larienna said:

No as broken as you think. It takes a turn to go down into the catacombs, and a turn to come up. Then you have to encounter the space you arrived on the turn after you come up. So the shortest trip to the catacombs still takes three turns:

Turn 1: descend to catacombs. Replace fig with marker. Do NOT draw catacomb card.

Turn 2: Draw catacomb card. It's an exit! Move forward one, deviate 1-6 spaces, and emerge. End your turn.

Turn 3: encounter the room you emerged in. DO NOT MOVE or SEARCH.

Turn 4: Finally, I can move!

So, at best, if you exit the catacombs on the first card you draw and then deviate 6 spaces, you only get an extra 4 spaces of movement for the cost of 3 turns.

And that will be the excpetion, not the rule. Average deviation will be 3.5 spaces. I need to count catacomb cards to see how many exit there are, but I imagine it's one out of every 3-4 cards, call it 3 for example's sake. It will take me 6 turns to enter, travel 3 cards, exit, and encounter the exit room. Let's say I deviate high average4 squares. Forward 3, over 4 = 7 squares at the cost of 6 turns. Sure, I got one extra square, but faced tougher challenges and the had no idea where I would resurface!

I may need to amend the above analysis after I ask a question. I'll start another thread for that. But stay tuned here!

Keep in mind that there are many encounters in the catacomb that halt your progress, or manipulate the direction of the journey through the catacombs, like the naga. While it might seem that you get further into Dragonfire Castle faster there's still a huge chance that you will become stuck due to cave-ins, torch goes out, Poisonus gas, snakes / spiders... It's balanced out. Other than that even though you can choose direction there are just too many scenarios where you will end up in the wrong part of the castle because you rolled a 5-6 or generally didn't find an exit from the catacombs at the right time.

The advantages of the catacombs are that you can't get stuck because of a bad tile that lead you into the outer wall, dead end or a path that takes you farther away from the goal. But the disadvantage is that you don't know where you will come up unless there's plenty of exit cards at the top of the deck, the amount of dangerous encounters outweights the amount of exits. The dangers will come in the form of preventing your progress, dealing high damage, change your direction, monster encounters.

The catacombs are balanced, far from broken as long the players follow the rules stated in the rulebook, otherwise it may become broken by house ruling.

It's common in my games that a player will be stuck in the catacombs far longer than he/she expects.

finally got the game, and tried few times catacombs...

now I understand why they chenged the deviation system: catacombs are really deadly, more difficult than the old DQ catacombs (sneak attacks, hidden traps etc.) even with more exits (6 vs 3). So they choose to allows players to choose the direction of the deviation.

I thought I would use the older DQ chart, but now I think that the new system is balanced.

I've heard this distance of deviation talked about elsewhere, but there was a simpler answer. If you think the standard deviation is too much...

When you and yours make deviation rolls, divide it in half and round up for 1D3 instead of 1D6. Simple.

The catacombs is intended to be a highly risky shortcut, but personally some of those "deviations" are just too nonsensical in that lower level being sought for a shortcut and more control over one's movement. Of course we've also considered eliminating the "choice" in deviation as balance for a smaller deviation. It fits better for wandering in the dark in a real catacombs .

We roll a second dice, divide it by 2 again: 1-2 go left from your direction of movement; 3-4 to the right; 5-6 continue in the direction you were moving. Again, simple for a supposedly simple game.

How many people here play that an exit card from the catacombs must be used? How many play that the exit is marked but can be ignored to continue onward in the catacombs?

JCHendee said:

??? I haven't the card here right now, but we play that if you find an exit you MAY exit, as you can continue inside catacombs if you wish. And what do you mean by "the exit is marked"? I haven't seen any rule about marking the exits.

Anyway, we play this way: if you want to exit, then exit. If you want to continue, go ahead, no problem (and I think that is according with rules).

Wasn't so much interest in the rules... just the common discussion point of choice I heard about elsewhere. Some groups are using a forced exit because they say the movement mechanic for choosing the deviation direction is making it too easy to get to the treasure chamber. Haven't noticed that myself, but thought I'd bring it up.