So what's everyones' opinion on the Web ability? As the Overlord, it's one of my favorite abilities as it's good for stalling heroes. However, as a hero player, it can be horrible. We played this game yesterday and I webbed one hero and it took him 6 turns to get out of a single web. He simply could not roll a surge to save his life. About 45 minutes of real time and he was basically out of the game.

Does anyone have any house rules for dealing with such a potentially crippling effect? Maybe allowing the hero to spend fatigue to re roll? It adds to the flavor as he'd be struggling to free himself. What about having another hero try to help him out? Or is it just fine the way it is?

Were you playing Vanilla descent or Road to Legend? In RtL, you roll one power die plus another die for every rank in your hero's melee trait.

I think it's fine the way it is. Yes it can be crippling if you have bad luck, but that's why it's called bad luck after all. =P

Also, the only monsters who use webs are master spiders, so if your heroes really feel that strongly about not getting webbed, they should perhaps focus on killing the red spiders before they get too many shots in.

As an Overlord, I hate the Spiders more than I love Web, so it rarely comes into this game.

I really wish I had a 1x1 sized Spider...

-shnar

You can always use a Doom spider I suppose

I'm actually thinking of adding in Castle Ravenloft spiders

(gotta get *some* good usage out of that game)

-shnar

I love Bane Spiders. They may be difficult to spawn at times and not too easy to maneuver due to their size but their special abilities are great. And then, you've got Hordes of Things which lets you put them on the board without spawning. Two or three copies of Hordes in play, and voila you've got an entire room full of arachnid

And then the hero with blast or breath steps forward and you have a room full of empty and the smell of burnt spiders...

Not saying they're not disposable, of course, all monsters in Descent are, but they can seriously hinder the party before going down in flames.

zealot12 said:

So you've found a way to make spiders useful by spending 54 threat and mocking up an extra copy of a power card (only 2 HotT exist in a standard game of Descent). Pardon me for not being impressed.

54 threat is not that big a deal in a game with 4 heroes.And if you play with treachery, you can get an extra copy of Hordes. Spiders get a bad rep , but when they get to act., they can be good. If nothing else, they can form blockades.(:

The randomness of the web ability can be a bit annoying. I have been thinking about a house rule to get rid of the randomness in Vanilla Descent:

If a hero without a web token gets hit with web you add 2 web tokens. A hero that already has one or more web tokens gets one more if hit by a web attack. At the beginning of each a heroes turn you remove one web token.

I havent been running the numbers but I think the expectation-values are about the same as with the original rules.

zealot12 said:

54 threat is doable, but it's not exactly easy. If that's what you need to make good use out of spiders, I'd say you've paid a fair price for what you're getting.

zealot12 said:

Not according to descentinthedark.com. If their count is wrong, let me know and I'll shoot them an email to update it.