RTL monster upgrade balance

By Galdred, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

So far, it seems that Eldritchare a much better upgrade than the other monster types for several reasons:

The humanoid mainstray unit, the beastman gets very little upgrade:

From copper to diamond, beastmen go from : 4.93 damage to 8.1 damage on averag

And hellhounds get from completely useless to insanely powerful: 1.53 pierce 2 to 5.53 pierce 5

skeletons go from 3.37 pierce 1 to 5.53 pierce 3, which is as good as the diamond beastman against most heroes

sorcerers too get much better, going from 2.33 sorcery 2 to 6.33 sorcery 5 !!! (they lose some range, though, going from 4.17 to 2.67), but it is still a massive damage boost.

Basically, many non humanoid monsters get as good as beasmen for their damage output, with some extra benefits (skels can kite much better with their insane range and speed), while the beastman main problem, his speed, does not get addressed. Same goes for every humanoid, as they rely on close combat. Their resilience inreases by the same amount as the other monsters, and their damage too, but they get nothing to make up for the range/speed increase other get.

The main strength of the beastmen was to hit hard enough to pass hero armour, but as every monster gets better, this is not specific at all, and they are much easier to kill than skeletons that can headshot from the other side of the dungeon and zip away at insane speed.

And it is even worse for the other humanoids that are usually slower than the beastmen (except for the deep elf).

Next comes the dungeon problem: most dungeons have better eldritch choices, according to reinforcement costs (I have computed the 4 different choices for each dungeon, for each monster category, according to reinforcement costs):

best choice earns 1 point, and second best 0.5 if it is at least 75% as good as best choice. I have counted masters double, and named 3 times the normal cost (it is a very rough way to do it, but we need some metrics):

the method may be imprecise, but without ToI, the tally is:

Eldrtich 19

Beasts 13

Humanoids 11.5

So Eldritch are more useful, and benefit more from upgrades.

In our first game, the OL titan decided to upgrade his eldritch instead of his humanoids, for these reasons (planning to revert to humanoids for the fnal battle).

They need either an expansion with tons of humanoid dungeons, or a revamp of the cards.

I was thinking about giving humanoids a +1 damage boost at silver, and another +1 at diamond, and making the opposite for Eldritch, but that would be unfair for poor golem and probably tons of other monster, or swapping two monsters (like making eldritch kobolds and humanoids dark priests) but that would be thematically stupid.

Something else I considered was to modify the upgrade costs of the different monster types, but that would probably cause serious balance issues if the OL can upgrade humanoids faster than he used to (if their upgrade cost is lowered to 20/25 and the eldritch gets upped to 25/30)

Are you using any houserule for this, or are the beastman and titan's abilities good enough to make up for it?

I don't think it is that bad at all. Yes, Eldritch does seem slightly above average. But you can't solely look at the numbers of each monster. You have to take everything into account, if you wish to compare. The Master Beastman for instance, is a monster to be aware off. His command, and hitting power is very strong and the basic deck gives you two spawn cards for him, and you can have two more from the Treachery. The command (especially when it gets Cammand 2) is boosting your entire army.

Also, Kobolds on copper is quite a strong force as well, when upgraded, because they get a certain toughness to work with and they come in numbers. I do appreciate their newest member, the Medusa though. The ranged power is 'very' nice to have, even though there is only a basic version open for spawning in the base deck.

I don't disagree that Eldritch is a powerful suit, but I don't think it's 'that' more powerful than others. Comparing Beastmen and Skeletons, remember that +2 Damage is much better than Pierce 2. The Ferrox is a power to reckon with as well. I think Joram did a nice review of the Ferrox some time back (apologize if it was someone else). You mention the Deep Elf yourself, and I think, if you can afford the Lone Assassin card, then that is extremely dangerous as well, especially if you can get attacks in, after she has delivered her Frost token, in order to try and break armor.

I don't think +3 damage makes that much a difference compared to pierce 3, except for very unarmored characters, as the weakest one has at least a leather armor + a ring of protection, and usually a +2 robe against range.

It is true that the master beastman stays one of the best spawnable monster ever, though, but the humanoid "troopers" are quite disappointing at higher level. I am still waiting for my Tomb of Ice copy, but the medusa looks like a hard hitter indeed. Overall, it is not that bad, but seing the titan OL upgrade his eldritch

It is probably more a problem of ranged monsters vs melee ones. I think ranged or fast monsters get both higher armor and higher range/speed to work with, allowing them to survive much longer than melee ones that need to close in stay there, and die in order to achieve anything.

Humanoids are slightly weaker because of the lack of ranged monsters. I think there should be a durability trade off in increasing speed/range for ranged monsters.

I think a better rebalancing than what I proposed would be to give melee +1 HP/level and ranged and magic -1HP/level. That would be less extreme than changing damages, and that would address the compared durability of these monsters. The only problem would be the chaos beast :D

Beasts and humonoids are generaly tougher than elderiitch already so when they go silver, gold, diamond they stay tougher.

Beastmen have command, Ferrox bleed, Deep Elf frost, Koblads trickster and swarm ect. Each class of monster has their strengths and weakness'.

As far as beasts go they are extremely tough when upgraded and have you faced silver dragons in the legendary dungeon before?

As a Hero I have faced Elderitch and Beast Avatars as an OL I have played Beast and Humanoid. They all have ups and downs.

I'm not convinced the difference is enormous, but I am convinced that Humanoids are significantly worse than the other two classes, due to the fact (as was pointed out) that they do not increase in either speed or range. As the strike-range of the Heroes increases (both due to better range and better movement), the only way humanoids will EVER get to attack is if they are tough enough to stand there and bear the brunt of the initial Hero assault, and then strike back. More damage doesn't help, because they'd never get to use it - they need more durability. At copper level, a difference of 1 armor between an Ogre and a Naga is somewhat significant - at Diamond level, it no longer is. Humanoids need to increase in durability faster than the other classes to make up for the fact that they do not increase in speed or range.

Indeed. A Beastman has to move up close to deliver his punch. They cannot plink orders away from heroes, they cannot concentrate their attacks, and it is easy to avoid them.

They should get a speed upgrade (3 critters with a speed of 3 and melee attacks is ridiculous) and a decent boost to health, so that they can survive a few hits as they lumber towards the heroes.

To add insult to injury, several humanoids get their damages capped very early:

Most tiers 4 monsrers get their second green dice at silver. Thus, when they get to gold, they earn an extra weak yellow dice, and another one at diamond.

Yellow dice maks very little difference, so tiers 4 monsters usually have a ridiculous damage output at diamond:

Ogre get 0.6 extra damage between silver and diamond, giants get 0.3...

On the other hand, a skeleton gets 2.8 making more damage than an ogre (assuming the target has enough armour not to waste his pierce). The balance is screwed by the fact that we are limited to 2 green dice

Basically, because of the dice limit, all the high tiers monsters who do not have a damage special ability that scale (like pierce, +damage of the beastmen, or even bash) gets screwed.

It is the case for ogres, giants (Golems too, but it is because they have a ridiculous damage upgrade , getting another yellow dice instead of a green one at silver, and they start very weak). Other high tiers monsters with pierce (dragon), or sorcery (demon, chaos beast) suffer a little from green dice capping (a hellhound deals almost as much damage as a dragon at diamond), but it is nowhere as bad as for the multisquare melee ones.

These need to get a +damage ability, as long as they are not authorized to roll an extra green dice (we could very well add a third green dice in an expansion...) to make up for the lack of increase in their damage output. I think ogres, trolls and golems should get a speed upgrade at gold, because there is nothing they can achieve right now without a charge card (and even with a charge card, ogres and golems stay pretty useless): being a 2*2 monster already implies slower movement