I know this has been discussed many times with the conclusion that there is no balanced way to maintain characters through play sessions in vanilla descent without a complete overhaul of the core game. Usually these threads end with “Get Road to Legend”

My goal was to create a variant which appeals to casual descent players who enjoy the simple dungeon hack and slash aspect of vanilla descent but wish to continue playing and upgrading their characters for further play sessions. Without any major changes to the core rules, and a small adjustment to the OL setup, I believe this variant achieves this goal. Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated. All 'Setup Steps' mentioned here refer to the Setup Steps listed on the Game Setup for Descent (Vanilla) page at http://www.descentinthedark.com/_g_/game_setup.php.

In order to track hero progression, each hero player must create their own pen and paper Character Sheet . This character sheet will be used to record and update the following information at the end (victory or defeat) of every quest.

1. Hero level.
a. New heroes always begin at level 0.
b. Victory: Hero Level increases by 1. Defeat: No change.

2. Training tokens.
All training tokens purchased remain through play sessions following normal rules for trait limits. (maximum 5 per trait)

3. Skill cards.
a. The hero’s skill cards remain through play sessions.
b. All additional skill cards purchased remain through play sessions to a maximum of 5 skill cards.
c. During setup, each hero player may choose to trade in one (and only one) of his skill cards for a new card from the same deck.
d. When shopping, a hero with the maximum of 5 skill cards may spend 1000 coins for a replacement skill. The hero first draws 1 skill card, then immediately discards 1 skill, reducing his skill cards to the maximum of 5. The discarded skill card may be the recently purchased skill card.

4. Gold Coins.
a. The hero’s Gold Coins are recorded at the end of every quest.
b. Victory: Gold Coins = Current coins + (total value of items)/2.
The maximum number of each Copper, Silver or Gold items that can be added to this equation cannot exceed the maximum number of C, S or G items awarded from the specific chests markers during the quest. For this reason, it is important to separate and set aside all used chest markers to determine the maximum number of each item type that may be exchanged for coins in this formula at the end of the session. This is to prevent players from stacking 1 hero with many items for a big payday at the end of the quest.
{Example 1: a hero has 400 coins, chain mail, 1 copper, 1 silver and 1 gold item after victory. He would receive: 400 + (50+125+250+375)/2 = 800 coins.}
{Example 2: a hero has 200 coins, chain mail, 1 copper, 2 gold items after victory in JitD Quest 1: Into the Dark. However, during that quest the gold quest marker was revealed as Gold 1: 3 Conquest, 1 Curse, 1 Gold Treasure. Therefore, the hero may only receive the coin value of 1 of his gold items, not both. He would receive: 200 + (50+125+375)/2 = 475.}
c. Defeat: Gold Coins = 300. (Equal to normal setup step 3A. Setup Hero Markers, for use during setup step of the next quest 6A. Purchase Starting Equipment.)

5. Conquest Tokens.
a. The total number of remaining conquest tokens at the end of each quest (assuming victory) is divided evenly among the heroes. These recorded conquest tokens are added to the starting CTs of the next quest.
b. Fractions of conquest tokens are discarded and are not recorded by any hero player.
{Example: Upon victory of a quest, the hero’s pool of conquest tokens is 7. The tokens are divided evenly among the 4 heroes at 1 each. The 3 remaining tokens are then discarded and not recorded by any hero. Heroes do not receive fractions of conquest tokens.}

6. Quests Completed and Special Notes.
The quests completed by the hero may be recorded and updated at the end of every session as well as any special notes the player may want to record for flavour text etc.

A typical Character Sheet may look like this:
Hero Name: Grey Ker
Hero Level: 5
Training Tokens: Ranged x 1
Skills: Alertness, Marksman, Inner Fire, Relentless
Gold Coins: 860
Conquest Tokens: 3
Quests Completed: JitD: Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 – AoD: Q1
Notes: OneShotKill on Narthak in JitD:Q1 Into the Dark with an Elven Bow LOL!

OVERLORD: Setup Step 7B (final step): Draw overlord cards.
a. The overlord draws 3 cards from his deck after shuffling it.
b. The overlord draws X additional cards. Where X = (total hero levels)/ 2 (rounded down)
{Example: during setup of JitD quest 5, the OL counts the total number of levels of the heroes. There are 2 level 4 heroes, a level 3 hero and a new hero level 0. The overlord receives 11/2 (rounded down) = 5 additional cards during setup.}
c. The overlord player must discard cards until he has no more than eight cards in his hand.
d. The overlord player immediately collects threat tokens from all discarded cards in this step.

Additional Notes on this Variant

Regarding Purchased Traits and Skills:
Since players do not keep any items in this variant, I felt as though this was one of the only ways to achieve a sense of progression and leveling.

Regarding Skill Cards section (3c):
Over the course of several quests, this will enable players to slowly fine tune their characters. As such, a level 7 character would have a more refined combination of skills than a level 3.

Regarding Gold Coins in general:
The carry over of gold coins gives a Career Hero a starting perk without actually starting with chest items. Once chests have been opened during a new quest and are available for shopping, this larger stash of gold coins will allow the hero to buy more frequently from those item types in town. Thus, a character who previously owned a gold item, would have more money to spend in the next quest towards copper, silver and gold items as those chests are discovered.

Regarding Gold Coins section (4b):
Basically what this means is that if for every 1 item type received via a chest during the quest, the hero at the end of the quest may add 1 item of that type to the gold coins formula. I believe without this rule, players would simply give all the items to one hero before the last boss was defeated and begin the next game with way too much gold.

Regarding Conquest Tokens:
The reason I added this was to offset the increased overlords starting cards. Since the overlords first cycle of the deck will come much quicker, i felt it was important to offset this by adding more conquest tokens to each quest. This seemed a reasonable way to do it, but only further testing will tell.

Regarding the Overlords starting deck and general game balance:
I felt that by starting the overlord with a bigger hand, scaled with the heroes levels. It will allow for stronger early tactics by the OL. This seems to be the best way to balance the Career Hero variant. For example, 4 level 8 players would likely have multiple bonus traits and up to 5 skills each along with a greater starting gold stash and a carry over of conquest tokens. The overlord however would start with 3 + 32/2 = 19 cards. His hand would then be discarded down to 8 giving him lots of threat tokens to work with early. At this point im not sure if this will make the OL too powerful. It will require more playtesting and to see exactly how things work out over the course of several quests.

Hmm, i cant seem to edit my own post.
Is this normal for these forums?

The Edit button disappears a few minutes after posting, so you have to be quick.

Interesting idea. Are you imagining that over time there will be a pool of hero characters of different levels which may be selected (or randomly drawn) from by a hero player? How far did you playtest this, did it work out so far? If the starting bonus for the OL has been spent and the heroes survived that long, it will be even more of a cakewalk for the heroes - more money, more skills and traits but no further compensation for the OL. Probably one could think of monster upgrades a la RtL/SoB to throw some tougher adversaries against the heroes?

One question: Do the conquest tokens recorded on the character sheet also accumulate over time and will be added to the starting CT of each subsequent quest? E.g. if heroes with 3,3,2 and 4 recorded CT will play a quest with normally 5 starting CT, it will be 17 starting CT instead? And if they succeed, the next quest will be with 17 starting CT as well (or even more if they won with four or more CT left)?

Actually - I thought it would allow you to edit the post - as long as there were no replied to it... once you or anyone else replies - the edit option still stays there... I thought!!!

Thank you for the feedback. There are few rule changes and specific wording changes Id like to make. I guess I'll have to post them in a separate reply.

I was assuming any given descent player would have 1 Career Hero that they may use for further play sessions. I was also trying to account for players who may miss a session here or there, or the addition or possibly re-selection of new heroes. Basically I was considering the fact that any session may include players that may not have participated in any or all of the previous sessions. Also allows for drop in and drop out of players and their Heroes for each session.

[Parathion said: If the starting bonus for the OL has been spent and the heroes survived that long, it will be even more of a cakewalk for the heroes - more money, more skills and traits but no further compensation for the OL]

The overlord will not only start with more cards at the beginning, but also threat tokens from the discards. As well, the OL deck will begin the game with several cards in the discard pile, meaning the first cycle of the OL deck will come much sooner (3 CT loss for the heroes).

This chart includes the number of OL cards drawn during setup assuming 4 level 0 heroes starting from quest 1 play to quest 9 in D:JitD. As well as TotalHeroLevels (THL).
THL = 0, Q1 = 3 Cards THL = 12, Q4 = 9 Cards THL = 24, Q7 = 15 Cards
THL = 4, Q2 = 5 Cards THL = 16, Q5 = 11 Cards THL = 28, Q8 = 17 Cards
THL = 8, Q3 = 7 Cards THL = 20, Q6 = 13 Cards THL = 32, Q9 = 19 Cards

Considering the amount of cards drawn, It wouldn't take long before the OL was playing Power Cards and expensive treachery cards on his first turn.

Although the heroes start with more traits and more skills (if they have purchased them in previous quests) and more money, their starting items are still only shop items. Consider an OL who plays a card like Aim+Lone Troll or Doom within his first turn. This will likely result in an easy hero kill with only shop armor, causing the hero to lose half his coins. The downside of hoarding 1000+ gold is losing 500+ coins when you die.

I want to avoid any major changes such as adding RtL or SoB rules for monster upgrades etc. My goal is to keep the game as close to the core rules as possible. As well, Id like to avoid any extra accounting, stat tracking or bookkeeping during play sessions. For now, only after the session has ended will heroes need to use pen and paper for anything.

About the conquest tokens. This part is a little tricky. It was my intent that heroes who complete a quest would retain a fraction of left over CTs for the next quest. While its true that this could mean starting a quest with 17 CTs, I imagined that the OL would start getting multiple kills within the first 1-2 rounds of the game due to the extra cards and threat he would have at his disposal, not to mention a quicker first cycle of the OL deck. As far as mid to late game is concerned, I believe this starting boost for the OL is enough to keep the heroes on their toes for the majority of the session. One could expect early play of power cards and constant monster spawns each OL turn. Once the heroes have weathered the storm of several rounds of major harassment by the OL, the heroes would still be facing many more power cards than usual per game. I believe this is a good balance to heroes having bonus traits and skill cards to a max of 5.

However, I can see now that lower level heroes that managed to finish previous dungeons with alot of CTs remaining will gain a huge starting advantage.
Possibly a better idea is to use either Career Hero total CTs -or- Starting CTs for the quest, whichever is greater.

Dave99 said:

Heroes will very quickly max out their training dice (possibly on the first quest, circumstances allowing) and will never, ever need to spend Fatigue on dice again. This means they can do a lot more Battle actions and blow fatigue on movement, because what else is it good for? Add in vitality potions and you've functionally got four heroes with enough attacks to count as 8. Nothing will survive, even with town gear.

Dave99 said:

There's no need for both of these options. It's rare that a hero will ever have the urgent need to swap out a skill once he has 5 (heroes with 3 skills can do enough damage anyway) so if he has the option of swapping one for free at the start of every quest, he'll just wait until then and swap it. Over time he'll build the ideal 5 skill combo, and in the mean time he can make due with 5 trait dice and a longsword (see above.)

Personally I would remove option c and force option d for heroes who want to fine tune their skills. At least that way you're funneling off some of their money. Which brings me to...

Dave99 said:

Your limitation won't hold. If one hero wants a big payday he'll just get all the other heroes to give him all the unnecessary treasure items and go sell them in town immediately before killing the last boss. This can be done over several turns if they don't have the Bag of Holding treasure item. Then all the items money will be part of his "current coins" when the quest ends. Lather, rinse and repeat, after four quests each hero will have had such a payday.

They won't be spending money on skills after they cap at 5 since they can swap one out for free at the start of each quest. They won't be spending money on trait dice after they cap out at 5 because they never lose the ones they bought early. Potions are a drop in the bucket. Pretty soon all they'll have to spend money on is cycling the treasure decks until they find the best gear each quest, not that they'll really need to optimize gear when they're rolling 5 trait dice and have a maximized combo of 5 skills.

Dave99 said:

One of the rules mistakes we made early on was allowing CT to carry over from quest to quest. By the time the heroes got to the third quest I could no longer award them CT for things because they had them all. I was doing everything in my power to reduce their CT count, and they would just get it back from activating a glyph in the next area. Your dividing CT idea might slow this process down a bit by causing the odd CTs to get dropped (in the example you give you've almost halved their total CT, which is good) but I suspect it will still build up over time to the point where the heroes have no practical chance of failure since you can't kill them enough to fail a quest.

Dave99 said:

It's good that you thought of the Overlord and gave him a boost, too. Whether or not it will make a difference I can't say. I do know from my experience above that I couldn't earn Threat fast enough to kill the heroes in that mistaken CT game we played. Maybe an initial boost would've helped, it's hard to say.

FWIW, here's my variant for a continuing campaign experience aside from RtL/SoB:

Play D&D. Use these bits and maps, fiddle with monsters to make balanced encounter groups.

I can't say it'll be perfect, but it's looking good so far.

Thank you for the thoughtful response Steve-O.

Ive been meaning to edit some of the rules I posted, but the forum here doesnt allow it

Training Tokens:
I do agree with most of what you have posted. My intention has been to edit this with an update.
I dont think heroes will max out their traits so quickly. Knowing the bonus traits will carry over would be a bigger incentive to purchase them, but i dont forsee anyone being able to spend any more than 500g per game on traits. However, even if they only bought 1 trait per session that would still leave them maxed out in a single trait by the 3rd or 4th session which is probably a bad thing.

Not having to spend fatigue on combat rolls is an intended result of buying bonus traits, however this does not make them any harder to kill. I realize having less monsters to work with after the heroes turn does make it harder for the OL to do damage, this means the OL would rely more on spawn cards. As per the OL setup changes I believe the extra spawning cards and threat tokens at his disposal would balance the need for such cards.

Ive been thinking about a few possible fixes for Training Tokens and Skill cards:
1. Only allow the purchase of Training Tokens and Skill Cards at the end of a play session.
2. Change the cost of Training Tokens and Skill Cards:
Traits 1-3 = 500 coins
Trait / Skill Card 4 = 1000 coins
Trait / Skill Card 5 = 1500 coins
Replacement Skills (4d.) = 1500 coins

Skill Cards:
One of the things I wanted to change was removing 3c. entirely. I totally agree with you on this point. There is no need to allow heroes to replace a skill card every session for free. It also undermines 3d. in the process. Also, regarding 3d. I think it would be better served as per the original setup phase, basically discarding first then redraw, instead the other way around that lets a hero pick first then discard the same card he just drew. Also, I think adding the rule from above, only allow the purchase of skill cards at the end of a play session, would slow down the heroes ability to refine their skill combination.

Gold Coins:
I realize the heroes could just dump all of their items to one player before they kill the last boss. I just didn't want to make it easy for them. This will take time and a several trips to town (without bag of holding). Time as u know is the OL's strongest ally. I would assume the OL would take advantage of the time during those turns while they wait without their copper, silver and gold items. There is also the possibility that without the chest items they have found or purchased during the session that they may not be able to kill the last boss at all. I know there are ways which the players could effectively stack one hero with gold, but none of them are easy and will likely result in a couple of deaths.

If you add the changes to skill cards and trait tokens from above, and consider the huge amount of coins a wealthy hero will lose upon death, I think the coin carry over would balance nicely. Players will seek to keep their coins in access of 1000 till the end of a session, possibly refusing to buy extra items and such to purchase skills and traits when the game ends. Also, every death they suffer along the way will cut their savings in half. Wealthy heroes will become targets of the OL in this case which is kinda funny.

Conquest Tokens:
I admit this one is very tricky to balance. On one hand I would like to give the heroes a reward for doing well in a quest and I like the idea of using conquest tokens as a way to determine how well they have done. One the other hand there are some obvious problems starting with too many CTs. This is the alternate version Ive been considering:

5. Conquest Tokens.
a. After Victory of a quest, each hero receives 1/X of the remaining conquest tokens rounded down , where X = the number of hero players. These conquest tokens are recorded as Personal Conquest Tokens (PCT) on the hero's Character Sheet.
b. During setup phase of the next quest, each hero places conquest tokens on his Hero Card equal to his PCTs recorded on his Character Sheet. PCTs must always remain near the Hero Card and separate from the groups regular CTs. When a hero is slain, he first loses conquest tokens from his PCTs. Any additional conquest tokens required to meet the hero's conquest value are removed from the group CTs. PCTs cannot be traded or used by other heroes.
c. If the Heroes ever run out of Conquest Tokens (ignoring PCTs), the game immediately ends and the overlord wins. PCTs do not count as conquest tokens toward victory/defeat conditions.

This rule creates 2 types of conquest tokens, regular CTs and PCTs. PCTs are always lost before CTs. When the heroes run out of CTs they are defeated as per normal rules. It is possible for the heroes to be defeated by losing all of their CTs even though some heroes may still have their PCTs.

{Example: During a quest, the party of heroes hav e 5 conquest tokens left. ' 'Hero A' has a conquest value of 4 and 3 PCT from a previous quest . 'Hero B ' has a conquest value of 3 and started with 4 PCT. After his first death, Hero B lost 3 PCT with 1 remaining. After his second death he lost his last 1 PCT as well as 2 CTs from the groups regular conquest tokens for a total of 3. Since the group only has 3 CTs left, one more death by this player would result in a defeat for the heroes and victory for the overlord. Even though Hero A still has 3 PCT left, PCTs do not count as conquest tokens toward victory/ defeat conditions. If Hero A dies instead, he would first lose his 3 PCTs and 1 group CT. The heroes would have 2 CTs remaining and would be able to continue their quest.}

Im kinda dissapointed that I cant edit my own posts here, I'll have to repost the entire rules set after some additional testing and changes are made.

Dave99 said:

Most heroes won't bother training traits that aren't naturally strong. A hero who starts with 3 dice in one trait will focus on that trait exclusively, which means he only needs 2 training tokens to max out. Sacrifice a skill swap on the first dungeon and spend that 1000g on training instead. It never goes away, after all. A hero with 2 trait dice in one category will be strongly tempted to "finish it off" once he's bought the first two extra dice, so I wouldn't plan on them taking more than two dungeons to cap. The only heroes who might take 3 or 4 quests to hit the trait cap are the "jack of all trades" heroes like Red Scorpion who start with 1 die in each category. Bottom line, the training system in the rulebook is designed with the intent that any hero could train up to max in a single dungeon if he wanted to. In practice the heroes might not bother when playing plain vanilla, but if they know those trait dice will stick around forever once they're bought, there's very little reason not to do it fast.

Dave99 said:

Those are both good ideas. Put them both together and the scaling cost at least provides an incentive to think of doing something else for your one upgrade this dungeon. If buying traits or skills are mutually exclusive, that makes it even better. The thing to realize at this point is that once the hero reaches the cap in either skills or traits, he'll never go back down. The most powerful hero in all the land has 5 trait dice in his chosen field and 5 skills that synergize well. If the heroes can reach that level in a few dungeons, then it's all slaughter all the time from there on out. There's nothing left to progress with.

For that reason, you want to make sure the system is designed to regulate advancement at a reasonable rate. Partly to spare your poor monsters, but also partly so that the heroes have something to do with all their money after quest 5. If you have or choose to pick up RtL or SoB at some point, you could also add an option to begin upgrading into silver and gold trait dice later on (using the RtL monster cards so your beasties can keep up.) You don't have to play the advanced campaign map or any of the other rules, but this gives your advancement system more granularity.

Dave99 said:

Sorry, I was assuming the heroes would only be selling off the gear they don't need. So they'd still be kitted out in gold weapons and armor for the final boss fight, and for waiting around while the one hero who wants a pay day sells things. You're right that time is on the OL's side, generally speaking, but if the heroes can hole up in a good place with reasonable spawn prevention lines, they can wait a few turns while one hero goes shopping and hold off whatever spawns you send at them. Without needing to spend fatigue on trait dice anymore (or even moving if they're mainly standing still for this) then the hero party isn't loosing any resources.

True the OL will continue gaining threat and optimizing his hand, but I doubt he'll get enough to seriously slow down the heroes with only one room left to go. Traditionally, if the OL doesn't finish off the heroes before the boss room, he won't stop them in the end. These extra turns might make the fight more challenging, but I doubt if it would tilt the balance far enough in the OL's favour to pull out a win. Especially if the heroes have 30-odd CT built up from previous quests. Barring unusual luck or foolish errors, all this will do is draw the game out longer than it needs to be.

If the heroes are going to be rolling in the cash anyway (and they will be), you might as well just let them have it.

Dave99 said:

That might work. I'd have to playtest it to see if it was flawed in some less obvious way, but on the surface it seems good. Of course, to be honest, it also strikes me as unnecessarily complex. Better to just wipe the slate and start fresh every game. Give the heroes extra money instead of +4CT after killing the boss if you really want to give them a lasting reward. Also, the opportunity to train traits or skills, as discussed above, could be seen as a reward for completing the quest.

CT is thematically meant to represent progress toward the completion of your quest. Things that give you CT are forward progress, things that remove CT are setbacks. Once a quest is completed, there's really no more forward or backward progress. It's done. The next quest you pick up, you start fresh.

One thing that occurs to me: the tanks will build up PCTs that rarely if ever get depleted, while the squishies will probably not build up any. Just further exaggerating the dynamic of avoiding the tank, really. Pretty soon your tank will have so many PCTs that you don't have enough tokens to go around. That's less an issue of overall game balance and more an issue of token management.

Dave99 said:

Yeah, it's a nuisance.