access. For 2 xp you could gain a special surge ability, for example. I think the xp cost would have to be quite high to stop abuse; but it would allow so,done to build a character in a different way if they really wanted to.

13 minutes ago, ellhaynes said:

One of the key differences - and in my opinion, a rare occasion where Descent does it better - is in selecting your character class.

Descent has four types - warrior, scout/ ranger, healer, wizard. The hero you choose is automatically from one of these types, and you then search the type to decide what subtype you want to be.

For example, the warrior could be a knight, or a skirmisher, a beast master, Marshall, etc.. each has completely different skill pathways.

I prefer it because you can replay the hero and see him develop in a different way based on what type you choose to play. IA just doesn't have that flexibility.

One option for IA would be a set of generic skill upgrades, that anyone could access. For 2 xp you could gain a special surge ability, for example. I think the xp cost would have to be quite high to stop abuse; but it would allow so,done to build a character in a different way if they really wanted to.

I really like that idea! I wonder how they'd work, though. If they're pretty good abilities, I'd expect them to be snatched up pretty quick. If they're not that great, they may never be used.

Maybe we could get a deck of 15-20 of these neutral abilities, ranging in usefulness (and we could add more cards with more expansions).

Then, after the deck is shuffled, the heroes draw 1-2 of them and add them to the pool, from which any hero can purchase them. If no one gets them, they're shuffled back into the deck.

Anyway, there's also some mounted heroes, I believe. Not sure I'd want that with this game, though.

The mounted hero is rubbish, it just doesn't work right. Hope to avoid that.

I like the idea of the deck of cards, and you could actually introduce some basic system to limit who can take what - so for example, you could offer a 3 xp upgrade ("bodybuilder") to gain +4 health or something, but the requirement could be that you have to already have 12 health; or be rolling at least one red die for your strength interactions. The idea being that it would be available for people like Gaarkhan and Biv, but not Gideon.

(completely made that up on the spot to show the concept, suspect I've got the detail wrong somewhere!)

The other idea Descent had just trialled in the last box set was the concept of multi class - they had trialled warrior/ wizard and scout/ healer. The basic approach was that you got some great 1 and 2 xp skills, but almost no 3 xp skills (Descent never offered 4 xp skills). This again added more variety and reflected well most RPG experience of multi class heroes - great to begin with but level up too slowly to keep up with the rest of the party.

Thats one of the reasons Descent players are so unhappy with the current freeze, but also a bit puzzled - we saw a glimpse of how multi class would work and, basically, loved it - so it's annoying there's nothing new coming to trial some of the other potential combinations.

IA is by far the better game overall, but I really wish there was a way to build more varied characters.

3 hours ago, ellhaynes said:

I like the idea of the deck of cards, and you could actually introduce some basic system to limit who can take what - so for example, you could offer a 3 xp upgrade ("bodybuilder") to gain +4 health or something, but the requirement could be that you have to already have 12 health; or be rolling at least one red die for your strength interactions. The idea being that it would be available for people like Gaarkhan and Biv, but not Gideon.

(completely made that up on the spot to show the concept, suspect I've got the detail wrong somewhere!)

Gaarkhan has BGY for strength tests. Keep in mind, test successes are surges, and those dice are not necessarily damage heavy.

It's a good idea. Perhaps the trick may be to try and price them one level higher than the heroes actual upgrades.

For instance, a Diala 2xp upgrade is equal to a "skill level of B." The equivalent generic xp upgrade would be 3xp and be equal to the same "skill level of B."

Not sure if that would be worth it or not?

I kind of like IA's system better, to be honest. It helps to keep all of the characters more unique and to give them some personality.

Just to clarify a little bit how Descent does it, you pick a hero (which has stats and two special abilities on the hero card, essentially just like IA) and then you pick your class deck (which contains all of the XP upgrades). The positive part of this is that you can mix and match the heroes and the class decks to try and find which XP powers work best with which heroes. The trade-off, though, is that the class decks cannot build directly off of the hero abilities in any way.

Take Biv for example - his entire play style and many of his XP cards are centered around his "Up Close and Personal" starting ability. With the Descent system you couldn't have an XP card like the bayonet upgrade since it wouldn't make sense with any other character. Murne is probably an even stronger example, with a whole bunch of her class cards triggering off of false orders.

Now I guess you could work those abilities into the class decks instead of the hero sheets (have a "soldier" class with up close and personal, or a "secret agent" class with false orders) but then you're left with really bland and boring hero abilities. It just makes all the heroes feel more same-y. I don't really want a Saska support character who is a secret agent or a Garkhaan who uses a bayonet - I'm much happier to see them each have their own distinct identities and skills, and it's nice to see those particular skills grow as they gain XP.

Now with all that said, I don't hate the idea that you guys are talking about of having a deck with some generic upgrades in addition to the current character-specific ones as it could add a bit of replayability. But most characters already have a few valid XP paths so that they can be made to feel different from game to game, not to mention what a huge impact a different set of items can have. And there are already so many heroes to choose from, that by the time you're running out of new hero builds to try you're either using the same character every campaign or you've played an awful lot of IA :).

3 hours ago, ManateeX said:

having a deck with some generic upgrades in addition to the current character-specific ones as it could add a bit of replayability.

I think the generic upgrades are covered relatively well by the item decks with different kinds of weapons, modifications, armor, equipment, etc. There are 'must-buys' but also a lot of flexibility to get what the exact hero group most needs.

(I like the IA system.)

How long did I take from Descent 1.0 to Descent 2.0?

Were figures still usable after the transition?

They made a conversion pack that transitioned all the 1.ed models into the second edition - monters and heroes both. Though without a lot of testing I believe.

One thing I miss a lot in IA compared to Descent is the myriad of conditions in Descent. In IA we only have the most basic conditions available - and have for a long time. Like in Descent, they made a new condition with nearly every expansion.

I'm not sure we can glean too too much from Descent, as IA also have the Skirmish side which demands releases.

I'm happy that there are only a limited number of conditions.

A lot of the 1.0 figures were rereleased in the hero & monster packs, or whatever they're called. I don't know if they were updated to be more balanced with 2.0.

Which leads me to this; I'd love something like the hero & monster packs for IA. I'd like a pack which falls somewhere between the ally/villain packs we already have, and small box expansions. A couple more heroes, and a few villains (maybe even new sculpts of figures we don't want to buy a second copy of an expansion for), a skirmish map, and a couple of side missions. Basically, a larger, slightly more economical version of the ally/villain packs with heroes. The problem with the side missions is map tile requirements, which are generally handled well at the moment.

I don't see a need for new classes for existing characters. It adds a layer of depth, but also begins to encroach on the RPGs.

How many conditions do we need, and how many of them will really be utilized by the Imp player? I can't think of any additional condition from Descent that I was jazzed about other than BURNING..because it made perfect sense. (to me)

2 hours ago, a1bert said:

I'm happy that there are only a limited number of conditions.

Agreed.

In fact, I think we're already almost a little oversaturated.

While Bleeding/Stun/Focus are all nice, I've always found Weakened and even sometimes Hidden to be a little gimmicky. But maybe that's just me.

I was toying around with the concept of taking cover. If heroes used a movement point to take cover, they would get +1 defence.

Also, a called shot. Heroes take a strain and make an insight check and if successful, +2 damage. 1 success for arms and limbs and 2 for head shot. Head shot adds stun condition too.

Way off the OP with my rambling.

I was surprised when hidden came out and even more so when the power tokens were revealed.

There is already so much to try and remember and adding more is starting to stretch things (for the occasional player anyway).

It'd be neat to see a hero with a jet pack that has 6 movement, I always thought that would be our first Mandalorian hero, guess not.. but we haven't seen that yet. Or someone with crazy high strain but very low health that uses a lot of agility type moves to avoid damage (taking strain) instead of health (even able to avoid things like mortar or blast), making you choose between going all out with their abilities or holding back to be able to take damage (opposite of Onar basically as he is all health no defense).

I think the universal talents deck is cool, but I can see just a few being outted as the strongest and heroes making a mad dash for those each game creating more imbalance. So the idea of just drawing a few is intriguing.. but again would the Imp be rolling his eyes if he saw one drawn off the bat meaning he knows his campaign is tilted? Would require a lot of testing to make sure that these talents aren't broken on one single hero.. but useful for every hero.

I always prefer the class system in any game, pre assigned classes aren't as fun for me.. but I've found the fun in it with IA. I agree though in Descent this is a great mechanic and allows you to recycle heroes with more combinations. Some classes work better with certain heroes, but anything is worth a try. And in a game with soooooo many heroes compared to IA it really does create a lot more variety than IA can ever hope for with its current model.

All good stuff guys ?

It's thinking ahead to the app when I worry about the lack of variety in hero builds with IA. The descent app has given me the chance to trial some really unusual hero and party builds, using some of the xp cards I'd never normally take. I've got over 50 Descent heroes and 20 classes to play around with!

If the IA app has the same basic "random mission creator" as Descent has, I worry that there's only so many times I'll want to play someone like Murne Rin before I get bored.

I think what IA really needs is the mission builder like what Descent has.

Most people on here are trying single missions, or making mini-campaigns even! It'd be nice to have a universal and easy to use app/program that would provide a solid template that everyone uses. That would remove the "uggh I don't know what I'm looking at because it's not standardized" moment of looking at someone's campaign files.

This would not only provide us with a bazillion other missions/campaigns, but also make the wait time between previews/spoilers sooooo much easier!

I think overall, more items could help out variety quite a bit.

Maybe instead of a hero with a jetpack, a tier III item (armor) could be a jetpack that give the hero one or two extra speed. Or, maybe weapons like rocket launchers that deal significant splash damage, but make it so that the hero can only attack once per activation. Maybe a melee weapon or two that allow for multiple attachments. A stormtrooper helmet that has a Confusion ability- essentially adds a white die to the hero's defense pool when being attacked by troopers, but also subtracts one surge cancel and one damage block from the white die (so, giving a 1/6 chance for a dodge).

You know, out of the box stuff that could significantly change up the game.

The difference between IA and Descent are very numerous and have been documented exhaustively here: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/134544/differences-between-descent-20-and-imperial-assaul

The games look very similar to each other but have very different rulesets. It's actually very difficult for players to successfully transfer from one game to the other because it's so easy misapply the rules from one game to the other. My first IA group was led by a former Descent player and the first two missions I played (I jumped in mid-campaign) we were using the Rest rules from Descent which made things way harder than they should have been.