Just looked at the characters from the conversion kit and, although I find them more interesting that the ones in the second ed box, I wonder if they are a little OP?

I remember them from the first edition of the game (that I only played a couple of times) and I like them a lot as far as general look, character idea, and abilities but some seem pretty **** powerful. Varikas the Dead's ability to regenerate and jump up from being knocked out is awesome!

Am I making my job as Overlord way too hard by including these characters in my second edition game?

You also get some monsters that are OP. It seems to me that the conversion kit was not play tested enough. Look at the first encounter of Fat Goblin. Before, the "beefiest" monster you could choose was the Merriod. Now you can choose Giants which are twice as strong and can stun all the heroes immediately unless they manage to break through the Giants. Also, they can be placed in such a way that the heroes can only have two heroes attack on turn one. The heroes need some decent dice rolls to knock down the white one, afterwhich only two of the heroes can get by AND then the overlord can retrap the two heroes that had to attack to break him down in the first place.

I still think Aviric's healing ability is the best at the start of the game.

Also, with so many heroes, you could play so each player gets 4 random hero cards and then chooses the one they want to play. Then, for each open group, the overlord randomly gets monster cards (half of the possible open groups maybe) to choose from rather than all of them.

My $0.02.

I am new to Descent so I am wondering do you just use the class cards from 2e with the conversion kit hero sheets?

Yes, the Conversion Kit heroes still use the same Class decks from the 2E box.

Thanks for the info. KristoffStark.

jcbbjjttt said:

I tend to agree. I don't know about monster balance…they actually seem fairly decently balanced…but I think it's the quest icon system that wasn't thought through enough. Putting Giants in the same icon as some lesser monsters seems to be the biggest questionable call.

kingbobb said:

Another way to play is only being able to use monsters with similar group limits. For example, if in the original game you could only use a monster group with group limit of [1, 3] or [1, 4] you can only use monster groups of similar size (excluding Kobolds which can always be used).

They really needed to add in some kind of ranking system for monster difficulties.

I echo your concerns about the giants in Fat Goblin. What OL would not choose them now, as OL your basically stuck always picking these guys since any other choice would be a poor choice. They are large, have reach and stun and the master has sweep, Plus they reinforce in the first encounter, so killing the master is basically useless. As the heroes you have basically no where to hide from these guys as they cover so much ground with their attack they are fairly certain to hit at least 2 heroes each turn due to the dungeon design. Narrow Halls and only the one large room that a giant in the middle of can hit every square in it. The same seems almost true for other quests also that have giants as a choice…Why would you not choose them? but we have not played enough to see if this is a real issue or not yet.

As heroes, its almost likely that we will not choose fat goblin again now because its so tough to win (and the reward is low), whereas I would have picked it right away since it should be a bit easier for heroes without the giants. It's almost a non-issue though since all the OL gets is extra health in encounter 2 if he does win…

Bravo McWilley said:

I actually prefer the Marriods and their Immobilize for the first Encounter of Fat Goblin.

We played Fat Goblin last week, first quest after the intro, so the heroes (Runemaster Leoric, Necromancer Tarha, Disciple Ashrian and Knight Lord Hawthorne) only replaced the necro staff with a sling. I used Merriods as they seemed strong and I wanted to try out the new monsters. The merriods totally stymied the heroes' advance, the black defence die was powerful and their attacks pretty effective. The heroes still managed to kill a goblin and keep one crop (the knight's OoH and Advance skills are pretty nice to make him jump far forward, even over monsters if the near squares are occupied).

Second encounter was a steamroll for the heroes though as the monsters (I used trolls for the open group, wasn't impressed with their inability to use surges, it seems bash is the way to go with them) couldn't do anything and wouldn't stop the heroes for more than a turn. I only found Fredrick on the 4th token and by then the heroes had completely blocked off the hallway, no reinforcements hurt a lot. They managed to buy 4/5 items, 2 leather armours, 1 chainmail and something else, plus they found a broadsword in the quest.