*Should* Sea of Blood rules be implemented into RtL?

By Kartigan13, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

The title of the post pretty much says it all, we've all talked about how easy it is to implement some of Sea of Blood's rule changes into the Road to Legend, my question is, do people think they should be included? Specifically I'm talking about the following changes:

Divine Favor

+1 Fatigue Upgrades (rather than +2)

Have to destroy 4 cities before sieging Tamalir (to conicide with the destroy any 5 cities victory condition from Sea of Blood)

Multiplying the Dungeon Leaders health based on the campaign level (if you play with the SoB dungeon cards you will do this when you draw its levels anyway)

Integrating the Bonus Health from Sea of Blood into the Final Battle (it calculates the Avatar's and Hero's bonus health based on the conquest they have earned over the entire campaign, rather than just from when they entered the Overlord's keep).

I think the LTs getting no treachery but being able to place orders is definitely NOT meant to be put into RtL as the LT encounters differ greatly between the two of them. But what about the rest of the rule changes?

I know people said that 11 fatigue heroes at the Gold Campaign was ridiculous, but aren't the heroes supposed to be a little ridiculous by the time gold level rolls around? Would Divine Favor change things too much? Many people said the Tamalir rush was the *only* viable Overlord strategy (or at least the best one), yet didn't it carry great risks if the heroes managed to counter it? Would the bonus health make the final battle less trivial or would it not interact well with certain Avatar upgrades (like the SK's upgrade that boosts his health by 200 which could concievably give him over 800 health with the SoB rules)?

I was thinking about starting a Road to Legend campaign, and was wondering if people thought that the rules from Sea of Blood should be added, or if it is fine the way it is.

I played an RtL campaign with the rules from SoB included. The fatigue upgrade was never an issue because we never got a chance to do that and LT fights, well we only faced off against one. In terms of the LT's using orders in RtL...Im on the fence with that one.

The divine favor and bonus health at the end of the campaign was actually a nice change. In previous campaigns, I always felt that the heroes had it really easy....4 against 1.....or 8 against 2 attacks, and at the gold level, thats easily 40+ damage.

As for the divine favor, it slowed the campaign down and better enabled the heroes to do things, rather then feel rushed or over-powered by the Overlord.

Every person is different...so take what other people say and go from there.

Kartigan said:

The title of the post pretty much says it all, we've all talked about how easy it is to implement some of Sea of Blood's rule changes into the Road to Legend, my question is, do people think they should be included? Specifically I'm talking about the following changes:

Divine Favor

+1 Fatigue Upgrades (rather than +2)

Have to destroy 4 cities before sieging Tamalir (to conicide with the destroy any 5 cities victory condition from Sea of Blood)

Multiplying the Dungeon Leaders health based on the campaign level (if you play with the SoB dungeon cards you will do this when you draw its levels anyway)

Integrating the Bonus Health from Sea of Blood into the Final Battle (it calculates the Avatar's and Hero's bonus health based on the conquest they have earned over the entire campaign, rather than just from when they entered the Overlord's keep).

I think the LTs getting no treachery but being able to place orders is definitely NOT meant to be put into RtL as the LT encounters differ greatly between the two of them. But what about the rest of the rule changes?

I know people said that 11 fatigue heroes at the Gold Campaign was ridiculous, but aren't the heroes supposed to be a little ridiculous by the time gold level rolls around? Would Divine Favor change things too much? Many people said the Tamalir rush was the *only* viable Overlord strategy (or at least the best one), yet didn't it carry great risks if the heroes managed to counter it? Would the bonus health make the final battle less trivial or would it not interact well with certain Avatar upgrades (like the SK's upgrade that boosts his health by 200 which could concievably give him over 800 health with the SoB rules)?

I was thinking about starting a Road to Legend campaign, and was wondering if people thought that the rules from Sea of Blood should be added, or if it is fine the way it is.

I was playing with JWS and my thoughts on the issue was the fatigue is fine at +1 being +2 is sick really sick the City rush that RTL has for Tamalir is well a waste of a game if you rush to destroy Tamalir . Multiplying the Dungeon Leaders is a great way to maintain balance the Heath Bonus at the end i felt just plain out sucked if it wasn't for our Web weopon we would have died in 6 turns eassy we managed to just web the End boss and shoot him from a distance he had shackles on one of us so we just killed that heroe of it took a hell of a long time to just do a few hundred damage from his over 1000 HP the OL just quit having nothing to do he was unable to get rid of the web or kill the web weopon due to the lack of that card in his deck.

My only problem is i feel the end boss now is Over Powered

Just my experience

Kartigan said:

Divine Favor

Only if implementing several of the other changes as well. I don't think that RtL is actually designed well at even CT counts. The OL needs more than half the CT (or more accurately, often needs to get his overall CT requirements much earlier so he has time to buy his upgrades. Early on he is always saving for the important upgrades like upgrading monsters etc, towards the end the campaign goes so fast he doesn;t get time to buy the little upgrades (like extra armour or extra dice for his Avatar). Conversely if the heroes get 300Ct, and the cash to spend it, they can become ridiculously powerful.

Kartigan said:

+1 Fatigue Upgrades (rather than +2)

Can, but not critical. The 24 fatigue token maximum is still there. And heroes who take 3 fatigue upgrades become quite killable by Diamond monsters. However if you are implementing the bonus wounds version from SoB then you should change this. The difference between a 32 wound hero (12W with 3 fatigue upgrades) and a 40 wound hero (12 wounds with 1F and 2W upgrades) (assuming around 20CT from 4 previous levels) is quite significant. The difference between 100 wounds and 108 wounds is not.

Kartigan said:

Have to destroy 4 cities before sieging Tamalir (to conicide with the destroy any 5 cities victory condition from Sea of Blood)

Only very, very cautiously. Well, actually no, not at all. If you are going to port the SoB victory condition in to RtL then don't screw it up by keeping the RtL emphasis on Tamalir. It should be any five cities.
Tamalir is already significantly more difficult to siege than other cities, with higher walls (+ improvements) and immediate access from anywhere on the map by the heroes. Saying you must raze 4 other cities before Tamalir is strictly harder than both RAW conditions - a lot harder!

Kartigan said:

Multiplying the Dungeon Leaders health based on the campaign level (if you play with the SoB dungeon cards you will do this when you draw its levels anyway)

Yes - sometimes. I seem to recall a few of the tougher bosses get +2 armour. +2 armour per campaign level is a bit over the top IMO. These bonuses weren't designed to be multiplied, the SoB ones explicitly were. It might work most of the time, but it might also fail some of the time.

Kartigan said:

Integrating the Bonus Health from Sea of Blood into the Final Battle (it calculates the Avatar's and Hero's bonus health based on the conquest they have earned over the entire campaign, rather than just from when they entered the Overlord's keep).

Probably yes. However some of the RtL Avatar fights are broken regardless of how many wounds the OL has. Melee Avatars that can be knockbacked further than they move every turn, or webbed with 4+ tokens won't be affected by how many wounds.
IMO a better way to go with Avatar fights is to allow the use of threat in the same way as in outdoor encounters.

Edit: BTW, I don't think any of the SoB conditions "should" be ported into RtL, just that they c an be imported if your group is struggling tactically with some area. Our last two RtL campaigns (ie ones with experienced players who understood the system and implications) were very tight, balanced affairs. Both could have gone either way on a dice roll or two. Both actually featured completely one-sided Avatar battles (one of which was totally broken by knockback) but both times the OL player had tried and failed to win the game on the mapboard first, so didn't 'deserve' an even fight in the Avatar battle.

Corbon said:

Kartigan said:

Have to destroy 4 cities before sieging Tamalir (to conicide with the destroy any 5 cities victory condition from Sea of Blood)

Only very, very cautiously. Well, actually no, not at all. If you are going to port the SoB victory condition in to RtL then don't screw it up by keeping the RtL emphasis on Tamalir. It should be any five cities.
Tamalir is already significantly more difficult to siege than other cities, with higher walls (+ improvements) and immediate access from anywhere on the map by the heroes. Saying you must raze 4 other cities before Tamalir is strictly harder than both RAW conditions - a lot harder!

Hm, good point about Tamalir being just tougher in general. I'm one of the proponents for this change to help accommodate the "Tamalir Rush", but maybe it should be less stringent, like 3 cities then Tamalir can be razed?

-shnar

Thanks for the responses guys, after reading them and thinking on it further, I think I have to agree with Corbon. Him breaking it down point by point made sense and after reading that I agree that I don't really see a need to import SoB rules to RtL unless I felt my group was really struggling in some area. Thanks for the answers!