Maybe some people can give me advice on playing the core set, or point me in the direction of an existing thread. I just played Descent for the first time with my friend. He played two heroes and I played the Overlord. We were playing Into the Dark, the first quest in the quest guide that came with the game.

My question, is that fact that I totally destroyed him a sign that we misinterpreted the rules? We both have a fair amount of RPG experience, DND especially, so we can usually interpret rules correctly. At first, it seemed like his characters were really overpowered but once I started getting Overlord cards and threat tokens, the table turned pretty quickly. He never made it passed Area 1.

Maybe someone can tell us if we were doing something wrong or give me some advice I can pass on to the players to make the game go a bit easier for them?

Thank you.

Playing with only 2 heroes makes the game particularly difficult to win for the hero side, something which is never really stated in the book. Think of it as "Hard Mode". For newcomers, it's particularly brutal. Try playing with 3 or 4 first to get a better feel for the game.

Thundercles is correct that playing with only two heroes tends to make things particularly hard; however, at the same time, you should note that the first quest is particularly easy for the heroes (at least compared to the other quests; maybe not for newbie heroes).

Some rules you might want to double-check:

• The overlord cannot spawn monsters within line-of-sight of any hero, and can only play one spawn card per turn.
• When a chest says something like "1 copper treasure," that means that every hero draws a copper treasure.
• Monsters cannot "battle" like heroes; they never attack more than once per turn unless you use a card.

Some things the heroes should do to improve their chances:

• Look over the different dice, and make sure that you start with a weapon that deals good damage. You almost always want to start with a weapon with a green die; the Mage Staff is OK if you have some source of bonus damage, but using a Dagger or Bow as your starting weapon is almost always a bad idea.
• Every hero should start buy some kind of armor to start. Melee or ranged heroes with 4 or less speed should almost always start with chainmail, unless you run out.
• Spend fatigue to move so that you can make more attacks; drink vitality potions so that you have more fatigue to spend. Many people will tell you that every hero should drink a vitality potion on the very first turn.
• Don't open a door to a new area until the current area is under control; when you open the door, most heroes will probably want to battle or ready and spend fatigue to move so that they can get in lots of attacks. It's not uncommon for heroes to kill most or all of the monsters in a new area before they get a single turn.

Though the first quest is probably the easiest, it's still quite hard with only 2 heroes controlled by inexperienced players: I ran that scenario with two of my friends a long time ago and wiped the floor with them.

Thank you both. It doesn't look like we did anything wrong from the point of view of the rules but we certainly didn't know it was harder with two characters and his weaker character had both the bow and daggers, so...

Antistone said:

Can you please tell me where it states that the overlord cannot use more than one spawn card per turn? My OL has been unleasing all of his spawn cards at once, and while i'm not sure I mind, I just want to show him the error of his ways.

Thanks!

An important thing to learn is the heroes need to try and keep line of sight as much as possible, to prevent the OL from spawning too closely. It's not always possible, but you always keep it in mind. Things like moving one more square forward so you can see most of the next room will often save at least one death. Of course, since you're playing with only two heroes it is much more difficult to keep line of sight. Yet another reason to play with three or four. I'd just give the two non-OL players two heroes each. Since it's a turn-based game it doesn't really matter how many heroes each person controls.

jjstev3 said:

Page 9, under "Step 2: Spawn Monsters":

To resolve this step of his turn, the overlord player may play one (and only one) spawn card.

Sarashinai said:

For any given hero to start with more than one type of weapon is usually a waste of coins; you can use ranged and magic weapons from only one space away without penalty, and you can't attack with more than one weapon at a time even if you have more than one equipped. Off-hand bonuses also only apply to melee attacks.

jjstev3 said:

JitD rules page 9:

" Step 2: Spawn Monsters
To resolve this step of his turn, the overlord player may play one (and only one) spawn card."

Page 12, under "Spawn Cards":

" Important: Only one spawn card may be played per turn."

Page 12, under "Spawning Monsters":

"Each turn, the overlord player may play a single spawn card."

Antistone said:

I recall after reading through the rules, seeing nothing that caused a penalty for using ranged weapons at point blank range, but my group seems to have instilled a house rule that makes it impossible. I can't remember if someone thought they saw a rule or if they just decided they liked it this way better. Does anyone have any thoughts on such a house rule. (Since it applies to both sides, it seems fair. I play a ranged hero, so it hurts me far more than anyone else in the group, but I don't really mind. We are only on the second quest of JitD, maybe i'll care more later.)

jjstev3 said:

I think the concept is just a general feature of most RPG's where there's a penalty for using a ranged weapon at point blank (such as DnD)

Decent is in NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM an RPG and there IS nothing in the rules for this idea.

Actually, such a house rule is very likely to hurt heroes more than monsters, because heroes can trade their movement for extra attacks (by declaring a battle action) but monsters always have movement points whether they want them or not. Thus, ranged monsters can just step away before attacking "for free" unless they are physically blocked from doing so (which is rare--blocking is hard in Descent), while ranged heroes always pay a cost for doing so.

Additionally, note that some ranged and magic weapons available to the heroes actually have rather poor range (e.g. Immolation), to the extent that you may actually have a noticeably higher miss chance from 2 spaces away than from 1 space away. Bane spiders are in a similar predicament, so this doesn't necessarily hurt heroes more, but it may have a nontrivial impact on tactics and game balance.

I recommend against instituting such a house rule until you have some experience with the game, especially if the heroes are currently losing by a large margin.

I finally got a chance to play the game, and in response to the original post I first have to say that I did a lot of things wrong while playing the OL. First, I used a lot of cards for cheaper threat than I should have. I was reading the wrong side of the card for threat cost/threat gained. Second, I played multiple spawns in multiple rounds (not that it mattered, because Boggs the rat was parked in just the right place to avoid most spawned critters). Other than that, I feel pretty sure we played the game in the right way. We used one hero from WoD (Lord Hawthorne), but everything else was the base set. The four heroes (all played by a person each), totally destroyed me as the OL!!!

Not that I mind too much, because people loved the game, but I thought I would share my experience from the other "side of the coin".

Here's my questions:

• In the first quest, why the hell is Narthak stuck behind a pit? Makes it very hard for him to enter the fray with only three move, and the hero players were just LOADED with goodies at that point, so we called the game at that point because they just ranged him to death. There were jokes galore at this point... "Why you so mean to Narthak?? Guys?"
• Did it take anyone else seven hours to run their first game? I assume it's a little quicker after the learning curve.

First Narthok can cross the pit (expesially with the latest FAQ where it can't effect him at all, 4 square base vs 2 square pit)

Second, the first one in my experiance (played it 4 times 2 as ol 2 as hero) is very easy win for the heroes as long as they move and don't wait around and as long as there are 3 or 4 heroes.

The length in my experiance does not go down at all. Becasue yes even though you play faster with experience the further along you get in the quest book the longer the quest get because of increased difficulty and increased complexity.

As solmead alluded to, large monsters aren't affected by pits unless they move such that every square they occupy is a pit square (that has always been the case, actually, it's not a change in the FAQ). And even if the pit were big enough to be a problem, worst-case scenario, Narthak voluntarily falls into it (sufferin 1 wound) and pays an extra movement point to climb back out, so it only delays him by 1 or 2 movement points.

However, the first quest is rather easy, and all monsters in Descent--bosses included--tend to die very fast. Even in later quests, you may find that if you don't save a Dodge card or two for the boss room, the boss may die before he gets a turn. Descent is just a very deadly game...

And I don't think my first game lasted 7 hours, but it lasted 6 or so. Gameplay does speed up a little bit. Keeping your components organized helps.

Get yourself some plastic hardware organisers - I'm using two with about 10 compartments each to deal with all the tokens and there are card tuck box designs available in the file download section of boardgamegeek (BGG).

Honestly, it really really helps.

There are also spreadsheet versions of the JiTD scenarios on BGG that you can print and mark up to serve as a snapshot of the game if you have to let real life interrupt it.

Satisfy the OCD in you.

two times i played the 1st scenario as OL with 4 players:) and i must tell that it was brutal for ...ME. They hunt down my monsters like a beast... a and poor gigant and 2 master manticore at the end... they open the door and turn my children in to the dust. (RIP) and i can tell you i have great time with them:)

First dungeon is Hard Mode for OL:) but something tell me the heroes will be punished in next quest:)

You dont misunderstand rules:) good to you. My biggest mistake was let the heroes get 3 potions and 3 items in backpack :/

Aust said:

To clarify: heroes are allowed to equip 3 potions and carry 3 items of any type (including potions) in their backpack. I assume you mean that you mistakenly let the heroes equip 3 potions, store 3 potions in their backpack, and store another 3 non-potion items in their backpack.

jjstev3 said:

Rules of Play, page 12:

Important: Only one spawn card may be played per turn.

Your not doing anything wrong. The concensus is that games with less than four characters are difficult and with only two, practically impossible.