Questions regarding Descent: Journeys in the dark

By nemo81, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Hi all!

I bought Descent a while ago and my gaming group has had several sessions now, completing the tutorial quest a few times and played quest 2 three times before it was finally beaten.

Over the course of our sessions there are some questions..

1. Can cleave be used as many times as possible during one turn? (it basically allows you to immediatly make one extra attack, can this be combined with movement?)

2. Is the Overlord allowed to use cards on a Hero under Dark Charm? (Rage, Charge, Aim etc)

3. When a hero is affected by damage that "ignores armor", can he use cloak of shield to reduce armor (by rolling power dies)?

4. Can you move diagonally through a corner? This one is hard to explain, but i will try to draw. H is hero, X are walls and _ are open squares.

NORTH

xxx__

xxx__

_H__

So can the Hero move diagonally North East here? If tracing LOS the line will typically almost touch the wall (border of the tile).

5. How strict are you fellas on redoing actions? If a player declares an attack, is that a point of no return, so to speak? Or do you generally give players some room for error? I find it hard to "be nice" because i end up being nice in one instance, and being strict in another.. Afterall when im the OL i want to win! :)

Thanks for any answers in advance, im sure i have more questions but i cant remember at the moment.. :)

(PS: any way of performing a search in a specific section of the forums? ATM the search is useless for me as it searches the entire board.)

nemo81 said:

Hi all!

I bought Descent a while ago and my gaming group has had several sessions now, completing the tutorial quest a few times and played quest 2 three times before it was finally beaten.

Over the course of our sessions there are some questions..

1. Can cleave be used as many times as possible during one turn? (it basically allows you to immediatly make one extra attack, can this be combined with movement?)

2. Is the Overlord allowed to use cards on a Hero under Dark Charm? (Rage, Charge, Aim etc)

3. When a hero is affected by damage that "ignores armor", can he use cloak of shield to reduce armor (by rolling power dies)?

4. Can you move diagonally through a corner? This one is hard to explain, but i will try to draw. H is hero, X are walls and _ are open squares.

NORTH

xxx__

xxx__

_H__

So can the Hero move diagonally North East here? If tracing LOS the line will typically almost touch the wall (border of the tile).

5. How strict are you fellas on redoing actions? If a player declares an attack, is that a point of no return, so to speak? Or do you generally give players some room for error? I find it hard to "be nice" because i end up being nice in one instance, and being strict in another.. Afterall when im the OL i want to win! :)

Thanks for any answers in advance, im sure i have more questions but i cant remember at the moment.. :)

(PS: any way of performing a search in a specific section of the forums? ATM the search is useless for me as it searches the entire board.)

1. Yes, Cleave may be used repeatedly as long as the hero has fatigue and kills a monster.

2. sonrojado.gif I feel I should know the answers. Check to wording on the card. If it says it has to be played on a monster then no. Rage I know can not because you don't actually activate the hero (just make an attack).

3. Yes, cloaks may be used against damage that ignores armor.

4. Yes, figures may move diagonally. Even around corners or through diagonally placed rubble.

5. Depends on how well they are doing. happy.gif Generally with people who don't play often, I'm pretty loose with their actions but once dice are rolled they are committed. I do think it is important to stress that idea of declaring actions since it matters for many skills. It also help keep straight the idea of orders. When in doubt as far as rules, I always rule in favor of what is fun and/or dramatic.

Hope you guys have fun with it!

Hi Nemo, it´s nice to see the Descent Community grow. You definetly picked one of the best boardgames available happy.gif .

I´m not 100% sure about all of my answeres beacause although I ´m an experienced Descent player I visited the Forum not that often ( which I´m about to change now)

1. Cleaving: Some players in this Forum felt this ability would be a little bit overpowered and houseruled it as though you could only use it as often as you could attack during this turn ( 2 times with ballte and only once with advance). But the original descent rules allow you to use it as often as your Fatigue allows you. But you must make the attack instantly which forbids moving after you killed a monster and then attack again with cleaving.

2. As I remember, all these cards require you to "Activate a monster" to play them. So my answer to that is "no".

3. That´s a very good question and I´m not certain if I´m on the right side here, but I would say "yes" because this effects just ignore your Armor value provided by the character sheet and your item card. They don´t ignore your complete armor card. One thing these kind of armor cards are superior to the others.

4. One thing we did wrong as well in our first descent game. The painting on the board seems to forbid that kind of moving but it is definetly allowed by the official rules.

5.In the beginning I went hard on the heros in concerns of redoing actions and I was giving my everything to beat them... the effect was that they didn´t manage to get really far in any dungeon^^ Now that it is clear,that the heros have a relatively hard time winning this game I sometimes slowed down myself to help them a little bit and let them change their target/action sometimes. Espacially when I was playing the heros I noticed, that these mistakes which are nearly never severe if the OL does them, can frustate the heroes quite a lot. Now that we all played it quite often we are quite strict again because everyone should know how everything works by now and it works well. ( I dont even have to be nice to the heroes anymore to give them a fair chance of winning)

It was easy to search in specific areas in the old forum, but I have no clue how it works in the new one, sorry.

Actually, you CAN Aim a Dark-Charm attack. After all, it is played when the OL declares an attack, not when he activates a critter.

Aim can also be combined with Rage, but Rage cannot be combined with Charge.

Hey all!

Thanks for your replies, this cleared up some of the issues we've been having for sure :)

Im sad to read that i cant use rage on a dark charmed Hero, it made it abit easier for me to gain the upper hand. I find as soon as the Heros get a silver or gold chest they become so powerfull that i have a very hard time stopping them (winning the game). But as i said in my first post we have only played Quest 1 and 2 so i recon it might change.

Another thing i really miss when i play the OL is the ability to interrupt the Heroes. They have their order tokens but the OL doesnt have these tools..

Thanks for welcoming me to the community:) Ive been playing boardgames for over a decade and Descent is my first boardgame of this type. Been more of a pure strategy (Adv. Civ. etc) fan up until now.

What i miss in Descent is some proper campaign rules to make the game play more like an RPG (ie, Heroes keep their gear etc through quests) but from what ive read i recon this is something that is already in existence in one of the expansions.

Thanks again :)