Hi All,

I played my first game of Descent last night with just a one off. I had a great time! Our two heroes were able to kill the giant in one round of combat! We got lucky with magic items we found and cards we drew.

Anyways, we are going to start a campaign. Our Overlord is going to let us pick our characters. We only have the main expansion at the moment. So, I know we are limited to which we can pick. I've seen all sorts of strategies as to what types of heroes to pick and all that. What I don't find is an evaluation of each of the characters. The problem I see is that some characters are just maxed out on specific things (combat, magic, shooting, etc). Most people tend to go toward them. I'm thinking that some of the characters that have a bit of a mixed skill set might be worth more in a campaign. Is that a good idea, though?

I was looking at Spiritspeaker Mok, for example. He's got more life than Mad Carthos (who I played last night) and he has some melee skills. Oh, not much, but some. I found I was swamped and killed pretty easy as Carthos. I might be more interested in this other guy. His special ability is kind of cool, too. Is it really worth it, though, to have a mixed character like that? Wouldn't it just be better to max out on caster and take someone like Landrec the Wise who has the same life and 2 free surges per turn? Why bother with a combat skill when you can just blast things really well with magic? The cool magic items always take 2 hands, anyways.

So, what's the point of a mixed character?

I'm sure that this is typed up already and probably a whole tactica on each of the heroes. I just don't know where it is. I'm sure each one is good at SOMETHING.

If you follow the RAW you pick a character at random, so you get stuck with what you draw...

Our Overlord is going to let us pick as he doesn't want us to get someone we hate if we are going to spend a few months playing this game.

The point of having multiple characters is so that you're likely to be able to use any treasure you draw. Also, the melee types tend to be the best tanks because of heavy armor and health, mages tend to kill stuff the fastest, and ranged characters are usually the best runners because their speed and fatigue are higher.

Unless the character's ability ios really nice, the extra die means a lot. It's 5/6 more damage through most of copper and goes up from there. It's very rare to have a hero carrying around multiple weapon types and actually being great with them both, so that extra die saves you a good chunk of money and XP as well.

A rough estimate IMO:

Mages : Landrec the Wise and Battlemage Jaes are the front-runners for the two mage slots. Jaes is one of those characters who doesn't get 3 dice, but his defenses make up for it. He's also got a slight chance at getting a lucky draw and pulling one of the melee skills that gives extra attacks.

Melee: I've never seen Sir Valadir in a campaign, but his ability looks like it would be amazing. His base 3 fatigue is enough to add 6 upgrades to an attack, and you can go higher than that with secret master training. Give him a strong weapon and he'll be cranking out the damage. Once someone has Leadership he can do it every turn by being given a rest order right before his turn starts.

Runner : Runewitch Astarra is a good runner, but she's also a mage so you'll be fighting over who gets the staves and runes and going to town to sell all the bows. I've seen Silhouette in a campaign and she was nice. Her ability is basically a Dodge + rest, meaning she can move 8 and still dodge every turn. Or pop up a guard if the OL over-extends.

I'm somewhat unclear on whether you mean an advanced campaign, using either the Road to Legend or Sea of Blood expansion, or the "basic campaign" rules printed on the cover of the quest guide. People usually mean the former, but you said you had "only the main expansion".

If you meant the basic campaign rules, most people don't recommend using them. They can skew the game's strategy significantly and aren't very well-developed; players seeking a feeling of continuity between quests generally aren't satisfied with them. But strategy-wise, hero selection shouldn't be much different from a normal game, just...more important.

If you meant an advanced campaign using RtL or SoB, people generally recommend playing more than just 1 regular quest before starting it. I understand you need to use fairly sophisticated tactics in order to do well, and early mistakes can lead to a long but slanted game where it feels like one side always has the upper hand. As for hero selection...

heychadwick said:

I would expect the opposite: in an advanced campaign, you're going to buy lots of upgrades for the trait that you use, which means your other traits are going to fall further and further behind, so there will be fewer and fewer situations where it would be worth it to use the dice in your second trait. Also, you get to cherry-pick the equipment you want as it shows up in markets instead of relying entirely on random draws, so it should be easier to get a weapon of the type you want.

Whether in a campaign or not, people generally agree that having all your dice in one trait is better than having them spread out. It's not so much better that you wouldn't consider a hero with split dice if they had some other advantage, but it's fairly significant. And the designers didn't seem to know how significant until after the base game was published, so heroes with split dice from the base game seem especially likely to be subpar.

Popular heroes from the base game include Runewitch Astarra, Silhouette, Landrec the Wise, Varikas the Dead, Ronan of the Wild, Grey Ker, and Battlemage Jaes. Varikas and Jaes have split dice, but very useful abilities. Ronan has split dice, but with Pico he still effectively has 3 in his main trait.

Hm...I've just realized that most of the top melee picks are from expansions...Steelhorns or Modrog might be your next-best options for melee heroes. Sir Valadir is notoriously bad in normal Descent, but he may be a lot better in an advanced campaign.

heychadwick said:

Letting the heroes pick their character explicitly is a great way to make sure the OL loses (which may or may not fine with him.) In your case it might not be so bad since it sounds like you're all new to the game and don't necessarily know which heroes are best to pick anyway, but an experienced group of players could pick an ideal hero party and totally walk through the game, largely uncontested.

Of course, if you also only have the base game I suppose that limits the number of really good heroes to pick from. A lot of the more annoying ones come from expansions.

The thing to understand is that there are really, REALLY good heroes, then there are average heroes, and there are some really crappy heroes. The balance of the game depends on the random draw factor to ensure the OL isn't always facing a party of 4 Grade A heroes. Sometimes it will happen, and the OL will likely lose those games, other time the heroes will suckand the OL will win. The OL is allowed to win by design. Perhaps your group doesn't care about the OL winning and just wants to play a fantasy adventure where the heroes always win. In that case, the method you're planning to use works fine. As long as that's what everyone at the table wants, it's your fun to have.

For what it's worth, having each player draw 3 heroes at random and choose one to play has always produced acceptable results for us. No one got stuck with a really crappy hero unless they decided to pick that one (for kicks.) There's usually at least one really good hero in the mix and the party performs pretty well overall, but the OL still has enough punch to keep things suspenseful.

i got the impression from the OP that he is actually talking about the base game 'campaign'. If that is true, the best advice I can think of is simply not to keep the same heroes. Play with a new and different party in every quest, even if you use the campaign rules (which are weak and not worth it at best).
That gives you a wider and richer experience, as well as the opportunity to play with different styles of characters. As a side benefit, t will also 'balance' things preventing a too-strong party if the heroes pick well and a too-weak party if the heroes pick poorly due to inexperience.

I would have to agree that the basic campain rules are garbage. I don't have the adv campain rules, but the base rules are jsut not well thought out and it shows.

However, personally, I have been letting my players choose their heroes since we started playing, and I have no problem defeating them 80% of the time. I do have to step up my strategies, and it's more of a challenge, but in all reality, it's not that big of a deal. I bet at best, they aren't walking through the dungeon, but rather gain the advantage of developing a strategy they can carry with them from game to game.

The way I've always seen it when it comes to games, is that no one should have to be stuck with a character they don't like. I might try the "draw 3 then pick one" thing, to see how my players like it, but I get the feeling that after playing the way we have for so long, they will get their a's handed to them the first time, lest one of them get the hero they want.

A question for you all...

Do you allow the self generated characters in your game? I DL'd the rules for this off hte website, and I don't like them. I let my players make their own once, and disallowed them after.

mysterymantis said:

FFGs rules for self generated characters are about the worst thing they have made - and given the mess they made of the normal rules, and the botch/patch job of the vanilla 'campaign' rules (not to mention the mess they made of SoB), that is saying an awful lot, none of it good.

Those rules are contradictory and totally unbalanced. You are correct in your assessment not to let your players use them.

If you do a search on BGG you should be able to find Antistone's HeroGen (2.3?+) spreadsheet. It does an infinitely better job of balancing things, with far more options available too. As long as you stick to 360pts you will get decent heroes but nothing over powered. Less experienced players will tend to try and overpower their heroes by increasing the CT value (more fool them), so sometimes you will get heroes that look slightly more overpowered than they are.
It is still advisable to be cautious when using even Antistone's Herogen programme if building heroes for Advanced Campaigns, as the slightly different rules there mean that his base 'prices' are not necessarily accurate for ACs.