I hope someone can answer this, I was just wondering why in the "core game" (not RtL or SoB) do you award Conquest tokens at the end of the quest, If you cant carry your heroes on to the next quest why bother? I like (and my players like) The idea of carrying their characters on to the next quest. Is this why at the end of quests is says "you are awarded 4 conquest tokens and you complete the quest" Thanks for imput

No one's sure. Several theories have been proposed; I think the most popular one is that it's so that the heroes still win if a hero and the boss die at the same time (e.g. in a Blast attack).

There are "basic campaign rules" on the cover of the quest guide for carrying heroes into the next quest, but they're not very good, and you still lose all your stuff. Carrying gold treasures into the next quest is just a non-starter if you want any semblance of balance.

There is an advanced campaign mode added in the Road to Legend or Sea of Blood expansions that allows heroes to develop gradually over the course of a long adventure; you could consider that.

Iv'e always thought it's kind of a "high score" thing

Arcade games that keep score, give you points for winning, which you don't use.

I'm guessing it helps with some sort of replay value. "That's 3 more conquest than last time, we are getting good! )

I would agree with Zombiemold, as it is suggested somewhere in the rulebook/questguide that you might try playing the same quest several times to try and end it with a higher number of conquest tokens.

That makes no sense whatsoever, since the Heros always get the same amount of conquest at the end of the quest... How would that effect the high score... when you replay the same quest..

They are for basic campaign play and competitive play as defined on the front page of the JITD quest book.

In terms of a "high" score, the ending points are there to set your score higher than it would be if you lost... They function to add fluff to your final score.

During the term of the game there are ways to gain and lose conquest (Obviously)

Glyphs, Deaths, and even a gold treasure.

Whatever points you have when you beat the dungeon, are added to the "fluff" points and added up. They do
seem" useless, but then most high score points are, only adding to replay value.

Nephrinn said:

Conquest tokens never carry over to the next quest, even in basic campaign play.

It is conceivable they are for competitive play, but the competitive play rules aren't even close to being fair or reasonable; it's obvious they were never given serious consideration. I've never heard of anyone actually using them.

Zombiemold said:

If you lose, your final conquest is always zero. If you win, your score is already guaranteed to be higher than every single score from every single game that was ever lost, even without the "fluff".

iownr2d2 said:

You can carry over your heroes in vanilla if you like (discarding all treasures, training tokens, and skills beyond their initial three) if you like. That's not officially how the rules work, but it saves you needing to draw new heroes and new skills, so if you prefer that, go nuts. Carrying over treasures and skills from the previous quest might sound like a good thematic idea (for "telling the story") but if the heroes start quest quest 2 with gold gear, they'll just clear the dungeon in a few short turns and discard all the useless copper and silver treasures they find along the way. The only marginally interesting part of the quest will be the boss fight, and that will really only be interesting for the new gold treasures they draw from the gold chests they find shortly before the boss. At that point, the game will be less of a challenge and more of an exercise in rolling dice. Maybe your wrists need the workout, but that sound boring as all get out to me.

Carrying over CT to the next dungeon is a disasterous idea. I know this from having tried it myself when we first bought the game. By the middle of quest 3 the heroes had so much CT that we had literally run out of tokens. They had it all. We debated tracking extra CT on paper but ultimately decided that they had such a huge advantage already they didn't really need more, and so any CT gains were lost until the heroe died a bit. Even so they were regularly replacing any CT they lost and staying capped at the 30-odd CT the game gives you. If you want to go that route you may as well ignore CT altogether and just play until the heroes win. If you're cool with the idea that the OL can't win (as he's supposed to be able) then that's fine.

svarun said:

They always get the same amount of CT from killing the boss, but their total CT will vary based on how much CT they gained or lost throughout the quest. Each time a hero dies that would negatively impact their "high score." Of course, each quest will have an upper limit on what the high score can be based on how many opportunities there are to gain CT and assuming the heroes never die.

There is a throw-away line in the base rulebook that suggests "keeping score" and as far as mechanical reasons for the CT awarded after killing a boss, that's about as official as you're going to get. I don't know of anyone who actually keeps score, except perhaps those who use the popular "negative CT" house rule.

Personally I prefer to think of it simply as a thematic award. Every time the heroes gain CT it's because they've accomplished something that brings them closer to completing their quest (getting new treasure, activating glyphs that help them secure a foothold in the dungeon, etc.) Killing the boss is certainly a step towards completing the quest. The defining step, one might say. And so you get CT, even though it immediately gets discarded because the game is over.