Those Runebound banners that nobody uses, well here they are for Descent. Small versions only. Final copies will be posted after discussion. The lion and wolf banner are bronze, the griffon and unicorn are silver, and the boar and ram are gold treaures.

Wait, so you think that +1 max wounds is equal in power to +1 armor and stronger than +1 speed or +1 max fatigue? Is this for some weird variant that's balanced completely differently from normal Descent?

Acolyte Rivan said:

I would put Banner of Ram and Unicorn as Gold, Lion and Wolf as Silver and Boar and Griffon as Copper. At least in any Descent version that follows the same general balances as the base game or advanced campaigns.

Corbon said:

If we have to use exactly those 6 effects and put 2 at each treasure level, I'd agree that's probably the correct sorted order.

However, I in terms of balancing them with existing treasures, I don't think the Banner of the Boar is out-of-place at gold level; +1 black die on all attacks to the whole party seems roughly comparable to to +2 damage and range (Ring of Arcane) or +3 damage (Sheath of Might) for one person - possibly even better, considering those are attack-type limited, and that surges are fairly awesome at gold level. (Depends on party size, of course.)

Which would imply that all of the banners except Griffon and Boar are too powerful even for gold level. Ram is definitely the strongest, and I'd say it might fit in at a hypothetical treasure level about three levels higher than gold.

I like the idea, but I'll agree with the others that the abilities are way out of line in that first draft.

What I especially like is the idea of a 'party upgrade', and the strategic element of having to choose which of several options. Could you make them less all-round powerful, but perhaps obtainable from town at a hefty price which all heroes can contribute to, provided one hero is in town to buy it? This would add the strategic decision of whether to buy a cheap banner early or save for an expensive one late rather than being bestowed randomly as treasure. Perhaps make them so that they could address flaws in the party make-up?

eg. (off the top of my head)

Banner of the Wolf. 100 coin. When making an attack with a weapon with which a hero rolls less than two black dice, that hero may roll one additional power dice for that attack. (with apologies to one of antistone's homebrews)

Banner of the Boar. 500 coin. All heroes with a armour value of 0 on their cards gain +1 armour while this banner is equipped.

Banner of the Boar. 500 coin. All heroes within three squares of a hero with this banner equipped gain the Unstoppable ability

Banner of the Griffin. 1,000 coin. All heroes are treated as having Conquest value of 3 while this banner is equipped.

Acolyte Rivan said:

Slightly off-topic, but what banners from Runebound? Is this from some card expansion that I probably don't have? I've never seen these things before.

Very impressive ideas to include banners. These are actually and effectively a whole new category of items themselves. I am very interested to use your works in my future games.

Attempting to nerf the Banners and came up with this idea. Activating glyph empowers the banners, place a fatigue toke on the item. Exhaust the item and remove a fatigue token to activate the banner.

No treasure level assigned

To Steve-O

They are from the Runebound: Artifact and Allies Deck Expansion. The Runebound banners all had different activation requirements and limited usefullness.

Lots of text. "Per glyph" isn't my favorite method of limiting charges, but it's not unprecedented. Approximately how many rounds do you think elapse, on average, between glyph activations?

"Until the following refresh phase" - meaning hero player's turn step 1: refresh cards? That happens at the start of each hero's turn, which makes these kind of pointless as whole-party effects.

Is there any reason other than theme that you don't want to let the party use more than one banner? I mean, in a typical game, the odds of even drawing more than one have got to be fairly small, and I don't see any obvious mechanical or balance problems from using more than one...

Specifying a fatigue token doesn't accomplish anything except possibly hurting high-fatigue parties when they run out of tokens.

Banner of the Ram seems like a really complicated way to basically achieve +1 conquest token per glyph activated. Sure, this forces the party to have the banner equipped when the glyph is activated and at some later time when a hero dies, but it's pretty unusual for the entire party to run out of "Other" slots, at least in vanilla...

Similarly, Banner of the Griffon seems like kind of a complicated way to give all heroes 1 healing per glyph activated. It lets the party save the healing for later, but since it still needs to be used on the entire party at once (rather than separately by each hero whenever they get wounded), that seems like a lot of complication for a relatively minor advantage.

That seems a bit limited... Perhaps just a lesser ability?

Boar: Whenever a hero rolls any number of Power dice when attacking, they gain one free surge.

Griffon: At any time, a hero may choose to pass on their turn. If they do, remove one status token from that hero, and that hero recovers 1 wound.

Ram: Whenever a hero is killed, when they return to life they are worth 1 less conquest. This effect is cumulative, but cannot lower a hero's conquest value by more than half their original conquest value.

Lion: Whenever a hero expends Fatigue to gain movement, they gain that movement again their next turn as well, if this banner is still equipped.

Unicorn: Whenever a hero takes damage, that hero rolls one power dice for each wound taken to a maximum of 5. For every Blank rolled in this way, the hero prevents 1 wound of damage.

Wolf: Whenever a hero uses all their movement in a turn, they regain 1 fatigue.

Antistone said:

Change the length of activation until the "start of the next turn"

Purely thematic for the one banner limitation. Removed

Remove fatigue from the text; "Place a 'token' on the card."

Antistone said:

(proposed) Banner of the Ram: Whenever a glyph is activated, or chest is opened, the heroes receive +1 conquest token.

(proposed) Banner of the Griffon: Whenever a glyph is activated, each hero recovers a number of wounds equal to the roll of a White die.

Acolyte Rivan said:

I think you miss the point. Each hero and the OL all get 'turns' inside a 'round', which means the 'start of the next turn' basically means at the end of the hero with the banner's turn. I think you mean at the start of the same hero's next turn. You could perhaps use "when this banner refreshes" (refreshing exhausted items not being optional, that would happen during the owning hero's next refresh phase after a complete round of everyone having a turn).

Antistone said:

Which brings up a good point. These are 'other' items and take up a hand slot. Is this necessary? Basically 'other' items are things which are worn, but not armour. Rings, sheaths, belts, boots, bracers, helms etc. Taking up a hand slot is not only fundamentally a different classification, but also already a considerable 'cost'. The hero must give up any 2H weapon, and loses the use of any shield or OHB weapon. I don't think breaking one of the fundamentals of classification is necessary, though there isn't any particular reason why you mustn't break it .
Personally I would keep the 1H slot and remove the 'other'. As Antistone said, outside of Advanced Campaigns it is pretty rare to see the heroes run out of 'other' slots for their party.

Corbon said:

That invites all the other heroes to "double-dip", since the heroes can choose their activation order: banner hero goes first on the round he activates it, but last on the next round. Which can be OK, if that's what you want, but I suspect it isn't.

You probably want it to last "until the end of the overlord's turn". There's currently no restriction on when it can be activated, so the hero can use it at the start of the round even if another hero wants to go first.

Corbon said:

Wow, I didn't even notice that! Yeah, an "other" item that takes up a hand slot is somewhat confusing - it's not clear whether that should take up both an "other" slot and a hand slot, or if it just takes up a hand slot but doesn't count as a weapon or a shield, or what. And taking up a hand slot is a very big deal, both because hand slots are more valuable than "other" slots, and because lots of weapons (including almost all magic weapons) already use up all of a hero's hand slots, which means that any hero using any of those weapons is automatically disqualified from using a banner.

I probably overestimated the value of the original banners somewhat if they take up a hand slot.

OH HOLY BALLS THEY TAKE UP A HAND SLOT.

Sorry for the outburst, but jeese... Jeese... I know, even with the original batch, that my friends would be like "Meh" and sell the item right away. Even I would, unless we happened to have someone who could afford a free hand slot for whatever reason.

Perhaps an "Off Hand Bonus" would make them more attractive: +1 surge for Copper; +1 Damage for Silver; and +1 surge & +1 Damage for Gold?

I believe a free surge is better than +1 damage for every one-handed melee weapon in the game (can be traded for +1 damage or better, and also works against Fear), except for shop weapons. So swapping out a free surge for +1 damage at silver level isn't an improvement.

But that change doesn't make much sense to me. It doesn't seem thematic, you're adding complexity, and you're restricting the set of interested heroes even further, from "heroes with a hand slot available" to "heroes with a hand slot available and a melee weapon in the other hand ."

If you're going to do that, you should at least make it a generic bonus, instead of an Off-Hand bonus. That makes it available to ranged weapons and sidesteps some rules issues (only melee weapons are supposed to give Off-Hand bonuses). But I would recommend that you just clarify what slot(s) the banners occupy, and make the banner effects appropriately powerful for whatever that is. If they take up a hand slot, balance them against shields - and keep in mind that, like shields, there's a good chance no one in the party will realistically be able to use them when they're drawn.

Revisited Banners

Copper

Silver

Gold

They're still listed as "other" items, but take up a hand slot. I can only assume they're supposed to take up both a hand slot and an other slot, since otherwise you could greatly improve clarity by just deleting the word "other" or the hand icon, but an accompanying rule would really be a good idea.

I'm inclined to say that +1 armor (without exhaustion) is probably too good for a copper-level shield, even with no other effect. It's worse than the Ring of Protection, but the Ring of Protection is just blatantly overpowered and only avoids destroying the game because there's only one of it.

"Until the end of the overlord's next turn" invites double-counting by activating it at the start of one overlord turn to get the effect for all of that turn and all of the next overlord turn. That doesn't matter for Lion except for Tahlia, but it's potentially a substantial boost on Boar if everyone uses Guard orders, and it's an amazing difference on Unicorn.

I like the new versions, and I would say if they took up an Other slot and a Hand slot, they're very balanced, and maybe just a tad bit powerful if they only take up a hand slot. They're nice, useful items, though I do agree a flat +1 Armor is a bit overpowered on the Copper-level ones, perhaps... "Whenever you lose wounds from an attack, roll a power dice and prevent one wound if you roll a surge."

I concur with Antistone that +1 Armor is too good. Armor is the most powerful stat, and, as Antistone said, the game can only keep from falling apart because there's only one easily available Armor bonus.

Consider this– Ring of Protection is better than Heavy Leather Armor, Plate Mail, and Robe of Kellos, because it lets a character improve his armor by 1, and it's less alluring to Crush. An improvement by 1 is pretty much the max that you ever get at one time– upgrading Leather for Heavy Leather, Wizard's Robe for Elven Robe. Therefore, by adding 6 new armor bonuses across the treasure decks, you're basically doubling the amount of bonus armor available in the game. The hand requirement is certainly a significant cost, but that sort of choice– between armor, shield or good weapon– isn't really a fun one to make, because you tend to regret it no matter what you do. Regardless, the Banners would be the best choice, and the game begins to suffer when Armor becomes so copious.

Also, all other things being equal, the abilities for Wolf and Unicorn should be swapped. Consider– Protect Thyself is a feat which is just shy of double the power of the Unicorn ability. One of the best feast, Second Wind, is vastly inferior to the Wolf ability (sometimes by a factor of 4).

I'm not sure I like these versions better than the earlier ones. In terms of real playability, I think the best thing you could do is take out both the Armor and the hand requirement. This would make them more like things which FF actually prints. I know this is boring. Sorry.

-pw

Newer versions of the banners have been uploaded. See the "Revisited Banners" post for the new ones.

"Exhaust to receive +1 armor."

I'm not sure what that's supposed to be, but it's clearly not correct right now.