About three months ago and picked up the basic Descent board game and have been playing it very actively ever since. I've played with the same group, and other groups and we've bounced around with the different players playing each role. The typical person in my group has been playing board/strategy/roleplaying games for at least 20-25 years, is intelligent, and highly, highly competitive.

Needless to say, we've had a lot of fun with Descent and have played through just over 20 games so far. We've been amazed at the balance between the overlord and the players. I am personally undefeated as the OL, but overall our games are about equal between the heroes and the OL in terms of victory/defeat. None of the victories by either side have been by a large margin, almost every game has been decided in 1-2 key rounds.

The extremely well balanced and playtested nature of the game is what I was expecting when we recently introduced all of the expansions (ToI, WoD, and AoD). While we got the campaign rules expansion as well, we aren't using it yet.

We're 12 games in since adding the expansions, and all 12 games have resulted in CRUSHING victories by the overlord. This is true even of the game where the only person in our group with no previous, core-game victories as the OL, was OL.

I see a lot of posts on the forums for various styles of play, and house rules people have come up with to address balance issues (which may in part be susceptible to localized misunderstandings of certain strategies, or even other house rules that create the issues to begin with, or just styles of play and preferences).

However, with all the issues I see, I don't see anything from the game designers. Sure, there are a few small FAQ answers, and issues, but nothing that specifically talks about balance issues. If I buy something that's broken (and my perception of the expansions is that they very much are), I expect the company that produces the product to respond, not the community.

If my car died every time I made a right hand turn, the community telling me that I could, in fact, make three left turns instead isn't helpful.

So where's the official response? Is the official answer that nothing is wrong, or something is but we don't know how to fix it, or maybe a fix is coming? I'm very curious, and it will definately effect my purchasing decisions in the future.

I very much doubt you'll get an official response, so this forum and BGG is all you got...

I've only played basic Descent thrice (quest 1 twice and quest 2 once), so you have lots more experience than me. However, I've had the game for years and read a lot of threads. Apparently, the basic game is balanced with 3 heroes. Play with 4 and its a bit easy for them and they win most of the time.

Then the first expansion came out and now the OL has treachery. Suddenly, the OL gets a big boost. More powerful cards in the deck without having to increase the size (i.e 1 in, 1 out). But, the OL got a slight disadvantage by some non-treachery cards being added, meaning he cycles through his deck slightly slower.

There were also some treasures and skills in the expansion which were very good, but overall, the OL got a boost I think.

I've read that the quests in WoD are especially difficult - to the point where they are broken, and the heroes have very little chance of winning. This I believe is a flaw in WoD. As far as I am concerned, each quest should have been properly playtested and be balanced. No chance.

Then comes along Tomb of Ice. And the heroes now get feat cards. They get them for free at the start, they get more for free as the game goes on, they cost nothing to use. So, a huge bonus for the heroes, with nothing at all to balance things for the OL. This IMO is bad. I like feats but they should have a cost associated with them to get &/or play. i.e The feat card mechanic should be balanced both for OL & heroes so that they effectively become an optional rule that you can then use with your normal (non-ToI) games without breaking the game.

But, combine WoD's impossible quests and ToI's freebie goodies for the heroes, now maybe that is balanced?

Unfortunately, you're just going to have to play the quests yourselves, and effectively playtest them. Play it once or twice. If you feel it is unbalanced, make some tweaks. Change some of the monsters, start the heroes with more / less conquest. All sorts of things like that.

I'm rather surprised to hear you speak so highly of the game balance without the expansions. There are numerous and obvious inequalities in the power of various cards and options, so its balance can obviously be improved if by "balance" we mean the fine tuning of all elements of the game, rather than just the overall win/lose rate.

And if you're speaking only of the average win rate in favor of one side or the other, your sample hardly sounds definitive--20 games spread across 9+ quests, with different play groups, with some overlords undefeated and others with zero wins? That sounds like it could easily be that some of your players are just better than others, or some of the quests are harder than others, or any of several other uncontrolled variables, rather than that the game is particularly balanced "on average."

Not to mention that it is already well established by the observations of numerous players that the particular quest played and the number of heroes in the game both have a profound effect on overall win rate, so if you're not controlling for those variables (and especially if you haven't even noticed those effects), it's hard to conclude anything at all from your data.

Still, it sounds like you've had a rather noticeable change after adding the expansions, so I can only assume there's some significant variable contributing to that. My first guess would be that you're playing expansion quests that are harder than the base game quests--I believe the Well of Darkness quests in particular are considered very difficult for the heroes. It would be interesting to know more particulars of your games.

Fair point, but again, I'm mostly *hoping* for a semi-official response. I doubt I'll get one.

For what it's worth though, every game I have played has been from the quests in the original core game, and all but one of them have been among the first four.

And of course I consider "balanced" the overall win/loss ratio, but to a degree also the WAY the game plays out. How close are the turns, how often are the heroes within one turn of losing (Drama), how much of their turns were necessary vs "playing it safe" (Delay), etc.

Sure, some characters are vastly superior to others, some cards are extremely superior to others, and of course, the mother of it all, some combinations of cards (mostly skills) are just downright crazy. No matter how powerful one hero is though, you need a foundation to build your party on. If one character is overly powerful, the job of the OL then becomes to mitigate the effectiveness of that character, something that you're given a wide variety of options to do.

The first 2-3 quests of the base game are widely considered to be very easy for experienced heroes. In my group, the heroes won quest 2 on the first try with around 24 conquest at the end. I've played a close game on quest 3 with 2 heroes against an overlord using treachery (no feats). Quest 4 is harder, but I've beaten it with 3 heroes when the OL had treachery and the heroes didn't have feats.

How many heroes are you playing with? If the OL is consistently crushing the heroes on quest 1 (or even quest 3) when you've got 3-4 heroes, with or without expansions, I'm suspicious that either you're doing something wrong, or that your heroes have not done nearly as good a job of figuring out tactics for the game as you think.

If you're only playing with 2 heroes, try using more.

There is something semi-official you can try that comes from the designer: in the Road to Legend expansion they include something called the Reinforcement Marker, which is just a token with a pair of monster eyes on one side and blank on the other side. It starts eyes side up. When the OL spawns monsters, he turns it face down and cannot spawn again until it is turned face up. It turns face up automatically between dungeon levels, or the OL can spend 15 threat to turn it face up early.

The designer has said that this can also be used with non-RtL quests. Just change things so that the Reinforcement Marker automatically resets when a new area is revealed. The cost for the OL to reset also depends on the number of heroes: 15 threat for two heroes, 10 threat for three heroes and 5 threat for four heroes.

Wierd how you considered the original Game balanced, since after a few games of learning the heroes should start beating up the overlord badly, and thats when you relize you need the expansion to even it out. Don't take game balance on a win ratio, as you said you swapped OLs and Heroes alike, some people just didn't get a grasp of the OL or heroes that fast, and the style of play is completly different for the OL.

If your heroes are loosing with the expansions, I can say hands down, they were never good to begin with...and most likely they haven't learned the lessons of the game from the first scenarios, as dumb as it might sound the first 1-3 quests are like Tutorials without a stupid text poping up to give you tips.

If you feel the Overlord is too powerful try doubling the threat cost for spawn cards only e.g. Beastman War Party=8 threat. I have all expansions and have played every dungeon as a player and OL.

Harry

Have you added Feats into the game yet? I'm curious to hear if you feel this swings the favor back into the Heroes side or not?

-shnar

Daulken said:

On the contrary, FFG in my experience has been very active in the community. They seem to put a great deal of consideration into our house rules and otehr suggestions - which is not to say they always take us up on things. I've seen a number of things in Descent expansions that indicated they were at least listening to us, however. I think the biggest problem is that, in terms of "fixing" the game, the designers feel limited by what they've already put out. To properly correct things would involve reprinting a large number of cards to clarify and simplify the rules. I think if (and when) Descent 2e is put out, that's when we'll see the fruits of these balance thread discussions come to bear.

Which is not to say Descent 1e is hopeless. I rather like it, and as long as you have a group who's not too concerned with making "the best choice every time" the game is still a lot of fun. I agree there are issues, and some day I may even try to address them. For now I just play by RaW as much as possible, with the occasional "don't be an arse, Jake" comment to cut down on crap like the heroes camping in a dungeon until the final battle, for example.

This is true. Remember the FAQ that just came out and they removed Crushing Blow from RtL? There was quite the outroar from the community. Said FAQ disappeared, and a week later the new one kept one of the Crushing Blows in the game. Apparently, *someone* was listening

-shnar

StarBurn said:

I'd have to agree with this, I find the game fairly balanced with the expansions. Actually, it is a little harder for the heros. But I prefer it this way. it makes each level replayable.

But if the OL is winning as much as you claim especially the base game quests (the expansion ones are much harder) the I'd say its one of 2 things...

#1 like Efidm says...your players suck, and just don't learn.

or

#2 you're doing something wrong.

its more likly the 2nd. there are so many rules and options, that its easy to miss one little thing that could change the balance of the game.

I've been playing this game since day 1 (this is the 3rd differant forum since then ) and I remember when everyone first started playing (and even later on new players) they couldn't figure out why the players could never win. And all it was is that every coins token or treasure chest the OL would only give out 100 coins TOTAL, and 1 treasure to the entire party. When infact its suppose to be 400 coins, or 4 treasure cards, one for each hero.

i'm sure no one does that anymore but its just an example. there were many.

You read the rules a few times, and play a few games, you get used to the rules, you don't look at them much anymore...boom you've played 20 games and you've been playign one little thing wrong from the start.

I'll have to second that. With most games that seem "hard" it's usually because of an overlooked rule or misinterpreted one (and the flip is true too, if the game seems too easy, chances are you're not doing something correctly). Arkham Horror was this way for us, it was too easy until we realized we were skipping a few things that really boosted difficulty.

Reread the rules and FAQ. Just a simple rereading of the rules for me often makes something jump out and I go, Aw crap, I've been playing wrong!

-shnar

shnar said:

• Until 2 months ago I was placing clue tokens on gates.
• Until 1 week ago I was drawing monsters and after looking at them, decided where they should go during a surge (except for out skirts, those were drawn separetly).
• Not to mention I'm still surprised that when you close a gate from anywhere, you could actually spend clue tokens to seal it. You don't actually need to be in the location.

StarBurn said:

Wait, what?!? You don't have to be the Investigator that closed the gate in order to seal it with Clue Tokens? If so, yet one more rule we are screwing up

-shnar

StarBurn said:

Or possibly your OL was no good to begin with and couldn't win unless they had the advantages offered by the expansions. No offense, but it's dangerous to cast aspersions about other players' skill unless you have first hand knowledge.

I agree with the OP to a large degree. We found the base game well balanced with 3 heroes. But that was our group, our style. Our heroes have had more problems with the quests from WoD and AoD. We came up with various solutions for various quests, such omitting some areas, or reducing the amount of Treachery, or not allowing corrupted glyphs. About all any group can do is find the tweaks that give them the game experience they want.

To answer Dauklen's question: FFG has not had much presence on their forums for a while. You might get a response...

shnar said:

Since I lack the ability to find a private message ability, I promise to stop stealing the topic and just awnser this to make it clear.

No, actually...All I wanted to say, if by some encounter you manage to close a gate, and the encounter deos not specify that you can't seal these gates, you can imediatly spend 5 clue tokens to seal the one gate.

I have to admit the 4th quest in JitD is freaken nuts. I mean my group, and I can't even complete half of it.

So I'm not really sure how you can move fast enough, and not be bottlenecked in that quest, and adding treachery just makes it that much harder. All your overload has to do it spawn Ferox, and crush your shiny new gear, and you're worse off than trying the dragon with town gear.