Hello. We have Descent just a couple of days. I play it with my girlfriend (she's OL) but I am not able to win with only 2 random heroes, even in the first quest of the guide (I'm pretty sure it's not because I'm such a bad player). I know there is big curve of experience, but I have read some thoughts about unbalancing of original 2-player game variant, so would you recommend me to play with 3 heroes, or just 2 and try to be better?

Generally: Is it possible to win with only 2 heroes, following original rules, each of the original quests?

Thank you for your experiences!!

I would reccomend controlling extra heros up to the maximum whenever you dont have enough players. Its incredibly difficult to clear the dungeons with only 2 heros.

The scaling rules don't work. A party of 2 heroes is almost unplayable, and there's a significant difference in difficulty between 3 and 4.

Some people recommend 3 heroes for the base game and 4 for expansion quests, others just recommend always playing with 4.

If you feel that's unacceptable, you could try my homebrew variant, The Enduring Evil , which is designed to fix the scaling issues (among other things). But it requires printing your own cards, and it's not compatible with standard quests.

In our group we always play with 4 random heroes or with 3 heroes chosen by the players. Most of the times this does offer a good playing experience (as long as they don't draw 4 awfully bad heroes that is)

Polylux1 said:

At this point I think you probably already have your answer, but I'll just come out and say it anyway: No, it isn't possible to play all the quests with just two heroes. At least, not assuming the OL is prepared to actually try and win.

It should be possible to beat the first quest with just 2. Maybe even the second quest. But both of those accomplishments would be considered very impressive, even to us experienced players. I haven't tried it myself.

Thank you all very much. The main thing I found is that it is impossible to win each quest with only two heroes. But I'm not pleased about imagination of playing with more than two heroes by myself, so I decided to find a way how to reduce abilities of OL. The best idea I found on BGG (and as I read it's recommended by Kevin Wilson) is using the Spawn Marker from Road to Legend expansion (which reduce spawning only to one spawn card per area or by paying 15 threats). It should pull Overlord back enough, I've read...

Polylux1 said:

That should certainly help. Whether or not it will be enough, I can't rightly say. Let us know it works out; I for one would be interested to hear how it goes.

I've tested it now on the quest 2, following some strategy tips from BGG too, and I had no bigger problems to win the first game ... It looks pretty good but I have to test some other - more complicated and less "special" quests to know more.

I always play with the Spawn Marker to limit the OL to one spawn per area - period. Not only does this balance the game more, it also shortens the game significantly. Plus it requires the OL to use a bit more strategy with spawning in general.

To really balance things for less than 4 heroes, you would need a 3 hero and 2 hero version of each scenario which lowers the amount of opposition the base adventure provides. The tutorial focused scenarios are probably just fine for 3, but to make a full 4 player scenario work for 2 you would probably need to reduce the opposition by about 1/3 (remove 1 in three monsters from the starting map, shave a third off of special boss bonuses). I have been playing with two heroes (my 8 eight yr old son is the OL) and may try this. So far we played a scenario I created, designed as a fairly easy learning romp and it seemed well balanced for two heroes (basically came down to whether the OL would make an Undying roll - which he did and ultimately won).