The latest Dungeon Quest preview stated that all 6 heroes will have Descent cards, like this one:

So gives me one more reason to buy Dungeon Quest I guess

-shnar

An obvious marketing strategy - I predict all future "Tenneroth" games will come with unique figures + the cards to play them in other games.

*sigh*

Don't you have enough of my money already FFG?

I take it Dungeon Quest is a new and upcoming game?

Is there anywhere I can find info on it?

In the announcement, it is written that all Terrinoth games allow you to "to carry over your favorite Hero from one game to another". However, I think "Challara" is a very bad example for that because in the three different games, she is a very different sort of hero and it won't be the same "feeling" to play her in Runewars, in Descent and in Dungeon Quest.

For example, while she seems to be rather some kind of seer (that plays like some sort of magic-driven scout) in Dungeon Quest, she is a really heavy fighter with lots of hitpoints in Runewars. However, she is nor a heavy fighter with lots of hitpoints nor a scouting seer in Descent, but a mage that shines because of her familiar. In reverse, exactly this characteristic familiar is not seen in any of the other games.

Thus, Challara can be transfered from one game to the next, but she doesn't keep her characteristics and she does not seem to be "the same" hero.

I don't critizise this "game-travelling-system" in general: It is a nice idea. I just think that Challara is a bad example. If you take a look at the existing Terrinoth heroes, there are much better examples. (I don't own Runebound so I cannot say anything about it, but e.g. the characteristics of Varikas, the Runewitch, Bogran or Sir Valadir have been pretty good "translated" from Descent to Runewars. Surely, their special powers cannot be directly moved from one game to the other, but you really feel that you are playing the same hero.)

The question that remains unanswered is: Does Dungeon Quest contain hero sheets from all the other existing Terrinoth heroes? Can you transfer Varikas or the Runewitch into Dungeon Quest?

shnar said:

Will they have RB and RW cards, too?

It's always fun to see new heroes. I'm a little concerned that the whole "once per area" limit will be a headache to keep track of in vanilla games (advanced campaigns will be easier since there aren't that many big dungeons with more than one area per floor.) I'm also curious if Brightblaze will have the same restrictions imposed as Furr (must be within 5 spaces and owner must have LOS.) Other than that, she looks like a cool hero.

I'm also kind of curious - I'm assuming there will be a Brightblaze hex token included, but will it be used in DQ at all, or will it be one more useless component included for crossover games?

TeufelHund said:

I feel you on that one. The recycling heroes strategy has been going on for so long though, it's hard for me to imagine them doing a full about face. I suppose time will tell, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there were new expansions for RW (and maybe DQ) that include recycled heroes still.

Wanderer999 said:

There is a DungeonQuest forum, that's a good place to start. Also, check the news archives for all the previews that have been released.

Graf said:

That's unfortunate. I definitely like it when a hero has similar themes across all the games. Maybe not identical, but at least similar.

Graf said:

That would be interesting. On the one hand as a marketing strategy it's pretty genius, on the other hand new customers who open DQ to find 20+ hero cards for figures they don't appear to have might be confused or find themselves discouraged at the thought of "needing" to buy all these other games and expansions just to get appropriate hero figures.

At this point, it might even be a wiser strategy to pick a certain core group of heroes to use in all new games (like, say, the 12 included in RB core, and RW core, who were also 12 out of 20 heroes in Descent core.) and then sell new heroes separately or in pairs or something packaged with hero cards for all games. Sort of like they did with WoW: the Adventure Game and its expansion heroes.

yeah looks like DungeonQuest is on my list as well.

Oh, didn't notice the "Once Per Area" limitation on the familiar. That helps. For a second there, I thought she was *extremely* powerful, if she basically got a free attack *that ignores armor* every turn. But if it's one attack per level, then that's not so bad.

I'm curious to see what the other heroes will be like. Also thinking it's time to paint these figs, since I can play them in many games now

-shnar

Steve-O said:

I don't see any reason for that. That restriction on Furr is (presumably) to prevent him from slowly killing off monsters (particularly bosses) when the heroes are all in town or otherwise out of range for counter-attack - similar to the restriction that prevents the heroes from going out and into town every turn so the monsters can never attack them. Since Brightblaze is already limited to one attack per area, there's nothing to be gained by hiding in town.

shnar said:

Every turn would be exceedingly broken.

But it's still a free Breath attack that one-shots tier 1 monsters on an median roll (58% chance). Assuming you can catch 2 monsters in the template (which seems low), that's an average of more than one free kill per area; probably better than Varikas' 1 fatigue/turn, putting this in the top 5-10 for published hero abilities (excluding the promo figures), with Tahlia, Landrec, Okaluk, Kirga, Glyr...maybe Nanok, Laurel, Carthos, or Corbin.

At a squishy 12/0 and 3 conquest, though, that might only make her a bit better than average. If you assume her ability is equal to Kirga's, my editor puts her in the 70th percentile for recreatable FFG heroes, at 375 BP (recommended cap 360)...though I'd be willing to entertain arguments that her ability is either stronger or weaker than that.

Wanderer999 said:

Dungeon Quest is a remaking of an old Games Workshop game in the same way they remade Talisman. You "build" the dungeon as you explore and your ultimate goal is go get as much treasure and get back out of the dungeon before the sun sets and everyone dies. There's a dragon with a hoard in the center and various monster trap, search, and crypt cards that you'll encounter. The combat sysetm is basically Paper-Rock-Scissors.

My old copy is in pretty decent shape except for the box which has disintergrated. I'm looking foward to FFG's remake and it'll be fun to be able to use DQ heros in Descent.

I wonder if the heroes in the next Runebound expansion will get Descent stat cards?

TeufelHund said:

No. No we don't. What's your checking account number?

(Note: Not a FFG employee.)

Here's the next hero:

-shnar

Is this an official hero??

He seems pretty strong with armor 2, but his ability completely sucks. With such high armor, he is difficult to be wounded, yet he gives away free wounds just to make his attacks aimed. In effect, if he wears some basic armor, his defence is easily a 3 or 4, which means he sacrifices FOUR TO FIVE wounds just to do an aim...

I'd call that a good ability. In our last campaign (SoB) Runemaster Thorn had the ability where he could sacrifice wounds to do order and he often used it for aims. Aiming at the right moment is worth a lot, you can use those power potions to their maximum potential, you avoid missing when you really need to hit and you can get your average damage higher so that you are more likely to kill whatever you are attacking (worth more in campaigns than vanilla though as monsters are thougher). Great ability when using blast, since you can tailor the result.

You can't just use it every time, but if you can use it to clear out a room then you can easily just spend a single turn in town and get those wounds back. Well worth it. Not sure Thorn ever died because of spending wounds for these aims, but he did hurt me (OL) a lot.

I guess that explains why u find it good while I find it horrible. I only play Vanilla while u play Advanced campaigns.

You don't recover wounds by just going to town in vanilla. They stay there till you actually bother to heal. And its always slowly, not a one-time max hp.

I think his ability is pretty good, even in vanilla. Having the option of Aiming without declaring a Ready action is pretty big news. Especially for a magic user, since those silver and gold runes can do a lot of damage. As OL I can no longer breathe a sigh of relief when that X shows up the first time around...

Also, it doesn't say this ability is usable only once per turn, which is huge. This guy can Battle and Aim both times if he really needs to. He can also move and then make an aimed attack (normally moving would force you to discard an Aim order, but he can just wait until he's finished moving to take the wound.) And by extension, he can Aim-attack, move with fatigue and Aim-attack again on a Battle.

I agree healing is less frequent in vanilla - often to the point that heroes in my game don't even bother healing unless they find a handy healing item like Crystal of Tival or the stars align to drop a healing potion in their lap and no better potion to drink this turn. Even so, I think this guy's ability is one to keep an eye on. He may not use it every turn, but the turns he does use it will be pretty devastating to the OL.

Wanderer999 said:

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding this statement, but I don't really see how wearing more armor would equate to his ability being less cost-effective. If anything more armor will reduce the number of wounds coming in from other attacks, thereby making his ability MORE cost-effective.

I think Brother Gherinn will be balanced for Vanilla Descent, but I suggest his ability might be a little bit overpowered for the advanced campaign. The possibility to increase your wounds (secret training) or to heal very fast in the temple makes the loss of one wound insignificant.

Anyway, he is the rare case of a hero for whom a healing potion might be more efficient than a vitality potion (especially in Vanilla). All in all, I like this hero and I would definitely enjoy it to see this hero in my (Vanilla) game sessions.

Steve-O said:

I think Wanderer is saying that if he has defense of 4, sacrificing 1 wound is the same as taking 5 damage from an attack. While that's true, I don't think it's a useful way of thinking about the issue. Having a high defense actually means he'll take less damage and therefore have more health remaining to spend on his ability. If he had lower armor, the ability would be harder to use, because you wouldn't want to leave your low-armor hero vulnerable to an easy kill. (In other words, I agree with Steve-O.)

Does anyone else think they created this hero to try to get players to actually use Aim orders?

mahkra said:

The stealth ability from ToI has increased the importance of aim orders before.

Barely. In almost all cases it is better to Battle than to Ready / Aim / Attack.

And in the rare circumstances you want to Aim at a Stealth creature, the hit chance is increased by only a few percent compared to a Battle (I couldn´t believe it when I calculated the difference).

Since these heroes appear to be really ugly (going by the first 2 revealed), I think I can live without them in Descent.

Now if Mist of Zanaga does not have stat cards for Descent, then I believe that means they will announce a new vanilla Descent expansion at Gencon using those awesome characters. If you have not seen the characters from the new Runebound expansion, check them out at Board Game Geek. They are reall wicked looking!

Parathion said:

In vanilla, yes, in the advanced campaign, no. After drinking a power potion, aiming is *very* effective.

-shnar

shnar said:

I think that still falls under the umbrella of "almost all cases."

Frog said:

Even if they don't release any expansions for Descent, MANY of us will probably do up our own unique character conversions using third party character editors to port over these heroes from the Runebound game, and still use them for Descent

Wanderer999 said:

Like my Talisman heroes I'm going to do soon. A lot of characters to use from there.