dragon76 said:
Just a quick thought, if I remember correctly in Trial by Fire the runelocked doors OPEN when the master for that area is killed. Something that your heroes may overlook the first time through the dungeon that may be used to your advantage.
Additionally, under RAW I believe that named monsters can open runelocked doors as long as the areas are revealed. As all areas in an RTL Dungeon are considered revealed this can lead to some mischief as well. Having a Master Dragon and a Master Demon in the second area could prove to be a bit much for the heroes as well.
Heh, after the Heroes opened the first door and finished Firefang (Master Hellhound) before half their attacks were even spent, it's pretty much all I had to try, the slow movement of both, and a miss by Grimfire (Master Dragon), and no LoS from Firebane (Master Demon), and lack of space to move either made this level abit of a cakewalk for the Heroes. By round 4 all monsters were dead, I hadn't even played a spawn, and most treasure had been grabbed. To my advantage the Heroes stuck around for another three rounds healing two party members in town with a quick stop at the Alchemist and Market (three Beastmen at silver still did some damage). It should be noted, that this is the worst time to pull this level, right at the start of a dungeon with an "empty" hand of cards preventing you from really doing much to boost or help the dungeon to be a little tougher. And ending this dungeon with Collapsed Columns as the final level, was pretty much a slap in the face to how easy this one turned out for the Heroes.
Fully healed they entered #14 The Fountain of Life, after they realized that the only way to kill the named was to get a knockback weapon, they grabbed the one from store and set a plan to stay a "safe" distance from the named, figuring I wouldn't remove him from the fountain area to protect his "bonus" for that level. Of course, knowing I couldn't stop the knockback I used another critter to lure the Guard off of the one Hero who was vulnerable, and then pulled the named off the fountain area and killed her in two blows with Rage, something the Heroes didn't think I would do (I take what strategic advantage I can, including their assumptions). With eneogh threat tokens by this point (lack of spawning or getting to play much on the first level) I was able to spawn a Kobold Swarm, spend 12 threat to flip my tile, spawn a Beastman Patrol next turn, flip my tile with another 12, and dumped a Ferrox Tribe on them. I didn't manage to kill anyone else that level but all the heroes were wounded by that point.
The last level, #1 Collapsed Columns was breezed thru, but then at the end the Heroes decided to "heal" a wounded 3 CT character (down to 2 wounds and managed to escape to town), and stay in the dungeon till then, by then I had so many Threat Tokens I was able to spawn and kill Thorn for an additional 2 CT before they could leave the dungeon. The two Ferrox I spawned didn't kill him, but the bleed token got his last wounds at the start of his turn.
At least I walked away with six CT this dungeon, although that was due to a Hero miscalculation rather than getting in the "kill".