Hello,

We love Descent and have been trying to start a RTL campaign for a while now. Only problem is that we only have 4 total people and the RTL needs an Overlord and 4 players. We tried starting a campaign anyway, but it seemed like with only 3 players that we were getting crushed right from the very start. I have heard a lot of people say that RTL is tough to beat anyway, but it seemed more than that.

I was just curious if anyone else had any good suggestions to balance the RTL campaign for only 3 players (+ overlord).

Thx.

The easiest way is to have one person play two charecters.

In fact I'm only going to have 2 other people this weekend (3 of us total) with me as the overload, so each of them will be playing 2 charecters each.

Our RtL group is made up of 5 but we can’t always all make a session. When this happens, someone controls 2 heroes. Assuming that you’re not brand new to Descent, this is very simple. If your group is new to Descent, the rest of the heroes between them should be able to decide what the best course of action for the additional character is.

Noodle2977 said:

Someone running two characters is pretty much the one possible solution we had thought of. Though for you guys that have tried it that way, does this bog the game down any for the players only running one character?

I do like the idea of a "group NPC" kind of like you were saying, Noodle2977. We're not really new to Descent, but the idea of the group as a whole deciding what the 4th character should do is interesting. Since there is only three real players we could easily put it to vote.

Maybe doing something like that, or yeah, just having someone run two characters is probably the best ways.

We’ve done both ways. Last session there were 3 of us (including the Overlord) so we had 2 characters each. We tend to discuss things as a group anyway so no massive impact. It won’t affect the time too much and if each of your players have input into the additional hero’s actions they may well come up with a better group plan

I would not advise one player running 2 heroes.

I would advise the 4th hero being played by all of the other players by mutual consent. That is what we do when 1 player cannot make it to a session.

And, I would also allow the other players to swap with that character if they want to if it turns out that the 4th hero ends up being much better.

In my games all of the characters tend to be played by mutual consent (and accompanied 15 minute per turn discussions) regardless of the number of actual players, so fewer players may actually speed things up.