by DSteak
I absolutely love just about everything about Descent 2nd Edition except for, in my opinion, one glaring flaw - the lack of death.I know this topic has been done to death (pun) but here is a variant I've toyed with and it seems pretty cool. First though, here is my issue with the lack of death.
We all understand Descent is not a dungeon crawler, but a strategic objective-based game, where each player needs to make the most out of his finite number of actions and moves. With that said, I don't see how me, as the overlord, killing a player does very much in decreasing the heroes' total number of moves, as they can simply stand up on their next turn.
Also, I don't understand the point of healing another character. If Alvric spends 1 or 2 actions to heal a character, what is the point if a knocked down hero can simply stand up using one action?
I, as most of you, grew up where in video games death was final. Just like in Final Fantasy 1, and now in games like Dark Souls. How can we implement this sense of danger into Descent?
My initial idea, which has proven to be pretty fun, is this:
Each hero gets three tokens (i usually use their hero tokens). These tokens can be used in the following two ways:
- When a hero dies, he may use one token to stand up and roll 2 red dice to recover that amount of health.
- A hero may use a token as a "revive potion" on an adjacent fallen hero, who then recovers full health.
Once all three of a heroes tokens are used in a quest (encounter 1 results carry over to encounter 2) he or she may no longer stand up or revive another hero. However, another hero with a token may still revive that player.
This system promotes heroes reviving each other because they recover full health, as opposed to standing up which just gives you the health of a two-red dice roll.
I've also toyed with a dead hero receiving none or maybe half of the bonus gold upon the completion of a quest.
My favorite aspect of this rule is it adds a sense of danger to the game for the heroes. One more thing to keep an eye on, similar to Imperial Assault. And it makes a healer's job much more important.
I haven't yet taken his rule through a full campaign yet, so I am excited to see how it works. Any thoughts or things I'm missing? Thanks