Conquest tokens awarded after boss kill?

By dave100, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Why do all the quests give conquest tokens for killing the end boss?
The quest is over when the boss dies, whats the point?
Am i missing something?

Dave99 said:

Why do all the quests give conquest tokens for killing the end boss?
The quest is over when the boss dies, whats the point?
Am i missing something?

There isn't much point. Part of it is consistency, probably. Part of it is likely rules that changed during development and were never 'cleaned up' at the end (there are a lot of those).

Some people play -ve CT variants where the heroes can go negative and keep going and the winner is determined by the final score.
Some people use 'final score' counts as marks for how well they did the quest so they can compare with other parties or Overlords.

No one knows for sure. Common guesses include:

  • So that if a hero and the boss die simultaneously (e.g. due to a Blast attack) when the heroes are low on conquest, the heroes still win.
  • To establish the precedent that named monsters give conquest when killed.
  • For the "competitive" variant described on the cover of the quest guide, where each hero gets points equal to the number of conquest they earn for the party. (Even though that variant is a terrible idea.)
  • For scoring purposes, so you can compare the amount of conquest the heroes have remaining on different playthroughs of the quest (yes, that' a common guess, even though it doesn't make any sense, because every party that finishes the quest at all would get exactly the same bonus).

I figured it was only for post game accounting purposes, but i just wanted to make sure.

ty corbon and antistone :)

And while im at it, thank you for so many helpful replies in various threads on this forum.
It seems every time I come across a situation im unsure about, I always find the answer in one of your posts.
Our group has only played a few sessions so far from JitD, but I've learned alot about descent in a very short time from you guys.

Keep up the good work guys and thanks for the help,

cheers!

There is one dungeon in AOD or WOD that requires the party to be over 12 conquest to win. The one where you rescue prisoners. So gaining conquest from killing the boss seems useful in that dungeon. But other than that it seems pointless unless you let the heroes go negative and win if they are positive at the end.

Perhaps to get you used to account for conquest when playing RTL.

It is useful for deciding how much of a victory it was to the Hero's assuming they win.

Was a few quests where the hero's only had a couple of conquest left when they won, and some where they had loads of conquest.

Mordak said:

Perhaps to get you used to account for conquest when playing RTL.

The conquest awarded for boss kills was part of the game since launch, long before Road to Legend existed. If you're going to try and argue that RtL was on the drawing board from the start then I'm afraid I'll have to call shenanigans on you. RtL was something like 3 years after the base game was released. If there was that much foresight in the development of this game then the rules wouldn't be half as twisted as they are.

I'm pretty sure it mentions somewhere in the rules or in the quest book the idea of "keeping score." That seems to me the most obvious reason for the final CT, not that anyone plays it that way that I know of.

we play a houserule that the heroes have to escape (use a glyph) after killing the boss. this give the conquest at least some sense, and also the other monsters that are in the boss room.