OK, looking for some input on other people's house rules to help balance WoD. I do not want to debate if the OL is OP or not, for our gaming group, the OL dominates in WoD, but was a slight underdog in JitD.

We want to implement rules slowly and ones that make sense until we feel we are around a 50/50 chance for the players. Currently, I would say it is at least a 80/20 OL advantage. So, we started with these minor changes:

1) Web token rolls: Modified so that each web token receives its own # of dice based on the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5. So, on the 3rd turn of having a web, you get to roll 3 power dice to try and get off just that one particular web. . . . . . . . . . Reason: Back to back games one Hero was locked down for 5 turns in a row with a single web.

2) Hero's are chosen by players, not randomized

3) Skills are determined by drawing double the amount and choosing which you want.

We have played one game with the 3 house rules above and it brought the Hero's much closer to victory. Also, rules 2 &3 really do not change the mechanics of the game, it is just a feeling of getting really lucky with Heroes and stats to start. Does anyone else have some house ideas?

Other ideas we were considering:

a) Overlord may customize deck with treachery cards, but may not remove any cards. In other words, deck is larger and you do not scrap out every aim dodge and gust of wind to create a high spawn, high threat draw deck.

b) If treasure says 1 (whatever), then the group draws one treasure for each hero and then distributes one treasure to each hero as the group sees fit. Eliminating the random draw and subsequent run around to get each other relative gear.

c) Undying triggers once.

I have read that TOI helps the players, but please, based on ownership of JitD and WoD only, I would appreciate any balancing ideas.

Tuladark said:

1) Fibonacci sequence? Reminds me of the tv series Fringe... But just don't get webbed at the wrong time. It really doesn't do much if u have the right stuff. For me, when my melee hero finds a ranged weapon, I usually keep it instead of selling it off for such purposes.

2 & 3) These are horrible rules! There's a game out there called DotA and such a thing is called Draft Match, where u deliberately choose ur heroes to match and compliment each other's abilties to do superb combos. While u say that it does not change the mechanics of the game, it really actually does just that! Veteran players can WIPE the overlord out using mad combinations. (shudders at the thought of Zyla+Divine Retribution, or Tahlia+Leadership etc) Overbalancing the game aside, it also QUICKLY gets very boring with the top heroes and skills used repeatedly in all the quests. How can this not change the game mechanics? U have just changed the game mechanics completely! U changed the luck factor! It's like saying u didn't cheat in a dice game, u still roll a die, only that you always roll a 6... I strongly disagree with the choosing of heroes AND skills.

a) The OL was meant to always have 48 cards. If you change this, I think that its very bad on the OL...

b) By doing this, you completely destroy the cards: Bardic Lore & Envy.

c) As with the above, when u remove too much luck factor, where's the fun.... My group LOVES the moment when u roll for an undying unit, and everyone holds his breath.

My opinions:

Do NOT do any of the above. Or u should just get Tomb of Ice, its really a good expansion that adds new systems to the game, increasing fun several folds. The heroes can use their new FEAT cards to do fun stuff.

Instead look at your team's strategies. I understand that every group plays differently, however slight. In ur case, the OL seems to be dominating in WoD. This shouldn't be happening. At most, there are a few quests to watch out for, such as quests 4,6 and 7. (maybe quest 2, but its really easy if u plan carefully) The rest should be fairly balanced. Did your heroes try to open every single chest (however unnecessary) and killing every monster that appears? Did your heroes always regroup after a battle? Did they try to heal up properly first before pushing on again? They shouldn't.

My advice to the heroes:

It is very often that Heroes pushing forward, despite having low health, is the best decision. They only heal WHEN IT IS CONVENIENTLY AVAILABLE. There are times when it is better to just die and lose those CT and come back again quickly. If u try to heal up, take note that the OL also gains time to spawn YET MORE monsters etc. This way u will be trapped in his vicious cycle and eventually DIE anywaez. Contrary to the game type, it is a dungeon RACE, not a dungeon crawl.

Avoid going near corners where spawns can appear during the OL turn and u end up taking free hits.

Try to have 1 or 2 runners in ur game that focus completely on opening doors and chests. They should be the ones to have ghost armor equipped.

Invulnerability potions ARE GODSENT.

Losing a quest the first time around IS NORMAL. Don't be lazy to retry it a 2nd time. U will find its much easier now.

Lastly, its a game! Luck is a heavy factor of it, but also one KEY reason why its so exciting. Don't remove that factor. Just pray If u guys get really lucky on rolls all the time and the OL gets 'miss' rolls equally often, the OL will hav his ass kicked, even in the toughest of quests.

P.S: My group has beaten quest 4 once, on its first attempt, with lots of lucky rolls and excellent planning. That is probably the 2nd hardest quest in the entire Descent vanilla. (the hardest of all time going to quest 6)

Tuladark said:

This is consistent with most people's experiences. That's good because it means you probably aren't making any huge mistakes that are giving the OL an advantage he shouldn't have. At this point, house rules would be the way to go if you feel the need to readjust your game.

Tuladark said:

Of all the proposed house rules you suggest, this is the only one I would implement. This and always run 4 heroes, natch. When we started with WoD we decided to "take it easy" and I, as OL, ignored Treachery altogether. Everything else worked out well. Assuming your OL is not willing to forego Treachery even for a few games, this house rule will at least prevent him from swapping all the trash in his deck for good stuff, which is the primary weakness of the treachery system IMHO.

Over time the heroes learned how to deal with treachery cards and then they weren't so problematic, but the first few times we used them they definitely tilted the playing field in the OL's favour.

Wanderer999 said:

With just JitD and WoD, the OL deck will never have 48 cards unless they add 9 cards with treachery and do not remove anything. It's 36 in the base game + 3 from WoD. And given that the expansions added cards to the base OL deck (in addition to adding treachery cards), I don't see a fixed deck size as particularly necessary. If you play with WoD + AoD + ToI, the OL deck is 33% larger than it is with just JitD - but that's certainly not game-breaking.

If the OL had a choice to play with 100 cards or 20 cards in his deck, it might make a difference. But 30 cards vs 60 cards isn't really going to matter. At most it's probably a difference of the deck cycling 1 time, which is roughly equivalent to a single hero death. If the heroes are slow enough that the larger deck becomes more of an issue than that, the OL will have already won the game anyway.

I would also encourage you to try a randomized treachery variant instead of letting the OL choose his treachery cards. It will increase the variety and slightly weaken the OL by preventing him from adding his favorite cards to the deck each time.

Oops I just realized that the opening guy has only WoD...

Yea, feat cards help a ton (esp Preventing Evil). So get tomb of ice. And always play with a min. of 4 heroes.

If I were u, I'd hold off on the games and get ToI first, then mix it all in. If budget allows, then AoD also increases the fun, though it benefits the OL more.

Several simple suggestions:

- Randomised Treachery

There are several ways people do this, most of which involve separating the Treachery cards into three decks: Red, Green and Purple. I would then draw randomly the same number of cards from each as the Overlord has Treachery points. He can then purchase Treachery only from this selection.

- Reinforcement marker

See the online RtL or SoB rules for how to use this. You don't actually need to own the marker itself, any unused token will do. Basically the Overlord can only make one cheap spawn per area. After that each spawn card costs an additional 15 threat to play. Keeps the game moving which needs to happen in WoD sized dungeons.

-Endgame Genius

Remove Evil Genius from the deck at the start of the game. If the deck runs out, add it to the deck when reshuffling. I just throw this in because I think I just read in your session that your overlord got this out in turn 2. For WoD sized dungeons, you might as well concede if that happens.

We found several of the WoD quests to be absurd. I would be very interested in trying them again though using just these rules and the ToI Feat cards, although I appreciate you don't have them yet.

I really wouldn't cherry-pick skills or heroes for all of the reasons set out by other posters. "Pick two choose one" is more than adequate for hero selection. If you get a really miserable selection of skills, you can always ask the other players to redo the whole process. Everybody wants the game to be fun, after all. One other house rule I've been toying with is to enable one skill redraw per category of skill to give some love back to Valadir and Red Scorpion.

inle_badger said:

Evil Genius in turn 2?? That's impossible... Someone muz be playing wrongly somewhere...

It is possible to play evil genius in your second turn, especially if you draw this card in combination with a "danger" card that gives you 10 threat. (Don't forget that you can add additional danger-cards with your treachery).

Moreover, if the heroes open chests with curses in their first turns, it gets easier to play out power cards very early in game.

Graf said:

First off, as far as i can recall there is only 1 "Danger" card giving 10 threat, not any more. Secondly I can imagine that if you start with danger in your hand and 2 other power cards you have already 20 points, so drawing the next round another 2 power cards you have 25 points (as one of the cards is Evil Genius). Ofcourse there are those quests where you start with more cards drawn so that would make it a bit more believable....

Evil Genius in turn 2 is not that hard. It cost 25 threat, so with 4 heroes on turn 2 you have generated 8 threat. If you attack with all your creatures you have probably generated 3 more threat on surges. Sitting at 11 threat. You start with 3 cards, draw 2, draw 2. One card is evil genius, that leaves you with 6 cards to come up with 14 threat. That is really easy to do with a customized deck.

Several of the WOD maps even have the OL start with extra cards. So, if they couple "danger" with EG and a couple other powers they can conceivably EG on the first turn.

My gaming group really likes the endgame EG, thanks for that suggestion. We have discussed how an early EG play might as well have the heroes concede and start again to save game time. The randomized treachery is another we may implement.

*** For hero picking, we will probably go with a blend. 2 random, 2 picked.

*** Skills, instead of draw double, we might just make the 1 redraw visible. So, after picking which skill you want to toss, the player can decide to take the next one drawn or keep the original. Or maybe we just do this for the magic skills, because no one wants to even put mata and kata on the board...lol

Good suggestions, keep them coming, the weekend is almost here!

Slight revision. Opening area creatures probably only generate 1 surge threat for the OL. So 6 cards for 16 threat in a customized deck is still very plausible. Dungeon 4 is kind enough to have the OL start with 6 cards and trapmaster. Early EG in that huge dungeon is game over.

Shmoozer said:

There are 3 Danger cards, but the OP would only have one. There's one (treachery) in WoD and two (1 treachery, 1 added to base deck) in AoD.

mahkra said:

Aaah, there I go, we don't have AoD, hence my mistake

Wanderer999 said:

Not impossible, but difficult. The OL can discard as many cards as he wants for threat, so if he throws out the rest of his hand (especially if he has other big cards like Doom to get rid of) he might be able to put together 20-25 threat by turn 2.

You'll have 8 threat by default if there's 4 heroes. Add a Danger to your draw and it's definitely doable, especially if the other cards are big-threat low-value stuff like chest and door traps that deal damage (assuming your hero players don't like to clump around those things before they open them).

OK, we hand picked our Heroes. We also played the Endgame Evil genius and we were hoping the game would be a little more balanced. Map 5 WOD, first room on the right. OL combos Elite beastman warparty, charge and ambush. Game over.

New balancing rule for WOD: Removing Treachery from the game until we get TOI.

I think we are 0-10 as players in WOD. The combos of a well customized deck are just way too powerful.

Tuladark said:

Which is precisely why I really would recommend randomised treachery as in my earlier post. Some cards, Ambush being one example, are far superior to others of the same cost which means that you will see a lot of them in optimised decks. Reducing the Overlord's options means that you will still see the occasional Lone Troll/Ambush/Poison Spikes, but not all together, and you may even see the occasional Jungle Drums/Smash/Curse of the Ancients making for much more interesting. It's also worth noting that having feat cards probably wouldn't have saved the party from the instant defeat you described.

And for long quests, really can't recommend the reinforcement marker either. Had your group survived that round, at least they would have known that they needn't have worried about further spawns until the next area.

Tuladark said:

Oke, how lucky can an OL be, to get a great combo like that so early?

We've had our problems with Ambush as well. It allows the OL to break an unwritten rule of the game: if monsters attack, heroes can counterattack. Ambush allows the OL to spawn, go all-out on the heroes, spawn again and go all-out again. If this sequence is well-timed it ends in a TPK more often than not. It's the biggest 'I win' card the OL has at his disposal.

By the way I see nothing wrong with hand-picking heroes and skills in WoD. If you can't win in a normal way, by all means try it out. If the result is a victory for the heroes, at least it will be a pleasant change after 10 losses. If it felt to easy, try something in the middle, for example draw 3 heroes choose one, draw double the skill cards and keep half of them, etc.