questions from a newbie

By nasonex, in Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Hey, I recently bought Descent and Im having a blast with it.

Although we had some discussions about the rules. How do I calculate range? Do I just add up all the range numbers on the rangedie + yellow or greens and then either add damage or range from the black dice? Or is it the highest rolled range that determin the range and you ignore the others?

also, Im having a hard time as OL. Its semi-easy to get one or two heroes killed at the start if there is a master-monster near the start but after the heroes get the first chest it seems killing them is almost impossible for me (seems like the only challenge for them are masters and only if there is alot of them). I can just forget even hurting them with normal monsters.

also, is there any rule that covers selling? and how much you can sell each round? Reason Im asking is because of the chests people often get things they do not want or get upgrades in the next chest and I think during the last mission my players visited town 10-12 times to sell treasurecards and they ended up buying alot of gold treasures and skillcards since they got so much money (making it even harder for me to kill them;) )

1. Range is added from all white/red/blue, green and yellow dices. If you need more to reach the target; you spend range from the power enhancement result on the black dice. The unused range from the black dices is added to damage.

2. Practice makes perfect. You'll get the hang of it. Normal monsters may seem weak but when you learn to use them they will wear down the heroes slowly but surely.

3. Items that is picked up in the dungeon can be sold at half price on the market. The party may not buy items of a higher grade than the highest level chest they've opened; so no gold items before you've reached that gold chest. From the faq:

Buying Treasure Cards from the Shop
Heroes can only buy treasure cards from the shop if they’ve previously opened at least one chest of that color this game. For example, until the heroes open at least one silver chest, they cannot buy silver treasures from the town shop.

got any good ideas on how to use the normal monsters? :D

nasonex said:

got any good ideas on how to use the normal monsters? :D

If they have the speed for it, do hit and run attacks. Otherwise swarm the monsters onto the Heroes and slowly wear them down.

Avoid attacking tanks as much as possible and go after ranged/magic Heroes since they tend to be easier to kill. Traps are one of your best allies against tanks.

From the general list of rules to double-check when the heroes are winning...

  • Limit to 1 potion per turn
  • Can't buy treasures of a level higher than the highest chest opened
  • The original printed rules allowed heroes to immediately trade in a treasure from a chest for its full value in coins, but the errata don't allow this; if they don't like a treasure, they have to take it back to town and sell it for half price.
  • Heroes are limited to 3 items in their backpack.
  • Using the shop costs 3 movement points (though when you use it, you can buy/sell as much as you want).
  • The only way to transfer an item to another hero is to move adjacent to that hero and then spend 1 movement point per item you want to give. You can never transfer coins.
  • A given hero cannot teleport to and from town on the same turn; he has to wait a turn before coming back.

Also note that the first few quests are pretty easy for the heroes; things will generally get harder for them as you go on. The numer of heroes in the game also influences the difficulty a good deal; the heroes will have an easier time when there are lots of them.

It's not uncommon for the heroes to kill most monsters very quickly, often before they even get a turn, but remember that you can spawn additional monsters with cards, and spawned monsters can move and attack on the turn they're spawned.

Keeping track of the heroes movement and other stats and abilitities will help. I usually make a chart of hero players abilities and refer to it druring combat. If I can move a monster out of range, or make a hero expend surge to attack, so much the better.

Also, try to split up the party by spawning new monsters at different points in the dungeon. Hero parties tend to split up when collecting loot, this is a good time to spawn monsters.

Falling blocks and pits are good because they inflict damage that ingores armor, plus you can situate the resultant obstacle to block line of sight or create choke points.

The idea is to wear the party down. Eventually you'll get them to the point where you can pick them off easily.