This question is probably redundant, but the search engine is horrible to find anything. My group has really debated how to 100% go about this.

Say you have 5 players (4 Hero 1 OL) so a Master Skeleton Archer has +2 Pierce +2 Range and Undying for Skills. The targeted hero has 2 Armor (items included) & 12 Wounds

Say the Archer rolls enough range and hits for 4 Wounds

How exactly does Pierce get rolled into this? 2 Damage ignores armor so it hits and the hero loses 2 Wounds automatically are taken away. Does the other 2 Damage now get factored against the 2 armor, or has the armor already been used up for the entire roll? would the hero end with 10 Wounds or 8 Wounds?

I know that Shields can respectively counter 1 rank of Pierce for each Wound a shield can block. so I'm not putting that into this example.

____________________________________

My other question is just a general one.

We've played Descent about 8 times so far, adjusting things to our House Rules here and there after each game. And yet, the heroes have never actually won a game. Most of the time they lose 1-3 Area's before the Boss/goal. I've figured out some reasons why it fails, but other times it just doesn't seem to add up. It makes our group feel like either the OL or Heroes are doing something wrong somewhere.

Most of the time it ends when we are trying to get around a corner, or when we are venturing into a newly revealed area so the OL spawns stuff in the last room we were in resulting in being sandwiched most of the time.

Any special things anyone's figured out?

guess i just figured out one thing my group completely forgot, using Fatigue for MP's. That will make a difference.

Aseimlost said:

Q1: Pierce reduces the Hero's armor rating by how many ranks its has. So Pierce 2 reduces the armor by 2. And this is all before the application of damage. So for example, the Hero in your example above has 2 Armor and is hit with an attack with Pierce 2. He now has zero armor for the purposes of determining the number of wounds, so he would take 4 wounds. If he had 3 armor, his armor value would become 1, and he would take 3 wounds. In all cases with Pierce, just subtract the Pierce rank from the Hero's armor to get his new armor rating, then apply the new rating to the damage to determing wounds. So the Hero takes 4 wounds, ends up with 8.

Additionally: Shield, unless specfically stated by the item, NEVER counter. Pierce. They are used to cancel WOUNDS, which happen a step or two after Pierce comes into play. Shields themselves do not give (again, unless stated on the card), an armor bonus. The end result might be that you block a wound that you received due to Pierce, but a lot of people seem to think that Shields can be used to cancel Pierce, and they can't.

Q2: Just keep moving as fast as you can. Double check the rules for LOS and Spawning to make sure your following them correctly. I know the first few times I was OL, I was messing things up. A lot of it could also be Hero selection, if you are consistantly getting bad draws it can make things hard. One thing to try would be using the RtL method, where you draw three Heroes and pick one to keep. Gives you more balanced parties.

1: Pierce reduces the Hero's armor rating by how many ranks its has. So Pierce 2 reduces the armor by 2. And this is all before the application of damage. So for example, the Hero in your example above has 2 Armor and is hit with an attack with Pierce 2. He now has zero armor for the purposes of determining the number of wounds, so he would take 4 wounds. If he had 3 armor, his armor value would become 1, and he would take 3 wounds. In all cases with Pierce, just subtract the Pierce rank from the Hero's armor to get his new armor rating, then apply the new rating to the damage to determing wounds. So the Hero takes 4 wounds, ends up with 8.

Additionally: Shield, unless specfically stated by the item, NEVER counter. Pierce. They are used to cancel WOUNDS, which happen a step or two after Pierce comes into play. Shields themselves do not give (again, unless stated on the card), an armor bonus. The end result might be that you block a wound that you received due to Pierce, but a lot of people seem to think that Shields can be used to cancel Pierce, and they can't.

Q2: Just keep moving as fast as you can. Double check the rules for LOS and Spawning to make sure your following them correctly. I know the first few times I was OL, I was messing things up. A lot of it could also be Hero selection, if you are consistantly getting bad draws it can make things hard. One thing to try would be using the RtL method, where you draw three Heroes and pick one to keep. Gives you more balanced parties.

So in a sense, Pierce 1 is the same thing as +1 Damage then? why would the rules be adjusted to "fix" the Beastmen from Pierce to Damage then?

I could be misintepretting that incorrectly though.

So in a sense, Pierce 1 is the same thing as +1 Damage then? why would the rules be adjusted to "fix" the Beastmen from Pierce to Damage then?

Sort of. Pierce 1 can be interpreted as +1 Damage in cases where the target has at least 1 armor.

If the target had no armor (or had less armor than the Pierce) then the extra Pierce does NOT count as damage... so if you think of Pierce as extra Damage, it can only be extra damage up to how much armor value the target has. Excess Pierce beyond the armor rating is wasted. Thus you want your Heroes with Pierce 4 to target monsters with 4 or more armor to get the best value from their attack.

So in a sense, Pierce 1 is the same thing as +1 Damage then? why would the rules be adjusted to "fix" the Beastmen from Pierce to Damage then?

I could be misintepretting that incorrectly though.

Far from it. Lets see the difference if we escalate it.

Monster A has 20 pierce, hitting hero with 1 damage

Monster B has 1 pierce, hitting hero with 20 damage

Hero has zero armor, 16 wounds.

Now, monster A would pierce the heros armor(which is absent nonetheless), but still only inflict 1 wound. Hero stays alive, still having 15 wound tokens to spend. Monster B would pierce the heros armor(still noexistent), then inflict 20 wounds. Hero substracts 16 wound tokens and dies.

Having +#damage is way better than having +#pierce.

This can be seen in hero weapons, as they can state 1 surge gives +2 pierce, or 1 surge gives 1 damage.

Pierce +3 means Hero armor - 3 and hero armor can never go below 0. So If you have a pierce + 3 agains a armor 2 Hero or unit he can only lose to armor, he cannot lose more armor than his total (base hero armor and equipment) then you deal wounds regarding his new temporary armor value. (temporary cause it only lasts for the duration of the attack)

Also just making sure...your OL cannot decalre actions while using monsters (battle, run, etc.) he can only move and attack....he cannot spawn in your line of sight, he draws only 2 cards and takes 1 threat per hero, his hand size is of 8... and donno....it deos seem wierd since even a party of noobs still gave me a hard time during the first dungeon...