http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3222

Interesting Scout info...

Say farewell to guard, aim and dodge orders. It's been a good time we had with you, beloved orders, now we've grown up and try to get along without your help... ;-)

So far I'm liking the changes. I can't wait to see how it plays.

So now we know who the eight hero is. I'm still curious about the combat. 1st ED had the dice on the card sheets. A guess but maybe standard combat dice for each archetype (maybe even class type) that is further modified by equipment. Fun stuff, looking forward to more.

Me too

Unclechawie said:

What do you mean? 1E had the attack dice on the weapon card - only power dice were on the hero card. And it seems power dice are only available by spending fatigue now.

Graf said:

These abilities are probably now represented on skill cards, which I quite like, as it further differentiates each class.

Bleached Lizard said:

That's just the thing though, power dice varied from character to character in 1st ED. If rolls are weapon specific and we can still buy dice with fatigue, a warrior can essentially due the same base damage as a scout with the same weapon and spending the same fatigue. Realistically a warrior would be able to do much more damage due to strength that isn't represented.

I took A peak at the weapons cards in the preview and the healer and Mage weapons both used the same attack dice. 1 blue, 1 yellow. The fighter used 1 blue , 1 red. Without some way to represent a differentiation in skill level with a specific weapon or weapon type, what's really the difference when it comes to attacki. It becomes all about the weapon, and less about the hero wielding the weapon. Thus I'm curious as to how combat will work.

And another question that comes to mind, the heroic feat says it can be used once per game. Does that mean per quest if playing the campaign?

Well, the heroic feat is not so godly powerfull, so i guess it will be once per setted dungeon

"Revive an adjacent hero who has been knocked out."

No more dying!!! My prayers to the gaming gods have been answered. Thank you FFG!

I was a bit surprised that they want to simplify the game but added even more numbers to those hero sheets. I found skill checks to be a lot of fun and easy to understand in Arkham Horror, though, so they'll make a nice addition to Descent, too.

I really like the simplification of hero turns. I mean, Run and Battle were really just two actions chained together in the strictest sense. I was a bit concerned at first because now a hero won't have to decide what they want to do at the start of the turn. For example, a hero may have a chance to instantly kill a monster, but isn't 100% sure of it, so they choose battle to make sure but then can't move anymore. With the new hero turn system (I'm assuming) they will be able to do sort of a "check swing" and then decide if they move or attack again. It seemed like it gave the heroes too many options. Then I saw someone mention that the fourth hero action (Sorry I can't come up with it right now, I only know the German terms right now >_>), as in aim, rest etc. could be out of the game or at least in the game as limited class-based abilities, thus limiting the heroes' options in the overlord's turn, which I really like.

Also, the new hero turn card is brilliant. The X and O were useful for keeping track of who'd already completed their turn, but this will make play just a tad faster since no one will ever have to consult the rulebook for these things again. I hope they will also be printing all special rules that a card makes use of on that card (e.g. if you get a weapon that has Bleed as an ability, the card should list the special rule for the bleed effect), I found it slowed down gameplay immensely (and bored the hero players a ton) if you had to look up the rulebook every time you didn't know for sure what that rule did.

I still don't like the defense dice, but considering how much smoother the game seems to flow, I'll be able to tolerate that.

Unclechawie said:

Again, probably skills. We've already seen one ability that only works on Magic weapons. Presumably there will be others in each of the class decks.

What if the abilities factor in here. Maybe might adds to melee weapons, awareness adds to bows, etc., knowledge adds to runes, etc., and willpower adds to staffs or some such (whatever weapon healers would normally use). This way, there'd be an iconic attribute for each archetype. Might for warriors, awareness for scouts, knowledge for mages, and willpower for healers.

Mordjinn said:

I wonder if this will be a straight copy (near as anyway) of Gears of War?

It does beg the question though, how does the Overlord score conquest or whatever they may have instead?

chas said:

Completely agree. Not to mention the number of counters to represent those effects, I STILL get stun and daze counters mixed up...

Writing the effect on the cards makes much more sense to me.

As for defense dice though - I'm a little perplexed. Why doesn't the attacked roll those? Seems to needlessly lengthen combat to have attack roll then defence roll, when an attack roll could easily contain the defensive dice too...

Sausageman said:

There's no reason the attacker can't roll the defence dice as well, but it probably has more to do with the "feel" of things - it just "feels right" for the defender to roll the defence dice. Plus, you'll get some defending players complaining that the attacker didn't roll properly or with enough luck or some other such rubbish.

EDIT: Actually, it may be so that the defender has a chance to play defence abilities.

Unclechawie said:

Go check back the previous previews, Leoric of the Book has 3 Runemaster ability cards laid next to him. That's where every character's attacks will be differentiated (get an extra surge, etc. etc.). They'll say more in upcoming previews.

Mordjinn said:

Yup, a good idea that they took from the Gears of War board game.

Bleached Lizard said:

This is my assumption as well. I'm looking forward to some sort of confirmation though in the upcoming previews. When they said check back often, I'm hoping that doesn't weekly. I'm hoping they come out with more and more previews the closer we get to the shipment date.

Here's what I'm most excited about!

"From left to right, Jain’s attributes are Willpower, Might, Knowledge, and Awareness. These versatile stats underscore Second Edition’s focus on compelling narratives; a scenario might call for a test of Might to move a boulder blocking a path, or a test of Awareness to avoid an ambush by sinister goblins. Even new versions of classic Overlord cards like Curse of the Monkey God depend on a character’s attributes. This underhanded spell can only be resisted by a display of superior intellect, represented in-game by a Knowledge test."

THIS is where a lot of the role-play lite stuff is going to come into play. No longer is the game merely centered on combat tactics...using the rules above, it in fact mimics the granddad of all dungeon crawlers, D&D. Now the GM/Overlord can call for tests of Willpower to convince a merchant to lower the price on an item, or a Knowledge test to try and recall the location of a particular mine shaft, or an Awareness check to notice the Elf scout that's been following the party for the past two days. In other words, these new rules/mechanics will allow us to think outside the hack/slash encounter box (not that I have a problem with killing the monsters and taking their treasure).

I also see this edition becoming much more hackable and more open to player created variants. Hell, with the few rules I've gleaned from recent updates, I'd venture to guess that it would be relatively easy to ditch the tiles, use a dry-erasable battlemat and some sort of overland map to create an open world sandbox for the heroes to explore as opposed to the more rigid, board-game like random/preset generation of events.

GoblynKing said:

So I've been pretty quiet, but I feel I gotta ask this: Why do you want want Descent to become a full on RPG? I like that they are expanding the lite story elements, the extra depth presented so far looks good. But your points imply to me that you want more of a full on story, instead of the bare bones plots Descent had. To me, that's a big part of the point to Descent: "Smash some monsters, grab the loot, who cares about 'Why are we here?'."

I liked that Descent focused almost entirely on the combat, it's the reason I bought it instead of continuing to play Pen & Paper RPGs. Thing is, there are plenty of excellent choices for tactical dungeon crawling with deeper story. Pathfinder, D&D 4.0 or the upcoming 5.0 are all options much closer to what I get from your post, and with little need to make the rules up yourself.

I'm sure some talented people are going to put some slick rules together for just such an idea, but I'm not sure I see a good reason why.

Proto Persona said:

That's the point. Some of us just like to tweak and hack games. You can't see a good reason why? Well, you're not one of those people, so of course you don't see the point. I'm not asking the designers to cater to my tastes, that's the point in homebrewed variant rules.

GoblynKing said:

Hallelujah, sister!

GoblynKing said:

True enough, and that's a fair response. Still, I really do want to know why you want a deeper RPG experience out of Descent when there are already good games that cater to what you sound like you're looking for. Asking for more RPG stuff was pretty common during 1st edition. I'm just wondering why people seem to be looking for that experience from this game when it already exists.

So they leaked the Mad Carthos sheet from the conversion kit on their FB page, nice.

It seems every character so far has a total of 11 points divided between the 4 attributes.