I've played 4 games of Descent and have found that the balance of the game seems to be tipped way to far in the heroes favour. Ive tried lots of tactics including gust of wind followed by razor wings or shooty creatures but damage is minimal. Tried dropping traps on wounded characters but they never do quite enough damage then they heal up to full strength. Tried setting up kill zones but my minions get killed too easy and inflict never enogh damage. Rooms with larger beasties get annhialated by word of vaal and flame strike before getting a single attack. The overlord seems too weak and the heroes seem too overpowered. Continous spawning (when i have the chance los) only slows the heroes down as long as it takes to kill them with a single hit. Somebody please help me my friends are no dummies and playing the overlord is starting to feel like a community service. Can characters pool money to buy gold treasures and make playing the game kinda piontless for me? Last game I played I only managed to kill one player once. By the end of the game I have way too many threat tokens but never seem to have the opprtunity to spend them.

Firstly, it is important to note that the first two maps in the base game are easy, the first one ridiculously so. They are normally treated as "training missions" as a result. I find the first map in Tomb of Ice is a training mission as well, though I don't remember the first one in Well of Darkness or Altar of Despair being that way.

No, heroes may never pass gold between each other.

It also sounds like you are ignoring the rule that prevents the heroes from purchasing a treasure chest of a type that they haven't opened already. Since Gold hcests pretty much only exist in the final boss room (and only about half the time even then) they shouldn't be able to buy a gold chest until they are already facing the boss, at which point spending the time to go back to town is a waste. Gold chest weapons are stupidly overpowered, and even Silver Chest weapons border on excessive force.

Are you letting the other players choose their own heroes and/or starting skills? Skills should be drawn randomly, and starting heroes should not be a simple choice (though doing completely random allows for one player to get a useless character). Most players here I think use the rule from Road to Legend, where each player (or hero slot, if a player is running multiple heroes) draws 3 heroes and chooses one from among them.

Be sure to attack soft targets (mages and archers) most of the time, and focus on a single target. In most cases, traps are the only way of doing reasonable damage to melee characters unless you have something like an ogre or giant handy. But mostly, your monsters aren't there to kill them instnatly; that's the heroes job. You need to slow them down so you can get out your big Power cards.

Sorry, Rajamic already addressed this ruling issue

Rajamic's points are good.

Also be sure that you're limiting the heroes to drinking 1 potion per turn, and to using the glyphs to teleport only once per turn (so a hero can go to town, or come back, but can't do both in a single turn, and can't teleport directly between two glyphs in the dungeon).

It'll take you some time to learn which of the overlord cards are good and which are generally a waste of threat. Razorwings are not generally worth spawning; their damage output is extremely low. Gust of Wind is only useful in rather extreme situations. Traps are mostly useful for finishing off a wounded hero or messing up their turn when they have exactly enough movement points, which makes the area-affecting traps (which just deal damage) fairly hard to justify even in the rare situation when they can hit several heroes.

Also, if your players are just too good try to up the difficulty using that chart on the start of your quest book. For instance, each hero will get 100 extra gold but you'll gain an additional card a turn and one additional threat token per player.

Im allowing players to choose their heroes but skill cards are random. I have been singling out the weaker heroes but even they seem to just scrape through long enough to catch a breather and then heal before i can play a trap. with the power cards I usually play the evil genius (3 cards) and trapmaster but after that it is too late in the game for horde of things and brilliant commander to make much of an impact. Its good to know that players cant pool money but cant they just buy equipment and give to any hero anyway? It is also good to know that Buying treasures is capped to what chests have been opened (phew!) Thanx guys your feedback has been great. Any Additional advice will be appreciated too.

Weaver2 said:

That's not a difficulty chart, it's a chart for "character advancement" that's supposed to make you feel like the heroes are getting better while still, theoretically, maintaining balance (most people don't use it). And the overlord benefits are starting benefits, not per turn . I don't understand why so many people seem to make that mistake, but those benefits are absurdly overpowering if you give them out every turn.

The best advice I can give is to read the FAQ. Read it several times. Read it again just before you play.

This is especially true if you have an older copy of the game, as some monsters got beefed up and some skills got nerfed.

Also:

- Make hero draws completely random. Draw 3 & pick 1 is good for a campaign, since the players will be stuck with those heroes for a long time. But doing it in a standard game means much stronger parties on average. The balance level of the base game assumes that the party will have some dead weight and/or some bad synergies. Unless the OL is much better tactically than the combined skills of the hero players, giving them that greatly enhanced flexibility spells doom.

- Ignore space traps that deal damage and don't slow the hero down (i.e. almost anything but pits and crushing blocks).

- For door and chest traps, ignore anything that isn't going to net you a kill (i.e. usually anything but Curse of the Monkey God). They're too expensive for their effect, even if you can hit two heroes at once.

- Don't spawn unless the monsters can attack. Monsters die too fast to waste the threat summoning them unless they're going to get some damage in.

- Don't house rule anything, no matter how logical it may sound. Descent is pretty well balanced, but its not a reality engine, its a board game. Lots of people come on complaining about balance and it turns out they're using house rules because aspect X or Y of the game doesn't make logical sense.

- Don't use the hero generator. It makes some crazy heroes.

- Don't start an advanced campaign (Road to Legend or Sea of Blood) until you've got a good win ratio as OL. They're labelled "advanced" because they're not meant for beginning groups.

Question on this part ...when the players use the glyphs to go to town ...they can return to the same glyph correct or do they have to return to the starting glyph?

pyrefly1986 said:

afaik they can use any activated glyph to appear on

pyrefly1986 said:

They can return to any active glyph in the dungeon, even ones which were activated by other heroes after they went to town in the first place. Since there's no way I know of to de-activate a glyph (short of special quest rules), the one they used to go to town will definitely still be valid. =)

Hi - one point you made which I did not see addressed is regarding having unused threat at the end of the game.

It sounds like you may be too eager to convert your cards to threat, thus having too much threat and no cards.

You should hold onto your cards unless you either:

1) Have to convert some to threat because you have too many OR

2) Need threat to actually play another card

Why? Because cards represent options you have. Just like in Chess - maximizing your options (possible moves) helps win. So don't be trading in those Dodge or Aim or Trap cards because you don't think they will help currently or just because you want to play something. Keep them. More importantly use cards to best effect, for instance you may get Rage early on which gives a monster two attacks. It's so tempting to use it in the first encounter, but what if you saved it in your hand until they reach the boss - much more effective. Of course, always play cards when there is a likely opportunity to gain conquest (kill a character).

Basically what this boils down to is play the OL with a bit more patience and control of your resources. This can help you get out a key power or two early and then play some dangerous spawns and combat tricks later when it really counts. You want your players saying, "****, where is all this coming from all of a sudden?"

I challenge you to win a game with 0 cards and 0 threat as the players lose their last conquest point...

Decapitus said:

I agree. In addition to keeping your options open, having a few cards in hand will help you bluff out the heroes, or at least keep them worried that you might have one more pit in reserve. You can discard cards for threat at any time , during your turn or the heroes', so there's no reason to take them out of your hand unless you have to.