pinkymadigan said:

Resembles it far more than RtL does.

Rajamic said:

Then you have never really played RtL, because you have a very very different game going on then Descent. You did everything you could to turn it into DnD.

Big Remy said:

Oh come on. A third of those house rules take things in Descent that are already like D&D and make them less like D&D. And those are some big changes, but to suggest that it's not easily recognizable as Descent-with-houserules is wild exaggeration.

I do notice that almost everything in those house rules makes the heroes stronger, though. I'd be much concerned about game balance.

The balance in favor of the players seems to be where our group tends to have a different experence from most of you here. From what we played, the first map is strongly in the heroes favor (probably even if you gave the overlord every power card at the start for free), and every map after that, under normal rules, they have no chance whatsoever, as the overlord with just one rank up suddenly gets so much threat that it's almost impossible to spend it all. Maybe there's some rule that should be tipping things more in the heroes' favor already that we are missing or messing up (a house rule we don't even realize) which was already throwing the balance out of whack and our rules were just an attempt to counter it. But for the most part, it was an attempt to create a sort of campaign system where you don't start with completely fresh characters each dungeon (which we feel doesn't make it a campaign at all), something that things in the rules and maps suggest was at least planned, but never implemented.

But if you tip the balance so that the heroes often or always win, then it isn't Descent anymore, even if you're having more fun.

Rajamic said:

OK, first of all, "normal" rules don't involve the OL gaining ranks at all, that's a special optional rule that isn't even in the main rulebook.

Secondly, getting 1 extra threat per player and 1 extra card at the beginning of the game shouldn't be anywhere close to "so much threat that it's almost impossible to spend it all." Maybe you're giving the OL this bonus every turn, rather than just at the beginning of the game as recommended?

Once the heroes know what they're doing, the overlord should be getting massacred on quest 2. Moreso than on quest 1.

Antistone said:

Ah, that's what it is. Yeah, we read that as one extra card per turn. That would make a huge difference, and as you can imagine, woudl through the game steeply in the OL favor after the first map.

You read the card as per-turn but not the threat? That seems kind of odd...and still shouldn't get you close to having more threat than you can possibly spend. There's a power card (Evil Genius) that actually does let you draw an extra card every turn.

Anyway, all of the basic campaign bonuses (for both sides) are one-time effects at the quest's start. A level 5 overlord drawing 2+4 cards per turn would be totally insane; you could probably win some quests just by cycling the deck, without ever killing anyone.

We read it as, you get "+1 threat per hero and +1 card" each turn.

a house rule we came up with involves the pits.

when jumping over a pit you roll a power die. if you roll a blank you fall in. (you hit the edge of the pit and it crumbles and you fall in) we also like to make things logical and play it out like people are actualy there so small tweaks like that are vary common in our games.

we do make sure that if we change something for the overlords gain we do something for the heros also but that is my favorite house rule we started.