hey

me and a friend of mine stumbled on Descent about 4 months ago.

i bouth it including Road to legend, tombe of ice, and sea of blood

still missing the 1st 2 expensions.

but we stumbled on some problems while playing.

well were with 2 players so 1 overlord and 1 or 2 heroes,

i need to say we both look up to 3 steps ahead, but for some reason with juist the basic game, the overlord player mostly me keeps winning the game.

we added the feat cards from the 3 expansions to the basic game including the heroes, and still the overlord keeps winning.

we tryded to disemble the game turms, and we noticed that the overlord player has a slide more advantage vesus 1 or 2 heroes.

how can we solve this problem??

we are using the monstercards with the player numbers on it.

so thats not it.

do we need to put mnsters away or what, we wanna start a campaign soon, but we think it might not be possible with only 1 or 2 heroes.

can anybody help us solve this problem??

First of all, you should never play with one hero. The rules say that in a two-player game, the hero player should control 2 heroes, and there's a reason for that.

Second of all, you should never play with two heroes, either. The game's scaling rules really don't work. At all.

3-4 heroes are recommended for base game quests, 4 heroes exactly is recommended for most expansion quests, and the extended campaign explicitly tells you to play with 4 heroes and doesn't have scaling rules at all. Just divide up that number of heroes among however many players you have.

Alternately, play Enduring Evil . It's my homebrew mod, and it's designed to fix the scaling issues (among other things); I've tested it with everything from 2 to 5 heroes, and it seems pretty solid.

Yes, one hero is completely impossible: don't even consider it.

Two is very difficult for most quests. Some short quests can be beaten with two heroes (the first quest from the base game, for example) with reasonable skill, but I'd definitely recommend trying 3 or 4 to begin with.

hey thx

ive tryed a 1 on 1 game with juist my self last night using the Hero creator rulez.

and i need to say the out come was much suprsing, i made a Dwarf with the barbarian option, so it had stoneskin rule.

with this hero i came to basic set Quest nr 3.

also i made a pixi with the healer option this one came to the 2nd Quest.

ive conciderd using 3 heroes because thats almost the bace for a group to venture.

but the other my friend wants to use no more then 3 heroes, should i as overlord play the 3rd or leave it at that?

also thx for the, The Enduring Evil

ive looked it over and it seems pretty well balanced, so im gonna try it out to see how it works.

this monday im gonna have a few extra players so im gonna try the basic game for like 4 heroes.

for the rest ive my friends likes The Enduring Evil , then were gonna handle that for now on.

The official build-your-own-hero rules have a number of issues, the biggest one being that it's pretty easy to make grossly over- or under-powered heroes. You might take a look at my random hero generator if you want more heroes to play with.

You've got a number conflict in your story about your friend, you said he would control up to 3 heroes then asked if you should control the third. If he's willing to control three, that should be adequate for most of the base game, so I'd play with that for now. If he only wants to control 2...is there any way you can find a third player? Having the overlord control a hero is probably not a good idea (conflict of interests, plus the overlord knows things the heroes shouldn't), though you could maybe do it just to teach the game or something. Or you could use 2 heroes in Enduring Evil.

ya i know the conflict.

i'm also once a week Game Master for a RPG and sometimes even i use a DMPC (a Hero controlled by the game master)

i could play a hero to help the hero's in a certain direction,

but also ive never played a hero so that would also be a change for me.

at the other hand im a person that likes a challenge, so even when i play overlord and 1 hero

i'm the kind of person to test my self, thinking as the hero player when its the heróes turn, and as overlord in the overlords turn.

it sounds creazy but when i play bouth im more looking at a 2nd or 3rd person, scaling the tactics of teh other.

becuase i can do this i can play both without problems, because i like to win as hero and as overlord,

ya i know it soudsa crazy

Remember that Descent is NOT D&D. In D&D (and most other RPGs), the DM's job is to create an adventure to the heroes; he plays as the monsters that the heroes must face, but does so as more of a "third party". Descent is made and balanced around direct opposition; the person in control of the monsters doesn't take on a storyteller role, he's the direct adversary, and should be played as such. Of course, that doesn't mean that you have to always be trying to slaughter the players when they're new; generally, it's up to the most experienced player(s) to ensure that all players enjoy the game when teaching it to new players, and that does include the overlord going easier on the players at first when learning the game.

Robb put out a good article some time ago that kind of outlines this: new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp

Regardless, if you want some advice for how to make the game easier for the heroes, try playing another game and give us as much of a play-by-play as possible. You don't need to give us exact die rolls or damage or anything like that, but enough to know what the players' strategy was.

I definitely recommend that your friend play either 3 hero characters (use the 4 player monster stats) or 4 hero characters (use 5 player stats). The Advanced Campains both require 4 hero characters anyway so if you plan on going down that Road or Sea with just the two of you, you might as well get used to having one player controll all 4 heroes.

There was also a really nice hero's guide on the FFG site at some point but I can't seem to find it now but there are a number of good strategy articles on http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17226/descent-journeys-in-the-dark that could be of use to both of you.

Good luck!

Oboewan said:

You might mean this basic one: new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp

hey thx

i know Descent isnt D&D, it was a ruff resembles to see a problem been resolved.

but still all is the well beter hey

wel we tryed yesterday that he was gonna play # heroes but he came cross Quest 1 and not even trough area 1 of the 2nd quest.

2nd time hey tryed again and came much furtere trough i made 2 mistakes and was going easy that time as overlord.

last monday we played with a full group of 5 players and we didnt finish the 1st quest at all we tryed it 3 times.

next week were gonna play it again with a full group but with more team work of heroes i hope,

it was the first time for 3 players so we hope they get with it soon enough so we can get a start with RTL.

You didn't finish the 1:st quest after trying 3 times? In that case I think you need to specify a bit more about how the heroes are failing and where, because that is almost not possible unless you are misunderstanding the rules. The 1:st quest in the base game is made to be a very easy start for the heroes, they should be able to complete it even with no prior experience with the game.

What is it that kills the heroes? Is it spawns, do they rush into rooms without backup, don't they find enough items? And how many times does each hero die?

the problem is they dont really work as a team no tactics.

also they juist barge into the next area.

and most inportant they use order tokens.

so i kill them easely.

i made a houze rule of spawning, i dont spawn in already searched area's.

also they never close door behind them so if i spawn they will be dead in no time.

in 2 days im reseiving WOD so i can finnaly use Feats and Threachery to inprove the game play.

in overall look we advance more with 2 players and 3 heroes then 5 players and 4 heroes.

Closing door is not a very good idea for heroes. They need to block spawns by having line of sight backwards. Stopping to close a door takes movement and gives the overlord the ability to spawn right behind them, so I think they are doing the right thing in that case.

As per your house rule, where do you spawn? You can't spawn in areas they have not entered yet, so if you house rule that you can't spawn in areas they have entered, there should be no place to spawn at all? Or do you mean that you don't spawn in the rooms behind them?

There are no feats in WoD. They only show up in ToI.

Honn said:

Closing a rune-locked door, though, is a good idea, as long as there's not a named monster on the other side to reopen it. All monsters can open normal doors but only named monsters can open rune-locked ones.