Hey guys we just played tonight and the overlord thought it seemed unfair to pull a dungeon encounter where we had to fight two leaders because if we killed them both we would get 8 conquest and 500 gold (250 each leader). We checked the manual and could not find anything specific stating if the conquest and loot was split between the two leaders or if it was doubled when fighting two leaders?

So we house ruled it that its split between the two leaders.. so it would be 2 conquest 125 gold per leader on the 3rd level. How do you guys rule this?

You recieve the listed reward per leader, if you're (un)lucky enough to get a lvl with 3 leaders each one gives you the conquest/gold, and if that's the last lvl of the dungeon then you've hit the jackpot (if you can take them....).

Twak.

Twak is correct, the bonus is applied to each leader individually if there happen to be more than one on the third level. There are a couple dungeon cards with three leaders as well, IIRC, which is the super jackpot if it comes up as the third level! This is one of the more random aspects of Descent. Much like a hero player might draw a trio of sh*tty heroes and crappy skills, the OL might get unlucky and draw a multi-leader level as the final level in a dungeon. The heroes do still have to contend with multiple leaders, though. If this is still Copper, that's a pretty big deal.

Ok cool. We may house rule it that way. Do you guys think thats unfair to the overlord to get 12 conquest for a 3 leader dungeon in the early copper campaign?

Also the Overlord is beastman overlord and upgraded humonoids to silver. So he gets in a scenario where he has like two kobold swarms surrounds one of our melee characters and at this point he is rolling like max dice plus one or two silver and our guy has 6 armor. He rolls and gets an insane amount of surges but only does like 5 or 6 damage so nothing goes through. This was fustrating to him cause he is rolling all these dice and the surges are wasted.

Does the overlord have some type of card he can play or something he can do to make those surges worth something?

Right now our game is tied 59 conquest to 59 conquest and he has raised one city.

For Overlord two surges = one Threat token, for Dark Priest attacks this is 1 surge = 1 Threat token.

Why did your Overlord even bother with the tank? In my group I attack the tank only as the last resort, there are always better targets.

D.

Ok well he had no choice. Kolbolds move 3 and our two tanks were his only choice. we kept our glass cannon and ranged character far back so we could not get swarmed. I think he was just fustrated cause when he gets dice upgaded to silver because of the swarm ability and he rolls nothing but surges and can't do any damage or do anything. I guess he just felt the ability was somewhat worthless.

Dred said:

That means there are three nasty bosses that the heroes had to face.

I'm finding it very difficult to comment on people trying to decide what is 'fair' when they have barely scratched the surface of a deep and complex game without coming across as rather rude.

Corbon said:

We played the regular Descent a long time ago and this is the first time we have ever played RTL. Whoever is the overlord we tend to let him interpet the rules and make house rules that we all agree on. We try not to take the game too seriously and just have fun. However i do like to know the rules and follow them as intended as much as possible which is why i been posting here more often. I enjoy the discussion here so i guess thats why i was asking about opinion. Plus since i am not overlord i am just informing everyone the rules not trying to impose them on everyone if they dislilke it. Although so far I think we been following all the rules to the letter unless we interpeted it wrong.

Anyway getting 12 conquest for a 3 named leader dungeon on the 3rd level is fine with me and actually sounds quite fair. I just didn't want to argue with the overlord about it. =P Anyway i will mention it to him again in our game next week and hopefully its no big deal.

Basically were getting in the tail end of copper so things are getting pretty easy for us and hard for him.

1. we almost never die or bail when it gets too rough.

2. hates using silver kobolds and rolling all 5 power dice with two silver and then getting no damage to hurt our tank but has like 10 surges that go to waste cause he did not do at least 1 point of damage. (altho i think he will refrain from using kobolds ever again after this incident unless its to slow down a hero)

3. we have leadership and a few times i have had our tank battle the leader and if the boss is still alive i will use leadership to give our tank guard so as soon as overlords turn starts our tank can attack and usually kills the leader on the last attack.

4. no one has rapid fire yet but we have discussed the drink a fatigue potion and get like 6 attacks in one round and he was thinking of house rulling it 1 additional attack per attack. So on an advance i could make a total of two attacks on a battle i could make a total of 4 attacks.. Or maybe we just suggest you can't use a fatigue pot to do more rapid fire attacks in a single turn.

I feel like i am forgetting something but i guess thats whats going on.. So please don't take it the wrong way. I appreciate all the input..

Thanks =)

1 and 2: I think these are correleated. Kobolts? Those are propably the worst monster in the campaigns. Only Bane Spiders come near and then only because they are near impossible to spawn. Anyway you say you might use them, but that might not be enough. Unfortunately RtL is heavily biased for Eldrich monsters, the OL needs this upgrade instead of beasts or humanoid if he wants to hurt a carful party, so your OL shot himself in the foot by not looking through the upgrades and maps properly

3. Happens now and then, although we found it better to use the order for rests on fatigue heavy characters or guards and blast-mages. Changes the game a bit, but not that much,

4. Rapid Fire is probably the only way a Range hero in RtL can compete with Magic ones since he has no blast or breath and never does the same amount of damage. There is no need to house rule it (just remember that the gauntlets have been changed in the FaQ).

Also remember that the OL wins through the overland map, the heroes win through dungeons, so don't expect the OL to keep up in Conquest if he doesnt sack some cities. And I agree with Corbon. RtL is not regular Descent, play a while before deciding to house rule things.

Dred said:

2. Tell him that gold Kobolds are rather cool, especially early on when the heroes don't have many silver weapons. He should be saving CT at the end of copper so that he can buy the Gold monster upgrade on his first week of silver level. Silver->gold is actually a very nice upgrade for humanoids. Beastman get Command 2 on the masters and Kobolds move to a RG dice! And at least if his silver dice rolls surges instead of damage he is getting back threat. 10 surges is not entirely wasted - it paid for the spawn card at least.

3. Leadership is a very powerful skill, though it's most common use is to allow heroes to 'rest' safely (hero A with Leadership goes first, placing a rest on hero B who then has his turn and viola! is rested without the OL ever having a chance t break the rest order.

4. As mentioned, Ranged weapons are signficantly worse than other weapons so Rapid Fire is a way of catching up and keeping the ranged hero significant. It is very powerful in the right circumstances but sometimes it needs to be that powerful.

Dred said:

He sounds exactly like our OL, who also played the Beastman Lord! Because of that, he convinced us to be allowed to use 2 surges for 1 damage or take a threat on attack rolls, his choice. If he isn't able to kill you anymore, you might try that.

We carried over that rule for SoB, which is questionable because it seems a harder campaign and because of the final fight (it would feel unfair to us heroes to lose that fight because of a house rule). However, we are far from it yet (48-45 in copper), so we'll see.

Dred said:

That's exactly how we houseruled Rapid Fire when the OL noticed that I was able to fire 10 attacks a turn (8 fatigue + the Knight skill)! Do all Beastman Lords have similar minds? With Knight, that still left me 6 attacks a turn, which indeed is more than enough.

Another houserule we adopted was that leader bonuses scaled with the campaign level (except leaders of legendary dungeons, whose stats are supposed to be adapted to their campaign level), before it became an official rule in SoB. It worked well for us.

However, keep in mind that the game is very dependent on the heroes' and OL's respective strategical and tactical skills. Very often, the better playing group runs away with it, so whatever rules you choose to play with at the start of the game will not guarantee a balanced campaign, because you do not know beforehand (except when playing with children maybe) who will be the better player.