Ok, so i'm running a new RTL starting friday and we have not played with Feats yet.

What is the concenscous on feats in RTL?

I saw one thread say that the were insanly over powered. Yes the cards look strong, but they only get 3 to start, and can only get 3ish more per dungeon.

I've also see threads where people say they hero's are way out matched with out the feats. maybe feats would even it out?

but then again, i've also seen a thread where someone said they caked walked over the OL (with only like heroes 150 xp vs OL 450xp) during the final battle.
Honestly in that case I think the OL just sucked.

i'd just like to see what most people think, go with our with out the feats?

if they are to strong, maybe they can be reduced to the number of skills you have. if you start with 1 skill you can never hold more then 1 feat at a time.?

We started our RTL after ToI came out.

I'm leadingthe Heroes around 2:1 on Conquest half-way through Copper despite them using Feats. They definately work well at Copper.

I've played 2 campaigns. Thanks to good players, they have been ahead on conquest in both campaigns.

I have an issue with Feats simply being introduced in RtL. It was like when Treachery was introduced in WoD. They said "Here are the new treachery rules. BTW - you can now play your base quests with this if you want. Which is nice, but treachery is a huge bonus for the OL with little to compensate for the heroes.

Feats are simply good for the heroes. There is nothing in ToI which rebalances the game for the OL. So if you are an OL and you buy ToI, your heroes will have an easier time. This either means a) RtL was too hard for the heroes and they needed a boost, so they introduced feats. or b) feats were an idea for ToI that they hadnt actually thought about in RtL (Kevin W actually said this), and they then just went "erm, yeah, just use them as they are".

I use the following house rule for feats in RtL.

The heroes start with 1.
Each time a glyph is activated, each hero rolls a power die. On a surge, they get a new feat.
Max feats is 2 at copper, 3 at silver, 4 at gold.
Using a feat costs 1 fatigue and the OL draws 1 card.

Seems to work ok. They are a nice addition without being too powerful and give a bit of something to each side.

I like having the feats in our RTL games as well. The way we use them is:

Each hero starts with 1 feat of a matching type as their starting skill.
Each time a glyph is activated (not sundered) the hero who activated the glyph gains 1 feat.

This I find works well as it now introduces a strategy element, in that if you want a particular hero to gain the feat, they need to tag the glyph. Additionally we have found that they are reserved for critical moments since they are in limited supply.

After struggling with WoD as the heroes, we picked up ToI for the feats. As a result, feats have been part of our Descent experience for all the ToI and AoD quests and now for rtl.

The only house rule we used for feats in our first campaign was heroes only start with one feat, and it was based on the starting skill they chose. After that, they could draw based on whatever is on their hero sheet. This was really only because there was no ruling at the time, but we kept if for our second campaign so it was fair for the second OL.

Feats had a few "game-breaking" moments, but for the most part didn't really change the game that much. They give the heroes a slight advantage on one attack, one defense, possibly one OL turn in the case of a sparks of pain or whatever. But even sparks of pain won't slow down upgraded melee monsters from making an attack and you just go after that guy with something else or get him dead early.

The ones that really suck are the two disarms, the preventing evil, and maybe blocked/evade or sweeping/killing blow. They still only happen once and then they get put in discard. We play where the decks don't get shuffled between sessions, so the heroes aren't consistently getting the best or worst feats. The rest of the feats, imo are little more than a slight annoyance for a skilled OL, even against solid players.

With feats from start to finish, I still had a considerable advantage over the heroes, and I would say they made relatively few mistakes. Treachery and upgraded monsters are still really powerful, and I didn't even use crushing blow other than twice all campaign. Keep in mind that while your heroes keep their equipment, they still max out at like 6/7 armor for everyone but nanok (who I was playing against) and some of your upgraded monsters do more than enough damage to get through that armor.

As to the final battle, I think that the main goal is not to let the heroes get that far via tamalir and plots. God knows an lt. encounter with treachery can be very hard for the heroes if played right (note: get at least 2 trap treachery for both dark charms and a danger so you can play them early).

I think while feats suck for the OL, they by no means make it impossible for him to win and if anything make it a little more reasonable for the heroes...especially in the early goings.

Our house rule is this:

- Heroes start with a 0 Feat Card hand (except that one girl from ToI, she starts with a hand of 2)
- Heroes can use the Secret Training to upgrade their hand by 2 (so they have to choose either +4 Health, +2 Fatigue, or +2 Feat Hand)
- All other rules are the same (i.e. glyph gives feats, can't hold more than you hand allows (which is zero to begin with)).

So far, none of the Heroes have opted to train in Feats, preferring the extra fatigue. I'll report back once I find someone who does

-shnar

Given the fact that grapple and tele are being removed from RTL, I see no reason not to include the feats.

My RTL game has used full feat rules. They have helped in some situations but I am not convinced they are overpowered.

Many OL fear the concept of adding to the heroes side of the table without getting something themselves and have house ruled the feats without having played with them under standard rules.

Out of curiosity, has anyone else played a full campaign with feats, just allowing one per glyph and not putting special rules on them? If not, I think the utility of feats is really being overestimated. As long as you don't constantly see the same "elite" feats over and over again (which you won't if you keep the already played feats separate until going through the deck), I really don't think they are that powerful. Do they tip things in the heroes' favor? Yes. Did the heroes probably need a little tipping? I would say so.

At this point, I'm the only person I know of who played a complete campaign with feats and didn't house rule any extra cost. I'd be curious to see if anyone else played with feats and really thought they made that big of a difference.

For shnar: who would ever buy feats when they could buy fatigue or (even) health? Feats are nowhere NEAR as powerful. You can't restore feats with a rest action or a potion or when you die, and they're generally not as useful. Your houserule as a result is basically a de facto "no feats in rtl rule." That's fine if that's what you want, but I wouldn't pay 500 gold and 20xp for 2 feats, and that's just at copper.

EDIT: Exactly Granor. Exactly.

granor said:

Our group never played with TK, yet the heroes always still won. In my experience the heroes do NOT need a boost against the OL.

I should clarify that no one has seriously tried an early Tamalir raze. That's the OL's only real chance of winning, so it's not surprising the heroes have always won. Feats might help balance against a determined Tamalir assault, but there's no way they're balanced if the OL decides not to do this. The OL is already guaranteed to lose if it gets to 600 conquest, and feats are only going to make that worse.

I suppose it's a central balance issue with RtL in general.

In my experience, the RaW is actually reasonably well balanced, but it is also unforgiving. What I mean by that is that if the heroes or the OL aren't playing every advantage they have, then that side will find themselves falling behind the other. When We first introduced Treachery, the OL started kicking ass up and down the block, but afte a few game the heroes figured out new tactics (sometimes employing the expansion characters/equipment, sometimes not) and they caught up again till we were balanced again. I haven't had a chance to play with Feats yet, but looking at them objectively they seem to be cool, but not too broken. I expect the heroes will probably kick ass for a couple games when we do use them, but sooner or later the OL will find a way to compensate. Maybe by pulling out some of the nastier Treachery cards that we've previously shied away from in the name of fair play.

Before the new FAQ removed Telekinesis and Grapple from the heroes armoury, Feats were absolutely an unbalancing factor. Giving the heroes something for no cost whatsoever, eitehr to get or to play, cannot be balanced. It does not matter whether the choice/HR was 1 feat per glyph or 4 feats per glyph or 1 feat per campaign, it was just a matter of how much imbalancing giving them to the heroes was going to be.
Clearly, a variety of different playing groups using a variety of different 'volumes' of feats, had a variety of different balance experiences. I suggest that perhaps that variety indicated that a far greater balance/imbalance factor than feats was player ability. Frankly, heroes with Feats as per ToI going through RtL and still losing, to me merely indicates less than competent hero players - sorry if that offends some people, I'm not trying to be personal, just trying to put some perspective.
Under the older rules I playtested allowing the OL to draw cards whenever Feats were played*, then whenever feats were drawn**. Neither system was perfect (see the *,** comments below), but both were trying to provide a balance so that feats were not simply "something for nothing".

Now the FAQ has removed Telekinesis and Grapple. Whether a party used these skills or not, that is a huge blow for the heroes. Any , and I do mean any , party not playing with Telekinesis in particular was playing vastly non-optimally. Not a little bit, vastly . If you weren't playing with Telekinesis you probably had a more enjoyable campaign though, I'll give you that.
Now that Telekinesis is gone, the hero game should slow dramatically, thus allowing the OL more time and therefore more resources. Balancing that, giving the heroes Feats gives them more resources (and of an interesting kind because of the 'surprise' nature of them) to match the OL's increased resources.
In summary, I think the adding of Feats might be a fair balance for the taking away of Telekinesis and Grapple. Time will tell. However I am confident that the game as a whole will be more enjoyable for both sides with Feats replacing Telekinesis and Grapple.

*This worked rather well balance wise. The chief problem was that only the better Feat cards tended to be played (or rather, Feats tended to be played only when they had a large effect) so that the one card bonus for the OL was rarely the same value as the effect. This problem may have been exacerbated because we played with no feats being 'held over' between dungeons, so the weak feat cards would be discarded at the end of a dungeon.

**In order to encourage more variety of feats we changed so that the OL drew a card whenever a Feat was drawn. Unfortunately we only played one session and the OL played Evil Genius very early on. Consequently the OL was swimming in resources and te system did not get a decent test as the heroes simply decided not to draw any feats most of the time. In fact they drew 4-5 feats in the entire dungeon (including the start) and the OL only got through his deck and about 3-4 extra cards, so the Feats probably made the difference in 3CT worth of deck cycling for the OL.

For now, we will play the RAW - normal feats and no Telekinesis/Grapple (sad, because I drew both key skills in my start). If we were to playtest again a new system I would change the test to 1 OL card drawn per feat played and feats are held over.

Corbon said:

We tried your idea with feats held over - it works relatively well, the main problem is there are feats that become obsolete. One of the feats is akin to "discard a random card from the OL's hand", which then gives him a card from his deck, putting him closer to cycling, and is possibly better than the one he randomly threw away. I let my players decide how they wanted to handle it, as I can see a few situations where it would be great, but can often see it being terrible most of the time. We decided on removing the offending cards from the deck, but I can also see heroes wanting maybe one copy in the deck, which I think would also be fine.

All in all though, the draw a card system is great. Heroes play timely useful cards, I get a consolation prize.

My wife and I decided to try the following:

• At the start of each game week, the Heroes discard their entire hands & draw 1 feat card each
• Heroes get feat cards normally, 1 per hero when a glyph is activated
• Hand size limit of 2

We like feat usage for the 'surprise' factor it gives the heroes - without feats, hero turns play out fairly predictably, and we like the effect feats have on upsetting the OL's plans. What we dont like is saving only the best feats for the precise moment when they are useful - we wanted a rule to encourage feats to be frequently used as small tactical bonuses rather than hoarded and used strategically to counter the OL's momentum at critical points.

Hi

We're running RTL and using feats they way the rules are written .

So far as the overlord i can see no real difference.

The funniest thing is that the players usually forget they've got them until it's too late.

I'm still in the camp which believes that feats shouldnt be introduced just as written. However, Corbon has a good argument. Is the loss of Telekenesis & Grapple tattoo roughly equivalent to getting feats? Who knows.

We've never had either of these skills crop up, so for me, all I could see is they were getting feats for free.
As an aside, I'm thinking of not scrapping TK/Grapple, just tweaking them so they dont work on named monsters.

I first ruled that using a feat costs 1 fatigue. I still really like this and it works well. The hero has to put extra effort in to accomplish the feat, so it fits well themewise, and to be honest, isnt much of a big thing.

However, I then started getting frustrated that because I bought the expansions, I wasnt managing to go through my deck in a 3 level dungeon. So buying the expansions has really hurt me in that respect. As such, I stole the idea of when the heroes play a feat, the OL draws a card. But now I'm seeing that might not be great for some.

Since all feats are not equal, maybe the less useful ones just get played as they are, but the more powerful ones allow the OL to draw a card when played. Balance restored?

I have only OL'ed a few campaigns in RTL with feats, and only for a small time as each of those campaigns were abandoned due to players RL intervention. However, I didn't find them overly powerful. Good. Yes! But not in any way broken. There are a lot of the feats that is really poor, and a few is very powerful. But those which are powerful have only one or two of a kind in the deck.

Right now, I play as a player in a campaign which hasn't houseruled feats (yet). I think they add interesting elements for the players not to have too predictable turns. Our OL is not too fond of them without restrictions, so we are discussing various ways. I think the 1 Fatigue to play a Feat card seems as the best option. It puts a little dampener on their use, but doesn't make the poorer feats useless. We do have a sort of special situation, since I play Laurel of Bloodwood, which makes the three +8 range 'very' useful, instead of outright poor. This means that nearly every card in the Ranger Feat deck is useful for me (some obviously more than others, but still). However, I think there is also a learning curve for the OL on the feats, since each of the blocking feats only counters one or two types of attacks. Hence, if the overlord plans his moves a little (if possible) (s)he can actually play around the feat cards, some.

Another aspect is that without the feats, you have to pull the trigger on the Lt. before the OL buys Treachery, otherwise you are in for an extremely tough time. And now that you cannot even grapple (or Tele) the Lt. it's near impossible to kill them off, if the OL plays it safe. I definitely think removing grapple (and Tele, though I haven't tried that one yet) more than makes it up for the feats. Grapple has by far been the most annoying feat I have encountered as an OL, and always the one feat players always went straight for, if not in the starting draw.