My friends and I played are first game of vanilla Descent last night. It was going ok in the beginning but once they started getting treasure chests, they were slaughtering my creatures. Once they had a few items, I was not really able to attack before they killed them and if I did they had so much armor, rune armor, healing that I could not kill them.

My friends are min/maxers that have played all versions of D&D and thus were playing their characters very well. It seemed that they had way more options in combat than I as the OL. They were constantly using fatigue to move and Battling every turn. We played the first quest, Into the Dark, and on the boss room, one Hero opened the door and used the Flame Strike Rune and killed the two red manticores before I had a chance to do anything. That seemed a bit silly.

I will admit I made a few mistakes, but so did they. It just seems they have a larger margin for error than the OL. One thing that did hurt me was that early in the game we missed the rule that the OL gets one threat per 2 surges rolled when attacking, so I was not playing as many cards. However, even after we started using that rule, any tricks I had were negated by all the items and abilities they had. I did kill one payer but it took a lot of resources to do. But once they had about nine conquest tokens and I only had two rooms left, it seemed futile.

Do the quests get harder and more balanced for the OL? Or am I jus playing poorly? The spawning mechanism seems weird. I can only spawn in areas that are revealed but cannot spawn in areas that the Heroes have line-of-sight. That does not leave me much choice and they exploited it to the fullest, always keeping heroes with Line-of-sight. Another tactic they used that was annoying, I had attacked one Hero and he now had two stun tokens and was very low on health. He was 3 squares from a portal glyph and spent fatigue to transport back to town until his stun tokens wore off and then came back, is that even legal? Another player had the Unmovable ability and every turn he would use Fatigue to move and Battle thus putting himself on Guard and gaining +1 armor. The hero he used was Varikas the Dead so he was getting 1 fatigue back every turn. I could not damage him at all.

Anyway, I just hope the later quests are harder for the heroes and any OL tips would be great. Also, we have limited times to get together. What are the most fun quests in Vanilla descent?

Thanks.

Oh and we had 4 heroes, I forgot to mention that.

The base game tends to favor the heroes when there are 4 of them, and in addition, the first quest is very easy for the heroes. The second quest is also very easy if they know what they're doing (it's basically designed to teach the heroes a specific strategy). Quest 3 is a good step up in difficulty, and quests 4 and 5 are harder still, so you may want to jump forward if the heroes are finding things too easy.

If you happen to have any of the expansions, you can also consider using the treachery cards; there are tables in the expansion rules listing appropriate treachery amounts for base game quests. Though, naturally, I don't expect you to shell out more cash if the base game isn't working for you.

Anyway, the things you described the heroes doing mostly sound like the kinds of things heroes should be doing--killing monsters quickly to reduce the damage they can cause, spending fatigue and using potions to get more attacks in, covering line-of-sight to reduce risks from spawning, taking maximum advantage of skills and hero abilities, etc. When they get to the harder quests, they'll need to do these sorts of things to survive. Make sure you're limiting them to 1 potion per turn, though. Also note that the errata changed the rule about exchanging a treasure from a chest for cash; you're now stuck with what you draw, and you have to lug it back to town and sell it for half price if you don't want to keep it.

Going to town to recover is legal, but isn't usually hugely effective, because the overlord gets threat and cards every turn, so any delay is usually to his advantage. It seems especially silly to do it for stun, since the hero still gets a half-action while stunned and isn't usually any easier to kill; the entire point of stunning a hero is to stop them from doing as much, so if they go to town and sit on their hands for 2 turns, mission accomplished. In fact, when I get an effect that prevents the hero from acting and makes them easier to kill, such as curse of the monkey god, I often refrain from killing them right away to try and keep the hero out of commission for longer.

Antistone said:

Thanks for the response. Ok, so I guess they were doing what they are supposed to do. I have one more question; is magic damage mitigated by armor? If so, why have magic? Why not just have ranged and melee? Is it just for flavor? I had two sorcerers who could not damage Varikas, because his armor is so high.

Magic typically have added effects to the attacks, such as Stun, Blast, Breathe, etc etc.

Magic damage does not ignore armor. There's no fundamental difference between magic and ranged attacks, but there are some general differences in the available weapons and heroes, and a few cards that only interact with certain kinds of attacks (for example, the "Deflect Arrows" skill increases armor against ranged attacks but not magic attacks).

However, Sorcerers do a fair bit of damage, on account of their "Sorcery 3" ability, which allows them to add 3 extra points to either range or damage after making an attack roll. I'm not sure exactly how much armor Varikas had in your game, but Sorcerers should average about 5 damage (when not too far away) and can inflict as much as 8, which means they should have a decent chance of inflicting some damage even against very high-armor targets.

Still, if one hero gets up to 5+ armor, that's generally a sign that you should be focusing your attacks on other heroes, especially in a large game. Remember, you can win the game without ever hurting Varikas if you can kill the squishier heroes enough to use up all their conquest.

Antistone said:

That is what I ended up trying to do.

Oh, and I had planned on getting the expansions eventually. I don't know about RtL yet, since we like to just get together, play a one shot game and have a few drinks. We don't really have the time for a campaign yet. What expansions are must haves? Are there any expansions that everyone agrees Descent should not be played without? (I here this about RtL but again, we are just interested in one-shot games right now)

Hi,

I played 4 times Descent + AoD expansion set. I played 2 times the first mission and one time the 2nd and 4th missions. I was the Overlord and there were 4 players. I won 2 times in the 2nd and in the 4th mission. I think that the evil player is influenced by cards that he draws. For example in the 2nd mission, when players open the first door the possibility of make 2 attaks by means of the "Rage card" and then of playing the "Animate weapons" (it's a AoD card) card may let you to win in few turns.

With regard to the better expansion I think that WoD is a better choice than AoD (I bought AoD because I payed only 20€ XD). I think so because there are some trap tokens and heroes in WoD seem more fascinating. I advise you to download manuals of the expansions ( from this site ) and read them before buying.

Bye

It is a fact that the expansions does add a fair bit of weapons to the overlord, because of the treachery, but the general rule too being an OL is to remember: You are not a GM, you are not there to help their survival, you are there to challenge them.. don't play nice

Pick on the weak ones, unless you actually have a chance of killing a tank... I usually try to pick off the soft mages, or one of the ranged attackers, if they give me a chance ( played 10+ games of vanilla and just finished a game of RtL), but an "Undead Legion" vs. a tank, still hurts on account of the skeleton pierce(if you don't have WoD then it's just a damage bonus, unless you read the errata and made the changes)..

I would reccoment WoD to start with and AoD or ToI after that, if you don't want to buy RtL yet... I have had WoD for a while, and it's a good addition... only got RtL at xmas and AoD this month though.

Antistone said:

I was Varikas. I saw the damage potential of the sorcerers, so I used LOS and let our ranged pick them off.

Something I was wondering was whether everyone is supposed to get items when a treasure chest is opened. That was really what made it silly. We'd open a chest and everyone would draw their cards and we would huddle and trade the items to the person that could best use them. Is everyone really supposed to get to draw items?

Everyone draws items, but you can not sit there and free trade in vanilla Descent. You have to pass the items to another Hero using movement points on your turn when you are adjacent to another Hero.

Using part of a turn to trade items was much better than attacking with a sword I bought in town.

That leads me to another question. Do you ever actually need anything other than potions from town?

SpikeyFreak said:

Yeah. Remember that once you open a Copper/Silver/Gold chest you can then pay to draw those Treasures in town (well, I know you can in RtL, I haven't played vanilla Descent in so long that I might be getting confused).

You can buy random copper, silver, and gold treasures in town for 250, 500, and 750 coins each, respectively, once you've opened at least one chest of the appropriate color. You can also buy training (extra black dice) for 500 each, or additional skills for 1000 each.

Selling useless/redundant treasures for another chance at a useful one (or sellings lots of weak treasures to buy a higher-level one) is often a reasonable thing to do, but only if no one in the entire party needs it. Trading items to heroes that can make good use of them is generally one of the first things you do after opening a chest.