by Solaius
Alright, I recently acquired the base game without any previous contact with descent first edition.I started playing the campaign as Overlord against a party of 3 players, and I must say I don't think this game is balanced at all. Before I comment more on that, let me explain that everyone in my playgroup has a decent strategic mindset and it's not hard for us to quickly grasp what is working and what isn't. The heroes chose their characters based on what they saw was strongest (by checking suggestions on the internet).
I'm playing against leoric as runemaster, avric as knight and grisbam as berserker. We have played so far First Blood, Castle Darion and Death on the Wing. I won first blood solely because the heroes wanted to grab all search tokens in the map to sell the items before the game ended, otherwise I would have lost. I lost the other four encounters in the next two quests handedly. It was not close.
Here's what I think so far about what is breaking the game's balance:
- The fatigue as extra movement point rule: this effect seems to me the most egregious. One of the things that it allows the heroes to do almost at the start of any encounter is to get an extra action by moving with fatigue and then clearing at least one monster mob before the overlord can even begin to act.
- The monsters can attack only once rule: heroes get multiple attack actions while monsters get only one, this heavily skews the game so the overlord has to keep monsters AWAY from the heroes, otherwise they can spend their actions killing them.
- The difficulty that it is to knock out a single hero and the low payoff it brings: with monsters attacking only once, you generally have to spend several attack actions from several monster to kill ONE hero. Reviving this hero costs just a single action to the heroes and the overlord gets to draw just a single card for his trouble, after losing many actions from his monsters.
- Some issues related to my party in particular: Leoric has acquired a combination of items and skills that allows him to add blast to his attacks, combined with Pierce and extra damage. This basically one shots any mob with a single attack, and kills big monsters with ease due to piercing damage. Avric is constantly healing/giving extra defense to the heroes which discourages me to try and kill them effectively. Grisbam is the least problematic, but still hard to handle due to his high life total and ability to remove any received conditions.
- The progression is severely slanted in favor of heroes. Each map the heroes have time to get all search tokens and sell them, they get a lot of gold and buy the best items. They also get at least one XP EACH. The overlord gets just ONE XP which amounts to ONE card. With the extra XP and items each hero gets powerful skills that sometimes have effects that don't even require actions, such as prayer of healing from Avric. As each hero improves significantly after every map, the Overlord gets ONE card that he might or might not draw.
- The heroic feat is too much: being a one shot use per encounter is hardly useful to stop the heroes, as these feats are very powerful and usually encounters don't last long at all. When each hero has 3 powerful effects in their sleeve they can use it right at the get go to shift the map in their favor and keep the overlord on the backfoot.
As we move to the next quest next week, I'm confident I'm going to get steamrolled this entire campaign if something doesn't change. The combination of area attacks, healing and high damage output is too much to overcome. It's unfortunate because I really like the idea of the game, but I think this game is giving too much resources to the heroes and not enough resources to the overlord. I played once as hero before that in First Blood and I found it very very easy to win that map and destroy the overlord.
Last thing: as overlord I acquired two web traps and one unholy ritual as my cards, with the mindset of trying to make the heroes lose the most actions possible by immobilizing them and also having the ability to draw more cards. Sometimes it worked for a bit, but never really to give me a fighting chance. I also played two quests against a party of two and I found the games to be much easier to win as Overlord, though that was BEFORE I learned there was an errata giving extra attacks/healing actions for two-hero parties, which I think would swing the games in favor of heroes again.
I'm competitive and I don't find it fun at all to have a strategy game where one side is constantly going to lose because the other has more resources and options. I would like to hear some feedback about whether people faced the same issues with the base game and if they know how to fix it. I proposed to my playgroup next week that we allow fatigue to be spent as extra movement only once per hero turn, to see if they can stop blitzkrieging through the map and killing my monsters before I do a single thing.
P.S.: all heroes agreed the game is not balanced and the heroes have it too easy.