Long time Descent player here – My gaming group and I came to the conclusion that we were simply missing something during a Lieutenant encounter we had last night. Even the Overlord got tired of pouring through the rulebook trying to figure out what we were missing.

The Overlord is playing The Siren and his first purchase was Soriss – this nasty sea monster with regeneration 10. His mission is to destroy a bunch of islands and awaken the leviathan or something like that.

Anyway, our group decided we were finally strong enough to take on Soriss and we used a reward from a rumor we completed to teleport to him. We had some issues figuring out how to set up but, after some agreements, we placed the ship on the map and the lieutenant and his Naga compatriots in the area where the ship WOULD be if Soriss had a ship.

So, after setup we quickly realized that the encounter was unwinnable. The Overlord screened Soriss with his minions then scooted Soriss away from the ship as quickly as possible. From there the overlord simply began pumping out Naga (silver level beasts) and started lighting up our heroes from range while we sat helplessly confined to the ship. Our ranged fighter was the first to die – focus fired by one Naga after another. At that point we started packing up. There was no way to win.

None of our heroes had swim. The nature of movement through water made it impossible for our heroes to engage Soriss. The situation was clearly the Overlord had infinite resources to summon Naga and could keep Sorriss away from the party indefinitely – and even if he was unlucky enough to take a ranged hit or two, would simply scoot away and regenerate. The melee fighters could do nothing but try and fire the cannon at a naga or sit around while everyone else got wrecked. We thought about jumping in the water and chasing after Soriss but quickly realized the futility of such a task in deep water with base 2 armor.

So, couple questions.

1. how are the monsters in a lieutenant water encounter supposed to set up?
2. Were we missing something with our assessment of the situation? It seems odd that a lieutenant encounter would be unwinnable.
3. Are all lieutenant encounters the same? Seems like they can all just scoot away and kill the heroes by spawning minions every turn – we HAVE to be missing something.

The entire campaign hinges upon this encounter. We’ll be moving into silver campaign level soon and cannot allow Soriss to siege islands with impunity. We don’t seem to have any way to stop him though. We’re a very well equipped group so I’m not sure I need to go into details about our gear because I can’t imagine HAVING to acquire particular gear to defeat lieutenants.

All SoB lieutenant encounters are fundamentally unwinnable for this very reason.

My group has a houserule that if the revenge moves off the top side of the map with at least 1 hero still alive and on the map, the result is treated as if the lieutenant fled. This lets the OL still have a good chance to pummel and possibly kill the heroes, but if he is overly cautious with the lieutenant then the heroes still have a way to win. Theme wise the Revenge is full of supplies, and making through the blockade is able to give the city new strength to oppose the OL.

In encounters without a ship, I'm pretty sure that the monsters have to set up along the edges of the map and at least five (5) spaces from the Revenge. Without the rules in front of me, I can not find it, but that was how we had been doing the non-ship encounters.

As for the encounters being unwinable....yeah, that was what we noticed as well.

It seems that in every encounter, the overlord simply has to keep one creature (usually the boss) away from the ship and the players only have one choice...flee the map. The overlord will have a few rounds of attacking the heroes and then nothing.

Perhaps the encounters were designed to simply wear down the party, perhaps not. But, what we've found is that every encounter comes out with either the party dead, or worse off than they started.

The idea of counting the encounter as a party win if the revenge sails off the opposite map edge is a good plan. It will at least motivate the overlord to bring all of the monsters into the fight.

1) Lieutenant Encounters are intentionally difficult at Copper. This is by design. You will also note that the OL gets less Lieutenants early in the game as compared to RtL.

2) No ship for the Lieutenant? No problem! Chck out page 17 of the SoB rules:

Monster Setup
After the heroes are placed on the map, the overlord places the
leader and his minions on the map. Figures without the Soar or
Swim abilities must be placed on the NPC ship. Figures with the
Soar or Swim abilities may be placed along any edge of the ocean
map, but they must be at least five spaces away from the heroes’
ship. Large monsters must be placed completely on the map.

3) Early on, the Lieutenants have a distinct advantage, however, it behooves the heroes to get the campaign to silver as quickly as possible as the power of silver treasures really helps tip the balance of power in favor of the heroes. As strange as this sounds, heroes without swim really need to take off their armor (to help them Swim), equip the most powerful weapons and potions they can and go all-out offensive against a Lieutenant. Sail The Revenge so that you can get as close as possible to the Lieutenant and run your numbers and make sure they heroes can either one-shot a lieutenant, or get close enough to killing it that the OL is forced to flee.

4) The Leviathan Plot is IMHO, broken. We house ruled it so that each shackle has a defense of 5 instead of 3, lest we have the Siren killing 2 shackles before copper is done, and the other 3 shackles fall extremely quickly once the 2nd and 3rd Lieutenants come into play at Silver.

5) The encounters are not "unwinnable" they just deviate form standard Descent logic. You must adapt.

Fizz said:

QFT

Fizz said:

We are an extremely well geared group but I just don’t see it. Soriss can move something like 6 spaces. We could move the ship to the exact middle of the board, remove our armor, and take run action after run action to get to combat with Soriss.

A wise overlord will screen with naga’s and, if the opportunity arises, grapple the characters to prevent them from pursuing, butter up with sharks, and pummel the armor-less characters.

In some fantasy world where the overlord doesn’t see this obvious strategy – and doesn’t summon additional Naga with his threat -the players are JUST dealing with Soriss. The Overlord can still use his superior movement and regeneration 10 to stay away – either the players split into two groups of two and try to hem Soriss in (in which case Soriss’s regeneration should outstrip even well geared characters ability to hurt him) or move as a group, in which case Soriss just bolts one way or another and swims circles around the Revenge.

I don’t see it. Even at Silver or Gold Soriss is going to be running with way more HP and gold or diamond Naga.

I believe these encounters will be easier when the heroes invest in the swim skill.

Aye, not only the swim skill, but also some cannons, the heroes shouln't go into a LT battle with fewer than 3 or 4 cannons. The Dragon Breath one could blast through minions or rubble to still hit the LT even if the OL tried to "screen" his LT with them. His only option to avoid them would be to put his LT directly in front of the heroes ship, which of course means that they are headed straight toward them. Also unless the LT has Unstoppable, a web weapon would be most useful.

Mr. Incarna,

Unfortunately, I have to agree with you that the Sea of Blood Lieutenant encounters - or at least, any that involve 'minions' - are completely broken, making the campaign totally unplayable in its current state. And I am not one to say this lightly. I consider myself to be an extremely experienced and adept Descent-player and believe in exploring all available options before coming to a conclusion. But you are not missing anything, other than that, as others have already pointed out, the monster set-up in Lt. battles favors the Overlord even MORE than you were actually playing it.

As I am somewhat debating in another thread, I believe even the *Siren* is undefeatable with most Hero parties. There are some edge-cases, with very specific expansion-only Heroes (Runemaster Thorn and Zyla) that make beating her somewhat possible IF you also got lucky on your starting skills. Other than that, you MUST have Shark Tattoo to even stand half a chance, and even then that chance is slim in my opinion. Soriss and Darkwind are just utterly ridiculous. They are far, FAR stronger than either Sweetheart or the Void, and are available immediately. There is simply no way the Mistress of Serpents or the Master of the Hunt can fail to win the game by plot with either Leviathan or by razing 5 cities with the Shadow Queen (start with siege engines, raze 4 quickly then buy Dallak for the win).

Cannons are of no use either in beating the lieutenants. Their firing arc is simply too awkward, and even if it wasn't, it's not hard for the Lieutenant to stay well out of range of even the farthest-reaching Hawk-eye cannons.

It gets even worse. If you work things out, it turns out that even if you assume the Heroes can defeat ANY lieutenant they bump into TRIVIALLY and reliably, the game is STILL nearly impossible for the Heroes, since the lieutenant only retreats one space away. With only 2 lieutenants, it is already possible for the Overlord to 'fork' cities and make it such that even if the Heroes devote all their time to running back and forth between the threatened cities, the cities will still eventually burn (ie. siege rolls will be made). With 3 or 4 lieutenants, of course, it is even easier and faster for the Overlord to do this.

I agree completely (and as of my latest campaign, am currently using) the house-rule on Heroes winning the encounter if they can sail the Revenge off the opposite edge of the map from which they enter. Structurally, because the water maps are just SO big and the Overlord has the "power" to decide whether or not to engage the fight, it NEEDS to be the Heroes who win on time-out, to give the Overlord an incentive to actually attack. As it stands, of course, it is the Overlord who wins on time-out, which just doesn't work. I've also ruled that Soriss and Darkwind should not be available until Silver level either; 2 lieutenants at Copper is just WAY too strong, not only from a balance view vis-a-vis the Heroes, but it also all but forces the Overlord to pick either Mistress of Serpents or Master of the Hunt, since it would be insane for him to give up such an advantage.

If the heroes win on the time-out, does it count as though the Lt fleed or the Lt was killed?

-shnar

I think most people who play with that house rule count it as the LT fleeing.

I agree, this is the best house rule for LT encounters, they can easily run from one side of the map to another but the ship cannot turn back, so if he doesn't want to fight than he must be fleeing.

We will apply it too, in my group the heroes rarely manage to make the LT flee and with the "griffin" LT with 6 or 7 speed it's imposible.

If the Lieutenant can put himself in a position where he is not reachable, maybe a new concept should be introduced: the Stand-Off.

A Stand-Off would be a new outcome to a Lieutenant fight where, if after an arbitrary number of turns (my guess would be somewhere between 10 and 15) no side has won or fled, the fight ends in a Stand-Off.

In a Stand-Off, both sides stay in the same location they met. All siege engines in that location are removed (the Lieutenant was "distracted" from sieging by the heroes), but the heroes may not visit the location either (the fight "took the whole week"). Additionally, both sides may not attack each other the following week (because of exhaustion).

Of course, it is not very different from a Lieutenant flight (except that the heroes may not visit the location), but with such situations that seem to be game bugs, I agree one has to come up with some kind of solution...

Ispher said:

I think this is still a little to heavy in the partys favor. Pretty quickly the Lieutenants can get killed by the party in a single turn. I don't think the Lieutentant should be forced to suicide in to the party before they can full sail the Revenge off the other side of the map.

My game group just did the 4 hour Stand-Off with the Siren at copper level and somthing should be done to address that. The Heros could kill all of the Skeletons that I could summon in a single turn and would do enouf damage to the LT in a single round that going toe to toe with the Party was silly. But on the flip side Those sharks just destroy Heros at copper and they can't swim out to engauge the LT either.

I like the Stand-Off idea, I'm not sure how many turns it would need to be. But discarding ALL of the Siege tokens would be a bit much. I think a better Idea would be to remove 1 Token. The party can not enter the city. This would stop the LT from Rolling to destroy a City, but still keep the pressure on to deal with the LT or have the LT engauge the party as no progress will be made.

If you remove the stack of siege tokens the party will force the stand-off rule every few turns to reset the Siege clock with never really needing to deal with the LT.

Yet again FFG releasing a game without proper game testing without knowing about forums and the help you all do to talk and fix all the missed bugs i would spend weeks playing and hate any FFG game seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot by not properly playtesting especially in Descent

But anywhoo i will bring this issue up with my DM see what he thinks

Thanks for the Thread !

Cheers

Or maybe make the high sea map smaller? In a way that heroes can at least reach a Lieutenant crouching in a corner to fight him, if they choose to go all-in, even if they won't be able to get back onto the ship?

Just trying to find solutions...

It’s very frustrating have made it so far into the campaign only to stumble upon this ridiculous bug. I kinda though two solutions – though the ideas aren’t completely fleshed out so I welcome any input.

The revenge has 4 rowboats. Use sarcophagus/table tokens as “rowboats”. That can hold up to two heroes. Heroes may spend a move action to move the boat as they see fit subject to normal movement rules – but any hero in the same rowboat as a hero rowing the boat moves with the boat. Rowboats are subject to current, and whirlpool effects as the Revenge is. If a rowboat moves off the edge of a water encounter for any reason, the heroes are considered to be washed out to see and killed.

Or.

Use invulnerability potions as “potions of swimming”. These potions may be purchased from towns, acquired viat treasure cache, etc. as normal. Players who drink a potion of swimming may move through water in sea encounters just as if it were normal land. At the end of each turn, roll a power die. If the result is a blank, the potion wears off and the hero will be subject to normal sea movement rules. If the result is not a blank, the potion remains in effect.

Thoughts?

incarna said:

Very creative solution. I like it.

I guess you'd have to spend 3 movement points to "man" the rowboats (i.e. to put them into the sea). However 2 rowboats would be enough I think, since they can hold 2 heroes each. And if both heroes are rowing (though not at the same time, since heroes play one after another), the rowboat would move twice as fast.

I can already hear OLs complain that rowboats are overpowered!...

Maybe a rowboat could be purchased as a ship upgrade? Say 10 XP and 1'000 gold each, and you could buy up to two?

Ispher said:

I thought about that – but then I remembered rowing in a rowboat when I was a kid. If one person rowed casually it would move casually. If two people rowed casually, it would move at a decent speed – but if two people rowed their butts off we could really build up a ton of speed. I know that applying realistic ideas to Descent isn’t the best way to do things though so I can definitely see the overlord getting upset when two heroes jump in a rowboat each doing a run action, burning their fatigue, and then drinking a fatigue potion to burn through the rest of their fatigue to move from one side of the map to the other and back again in one turn.

Maybe keep everything the same except rowing 1 space costs two movement. That seems like a decent compromise – heroes HAVE to work together to catch up to speedy monsters.

The purchasing of rowboats is a good idea. Maybe the revenge starts with 1 and they can be purchased for 500 to 1000.

Or make the rowboat cost fatigue, since rowing can be rather tiresome. Something like "casual" speed costs 3MPs and you can move 2 spaces. Or "sprinting" speed costs 3MPs and 2 Fatigue and you get 6 spaces (or something like that)...

-shnar

Fizz said:

Maybe I am missing something, but where are monsters without Swim/Soar placed if there is no NPC ship?

Edit: Nevermind, just checked the Lts. - no Lt has minions without Soar/Swim.