Hi there..

I was really digging the fact that I can use the "Dungeon Quest" Heroes for my 1st Edition of Descent.

Does anybody know if the new Heroes of the upcoming 2nd Edition are also usable in Descent 1st Edition.

If not!! They should be:

A: good marketing

B: cool new heroes for fans of the first edition

I appreciate your feedback..

I sincerely doubt that there will be any official 1e hero sheets for the new heroes in 2e. I'm also reasonably certain that fans will make their own versions pretty quickly, so the options will exist even if FFG doesn't make them.

I also hope that crossover support continues between 2e and the rest of the Terrinoth games, but I don't think FFG really has any obligation or inclination to continue supporting a product they've officially put to bed with new material. Especially considering that 2e IS the new material for this particular franchise.

But wouldn´t it encourage fans of the first edition to buy the second edition as well. Sure there are a lot of fans that will do it either way, but it definetly would throw another incentive out to buy the second edition.

Mentioning selfmade heroes: Is there a list of "homebrewed" heroes, which are kind of approved to play. I feel a little bit lost sometimes going to all the homebrew threats to find some decent new character sheets. Often I doubt that they are well balanced. Anybody got a hint?

Shas'O said:

What incentive? Buy 2e so you can throw away everything but 8 heroes and use those in 1e? There's something like 40-odd heroes for 1e already (including fan-made hero sheets for the few heroes from other Terrinoth games who haven't been migrated officially to Descent.) How many people are going to buy the 2e box set for another 8?

Even if the new monsters are also ported backwards, we already know how new expansion monsters get integrated into old quests - namely, a few new spawn cards that result in those monsters showing up rarely, if ever, in any quests that weren't made with them in mind. People who want to start playing by 2e rules (or think they might want to) don't need 1e versions of the new figures to encourage them to buy - once they have 2e they'll likely just play by 2e rules, at which point the 1e sheets become useless deadweight. People who don't want to upgrade (for whatever reason) aren't going to be tempted by a few more of the things they already have in spades for 1e.

If anything, including 1e sheets for the 2e heroes and/or monsters would just encourage people to try and find other 1e products after having bought 2e - a process which is sure to fill FFG's inbox with cries for reprints of 1e boxes. If FFG wanted to keep printing 1e boxes, they wouldn't have cut off the ones that were already scheduled for reprints after announcing 2e.

Shas'O said:

Not that I'm aware of. Anything made with Antistone's hero generator program is probably pretty solid, though. When it comes to homebrew content, you pick your poison and you take your chances. If it doesn't work out, you tweak it to suit your fancy.

The one thing I would suggest, though, is try playing with the homebrew heroes a couple fo times before deciding if they're really broken. Sometimes heroes tha tlook super strong aren't really so hot in practice, and vice versa.

Steve-O said:

This is a very interesting point Steve-O, and makes me wonder if it's something they've try to pre-empt. I remember in Doom, the way the balanced maps was to have figures colours the same as the heroes. One of the heroes missing - don't use that colour of monster.

Maybe we'll see something similar here. Not with colours, as they already signify something, but perhaps monsters will fall into 'tiers'. Dragons, Demons and Giants being tier 5, Skeletons, Beastmen etc being tier one. On the maps they could mark where certain tiers of creatures sit, rather than what specific creatures go where. And when they introduce new creatures, they could just assign them a 'tier' rating.

The effects of this are many. Firstly, it resolves the problem you mentioned where new creatures are woefully underused. Second, it means dungeons become customisable to the overlord - themed, if you prefer. Want to give a wholly 'undead' feel to a dungeon? Use the tier 1 Eldritch 'Skeletons'. Next time you play it, that Overlord may want there to be a beast feel to it, so those creatures become spiders, giving the same dungeon a completely different feel...

*sigh* Probably a bit late for all that now, unless they do this already

Personally I'm hoping for an initial spawn along the lines of the 1e AC where you get yo place your figured were ever you choose. I enjoy the more tactical feel of the game when I OL an AC rather than a premade quest.

As far as monster selection, I hope they do a more diversified system. Something like a point value system. Basicly assign each monster a point value and the quest itself a maximum value for initial spawns.