I'm new to the game, and I'm having trouble with the balance of the game with a different number of heroes.

I think that playing with 2 heroes makes the game very exciting but ultimately almost unwinable for the heroes.

On the other hand, playing with 4 heroes, the Overlord just doesn't stand a chance. The bonus for 4 heroes for the Overlord is almost insignificant, while the mere bonus of collecting 4x treasures for each chest is absurd. With a single chest, 4 heroes are able to gather up to 8 treasures that instantly makes the party almost undefeatable. Furthermore, it is way too easy for the heroes to evade monster in opening glyphs, collecting items, and escaping from the dungeon to town. This allows them to **** the map by entering and exiting the dungeon with ease, ecaping where the heat is on, and returning to deliver heavy punishment in the place most convenient to them. Add to this various imbalanced abilities such as Divine Retribution on a 2 conquest worth Mage, and the Overlord quickly finds himself in dire straits, struggling to kill a single hero, let alone drain the party's conquest token supply.

I think the following issues really ruin the balance of the game;

- moving from the dungeon to town is way too cheap, where it should cost at least 3-5 movement points to travel through a glyph

- treasure items are overpowered, especially when a single chest gives 4x treasures

- Overlord monsters are way too weak regarding defense AND offense, dying too easily and not being able to deliver enough punch (also due to treasures that buff the heroes too much and too quickly) ...

- there is a glyph in every room, which is just too many ...

- the heroes can dispatch all monsters in a room way too easily, and they can run past them way too easily as well ...

- the Overlord doesn't get ANY relevant bonus when the number of player rises

I like this game, but just as with Doom, the highly unbalanced feeling the game keeps giving me is pushing me away. Maybe it's just my inexperience, but I do have a strong feeling that this game was fine-tuned over a sunday breakfast, drinking coffee and making up paper rules ... If only FFG were a little more proficient with game-balancing erratas that would help adjust the loosenes of the current balance of the game ...

uhhm if i play as overlord i crush the heroes either in the first room before they even reach the first treasure or i crush them in critical spots with saved up traps, spawn and some other nasty surprises. But i am playing with all expansions, so the winning chance for expierienced players and a expierienced overlord should be 50:50. Yes in the base game heroes have ofc a great advantage, maybe check out Enduring Evil from Antistone to fix your issues (he will post about it later anyways as he always do.)

Player scaling in Descent doesn't work at all.

The conventional solution is to never play with 2 heroes...and never to play the harder quests with 3 heroes, either.

My solution is an extensive homebrew mod called The Enduring Evil ( discussion thread ) that makes monsters a lot harder to kill (among other things). It scales quite well to anywhere from 2 to 5 heroes. I think it turned out nicely, but you need to print a bunch of cards and play quests specifically designed for it, so it takes some work to get into.

Regarding your points, though, I think you've latched onto some things that are actually fine while ignoring some of the most important problems.

For example, giving more treasures to larger parties is absolutely necessary - they have more heroes to equip! Two good weapons arms an entire party of two but only half a party of four, so the larger party would fall behind really quickly with the same number of treasures (assuming the other balance problems were addressed).

The number of glyphs, the ease of using them, and the power of items don't really help larger parties any more than small ones; insofar as those are issues at all, they're issues of general difficulty, not of scaling. You should also take note that a hero can't teleport through glyphs more than once per turn, which means you need to end at least one turn in town when using them to hop across the dungeon, and you can't go back to town to hide at the end of every turn.

If you've only tried the earlier quests from the quest book, you should take note that they get a lot harder. The first couple of quests, in particular, are just training for the heroes, and the overlord really doesn't stand a chance against experienced players.

And the overlord actually does get some meaningful bonuses when the number of heroes rises: stronger monsters, and more threat per turn. Those bonuses aren't adequate , but they're very noticably different from nothing .

If you take it from me, the major issues with player scaling are:

• Action Dispartiy: A party of 4 heroes gets twice as many actions as a party of 2 heroes, which only works if they need to spend twice as much effort to get things done. Monsters get extra health, but not enough extra to require twice as many attacks to kill, which means larger parties can kill more monsters per round. This is easily the single biggest scaling problem. Large parties also have an advantage in collecting treasures/glyphs/keys in out-of-the-way places, since only one hero needs to make the trip.
• Line-of-Sight Coverage: One of the biggest threats to the heroes is spawned monsters (especially to small parties, since they can't kill them as fast). Parties with more heroes can spread out and get line-of-sight to more areas, making it harder for the overlord to spawn in useful positions.
• Trading Items: Most items can be used more effectively by some heroes than others. A larger party has a greater opportunity to optimize treasure distribution by trading items back and forth. In particular, a large hero party usually has greater coverage of attack types (melee, ranged, magic) and so is less likely to draw a weapon that they can't effectively use. If you said heroes can't trade items at all, then individual heroes in small and large parties would be on roughly equal footing...though, the way Descent's designed, that probably just means they'd be equally screwed, since less than half the items they draw would be useful.

Giving the overlord more threat against larger parties actually doesn't make a lot of sense, and shouldn't be necessary if the major scaling problems are addressed...at the same time, it's also a smaller effect than the other issues, so even though it favors small parties, large parties still have a huge advantage overall.

Antistone said:

Didnt i said that he will tell you about it ^^?

The more I think of it, the more I believe that 4x treasure is the main problem of a 4 player game. Sure, a party of 4 couldn't equip as easily if there were fewer treasures, but the truth is, the basic treasures are more than enough to 1-shot kill most monsters or clear out most rooms in one turn. Gaining a gazillion of Copper or even Silver treasures out of just a single chest (that the OL can't even protect) is just too much, giving too many overpowered tools to the party - from unbreachable armors to broken weapons with blast or pierce. So after that, even 'strong' monsters get 1-shot killed without difficulty.

Another thing I forgot to mention, though, is the small amount of monster at the OL's disposal. We were playing quest number 4 from the basic book - Spoiled Brat. All it took for the heroes was a runner with Acrobat ability to open a couple of doors, and my army as the OL was halved due to the lack of pieces - so I had to sacrifice 1/2 of Master Sorcerers, Skeletons and Ogres. Really depressing, considering that each of these rooms contained GOLD treasures, which just gave even more power to the heroes, without me being able to do anything from then on ... I even killed a hero as soon as I could, knowing that I have to play strong from the start. But it just isn't any help when a hero can move past anything up to 19 squares away, finally escaping to town, re-emerging somewhere else and repeat the 19 squares run, pick up more treasures and sealing the fate of the OL for good.

I appreciate that the add-ons increase the difficulty for the heroes, but I found the main game to be expensive enough and don't really want to shell out new money right now just to make the game fun. Our group collectively agreed that Descent isn't any challenge at all if playing with four heroes, actually expressing their opinion that they prefer Doom, due the exciting challenge involved for the Marines. Personally, I'm still split between the two games as I enjoy much more being OL in Descent than in Doom due to more interesting options and a greater challenge for the OL, but I just don't like it once the game gets brainless; and a 4 hero party with a few gold treasures quickly turns the game that way. Summon what? Kill it! Oh, a boss ... Kill it! A treasure 15+ squares away. Just let me take a sprint action ...

Also, the ability cards for the heroes are powerful enough without too strong weapons to back them up. For example, +2 damage on attacks is usually enough to kill anything. Now just give this mage Divine Retribution, Prodigy, and a weapon with blast. Not really exciting, just brainless ... All this doesn't mean that I don't like the game, I really do. Much of it is great stuff, but it all leads back to the point that the heroes have just too much power in their hands. So ultimately, the chests should either give the treasure only to the hero who picked it up, or the heroes shouldn't be able to swap items between them. As someone pointed out, if a 4 hero party gets 8 treasures, they will quite easily find a good tool for everyone. Is that the way the game was intended to be played? That whatever you pick up is pure gold? It shouldn't be ... It's irritating for the OL and brainless for the heroes. It kills the strategic aspects of the game completely, making it just an ordinary RPG where an overpowered party bashes helpless NPCs to oblivion.

TheWorld said:

You do use traps right? All this talk of unprotected chests and runners moving 19 spaces every turn really makes me wonder what happened to all your pit traps and explosive runes. Are you perhaps hoarding cards in your hand in the hopes of someday dropping Doom!, Hordes of the Things and Evil Genius all at once? Burn those big cards and use the threat to harass the party with pits and such! All it takes is one paralyzing gas trap on a door to stop the runner who foolishly moved away from the rest of the party and then all the monsters in your newly revealed room have lunch delivered to their front door.

As far as one-shotting monsters, well, that's actually fairly standard. Gold weapons (and even silver) can easily wipe out whole rooms of white monsters. Don't count on the monsters that start on the map living very long. Spawned monsters are the ones that will do most of your damage. If the heroes are spreading out the way it sounds like they are from your posts, it should be relatively easy to spawn a beastman warparty or some such close to a solo hero and tear him to shreds.

To be clear, the base game does favour the heroes a little, but even so it shouldn't be the cakewalk you're describing here. At least not beyond the first couple quests (Quest 4 should have a noticeable shift away from the heroes.) Something is amiss.

I did say I am inexperienced and thus allow much room for improvement to my basic strategy as the OL. But I am an experienced gamer in general and have players in my group who have been playing for years. Regardless, let me answer some of those things.

Traps; I don't hoard cards to drop bombs and I will always use a trap if it will prove to be relevant; but in the first turns, the OL doesn't have many cards so the choices are limited, and many times trap cards don't really make a difference ... I always try to use the paralyzing gas card or mimic to delay the heroes, also the dropping rocks and pit; but all in all, a runner with 19 movement has generally enough MP to play around these cards.

Summons; It is probably right what you say about summons, with Warparty being the most efficient damage dealer. I will try to focus more on that. The issue I have with summons, though, is that the Warparty is the only really efficient summon, but luckily, there are a few in the deck. I also know that a room of white monsters is cannon fodder, but a room of red monsters should count for something.

4th level; the problems with this level, as I said, is that it's enough for the heroes to open a few doors, and the army is split in two, because of the symetric nature of the level, with equal red (and white) monsters on each side. This maybe doesn't mean that the OL will automatically lose, it's just a whole lot of cheap GOLD treasures for the heroes, where the true problems begin to emerge ... Is a Beastmen Warparty enough to stop a 4 hero party full of gold treasures?

Well, I will have to play some more games, sharpen my skills as the OL, and then maybe I'll see it differently.

Running out of figures when the heroes open multiple areas is a problem on some maps, because FFG is overly fond of symmetry. But the rooms with gold chests in quest 4 are really far apart, and the heroes are saddled with a princess that slows their movement and can't be transported through glyphs. If they managed to open both of those at once without leaving any heroes isolated and vulnerable either before or during those fights, I'm not sure if I should be impressed, or worried that you've seriously misunderstood some important rule.

If you want to try a harder quest, though, quest #7 ("The Black Blade") is widely considered to be the hardest in the base game.

Monsters dying in one hit is pretty much par for the course. Even with just a shop Axe and no skills or "Other" items, a hero's got a respectable chance of one-shotting tier 2 master monsters, such as master sorcerers. But that also means that a hero who can't one-shot a monster is practically wasting their time attacking at all, which means cutting their treasure allotment by 75% can still destroy the game pretty rapidly. No monsters can withstand gold weapons, but even basic monsters can still inflict some damage through gold armor, and since the base game only contains 2 armors per treasure level, armoring all of the heroes in silver/gold armor is stupendously unlikely. Focus on the weakest target.

For what it's worth, though, monsters in The Enduring Evil are specifically designed to scale up to all treasure levels, and to require multiple hits to kill with appropriate weaponry. In a 4-hero game, a beastman is designed to take about 4 attacks to kill with shop weapons, and a giant is designed to take about 4 attacks to kill with gold weapons.

TheWorld said:

Granted a good runner will probably get around pit traps easily enough, but harassing them is still important because it will force themt o spend Fatigue on extra movement instead of extra dice on a later attack. Either that or they'll be forced to consume potions or waste time resting to get the fatigue back. Death by papercuts. It may not seem like much taken as a single trap, but when a series of these things withers down a hero's resources to the point he can't resist your spawned monsters, it all pays off.

TheWorld said:

Big red monsters, maybe. Red skeletons and red beastmen don't generally last much longer than their white counterparts. As a rule, red monsters are the only ones worth trying to save with things like Dodge, and even then it depends highly on the situation. If you're only going to buy one more turn of life it's probably not worth it. But if that extra turn gives you time to spawn a new warparty nearby that the red beastman can hook up with, maybe it is.

The Warparty is definitely the most efficient damage burst as far as spawns go, but that's not to say other spawns are useless. Especially if your heroes are overconfident about splitting up, you can use that. If your heroes like trying to kill everything that moves, a Skeleton patrol can stay just out reach and draw the heroes out, giving you more time to earn threat and draw cards to assail them with when they get back on track. If there's a particular type of monster your heroes hate and try to kill quickly, spawning a few solely to draw fire can be a good way to keep other monsters alive. My hero players have the hate on for Hell Hounds, for example. Hell Hounds aren't really that cool IMHO, but something about Breath and Pierce scares them. Whenever I have a monster or group of monsters I'd like to keep alive a few turns, I spawn some Hell Hounds on other side of the hero party and they pretty much always devote at least a couple attacks to the hounds.

TheWorld said:

Honestly, no it wouldn't. Not a full party. But if you can get one hero alone, even with gold gear, the warparty will probably tear him to shreds before he can stop them. If you can't get one hero alone, but you can spawn a warparty close by, then focus on killing one hero with all of them. The other three heroes will wreak holy vengeance, but you'll still get CT for that one you killed. That's what it's all about.

Edit: also remember that monsters can move before and after attacking. If the beastmen are close enough they can move in, attack and retreat around a corner. If you have a Charge to drop on one of them (ie: the red) he can make it that much farther away after landing his blows. Maybe I've been playing too much D&D, but it did take me a while to cotton on to the fact that monster can keep moving after stopping to attack, and that can make a big difference for survivability.

Agreed. The fact that monsters can retreat after attacking is one of the best survival tactics. When I first got the game I thought the heroes were pretty much unbeatable, but once you get into it, you see that killing two heroes is all the overlord needs to do at the start of a dungeon.A few well-placed spawns, traps and attacks is often all that separates the OL from victory, as long as the heroes are not overly cautious.Just focus on killing off the weaker characters.

Well, I have to admit things are not so grim for the OL. We were playing a lot of quest 5 in the last two days, and this is finally a stage where the odds are quite even. I love it.

Also, make sure to read the FAQ if you only have the base game. They've changed a few of the monster's stats, and added a couple of rules that make gameplay more balanced, like for instance: a hero may only drink/use one potion per turn.

If you develop a feeling for the game, get some the expansions as well. Each(non-campaign) expansion adds new monsters to the mix, many new overlord cards,traps, props, new gameplay mechanics, quests and what not. Campaign expansions like Road to Legend are also lots of fun, featuring an overland map, interesting mini-dungeons, each with its own special rules and bosses, upgrades for the various monsters in the game, deadly lieutenants for the overlord to deploy(basically, they're more or less like heroes who serve the Overlord) and six different avatars for the overlord to choose from, each with his own special abilities, lieutenants and upgrade paths.