I'm going to start my 2nd SoB experience. All that the crew needs is a little compendium of the main "fixing rules" for SoB, in order to have a well balanced campaign! It's hard to find them among this forum, and to select ONLY those ones actually usefull...so, here is my desperated request!!!
Please help me and my upcoming sea journey in SoB!!!! The FAQs seem to be toooo far.....
Thanks in advance!
what we have so far is a list submitted to FFG with options for an FAQ. i am not sure if it included balancing for SoB though.
There have been a couple of individual users who sat down and made house rules to balance SoB. They posted the rules they intended to try and sometimes the reasons why they intended to try each of those house rules. I never saw any of them post back after having actually played with those rules to tell us if they worked or not.
The bottom line is, there is no single, definitive set of house rules that are known and proven to "fix" SoB. There are lots of ideas scattered all over the place, but no one has made an effort to consolidate them into one package, nor to categorize them as "necessary" or "not necessary." (That I know of.) There certainly isn't any official effort as yet from FFG, though hopefully the forthcoming answers given to the SoB questions in the FAQ project will help clear things up.
If you want such a compiled set of "fixes" for SoB, I'm afraid you'll have to make it yourself. Please consider sharing anything you come up with for the benefit of others in the same position.
My personal way to try to fixing SoB is here summarized:
1) No Divine Favore at all
2) Lts at OL's Keep when they flee an encounter (as in RtL)
3) Always 6 rounds (never less) of battle before a LT can flee an encounter
4) "Eight cities razed" condition for OL's victory (no longer used the "five cities razed" condition)
5) Kraken (and other sea monsters) can attack the Revenge
6) The Skull Entrance on island level automatically open after 4th round
Other ideas? Feedback is wellcome!!
Actually, this is pretty good!
My tweaks with your set-up would be--
a. Don't let sharks attack the revenge, or give them a major damage reduction, like -4. (in the latter case, you can rename them "Daggernosed sharks")
b. Lieutenants should flee back to their starting location, not the Overlord's Keep. This is closer to the RtL dynamic, and also circumvents land-locked keeps.
c. Change the Round-4 unlocking thing. Sometimes the islands just take a while to get on, or have bosses that are intentionally hard to kill, and as it's set up now, there could be a lot of abuse. I think it would be preferable to say– "The door unlocks at the end of the Overlord''s turn if there is no Island leader within (somewhere between 6 and 9) spaces of the entrance or any hero." I don't know all the islands by heart, but that should cover most problems.
d. If you're actually trying to fix lieutenant encounters, I don't think there's a need to tweak with the number of cities to raze. However, I would change the effects of completion for the lighthouse and leviathan plots from instant win to counting as 4 cities razed.
e. Big one–– The Revenge simply takes 10 wounds from hitting a rock (and the rock is removed), rather than dying immediately. This makes gameplay more interesting, anyway, especially if the Overlord now has more means of further damaging the ship.
f. I actually think that a general rule of allowing any melee monster to attack the Revenge might be fine, and fix a lot of problems. Just modify the damage by -6/-8/-10 by campaign level. Maybe someone who's played more can elucidate any problems this would create.
g. A tentacle that is moved further than 3 spaces from the Kraken (because it's on a moving boat) must immediately move itself back within normal range, along with any figure it is holding.
-pw
Ok, after the Phelanward inputs, I'm going to change my "fixing rules" for SoB.
Here is what I called "MyPersonalFixingSoB" (MPFS) v.1.1
1) No Divine Favore at all
2) LTs at their own starting location when they flee an encounter
3) Always 6 rounds (never less) of battle before a LT can flee an encounter
4) Kraken (and other sea monsters, with the exception of sharks) can attack the Revenge
5) Any melee monster attacking the Revenge can make damage by -6/-8/-10 by campaign level
6) The Revenge simply takes 10 wounds from hitting a rock (and the rock is removed), rather than dying immediately
7) A tentacle that is moved further than 3 spaces from the Kraken (because it's on a moving boat) must immediately move itself back within normal range, along with any figure it is holding.
8) The Skull Entrance on island level unlocks automatically at the end of the Overlord's turn if there is no Island leader or any hero within 7 spaces of the entrance
Any further suggestions?