Hi everyone
Has any one tried playing the game with 5-6 players insted of the normal 4 players?

I am wondering as i realy want to Dm it with my boardgame groupe

You may want to search Board Game Geeks forum under Variants. I found one thread there, but there may be more.

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1025546/playing-descent-v2-0-with-5-adventurers-instead-of

Rags just beat me to the BGG point, but I'll add a bit.

One of the big concerns that you'll want to keep in mind with more players is that the map is going to get crowded fast. While I haven't played it yet, I hear that the Labyrinth of Ruin maps tend to have a bit more room on them than the Shadow Rune quests do, so that's something to look into.

When you scale up the monsters, I would recommend looking at solutions that increase monster stats more than increasing the number of monsters. Things like +X health divided evenly over each monster group, upgrading a single defense die (or adding a brown one if they already have black). Just adding another monster group is going to make the "crowded" feeling even worse.

Another alternative (at least for if you have 6 players instead of the game's normal 5) is to break up the Overlord responsibilities and play it as a team. One of the advantages that the heroes have over the overlord is that they can talk about strategy and can point out where someone may have missed something. (This goes both ways, though, as table-talk means that the other side can hear your strategy.) As an example: You could split up the monster groups (treat whoever is managing the cards as having an extra monster group).

I am running the base campaign (though the players are using characters from the first expansion as well) with myself as overlord and 5 players. One of my friends is having his kids play and we didnt want to exclude anyone.

We have run the first several battles. Starting this week, in order to balance out the for the extra hero I have giving each minion one extra hit point , red monsters get two extra hit points and the Lts. also get two extra hit points.It seems to have help a little bit. We are taking baby steps and if everyone thinks more balance is needed I can always up their hit points more.

The biggest advantage in adding another hero to the table is the additional actions he gets. That's two more attacks (give or take movement) per hero per turn. Upping monster stats is one way to deal with it.

Raising the group limits on monsters would be the most direct method, though it would mean you'd need proxies for a lot of monsters. If you have a full D1E set, some monsters will have enough extras to cover this plan. Other monsters might use comparable figures (ie: use a Crypt Dragon as an extra Shadow Dragon or vice versa, and just don't pick both at once. =P)

All the ideas people have generated coming up with proxies for 1E figs could also be applied to handling the idea of raising monster group limits for more heroes.

Thank you for you feedback

I play against 5 heroes. We have balanced game by change statistics from master monsters to minion and from minion to master (white is red and red is white, except for group with only 2 monters. In that group both monsters are masters). If you add to many monsters to the group as overlord, you're gonna make some of the quests to hard even for 5 heroes. I try this and this is good option. For lieutenants you add 3 (or 4 in act 2) to their life and change the weakest of their defence dice to the better one (brown to gray, gray to black, if lieutenant has only black dice add one brown).

I play against 5 heroes. We have balanced game by change statistics from master monsters to minion and from minion to master (white is red and red is white, except for group with only 2 monters. In that group both monsters are masters).

Well, that's certainly a solution I probably never would have thought of myself. Very interesting. =)

And you say this house rule has been well-balanced against 5 heroes in your play experience? How many games have you played like this? How many different monster types have you tried it with?

I don't have truly expierience with that house rule because I play only one quest like this from my new campaign. But in the whole quest (we play From The Ashes, from Quest Vault and I take Hellhounds as open group), my team and me said that balance is good and is not gona support heroes or overlord. The quest ends with my (overlords) win, just because heroes goes split and have many fails at dice rolls. I planned play whole campaign on this house rule and I will post the results if you like, but in my (and my team) opinion this balance is well done. The master monsters statistics are not very different from minions. They maybe inflict more damage (from +1 to +2) or have more life (from 2 to 4 or something like that), and of course have a one special abillity, but numerically they are the same as for 4 heroes team.

5 heroes is 10 attacts and i can feel it at the start of this quest as they massacres all of my (3 masters and one minion) Hellhounds.

I play against 5 heroes. We have balanced game by change statistics from master monsters to minion and from minion to master (white is red and red is white, except for group with only 2 monters. In that group both monsters are masters).

I'm also curious how you handle Search Tokens (do you just leave it as the 4-hero setup?)

I play against 5 heroes. We have balanced game by change statistics from master monsters to minion and from minion to master (white is red and red is white, except for group with only 2 monters. In that group both monsters are masters).

I'm also curious how you handle Search Tokens (do you just leave it as the 4-hero setup?)

Maybe I'm biased as I'm almost always OL, but I don't think they need any more search tokens =P

In quests with only 4 search tokens i planned to add one bonus token. More heroes need more money. In quest with more then 4 search tokens i planned add none. Normaly my heroes don't grab all tokens, but they need to have chance to get some more. 5 heroes are harder to arm, even if they have more shop items, they need more stuff than 4 heroes team. I add these bonus search token randomly, where i have more empty room on board.

In quests with only 4 search tokens i planned to add one bonus token. More heroes need more money. In quest with more then 4 search tokens i planned add none. Normaly my heroes don't grab all tokens, but they need to have chance to get some more. 5 heroes are harder to arm, even if they have more shop items, they need more stuff than 4 heroes team. I add these bonus search token randomly, where i have more empty room on board.

And you are getting five OL cards at the start of the quest. I guess it balances out for everyone. I would love the agree with Steve-o, as I am normally the OL as well. ^.^;; but....

Oh heroes...

And you are getting five OL cards at the start of the quest. I guess it balances out for everyone. I would love the agree with Steve-o, as I am normally the OL as well. ^.^;;

Of course. From rulebook: The overlord player draws a number of overlords cards equal to the number of heroes into his hand.