Malicain said:

The difference between the case of the "knocked out" text and the case of the Stunned text is that for "knocked out" we were just going with an unofficial description contained in the preview, as written by someone in their marketing department. For "Stunned" we have the official gameplay text.

The line of sight rules don't bother me since they're fairly close to the 4th Edition D&D rules. The new dice, however, bug the heck out of me. The attack dice have been far too reduced in variety for my liking. I would much prefer keeping a Melee themed and Ranged themed basic die, along with the "better for range" and "better for damage" enhancement dice. Now the only thing to differentiate weapons is the surge abilities, and from the looks of things there's a strong chance you won't get any surges on an attack.

If they were going to change up the attack dice I'd have preferred if they'd removed the Miss side and added some sort of defense stat you had to roll range against when making a melee attack. Therefore melee weapons using range enhancement dice would hit more often to compensate for less damage.

I agree with your sentiment. However, part of what all games are trying to do now is become simpler to cater to the widest possible audience (biggest profit margin). You mentioned 4th Ed D&D (which I play) so you must know what I'm talking about.

I think most gamers find simplification to be an immediate turn-off. I know I do. But when I stop to think about how the dice worked in 1st ed versus how they appear in the preview of 2nd ed, I like the change.

I've played 1st edition Descent with a small group of people for several years so we're all very familiar with the rules and the dice. Invariably, any weapon with a yellow die instead of a green die is considered trash. There are so few situations where you need long range and so many where you need more damage. Plus, it's very easy to get extra range when you need it (surges, feats, fatigue to move closer) but damage is harder to obtain. So I don't mind that they phased out the often-ignored attack die. (Case in point: In all my years of Descent no mage has ever taken Wand instead of Immolation).

Further, once you start using silver weapons and even moreso when you play with gold ones, you spend a great deal of time rationing out your surge usage. I'll be the first to admit that using lots of surges is fun and crunchy. It's what us math-geek-gamers like to do. However, from a time standpoint, all that math was awful. It just made the game take that much longer.

So it seems to me that simpler die, with quicker tallying of damage and range, is what they're going for with 2nd edition. Also note that monsters have very few hitpoints when compared to 1st ed. But since we haven't really seen the defense die worked in we [probably won't know how durable the monsters are until we see them in action.

All that said, I totally agree that having a primary color die for each attack type, and each of those having very different results, gave us more of an illusion of choice. And in the end, that illusion of choice is what we're playing the game for. I guess they've effectively made a bunch of assumptions about what choice most people are going to make in order to speed up the time requirements of Descent (which was pretty considerable for 1st edition, and is the main reason I don't get to play it very often.)

So I'm in favor of speeding up the playtime even if it means a simpler gaming experience.

RogueRegault said:

I completely agree - I already mourn the loss of the 3 different attack dice. On the plus side, I guess it makes it cheaper to make, which means we get more for the same price, or the same for less cash. Neither is terrible IMO.

It does seem like, with so few dice, most will be rolling basically the same to attack with now - with only skills and surge abilities (and hero abilities where applicable) differentiating the attacks. Plus, as they've removed the three attack skills (melee, range, magic) and their enhancement adding, I don't see why everyone won't use the best weapon they can get hold of now - regardless of whether it's thematically applicable (my warrior has found a bow. Ok, I don't benefit from my One Surge = +1 damage melee attack skill now, but who cares - this bow is much better than the sword I had AND I can shoot at range…)

Bleached Lizard said:

I'm tempted to do as someone suggested above, and not allow LoS or movement through these. I've always seen diagonal obstacles as continuous 'walls' (possibly a throw back from something in Heroclix), and it never sat well with me being able to squeeze through the gap or 'thread the needle' through it to shoot someone.

Well, iam afraid that Berserker for example, will not be able to equip or fully use Bow. When you look at "Sling" weapon card on last preview, its stated "exotic" under its picture and also, there is a green gem symoblizing that it is a ranged weapon. My guess is that there will be some kind of weapon limitation or weapon type oriented skills or cards (If your weapon is exotic, you gain 1 surge etc.)

Bleached Lizard said:

I don't see the problem at all. If you need a large diagonal barrier, just fill in the spaces where only corners are touching with another block, to create a kind of full stairway shape.

It all seems moot anyways, because it appears that the new tiles already incorporate the boulders/pits/etc.

Jafix said:

That's assuming there aren't exotic melee weapons of course. Taking the 'D&D' approach to exotic, katana would be under that banner too.

I haven't seen anything suggesting any reason, other than theme/colour, why certain weapons are restricted to certain characters. It's not a huge problem, but it would be nice to have 'signature weaponry' like Descent 1 characters had (who, for example, would give the Yeti a magic weapon when he had 5 melee enhancement dice??)

Don't think I'll be using the new LoS rules. They seem illogical to me and the preview example doesn't make a lot of sense to me from a practical stand point.

I've also always thought of diagonally placed LoS blockers as being continuous and have played them that way as well. Given the preview example, my groups wouldn't be able to make any attacks because neither of the heroes would have LoS to the zombie. But that's just personal preference on my part.