Hi folks, I'm new to Descent and enjoying playing it. However being a Virgo I want to know all I can about the game so I've been reading through the forums to see how others have addressed play balance issues. It seems there are a number of peeps out there who have their own rules that modify the game, so this is an attempt to see which 'house rules' are popular amongst players.

Here are a few that I have been playing (with acknowledgement to Christopher Park).

All monsters have the same activation actions as heroes. However they don't get the benefits of spending fatigue that heroes do. I use coins to represent any orders laid down for the monsters. The rest order will restore 1 life to a wounded monster at the end of the same turn it was placed as long as it isn't hit by a guard attack. (making it wait for the next turn is kind of useless, they just don't seem to live that long... )

As a consequence, dodge and aim threat cards always get swapped out for treachery.

When a new area is first revealed, the OL can pay 5 threat to retrospectively add an order to a revealed monster. The OL does this before the heroes continue their move.

Surges rolled by the OL can add damage or range on a 2 for 1 basis, or they can still be used to gain threat. If an attack actually takes life from a hero, surges can also be used to add life to any one monster in LOS of the hit, again on a 2 for 1 basis - a kind of moral boost for the bad guys if you like.

With all of these extra options available to the OL, I limit the number of cards held by the OL to 4.

Bane spiders apart from being psychologically icky are not much chop. So I've given them the ability to spin web outside of an attack. The web can be left on any space the spider passes over or is adjacent to in turn. The spider can generate 1 web token per half action. The web blocks LOS, arrests movement for anything that can't fly and isn't a Bane spider, and takes 1 damage to destroy 1 token. It can be destroyed by melee weapons or by attacks that can reasonably be considered explosive or temperature attacks. A successful heat or cold attack will destroy the web tokens in the targetted space and any web in spaces connected to it, cascading outwards. If a web is destroyed by heat, any monster or hero in it receives burn tokens equal to the number of web tokens it is on. An unwebbed hero can free a webbed hero by destroying the web as above. A webbed hero cannot make any of the above attacks. This makes Bane spiders different and fun, able to create spawning chambers, lay a new kind of trap on spaces heroes need to jump to, burying treasure chests a few squares deep in web, and oh what fun when they web up a long corridor that itches for a boulder...

Razorwings (both normal and master) are also a nuisance monster, so I've made them a little more annoying by giving them a permanent dodge ability.

So what do you all out there do? Perhaps if there is a commonly applied change to the game, it might influence FFG to alter the official rules.

Holy smoke, those are some pretty significant changes.

Giving monsters the ability to do all the same actions as Heroes is a huge change. How do you deal with monsters with Quick Shot now or is that ability completely gone? And I can't even imagine the horror show that must be a group of Kobolds who move in on their turn to surround a Hero and the all place Guard orders. They would all get the Swarm bonus, and would probably be an instant death on that poor Hero. I can think of at least four or five OL cards that are completely useless now with that change.

As for the surges thing, you basically went and gave every monster Dark Prayer? And if a Hero suffers wounds, the attack gets Leech that can be given to any monster in LOS?

The web thing for the Bane Spiders isn't bad, but why would they block LOS? And by the sound of it, you've completely altered the rules for the Web effect token as well.

Permenant Dodge for Razorwings? Really?

I mean I honestly hate to sound like I'm just coming down on you, since I don't mind a house rule here and there if its warranted, but these are a significant change in the way the game is played IMO. And if I'm going to be truthful with you, there's not a single one there I would want FFG to make an official part of the game.

Those don't sound like they are in any way designed to address balance issues; they sound like they're designed to appeal to your personal sense of aesthetics and theme. Not that that's bad, and you didn't actually say that your house rules were there for balance reasons, I just don't want anyone to get the wrong impression. Those sound like they're rather more likely to upset balance than improve it, and certainly have the potential to change the tactical landscape quite a bit.

I believe that most of the game's balance problems can be traced back to the fact that monsters drop like flies, and I'm currently working on a complete re-balancing of the game to address them (new stats for monsters, new treasure cards, new OL cards, new quests...). But I don't really have any house rules I use in "normal" play, other than the decisions we've made about how to treat various ambiguous rules.

Thanks for the feedback, and I take no offence. As I said, I'm new to the game and it may be that these changes are too overpowering, but they've been working well so far.

I haven't changed the rules that exist for a player being webbed, it just seems logical to me that an adjacent player can help you out of it.

My intent is to go through all the standard scenarios with them and see how it goes. I sincerely doubt a party of less than 4 heroes would survive it , but 4 is what we're using - and from reading the forums it seems that the 4 hero party is the one that exposes the most imbalance in the game.

So you always play the game strictly to the rules and FAQ?

steverey said:

Uh...well, 4 heroes gives the maximum advantage to the heroes, and it causes any given unbalancing card or combo to appear more often just because they have more cards, but if you want to see what power abuses are available to the overlord, playing with the minimum number of players is likely to be much more revealing. When there's only 2 heroes, a single web/stun marker or a single trap is much more likely to produce a huge effect, spawn cards become massively more powerful, and the overlord generally has a lot more space to maneuver.

Many of the official quests are also probably virtually unwinnable with only 2 heroes, but that's kind of the point...

Holy Cow Stevery! You obviously don't play with the expansions.

All your rules make it harder for the players. I agree with Big Remy, I hate to come down on you too, but your house rules are not good, and I would NEVER want FFG to make them official.

If you are playing the base game and think its to easy for the hero's simply get the expansions. It makes it more then hard enough.

I have ZERO balance issues, and i've argued this time and time again on FFG forums.

The expansions make it a lot harder for players so I only have one house rule. The way characters are picked.

instead of just dealing out 4 characters, I make 3 piles of melee, ranged, and magic attack types. Then I let each character choose an attack type and choose 2 characters. they can then pick one of the two.

this makes the party more balanced each game. with that like I said...I have ZERO balance problems.

On the subject of the surges giving life bit, I wouldn't call that Leech.

The surges can only be spent on 1 thing. If the attack only does enough to penetrate armor without the use of surges, and 2 surges were rolled, then the OL could spend the surges to cause 1 extra damage and hence 1 wound. Having spent them, they can't then be used again to boost a monster.

KAGE13 said:

Thanks for the feedback too. I did not suggest that those rules be adopted. I'm asking the forum members whether they have house rules in order to see if there are commonly used ones. I always find it more effective in getting feedback to put up something argumentative than to just leave a blank slate.

Ah well, seems there was enough feedback on this thread to prevent anyone else from answering it for fear of being made to feel mentally deficient.

To sum up:

Nobody sensible uses house rules beyond character selection, to do otherwise is bound to destroy the gaming experience, which can only be improved by purchasing expansions. So if all you have is JITD, tough luck. Under no circumstances should any of the rules I had previously stated be considered. Don't try them. I shall confine myself then only to reading what wiser heads on these forums decree.

I repent my sins

no truly

I'm going to apologize here. It was not my intent, and I'm sure this goes for several others as well, to try and make you feel "mentally deficient".

That being said, the "house rules" you posted weren't exactly what one would call minor tweaks to the game. Those are half a step away from redesigning the rules of the entire game . So while coming on there to post argumentative things to get a discussion going is all well and good, coming on here and presenting those a reasonable house rules was never going to get you a good reception.

Several reasonable house rules I've seen:

1) Hero selection: For JitD, do it the RtL way. So deal 3 and choose 1. Another way I've seen is to separate the Heroes into Melee, Range and Magic users and pick one from each of those.

2) Rapid Fire: probably the most common house rule. Limit to one use, so that it doesn't chain especially when combined with the Guantlets of Power.

3) Crushing Blow: Some (myself not included) feel this card is very overpowered. Potential fixes I've seen are raising the Treachery cost of the card, limiting its use to once or twice a dungeon, etc etc.

Those are what I call house rules. Again, sorry for the reception but what you posted was only the fairly radical side for this game IMO.

Oh and something from one of your earliers posts: Mixing Logic and Descent will only lead to several mental anguish.

Actually, about the spider web thing, I've spent over 5 turns in a web, (bad luck happens..) And a lot can happen in 5 turns.. I do agree about having a rule, where alies can help you out of the web. They should be next to you and it should cost them their turn of attack, like placing an order, maybe roll and try to get the power stormy thing... it seems more logical. (sorry don't know the terms I play the game in french, hope you get what I mean)

Ya I wasn't really trying to make you feel dumb either, but your suggestions are...showing your inexperience in the game.

All your suggestions make things more beneficial to the OL player.

The players have a hard enough time already with out giving every monster and extra attack, more movement, free dodge, extra damage for surges every single OL turn...OMG the hero's might as well not even try.

I have been around and playing descent since day 1. I've played and watched discussions through every single expansion.

EVERY single new player has their own "house rule" ideas because they insist the game is "unbalanced".
99% of the time I've found that its because they've misinterpreted a rule and are doing something wrong.

Yes the base game was a bit easy for the hero's, and then the expansions made things harder for the hero's. Now the new expansion has given a bit of power back to the hero's with feats and invisability potions.

but to me, the game should be harder for the hero's. But not impossible, which your house rules would make it.

If you want more depth play D&D, if you want less play hero quest.

but to me this is **** near the perfect board game with 5 players. And I own and play A LOT of board games.

I wouldn't change a thing except maybe tweaking or adding to Road to Legend.
But FFG is very good at "balancing" all their board game with expansions...if something needs balancing.

Having said all that, I know that I am a very ANTI-house rule board gamer. So, even if something does need a fix, I might not always see it that way.

But trust me on these ones, your house rules would not change the balance of the game, but destroy it entirly.

Its fun the way it is.

Two house rules I've been considering are as follows (we only have Journey and Altar btw):

1) All Aim, Dodge, Rage, etc. type are interchangeable, but all cost 5 threat ( one higher than the highest threat for these type of cards I believe). So for example, if you have an Aim card, you can instead play it as a Charge card. Basically, it's like replacing all these cards with one card that encompasses all the abilities. The tradeoff is all these actions are set at a higher threat.

2) Having an in-town healer of sorts that will fully heal and restore fatigue in one full turn for 500 coins. It is more expensive than drinking potions because of the time saved.

We have house rules for incorporating feat cards (by including them in more limited numbers) and limiting rapid fire (to once per main attack.. 1 on advance and 2 on battle). We also have a rule to prevent Tamalir Rush (just to remove that rather boring campaign start) by saying that 2 other cities must be razed beforehand. Global radius on all cards is reduced from 3 to 2 (command, divine retr. etc.). Lawlessness says may add or remove one dice . And finally, Staff of the Grave ignore undying ability costs 1 surge.

McRae said:

Isn't one of the few advantages that the OL has over these multi-talented globe trotting pillagers (heroes) the fact that it takes time to heal? Otherwise each area of the dungeon is basically a restart. I know I sound in this thread to be on the OL's side but I've actually been playing the hero in my games. How about rather than 500 coins the hero hands over his conquest value?

angel1977 said:

What prompted this rule?

KAGE13 said:

You seriously think RtL has good balance? It will take more than a few tweaks to fix it. The heroes can annihilate the avatar in the final battle while being behind 3 to 1 in conquest. The avatar MUST go for a Tamilar raze or an early Ascension plot. Crushing Blow is mandatory. So is Spiritwalker, Rapid Fire, Knight, Leadership, and Quick Casting. Copper level is very easy for the heroes and gold level is a joke for them. Certain monsters are strictly inferior to others.

Come on. RtL is a good game, but there are many, many balance issues. The OP's changes didn't fix any of them, but there's nothing wrong with changing the game because it's already so well-balanced or something.

Based on his comment about "balancing" the board game with expansions, I can only imagine that KAGE13 is using the word "balance" to refer only to equalizing each side's chance of winning, and not to issues with particular strategies or cards that make some clearly superior to others. I don't think that's how most people use the term "balance" in this context, but it makes his post sound a lot more reasonable (at least to me, with my ignorance of RtL stuff).

Hard to imagine that someone would fail to see power discrepancies in the base game. Not so hard to imagine that they think the overall win rate for the heroes and the overlord is good enough, especially when they have a general anti-house rule philosophy.

Big Remy said:

Nothing special really. We just felt that in many of the RtL dungeons, global radius of range 3 covered a large part of the dungeon level (compared to vanilla descent maps). It's one of those house rules that I'm unsure about. We might end up removing it again if we feel that it cripples some abilities too much.

steverey said:

Thinking about this one without being cheeky this time, it might be worth considering town healing in 1 turn without using potions at a cost in conquest tokens equal to the life healed / hero's life total rounded UP. so a 4 conquest hero with 16 LP could heal 5 to 8 life for a cost of 2 conquest tokens. But wait, there's more! With this offer you'd also remove ALL poison tokens and other effects AND restore all fatigue. Obviously the hero would be weighing up the time and cost saved with the impact on the whole party - or at least the party would be...

Given that there is Divine Retribution, one could reason that the 'on death' restart is a Divine Resurrection, which clearly has a conquest token cost, so Divine Healing isn't a ridiculous theme. Maybe praying for Divine Intervention can only be done with conquest tokens and not with coin.

steverey said:

I don't see why the heroes would want to do this in Vanilla Descent or RtL

Vanilla Descent: Seeing as how I lose the game if I lose all my CT, why would I willingly give up 2 CT when I could spend two turns drinking potions for the same benefit?

RtL: I could maybe see this, but you'd have to spend XP instead of CT since you don't spend CT in RtL. And frankly, I'm not sure I'd want to reduce my XP by 2 to gain back life on a regular basis when I could just fight to the death and give the OL the 2-4 CT and come back at full health and fatigue.

SkittlesAreYum said:

Don't think this whole thing was about RtL, but it can be fixed with some tweaks, and not major overhals.

so you are saying that if the overlord has 402 XP and the hero's only have 198xp , they can cake walk through the OL. And if the XP is 3 to 1 in favor of the OL, then obviously they haven't has as much as a cake walk as you claim.

I find that hard to believe, since a hero would only have, 1 gold dice, 3 silver, 3 skills, and +4 health. and the overlord could do...pretty much have every upgrade. and NO Talmiar upgrades for the hero's.

not to mention I've heard many many people claim they need to take Crushing blow out of RtL becuase its to much of an advantage for the OL.

any way, RtL aside I think Descent is balanced fine.

Yes there is no problem in making house rules even if the game is balanced already, but for me, in my humble opinion, If its balanced, then why would you want to waste time adding house rules, play testing them, when you could just be playing and having fun,. and take the chance of unbalancing the game. which the suggested rules at the begining of this thread would do.

sorry my math is bad...

3 to 1 would be 150xp for the heros to 450 for the OL,

The heros could only have

1 gold dice
2 Silver dice
1 Black Dice

3 skills

NO Talimar Upgrades.

the OL could have. EVERY SINGLE upgrade with XP to spare,
And you feel crushing blow is mandatory?

Your OL must be doing something wrong if the Hero's are finding it to easy with these numbers.

This is a re-post, hope it doesn't duplicate.

Another house rule we use is that the off-hand bonus can be used with an adjacent range or magic attack - so you can fire that crossbow AND stab the beast in the eye with your dagger. I mean, you would, wouldn't you?

You know, your obsession with subjugating mechanics to theme would be much less annoying if you were less arbitrary about what mechanics you decided were thematically OK.

An attack doesn't have to represent a single swing and dual-wielding certainly doesn't have to represent swinging with both weapons. The mechanics certainly don't make sense if that's what you want to represent--that would be better represented by two attack rolls, not adding a bonus that neither weapon could generate alone onto a single attack roll.

Dual-wielding represents using the two weapons synergystically. A dagger and a crossbow do not synergize. I'm no weapons expert, but I'm reasonably confident that if you proposed attacking simultaneously with a crossbow and a dagger in real life, unless you were suggesting using the crossbow as an improvised club, you'd be laughed out of the room. Also, the rules already allow you to claim an off-hand bonus when making a Reach attack (though that's only possible for an expansion hero), so limiting the bonus to adjacent targets only for ranged attacks is inconsistent.

Also, all magic weapons are two-handed, so that rule doesn't actually have any effect except for ranged weapons.