Okay, so, we have about 8 people who are regular Descent players in our group, and 5 showed up the first night of our new RtL campaign. After minimal thought, we quickly agreed to try 5 heroes, with the stipulation that most of the rules from RtL would be followed to the word- that is: 1200 starting coins, 4 dice for encounter loot, 4 dice for chests.

Granted, we are only at the copper level (current CT total is 167) but I have them 2:1 right now, and their treasure haul is kind of sad. Each is probably carrying one useful copper treasure, each has an secret training upgrade (3 took HEALTH- I stifled a laugh) (though they are limited to 4 of each type per level).

3 of them have an extra pip, one has an extra skill, and they are about to burn their free move (from that one rumor) to get to Thuul prior to exiting the copper age.

All in all, I feel pretty good, I have two active Lts, though they did prevent me from finishing off Greyhaven, but I'm generally squashing them in the dungeons, and ought to be able to buy two monster upgrades at the start of the silver age.

I'm focusing heavily on upgrades that improve my dungeon abilities, due to the fact that I agreed not to go for a Tamalir raze in exchange for 5 CT everytime they abandon a dungeon (we just wanted the campaign to no end on a 'meh' note - but rather a decent fight between the heroes and the Avatar).

The only rules we've really changed are:

If there are not 5 people, alternates can sit in. If there are no alternates, the party leaves a member behind in Tamalir. For an entire turn (like visiting a building), the heroes can mule to and from the stationary hero, using his pack space as normal.

If the heroes go for secret training and their is a person missing, they may spend for them as though they were present.

Additionally, we capped chests at 400 gold (limited resources is the price they pay for that 5th body) - and I still draw my 5 threat a turn.

The only rough dungeon so far was actually the first for me, as without any major upgrades I suffered with the 5th hero at 4 to 16 conquest throughout the first two levels. After that, it's pretty much been all me.

Has anyone else tried this? Are the silver/gold ages still massively broken, or will the resource shortage and big lead be enough to keep me ahead? My only worry right now is they just drew "The Twins" and there are a few avatar upgrades I'd like to save from being discarded.

Hi,

pinkymadigan said:

My group plays with five heroes at the moment, with some more houserules to deal with the extra hero - see my campaign diary (link is in my sig) for details. We are in mid-silver so far, and it doesn't work - at all. (I have yet to report about the latest three sessions, where this will become the most obvious - expect an update in a couple of days)

Our extra rules worked fine in copper, but now the balance is shifted way too much towards the heroes. Several dungeon levels that rely on only four heroes being present don't work anymore (Two by Two for example). The extra hero actions and firepower outweigh the extra two monsters we've added by far, thanks to blast, quick casting, rapid fire et al. The extra skills that are now in the game thanks to the extra hero provide too much a boost - think about it, the heroes gain ~4 free skills for the same amount of CTs, which in case of crowd-control skills like Taunt, Grapple, Telekinesis et al. is huge! Overland encounters and fights with Lieutenants are especially affected by the extra hero, because there the very first hero turn is critical, and that extra hero makes a huge difference there. I expect the Avatar battle to be even more of a joke than it usually seems to be anyway.

Bottom line: Don't do it, it won't work - at least not with good players that know what they are doing. It might work with your hero players if they play badly, but not if they play well (our CTs are evenly distributed). And the main problem is that it will break the game at a time when you already have invested lots of sessions, when quitting the campaign really hurts.

-Kylearan

Kylearan said:

I've been reading your session reports and have had great fun reading them, thanks for that. However, I feel I have to point out that you allowed the heroes to build their own characters, and they came up with the perfect mix of very strong characters with very good abilities. A normally drawn party is likely to be far, far less strong than the party you are up against. For example, I'm being the OL in a campaign right now where the heroes drew very bad heroes generally, so they ended up with Karnon, Brother Glyr, Kirga and Sahla. Not a bad party at all, but also not nearly as strong as 2 fighters, the ranger and the mage from your party would be.

So, in conclusion, I have a feeling that a 5 character campaign might work fine (we are probably going to try it, and I will allow the heroes to choose from only 2 characters instead of 3, reducing the chance for an uberparty).

Hi,

Hurdler14 said:

Just for the record : I didn't allow them to build their own chars, they simply outvoted me. I had heavy reservations against this - and the sad part is, the hero players still think a randomly drawn party would be equally good.

I have to admit that the uber-hero-characters play a role in how my campaign went, and that it's hard to determine what went wrong because of the fifth hero, and what went wrong because of these specific character builds. However, the things I mentioned in my post (extra actions in LT/random encounters, more skills in play, extra hero able to kill more than 2 monsters per turn, dungeon level twists break/more LoS) are independant of character stats and would still be problematic with a weak, randomly drawn party.

Five heroes might work with a weak party and bad players, but I'm convinced it breaks the game with an average party and good players.

-Kylearan

I'm playing with 5 heroes right now but went with a different approach.

I increased all the money they receive by 25%. Only 4 heroes are ever involved in a dungeon or encounter at a time. In dungeons once a hero dies he/she switches with the character who was sitting out. Also when they go through a portal or glyph they can swap in the hero who was sitting out as long as the new hero that is going out has at least half his wounds remaining.

This way each person has their own hero but it doesn't change the balance of the dungeon or encounter. What it does do however is created some new problems for the heroes. Equipment shortage, distribution of skill etc. Also for me as the OL it's hard to remember exactly what the skill setup is and what the party can do.

We are about to enter Silver and so far things are going fine. I'm beating them 2 to 1 in conquest, and from what I've heard that is normal. We will see how it goes when we enter Silver.

This is our first campaign and I really wish we were just playing with 4 heroes but I guess this is better than completely leaving somebody out.

I agree, I'd hate to leave people out, and usually only 5 of us are available at a time. If it doesn't work I'm sure they'll let me tailor things a bit later on. One time we had six playing a regular one-off game they let me make the level a lot bigger, it evened things out pretty well. The extra room between the door and my monsters was just enough to make things a bit worse for them, make spawns easier to do, etc. Really, I think what makes WoD the most feared one-off session is the size of the levels for the heroes. They just can't spend a few extra fatigue to get to the end of the hall in most cases.