Ripley,

While I see your point that when you spend money on a product you want said product to be without flaws or defects, you have to consider that perhaps they did play test the game well enough but were on a time budget to get the game published and released to the public. I also take into consideration that perhaps it was only a handful of people that did the actual play testing. (there are 6 named people, and the FFG staff...which could be any number) When a small group plays the game with so many different interactions and rules, there are bound to be a few things that were missed or did not come up during play testing. I do not know how much FFG invested for R&D for Descent, but it wasn't much. However, when you look at Road to Legend, it was almost a full year before the game was released to the public after first being announced.

That being said...Descent is still a great game, and is played all the time by veterans and new comers alike. I personally would like to see an updated FAQ for the new Sea of Blood expansion...just to clarify some of the known issues.

As for your Overlord throwing the game, If he was not a veteran player of the game with intimate knowledge of rules and the like, then I can see how the web weapon could make the game a little dull. There are ways to solve those problems though, again, it all depends on your overlord. If you read the rules, it does state that the most experienced player should take the role as overlord.

Any complex game like Descent that is played on a board instead of a computer all comes down to how a person reads and interprets the rules. And then plays according to those rules. While on a computer, unless you find a serious bug in the programming, you cant just miss-read something...the game will just not allow it.

For a game like Descent, I HIGHLY recommend reading all the rule books and FAQ cover to cover...at least twice. At the very least to know where something is when an issue comes up.

Thats all I am going to say.

Cheers!

Thanks guys for the discussion you all make valid points and thats exactly why i wanted to talk about it

Thanks again for your time

Steve-O said:

I would also be interested to see FFG's take on The Lost Vikings.

mahkra said:

I would love to see FFG's take on Ghost! At least let that game see *some* light of day...

-shnar

After being introduced as the quitter, i felt it was only right to name myself as such here as well

Please allow me a short bit of your time to explain why the DM (me) quit Ripley...'s game. After the first campaign that we played, i roflstomped all over their home city in the copper level and obliterated what they thought would be a well drawn out match between the Over Lord, and 4 Heroes. (muwhahahaha for me). We then continued into a second campaign, now this is where this post adds to the topic of the thread:

After playing the OverLord (OL from now on), I compare it to playing MAG or another strategic / kill everything that breathes kind of game. I went aggro for the first 2 stages of the game, Copper and Silver. In Copper levels, I think the OL's power was a little too much for the heroes to compete with. (and im considering it was just the hero combination that was used too). Silver seemed to even things up a bit, The heroes had some better gear, and a few things like that damned curse doll, ooooo that thing makes my blood boil. They (heroes) opted for power potions and fatigue potions almost 90% of the time, only keeping a healing potion if they absolutely felt it necessary. Once we stepped into the Gold level of the campaign, the OL's power dropped to a bare minimum. I was really quite simply spawning monsters for something to do while i sat at the table. There were only a few tricks i could do to pass the time, and most of them were to upgrade my Avatar each turn. We used the new rules that lowered a Hero's conquest value per 25 conquest points the OL had more of; over the hero's total conquest value.

Suffice it to say, after copper level, i was rockin a 200 conquest lead over the heros, and leave it to the math, not one of them was worth more than 1 conquest point each. This makes my OL epeen weep silently, BTW. Any of you OL's out there know what a pain this is. Not only is the hardest to kill hero worth only 1 point, but enterring the gold stage of the campaign, and you're looking at a Hero with 9 armor, 6 movement, aura, and a weapon that either webs, or has blast 2 burn 3 built in, AND they are only worth a single Conquest Point when killed. OUCH!!

Where was I? Oh right, ...

The game is unbalanced in some places, where on the other hand, it's quite balanced, although one side, or the other may not feel that way. Sure, your Hero is tough, but my Avatar now has 964 HP, and you need to work to kill him. This isn't like the Gold level where you can do 44 points of damage on a battle action and kill my diamond level master dark priest before i get a turn.

Now the nitty gritty parts of the game, maps:

I believe the most trouble we had on any of the campaigns were on Dungeon Cards: 37, 42, and one of the new cards. (cant remember map #... 65? maybe?)
Even resorting to the FAQ guru we play with, who memorizes the books cover to cover, even HE had arms in the air reading the FAQs online. More or less, we had to come to a mutual decision as per whether one thing happened on a map, or it didn't. For instance, "A hero entering this space loses 2 health, and immediately ends his/her turn". yet a monster enters and exits the same space at no penalty. This makes for a very long, and Conquest gaining map for the OL. chances are good if you've hit this dungeon, your heros have either ran away, or allowed the OL to cycle his deck twice in this map alone.

All in all, I think Descent is one of the best games I've played. From all the games I've played, online and off. I compare it to Heroes Quest, and Talisman. Fun for both sides of the board. Unless you meet map 37, 42, and that other one. in which I cheer for the winning team, root for the underdog, and pay lousy prices for old and dissatisfactory hotdogs.

pewpew lazers.
That is all.

TheQuitter

Some may call it a weakness of the game but i look at it as a strength. Descent is one of those games where it shines with good players and seems completely off balance with bad players. The learning curve is by no means easy and usually puts the casual players off. Those people are not who the game was designed for. This is supposed to be as hardcore a dungeon romp in the form of a board game as can be. Sure there are some scenarios that have flaws but not every D&D module was perfect either. Taken as a whole though the game is very good at deliverying what it was designed for.

Baenre said:

While I agree completely with this post, the fact remains that the rules editing, not to mention the deliberately casual structure and language used, are abominably unsuitable. And this appears to be a design decision, at least from the rules style pov.

And there is ample evidence of a lack of playtesting (or playtesting with non-standard sets, either pre-release or with extra parts).
The number of times you run up against simple errors such as RtL leaders having 'additional Burn' when they have no Burn normally and parts that are printed differently on opposite sides having both sides required in a scenario all point to the actual playtesting of the finished product being minimal, if any.

Not to mention basic editing errors, like the skills available by city list in SoB having a Feat listed and missing a Skill, or Jaes having only 1 armour in an example.

Or the basic rules using completely different and wrong terminology - Orders descriptions discussing 'moving spaces up to your movement' instead of 'gaining MPs equal to you Speed' for example.

Some things are forgivable. And some are not.

But we play anyway because it is an awesome game!

shnar said:

=O

You, sir, are made entirely of win. I'd love to see a Ghost game, too. Off the top of my head one player is Nova trying to complete a mission, everyone else is bad guys split up somehow. Kind of a reverse Descent dynamic =P

Now that would be interesting. Seems like most if not all many-vs-one games are good-vs-evil. Would be interesting to see a many evil-vs-good game...

-shnar

I think my biggest beef with FFG and Descent is the dire lack of professionalism that goes into the editing/proofreading/consistancy of the rules. If they had spent even just a little more effort and thought into the wording of rules, verification of examples, and gameplay, we wouldn't have had nearly as many issues come up. I also feel that Descent was created/written without expecting the kinds of "rules-lawyering think" that many players have to come into play.

I really love playing and am going through some serious withdrawl.... I'm looking forward to OLing and Heroing at GCOM Game Days in April.

Oboewan said:

Corbon said:

I can definetly see where you are coming from based on those examples. My group tends to overlook those kind of things and fill in the blanks on our own but it's definetly become more of an issue lately from the stuff i have seen. The game itself could do with a FRESH book that encompasses all the rules from all the sets and spells them out more clearly. Publishing all of the campaign material into one book and the regular material would work as well. That is actually my biggest complaint in that looking up an obscure rule is time consuming due to a lack of any index in the old books. I know it's possible to have all the updated info on PDF's and binder it up but i would rather have published book from them. Hell that's one of the reasons i bought the CE of War of the Ring. I wanted that rulebook so i could have everything together in one spot.

It's not like FFG would lose money on such a deal since you still need the box sets to play those addons.

Here's what I have learned as the OL:

"The Overlord can win whenever he wants, if the players are willing to play."

Case in point, My players were doing the SoB rumor "The Creature" and had just entered level 3. If the Creature wakes up before the player enter Area 2 (which he did), the OL can move the Creature forward to a point between Area 1 and Area 2 where it is completely impossible for the players to get into area 2. And by "completely impossible" I mean there is exactly 0% of success. (The Creature has an Undying Rule based on how many switches in area 2 are tossed, and if the player dont toss any switches, the undying roll is "auto" instead of a surge.)

Now, the OL could run by the rules, block it off, and say "tough **** kids, looks like you are going to have to run away and abandon the dungeon and the rumor", all the while amassing conquest until the players realize it really is impossible and then get pissed at "bad game design".

-OR-

The OL chooses not to.

Is this bad design? Maybe. Is this what the designers really intended? Who knows. Is this fun? That's up to the 5 people shaking the dice that night.

I guess my point is that in the beginning of a campaign, the cards are stacked so much in the OL's favor, that anyone can crush and destroy the heroes at their earliest opportunity, but you risk disheartening your players if you do. Everyone here knows the ultimate ******-OL move in RtL of the relentless Siege of Tamalir, but honestly ask yourself, does that make the game fun?

A truly evil OL helps the players make good decisions, and crushes them in a measured, focused way so that the game is still fun for everyone, while at the same time maintaining the challenge level that the game demands.

I'm new to Descent and I've only played two games so far. The first was with two heroes and the second was with four heroes (so 5 players). Two things I noticed, the heroes and especially the ones using ranged weapons, start out pretty weak but they'll get much stronger than the monster they're fighting after their first silver chest.

Second thing I noticed is that monsters don't really scale well with more players. Their stats are barely higher and the two extra points of threat the OL receive doesn't make up for the added player(s) at all. In my first game against two heroes one of them only had a copper weapon at the end because none of the players ever drew a better one handed weapon and he was playing the melee character that has only one hand. In the four heroes game, they all drew one gold weapon each could use well so they traded items. So they were able to open the door of the last room and kill the two red mantigores before they acted and due to a miss weren't able to two shot the giant. The giant attacked but the only player in range had such a good armor he wasn't able to deal any damage. And then he died.

I'd really like to see FFG coming out with "hard mode" rules for 5 player dungeons for the vanilla game. It'd be much more fun if the monsters were balanced in such a way to challenge a 4 hero party. Honestly, I do agree that whoever though adding 1 threat and 1 hp on monster balanced adding a hero didn't really do all that much play testing.

Fizz said:

As with the invulnerable beastman from the Fountain in RtL, you're not allowed to block off the player's progress with anything, whether it be a block or an unkillable monster. It's this obscure unwritten rule that Kevin's mentioned more than once as justification for several rulings (including the one about the beastman from the most recent FAQ).

That such a rule even exists, well, take it as you will.

Thundercles said:

Well, in this case you are allowed to block things off, its just that the creature becomes move-through-able by the heroes if you do.

FAQ pg 9
If an invulnerable monster blocks a path, the heroes may move through that monster.

It might be written in a level-specific answer, but it is clearly written as a general rule by the language, which is significantly different to some of the other level-specific rules (which say, 'in this level' or refer to specifics such as 'the cells' or 'Lord Akhtar').

As an aside I thought the Fizz's comment was... inexperienced. The OL can not win whenever he wants. Not even 'do better than the heroes and eventually win' whenever he wants.
If the rules are adhered to and the heroes play smart thay have as much chance as the OL - minor complications like genuine rules glitches (which can favour either side) and possibly unbalanced final battles (RtL certainly wasn't balanced, I'm reserving judgment in SoB until more experience and info is available) aside.

I've been playing for awhile, and this is my first time OL'ing. We're in a SoB campaign, I am playing Captain Bones with the Plot "Leviathan", and at one point had a 49 conquest lead over my heroes (I relinquished a TPK's worth of conquest due to our faulty usage of the Pierce rules, but the heroes are still at -1 conquest).

Here's what I see so far:

If I choose to go after the 5 shackles, the heroes can't really stop the Siren at Copper, and I get two more Lieutenants at Silver (Sweetheart and Ghost Ship), giving me a rediculous chance at winning the campaign just by plot (which is pretty lame IMHO).

The fights are REALLY one sided. I've upgraded my eldritch monsters to silver, and dark priests and skeletons (with the Death Head upgrade) pack an insane punch.

I have to pull my punches. No really, last game session, I couldnt gain any more threat cause there arent anymore tokens in the box. I could do what I wanted to whom I wanted, whenever I wanted.

So, yeah, I may be inexperienced, but I am just calling it like I see it.

As for the FAQ answer, that's good to know (i just didnt move the giant into a position to block it off and problem was solved).

Descent is very unforgiving for the heroes, but very forgiving for the Overlord. The problem isn't that you are inexperienced, it's that your hero players are inexperienced. I'm playing Leviathan right now, and that's 5 defense 3 cities you have to siege. I have a feeling it's going to take me a while before I can truly complete this, if at all, since there are so many to siege. I'm playing as Master of the Hunt, so we'll see how it goes, but I feel that the heroes won't have much of a problem keeping me at bay...

-shnar

shnar said:

So basically then, the advantage is if you had players of equal skill, the OL still has the advantage? I don't see how the heroes are going to be able to stop me...once the campaign goes silver, that's a green light for all hell to break loose.

On the heroes side. Your silver (and gold) monsters will not hold up very well to Silver weapons. Use this time in Copper to get as far ahead as you can, cause in Silver and Gold, the heroes will have the upper hand...

-shnar

See....that's what I keep telling them. They don't believe me.

The other problem (most likely) is that they aren't playing as effectively as they could be. As I said, it's a very unforgiving game for the heroes. If they aren't played well, then it's real easy for the OL to steamroll them. Are they playing together? Or is it more of a solo affair for each hero? Are they covering LOS well? Are they dodging? etc

-shnar

I see a few Guard actions here and there, not alot of dodging. Every single turn by my heroes is a collective effort by the four of them to do the most effective action they can. As far as covering LoS, they do a pretty good job of that, but the campaign maps are designed in such a way that it's next to impossible for the heroes to cover everything. Right now, they are playing the "offense is the best defense" method where they attempt to destroy as much of the incoming damage before it happens, but an unlucky miss, or a very lucky undying roll (or 6, i had one hero kill an undying monster with so much damage that it lapped around and he had to make two undying rolls.....which he did!), and that costs them Conquest.

What my heroes don't know is that i really don't have a master plan in the dungeons, I just toss stuff at them willy-nilly, and try to pick off the weak one, usually to a high probability of success.

Fizz said:

Yeah, I'm liking the way that SoB maps are mostly designed with a few blocks and statues etc scattered around that stop easy spawn prevention.

Incidently, RtL undying is different from vanilla undying - hits etc don't carry over, so there is never more than 1 undying check on an attack and if the one check passes the monster is 'clean' - full health and no tokens.
RtL pg30
When an Undying figure is killed, roll one power die. If a power surge is rolled, the figure is instantly restored to full health, and any lingering effects are removed. An Undying figure must stay dead in order for effects that take place when it is “killed” to actually occur.

Compare this with Vanilla undying
DJitD pg23
When an Undying figure is killed, roll one power die. If a power surge is rolled, the figure is instantly restored to full health (although any leftover damage from the killing blow is then applied to it). An Undying figure must stay dead in order for effects that take place when it is “killed” to actually occur.

Fizz said:

That's what I mean by being unforgiving for the heroes and very forgiving for the OL. The heroes pretty much need a good strategy going forward or they will get creamed every time, where-as the OL can in general just throw things at them and still do a decent job. That is until you get really good heroes who are extremely familiar with the game, and then they can cake walk the OL.

-shnar