Feat cards in JitD and WoD ?

By kalle, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Hi,

Is there any opinions on how the hero's feat cards in Tomb of Ice affect the ever so delicate balance in JitD and Well Of Darkness (I haven't got the AoD) ?

Clearly featcards do give advantage to hero's, but is it too much or just a welcome shift towards a fair game, as the treachery makes the core game a bit harder for heros, and WoD is just real hard ?

Also, there seems to be some quite good treasures and items for heros in ToI, so giving these available to heros looks like a nice way of giving the heros a decent change in WoD also.

Any good or bad experiences ? Or do You prefer just keeping the expansions separate from each other and not just add the new treasures and items to the common pool ?

Can't say I've tried either but I'd like to. For WoD, I'd like to try them again with feats and the reinforcement marker. For AoD, perhaps one or the other. Maybe both, depends on the quest and who was playing.

having been on the player end of feat cards they are frikin awesome! I love how they give a new tactical suprise edge to the players who otherwise are firly static and non dynamic in how thay play... move here attack get hit move here attack... now nothing the OL does is a for sure I only hope they continue to push the design envelope as they have in tomb of ice... btw anyone know where I can get the missing spawn card for wendigos?

Human_Fighter said:

having been on the player end of feat cards they are frikin awesome! I love how they give a new tactical suprise edge to the players who otherwise are firly static and non dynamic in how thay play... move here attack get hit move here attack... now nothing the OL does is a for sure I only hope they continue to push the design envelope as they have in tomb of ice... btw anyone know where I can get the missing spawn card for wendigos?

There is no Lone Wendigo card. I emailed FFG about missing mine, and they said they dropped the idea late in development but forgot to drop it off of the list...

kalle said:

Any good or bad experiences ? Or do You prefer just keeping the expansions separate from each other and not just add the new treasures and items to the common pool ?

JitD (+ all expansions): Quest 8 + 9 + German Bonus 10 = Hero cakewalk with Feats, OL never had a chance.

WoD (+ all exp.): Quest 2 + 3: Much closer. One hero, one OL victory. We already introduced a houserule to slightly reduce the number of Feats available: Heros get full starting Feats (3 each mostly), but draw less: two per glyph after a copper treasure was put on the board (not necessarily opened), one after silver, none after gold. This was done especially after WoD-Quest 2, where the number of glyphs flooded ther heros with quest tokens and feat cards way too much (it was still close at the beginning of the quest, that´s why we left the heros their full starting set).

All in all they are a very nice addition, except for the ones that complete annihilate OL cards.

Parathion said:

We already introduced a houserule to slightly reduce the number of Feats available: Heros get full starting Feats (3 each mostly), but draw less: two per glyph after a copper treasure was put on the board (not necessarily opened), one after silver, none after gold.

Just to check: you are aware that that is an increase in the number of feats drawn when a copper chest appears? The rules state that each hero begins play with one feat card per skill, but only draws one (regardless of number of skills) when a glyph is activated (top of page 6 of ToI rules). Arvel Worldwalker has a special hero ability that allows her to draw two.

Obviously I did not explain enough: The houserule is that only two out of four heros draw a card each upon glyph activation in the "copper phase" of the quest, one out of four in "silver", and no one gets to draw in "gold".

What my friends and I have been doing, if you notice in tthe TOI expansion copper #3 and silver # 2 in most of the Quests give the heroes 1 feat card each and usually some curses also. In the JitD, WoD, and AoD expansions we have just added 1 feat and 1 curse to copper #3 and silver #2 and we found it a good balance in our games. I hope that helps in some dicision making for your crew.