She is outright immune to the attacks of 7(8 if she is considered immune to the Leap attack) of the monsters that may be thrown at a party. That is 28% (32%counting Leap) of all the monsters can't hit her. The only Melee monsters than can hit her are the Giant, Troll, and Wendigo, and depending on the enterpretation of Leap, Blood Apes. Of the common (meaning Monsters the OL can summon without the use of the Treachery decks) monsters you find in dungeons she is immune to 7 out of 13 or 54%. In my opinion anyone immune to that many attacks is easily worth 3 points.

I think there's a number of problems with that line of reasoning.

First of all, the fact that Zyla is immune doesn't usually provide much help to the heroes; the monsters that can't hurt her will try to attack someone else, and if they succeed, they're still inflicting just as much damage on the party. You could theoretically have her go into dangerous situations alone or try to hinder melee monsters from reaching other heroes, but there's a limit to the effectiveness of such tactics (especially when she's easily killed by other monsters and doesn't block movement), so the effective gain to the heroes as a group is far smaller than you imply, except under highly specific circumstances. Letting her get Grapple may be a problem (though giving that to heroes in the first place was arguably a bad idea), but that's a special case.

Secondly, what are you comparing Zyla against in determining she should be worth 3 conquest? Even if we say that she's immune to a third of all monsters and take that to mean that one third of the damage she would otherwise sustain is simply negated (rather than transferred to other party members), that just means that it takes 50% more attacks to kill her than her stats would suggest, which would put her at the equivalent of about 12 health and 0 armor, which (according to precedent) only warrants 2 conquest for anyone except Shiver (who has a powerful defensive ability). And that's without even taking into account Zyla's comparative vulnerability to traps.

And Zyla's poor health/armor and completey distributed trait dice and skills suggest she should have a powerful ability...

And even in some hypothetical perfect scenario where Zyla really does make melee monsters dramatically less useful, it's reasonable to assume that the OL will tailor his choice of spawns appropriately...

Zyla is possibly overpowered, but I don't think she's good enough to warrant trippling her conquest value--and even if she was that good, she doesn't have sufficient general defenses to warrant it, and using a disproportionately high conquest value to compensate for generic awesomeness is a poor design strategy.

If you want to make her weaker, a better starting point might be to decide that her Fly ability is pretty similar to the Acrobat skill, and that she therefore has one skill "built in," and should only draw 2 to start with.

In practice, she is extremely overpowered. In my current RtL group, we're all agreed on that (even the person playing her). The reasons are as follows:

1) The fact that she is immune to a good number of monsters means that if she focusses on the monsters that CAN hurt her (and those tend to be more fragile than the melee monsters) it's generally pretty easy for her and the fellow heroes to ensure that she is completely invulnerable. Given her ability to fly, it is extremely easy for her to get in a good position to accomplish this. In my personal experience, there is often/usually a leaning towards melee monsters, and at any given time there are only a relatively small number of monsters that can threaten her. While, yes, the melee monsters will be focussing on one less hero, that doesn't change the fact that they can't harm HER. It doesn't increase the threat on the other heroes, since I could CHOOSE to ignore any hero. It just limits the overlord's options.

2) Her flight ability allows her to soom past areas without any hinderance. In RtL she can get past the tough areas in dungeons, take shortcuts over rubble that should slow down the party, and in outdoor encounters, her ability to fly over trees, mud, and water without being slowed makes her insanely mobile. In fact, the ability to zoom through and hit the glyph quickly (often on the first turn) means that quite often the entire party is able to emerge from an optimal position to take out any serious threats before the overlord has a chance to react.

3) The greatest damage (in my experience) comes from the melee monsters. The deep elves, the beastmen, and other similar critters. Again, her immunity to them makes her extremely difficult to kill. Not imposible, mind you, but when you have to focus all your ranged/magic attackers on her to MAYBE kill her, it's not worth it for the one conquest you get.

4) In RtL she is completely immune to many of the level bosses, multiple lieutenants, as well as one of the avatars.

Ultimately her invulnerability to an entire category of monsters in addition to her mobility and ability to avoid presenting a target to the few critters that can harm her make her worth far more than one conquest. As overlord it requires a great deal of strategy and effort to take her down for too little reward. I feel the same way as the original poster, in that she should be worth three conquest. Personally I'm tempted to file her away and not include her in the games again (once the current campaign is over, that is) since she makes most encounters and dungeon levels in RtL FAR too easy for the heroes. If I were to rebalance her instead, I'd likely take flight away, make her worth two conquest, and give her stealth instead of ghost against named melee monsters (maybe even let her dodge them too)

That being said, I have devised a couple ways to hinder her.

1) Focus on bringing her close to death, but only kill her at the right moment (i.e. to prevent the activation of a glyph, killing of a key monster or opening of a chest) Dealing poison damage in this way is quite helpful, as it makes it more ornerous for her to recover.

2) Trap treachery is your friend. Particularly the Dark Relic and Dark Charm. Since she is usually the one opening most of the chests (because of her crazy mobility and ability to ignore many monsters) it's pretty easy to lay a Dark Relic on her (like the boots of lead) Dark Charm lets you have one of her allies take her out at an opportune moment.

3) That's it, actually... If anyone else has some ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Osaka said:

It seems that your biggest problem is that she is extremely good against the style your group favours.

Personally I avoid Melee monsters (humanoids at least) like the plague when OLing as they are weak for a number of different reasons, despite their high damage possibilities.

2-3 attacks by Silver Skeletons will kill her most times. 1 good attack from a Silver+ Dark Priest will take her out. Even a Bronze master dark priest will often be a one shot kill on Zyla. Sorcerers are in a similar situation.
Note that Skeletons and Sorcerers are the most common level Bosses and Skeletons are available as the filler for many many levels.

If Beasts is your thing then Spiders looove little flies like Zyla. Hellhounds and Manticores are pretty feeble against everyone in Bronze, but once the get to Silver they will happily take Zyla out in a couple of shots. Naga's are a one shot kill by silver too.
Leap from Bloodapes is interesting (unless there is a clarification I've missed) as although it uses a Red dice, Leap is not specifically a melee attack and the Leaper is not specifically adjacent.

While she is very useful with the flying, particularly on outdoor maps, almost all of the non-humanoid focused Lts have plenty of capability to take her out. Even those who are limited to a direct, adjacent melee attack have minions (and reinforcements) that can take Zyla out fairly easily.

Frankly, I think if you play some different avatars with a different style you might find Zyla underpowered, or at least, a weakness in the party.

It is also important to note that the OL gets the opportunity to choose his avatar after he has seen the heroes and their skills etc. An OL who chooses a humanoid based Avatar after seeing Zyla in the party deserves all the pain that follows.

Having said that - Zyla definitely 'breaks' certain styles of playing. But then, Taunt does that to a sniper King, Tiger Tattoo and Cautious screw over the Spider Queen nicely (if not nearly as badly as Zyla does). There are strengths and weaknesses. Adapt.

Corbon said:

Leap isn't specifically a melee thing, but Blood Apes have a melee attack, and I see no reason why the attack type would change when making a Leap attack. Attacks with Blast, Bolt, and Breath all retain their original attack types.

So as the rules currently stand, I believe Leap attacks should work against Zyla if and only if the Blood Ape lands at least 2 spaces away from her (a Blood Ape that is killed in mid-Leap doesn't get to make an attack at all, so precedent says that, in mechanical terms, the attack isn't made until the Blood Ape lands--which is also what the rules literally say). That may be unintended, but I think it's pretty clearly correct by RAW.

And hypothetically if some figure with a ranged or magic attack had Leap, that would work regardless of landing position.

I agree that in RtL Zyla should be worth more than one conquest.

The thing about Zyla for me is that there is very little consequence for her actions. Yes you can kill her using traps or a few shots with ranged or magic characters but she is only worth 1 conquest. So it's easy to run her to a glyph and activate it, or have her open a chest without worrying if she is going to die because again only one conquest. She only needs to wear elven robes for armor and if you give her the ring of protection she can start with 3 armor against everything except melee monsters with reach. That's not bad. Her 1/1/1 dice although not ideal aren't that bad. You shouldn't be counting on her to be a a big hitter. Her 1/1/1 skills in RtL are a non issue. With Full Fatigue and a potion she can move 17 spaces. With the fly ability that means she can pretty much go anywhere. So the heroes can almost always activate a glyph with her for 3 conquest, even if they plan on fleeing a dungeon, and only risk losing 1 to the OL.

Compare her to Arium or Red Scorpion. She is better than both those characters(without taking conquest value into consideration) and they are worth 2/3 conquest respectively. I don't think she is 3 times harder to kill than Red Scorpion and I think she is much much more useful. I understand that these aren't the stongest heroes, but among some of the weakest. The heroes are not balanced, some are clearly better than others. However I don't think there is another character where I could double their conquest worth and have the still be a resonable choice over a similar character at half the conquest Nanok at 8? Landric at 6? It just doesn't work.

I just feel that 1 conquest isn't enough of a consequence for her death for what she can bring to the group. People talk about runners being useful and to me she is a super runner. Up to 17 spaces in one turn igonoring enemies and obsticles. Only a few characters have more potential movement than 17. If she dies shrugh.

I agree that the OL can change up the way he/she plays to account for Zyla. However, for a hero to cause the overlord to rethink the way they are going to play an entire campaign over a hero that is only worth 1 conqust token I think that character might be a little too powerful.

We currently have Zyla in our campaign. She is overpowered in Copper, and underpowered in Silver and Gold is what we have found.

Helznicht said:

I haven't actually seen her in action in a RtL game just in basic Descent. What makes her underpowered when you get to Silver and Gold?

2 main reasons we see:

1) By Silver, you need to be rolling 5 black dice or better to be effective offensively, to punch through the higher armors and health of silver monsters. With only 1 dice in any trait, she will be trailing behind all others, leaving her mainly as goodie grabber, which in itself is not bad, except:

2) At silver ranged monsters damage output easily gets by her at best 2 armor (lets face it, other high ct characters are going to get the good stuff before her). She is more often than not 1-2 shotted in 1 round from being fresh with 8 health before you even get to use a potion, making it real risky to run her out.

In copper, I could run her out, take a couple shots, and still make it to a glyph/chest in the second round, and often to some cover therafter. In silver, if she is out in the open, she is dead 9 times out of 10. I use her mainly now to draw fire, better her to die than my high damage mage or my 3 ct warrior. If the draw fire doesnt work, then I glyph grab with her.

The only time she is worth her salt is in encounters/dungeons with meele only bosses to keep them away from your characters, but since you want to kill those as quick as possible, the trick is limited to the oddball super kick but boss.

Also my wifely overlord has learned to save the ranged spawn cards and not thow those away, she always keeps one available. So in todays dungeons, seeing all meele is EXTREMELY rare, and quickly remidied by her.

Xyla in my group is using melee weapons (currently the bronze sword with +1dam/surge and the morning-star off-hand) and is able to kill outright anything ranged or magic she attacks with ease. I don't see that changing in silver level, as eldrich and monster classes don't really become much more durable (at least not the ones that you see on the table more than once every few sessions)

We just hit silver at the end of last week's session, so I'll have to see how things play out when I can upgrade more monster groups (I upgraded humanoids in bronze since I'm playing the Beastman Lord) I also finally got my second trap treachery, so I'll have to see if I scorn Xyla a little less when she's equipped with the boots of lead!

I realize that silver skeletons might have a better time of killing her, but I simply didn't want to have to wait for and spend the extra conquest that early in the game. Now that we've hit silver that'll be my next investment, I think. As for any of the other monsters you suggested for dealing with her:

a) They are exceedingly fragile, so even the weakest of the group can reliably squash them with one attack, and

b) They are rare. Most dungeon levels in RtL will have few of them to begin with, and there aren't nearly as many spawn cards for them (proportionately) as there are for the melee monsters (I'm not 100% sure on the last part, but that's the impression I get) Any of these kind of monsters that do see the table become the highest priority of the group, and therefore if I'm extra lucky, I might get one shot off with one of them before they're slaughtered. The heroes recognize the worth of having a fast and invulnerable party member, so they coordinate to ensure that they have one as long and as often as possible.

Helznicht said:

With youre example for the silver level it doesn't sound like you have upraded her at all beyond her starting gear. At this point she should have better aromor than store bought. She should have upgreaded her fatige or health. Also she should have another skill you could get her deflect arrows or the one that gives +2 armor to magic attacks to give her even more armor. If she has the copper robes(don't remember the name) and deflect arrwos she as 5 armor against skeltons which i am guessing are her biggest problem. I don't think this is hard to acomlish for her.

Also it seems like with her movement she should be able to get to her destination in one turn. Then she dies and gets all her fatigue back. Load her up at the beginging of a dungeon with fatigue potions and she should be able reach 80-90% of the glyphs on her very first turn from the starting glyph. That is extremely helpful in some dungeons.

I haven't used her yet in any context, but the mere fact that she effectively has Acrobat (in non-RtL, the best skill in the game hands-down) for FREE sounds ludicrously powerful. For non-RtL Descent, this is far more relevant than Ghost. In RtL, Ghost is more significant, but her Flying still means it is easy to abandon floors and have her grab glyphs/money-piles for the incredibly low cost of 1-CT. Definitely sounds too strong.

As an aside though, in terms of other characters that could be worth double CT and still be good, I actually DO think that Nanok (without house-rules) is easily worth 8 CT in RtL...

quartersmostly,

Appreciate the pointers, and I am definately looking to get the dodge arrows skill, but shoudl I put it on her or my mage that has a much higher damage output and is worth 2 ct?

But, I would say any one who has gotten ALL thier characters the following by the start of silver is doing Extremely well:

1) Upgraded health and/or fatigue

2) Copper armor

3) Copper weapon

4) One addiitional skill

5) added 3 or more trait dice

Two of my characters have all the above, the other 2 are on the way. Since she is only 1 CT, she will get the last pick in defensive items. I am sure I could make her more effective, but other more useful characters would have suffered. My 2 cents.

Osaka said:

I think you are still basing your analysis solely on playing the Beastman Lord. As far as durability goes, it is true that in general the common Ranged and Magic creatures are slightly less tough than melee critters - but the effect is marginal. It is rare that a one-shot kill that would take out a silver ranged/magic monster would not take out an equivalent silver melee monster. The possible exception is admittedly Silver Skeletons, who at 8/1 just barely fall into the high range of basic weapon one-shots. OTOH, at 8/3 the Silver Beastmen are only very marginally safer...

Remember in your spawn experience you will have been skewing your level loadouts toward Humanoids and away from Eldritch, and similarly with the spawns you play/discard.

Non treachery spawn cards off the top of my head go something like 2x Skeleton, 2x Spider, 2x Beastman, 1x Dark priest, 1x Sorcerer, 1x BloodApe, 1x Hellhound, 1x Razorwing, 1x Ferrox, 2?x Kobald. ToI adds something like 1x Medusa (Ranged Humanoid), 1x Lava Beetles (Ranged Beast) and 1x Shades (Magic Eldritch).
Even if you count Kobalds at full value (dubious) that leaves the count something like 7-6 against melee, 10-6 if you include ToI (leaving Bloodapes out because they are both freakily tougher and their melee attack can be used sometimes against Zyla).
Basically, if you weren't humanoid focused you'd not be finding melee more common I think (remove the Kobalds and it is 7-4 or 10/4). Especially if you add in ToI.

Having said that, if Zyla were worth 2 CT she would not by any means be ruled out as a viable hero choice (at 3CT she definitely would for me, much like Laurel) - which I think is a good indication of 'true value' (when a buyer can neither rule out nor automatically accept a choice, the value must be close to true - at least for that buyer)).
I think 1CT makes her a 'very very good' hero, 2 CT would make her 'ok but not great' and 3 CT would be 'rubbish'.

Corbon said:

That scale is about the way I see it. 3 is a ridiculous cost for someone that is probably going to die from trapmaster and two consecutive pits.

Corbon, you do make some fine points. It IS true that many of my gripes relate to the Avatar I'm playing, but the fact is that Xyla makes life exceedingly difficult for both the Beastman Lord and the Titan unless they make their monster priority a more expensive upgrade, which gives further advantage to the heroes. *shrug*

I think I would still have a problem with her even if I was playing a different Avatar, as a smart player will be able to avoid virtually all threats to her while using her to present a significant threat to the OL that he can't address. And, as mentioned, her rediculous mobility makes many/most dungeons/encounters in RtL far too easy. They drew "The Gauntlet" as their second dungeon level in their first dungeon level, and unfortunately, while I already had Trapmaster in play, I only had one pit trap in my hand when they entered the level. On the first turn Xyla activated the glyph, the rest of the party poured through it, and the level leader was dead. SPLAT. I didn't even get a single turn to respond. On the second turn they had the chest, and on the third they were gone. This is just one example of many similar situations, but this was the best example that came to mind.

In response to Pinkymadigan, yes, trapmaster and two pits will take her out, but it'll also take out brother Glyr, who is worth (3? 4?) or any other hero with 8 health. That assumes you're willing to invest effectively (21?) threat for two conquest, and that those cards come up as you need them. And that's assuming she's not carrying a healing potion for such situations. And that's assuming you're not playing RtL where the party makes a dash for the secret trainer right off the bat so she can get 12 health. ;-)

Osaka said:

Yeah, shes good.
Thing is though, any decent runner could do exactly the same thing if they draw acrobat. Okalak and Rakash can do it, Silhouette can do it, Thorn can do it (sometimes much better!), Astarra can do it. Ronan can do it. And all of those contribute more in other areas when needed to.

If Acrobat is lacking Telekinesis does a good job substituting and even, at worst, a hammer with an advance can do almost the same job.

But still, having Acrobat/Fly as a starting skill is very, very good. And for 1CT Zyla would still be worthwhile with just Ghost and no fly.

Perhaps Fly should be FAQed so that while you can move over a space with an enemy figure you can't do anything in that space (eg, activate glyphs, open treasure, pick up coin stashes etc) - since you are 'overhead' rather than actually 'in' the space. That would help I think.

I think getting rid of her flight entirely would balance her out a little bit, but just nerfing it a little like you suggest probably wouldnt's slow her down that much. The key thing is her mobility coupled with her pseudo-invulnerability that lets her get into crazy positions that noone would ever dare with any other hero, all with little or no consequence.

Your post broght something else to mind though... Her having flight built in means that another party member (e.g. one fist, miss "move on a guard order", etc) can buy acrobat, meaning you can have two crazy mobile characters in the party!

The other issue with her having Fly built in is that it's BUILT IN, meaning no need for a lucky skill draw or a journey to Dawnsmoor in RtL, and it also means she has some other skill in its place.

Osaka said:

Whee, rules quibble.

So, on turn 1, when she activates that Glyph, it is impossible for all of your heroes to pour out of it, since heroes can only use a glyph once per turn. That you didn't get even a turn to use your leader is a rules failure.

That is true. When the heroes begin a new level, they all have to start on or next to the open glyph. Osaka, did you realize there is an error in The Gauntlet? It was posted in the FAQ, which you can't access at the moment, of course. The glyph in the SE corner is not supposed to be open, at the beginning of the level....it should be inactive. That was a misprint. Maybe that's where the problem is emanating from. That would certainly change the terms of that level, completely. You may need a mulligan.

Okay, here's where I was VERY mistaken then. I was under the impression that unlike Regular Descent, in RtL the heroes effectively start "off-board" and enter through a glyph on their first turn, and that's how we've been playing it. I've just checked the rules, and confirmed that I was horribly, horribly wrong! I blame my brother, since he's not here to defend himself ;-)

So that changes things slightly, but not so much, really.

I'll never turn down Zyla. I bough ToI after WoD, finding that the balance seemed to be strongly in the OL's favor (at least for WoD quests), and I about lost my $#!t when I saw there was a flying hero worth 1 conquest. Granted, she's spread out in terms of skills and dice, but as someone else pointed out, she basically has built in acrobat...actually fly may be slightly better than acrobat. And with decent speed, excellent fatigue, beastman immunity, and very little cost if she does in fact die, she's pretty much the ultimate runner.

At the same time, I've seen her be pretty ineffective in combat without the right skills...but that's also playing with people who don't believe in power potions outside of RtL, so...that may be part of it.

In terms of Zyla in RTL, I would have to say she seems like she would be overpowered for certain. Once you get some of her dice upgraded (probably based on the skill you pick for her) and possibly increase her fatigue a little bit (I gotta think the extra movement from fatigue is worth more than trying to protect her from death, especially since upgraded monsters make one shots so common anyways), I can see her being highly frustrating for any OL. Beastman Lord can't even hit her, so...I sure wouldn't pick him..unless you're planning to win before the final battle via a) your plot Eternal Night (since ascenscion allows them to enter before you get all your comets) or b) tamalir raze, and maybe MAYBE c) obsidian shackles (better hope you don't shackle a melee hero if it isn't lord hawthorne). I guess final battles are pretty one-sided for the heroes if they get that far, anyway so...perhaps a tamalir raze or something is your plot all along...

I could conceive of her value being 2, but..she is a pixie/sprite, so...how much evil have you really done killing a silly little sprite?

Feanor said:

The OL gets to choose hAvatar after having seen the full hero party. SO a Beastman Lord feeling the pain against Zyla has only himself to blame. An Eldritch focused OL is just going to be laughing at Zyla CT wise, though Fly is still a problem.

That's why I said I wouldn't pick him. I did try to touch on what you could do if you were foolish enough to do so...ie win before the avatar battle since you can't win in the avatar battle until something in the faq says beastman lord ignores zyla's ghost. In general, since humanoids are so predominantly melee, picking titan or beastman lord in a campaign with zyla is not recommended.

I would agree that Sorcerer King or Demon Prince will eat zyla for breakfast. I might do Demon Prince and get his monster treachery upgraded. Put a wrath down and now that really easy to kill sprite just doubled in value.

I agree with Feanor’s assessment of Zyla being somewhat overpowered in RTL. With some fatigue upgrades, you have an unstoppable runner who can, on the first turn, dash through an entire level collecting all the treasure, coins, and whatever else, and then just die at very little benefit to the overlord.

That said, I don’t feel she’s broken. I would certainly prefer her to be worth more conquest but she is what she is. She adds a dynamic to a hero party that is unique at the cost of overall roup killing power.