As the kind of person who has to buy everything, I have just got Tomb of Ice - even though we are only playing RtL and not that often.

Anyway, I've now got myself a big pile of yellow feat cards and wondering what to do with them.

Incorporating them into vanilla descent I dont think would really work, since they just make it a lot easier for the heroes, with no balancing alternative for the overlord. It reminds me when they introduced Treachery and then said "you can now use this with the quests from JitD" - surely this just balances the game in favour of the Overlord?

However, the quests in WoD are apparently virtually impossible that you need to be lucky with characters / skills / dice to win. So maybe adding feats for the WoD quests might be a good idea.

Anyway, onto RtL. It seems clear that you cant just introduce feats into RtL as written in ToI, otherwise the game balance would be shifted way too much in favour of the heroes. But, I'd like to make use of them somehow.

How about this for an idea. Each hero starts with 1 feat. Or maybe 2, or maybe whatever they would normally get as printed on their sheet. The only way to get new feats is to train at a training ground somewhere. Something like - "Each time a hero trains to gain a skill or a trait, they may in addition purchase up to 2 feat cards."

And then deciding the cost. Free / 50 / 100 / more. XP even?

My experience with RtL, and everything I've read says that the heroes usually have lots of XP spare and are short of cash, so if I make it XP, it means they will easily be able to get them. If I make it cash, it makes their decision trickier.

Any thoughts?

I'm using Feat cards in RtL like this.

- All players get 1 feat card of the same type as the skill they chose at the start of the campaign.

- Each time someone activates a glyph, he/she can draw a feat of a type he/she has skills.

- You may only have (number of skills + 1) feats on your hand at any one time

- Using a feat cost 1 fatigue.

It seems to me making the feats cost gold in RTL will basically remove them from the game.

Use of a feat costing a fatigue is a nice idea and kinda in theme. You have to exert yourself that bit extra.

However, whilst I think this is a good idea, I dont think its enough to feats being a bit too good for the heroes. Maybe having them cost 2 fatigue?

I suppose doing something which triggers off the glyphs keeps in line with the ToI rules, though its clear that allowing all heroes 1 per glyph is totally way too good. I'm not too keen on the player who activates the glyph always getting it, since that role normally falls to fast movers, and the "stay at the back" characters will never get any.

Could rule that on glyph activation, all heroes roll a power dice. On a blank, they get a feat.

I like Angels method,

this gives the heroes their feats while not going over the top. (and I really like the Fatigue touch for use).

cheers

Mark

I introduced feats into the middle of my RTL campaign as soon as I got my hands on TOI. After that campaign and a couple afterwards, the feats play just fine as per the TOI rulebook and we have not had to tweak anything. They help the heroes early in copper, stayed balanced throughout silver and by the time gold came around, they weren't that game changing because the heroes are tough as it is. By the time we were in the midst of gold, a hero playing a feat card was a mere hiccup. The heroes shear domination during gold overshadowed anything the feats were doing.