First off i'd like to excuse myself for my horrible grammar. English is not my primairy language, so be warned

Anyhow, were currently playing Descent RLT: Advanced. I'm the overlord, this is our second game... In the first game

the other team got fed and killed my OL fairly fast. Due to my inexperience i got trampled... Fairly easily (well... i was

quite mercifull on mutiple occasions since they kept saying playing OL is overpowered - So it's really my fault). I played

Sorcerer King.

Now were in the second campaign. Im the OL again. They picked new Characters - But they drew no mage.

They all moaned it wouldnt be a fun game without, and i said - ohh well. F*ckit. draw a mage. They drew Mad carthus. (he seems strong imo).

So now im against:

(expansions used: WoD, ToI, RTL)

Nanok of the blade - Mighty

Mad Carthus - Wild Talent

Laurel of the Bloodwood - Leadership

Lord Hawthorne - Necromany

A pretty strong team. This game they have more survivability and more dmg than last campaign. They also asked

me to play another "race" to gold first. Instead of eldrich (which im quite fond of since, i now know how to use

them properly).

So yeah... Im asking for advice, how to go against them, as they have decent damage/def. I have not yet picked

a OL. So im open for advice on that aswell. Hopefully someone can help me.

AdamWest said:

I would say "if you want a mage that badly you can throw away all of these characters and start over." Especially after seeing what the other three draw apparently were. Jesus.

AdamWest said:

I'm not sure how Nanok performs in general (I don't think he's ever actually been drawn at our table), but he sure seems powerful to look at him. Looking at this party, they only drawback is they have two tanks instead of 3 range/magic attackers, and I'm not sure who the runner would be (not sure how Laurel stacks up in that capacity.)

The good news is they might have a harder than average time using the "blitz" technique wihtout a good runner.

AdamWest said:

I wouldn't make any such concessions, even against an average party. Certainly not against this one.

AdamWest said:

Stop letting your hero players dictate your strategy and bend the rules in thier own favour. If they cry about you being overpowered, laugh in their faces and proceed to nail them against the wall. This party has no reason to complain.

So you lost, they won and they are asking you to take it easy it on them by not using the monsters your most comfortable with?

Besides the fact that Nanok, Laurel and Hawthorne are all excellent characters who did they exchange for Carthus, I bet it was weaker than the other 3? I agree that if they wanted a re draw it should have been for everyone not just discard the character they like the least to get a mage.

There are two ways that an OL can play this game:

1) "Like a DM." Basically just put on a good show and make things exciting for the hero players, but don't actually try to win yourself. As long as you don't mind losing, this can be a perfectly valid way to kill a few hours. People who play this way usually also end up making all sorts of house rules to patch the illogical things that crop up in Descent's rules. Since the OL isn't really trying to win, game balance isn't as much of a factor.

2) "Like an Arsehole." Don't pull any punches, make the heroes fight for every inch of ground they earn. The OL has a reasonably good chance at winning (especially if he's not shy about going for early victories like the Tamalir Rush.) Hero players who think this is an RPG and expect they should come out victorious unless they made a horrible and obvious mistake will probably think the OL is "overpowered." Especially if you're playing a Campaign without having tested the waters with a few vanilla dungeons to learn the rules. The best way to counteract this attitude is to rotate who plays OL for a few games (ideally vanilla games so the action is contained to one session and people can more easily analyze what happened.) If you want to play this way you need to stick to your guns no matter how much they cry about things being unfair. If they want to win they have to EARN it by learning good tactics and using them. It would also behove you to avoid making house rules. Not only is the game balance a house of cards as it is, but this play style can make the game highly competetive in some groups, so having a singular (if ridiculous) set of rules to reference can be important in settling disputes.