So, I was thinking heavily on the matter awhile back, and I realized that when there are only one or two players each playing one hero, the group can quickly be overwhelmed with Spawns, and the overlord almost always wins, so I was thinking on some homebrewed rules to fix this problem, preferably something relatively simple.

Maximum Spawn Limit: Whenever the overlord plays a Spawn card, they put it down in front of them. When a monster represented by the spawn card dies, they set it atop the card, until all the monsters made by the spawn card die, at which point the overlord puts the spawn card in the discard pile, though the specific creature need not be spawned by that card. So if the Overlord had two Beastman War Parties in play, and the heroes killed two beastmen from one card, and one Master beastman from the other, they would all be put on one card, and that card would be discarded. The Overlord may only ever have as many spawns played as there are players. When playing with one hero, the overlord cannot play another spawn card directly after a spawn card has been discarded in this way. Creatures need not be spawned by a card to be affected by this rule.

This one rule should remedy the problem, hopefully, and I hope someone can get some playtesting in with it. Was also thinking of having spawn cards spawn less creatures for less heros. Anywho, could I get a bit of feedback on it? I will be editing this post with any good suggestions of homebrew rules to fix play for 1 or 2 heroes.

Descent was and always has been meant for 4 players minimum. I am not very sure how your homebrew works, but its obviously aimed to balance the spawning issue. But u still missed out on other major issues. For example if a hero needs another hero to help in one way or another, no one can assist him. Ur skills drawn will be limited to only 3 (the usual number) per hero. U will face extreme difficulty in all sorts of unseen situations.

The best 1-2 player rule?

One player controls multiple heroes. Best solution ever.

Overall, yeah. Unfortunately my players don't like playing multiple characters at once, so that kinda kills that. As far as skills, traps, and other things go, having less people mostly just means you have to be more careful, and stay healed up (At least in my opinion). At least when you aren't drowning in spawns.

Wait, you want the game to work with only one hero? That's a pretty tall order; the official rules don't even pretend to support that, and say that if there's only one hero player, he should control 2 heroes. Reducing the party size from 2 to 1 is probably a significantly bigger difference than going from 4 to 2, and we all know how well that works.

Spawns are perhaps the largest single problem for small parties, but they're certainly not the only problem: they'll also take longer to kill the preplaced monsters, need to spend more actions (proportionately) to collect treasure/keys/etc. on the map, and don't have as much flexibility with regards to treasures (since they don't have as many heroes to trade weapons with, and are much more likely to have an unrepresented attack type). So at best, this rule only solves one of several problems.

As for the rule itself, it certainly creates a very big incentive to leave monsters behind: if there's just one monster you can ignore and run past, that restrict's the overlord's spawning options for the rest of the game. Hiding master kobolds in corners for Trickster would certainly become a lot less appealing; certain spawn cards might become detrimental for the overlord to use.

On the other hand, if heroes are keeping control of the situation and killing monsters about as fast as they show up, you might go through the entire game without noticing the rule. Even with 2 heroes, I'm not sure it'll come up much unless the heroes deliberately leave a monster alive to block spawning. I suppose the fact that it doesn't really affect a 3-4 hero game might be a feature.

Using monster figures as counters to determine which spawns have been cleared also means less figures available to place on the board, which might disadvantage the overlord weirdly in some special cases.

As for other rules...fixing the player scaling issues in Descent was perhaps the biggest single reason that I created The Enduring Evil . That supports anywhere from 2-5 heroes fairly gracefully, I think. I don't think it would cope with only one hero.

The most promising-sounding simple house rule I've seen suggested is basically to give each hero in a 2-hero party two turns per round (using monsters/threat for a 4-hero party), or at least double attacks. But that still overlooks a lot of subtler issues: small parties pay more for movement when they need to run into a corner to get a treasure, but not when simply advancing through the dungeon; the treasure draw/distribution issues are pretty complicated; lots of ancillary mechanics have their own unique party-size dependencies.

Aye, it's no simple matter, balancing the game for less players. I've yet to look at Enduring Evil (And am going to when I finish this post). A lot of the problem is that I have seen fixes out there, but they're complicated, and I was hoping to get by a with a handful of simple rules, rather than one or two complicated ones. As for spawn-blocking, I believe I should amend the rule to make that impossible, and as for limited resources, I'll design something to account for that as well. I've also been thinking about it, and will be posting a new rule for traps and other cards affecting single players. Also, the Hirelings rule should solve the problem of limited movement and such, in a fair way that the overlord can deal with.

Maximum Spawn Limit: Whenever the overlord plays a Spawn card, they put it down in front of them. When a monster represented by the spawn card dies, they set it atop the card, until all the monsters made by the spawn card die, at which point the overlord puts the spawn card in the discard pile, though the specific creature need not be spawned by that card. So if the Overlord had two Beastman War Parties in play, and the heroes killed two beastmen from one card, and one Master beastman from the other, they would all be put on one card, and that card would be discarded. The Overlord may only ever have as many spawns played as there are players. When playing with one hero, the overlord cannot play another spawn card directly after a spawn card has been discarded in this way. Creatures need not be spawned by a card to be affected by this rule. If a spawned creature has not been attacked for more than three of the overlord's turns, the overlord may move the spawned creature out of the line of sight of the heroes and despawn it, to remove a spawn card from the field.

Hirelings: Heroes in a 1-2 hero game may hire on a noncombatant Hireling for 100 Gold. This hireling is treated as another hero in most ways, and a hireling has 8 Wounds, 1 Fatigue, 0 Armor, and 4 Movement. Hirelings do not have traits or hero abilities, and cannot train or learn skills. Hirelings can open chests, and can collect treasure, but cannot open doors, and have as much inventory space as a hero, though they do not have the ability to equip items. Each hero may only have 1 hireling at any one time. Hirelings can be affected by the Dark Curse overlord card, and roll one red dice when determining damage in such a way.

Tadask Nezerull said:

Enduring Evil works mostly by changing the game's content , rather than the rules; the changes to the actual rules are pretty simple and limited, and you could probably even cut back on them if you wanted. The disadvantage is that you need a bunch of new cards, and it's not compatible with content that wasn't designed specifically for Enduring Evil (you can't use Enduring Evil to play the official quests, for example).

Tadask Nezerull said:

That's complicated, difficult to track, confusingly worded, and only mitigates the problem; it doesn't solve it. Much simpler would be to allow the overlord to "despawn" at will; he's already allowed to remove any monster from the board when he needs the figure for a new monster, so removing an old spawn card (and all its remaining monsters) to make room for a new one kind of makes sense.

Tadask Nezerull said:

If we're supposed to assume that hirelines work like heroes in every way except the differences specifically mentioned, then they can declare actions (Run, Ready, etc.), make unarmed attacks, place orders, gain their own (separate) treasure cards and coins from chests and coin piles, and resurrect in town after they die. I somehow suspect that's not what you meant.

Also, it's Dark Charm, not Dark Curse. "Curse" already means too many things in Descent, we really don't need another one.

Sorry, was in MTG Rules mode when I was making the Hirelings thing. Gonna go back and fix it XD

Maximum Spawn Limit: Whenever the overlord plays a Spawn card, they put it down in front of them. When a monster represented by the spawn card dies, they set it atop the card, until all the monsters made by the spawn card die, at which point the overlord puts the spawn card in the discard pile, though the specific creature need not be spawned by that card. So if the Overlord had two Beastman War Parties in play, and the heroes killed two beastmen from one card, and one Master beastman from the other, they would all be put on one card, and that card would be discarded. The Overlord may only ever have as many spawns played as there are players. When playing with one hero, the overlord cannot play another spawn card directly after a spawn card has been discarded in this way. Creatures need not be spawned by a card to be affected by this rule. At any time during their turn, the overlord may despawn creatures and treat them as killed, to remove their spawn card from in front of them.

Hirelings: Heroes in a 1-2 hero game may hire on a noncombatant Hireling for 100 Gold. This hireling is treated as another hero in most ways, and a hireling has 8 Wounds, 1 Fatigue, 0 Armor, and 4 Movement. Hirelings do not have traits or hero abilities, and cannot train or learn skills. Hirelings can open chests, and can collect treasure, but cannot open doors, activate glyphs, attack, make a Ready action, and do not respawn in town or gain treasure, though they have as much inventory space as a hero, but do not have the ability to equip items that affect their armor, damage, or have the aura ability. Each hero may only have 1 hireling at any one time. Hirelings can be affected by the Dark Charm overlord card, and roll one red dice when determining damage in such a way.