Nope, that shield applies to all familiars (and NPCs) that are treated as heroes. Note that the Geomancers Summoned Stones are treated as obstacles and not as heroes.

Ah, now I understand your confusion.

The text in bold just states which spaces should be used in general. It does not give the sequence of the placement.
 
Quote: 3. Each additional monster is placed in spaces at the edges of the map tile oriented as shown in the quest description. Place additional monsters closest to the leftmost space of the top row, rightmost space of the top row, rightmost space of the bottom row, and leftmost space of the bottom row.
The last sentence gives the sequence of placements:
Quote: Start with the space the first monster was placed in and continue placing monsters clockwise until all monsters are placed. This is in agreement with the figure on the page of the manual. 

Sorry for not answering this earlier, but I tend to not check the FFG forum regularly anymore. You can contact me by sending a GeekMail to my account on BGG (sadgit). 
Question 1: I remember that this was a problem in an earlier version of the rule book. It has been corrected in v1.4.
Question 2: I think this is indeed suboptimal. Commands for zombies should be 
action: Engage the Open Field 
action: Engage the Open Field 
action: Attack h hero
 

Thanks for the praise. Glad you guys enjoy our mod.
Here are the corrected cards:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n1dnbhmn720quxd/b9.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lvz20zznhc1jjd7/ac-3.png?dl=0
 
Files available here: https://descent-community.org/index.php/obtaining-sands-of-the-past/ have also been updated. 
 
 

Thanks for the praise. Glad you guys enjoy our mod.
Here are the corrected cards:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n1dnbhmn720quxd/b9.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lvz20zznhc1jjd7/ac-3.png?dl=0
 
Files available here: https://descent-community.org/index.php/obtaining-sands-of-the-past/ have also been updated. 
 
 

It not only looks great but it works great too. The most fun automated-Overlord mechanism and game experience I tried so far for Descent. Really a professional work from the guys here - they deserve all credit for that. It would be really nice to have it for all the other campaigns as well.
 

A few observations regarding SOTP cards:
- Monster card 3B, Elemental - I suppose the "Chilling Tide" is dice value 2.
- Blood will Tell E1 (9B side) - I guess the Flesh Moulders activation Commands missing there (it's there in the Rulebook page 31).
 

Yes, it's an internal balance mechanism. The trap tests get harder if the heroes win a lot.

Yes, it's an internal balance mechanism. The trap tests get harder if the heroes win a lot.

I am happy to announce that the Sands of the Past expansion has been released. 
For more details see my BGG post.

Yes, when playing the cooperative Road to Peril you MUST use the staff at the first opportunity.

That was ... unexpected.
Description:
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Descent: Legends of the Dark, the definitive cooperative dungeon-crawling board game for one to four players!
Forge your own legend together with your friends as you adventure across the vibrant fantasy realm of Terrinoth! Powered by its fully integrated free companion app, Descent: Legends of the Dark puts you in the role of a budding hero with their own playstyle and abilities. Together with your unlikely companions, you’ll begin an unexpected adventure – an adventure told across the sixteen quests of the Blood and Flame campaign. Throughout your campaign, you’ll face undead lurking in the mists, demonic barbarians stalking the wilds, and even more terrifying threats. With 46 pieces of 3D terrain and 40 stunning hero and monster miniatures to draw you into the game, your greatest adventure is yet before you!
Source: https://spiel.digital/en/games/932220/descent--legends-of-the-dark

That was ... unexpected.
Description:
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Descent: Legends of the Dark, the definitive cooperative dungeon-crawling board game for one to four players!
Forge your own legend together with your friends as you adventure across the vibrant fantasy realm of Terrinoth! Powered by its fully integrated free companion app, Descent: Legends of the Dark puts you in the role of a budding hero with their own playstyle and abilities. Together with your unlikely companions, you’ll begin an unexpected adventure – an adventure told across the sixteen quests of the Blood and Flame campaign. Throughout your campaign, you’ll face undead lurking in the mists, demonic barbarians stalking the wilds, and even more terrifying threats. With 46 pieces of 3D terrain and 40 stunning hero and monster miniatures to draw you into the game, your greatest adventure is yet before you!
Source: https://spiel.digital/en/games/932220/descent--legends-of-the-dark

Given that playtime is notoriously understated on modern boardgames boxes that 120 - 180 min is surprising.

That was ... unexpected.
Description:
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Descent: Legends of the Dark, the definitive cooperative dungeon-crawling board game for one to four players!
Forge your own legend together with your friends as you adventure across the vibrant fantasy realm of Terrinoth! Powered by its fully integrated free companion app, Descent: Legends of the Dark puts you in the role of a budding hero with their own playstyle and abilities. Together with your unlikely companions, you’ll begin an unexpected adventure – an adventure told across the sixteen quests of the Blood and Flame campaign. Throughout your campaign, you’ll face undead lurking in the mists, demonic barbarians stalking the wilds, and even more terrifying threats. With 46 pieces of 3D terrain and 40 stunning hero and monster miniatures to draw you into the game, your greatest adventure is yet before you!
Source: https://spiel.digital/en/games/932220/descent--legends-of-the-dark

That was ... unexpected.
Description:
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Descent: Legends of the Dark, the definitive cooperative dungeon-crawling board game for one to four players!
Forge your own legend together with your friends as you adventure across the vibrant fantasy realm of Terrinoth! Powered by its fully integrated free companion app, Descent: Legends of the Dark puts you in the role of a budding hero with their own playstyle and abilities. Together with your unlikely companions, you’ll begin an unexpected adventure – an adventure told across the sixteen quests of the Blood and Flame campaign. Throughout your campaign, you’ll face undead lurking in the mists, demonic barbarians stalking the wilds, and even more terrifying threats. With 46 pieces of 3D terrain and 40 stunning hero and monster miniatures to draw you into the game, your greatest adventure is yet before you!
Source: https://spiel.digital/en/games/932220/descent--legends-of-the-dark

That was ... unexpected.
Description:
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Descent: Legends of the Dark, the definitive cooperative dungeon-crawling board game for one to four players!
Forge your own legend together with your friends as you adventure across the vibrant fantasy realm of Terrinoth! Powered by its fully integrated free companion app, Descent: Legends of the Dark puts you in the role of a budding hero with their own playstyle and abilities. Together with your unlikely companions, you’ll begin an unexpected adventure – an adventure told across the sixteen quests of the Blood and Flame campaign. Throughout your campaign, you’ll face undead lurking in the mists, demonic barbarians stalking the wilds, and even more terrifying threats. With 46 pieces of 3D terrain and 40 stunning hero and monster miniatures to draw you into the game, your greatest adventure is yet before you!
Source: https://spiel.digital/en/games/932220/descent--legends-of-the-dark

To be clear this is basically a new edition.  That means there will be a great deal of changes inbound for the game (despite trying to keep the spirit of the thing in tact).
The phrase "too much" is also very subjective.  While some changes were out of necessity, most were made based on trying to alleviate design flaws.  However, there's always that camp which will view inherent design flaws as "part of the charm" of 2nd edition.  It'd be foolish for me to comment on that aspect for you (as in: judging if it actually would be too much or not given the subjective nature of the thing).
The only I can say is that when this content is made available, the option will be present to download it in segments.  So while the core game will have an unavoidable bulk (to deal with monsters, items, etc), a significant chunk will be broken off into smaller downloads (for example: class decks, plot decks, overlord decks, etc).  So efforts will be made to break down the download/print bulk as much as possible.
 
Regarding the editor, there's a couple notes...
* it will allow for more effective play testing, as filling out text forms is far faster than manually adjusting photoshop files.  Obviously that means faster fixes to balance oversight issues (an issue ubiquitous with FFG style multi-component games).
* There will also be the spreadsheets made available for armchair devs to tinker with.  For example: the process of calculating the peril figure cost is a bit mathematically involved, so a spreadsheet was created to automate most of that.  Documentation and best practices guides will also be made available for all of this.
* Ideally, it'll be approachable enough to allow interested parties to both convert their D2e content, as well as add original creations without the psd barrier.

Recently, Delphi and I started a project to adapt the regular The Shadow Rune campaign to be playable without the need of an overlord. We will be using the fantastic Valkyrie software under development by BGG user BruceLGL to provide a look and feel very similar to the official Road to Legend app. To showcase what it will look like and evaluate how many people are interested in this, we adapted the introduction quest First Blood.
Give it a try, but beware, Mauler and his Goblins learned a few new tricks!
We think it is quite fun to play. Here are some screenshots:

Features:
step-by-step exploration of maps new quest-dependent activation instructions for monsters groups quest mechanics similar to the regular campaign but adapted to Road to Legend play-style.  travel and campaign phases at the start and at the end of each quest reward system based on gold and number of available Shop Item cards uses the Road to Legend rule set, no additional rules other than provided within the quest itself Download: http://descent-community.org/index.php/the-shadow-rune-project/
Installation:
install the official Road to Legend app download and unpack the current Valkyrie release from here start Valkyrie from the folder you unpacked it to select "Import Road to Legend content", click on the Descent button when import done select Start Quest and download First Blood (it will be saved in your windows user directory (%appdata%\Valkyrie\) Start the quest Support Requests:
Obviously, this is a big project that cannot be completed by two people alone. We will need a lot of help from you guys to get this done.
We need people to with ideas how to adapt each quest for app-play and put those ideas into our quest design template available for our download page. We need people to create the quest.ini files based on the quest design templates (using the Valkyrie Quest Editor GUI or very simple code). We need people to play test quests providing detailed feedback on bugs and balancing.
If this sparks enough interest, we will continue to get a full campaign adapted.
Contribute and make this project happen!
 

That's all FFGs fault! We had it all under control!

Thanks for posting these. The art that you use is top notch. May I ask where you got these from?
Some specific comments:
Are these act 1 or 2 items? Ring of Health and Regeneration: "On a previous turn" needs to be specified as it could ne interpreted as "any of your previous turns in this encounter". "Received" should be replaced by "suffered" Peacekeeper: "You cannot be Terrified" is standard language here. I am currently developing a community driven expansion that will have roughly the contents of a official mini expansion. We have most of the stuff completed and are doing play-tests at the moment. I wonder if you would be interested in joining this project and provide some item cards to be added to the expansion.
Could you explain your reasons for adding the new rather complex rules for weapons?

Thank you for sharing these. I really like the variety those heroes represent and hope to find the time to test them.
The quickest option to give them a more official look is this neat little tool: http://dataflux.nl/descent/hero/   

This morning, @Sadgit reached out to me and provided me a new super-hi-res template for the Hero cards.  It is hard to believe, but it is better than the one I was using.  You can actually see the graphics BENEATH the attribute values, the health, fatigue, and defense values, etc.
So, tonight, I re-generated all of the Healers, Mages, and Scouts using the new template.  Thanks @Sadgit

My OCD wood-working self wants to refinish the table ... 😂

1) Based off of the wording in quests like "Caladen's Crossing" and a warning in the beginning of the HoB book, I think the OL would not place Splig even in the rumor quest:
-When the LT is sacrificed, the rules say the card is "returned to the game box." The game box is essentially nowhere, those cards are inaccessible.
-There is an explicit warning at the beginning of the HoB campaign regarding plot decks, "Consideration should also be given when choosing the... Plot decks... If the overlord sacrifices Spig, Belthir, or Baron Zachareth, he cannot summon the corresponding agent into play for the remainder of the campaign."
In other words, the LT card is off limits, and the character is off limits as well via other cards. Therefore, I would say "consideration should be given" when playing rumor cards containing quests featuring lieutenants who may be sacrificed during HoB.
All the above being said, in a healthy, friendly, campaign, I would expect all parties to come up with a solution such as swapping out the rumor quest or playing a different rumor card from the OL's hand.

2) You do not use tainted cards in rumor quests during a mists/chains campaign, nor do you have the quest victory if all heroes are KO'd.
3) "Defend" is a "use this card" type skill without a time limit (for example, "limit once per round"). That means the knight may use it as many times as it is applicable, provided he can pay the cost. If the Elemental were to target 3 different heroes adjacent to the knight, the knight could pay 3 fatigue and redirect all 3 of those attacks back at himself. He would have to roll defense dice 3 separate times.
 
EDIT: Knight_66 reminded me to check the CRRG, which apparently details on page 48 how the knight can only use Defend once per attack.