14 hours into thread:

TheHunterBoy said:

23 hours into thread:

TheHunterBoy said:

2 days into thread:

TheHunterBoy said:

3 days into thread:

TheHunterBoy said:

http://xkcd.com/349/

The ability to change one's opinion in the face of new information is a virtue to be applauded. It seems like commendation rather than ridicule is in order here.

TheHunterBoy said:

I think this is why everyone is saying Lindel is /not/ the best hero in the campaign. Look at the other good heroes, say Landrec The Wise, and after 2 upgrades, he'll be better than Lindel. Same with Lord Hawthorne. It's the problem of being jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none that is Lindel's achilles heel (coupled with the fact that his ability is not very useful), that and his high CT. So, in a group with 4 heroes, they will be weaker if they choose Lindel than if they chose Landrec or Hawthorne.

-shnar

TheHunterBoy said:

Many things are declared as being the lifeblood of democracy - Freedom of speech, information, scrutiny and accountability, press freeedom, all of these come up on the first page of a google search.
None of them mean you get to say something and no one can disagree or point out the holes in your reasoning or theory.

I respect that you get to have an opinion. But if you publicise it, then you have to be prepared to defend it. You don't just get to make statements and have everyone accept them as true, or even reasonable, just because you made them.

Now your statement that Lindel is the most interesting hero (to you) - that is a subjective opinion with a non-measurable point, so I can totally accept that opinion and not even argue with it a little bit. I might even agree with it in a wider context.
But that is not an opinion I've argued against before - I've only argued against the statement that Lindel is the best hero. And within that argumnet pointed out the flaws that Lindel has. Frankly, I think he is the worst hero, but I am prepared for many to disagree with that. And prepared to back up my statement with logical reasons. I believe I can (have) establish(ed) that Lindel is not the best hero, by establishing that in all major roles there are multiple better heroes than Lindel. He might be the most flexible, and very definitely might be the most interesting to many people.

If you look at your posts in this thread objectively HunterBoy, you will see that you've made wild and exaggerated claims. These claims have been disputed. That doesn't mean that your opinion is worthless, or that people aren't respecting you, just that you made some mistakes, possibly merely descriptive mistakes at times (mislabeling something) and have been called on them.

I absolutely respect your opinion that Lindel is the most interesting hero.

Traditionally, heroes with one trait die in each category have been seen as weak due to their inability to fight in any category without training. It also hasn't helped that, generally speaking, the hero abilities assigned to these characters are less than spectacular. Red Scorpion's ability looks really cool at first glance, but once you get her into the game and realize what a drawback only having one die in each attack type really is, she becomes less interesting. Her ability just isn't cool enough to make up the difference. She's low CT though, so it's understandable that she's not great.

Lindel has two dice in each trait. At first that might seem OP since he has a total of 6 dice spread out as compared to every other hero who only has 3, but the fact that they're spread out makes a difference - as others in this thread have already pointed out. His ability also sounds cool at first blush, but it is random in nature, so it remains to be seen if it will be cool enough to keep him interesting despite his distributed dice. The fact that it modifies the game mechanics in a manner that no other hero ability has before also makes it tricky to call in terms of practicality. That he's 5CT won't help either. Even if he is ultimately found to be an amazing hero, the fact that his death alone can nix a vanilla dungeon for the heroes is pretty damning.

I don't think Lindel will prove to be the best hero ever, but I don't think he'll be the worst either. I do agree with the idea that he is the most flexible, but whether or not that flexibility is really worth all the hubbub I'm not so sure. In our games we rarely have trouble putting together a good tank, good ranger and good mage using the draw 3 pick 1 method, so Lindel will more than likely end up being "the fourth" in any party he appears in. I have little doubt the hero players in our groups will jump at him when he's drawn, but he isn't going to define any role in the party, he'll just end up picking up the slack the other heroes don't have covered.

In short, he will be interesting to see in play. =P

Dear Antistone, thank you for the detailed report of the chronology of my thoughts on this thread. But now (please) read well the following text of this post.

Just to clarify my position on Lindel issue: at a first look of the hero (14 hours into thread), I focused his special ability as "unfit" for the Campaign setting, simply because I think that changing a skill every time you enter a Dungeon goes to break the way you normally get the skills in RtL (or in SoB). Many people out there stated that this wouldn't be a problem, even if I still don't think so at all. Simply I dislike the special ability of Lindel.

Then (23 hours into thread) I stated that an hero with those characteristics in his traits, even if his special ability could appear a little bit unappropriated for a Campaign IMO, still could claim the sceptre of the best hero in the Descent world: he is, in fact, the only one hero (that I knew so far) who has 6 trait dice (2+2+2), and who could change his shape so quickly during the same game. At this point a number of replies arrived (Corbon but not only), all saying that I was wrong on this point, and that, probably, Lindel is little more than a mediocre hero, since he isn't actually nothing of "specific" (not a melee hero, not an archer, not a mage). Again, I didn't think so. And I tried to substain my position in the other posts I made.

Finally (3 days into thread) I reached a conclusion: to try before to talk. So, I'll tell you if Lindel will be for me a great hero or not as soon as possible, after I've played it into a real game setting.

Hope this could help you, Antistone, to understand the statements I made so far.

At this point I have to say "thank you, Corbon" for your words 'bout the right to move critics against an opinion: yes, you're perfectly right, and it was a pleasure to talk with you . Peace and love!

Three things that I think are worth pointing out:

1) Many people, such as Antistone, have surmised that 2 dice in each trait is not preferable to 3 dice in one. But many of the most powerful heroes in the game (Jaes, Corbin, Nanok, Varikas) are maxed at 2 dice in a given trait. Now, it's true that the main reason these heroes are powerful is not their offensive strength per se, but they are still very effective fighters, in a way that heroes with traits more spread out (Lyssa, Aurim) are not. What makes Jaes so powerful, for example, is not that he has a strong defense, but that he has a strong defense and also has 2 dice in magic. Until now, no other hero could claim this. Verikas has one die in magic, and a strong defense, but few people I know would use him as their primary mage, which leads me to suspect that the difference between 2 trait dice and 3 is much smaller gameplay-wise than the difference between 1 dice and 2. It's possible that this isn't supported by the math, but I certainly think that this is how most people perceive it.

Skills further complicate things. Corbin with Weapon Mastery is a much better fighter than Steelhorns with Battle Cry. But I don't think most people would use Arvel as their primary melee character even if she drew Mighty. My point here, combined with my suspicion above, is that 2 trait dice and one good skill is enough to make a hero very powerful– as powerful as heroes usually ever get. I'm not sure that can be said if you start with only one die. If I'm correct, that means that Lindel can easily become your most powerful hero in at least one combat type (although you won't know what that is until after skill cards are drawn). Compound this with the fact that the other heroes aren't likely to all be dedicated-types, and the fact that his ability lets you redraw skills, and I would wager that any time you play with Lindel, he will be your best hero in one combat type. The downside is that you may not realize which type until the end of set-up, and sometimes even later.

My greater point: The general feeling from some of the most convicted opinions on this thread is that Lindel's combat strength is closer to Aurim's than a combined Steelhorns/Tetherys/Andira. I think this is incorrect.

2) Many people have pointed out that his conquest is too high, even though his 4 primary stats are only slightly better than normal. However, I think mathematically this is exactly how it should be. Because of the way the game works, having 1 more armor or speed at a given time is often the difference between dying and not dying. The more of these potential "salvation points" that you have, the more likely it is that you will never die. Therefore, if a 12/4/1/4 hero is worth 4 conquest, that doesn't mean that a 24/8/2/8 hero should be worth 8. Actually, an 8-conquest hero would probably only look slightly better than Lindel (maybe 16/5/2/6) because the more stat increases you give, than greater likelihood that the Overlord will never make the heroes pay out.

Another way to think about it: Each of the primary stats can be seen as an "out" in terms of death. That is to say, each stat lends itself to preventing hero death one way.

Health: The overlord will never be able to deal enough damage in a single turn to kill you. The more health you have, the lesser the likelihood that you will die from just one round of attacks, meaning you will have time to escape, drink potions, heal, etc.

Fatigue: The overlord's monsters will never survive long enough to get an attack out. Because of the ability to spend fatigue to add dice, the more fatigue you have, the less likely it is that your attacks will fall 'just short' of killing the monsters, which means that you will probably end up killing any monster that you don't miss on (that are within the damage range). More fatigue also means that traps (Spiked Pits) are less likely to abort your Battles.

Armor: The overlord cannot consistently deal any damage to you. Especially within the first 3 natural points, each successive point of armor adds a major boost as more and more monsters become unlikely to ever deal damage to you. Any Overlord who's tried to kill Corbin knows all about this.

Speed: The overlord cannot ever make a legal attack. More speed means more likelihood that you can end your maneuvers in spaces where melee monsters can't reach you, and ranged monsters can't see you.

Most heroes excel in one or two traits, and are weak in another, meaning that they have some of these areas covered, and are susceptible to others. (Example: Corbin has excellent Armor and Fatigue, but bad Health and Speed. That means he fares pretty well against Hellhounds and Spiked Pits, but can't outrun the Dragon who will probably toast him in one turn.) Currently, there are only 2 other 'Melee heroes' who have 5 speed. Both have only 2 dice (like Lindel) and 0 Armor. There's a reason that this combination is fairly avoided.

Point 2: Lindel has high conquest, but it's not unreasonably high. He basically maxes out three of his stats, and is average in one. He should be very tough to kill. He may not be suited to Chainmail, but RoP and Ghost Armor will make this guy tougher to crack than most.

3) The fact that Lindel has 2 dice in each trait means that he can fill whatever hole the rest of the party has. Everyone on this thread seems to think that it's likely that their draw of heroes will contain a melee, ranged, and magic-user with 3 dice in that trait. In my experience, this is unlikely at best. It seems that each group has it's own way of selecting the party, but in my group, each hero player gets 2 hero cards, and then they convene to the best combination. But I have played many games when the best magic or ranged character out only had 1 die in that trait. I have played an entire RtL campaign with Arvel as my best Ranged character, and a AoD dungeon where she and Zyla were tied for best Melee hero. I mean, seriously– you know how many 3-die ranged characters there are? 4! And one's a stupid promo! 4 out of 42! A draw with Lindel means that the hero party will always contain a hero who excels at each role. If you like that whole "runner" thing, Lindel also has the stats to excel at that. (I'm sure it would take Antistone about 15 seconds to put together some nice spreadsheets which detail the likelihood of any 4 or 8-hero draw containing a set of dedicated characters.)

Point 3: Most people here seem to ignore the fact that Lindel can easily fill any role the party needs of him. Sometimes (and I would say usually) this will be extremely significant.

-pw

phelanward said:

Snipped a lot of pretty decent analysis there, good job.

Just to answer your main points though.
1. I don't think anyone thinks (or has argued) that his combat strength is bad, closer to Aurim than Steelhorns etc. His overall value, yes, because his weakness is rather extreme and his strengths many but individually weak. But all (I think) of the 'combat strength' arguments have been countering the claim that he was the best hero (and given X or Y bonus would be better than anyone else, without giving them also X or Y bonus) and would quickly be 'a leader in any party'. He is not, by a very long distance, the best combat hero (which was the claim, given it is based largely on his trait dice and ignores his CT value, even if it wasn't intended that way). He is also not, by a very long distance, an extremely weak combat hero - it is his weaknesses in other areas that push him in that direction, not his combat capabilities.

Basically, he just doesn't synergise (with himself). In any way. His stats scream runner, except the CT cost is impossible. He can't tank due to CT+low armour+high speed limiting heavy armour and he is behind the 8-ball as any sort of specialist because he is down a dice and also down a good related special ability. He might pull something back with slightly better than average skill picks, but that is, unknown, unreliable and unlikely to equate to a really good special anyway.
When you look at Jaes and Nanok, the really 'good' 2 dice heroes, they are good because of synergistic reasons both internally and externally. Nanok saves you cash and a limited armour spot - you still have 2 chainmails to give to other heroes and is great alround - without a significant weakness to detract. Jaes allows a party to eliminate its weakest weak spot - the killable mage that the OL always takes down easily, and is also well rounded overall. He has a slight weakness with the 12/2 for 4CT, but because he can easily get that armour up to 4 with Chainmail it isn't quite so bad. Jaes isn't just strong himself, he raises the bar for the party weak spot, which is much more valuable overall.

2. We can agree to disagree here. 5 is unreasonably high to me, given the fact that in nearly all vanilla questions the heroes start with 5 and lose if they go to zero. That makes him a 1 stop game loser.
Note that neither RoP nor Ghost armour are very affordable early in a quest.
Note also that if this guy has them, someone else can't. He also can't use any treasure 'other' items he picks up if he has filled his 'other' quota already, which weakens his claims to combat capability.
I think you overstate the value of speed and fatigue in making him difficult to kill. Fatigue only helps against 'existing' monsters. It is spawns that do most damage. Speed in fact makes him easier to kill IME, at least more likely easier than harder, as he is more likely to be out on a limb somewhere, separated from the main group - and more likely to be trapped as he is more likely to open doors and chests often if he is fast.
The simple fact is that Wounds and armour are what counts by vast amounts more than fatigue and speed. He has good wounds but mediocre armour (below average because his high speed makes the better armours 'unlikely'). That should make him a 3CT hero (Steelhorns, Validor, Kirga). He doesn't have any defensive bonus to boost his CT value, so he is not 1 CT overpriced but nearly 2CT overpriced.
To get the same CT value the OL has to kill both Steelhorns (almost exactly as difficult) and Landrec?

3. Yep, sometimes it will be extremely significant. Quite often, if you are playing draw 1 hero and keep it style (in which case discussion of how good heroes are relative to each other is pretty much pointless, since there are no choices to be made anyway!) But if you are paying a draw 3 keep 1 style, it will be very rare that his flexibility is game-winningly significant.
Just as often, it will be game-losingly significant that he is worth 5CT. If the OL can kill him (and you can put the house on seeing a more focused and committed assault on a single hero than you have ever seen before) before the heroes open a glyph or get CT from treasure, the game is over.
Sorry, the payoff is not worth the penalty.

Some interesting observations, phelanward, though you've strayed significantly from conventional wisdom on several points. Allow me to make some observations (numbering unrelated to yours):

1. Trading off speed and fatigue against conquest value is highly unorthodox and generally considered unwise.

Your argument that fatigue keeps you alive by helping to finish off monsters is pretty dubious; firstly because it suggests that trait dice should be given the same consideration, but more importantly because killing monsters protects the entire party, not just you, so you're going to run into balance problems very quickly when you consider parties with different numbers of heroes who trade conquest for offense.

Your argument for speed isn't much better; surviving by leaving your allies to take all the damage isn't much of a team strategy, and it's very hard to find positions where ranged monsters can't attack you at all. Additionally, this suggests that being melee-focused should result in a lower conquest value, because attacking from melee range makes it a lot harder to get out of range of possible counter-attack...but FFG's melee heroes all tend to have high conquest values.

It's pretty clear that FFG hasn't followed your reasoning when making heroes in the past. Silhouette is 12/5/1/5 and 3 conquest; you seriously think Lindel's +4 wounds (with fatigue, armor, and speed identical) is worth a +2 increase in conquest value? Mad Cathos is 8/3/1/4 with a conquest of 2; Zyla trades 1 armor for 2 fatigue and goes down in conquest value.

If you assume conquest to be determined almost entirely by wounds and armor, the published heroes are reasonably consistent; if you think fatigue and speed are just as important, they're all over the map. Kevin Wilson's custom hero rules base your conquest value soley on your wounds and armor (with a small BP difference depending on which way you round in some cases), not on all your stats combined. That doesn't necessarily mean that's the best option, but if nothing else, it helps illuminate how the game is supposed to be balanced.

And looking at wounds and armor, Lindel's "natural" conquest value is between 3 and 4; could go either way (and has, with other heroes in the past, depending on other advantages). Going to 5 is a large and unprecedented leap. That doesn't automatically make it unbalanced, but it's certainly uncharted territory.

2. After concluding that fatigue and speed don't count as "defensive" stats, notice that Jaes isn't the only hero with good defenses and 2 dice in a trait, he's just the only hero with good defenses and 2 dice in the magic trait. That's because FFG has a policy of giving 4-conquest heroes melee dice, 3-conquest heroes ranged dice, and 2-conquest heroes magic dice, with only a scant few exceptions (such as Jaes). Lots of heroes have defenses equal or better than Lindel's with two, three, or in one case five dice in a single trait.

It's worth thiking about whether 2 dice in magic is somehow inherently better (or better for high-defense heroes) than 2 dice in another trait, and you could possibly make a case for that, but I don't think it's a very pronounced effect. Kevin Wilson's published hero-building rules treat all traits as interchangable, so he must at least have believed at the time that any differences in power between the attack types were too small to bother having more rules to cover them. Also, in FFG's published heroes, while there's a definite style of hero associated with each attack type, it's not obvious that any of those styles of hero are better than the others, just different.

Conventional wisdom for the extended campaign says that you should have more melee heroes than ranged or magic, but the most important thing (in either vanilla or campaign) is to have a variety so that the party as a whole can effectively use a variety of equipment. Again, that suggests that any differences in overall power between the attack types are relatively minor.

So IF the combination of reasonably-good defenses and two dice in every trait is markedly powerful, the important word there must be "every," not "two". And obviously 2 dice in every trait is going to be better than 2 dice in only one; probably substantially better. Even if it's worse than 3 dice in one trait, lots of heroes clearly get by without 3 dice in any trait. But the fact remains that you can only use one trait at a time, and you have a fair amount of control over which one you use, so your first good trait is just a lot more valuable than your second and third good traits.

We can debate whether 2/2/2 is better or worse than 3/0/0, but it isn't anywhere close to 6/0/0 - distributed dice are worth much less than concentrated dice.

3. I think the relative difference between 1, 2, and 3 dice in a trait depends on the weapon. The fact that most monsters in Descent can go down to a single attack means that there's an important damage threshold, and getting enough damage to cross that threshold is pretty much mandatory, but additional damage (or range) is more of a tactical luxury.

It's worth noting that a hero with 1 melee and 2 ranged dice can inflict more damage with a sword than a crossbow. Melee weapons deal the most damage (at the cost of other advantages), so you don't need as many trait dice to make a worthwhile attack with one. Ranged weapons do the least damage, so you have to scrape for every bonus you can get.

Antistone, Corbon –

I think you guys make a lot of good points, and I don't disagree with most of what you've said. My primary responses would be:

Corbon: Reading your posts, I get this feeling that you see 5 movement as a rather worse than 4 because Chainmail then gets to limit you. I think this is easy to fall into, but I would urge you to think of the 5/5-fatigue/move as an option, rather than something you should build your character around. Most 5/5 guys get tagged as 'Runners', so we are initially abhorrent to the idea of weighing them down with Chainmail. You would rarely put Chainmail on Lyssa, for example, because to put a dent in her speed is to tarnish the only good thing about her. Being a runner is rarely one of many options a character has; with small exception, X/5/X/5 characters tend to have miserable abilities, traits, and armor. But, flawed as he may be, Lindel does have a lot of other things going for him, so we need to conceptualize his role in a very different way. If he were in my party, I'm tempted to think I would but him in Chainmail– he'd basically be like a slightly pricier Lord Hawthorne.

Antistone:

1) Most of what you say here is true. A few things I would point out: A) You criticisms of my arguments are fair, although circumstances relating to the board play a major roll here. e.g. Having high speed will not always save you, but it often will. However, my greater thought is that a hero whose stats reach higher and higher will consistently be able to avoid death, even if it's less pronounced at lower level. For example, a hero with 7 fatigue will typically be able to overcome underwhelming attack roles, and he will be to do it consistently. A hero with 8 speed should be able to consistently conclude his maneuvers in the most advantageous positions available. Most heroes don't have good stats across the board, but if you can keep a runner out of trouble, it follows that you should be able to keep Lindel out of trouble. So while I of course agree that Speed is widely inferior to Armor as a defensive trait, there should be no excuse for having your 7-speed hero in a bad tactical position. Thus, as stats go higher, longevity should. Lindel's stats are pretty darn high. B) You're absolutely right about Silhouette and Zyla. When compared to nearly every other character, Silhouette's stats are monstrous, really, and that's without taking into account her dedicated traits, skills, and pretty spiffy ability. I think Silhouette is probably the most unbalanced hero in the game, and I can't imagine any situation where she would be passed up. Likewise, I think most people would agree Zyla is an outlier, although I think the fact that her skills and traits are split belies the notion that the designers factored those vectors into calculating conquest value. Therefore, I think these examples highlight some interesting things, but are hardly representative samples.C) Well-meaning as he is, I don't think Kevin WIlson is a very meticulous or disciplined game designer. I find it unlikely that his hero editor is worth the bits it was coded on. I think we both know we could each design more balanced games.

2) This is very good. I like the 4th paragraph particularly.

3) Your point about the crossbow/sword is interesting, and makes me wonder why dedicated melee characters are so common, and dedicated range characters are so rare.

I would venture a general point that comparison with other heroes is going to be particularly difficult with this one, because there really are no characters remotely similar. Every other hero has their roll pretty much pre-decided, but Lindel does not. I think the most productive thing would be for us just to play three or four dungeons with him and reconvene afterwards. Another thing I would say is that his conquest value may have been pushed from 4 to 5 as a attempt by FF to avoid printing yet another volatile and broken promo hero. I mean, looking at him, you can kinda imagine the designer not really knowing how powerful he might end up being, and boosting his CV by one just for good measure.

-pw

phelanward said:

Obviously 5 speed is strictly better than 4 speed.

However the major feature Lindell has is that he is good at everything. As soon as you put chainmail on him then he becomes only 'average' at speed. Looking at Lord Hawthorne as the example you picked, he'd have 1 more fatigue and combat flexibility (less option on magic due to no runes), but not only be slightly weaker at combat but also not have Reach, which lets face it, is the only thing which stops Lord Hawthorne from being a 'weak' hero. Overall, in other words, he is about the same as Lord Hawthorne sans Reach if you put chainmail on him - 1 fatigue and flexibility traded for power (probably slightly better, barely). Oh, but his unreasonably high (potentially game-losing) CT cost makes him strictly much worse!
In short, if you give him him chainmail he becomes a weak hero (a more expensive Lord Hawthorne without Reach is a disaster).
If you don't give him chainmail then he is a weak hero (16/1 without heavy armour for 5 CT is a disaster).
Yes, he has options, but if none of them are as good as an average hero, then he is still weak.

If his CT was 4 then he'd be entirely acceptable, and quite good for a party filler, though still not great at anything.

Corbon said:

I think that the real point where you're completely right is that Lindel is a little bit expensive in terms of CT, expecially in Vanilla Descent (I don't think the same in a Campaign setting). A 5 CT hero is always the target of the major part of the attacks of the OL's minions, and, if so, dosen't matter the type of armor he wears: after 2-3 good attacks in a row, is pretty sure that the target could be striked down! So, a good strategy could be to keep Lindel in the backline, then (thanks his basic 5 speed), to leave him going in the frontline, to make his double (o more) "black-diced" attack (to have not less than 2 black dice in each trait sometimes matters, expecially if your hero can choose between a good melee weapon and a strong magic rune, on the base of the enemies he's fighting and/or the distance from the target!), and finally to leave he ran back in a safe area (spending 1-2 fatigue points his speed becomes 7 making him a sort of marathon runner for Descent!). But actually I can't say if this could be really possible always in the game...maybe sometimes...but of course not always, not!