I overlord for my group, more often than not. And when I OL, I have a near-unbroken string of brutal victories.

Last night, we had Mad Carthos, Battlemage Jaes, and Steelhorns attempting The Hall of the Monkey Kings, supposedly one of the easier quests. Steelhorns had Bear Tattoo, Furr the Spirit Wolf, and Weapon Mastery - good offense and defence, and grapple to protect Carthos. Carthos had Spiritwalker, Necromancy, and Sharr the Brightwing - awesome combination. Jaes had Blessing, Telekinesis, and Ox Tattoo - maybe not as good as the other sets but still solid. They seemed all set to take it on... and then they died, painfully and repeatedly.

Carthos died first, just after opening Area 3. He'd killed two of the Razorwings before they even got to act and had one of them as a zombie, but the others managed to exploit grapple's "only one held per square" rule to squeeze past Steelhorns and get to him, and a Skeleton Patrol provided enough firepower to take him down. Now that every monster was out of the room, Jaes entered to open runes and get working on the music box (clever use of fatigue potions made this not too bad) while Steelhorns held the door and kept line of site down the hall while killing things out there.

Bad move, as it turns out. A Beastman War Party, with Dark Servant for another Master Beastman, meant that they and the Master Razorwing (peasant in disguise) were swinging for massive damage. Eighteen health sounds like a lot until things are swinging at you for 9's and 10's against three armor. Beastmen have +1 damage; with two Masters that's Command x2 so effectively +3 damage. Doom was out, so they did average 7.8 damage, and the masters were doing average 9.3. That, plus the master razorwing, plus the couple skeletons that were left, meant Steelhorn dropped in a single round.

After that they recovered a little. With the music box solved, the first bronze treasure opened (Crystal Shield, Cloak of Deception, Gauntlets of Power - nothing offensive but all useful), and a couple runes to recoup conquest, they headed over to Area 2.

This is where things got pearshaped. Stalling them with more skellies got me Horde of the Things just before they were ready to open, and their starting gambit only actually managed to kill the two beastmen I clogged the door with, and maybe one of the minions. So when I summoned Bane Spiders to pincir them, and brought the Blood Ape out, they managed not to make any forward progress into the room or kill any more of the skeletons. Bane Spiders went down fast, but the Blood Ape soaked several good hits and ended the round still alive and in good position. So when I summoned another Beastman War Party and hammered into them with arrows backed by Pierce and Command and Doom, the entire party got shredded. All three fell, leaving a meagre two Conquest left.

So, they pull themselves together, come charging out of the portal at the bottom, manage to kill the blood ape and the master beastman... and then I summoned a Master Manticore behind them, used Rage, and proceeded to completely shred Mad Carthos.

Game over.

This seems pretty typical of my victories. Nasty, brutish, and short. Or at least, short in terms of forward progress of the heroes. I can almost invariably tangle them up and make them waste time by spawning in inconvenient places, pegging heroes with rest or guard orders placed, using traps to interrupt key bits of movement, etc. And then, when they're all tied up with that, I'll build up the threat so that when they enter a new zone I can bring down the pain. It works brutally effectively - I've had several different sets of players, and every single group gets crushed. Last time we did Last Wishes I even let them pick their skills, so of course Nanok was there with a Ring of Protection and Enduring for ridiculous armor, Talhia with Leadership for guard orders every turn, etc. And it was still a slog, we had to cancel due to time but they were struggling.

So I ask you guys, is there anything you think I'm doing wrong? Is the OL not intended to be played this brutally? Am I screwing up some major rules issues? Or should a good team be able to roll with it and win anyway?

And, if it's simply that I can outplay the rest of my group by too big a margin, can you make any recommendations to even the score? I do play heroes occasionally and let other people OL, but I prefer OLing and the rest of the group prefers playing the hero side. Is our group simply doomed to failure if we persist in that?

Since your heroes are struggling, you may want to consider using the reinforcement marker from Road to Legend or Sea of Blood. The rules for using it can be found on-line and you can use anything for the marker. This will make spawning more difficult. If that is not enough, you can limit spawning to once per area. Also, drawing treachery cards randomly will usually make things easier for the heroes. Additionally, do not use dark glyphs if the hereos are having trouble. Even with these changes, some of the expansion quests are very difficult for the heroes if they ever get bogged down. Good luck!

Dan Howell

Play with 4 heroes. Spawn coverage is key, but you seem to draw good cards as well.

rdh174 said:

We've never used RtL or SoB yet, and while I found the rules online, I'm having a hard time making sense of them. Are "Exit Pieces" simply activated glyphs? This would seem to have two major results - I have to purchase and commit the turn before so ambushes are out, and I'm constrained to currently open glyphs. That's a pretty massive change, I'm not sure I could win in that situation since it harshly limits my ability to both creatively slow down the heroes, and also my ability to swarm and crush them.

sonofzeal said:

Exit pieces are from outdoor encounters, they don't apply to dungeon levels even in RtL/SoB.

What Dan was referring to is the reinforcement marker, which is a piece that basically prevents the OL from spawning more than once per revealed area. The marker is "exhausted" when you play a spawn and "refreshed" when the heroes reveal a new area, or when you choose to pay 20 threat to refresh it. You're still limited to one spawn card per turn as usual. You don't really need to buy the AC expansion for that, of course, you can just use any convenient token with distinct front and back faces to track its status.

You can try the reinforcement marker if you like, although I would personally recommend Corbon's suggestion first and foremost - play with 4 heroes, even if it means one hero is communal and controlled by all the hero players. Especially since you seem to be on to expansion quests now. The scaling mechanic in Descent is less than ideal even in the base game, in the expansion quests you really need the fourth body.

Trying with four heroes is good advice. Many of the easier quests can in fact be beaten with three with reasonable hero-player skill, but it certainly makes a significant difference.

Another thing I'd suggest is trying some of the *really* easy quests (i.e. the first three in JitD)- how do the heroes perform on these? None of the expansion quests are as easy as these three.

I suspect that your heroes simply aren't playing very well. It's hard to be sure from your post, but, for example, the fact that multiple razorwings survived the heroes' entry to area 3 suggests they aren't timing their door-opening particularly well. Given the damage output of that party, they should have murdered four razorwings in a turn. Certainly leaving two alive suggests either very bad luck or poor timing.

Incidentally, I think of your three heroes, Jaes had the *best* skill selection, not the worst. Generally speaking they had a decent but not spectacular draw. They had lost of extra power per attack, but absolutely no way to get extra actions. Oddly, they drew no outright terrible skills (of which there are plenty to be had).

I have a hard time playing the Overlord as a complete adversary. I suppose it is from years of DM and GMing, but that can't be the only reason. I also have a couple players that must win to have fun, and I honestly don't care as much about winning, so it works out well. I have a player that simply has to do everything 'perfect.' He will browse forums before even trying a game (and did with Descent) in order to learn what the best and worst items/skills/etc are, and will never do anything but what is the most effective in any given situation. This just doesn't appeal to me. I'd much rather do whatever I think sounds the most fun, try something new, etc... even if it means I may not "perform as well."

It sounds to me like you may fall into this style as well. However, you must share some of my views, or it wouldn't bother you enough to post, looking for advice. You never mentioned that your group seems to be troubled by the fact that you obliterate them every time, and actually, you specifically mention they still like to play the heroes. Perhaps they enjoy the challenge of playing against you, and nothing needs to be done. However, I know that if this were my group, it wouldn't be going over so well, and I'd take it easier, just focusing on having fun. And then be accused of 'carebearing' the heroes by the aforementioned munchkin :-p

From a rules standpoint, it doesn't seem that you are technically doing anything wrong... but none of us can be certain of that. The simplest thing I can think of is that your group may have a different (or more forgiving) idea of what 'line of site' is for spawning purposes.