by tydobbs
There have been a ton of discussions and comments regarding whether this game is 'balanced' or not and I'd like to put a few ideas out there in writing because everybody seems to be talking about something different when they use the term. I apologize in advance for the number of references to Magic the Gathering but I do think it is a good comparison for this topic if you are familiar with it.First of all, there are several types of 'balance' that we need to define. Game Balance is composed of the rules of the game, and not the components. In a game like Chess, they are one and the same, but in a game like Descent with many interchangeable parts, asymmetric gameplay, and even variable win conditions, the overarching system that govern how all these pieces fit together should be separated from the components themselves and analysed themselves. When people simply say this entire 'game is imbalanced', what they usual have meant is they think the scenarios they played are imbalanced and not the rules themselves. The only legit conversation I can think of currently about the game itself being imbalanced is a discussion of the power of the Immobilize condition and how it is much easier for the hero's to inflict it repeatedly and mitigate it compared to the OL. Line of Sight could be considered imbalanced if, for instance only one side had access to ranged characters since it is much easier to establish line of sight in this edition. One last example is that in MTG, the player who goes first does not draw a card on their first turn because it was determined that rule favored that player too heavily.
This next one is mostly unique to thematic games and is what most people have been talking about. That is the balance of the scenarios themselves and I wish we could be more specific when this is what we are complaining about and restrict it to the scenario in question instead of making blanket statements about the whole game system. Once again, because the rules make up an entire gaming system, each scenario needs to be looked at individually, just because a particular quest may be imbalanced, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the system. In a game like Chess or Magic, this doesn't exist since the goal (quest?) is the same in every game. But since Descent tries to allow a story to be told in it's objectives, each scenario needs to be judged on it's own.
On a related topic, can we please stop citing the result of single play through of an encounter as evidence as to whether that encounter is balanced. If one player in a game of magic gets stuck on one land and gets crushed, that is not evidence that the matchup between their two decks is imbalanced, and it certainly isn't evidence that the game rules are imbalanced. (it is evidence that there is a high level of variance in the game, something that Descent does have with it's dice rolls and randomized search tokens in some encounters) Another thing we need to stop doing is crying out that an entire encounter is imbalance because a certain configuration of heroes/equipment/skills lost to a certain configuration of open groups / overlord card choices / overlord card draws. One play through with a particular combination is not enough, it will take the community a long time to get a sample size large enough to really know for sure. In MTG, a format is not imbalanced just because one deck has a heavily favored match-up against your favorite deck. There are many other decks configurations that can counter the other strategy and there is likely a tweaked version of your own choices that can improve your chances. Snap opinions on scenario balance this early in the game's lifetime are very likely to be wrong because right now is when there is the highest chance of the best strategies seeming counter intuitive. Once again, in MTG, evertime a new set is released there is at least one card that is heavily underestimated and the magic community is much better at evaluating new magic cards than we are at evaluating the components of Descent right now.
Speaking of components, in a game like this, and the reason MTG examples are appropriate, is that there are so many choices for customization (especially with the conversion kit) that component balance has to be taken into consideration. This has come up several times with threads that amount to "Shadow Dragons OP!!" and "Sorcery too good??" although the sorcery one starts to dip slightly into a question of rules balance. The issue here comes when one choice completely dominates all others in practically every situation to the point that there is no reason for the others to even exist. This happens in MTG more frequently than they would like and it leads to bannings. In the BGG world it more frequently leads to errata :-) Once again, one bad experience with one starting configuration is not enough data. Just because your all melee and low damage ranged party couldn't kill the shadow dragon at all doesn't mean that he's broken. If it turns out that the majority of party/gear/skill combinations have trouble killing the shadow dragon, and there is no reason to ever pick any other group (which there is simply by the nature of their open group symbols being different) then we would have a problem. This applies to heroes, skills, and equipment as well. The two things you have to consider is if it's better in every way than comparable choices, and does it's presence significantly warp in a negative way (by whatever measure you consider bad) the other parties behavior.
Finally there is campaign balance. This is the hardest one because every choice you make is locked in and for a much longer time. Your choice of heroes, number of heroes, skills, equipment, etc. The overlord has much more flexibily over the course of the campaign since he is not locked into a set of monsters to choose from, only the OL cards he buys. As an aside, I think this is one of his largest advantages, as the heroes are locked into any 'bad' decisions they make for the whole campaign, leaving the OL free to try to exploit those weaknesses meaning they have to try to present a well rounded party while the OL can specialize in exploiting any chinks in their armor. This is also the most painful one to 'get wrong' since you invest such a long time completing a campaign. The only help that those in charge of balancing the campaign get is that it lends itself more to role play which means that many players may be more willing to forgive some of the rough spots through the campaign as long as they are progressing, which they do given the flatter rewards for winning each quest than one might expect at first.
My personal opinion so far is that this is overall a good system with a lot of room for cool situations and combinations. Some of the scenarios could be imbalance but it is too early to cry foul for sure. In the context of the campaign having a few imbalanced scenarios are only a problem the first time you accidentally stumble upon them and actually can enhance the campaign once everybody knows about them. The short(er) play time of each quest helps take the sting out of a bad individual play due to bad luck or bad starting decisions which means that bigger risks can be taken in scenario design and other elements of the game.