So me and three friends have played quest 1 of regular Descent three times now, and they have never really won (I'm the OL). The third time, they made it to second-last area before the boss and I basically threw the fight by telling them I wouldn't play any more OL cards so they could just run in and finish the quest; even then they barely defeated him because I purposefully did not finish off one of their characters. I played with another group of three friends and they got beat twice before they beat the first quest (although I didn't have to throw the game that time). Are they just that bad, or is it just really hard with only three heroes?

McRae said:

I've beaten the first quest with 2 Heroes several times, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

Agreed... 2 heroes is possible and I have to think that three heroes is not any harder. Did the group get terrible luck with treaure? You can have situations where you get no silver or gold weapon treasures that randomly makes the last fight super difficult / impossible.

There are some boards (the 1st real room of the 3rd map) that are frickin difficult for 2-3 heroes because of a high concentration of elites (that room has a master bane spider and two master skeletons and its easy to spawn a master beastman if you get the card).

I recently had my first game of Decent (Into the Dark Quest) and had the opposite problem.

The three Heroes won without breaking a sweat. In my (inexperienced) eyes, it was because of very strong skills.

The three Heroes were (don't remember any names):

1. The one that starts with Pico

2. The Minotaur

3. The Priest that gets Pierce 2 on Magic attacks

One of my problems was the Knight skill that the first hero had; on a ranged attacker, doing three attacks per round is very powerful, especially as he often didn't need all three movement points so he could use one for a Vitality Potion every two rounds, making the cost of Knight negligible.

Even worse was the Priest: she had Blessing, adding to damage and range of everyone (three spaces are a lot, the heroes almost never had to move further apart), Vampiric Blood gave her back her Fatigue and even if I killed her, the Divine Retribution skill would take most of my monsters with her. One of the first Treasures she got was a Rune that gave her Blast, which meant she could single-handedly take out four or five monsters in close quarters. She was also able to use all her Fatigue to maneuver into position or to increase her number of diceduring those rounds, because she would gain them back anyway due to the Vampiric Blood.

The Minotaur had the skill that let him do two attacks with an Advance Action and had four additional Wounds ( for a maximum of 20), which made him very difficult to kill.

I did kill one of them sometimes, but not nearly often enough to be able to win the game. Often, my monsters would not even have a chance to act before they were killed, e. g. the Ogre in Area 2 and both Manticores in Area 4. The players finished with 11 Conquest Tokens.

So, was this just luck of the draw for the players or is this normal?

Also, I have a few questions:

1. Heroes do not have to stop moving to pick up treasures, do they? So they can just move to a Potion or pile of coins, grab it and move on, correct?

2. When exactly do I play the card that allows a monster to dodge? The problem was, the player targeted an empty space in hopes for enough surges to gain Blast 1 for the attack. I'd have liked to dodge with my Hellhound, but obviously it was not the target at the time the player rolled and after the hero used the surges, I assumed it was to late to let him reroll. But if an attack directly targets my monster can I wait for results on the roll before playing that card or do I have to play it before the roll?

3. If I play a trap on a chest that kills the hero opening the chest, or turns him into a monkey, are the contents still distributed or do the players have to try to open the chest again?

4. Clarification on the Minotaur's ability: He can't attack if he returns from town on the turn, right? What if he has to jump across a pit? Or if he has to move one space because of the effect of a trap (the one that creates rubble)?

5. If an Undying monster gets leftover damage applied to it, do you count armor again or is the damage immediately applied to wounds?

Morgaln said:

1) As long as they have the movement points, they can spend the 2MP to open it and then keep going.

2) You can play Dodge on a Blast attack. No attack actually targets a monster, they all target spaces. You would play Dodge after the attack was rolled.

3) Still gets distributed.

4) Steelhorns? He must Run in a straight line. I think he can do it when returning from town. As for jumping a pit, I don't think he can and dropping a trap like Crushing Block will screw up his ability to prevent him from doing it.

5) I'm pretty sure it just gets applied without armor taken into account.

Unless you're using treachery cards or something, I would say the first quest should be distinctly easy for 3 heroes. Some possible tactical and rules mistakes you might want to check for:

- When a chest gives something like "1 copper treasure," that means that each hero gets a copper treasure, not just the hero that opened the chest. Similarly, "100 coins" means that each hero receives 100 coins.

- The Overlord cannot play more than one spawn card per turn, and can only spawn in revealed areas (and not in heroes' line-of-sight).

- Heroes should open new rooms at the beginning of the round and kill half (or more) of the monsters before they get a turn, taking battle actions and spending fatigue to move if necessary. Revealing a new area at the end of the round is almost never a good idea. Remember that monsters cannot open doors leading to unrevealed areas, so the heroes are in control of when the next area opens.

- Heroes should make sure to start with weapons that can actually kill things; for example, buying the Bow from the shop is almost always a really bad idea, especially without the errata'd version from Well of Darkness.

Regarding Morgain's questions:

1. Picking up coins or a potion costs zero; opening a chest costs 2 movement points.

2. The Dodge card is played after the attack is rolled, and can be played on behalf of any monster affected by the attack, even if they weren't in the targeted space. Additionally, if any figure dodges an attack, the reroll affects the entire attack, including all other affected figures, so if someone makes a Blast attack, you can effectively have all your monsters dodge it. Blast attacks are great to dodge, because they are often ineffective if they come up low on any one of damage, range, or surges, and because they are so powerful in the first place.

3. The contents of the chest are distributed unless the card says otherwise (as in the case of Mimic).

4. I usually let him perform movement actions (return from town, open doors, pick up treasure, etc.) and still use his ability as long as all of his actual movement is in a straight line; this seems to be consistent with a strict reading of his hero card, and he's often hard-pressed to find an opportunity to actually use it.

5. It is my understanding that armor is only deducted once.

I only used treachery cards on the last game, the one I just gave up on and let them win. Even then, the only Altar cards I played were Gluttony and the Dark Priests, and even then I don't even think the priests actually hit anybody.

Which actually brings me to a question: Can Dark Priests attack monsters, and how far away can a target of a range/magic attack be? My friends all ran into town and were wondering if I could just blast my own beastmen with my priests to keep gaining threat while they rested up. I decided against it. Also, I decided that I (nor any heroes) could attempt a ranged/magic attack unless it was actually capable of connecting. So for example, the master Dark Priest has 1 white and 5 black dice, making (with his Dark Prayer ability) his maximum range 8. Therefore, I did not attempt an attack unless he was within that range. Is this an actual rule or can you target anybody in line of sight?

I believe the current ruling is that you can target anyone in line of sight, but unless the attack actually connects with a figure, the entire attack is negated, so you can't do things like using the Staff of Knowledge to discard threat unless you actually hit. Also, monsters are required to hit a hero in order for the Overlord to get threat.

But you can target a space outside your normal maximum range and then spend fatigue to try to hit it, or target an empty space with a blast rune and spend surges so that it hits figures outside the targeted space.

Morgaln said:

I didn't even notice this before! OOPS!!! We've been playing undying as if the critter gets full health and the attack is over. We've also been playing that effect tokens (burn/web/etc) went away as well... I'm guessing that we pulled that rule right out of our... ummm...

Reading the rule, I would have to say that armour is not subtracted a second time, as it's still the same attack, and all undying seems to do (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong here) is restore his health mid-attack. I think the way the rules are written it's like they heal X wounds (where X is their max health) mid-attack.

Osaka said:

We have been playing that way as well. Pardon my ignorance but where in the rules does it give you the information about leftover damage.

Undying works differently depending on if you play vanilla Descent or RtL.

Vanilla Descent = damage rolls over

RtL = full health

The rule for Undying and rollover health is on P23 of the original rules.

And I'm relieved to know that I've been using the rule correctly in RtL... (P30 of the RtL book BTW)

This just means I've been cheating/cheated in classic Descent!

Actually, one of the ways I balance the first scenario's in base descent is playing them with 3 instead of 4 characters (with full monster health).

The first thing I think of is that the heroes should really try to use more fatigue. A battle where you spent 4 fatigue to kill 2 monsters is always better than an advance with 1 kill. You can either buy a potion for a mere 50 gold or just rest 1 turn (otherwise it would have cost 2 turns to kill the monsters as well).

Finally did I notice that you use expansions If you use all 3 expansions (not RTL) the percentage of spawn cards will have increased drastically. You could try to spawn at most every other turn to give the heroes some leeway. (This might also be an idea if you don't have all the expansions. Just use it until the heroes have a better grasp of the game).

And about the same expansions: The spawn card for a normal and a master Dark Priest is way to good (because of dark curse, the damage output and the threat regain). I personally let it spawn two normal Dark Priests, since the card will about the same power as the sorcerer spawn in that case.