I have no problem with the fact some people somewhere would want to keep some abilities or characters out of the game as it destroys their experience of the game. I think that's a shame, because I don't feel like it would be required, but if it helps them solving a problem then why the hell not. Game groups are different, and what I find strategically interesting, including how I see abilities and mechanisms in this game is probably just one man's opinion about the thing. I can think of some friends feeling the same way as the OP about certain combinations of cards and powers in various games and the fact I don't feel stressed by the challenge (increased difficulty) doesn't mean they don't. I personally like to play games in the hardest difficulty settings and I don't mind losing as long as I was able to take some risks and get some choices. I don't think it makes me a better OL in any way, but my tolerance level is quite high towards these so-called overpowered abilities. Especially when these things heavily depend on playgroup mind set, and so many in-game factors. My point being that I´m sure there are playgroups around here that have exactly zero issue with the TH as a class. This said, as long as the players know what they´re dealing with, why not letting them play what they want. I´m the first one to pick a MTG deck winning on turn 2 if I previously told my group this is the kind of game we´d have this time. If they declined, I´d take another deck. Tell the TH player that if he picks the class again then you´ll play the Raythen deck. Better than picking a randomly bad plot deck if you ask me. To each measure its counter measure. You can still pick pink unicorns as your open groups and play any OL-class you want. You can't sit reactively, just looking at what gear the TH managed to gather, you just need to think "ah well" and run for your own objectives as your primary task. My best advice against the TH is to simply interact with him with OL cards only. Keep monsters out of his sight, until he's alone somewhere on the map. Then strike hard. It doesn't matter how much damage he can output if he's dead. To do that, pick shooters and hide them in the corridors leading to these search tokens. He has the choice between keeping up with the group and not search, or taking the risk and get exposed to your monsters. Everything in this game is a trade-off. Heroes need the full team to achieve their goals. They are vulnerable if they split up in an uncontrolled way. If they want to dedicate somebody to do the treasure hunting (whether it's the TH or not) then let them. In some cases it will add great value to the team, sometimes it won't.

I constantly re-evaluate plot decks for use in campaigns, and Serena's plot deck has never been a problem for me to ditch straight away. First of all, plot decks based around a monster type are automatically threat-heavy unless you´re lucky to pick the correct monsters in every quest. Giving a free re-roll per encounter and 1 less threat token to spend on abilities just to "enable" one monster group for MAYBE receiving another threat-heavy effects has never seemed appealing to me. For this particular plot deck, most effects are highly situational, but that's a common trend for many other plot decks. Brethren seems the best by a good shot, though, to make one monster cover a large distance in one turn, but that also requires a civilized monster, so that restricts the usability of the card quite a bit unless you´re willing to pay the extra threat on Diplomatic. That's a lot for an extra move, but if it can grant you a win then why not. Traveler's Rest is too expensive and is not fun card to play. Denial or discard abilities should not be in that game. Players should have choices and ways to interact with abilities instead of suppressing them alltogether. Power in Mourning seems like a must-have if you plan on using this deck. You need a lot of threat tokens. Lifegain effects in the case of monsters have always seemed underwhelming to me, bar Mend on Skarn maybe since he´s a big guy so keeping him alive is a big deal. But giving back 2HP on a monster? Is the 2HP significant enough to force more than one attack to defeat the monster? Not in most cases. 2HP is a nothing if the monster is still alive. I would typically pick this plot deck if I wanted to give myself access to these effects for some reason, but do not actually plan on using them unless I fell into one of these very situational moments. What you can do however is planning on using the Agent, since she "only" replaces one master monster. Serena seems very fragile to me though, but if you play with Infector class maybe you could use her surge. Still, a shooter with only 3 move points doesn't seem very strong to me. You need to know that I am very sceptical to the plot decks concept though, because of the Threat/Fortune system, but if you have no problems giving free re-rolls and actions to your heroes then it certainly opens up for more plot decks including this one.

I play it with beer on the side. Keeps me focused. Greasy fingers is nice too to ensure perfect dice rolls.

As I see it, it's also up to us the players to keep the game alive. Not only having people play the game, but also make our own quests in the Vault and thus increase the replaybility of the game. FFG just needs to provide us with heroes and monsters, which we already have plenty of, and sometimes a class or two. New tiles can be cool too, but they can be self designed also. It could be an idea for FFG to release tiles expansions ready to use in custom quests and future campaign books.

Keeping the game streamlined and flowing is one of the main reasons why I´m still playing this after these years. I can understand why people would think other LOS systems than D2E's own may be more realistic or tactically interesting, but I see absolutely no reason to dismiss the D2E rules. They make sense in every way, looking at what it achieves considering the game mechanisms. It's not a couple of weird situations that would make it automatically bad in my mind. When I think about the [very] few situations when me and my players need to "interrupt the game flow" to address LoS, it always comes down to drawing the line and that's it. Some RPG backgrounds may scream at a few of these situations, but D2E has never been a simulation anyway, plus people are free to implement their own set of rules if they think it destroys the game experience. I see no reason why it would, but to each people his own.

In almost every game there are combinations of characters/powers/abilities that are very hard to deal with as an opponent unless you adapt. I see it as a challenge and I still get fun out of it, especially when it rewards my choices. I play against a TH currently in a campaign. I tailored my choices given that fact, but so do I against any class or hero present. I still feel like there is room left for other cards, monsters or choices in general. Any class or hero can be uber if properly geared up so I´m trying not to focus on one hero at a time. The Thief I played against last time was really annoying in comparison. For the record, I don't really like heroes/monsters ranking in general, and how certain classes are automatically dismissed for some very subjective skill comparisons. I find that every class and hero in the game are worth playing, and as the OL I never let a monster card in the box when picking my options as every monster in the game fills its little role. As far as monsters go, there will always be some that I really enjoy and that my heroes will see in many encounters, but surprising them with something new can turn something in my favor from a psychological perspective. You would be amazed how this can freeze players' actions just by fear of the unknown (I chose that monster for a reason, we need to find why, maybe it's a trap - kind of reason). As far as classes go, effectiveness can not be measured unless you take the whole game into account with all of its possibilities, so aside comparing odds at rolling dices I don't really see how people can compare these, like at all. Or yeah, you´ve played twice against a Thief and the dude wasn't even remotely a threat, therefore the class sucks balls. I would assume that's not the kind of reason people draw their conclusions from though, but you never know. TH in particular can draw a ton of useful gear, or it can draw nothing. So you have that factor in the equation which you can't really qualify. That extra move point upon being 3 spaces from a search token is a huge deal, but the Thief's ability to crack one up 3 spaces away is another, so yeah you can compare all you want but each situation is unique and there is no straight answer to which one of the two is best. It's different. Some classes maybe have skills that are generically good, eg they work in all situations. The Disciple comes to mind as a good generic healer class. As opposed to some other hero classes which offer a more specialized approach and are therefore less relevant generally speaking in a subset of the game situations. Still, they shine at what they do so it's just a matter of playing the class to trigger these situations. It's a bit like if you give the Disciple to a total newbie to the game, it will probably still perform reasonably well. Give a specialized class like the Spiritspeaker instead and the outcome is probably less predictable. It needs to be played the way the class is supposed to be played, and considering its potential synergies with other hero settings.

Like I said many times before, fair enough if people enjoyed the co-op expansions and want more. I have exactly zero interest in that, therefore I am hoping for "normal" expansions using the core game as a base.

I find it's not just about giving the players more heroes and monsters to choose from, but more about re-playability. My players want new heroes each time we start a new campaign, and so far they´ve still got quite a few to choose from. Same for me as the OL, picking new monsters as my open groups renews my interest in replaying quests again.

Yeah, I could have found that out myself but I´m not willing to look at "monster spoilers" for future H&M packs, so that's why it came out as a dumb question

This is good stuff. Ranged attacks + Blast + these Willpower shenaningans including Immobilize condition... absolutely fantastic. I currently see plenty of ways to power this with OL cards and get some nasty combos going. It's a bit early to say, but I can plainly see picking these over Shadow Dragons in many - if not most - situations.

I personally don't give a **** about what's been released in other games than Descent 2Ed. I´m happy to see new heroes and monsters for use in campaigns, so the archetype breakdown or monster size split between packs has zero relevance in my mind. Likewise, I don't really care if some other game had Bob the Sharp Dong as a hero and sadly he´s not getting reprinted for D2E. I have to say that the monster type icons on each encounter is a hell of a good idea to implement for supporting these later releases, as it improves replayability tremendously. Very impressed by that. I also like to see non-human heroes, and seeing Manticores makes me happy too. Ogres and Trolls almost seem obligatory to the theme but I don't feel particularly overwhelmed by desire to play them. And yeah, more models to paint.. that will increase my backlog.

Knockback is a good ability, but Bloodrush is what makes the Hulk shine. It's the fastest large monster in the game by a good shot, which means they have great reach and get even better damage output thanks to that. With the 2x2 base, it also means it's the fastest monster in the game period, bar extra OL cards in the bargain. I love them for that, so I use them all the time. I am not concerned much about their somehow lower HP. I rarely choose Ettins as my open group because they are too slow anyway, so I´m not going to use Ogres much either, but I´m sure they can still be a viable choice in some situations. But unless I really want a 2x2 monster for special purpose, like Golems or Chaos Beasts, which fill their own little niche, I´m not going to bother and will certainly look at small monsters instead. But playing the SoN campaign and get stuck with the Hulks is far from being a pain. BTW Did you say Manticores had Ranged attacks with Ravage? You made my heart stop for a second. I tried to replicate that with Tristayne's Onslaught plot card on 4-dice Chaos Beasts, but having a monster ready for it from start makes me thrill.

Yeah no worries at all. I´m on vacation now so it's all good. It's perfectly fine to wish for an expansion going for this type of dungeon crawling experience. Like you pointed out, there are multiple ways to achieve this, and the POD product line proves that different game modes can be introduced to Descent in order to explore alternative ways to enjoy the game. What made me react at the first place was the fact that it feels like we have already this type of experience in other games, so I wanted to highlight what made D2E different and why its uniqueness should be preserved instead of replacing these bits by other interesting - yet already seen in many other games - combat-based mechanisms. But like you said there was a good response to the POD and you´re not the first guy to ask for this type of thing, so maybe there can be a future for this, although maybe not in a way as drastic as what was suggested earlier. The thing I wish the most is to get hold of interesting quests and mechanisms. I like combat but I like choices above that. Diversity and uniqueness is what keeps me in the Overlord business

Sorry about the "bla-bla", I just lost patience while typing and decided to abort my response when I hit the "you´re wrong". It just annoyed me to no end, but I know I should have been better in my reply, so apologies. That could be done, yes, there is no question about it. But if you take D2E as the game to implement this in, I´m not sure where that would lead you: - Introduce way more stats for dealing with in-depth combat maybe? - Introduce cover mechanisms for instance, and other combat-related things like maybe supply? = more complexity into a streamlined game - Less focus on everything else than combat. = Can be okay, but again the other stuff is what makes Descent interesting at the first place. Of course my opinion is biased and subjective, I like Descent because it's not that 100% combat game you described. But I would also play the game you described, I just wouldn't want Descent to become that game, that's all. We don't need to change already good (even staple) games to such extent is the point I was trying to explain. Like Forgotten Souls, you could alter the core mechanisms of the base game and implement the above. Since you´d be going more in depth to cover your expanded "combat experience", I´m not sure the current game material would be 100% compatible with your expansion, though. Would the expanded rules come on top of the current ones, or would it require more stats and abilities? Again, I guess it'd be doable to release an expansion line with these things in, but wouldn't it revolution the core game too much without having to re-design the material? It's an expansion by definition. But it is not a normal expansion as for expanding the base game. It changes core concepts of the base game. 1vsall -> full co-op. 5 players -> 4 players (for my playgroup it's a big deal). preset maps -> exploration. human-controlled monsters -> programmed monsters. It's not the same experience at all, which is why in my view, and despite the material is the same, it's not the same "game". Objectives are different, setup is different. It's a bit like taking the pieces of Trivial Pursuit and play bowling with the wheels, a bit exagerated but it's not the same thing. Of course it's Descent 2Ed, but a new game mode. I can't ask my players if they want to play Descent tonight without mentioning if it's going to be with Forgotten Souls or not. As opposed to deciding on which expansions we want to bring in as we sit and open the box. It proves that Descent can be made to a dungeon crawler, but it gets rid of a hell lot of interesting and unique concepts in the process. I don't dispute that. Which is your personal subjective biased opinion Like I said it's not that I don't like dungeon crawlers, and I´ve played a ton of them back in the days, but I´m not interested to make Descent that game, that's all.

Can I give you my coordinates so you can come and monitor our sessions next time? I´ve played many campaigns using the rules I described. A uber-deadly variation of the Lava spaces and move-friendly waters. That's a nice little house-rule there :8

Since only your opinion is valid I guess there was never any discussion.

Traps also exist in form of the Overlord class cards of the same name. I mean, web trap is that hero getting stuck in a giant spider web of some sort. It is less dramatic than falling into a pit, though Let's imagine... a group of Bane Spiders blocking a corridor with spider web terrain. Yikes for the heroes! It'd be cool to implement, I love terrain. But I don't see a way to do it without compromising balance.

You´re welcome to design your own game. EDIT: Responded later in the thread. Not changing the post since people quoted it anyway. Do what you want with it.

Exactly. Thematically, it could be one move point to climb out of the map, or getting into a hole or whatever. Besides, "Out of the map" doesn't count as a space as far as I know. Thus you cannot use a regular move action to reach that area of the game.

I share the pain. This type of terrain feels a bit shallow because of the possibility to fatigue-move. Moving to a water-space should definitely require 2 move points regardless if you´re on the water already. I don't mind Hazard and Lava as such, but there are a lot of abilities forcing figures to move into such spaces, e.g. killing them. I think Throwback is good as an ability, but I don't like the Hunter's Whip.

As the Overlord, I say no way you can do that, but I don't have solid proof for why it wouldn't be possible. However, my understanding of the extra movement point to get off the exit tile has always been that you need to dedicate one movement point in order to do whatever is required to exit the tile. To me it is not a standard movement, therefore Jain's ability which is about moving shouldn't allow her to exit. I consider this use of movement points as a price to pay for performing a special action. It's a movement point, but it is not a move as for getting from one space to another. Thus my position on the matter.

I guess with the same price tag as the previous opus in the line?

It's an interesting idea, reminds a bit about Hero Quest actually, however it would probably be a little hard to balance out because of the huge tactical advantage it would grant to the Overlord. You are effectively removing spaces available to the Heroes, and the more confined the area is the better control you have over the heroes' movement, which is key in most encounters. The trap tokens from the Stalker class are a lot more subtile and less game-breaking in that sense. Big traps like spike pits, although very thematic, feel like it would have too much effect on the strategy in this game, maybe.

I don't seem able to write a simple answer to anything in less than 6000 words so here you go. Thus I wanted to point out that throwing monsters at each others doesn't mean that game is shallow - hence my reference to Warhammer Fantasy Battle. In a game like Warhammer, which is the incarnation of two massive armies fighting against each other with its own tactical set, no it's not totally brainless. In a game like Descent, throwing monsters at the heroes would indeed be completely uninteresting and such a weak strategy. There is no point anyway, both thematically and for the purpose of winning. If you have played the game, you know that you just can't do that. Like I said, this game articulates around combat, but this is more about positioning your figures and harass the heroes than killing them. It's about forcing them to waste actions getting rid of monsters while your Goblin runs away grabbing the final crop. There is an unprinted number of actions required to kill a monster, so all you need to do as the Overlord is to force your heroes to "put their brains aside" and wave their weapons at your minions instead of focusing on the real purpose of the mission. Then of course it's not like combat is not a viable course of action in this game. Rat Swarms for instance is all about the "throwing it at the heroes", but that's not a general strategy for every monster in the game. From the perspective of a "total war" between two parts, like you suggest, it's neither viable nor it is balanced (assuming equal luck between sides). The Overlord is not a monster spawn point. It's all about reading your objectives, look at what you have on the table and assign figures to do stuff for you. Remove that choice to only leave combat and Decent loses all of what would make it truly unique. See, I wouldn't mind seeing an expansion with more non-combat-oriented choices in form of new figures, like Overlord builders or "civilians" (I guess they exist in form of tokens currently) where the Overlord tries to build something, even digging or getting ore or whatever. Figures heroes wouuldn't necessarly need to kill, but just have some control over. Overlord could use monsters to force civilians to do tasks etc. That's not a revolutionary thought at all, but the amount of choices would broaden up. Another idea: a quest where combat makes noise and wakes up some giant creature, or whatever. It would be interesting to see a party of heroes trying to get around monsters without the possibility of actually fighting them. Or a quest where heroes need to get back their weapons hidden somewhere in a cave before they can fight again. Why the hell not? Why does it have to be epic? Yes, but you´re not talking about expanding Descent, you´re talking about a redesign of the core game and that's what makes discussion difficult. You´re basically suggesting that Descent should become more like the 100s of games doing the exact things you are describing and remove all of its uniqueness. I mean, Descent 2ED will never be a dungeon crawl game, period. The co-op line does that but it's a totally new game using the core game's material, it's not an expansion per say. Also people have been talking about the "inherent flaws with the game" recently, but when you actually get to find out what people mean behind this you get to the conclusion that people "dislike some rule or mechanism" or "prefer game Y over Descent", so it's all about taste in the end. Why can't people accept the way the game is and move on? People can house rule as much as they want anyway so why taking the rant to these forums? Bad strategy, planning or even bad luck is always going to irritate people and most often they will scream about unbalance and unfairness in return. These people wouldn't be happy with a game summarized to just rolling a 2-6 on a D6. The people getting the 1 would still scream for flaws, FFG being evil and Imperial Assault being a plain better game in every way. Game design is really hard, making a unique game set in the fantasy theme is another difficult task, and yet we have complainers all over the place. Mind you, they do spend time coming to these forums. I also have my own little list of things I would have liked to see in Descent, but I totally get that the game needs to stay streamlined and fully accept the fact D2E is its own little brew and that people can develop house rules if they want to modify it. As for issues with imersion, everybody knows Descent is not about getting overflown with flavor text, but I´d think most of us D2E fans would agree on the fact FFG's put a great job balancing the story against the game play. This game needs to flow and story slows the game down, this is not a 6-hours RPG. But players are free to introduce more fluff if they want and have ttime to spend on that, and if you want to know more about the story, the characters and locations you can always check out the data about the world itself, which has been described in more in-depth RPGs or games from FFG.

Coming late to the party, but here's my input. I´m not saying games where players solely seek for the destruction of the other parts are necessarly shallow, dumb or light-hearted. What I´m saying is that I mostly enjoy the variety of goals and agendas this game offers you. Then this is still Fantasy, so it's still going to be all about swords and fire balls in the end, but the (very few) games that allow you to do something else than that, even with the swords and magic in the background, diverting you from just "killing stuff" provide way richer experience, at least I´ve found. I don't know, I have never played this game as a hero but as the overlord I often resort to combat only AFTER I´ve positioned myself in a way that puts me closer to my objectives. Sometimes combat is the best viable option, but most often it's about dealing a condition to a hero (immobilize, stun etc) or using a special ability like Throwback, Burrow of the worms, Pillage of the bandits. Some abilities trigger upon combat, some don't. Then of course a party of dead heroes is the best way to win a quest, but I can garantee you this strategy is most risky at best as you have to dedicate everything you´ve got towards that goal and hope the heroes to get really unlucky. It never happens in practice. Heroes are simply too good to defend themselves unless they play very poorly. I'm not saying either that I don't like pure wargames, but I think Descent has a much richer experience than say Warhammer Quest or Myth from that perspective alone. In my mind the dungeon crawling part, e.g. exploration just adds an element of randomness but at the end of the day all you get is a monster group you didn't know about before you opened the door, and maybe a treasure chest. It's ultra-linear, and above all it doesn't allow anything to happen outside of where the heroes are or have explored. It's all about the pew-pew, grossly exagerated maybe but here you go. I´ve had great gaming experiences playing Warhammer (the wargame) too, I´ve just gotten over this type of game mainly because of time investment (not to mention about money investment), but also because I think there are some really good games out there allowing players to do so many things and provide much more choices than just having to rely on an attack/defense stat. It's one man's opinion of course, I´m perfectly fine with the fact you think the opposite, but in all fairness I think Descent is way more than what you think it is. That it doesn't fit your taste is another question, but don't come here and say that Descent lacks depth or immersion. As the Overlord, even if people have different playstyles and aggressivity level, there is always a right course of action, and killing heroes tends to be the thing you do if there is no other option. Separating a hero from a group seems a better goal than trying to kill him. Then sure, you´re not going to let your monsters sit there if the best they can is to attack, but it often comes down to balance out damage versus the current position of all figures, e.g. prevent the heroes from pursuing their goals. There is direct confrontation in the game I guess, since it's still going to be a battle between the heroes and the overlord minions. There are no "armies" though, but in a couple of quest we´ve had some sort of "battlefield" with plenty of figures in the same area, just because everything had to be done in that room and because it was fun to experience. Imperial Assault has many fans indeed, but it doesn't mean its mechanisms necessarly outclass Descent 2Ed. These are two different games. It's fine if you prefer IA's death mechanism above Descent's, but like everybody said this wouldn't work in Descent 2E as it's part of the core mechanism of the game.