Slimak said:

Feat cards are to balance the base game. NOT the advanced campaign.

Based on the dice-per-glyph idea:

When activating a glyph, the Heroes roll four power dice and consult the following chart for each one:

Level Power Enhancement Surge Blank

Copper 1 feat 1 conquest Overlord +1 Threat

Silver 1 conquest 1 feat Overlord +1 Threat

Gold Overlord +1 Threat 1 conquest 1 feat

Notes

Sundered Glyphs only roll two dice.

The Worldwalker draws one additional feat for herself every time a glyph is activated regardless of the dice roll.

I’m 115 conquest into a RTL campaign (heroes at 51, me at 64) and I’ve included everything that Tomb of Ice has to offer into the campaign before starting it.

I don’t feel there is anything broken about how ToI integrates with RtL in any way. The feats are kind fun for me as an overlord because the heroes now have an element of surprise that they can utilize to enrich my game experience and their competitive level.

The ONLY question I have is whether heroes draw feet cards when they activate a corrupted glyph (as introduced in a previous expansion). I saw nothing in the rules to indicate that they do not.

Slev,

I like the system that you came up with, except I have one question... Did you mean "Overlord +1 Threat", or did you mean "Overlord +1 XP"?

If you really meant just threat, my feeling is that isn't really enough OL compensation, especially by comparison to what the heroes will be gaining. I think if you mean "Overlord +1 XP", the system would be perfect for me.....and I'm strongly considering using this system but amending it to that. Other than that question, I think this is brilliant, for its elegant simplicity in addressing this issue.

My thought process regarding this is that Feat Cards are intended to re-balance base Descent. At least that is my opinion. So when they are added to RTL, as they distinctly should be because they are an awesome innovation, then it should balance out equally because my assumption is that RTL is (in theory) balanced already, before the addition of feat cards.

Anyway....good job. That's a very nice resolution to this situation.

Slev said:

Hmm, I started with liking this alot. However I think that it is dangerous to mess to much with the average CT accumulation per level as it will change many time mechanics within a campaign. Not necessarily good, or bad, just dangerous - because it is difficult to predict what it will mean long term. I played around with modifying the table, including options to keep varying amounts of CT for the heroes in addition to the rolls, and giving CT to the OL instead of the heroes on some rolls (when the heroes were keeping their base CT, + rolls. Howveer I couldn't come up with anything that felt fully balanced and didn't change the overall amount of CT/Dungeon by too much.

Best I got was this: keeping the 'normal' 3 CT for the heroes and changing the table to (Power Enhancement/Surge/Blank)

Copper : Feat/+1Threat/1CT to OL

Silver : +1 Threat/Feat/1CT to OL

Gold : +1Threat/1 CT to OL/Feat

same Notes.

This adds on average less than 1 CT per level in Silver and Bronze, slightly over 1 CT per level in Gold (where by all accounts the OL is consistently getting hammered). It still changes the campaign length dynamics, but not by as much.

It still doesn't feel quite right but it is close enough to be worth playtesting I think.

Schmiegel: I was just throwing the idea out there. Doing it with Conquest instead of Threat is fine if you think the Heroes didn't need the boost. For those who think they did, Threat works better.

Corbon: Based on averages at Copper level, this will give per Glyph, 1.7-2 Conquest.
If you don't like the 1-1.3 loss, simply add one CT per Gylph. i.e. the heroes gain 1CT plus the dice roll. The change on average is that they recieve 0.3CT less per glyph at Silver. That's 1CT per dungeon on average at Silver only.
Alternatively, change the OL threat gain to 2CT for the Heroes at copper & Silver. This does give a small change on average per glyph (Copper=2.7CT+2F, Silver=3.3CT+1.7F, Gold=3.2CT+0.8F), but the percieved gain via feat power should facilitate the OL gaining fewer Conquest at the stages where they are more readily available.
A final option is to simply ignore the entrys that are not Feats, and give the Heroes their 3CTs in adition to the rolled Feats.

I expected it to be xp. some of the feat cards I feel are pretty over powered, and I tried to reflect that. Obviously everyone has their own idea on who needs a boost, so I don't think any 1 solution will fly with everyone.

1 threat doesn't seem worth hardly enough. Most of the feat cards mirror abilities that require 4-6 surges on average. With +1XP the players will weigh the use of the card vs what the OL gets. getting 3 or 4 threat tokens as you watch a dungeon level boss get taken down probably won't feel balanced.

Anyway, an "Every time a feat is played, the Overlord gets X" I think works easiest as a house rule to use. I'd still recommend the players losing all the feat cards between dungeons just to prevent them from hording junk cards to recylce the better or 'favorite' cards faster.

We are going to use the "everybody starts with one feat and only the character that activates the glyph gets a new one" rule. Played like that, feat cards are just a nice little bonus for the heroes, while not changing things too much.

Actually I think you misinterpet my feat rules. Basically feats are gained by A. Glyphs (but only the character who hit it), and B. By sucessfully killing the dungeon boss and then exiting the dungeon. Not the FLOOR BOSS. So in a standard dungeon they need to get to the 3rd floor and kill the boss monster there. Once they return to the overworld map, each gets 1 feat draw as a reward for clearing the dungeon. Normal rules apply for the number of feats you hold (no more than four). As for feats the decks refresh every change in color, otherwise if you burn all the feats in a deck you get to draw no more until the next color comes up. So for instance if you blew/draw all the Ranged Feats you can not draw from that deck anymore if you were to get a feat, until say you go from copper to silver where it refreshes, or silver to gold.

Hurdler14 said:

I am surprised so many people want to remove feats so completly from the game. Do your heroes object at all? Or do they just accept your ruling?

granor said:

Actually, it is a decision we have taken together based on our last campaign. In that campaign, I (the overlord) scored more points than the heroes, but in the final battle they destroyed my avatar in about 3 rounds. Overall everyone was quite happy with the way the campaign played, it was quite hard on the heroes in some dungeons but that made their final victory all the better. Therefore we decided that giving them a small bonus is fine to help out on some of the really tough dungeon levels (now they get one feat per dungeon level plus the four starting feats), but giving them four feat cards on every level would swing the balance too much towards the heroes.

However, I guess this really differs across playing groups, so what works fine for us may not be a good idea for other groups (some people seem to ban feat cards altogether, while others want to give them a more prominent role). I think that whatever you do, you should discuss it with your players and take a decision that everybody feels ok with.

Edit: In the last campaign I was the Sorcerer King, which gives the largest "in-dungeon bonus" of all avatars, which also makes us a bit hesitant to power up the heroes too much against other avatars.

granor said:

Actually, people are looking for a way to insert Feats into RtL that is not too unbalanced.

KW's 'ruling' was clearly an offhanded, un-thought through comment covering a stupendous gaffe by FFG (they clearly never thought about incorporation of Feats into RtL at all). ToI rules do not actually mention Feats at all wrt RtL, despite having a RtL section that details what parts of ToI should go into RtL. Not taht I'd be blaming him, what else could he say?

In short, Feats were clearly not designed to be in RtL, but are so cool that FFG couldn't really say "they don't belong" when asked. And so cool everyone wants them in somehow.

Corbon, that sums it all up very succinctly. Add to that the additional factor that Road to Legend, in theory, is a balanced game, overall. That may be debatable, but if anything the most common theme I seem to be hearing on the message boards is that the heroes most often prevail in the final battle, in the end. So within that context, if you're going to add a further boost to the heroes in the form of feat cards, at no expense to the heroes....(well, fill in the blanks).

Obviously people can do whatever they want, and have whatever opinion they want about the game's balance. Personally, I'm looking for a way to give something back in return to the OL, while retaining the feat cards to the fullest extent possible while also maintaining game balance. I appreciate all of the ideas that people have offered up....as in the process several interesting possibilities have evolved. Hopefully the conversation will continue.

Again, another inane idea since I don't own ToI yet...

If Feats are supposed to balance Treachery, it almost stands that it should cost them XP to be able to get them. I'm not talking sacrifice the CP/XP from a glyph, but have it cost like 250 Gold and 10 XP to even be able to draw Feat cards. Purchase the points like the OL purchases Treachery points, cap it at 3 points. For Avrel, have her start with one point already.

When a glyph is tripped, all those Heroes who have a point can draw one Feat card from the type they have it in. You can train to get Feat cards using the system that works for dice, like Tamilir can trains all 3, Frostgate does't have any etc etc.

Big Remy said:

I like it. More than the other ideas...

Biggest problem is that it hurts the heroes most in bronze, least in gold. This one is difficult to get around though, except by making the cost in coin/xp increase at each level.

What incentive is there to have more than 1 point in any one type? How will this affect the moving/exploring/training balancing act the heroes already have to do?

Perhaps add to it thus...

Hero maximum hand size is one more than the number of points they have (Arvel 2 more). (This gives incentive to have multiple of the same type of Feat). Buying Feats can be done in the same circumstances as upgrading Tamalir. (Thus it does not affect the timing balance that the heroes already have juggle, and we don't have to find rules for what feats can be learned, where).

Feat points cost 0Gold+10XP in Bronze, 500Gold+15XP in Silver and 1000Gold+20XP in Gold.

Obviously when a glyph is triggered the heroes get 1 Feat card of any type they have (Arvel +1).

Big Remy, Corbon - Both of these are great ideas. Nice. It's especially critical not to force the heroes to use up valuable training time, so that's a nice twist (Tamalir upgrade mode). Nobody can say feats would be cheap, though. With the Tamalir upgrade mode mechanic, a TPK in outdoor encounter would deny the opportunity to acquire feats that game turn, though, which is appropriate.

Schmiegel said:

Big Remy's idea, so all his credit not mine.

It still needs refining though I think. It will only take one dungeon (2 levels completed) and all the heroes can get a Feat point each. That is still 4 feats per level, they just can't keep them in hand.*

The underlying problem here is that IME XP is not a resource that the heroes struggle with. Cash, time and treasures are.

But making Feat points cost either time or cash would heavily impact the balance of the game in other ways.

The problem is, introducing lots of Feats (effectively 4/level) at no cost is obviously going to imbalance the dungeons. There has to be compensation to the OL for Feats being introduced. A cost to the heroes out-dungeon will by very difficult to balance without upsetting other balances. A compensation to the OL out-dungeon is unlikely to have enough effect in-dungeon unless it is unreasonably large or the heroes can get very few feats. An in-dungeon cost to the heroes seems to remove some of the element of surprise. An in-dungeon compensation to the OL might work - perhaps an extra card draw, possibly and bonus threat, every time a feat is played???

*Unless... feats are party upgrades not hero upgrades? 1 Feat (draw/glyph) per party per upgrade (+ Arvel always gets her bonus Feat).

Yeah it definitely needs refining. Most of what Corbon said sounds good to me though.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot.

Upon activation of a glyph, the player who activated it gets to roll a black dice.

Power enhancement: no effect.

Surge: the player who activated the glyph gains 1 Feat card.

Blank: Overlord gains 2 Threat.

Feat cards to be discarded at the end of the dungeon (NOT dungeon LEVEL).

Although this drastically reduces the frequency of Feats, let me explain my reasoning.

1) This is based on the assumption that Road To Legend was perfectly balanced before Tomb Of Ice.

2) I REALLY want to use the Feat cards.

3) After much discussion & looking at the various points of view I think that trying to keep things very simple is the best way forward.

4) Copied the mechanic for Bone Heap and used the cost of the Dodge card as the potential overlord gain (though I’m wondering if this should be 3 or 4 Threat due to the odds of rolling a surge vs a blank).

5) I have no problem with only getting 1 Feat card per dungeon (roughly), knowing that in theory we could get 3 (assuming 1 glyph per level). A little boost which can make the difference to that one attack which you’ve planned to kill the dungeon’s master before getting out of there is fine.

Thoughts welcome.

Noodle2977 said:

Your assumptions seem to beg your results.

1) basically says the new mechanic must be reduced as much as possible as to change the game as little as possible.

2) Says you will not remove the feats but instead add them in as little as possible.

3) States that no other game mechanics will be looked at.

By looking at these 3 assumptions the results you give are quite predicable. I understand these assumptions are very straight forward but I feel we have a great opportunity at this point in the game development cycle. Games that have expansions have great difficulty introducing new mechanics because each time a new mechanic is added to the game it must be reduced in power in order to limit the effect on the game as a whole. This is seen in descent with great effect tokens and monster abilities that are rarely seen in the game. Even treachery was reduced in RtL.

I feel now is the time to let FFG know we as descent players are ready for a drastic change in game rules. I think we can now incorporate the feat mechanic in full force and instead of reducing it to fit the game raise the rest of the game up to meet this new mechanic.

I like the idea of adding new advantages to the OL far more than reducing the number of feats the heroes get.

granor said:

I'm down with that. Its like a Cold War arms race.

And why did the saying "Who's the idiot who brought a knife to a gun fight?" just come to mind?

Big Remy said:

So am I, in theory.

The difficulty is that we have something fairly closely balanced (IMO) at the moment and judging just what to balance with Feats is... tricky.

Adding Feats doesn't affect the out-dungeon game per se (other than the results of the dungeon of course which is a huge change). Most options adding to the OL will either be massive (and difficult to judge accurately) in-dungeon (equal to at least 4 feats per level) or out-dungeon. Making out-dungeon changes will have far-reaching secondary changes that are difficult to predict, thus the 'value' of those (primary) changes is difficult to predict.

Reducing Feats as well as compensating them lessens any errors of judgement in value, or unforseen consequences of, the 'compensation. Thus it is an attractive route to take...

Apologies for threadomancy. But this is something still not entirely resolved (threads disappear far faster than I for one get game time to explore options).

Unfortunately my planned experimental session got delayed, but I had revised some ides since this thread was active.

Currently my best ides, that I am still planning to test, is;

- Every time the heroes play a Feat card, the OL draws a card

- Either, no Feats in Encounters, or Each time a Feat is played in an Encounter the OL gains 5 Threat.

I like the draw a card idea, in theory, because it
- enables the full play of feats
- gives a(n unknown to heroes) variable reward to the OL to balance the boost to the heroes
- going through the deck faster may mean more chance of the three CT thus slightly compensating the OL for the times the heroes are 'saved' by a Feat card
- Feats give the Heroes more option, more cards give the OL more options

Has anyone else had any really satisfactory trialled systems?

I wrote a short article on a system my friends and I tested. At first it appeared to work well, but it showed some flaws.

I called it the overlord reverse offer system. There is a post on it called "Fair fun way to add feats to RtL"

I wanted the system to be fast and simple. In a nutshell, how it worked was that when the heroes played a card, the overlord issued a price for the card to be played. This "price" could be threat or conquest, to keep the overlord honest, the heroes had two choices after the overlord stated his price.

1)They could pay the overlord his demand and proceed to play the card. OR

2) They could reject the overlords price, the card gets discarded, but the overlord pays the price he demanded of the heroes.

This made for a system that took into account that feats are of different values in the game depending on when they are played.

It appeared to work through our silver campaign, but then we found a few flaws.

1) I was letting the heroes keep the feats from dungeon to dungeon, then there was a dungeon the heros hit me with feat after feat, They rejected almost all my offers, costing me tons of threat!

2) I started issueing conquest point demands instead, in order to keep my threat, this started to artifically inflate the amount of conquest given out in a dungeon and I could see it abused.

So currently I am at a loss as to how to handle it.

Descent is not the kind of game one can "balance" in the same way as Kingsburg, Purto Rico etc, so I accept that game will never be perfectly balanced. However, its clear that the feats do not work as written in RtL and I for one would like to see a balanced inclusion rule of some kind from FF as the RtL campaign is so long and involved, it can suck to mess arround with it for those of us with families and limited play time.

I would like to just leave them out of RtL and play them with stand-alone dungeons where the overlord has his full threachery and customized decks.

However one of the players had just bought ToI and the heroes insisted on fitting them in some how. One of them will play overlord next, so they are objective enough to see how unbalancing the feats are.

I like the ideal of the overlord drawing a card when a feat is played, thats fast and simple and seams fair, I am willing to try that out.

I would say no feats in encounters. In fact I would not let the heroes carry feats from dungeon to dungeon. Let them earn those first cards by hitting a glyth first!

Besides, the overlord dosn;t get to carrey his threat and hand from dungeon to dungeon.

The feat cards have no rules written in for RTL aside from the brief note from KW, and as they were introduced for stand-alone dungeons, I see no reason for the heroes to carrey them between dungeons, they should get discarded and reshuffled into the decks. just like overlord cards do.