Antistone makes a good point. Personally, when I tried the melee party, I set them up to fail with my quest choice, since I'd already seen what happens in that quest when master Bane Spiders go up against 16hp/2armor tanks. Compared to the party that tried that quest before (Tahlia, Ker, Andira, Lord Hawthorne), Glyr did better than Ker (i.e. got the copper treasure and escaped his section), Tahlia got trapped and webbed just as badly as before on the second room tile, Varikas was somewhat slower than Hawthorne, and Nanok was hilariously ineffectual against the Spider horde that Andira had annihilated. So I'd say full melee is not always better than a mixed party, but I didn't really prove if a full melee party is better for most missions than a mixed party.
Full Melee Party
Templarion said:
6. We have Tomb of Ice but we haven't played it yet so I cannot comment it (I really hope it fixes this thing) . Soar is possible only in outdoor areas and there you can always run away. Smart melee heroes, have a ranged weapon and power potion with them so they can kill a random flying monsters if necessary. EDIT: I just recalled that with Guard you can hit soaring creatures and when you are "in a tree" soaring creatures cannot hit you unless they fly down and hit you from the square next to the tree square. You almost got me there. ;-)
Two more points.
1. Unless you have Telekinesis (very unlikely with your party composition) then you can't run away from Soaring creatures. Two Razorwings or one demon will completely block a corridor and they never have to attack at all. The heroes can't run through them, although if one hero is lucky enough to have Acrobat (with your party mix possible, but not likely) then that particular hero may escape. The rest will die, eventually, with no risk to the OL.
Wait 300 odd turns just to rub it in (1200 threat accumulated), create a few expendable reinforcements, then run them through in a mass attack. Maximum 4 wil be lost to guard defences and then attacks with 5 gold dice from any monster at all, even bronze kobolds, will hurt, and hurt bad.
Rinse, repeat, laugh at the feeble heroes.
The only chance the melee heroes will have will be to be loaded up on powerpots and effective magic weapons - preferably Blast or Breath so they don't have range problems. Of course, remember that those with heavy armours can't use runes, which limits the parties option heavily...
Lieutenants, particularly Aldric and his sister, will slaughter a melee based party every time, even without treachery.
As important as a balanced, rounded party is in base Descent, it is vastly more important in Road to Legend.
2. As you hoped, ToI has 'fixed' this problem. ToI introduces the Ghost ability. Figures with Ghost ability cannot be hit with melee weapons from adjacent spaces. Reach is the only solution for melee heroes to Ghosts, unless, again, they use backup magic/ranged weapons with powerpots. AT least in this case they only need range 2+ instead of 5+ for Soar!
I finally had enough time to triple test the "full melee" (not so full because Jaes was there) party and I still say they kick Overlord's ass serious time !
Randomizing characters removes this problem but it doesn't make ranged characters any better.
Well, basicly that is all. You don't agree with me and I am not going to change my mind. I just wanted to say, that I tested the game with fixed trap rules and all but it didn't change anything. Nanok, Varikas, Thalia and Jaes kick ass as always - others bite the dust.
I see you have completely disregarded all my advice for making a clear and convincing case.
In other news, if all the overlord's cards were replaced by Beastman War Party, he would win everytime.
God. 12 wounds and 4 armor isn't even that hard to kill, you're just being obnoxious.
Aureliano said:
In other news, if all the overlord's cards were replaced by Beastman War Party, he would win everytime
I agree. Oh well... against melee party they would probably be just a hinderance.
Templarion said:
Aureliano said:
In other news, if all the overlord's cards were replaced by Beastman War Party, he would win everytime
I agree. Oh well... against melee party they would probably be just a hinderance.
You still don't get it at all. 4 guys with 4 armor are still getting hit hard by beastman war parties every round. Red + Green=max 7 damage before bonuses from command and the +damage from the beastmen themselves. Even guarding will only kill so many of the beastmen who could easily stay at distance from your party until such a time as to swoop in full force with command 3 from all 3 master beastmen being on the board and eat your entire party for lunch. Full melee party is just silly AND boring in vanilla. In rtl, it would be laughable.
A Deep Elf, a Master Deep Elf and a Troll can take a 4 melee Hero party out with only minor difficulties.
This party would additionally have MAJOR issues solving any of the action based events in AoD. I agree, it may work well in certain circumstances against an OL who is clueless, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a wipeout 75-90% of the time against an OL worth his salt.
In a similar vain though, I do agree that the best party most likely includes 2 melees and Jaes. But the fourth absolutely needs to be a ranged of some sort to have any chance in RtL, and to have the best chance in most non-JiTD levels (and some of them as well, additionally. For instance, off the top of my head: In the Black Blade you'll be eating a lot of damage if you don't get any extra dice initially with that unpowered relic sword).
Good luck with it though, but I think eventually your OL will catch on and stop wasting his spawn cards and own you.
I'm trying to imagine a full melee party against either the Sorcerer King with Snipers or The Spider Queen with Into My Parlor.
They'd go down pretty quick, especially with the Spider Queen and some treachery for the really nasty trap cards.
Not that I care overly much about debates like these, but...
Context is *incredibly* important. A couple people have made RtL-related comments for instance - well, if the situation is RtL, then it's incredibly obvious that a 'full melee party' fails miserably. If you are playing the rules-as-written, you MUST have at least 3 of the 4 characters with a strong shooting attack (that means Ranged or Magic).
If we exclude RtL and stick to one-shot dungeon quests, the situation is different (although I completely agree that Nanok seems pivotal to the whole thing, since otherwise there is just not enough armor to go around). In any case, it can't ACTUALLY be the best party, since it doesn't include Silhouette, who is the only 5-5 character that can draw Skilled, Swift and Acrobat. ; >
The_Immortal said:
Not that I care overly much about debates like these, but...
Context is *incredibly* important. A couple people have made RtL-related comments for instance - well, if the situation is RtL, then it's incredibly obvious that a 'full melee party' fails miserably. If you are playing the rules-as-written, you MUST have at least 3 of the 4 characters with a strong shooting attack (that means Ranged or Magic).
If we exclude RtL and stick to one-shot dungeon quests, the situation is different (although I completely agree that Nanok seems pivotal to the whole thing, since otherwise there is just not enough armor to go around). In any case, it can't ACTUALLY be the best party, since it doesn't include Silhouette, who is the only 5-5 character that can draw Skilled, Swift and Acrobat. ; >
Yeah, but there is more to context than just RtL/non-RtL, as I mentioned above.
Most AoD levels would destroy all melees with the prolonged action system. As mentioned previously, there are several WoD levels that would destroy melee parties as well, mostly by being trap-oriented, but also by being gigantic.
Do you really think a two melee party would fail in RtL? My players had a rough start (I was ahead 2-1 up till gold, but never went for a map-kill, you know the rest...) but had no trouble at the beginning of gold. Well, maybe if I had just gone for the map kill things would've been different.
The_Immortal said:
Not that I care overly much about debates like these, but...
Context is *incredibly* important. A couple people have made RtL-related comments for instance - well, if the situation is RtL, then it's incredibly obvious that a 'full melee party' fails miserably. If you are playing the rules-as-written, you MUST have at least 3 of the 4 characters with a strong shooting attack (that means Ranged or Magic).
If we exclude RtL and stick to one-shot dungeon quests, the situation is different (although I completely agree that Nanok seems pivotal to the whole thing, since otherwise there is just not enough armor to go around). In any case, it can't ACTUALLY be the best party, since it doesn't include Silhouette, who is the only 5-5 character that can draw Skilled, Swift and Acrobat. ; >
I think the single most important context is an isolated group of players with a weak or unimaginative OL.
Wow... lots of feelings in this thread.
Well, heres my feelings as a vanilla player:
Sure, a full melee party can have an easy time if lucky, but if the OL has a large enough brain theres gonna be alot of spiky pits, archers and boulders. The whole thing about the OL having a hard time choosing his targets when they are all tanks sound strange, i mean, the monsters always gank the weakest link, even if the difference is minimal. Spreading the damage evenly works well in the favor of the heroes, not so much for the overlord.
We often find it best to have a mage, a melee and an archer (damagedealer, Tank and runner). The runner has played a big role in our games. Running through rooms, hopefully having enough fatigue to dodge traps and nagas, and getting to the new portal is often a great strategy. The other heroes can teleport to the new area, and skip alot of beastmen and ogres and such. The melee hero can then descend upon the new rooms monsters, and clear the way for the mage to finish the job.
A good thing is the treasures too. A group like the one above can use almost everything, getting noticably better by each chest, given a round to trade items.
Last note: Our ocational random "full melee" partys always dies. They are too slow, and to easy to move circles around.
pinkymadigan said:
Do you really think a two melee party would fail in RtL? My players had a rough start (I was ahead 2-1 up till gold, but never went for a map-kill, you know the rest...) but had no trouble at the beginning of gold. Well, maybe if I had just gone for the map kill things would've been different.
Yes it would - but indeed, only in the instance where the Overlord is actually playing to win right from the get-go.
Since in the RAW, the Overlords picks his Avatar after the Heroes pick their party, if they pick 2 melee, Overlord picks either Demon Prince or Beastman Lord, upgrades Eldritch/Beast respectively and goes for the Soaring-Monsters-knock-out-Tamalir with either Kar-Amog-Atoth or Kratz the Plague.
Ah, right. We've been modding the game pretty severly since our first play but that makes sense. I heard that strategy is about 50/50 against a good party makeup, so it makes sense that a second melee would handicap it.
Our fix for this issue is to give randomized heroes for players. Each player draws two hero cards which summed conquest value must be at least 5 (otherwise re-draw). Each player chooses one hero from those two.
This way the game is pretty balanced but has more luck-factors in it. Maybe someday in the future I have time to balance the heroes and print new hero cards so we can play with player chosen heroes once again.