I have the German edition, so please bear with me if my translation back to English does not match the terms used by the English edition exactly.

1. When entering the last level of the Overlord's dungeon, the rules state that players (tokens/4) and Overlord (tokens*2) get extra hitpoints based on ALL tokens collected during the campaign. You need 600 tokens total to reach the Overlord, so both parties will have about 300 tokens each. That's 75 extra hits for each player and 600(!) extra hits for the Overlord's avatar. That seems excessive, and makes the +15HP avatar upgrade a joke.

2. In the Master of the Hunt's dungeon, the text states that he cannot be resurrected using the "Hunting Call" card (the one that raises his HP from 0 to 200). What's the sense of the card if you're not allowed to use it?

3. The two avatar upgrade cards I already mentioned seem very unbalanced. One gives 15HP bonus while the other gives a 200HP healing. What did I miss?

4. When fighting lieutenants, the fight happens on one of the sea maps, right? But the lieutenant does not have a ship? So he spawns on the edge of the map?

5. When exploring an Island, do the players have to swim through at least one tile to reach the island?

Thanks for any and all help!

3. The two avatar upgrade cards I already mentioned seem very unbalanced. One gives 15HP bonus while the other gives a 200HP healing. What did I miss?

Each avatar has something that heals them or grants them more hit points that's much better than a flat +15. The +15 is for when you think you need even more health. It's also (I think) a holdover from RtL where the OL didn't get an extra 600 health.

4. When fighting lieutenants, the fight happens on one of the sea maps, right? But the lieutenant does not have a ship? So he spawns on the edge of the map?

Correct, though at least one overlord is a ship (the Ghost Ship) so it would follow standard ship setup rules.

5. When exploring an Island, do the players have to swim through at least one tile to reach the island?

You could move the ship and use the rope to get to land without having to swim, and some islands have extra bits of land added to their map.

Sorry, I haven't done a final fight or read any of the overlord dungeons so can't help with 1 or 2.

Scaramouche said:

My best guess is that this is to rectify the potential situation in which an Overlord takes the majority of the conquest points in a campaign but neglecting to spend them on personal upgrades, and the 15HP is a holdover like James said. Alternately, it could be an error, since it could easily lead to ridiculously-long final battles, and might get errata'd in the future.

I have played through a Road to Legend campaign, but not a Sea of Blood campaign.

I can tell you that the Sea of Blood rules are not excessive and might actually make for a good battle.

Our RtL campaign final battle fight was decided in ONE round.

We had shackles on, our mage was shackled.

One of our tanks attacked the mage first, mage was dead.

Our range attacker battled and shot his bow twice from 12 spaces away, hitting the dragon twice for a total of 30 damage.

The dragon only had around 70-90 hitpoints.

He quickly conceded since he didn't have cards, could only move a max of 8 spaces, and couldn't ever get out of line of sight of our ranged attacker.

I did read through the SOB rules posted online and you have the correct wording.

The +15 is definitely a hold-over from RtL and should only be purchased if you have nothing else to purchase.

Maybe in the last week when you have ALL other upgrades for your avatar.

I have always wondered why they change up the final battle so much.

You play the entire campaign with an overlord deck, and when the battle matters the most, they take it away from you.

Thanks for the answers!

I guess the high health in the final battles does make sense after all. I'll give it a try once we get there in, uh, 4 months or so

Got a few more questions now:

6. Can the heroes freely exchange items and potions while in town (or even while travelling)?

7. My base Descent game only has four get-an-extra-black-die training markers (of each type). How do you deal with that? No more training once they're used up? That is, the heroes are forced to upgrade to silver to free up more markers?

8. In the normal dungeon levels the whole level is revealed at once, which allows the OL to place his monsters anywhere. While play-testing for my campaign I found it extremely efficient to place all monsters at the far end of the dungeon next to the leader in one tight group (concentration of forces). Then I'd wait for the heroes to advance and hope for the beastman spawn card (or any spawn card, if that one doesn't come) before they have a line of sight. The resulting blob of enemies always gets at least one kill, but usually it's a party wipe. If it was real play and not just a test, the heroes would just turn around and leave to avoid giving the OL 12 quest tokens for the 5 tokens they can get in one level. Am I missing something? Or are the heroes just screwed?

9 Speaking of heroes being screwed: Is there any way to prevent the OL from winning by razing five cities once he has three lieutenants in play? The heroes cannot possibly travel fast enough to prevent the cities from being razed. And I can't see them killing any lieutenant - one turn on the combat map and he's out, one turn on the big map and he's back in the city starting a new siege...

Scaramouche said:

Yes.
FAQ pg15
As always, when the heroes are not in the midst of a quest, they may freely exchange items, regardless of who is actually visiting the market
and
Q: Can heroes purchase gear from the market and then distribute it as they see fit? What if they’re in the middle of a quest; does this cost MP?
A: Heroes in town are still considered to be adjacent to one another, regardless of what building they are in. However, a hero who is Restocking has no movement points to spend (and may not spend fatigue for extra movement points, since he’s not taking a normal turn). A hero who has visited the market on a previous turn and is returning to the dungeon may, for 1 MP, give an item to another hero in town.

Scaramouche said:

Yes. You are always (with) the exceptions of tokens that are shared, such as Wounds and CT) limited by the tokens that come with the game.
This was also explicitly answered in the GLOAQ
Since there are only 4 training tokens of each type are the heroes limited in the amount of training they can purchase?
The heroes are limited to the training tokens included in the game. If one hero hogs them all, that's going to be trouble for the party.

Scaramouche said:

You seem to be missing something. What you describe would generally be considered fairly inefficient play. However if your hero style is inefficient then 'normally' inefficient OL tactics might be much improved.
It would generally be rare that there is not at least one AoE weapon or mass-attack capability (like Cleaving) that will allow the heroes to clean up concentrations of monsters much easier than if the monsters were dispersed. Heroes should also find it easier to 'protect' the weaker party members if the threats are concentrated in one direction.
In Descent, concentration of forces isn't about the positioning of monsters, it is about getting massed attacks in in one turn against the same hero. That might be achieved by massing the monsters, but since monsters can both move and attack it is usually achievable just as easily by spreading the monsters, which then reduces their collective vulnerability. Standing monsters on chests and glyphs is also important to stop heroes just running through and looting stuff.

Scaramouche said:

It does look that way. I haven't heard a single report of a hero win yet.
We might have a bit more confidence in one of my campaigns but a weak hero party (bad draw, noob bad decisions in selection and training) is being crippled by appalling luck with treasures - with one level to go in copper (the score is already 220odd combined) the heroes have just 1 copper non-melee weapon between 2 mages and a ranger! (well, 2 actually - the ranger has a cursed bow, which is crap, as backup to his Dwarven Firebombs. Crushing blow comes up every dungeon, often twice because they just can't kill stuff and have to go 2-3 turns toe to toe with basic silver monsters (not to mention getting played and then shuffled back in during the pack up process between sessions!). The anti-anything feat card has failed both times against CB. We have drawn nearly all the dungeons with NO CHEST already (and there are far too many of those!). Despite a market of 5 (Dallak) the last 5 market visits have drawn 0 decent weapons - 1 Leviathon, 1 Great Bow, 3 Axe of Returnings at least 11 shortages, 5-6 Crystals of Tival (we even bought one, but funds have been very tight with weapons costing double) and a smattering of weaker armours, Bag of Holding, etc. Something in the deck seems to draw cuts at the same place every time, no matter the shuffling!

Lts can be killed. Web weapons help a lot. Unexpected bonuses for heroes from feat cards can help. Particular skills (Kolls/Saj's Mark, Runner) can help. Flying or teleporting heroes can help. Knockback weapons can help. But a competent OL should have most of these things 'covered'. It isn't easy.

One option for the heroes is to try and complete the campaign as fast as possible - never flee a dungeon (except maybe the very first), never train unless all heroes can train (and never train a single dice upgrade, always 2), never waste time getting treasure Xs, always train in the nearest available location instead of travelling further, etc etc. 'Never' of course meaning that is the principle aimed at, not always entrely achieved.
I

Regarding 7) The OP seems to be under the impression that upgrading bonus trait die to silver or gold would free up the basic black training token - this is not the case. The training token stays with the hero, and the upgrade token is placed onto it (or onto a printed black die).

@Corbon: "(not to mention getting played and then shuffled back in during the pack up process between sessions!)"

Do you actually use this rule if interrupting between dungeon levels? This always looked to me as an unnecessary evil, because of the possible consequences you stated (another extreme would be CB never showing up in a dungeon). It definitely shouldn´t make a difference whether two or three dungeon levels were played in a row or with a break in between. I simply store the OL deck in its present condition and continue from there.

Thank you very much, I really appreciate the answers!

And just in time for our play session today

Parathion said:

Annoyingly, if the game gets packed up (always when I am hero as my opponent doesn't have a set aside room, and sometimes when I am OL as my game table is needed occasionally between sessions), yes. There is no guarantee that a vanilla game won't be played next time and it is far too much trouble to record more than the cards-in-hand.

It is an evil, but sometimes a necessary one.

OTOH a couple of times there has been enormous interest from both of us as 29 cards or so get drawn, face up, one at a time, and discarded. The suspense is more than in the actual game!
That's actually pretty sad, but then this has been a pretty sad campaign. We'd restart, but the amount of 'grind' to get where we are at so far has been painful and I'd rather keep exploring the anti-ship game theory as far as possible. We may not start another SoB campaign at all, its been that bad.