I am playing an Overloard, The Great Wyrm, for our group of 4 adventurers (we are playing with all the expansions) using the Campaign Setting. I have scared them at first, but they are now to a point of just 1-shotting the monsters. While i have worked hard on surprising them with traps and tactical monsters...it all seems to be nothing to them now.

Should treachery cards be given out the same time players get feats? It has been 3 weeks (game time and not real time) and I seem to be stuck with 20 xp. I need 5 more xp to even have 1 treachery card, and that is still too slow as the players are getting new feats and weapons like candy. It seems like I am getting shafted on getting new challenges and upgrades, while the adventurers are getting new upgrades every dungoen.

I would recommend upgrading monsters before you bought any treachery. And since Treachery works very differently than Feats, I really don't think you can hand them out.

Having 20XP after 3 game weeks isn't bad, what do your Heroes have? Give us some more info about the Heroes and I'm sure the suggestions will come.

lol. Have a read of my session reports My heroes have been 1-shotting monsters since week 2. I'm now on Week 15 and I've only got a total of 39XP. I've just upgraded my humanoids to silver, but they are still 1-shotting them.

Anyway, I agree - upgrade monsters before treachery, although having a point of treachery does dissuade the heroes from making an attack on an Lt early, since that point of treachery means a card of choice in hand at the start of the encounter.

I wouldn't worry too much about the players "one-shotting" the monsters.

As the Overlord, remember that all your monsters are expendable and that the players are supposed to mow down wave upon wave of them as they fight their way through the dungeons to get to you.

Trying to keep your monsters alive is a recipe for disaster. The important thing is not whether they survive the heroes' attacks, but whether they manage to do damage to the heroes before dying. Having a monster charge at the heroes and do significant damage to them before falling to a single attack is far superior to having them hang back and maybe survive two or three attacks before falling over but not doing any damage in return.

I find this is a particular issue in the campaign. The temptation is to put the monsters as close to the players as you can to intimidate them - but that means that the players (who always go before you) get a free turn's worth of attacks on them. If you do your best to hide all your monsters round corners, the players will be forced to spend actions moving towards you; and then your monsters can come charging in and get a good hit on the players before falling over.

Quite every monster has too low life to stand a decent roll of any hero. Like said before, if the Beastman War Party was able to kill a hero, everything you wanted to achieve with it is done. If it then is able to survive the counter attack, all the better.

And I am not sure if I misunderstood you, but you are not stuck with 20 XP, as you still receive XP at the start of your week for razed cities and 1 XP just as time goes by.

And at least they cannot go to any Legendary Area if they lead in XP.

I am fairly certain, because the guard order is in the game, the monsters were made to be one shots most of the time.

My players have finally caught on to my suicide running a weak monster in next to their person with a Guard order placed to get rid of it, followed by something nasty.

Big Remy said:

The main point of that tactic is that it works whether the heroes catch on or not, because inflicting any wounds on a hero with a Guard order removes the order, so they're forced either to attack the weak monster anyway, or gamble that it can't penetrate their armor.

Okay, So upgrade beast and then get treachery. Think of beast as attacking 1 wound fodder. Get overland xp by razing cities.

The adventurers go to town alot to get fully healed and stocked with potions and then come back into the dungoen. They have stacks of gold laying around, just waiting to spend it on upgrades when we get to the silver level. Also, the feats are making it harder to kill them with their abilites. 1) Range can prevent monsters from spawning 5 squares away (forgot character's ability's name), 2) Wizard has Breath Attack, 3) Fighter has taunt (makes creatures 5 squares away must attack him if able), and 4) Scout has quick speed and every hit on him has a chance to miss. The most annoying thing, is that they position themselves up so spawning creatures is near impossible, even when their torches are blown out. Thus, if creatures do spawn, it is far enough that it cant move out of the wizards breath attack.

As you can see, this is a tough group to kill. While I am losing sleep just thinking of ideas (and going through the rules) to make their adventuring days deadly (get too excited for my own good sometimes), it feels like I am very limited with what I can do until i get a good chunk of xp. Maybe I am missing a few details that makes their gaining feats and equipment faster more balance then what i perceive as a slow xp gain and huge cost for 1 treachery. As my gaming groups know...I tend to not see the big picture sometimes in strategy games. This is very fun game and I enjoy being the overlord. I just think I am missing something with my observations.

I'm still of the opinion that Feats aren't designed to work with RTL and are way too powerful. However, Kevin has chimed in about this so that's the way it is. I personally feel they aren't needed in RTL at all, but I haven't played with them yet.

Limits to Feats in RTL: I like the idea of only the character activating the glyph as getting a new feat card. This will limit the abuse of Feats and also give the players pause with who they send to activate the glyph.

I also agree that feats gives a players a big hand in RtL. I limit getting new feats only when a glyth is activated. Any more would be too much.

Monsters are expendable minions. With the best copper treasure available players have a decent chance of 1-shotting even a silver monster and will almost certainly do him in with a second attack.

The key is to hit hard and fast and things will fall apart quickly for the heroes. Spawn a handful of silver skeletons behind the party and suddenly the mage with low armor drops like a sack of potatoes. The heroes will likely turn back to deal with the skeletons which buys you valuable time and threat. The skeletons take should take about 2 rounds to finish off if you’ve good about utilizing their movement.

The strategy is simple; build threat, build threat, build threat, HIT! build threat, build threat, buld threat, HIT!

My experience is, if you throw monsters at the Heroes without a sound strategy for taking down at least 1 things will not go well for you.

I like the idea of the person that activates the glyph, gets the feat. I will have that rule next time.

Just for an update: The idea of one feat per glyph opening feels alot better. It also makes the group work abit harder for it and the feats feel more like special treasure after having to work so hard to get it.

I treated my minions as shields and obstacles for the big guys. The funnest part was using my beast treachery to summon a Master Manticore. That thing was considered a 'boss' to the guys. Mostly cause he would move around after attacking and then I would throw my minions in the way as barriers. Also, I threw a curveball at my players and had all my minions retreat near the boss guy. At first, it confused them and so they followed. Once they found out that i lured them into an environmental hazard, it annoyed them even more.

Now, I gotta deal with complaints from the monsters about being 'trapped' into rooms and hallways without having room to move around. For some odd reason, I keep putting crushing blocks in small hallways to stop/slow progress of players. But, it ends up backfiring and prevents the large creatures from moving down the hallways or getting out of rooms.