Okay, so I am new to the world.

A couple of friends got me interested to play road to legend. I drew the hero Okaluk and Rakesh, cool hero, mediocre name, lol, ANYWAY...

I drew three skills to choose from for my starting one: Dash, Ox Tatoo, Tiger Tatoo. All great...

I need some help, what would you guys recommend. I am unfamiliar with game mechanics.

Starting with only one skill makes me sad...

Any help is great.

Descent has no skill called "Dash".

I've only played vanilla Descent, but depending on what the "Dash" skill actually is, I suspect you'll want Tiger Tattoo. It's a good skill generally, and especially for your likely party role as a runner to collect treasure and activate glyphs (due to your high speed and good defenses relative to your conquest value). All three of Tiger Tattoo's effects are great for runners (speed and fatigue help you move farther, and the resistance to traps makes it harder for the overlord to stop you with cards).

Are none of the other heroes experienced enough to help you out, though? I'm told that Road to Legend can go badly fairly fast if the heroes don't have at least an elementary grasp of long-term strategy...

I assume "Dash" is a English-Other Language-English translation. Either that or a poor memory!

Assuming it's "Swift", I think you could make a case for either Swift or TIger Tattoo, but I would definitely not take Ox Tattoo.

I haven't actually played RtL, but I was under the impression that you were supposed to get a choice of 4 skills to begin with, rather than 3 (unless you're playing Karnon or Arvel, that is)? Or am I wrong?

1) You should have drawn 4 skills, so for O/R you would have picked 2 Melee and 1 Subterfuge and then one more of your choice.

2) I'll assume "Dash" is Swift.

So....

Dash (aka Swift): Good choice, get up to Speed 8 for O/R.

Ox Tattoo: Not worth it for this guy really.

Tiger Tattoo: For O/R, this is my vote for best starting skill. You go up to base speed of 7, but more importantly you go up to 3 fatigue instead of an abysmal 2. Fatigue management is key in RtL (and Descent in general) so the more you have the better. Plus, the immunity to pit trap damage is nice.

So I would go with Tiger Tattoo.

Yeah dash is swift... lol. It was getting late when I wrote.

I was leaning toward the tiger,, but swift looked nice too.

The fourth skill I grabbed was parry.

Should we actually get that far, what would be some nice sought after skills to train?

I was thinking I would pursue swift, but some other good choices would be?

IIRC you have the halfling on the wolf, right? Doesn't he have insane speed, like 6? Does Swift give him +1 Speed? If so, talk about your sprinter!

In our campaign, the hobbit-warg-rider even at base speed was really good at running around grabbing things, blitzing during copper. Since he has permanent Invisibility too, he was harder to hit than you might think. Throw a Dodge on him (usually from the Leadership hero) and it got crazy...

-shnar

Take Tiger Tattoo. The extra speed plus the immunity from pit traps will really help. One of the hero's in the RtL I OL'd was Okaluk and Rakash. With the ability stealth I had to rely on traps to really hurt her.

Okaluk and Rakash is indeed the guy riding the wolf, and yes, he has 6 base speed and Stealth. And only 2 max fatigue.

Swift is +2 speed. Tiger Tattoo is +1 speed, +1 fatigue, and protects you from pits (both obstacles and trap cards, IIRC). Ox Tattoo gives you immunity to a bunch of status effects.

shnar said:

hmm dodge. gonna try that lol

I would as others have stated, probably take Tiger Tattoo although Swift does look very, very nice, speed 8 would be nuts. On a side note about Tiger Tattoo, an important note would be that it does not actually make you immune to pits or pit traps, it just causes you to take no damage from them (meaning LoS restriction while in them and the extra movement points to get out of them still apply).

The nice thing about Speed 8 is the 16MPs on a run, 18MPs if you are at full fatigue (before any upgrades). This, as opposed to 14MPs or 17MPs w/Fatigue. IMHO, those 2 extra MPs can really add up if you're blitzing.

-shnar

Tiger Tattoo is almost strictly better than Swift.

Even when blitzing, Swift gives no more potential than Tiger Tattoo because you usually do it with drinking a Vitality potion to max out the number of squares you can move.

Okaluk & Rakash with Swift: 16 natural movement + 1 from Fatigue (the other Fatigue is used for drinking the potion) + 2 Fatigue = 19 squares.

Okaluk & Rakash with Tiger Tattoo: 14 natural movement + 2 from Fatigue + 3 from Fatigue after drinking = 19 squares. No difference!

But Tiger Tattoo provides additional protection from traps, and the one additional Fatigue can be useful in circumstances where speed isn't involved (in combat for example, to add a Gold dice when a monster is left with 3 health, or for the protection granted by Ghost Armor, or for Fatigue-consuming skills like Leadership or Cleaving...).

Ispher said:

I think with the 16 natural movement it should read... 16 natural movement +1 from Fatigue (the other is for potion) + 3 Fatigue = 20 squares.

Still only one more space, so about the same.

Thanks for all the help guys

lol nm, apparently I am thinking you get three from the potion of vitality. You are right!

As you were

accidental double post...

A lot of people have written off Ox Tattoo. Well, yes,Tiger Tattoo is strictly better in general.

However, there are two things that stop a blitz strategy cold.
One is when the blitzer is a melee hero and uses the Hammer or other Knockback weapon to clear monsters as required. Ghost (shades) kills this tactic nicely. No more running up to the glyph, knocking the monster off it and stepping on to activate it. However, that is not immediately germaine...
The other, is Grapple (Naga's). If your OL is beast focused you can expect to see upgraded Nagas at pretty much every possibility in dungeons, and they will almost always be placed deep to prevent a runner blitzing and avoid the rest of the party easily getting to them and killing them.

Ox Tattoo is the only answer to Grapple left to the heroes. Telekinesis is not available and knockback doesn't work against size 4 monsters (except with the higher knockback treasures), so a single naga in the right place can stop a runner cold.

Immunity to Web and Stun is also very, very useful against a beast focused OL.

Anti-knockback is also not to be sniffed at for O&R in particular (because of his stealth and high health - with a dodge order he becomes very, very difficult to shift). He is then able to secure a corridor against large monsters, even ogres.
On one occasion in a gold encounter Lt encounter (Thadd) I had O&R holding off 2 gold ogres, a gold Master ogre, gold Thad and a gold elite beastman war party. Because of his Ox Tattoo the ogres couldn't shift him and he blocked up one path entirely. The beastman couldn't get through easily due to congestion and would get picked off easily by other party members with Guards or after missing the stealthy dodging O&R (84% chance miss approx). The other heroes were able to snipe from behind O&R, advance out, attack and retreat again etc. All because he could not be moved .

I would still start with Tiger Tattoo, but the 4 skills I want on my dream runner (which is either O&R or Zyla (who doesn't need acrobat) in RtL are, in order, Acrobat, Tiger Tattoo, Ox Tattoo, Swift (pure speed can be improved with fatigue upgrades and is the least useful anyway, beyond about 7ish...)

Try combining Okaluck and Rakash with the skill "Taunt". There is then no hope for the OL, particularly if the heros give O & R any armor whatsoever.

Essentially, the OL will then be spending every effort to avoid having O & R in LOS, to avoid being forced to spend attacks on them. Then let O & R add the "dodge" order, and the OL is REALLY in trouble.

I just finished (actually, gave up) an AdvCamp after only a single dungeon was completed when, during the final level, the party threw in O & R alove, and the others kept going back to town to "restock", thus eradicating all the damage I had done to them on the upper two levels, all the while a Beastman War Party was totally focused on trying to kill O & R. Couldn't be done in any short order. In fact, the Master Beastman was down to two hits left when I finally got lucky enough to avoid the "X" result on both the first, and then dodge re-roll.

I made it clear to my hero party that this combination cannot be permitted in the future.

Phloyd113 said:

Taunt is trivially easy to avoid (it has almost no effect on melee monsters for example), or at least reduce it's effect into something extremely minor, and is not the issue here. Your problem is that a dodging O&R was the only hero in the dungeon.

A dodging O&R is either not going to move very far at all, or not going to attack, so in essence he is using time (which gives you resources) for his other heroes to do other things. That is a legitimate trade, and not without risk.

An O&R with Taunt is actually a good thing for the OL - it means he has wasted a skill slot that could have been much more usefully spent on Acrobat, Tiger Tattoo, Ox Tattoo, Swift or even a combat skill.

I am in a campain right now where i am playing that character.. I would have cheesed myslelf if tiger tattoo was one that i drew.. definatley take that for now. Swift will be good later when you get too it.. and as soon as u can. Get to Dawnsmoor and get acrobat.. it is a must.. Only way to get around soaring.

Corbon said:

What would be the point of Zyla with Acrobat?

duhtch said:

There isn't one, which is why he said "Zyla (who doesn't need acrobat)".

yay for not being able to read, duh(tch)