I didn't play SoB for a while and I've lost a bit of confidence with its rules and clarifications
I tried to take a look in the FAQ but I still haven't found the right place where the rules to fix SoB actually are.
What about the LTs involvement and their fleeing? And how to solve the other broken issues?
I really need to have short compendium of the "fixed rules" of SoB. The ultimate one, I hope....
Would you give me the right link, please?
Thanks in advance!
Outside of the FAQ there are no official fixes, and no perfect list of fixes as far as I know. Things I've seen people mention:
James McMurray said:
Thank you for this reply!
These seem drastic changes to the official rules: to use RtL encounters instead of SoB ones hurts deeply the concept of SoB itself, IMHO.
I think that a good choice could be to bring the LTs to their starting locations, after they flee an encounter.
Ignore Divine Favor? Maybe...
Another open issue is the "five cities razed condition" to win the game for OL: someone out there states that could be better cancel this rule at all. But my thought is: why simply don't increase the number of cities to raze for the victory of OL (i.e. Razing ALL the cities = victory for OL)?
Finally, I think that SoB remains the hardest challenge for the heroes in Descent: you have to play it knowing this and only after a long time spent to learn very well all the tactics and the possible strategies. The players have to arrive to SoB after at least 4-5 AC in RtL, and go to RtL only after many many vanilla dungeon sessions. They really have to know EVERYTHING 'bout the enemies, the use of weapons, the role of runes, how the feats work and so on. They must be really a party, with a common strategy and well balanced. And even with all these features, probably they'll lose in SoB against a cruel OL...! But they have to know this possible outcome and accept the challenge: if they'll survive the Kraken & Co., if they'll resist to all the horrors of the ocean....well, they'll probably enter the legend!
Descent is the ultimate TACTICAL dungeon-themed fantasy boardgame: the real challenge for the heroes is to find the right way to the final victory....knowing that's like to climb the Everest Mt. (in SoB)! A good enough party has about 20-30% of chances to win a SoB campaign, playing at its best: they should know this aspect before to start the game.
Just for this reason, I've got another idea: why don't use a system of "Party Victory Points" (well different than Conquest Points)? I mean: when the party kills a normal monster gains 2 "victory points" (4 for a master monster, 8 for a named monster, 10 for a LT, and so on...). The victory points don't count for the campaign itself (you still have to use the CP, as normal), but they could be used to make a sort of "ranking" of the parties in several SoB campaigns: so, we'll have the "best party" (that one with more Victory Points at the end of the campaign), even if that party haven't actually win the SoB Camapign. This mechanism could add more motivations during the campaign (expecially a SoB campaign), even if the heroes know well that they could lose against the OL.
Naturally, the main goal of a Descent Campaign is always to win the campaign, but to have another goal could be a valid alternative when things go bad. So, after 4-5 SoB campaigns there will be the party who reached "500 victory points" (i.e.), and the objective could become to go over that record!
Summarizing, here my final considerations:
I don't know if these ideas could be usefull. Of course I'll looking forwards for your replies/suggestions!