Yup I'm back with yet more fun heroes! Only Holy Knight Chen remains UNTESTED, so use him at your own risk. The rest have already gone through 2 quests, and my players said that I have managed to give them the feeling that they are really using the characters from the actual game. This special edition focuses on giving the actual flavour of using the said characters from the popular warcraft 3 mod-game called DOTA. As always, I need help from you guys to give good criticism and feedbacks - especially players from the game DOTA.

Holy Knight:

Recommended Figurine: A specially painted figurine of Hell Hound from original Descent. (though this will make it 2 spaces instead of 1)

Vengeful Spirit:

Recommended Figurine: Any gal figurine from Descent's original heroes.

The Butcher:

Recommended Figurine: A round ball of clay with protruding limbs makes a good Pudge!

Shadow Fiend:

Recommended figurine: A specially painted Shade from Tomb of Ice's monsters.

P.S: Please let me know in all honesty if I am doing a good job of converting DOTA heroes over to Descent or if I am insulting the heroes completely. I wish to eventually add more and more suitable heroes straight from DOTA as I felt their unique powers could give excellent strategies to the players, but then again I could be insulting them with poor hero creation skills. My playgroup can only give so much feedback based on their gaming styles and I need more variety of gamers. Thanks in advance for all replies!

I can't comment on how well they transferred, but man I'm sorry these guys seems horribly busted compared to the normal Descent heroes. Like promo figure level busted. I'm not trying to be harsh, but in my experience 2 quests isn't a good shakedown of a custom hero.

I can tell you thought that looking at them, I would never allow them in a RtL or SoB game.

Holy Knight Chen: He's basically an autoheal of 2 wounds every turn. With him being a magic focused hero there is no reason for him to not sit back as much as possible, declare Ready: Rest orders every turn and either move away from monsters or attack to kill one in his LOS. Yes he is squishy at 8 wounds and no armor, but there are ways around that for the heroes. Maybe if he only healed heroes who had LOS to him, he would be more balanced IMO.

Shendelzare: umm...wow. This person is the runner of all runners. She is Shadowsoul as a hero. She would be able to make it clear across a RtL or SoB level on her first movement probably. All she has to is declare a Run, swap twice, drink a fatigue potion, and swap two more times and she could be clear across the level and still have 7 movement to open chest and get away from monsters. Maybe if she was 3CT and she had to spend MP instead of fatigue to do it.

Pudge: Give him Bear Tattoo in the base game so he gets grapple and he becomes a boss killer. Add in that there is no limit on the size of the monster, and you've got him pulling dragons across the map into attack range of all the heroes. Give him the Elven Boots and any enemy figure that comes within 6 spaces with clear LOS is dead to a Battle Action.

Nevermore: You just gave a hero am improved version of Blast that works with Blast. This guy gets any area of attack rune/staff and he will run the chance of using his ability every other turn. Declare an advance action, kill three monsters using the Blast rune. Next turn declare a battle then spend 2 fatigue to dish out 5 wounds to all monsters within 6 spaces. Which depending on the monsters involved could flat out kill them if this bypasses armor (and since you said wounds and not damage I have to assume it does). Repeat.

Again I am not trying to come down on you since I am always interested in seeing new heroes for this game. But I'd have to see them in action in the same quest about 10 times with a bunch of different skill combos before I'd let these guys hit my table, especially for RtL and SoB.

Putting aside game balance concerns for a moment...I don't know how these heroes work.

Holy Knight Chen: "Performs" a Rest order is not a defined game term. It could mean place a Rest order, or it could mean to use a Rest order to recover fatigue at the start of your next turn (and maybe something else I haven't thought of). In the former case, using his ability is easy, especially since you can still spend fatigue after placing the order. In the latter case, it's rather more difficult, unless of course you're in town...you say you can only heal heroes that are in the dungeon (why?), but don't say that Chen has to be in the dungeon, too.

And the conditions on usage are bizarre and complicated. In order to use this ability, (1) there must be a monster revealed in the dungeon, (2) it must not have line-of-sight to Chen, and (3) Chen must currently have 2 or more fatigue. With that level of complexity, it's very easy to make mistakes. And it's very easy to overlook loopholes, such as the fact that you just said that there must exist one monster that doesn't have LOS to Chen, rather than stating that all monsters must be unable to trace LOS to Chen as, I suspect you intended. And I'm honestly not sure what the reason is for all of that complexity.

Shendelzare: There are no rules for tracing line-of-sight to players; maybe you meant heroes? What does "you may not swap if space disallows" mean? That might be interpreted as meaning that you can only swap with figures whose base is the same size and shape as your own, or as meaning that you can't swap if it places you in an illegal position, or that you can't swap if it places either you or the swap target in an illegal position (and probably several other subtle variations, besides). In all but the first case, you need rules for what "swap" means if your bases aren't the same size.

Pudge: Again, there are no players in the dungeon. "Hook" is not a defined game term. "Straight line" already generates interminable arguments in Steelhorns' ability, and the "it" that must be in a straight line is ambiguous. You can "hook" a figure through walls, closed doors, and other figures, but not through mud, ice, pits, or fog?

Nevermore: I think you mean "spend 2 faitgue and remove 3 tokens," not " to remove 3 tokens;" your current wording implies that removing the tokens is an effect, and that therefore you can probably trigger the ability even if you don't have 3 tokens to remove. It's not clear whether the bomb can only be used immediately when you declare a Battle action, or any time during your turn when you declare one...and in the latter case, have you considered what happens if he uses it more than once? I also don't know what it means to receive a wound "directly".

I have no love and little knowledge of DotA. And I think some of Remy's criticisms are a bit strange (for example, you can generally battle a monster within 6 squares without any special abilities, and I don't know how changing a fatigue cost to an MP cost constitutes a nerf). But you really can't expect to get any meaningful feedback on your ideas if you can't even articulate them clearly.

I don't have a great deal of faith in your playtests, either, after reading the house rules you posted recently .

A BIG thank you to both Big Remy and Antistone for your excellent inputs. I could not have agreed more with you on the 2 quests being too short a time to playtest my characters properly, not to mention they are the same group in both quests. (Which is why I seek advice here again, and I wasn't disappointed at all)

I do understand that my words are not very comprehensive to refer to their complete meanings. I am facing a huge problem of lack of text space to write what I really want to. I guess I will have to come up with a separate sheet to describe their abilities in that case.

It is a sad thing that both of u are not DotA players too, because the value of the characters which lie in their maintaining as-close-a-flavour-as-the-actual-heroes in DotA is lost on you. But this is a blessing in disguise! I am getting feedbacks from purely Descent veterans who understand the boardgame inside out and point out that it cannot be completely ported over in this manner and yet not break the game. I will think hard on your advices and change them as best as I can.

P.S: Antistone, if its not too much trouble, I hope that you can assist me in pointing out the errors of my house variant for original Descent set. My group has been enjoying it very much, but they are no Descent guru and we could well be playing rubbish without any veterans' observation.

It can be very challenging to come up with appropriate heroes and descriptions. One key factor to be aware of is that Road to Legend (RtL) makes some important changes, for one they removed the healing runes from the game. Healing in RtL is critical and I can see with Chen you attempted to avoid this problem. As a side note I have not played DOTA. Here are some of my thoughts/suggestions:

Holy Knight Chen: Too many restrictions breeds confusion, one idea would be to utilize Glyphs. "When Chen reveals a Rest Order all adjacent heroes (not including Chen) recover 2 Health.". Alternatively if you are looking for a ranged healing ability. "While in a dungeon Holy Knight Chen may spend an attack action and X fatigue, every hero within X spaces of Chen heal 2 wounds." He is also over costed, he should be worth 2 CT.

Shendelzare: Her mobility is an issue as not only does it make her extremely mobile (Descent is often a race against time). She also foils almost any Overlord plan involving positioning. She can swap with a monster standing on a chest or glyph. Swap with a distant monster singling them out for the rest of the party. Exceedingly easy to escape from harm and difficult situations and can also pull weaker members from harm as well. I'm sure there are many other concerns, just trying to give you a perspective. One idea for a change "Once per turn during her action, Shendelzare may pay 2 fatigue to swap positions with another hero within her LOS." She is also borderline under costed, I think she should be worth 3 due to her flexable and defensive capable ability.

Pudge: I generally find this beast broken, no offense intended, but to use his ability he must sacrifice his move and he is already slow and unarmored, the Overlord would love this easy to kill high conquest hero. Here is another idea, "Pudge starts with a Hook token. When making an attack, Pudge may instead make a Ranged attack with his hook, Roll 1 blue die + Ranged traits and if the attack causes any wounds before armor, place his hook token on the target. Pudge may reclaim the hook token at the start of his turn or if the enemy breaks free/dies." I would his Melee Traits and Combat skills by one and increase his Ranged Trait and Subterfuge skill by one. Hook: Treat hook the same as web. Finally his CV to 3.

Nevermore: Ouch, way too powerful. Here is another idea, "When Nevermore declares a Battle action he may sacrifice both attack and spend 3 fatigue to cause 5 damage (ignoring armor) to all figures within 3 spaces. After the attack Nevermore gains a Curse token." Now his attack may harm friends and enemies alike, forcing his player to consider carfully when and if to use it. Powerful attacks should usually consume 75%-100% of the heroes fatigue, preventing consecutive uses. Finally his CV to 2.

I consider CV a measure of how difficult a hero is to defeat, including defensive special abilities. Anyways, I hope these suggestions are helpful.

Darkspell
-
Are you afraid of the dark? You should be...

Making rules text both clear and concise is a difficult and underappreciated skill, but it's very valuable, especially when you're trying to fit the rules in a small box on a template, such as for cards or hero abilities. I changed or dropped several ability ideas for my hero editor because they didn't fit in the box.

One important technique is to re-use words and phrases that already have an established meaning; for example, saying "when you place a Rest order" or "when you recover your fatigue by Resting" instead of "when you perfrom a Rest order." The word "place" is already used consistently throughout the rules and cards to refer to a hero gaining an order token, and the phrase "recover your fatigue by Resting" appears (verbatim) on an official card (Red Plate of Kelos). By usine one of those phrases, you signal to the player that this ability works like something that they already understand (and which thing), rather than in some weird new way they have to figure out.

Similarly, you probably want to say "figure" instead of "player [hero] or monster", "move" instead of "hook", and "(ignoring armor)" instead of "directly" (when talking about wounds). Because those terms are used by other rules and abilities, so players (or at least, experienced players) already know what they mean.

Another technique is to rely on the game's established conventions to convey rules implicitly, instead of spelling them out. For example, abilities in Descent can be used an unlimited number of times by default; you need to specifically state something like "once per turn" or "exhaust" to limit them. Therefore the entire sentence in Shendelzare's ability stating "this can be done multiple times, paying its cost" is unnecessary. It's sometimes nice to spell it out, if you have the space, but if you can't fit in the actual important rules, that's something you can cut to save space.

Sometimes you just have to simplify how an ability works in order to fit it in the allowed space. For example, you might limit Shendelzare's swap so that it only works on 1x1 figures, not for any game balance reason, but just so that you don't need to explain how it works for larger figures. You might eliminate some of the numerous restrictions on Chen's ability for similar reasons.

But other times you can keep a more general or more complicated version by finding just the right subtle turn-of-phrase. There's a skill in Enduring Evil called Necrotic Traversal that teleports you to the location of a figure that just died; I was able to clarify large figures by adding just a couple of words to the text, saying "move to any space occupied by that figure" instead of something like "move to that figure's space." But that only covers the case of a small figure moving into a larger figure's footprint, not vice versa.

I'd also like to comment that I think it's somewhat unreasonable to expect custom heroes to be balanced both for vanilla and the extended campaign, especially coming from someone who's only played vanilla; lots of stuff has to be changed or removed in the extended campaign. Pointing out which stuff would be problematic in RtL is certainly useful, but I'd recommend focusing on vanilla, at least to begin with.

Darkspell's suggestion to heal when a glyph is activated resembles an ability from the build-your-own-hero rules: "Each time a glyph is activated, you may restore up to (3-5, depending on ability level) wounds, split however you like, between yourself and any other heroes within 3 spaces of you."

With deep gratitude to everyone who has helped, I present the newer and far more Descent-playable versions of the DotA heroes! Hope this time they look alot better! (And AntiStone you got me there! I only play the vanilla set for now T-T )

The Butcher:

The Shadow Fiend:

The Holy Knight:

The Vengeful Spirit:

And here are two new additions to the DotA special edition:

The Giant:

Recommended Figurine: Specially painted Golem monster from expansion set.

The Spirit Breaker:

Recommended Figurine: Steelhorn.

P.S: If it isn't taking too much time, do leave some comments or crits on whether they are playable in Descent. These 2 new additions have not be tested at all.

Hi guys, latest updates to the DOTA Special Edition:

-Holy Knight Chen changed.

-Tiny the Giant changed.

-Axe added.

Axe the Whirling Blade

Recommended Figurine: Grumbaz from World of Warcraft Adventure/Boardgame

Tiny the Giant (downgraded)

Holy Chen (downgraded):

Loving the stuff Wanderer :3

What do you use to make your heroes, by the way?

My brainz

Wahahahaha~

XD

Actually, was asking what program, but I've done some research, and Iam's Fantasy Card Creator seems the most likely culprit :3

Hopefully I can get my hands on it soon.

Nice stuff, Knight Davion the Dragon Knight would be awesome being in Descent, should make him.

Whoah, finally another DotA *** Descent player~!

Thanks for the compliment, I will do just that! If you find that there any any other interesting heroes from DotA you think would be fun in Descent, do request them here and I will do it.

I use Knight Davion, Kardel Sharpeye (dwarven sniper) or Boush (goblin tinker) whichever I feel like using at the time if I'm in the sentinel side.

As the scourge, I use Terrorblade, Bone Clinkz or Abaddon, whichever I feel like using at the time.

I use Knight Davion, Kardel Sharpeye (dwarven sniper) or Boush (goblin tinker) whichever I feel like using at the time if I'm in the sentinel side.

As the scourge, I use Terrorblade, Bone Clinkz or Abaddon, whichever I feel like using at the time.

Here they are, the requested Heroes:

Knight Davion

(My apologies, but I just realized I already have another Dragon Knight character, called Rusha. He works exactly the same as I would have done for Davion. So you might want to consider using him instead since it wouldn't make sense to make two similar gameplay heroes. He's under my Heroes Vol.2)

Kardel Sharpeye, the Sniper (Dwarf)

Boush, the Tinker (Goblin)

Terrorblade, Soul Keeper (Demon)

Bone Clinkz, the Bone Fletcher (Undead)

Abaddon, Lord of Avernus (Death Knight)

Aiushtha the Enchantress (Dryad)

P.S to Knuckles Eki: In Dota, I personally use Naix as my number one. My number two is Shadow Fiend. Number three for me goes to Skeleton King.

They look awesome. Terrorblade got 4 trait dice, is that intentional?

Yup all are intentional~!

Been playing quests after quests of Descent, so I have improved alot on the 'feel' of the game to get out some pretty balanced stuff. My characters still lean towards unique and fun. But I focus on maintaining them to be playable with other Descent gameplay too. By the way, there's a hero called Karnon that has 5 power dice on Melee!

P.S: Oops, just realized I made a mistake on Kardel spending one fatigue, it should be two! I have updated the picture now.

I'm not sure how Kardel's ability works. Does he spend fatigue before or after rolling dice? If he spends it before the die roll, does he have to decide which bonus (+4R, +2D / +1R, +3D) he's using before the die roll, or can he decide that after rolling? Does his ability come before or after adding power dice with fatigue?

Thanks for pointing out that vague part, bro! Updated! If picture doesn't change, press F5 to refresh the pictures.

It is done when making an attack, BEFORE the roll.

Have you ever thought of creating a DOTA varient using RTL outdoor map.

A PVP descent in DOTA style.

Having published 13 DotA heroes and now with the newly added Descent PvP, it just might be possible. But it seems that most boardgame fans aren't pc fans, and vice-versa. I've noticed that the word DotA is next to alien in this forum.

Just check out your link in BBG. Nice to meet you. I am a Descent fan from Singapore too.

Wanderer999 said:

I'm not sure DotA is really popular enough to use as a basis for that statement; I've seen many a reference to the Diablo games on these forums.

The thing to remember about making a Dota scenario for Descent is that... who's got more than 1 of an expansion? The outdoors from 1 RtL wouldn't be enough for a Dota map.

It's actually possible to make a DotA map using the dungeon tiles. The outdoors tiles as you mentioned are limited, so if ever used, so probably be placed in minor areas for flavor at most.

And whipko: Not sure what u meant by my BBG link. Did u send me a message on boardgamegeeks or..? I did not find anything there from a whipko.