Elemental Ziggurat results
It was a close game, but my Descent players died a horrible, bloody death at my hands. Nice try, guys. Maybe next time.
Some details behind the cut.
The premise of the dungeon was to take a large dungeon and break it up into smaller, elemental themed areas to explore, finally returning to overcome a large boss. I think about 80% my game design worked, but the parts that were flawed bogged the game down. I'll get to that in a minute, but let me discuss the players first.
Nick played an agility based fighter. For the most part, he was the core damage output of the group, functioned as a healer, and was pretty resilient. His main ability came from his skill which allowed him to choose one of two treasure cards each time a chest was opened, giving him better equipment than his companions, allowing for even more abilities.
musikub played an agility based character with some skill in magic. He could inflict more damage against monsters by exploiting Line of Sight (LoS) rules to emulate a 'sneak attack' effect. He gained further bonuses by using Ranged attacks (not physical or magic), and acquired some rather powerful group-affecting staves. Essentially, he was the party's sniper.
mahannie57 was the full fledged mage. Her innate ability inflated the cost of my Overlord powers, and she fortuitously acquired a Bag of Holding making her a constant debuffer and inventory specialist. Furthermore, she had the ability to choose which players received the treasure chest awards, reducing the chances of players getting useless equipment. Oh, and let's not forget her animal companions, the ferrets whom could run around the map and collect all the potions and gold I set out without fear of harm from any enemy or trap I set. She became the core support of the group.
G played an odd character whose armor stat was based on his damage output; the more skill points he had in his melee stat, the better his armor became. Adding to this was his ability to inflict more damage as he accrued injury and a high movement rating which essentially turning him into a berserker. One of his traits gave him the Acrobat skill, which ignored ALL of my obstacles (pits, water, boulders, passing through enemies, etc.), he became a terrifying whirling dervish of absurd speed.
That was what I was up against. Luckily, they had weaknesses!
Nick wore too many hats, and was often rushing to many places. When I started using my Cursed Artifact ability to swap out his treasure cards for cursed relics, he became hesitant. When I used Crushing Blow to outright break some of his shiny weapons, he slowed down further. Overall, he was a solid character that was spread too thin in too many roles.
musikub was squishy. Sure, he had great AC against ranged and magic attacks, but he had almost no AC against melee attacks. I just needed to send my melee monsters in to take him out. Yes, that was tough to do, but it worked.
mahannie57 was used to playing a tank/fighter, so her skills as a mage weren't fully utilized. While her ferrets were great early on, after a while they were useless and she actually began to forget moving them around on her turn. Her role as Inventory Manager kept her *very* busy, and in hindsight I should have performed a Crushing Blow on her backpack to destroy Bag of Holding, eliminating the amount of items she carried which would have destroyed the party's funds.
G simply had bad luck. About 60% of his attacks missed, his AC/damage trick worked against him as his AC was so high that he never took any damage to boost his attack, and he had three different weapons break by various means. He tried to function as both high damage fighter and high speed explorer, but those sets didn't really work well together. Yes, he was quick to open chests, but I often had trap cards causing them to explode when opened. I think that was how I did most of the damage to him.
Before the game had started, I customized my Overlord deck with monster enhancing abilities, item destroying cards, cursed relics, and several key Overlord Powers. The most notable was Urgency, which let me go through my Overlord deck at twice the rate I should, and I drew this card on the first round of the game. When I draw my last card I would reshuffle, causing the players to lose more Victory Tokens than usual and if they ran out, I won. Thus, I was gaining power extremely quickly and was how I won at the end of the game.
I tried to keep my levels fairly streamlined, but the Water and Air stages were particularly troublesome. Water was a bit too large, and Air was filled with LoS limiting fog walls and numerous pits which had to be jumped over using precious movement points. G had Acrobatics, so he ignored everything, but felt that Air would have been 'impossible' if it wasn't for his ability. I disagreed, pointing out that there were plenty of platforms, but truth be told he did choose to go in ALONE. Two players utilizing a double-move/attack strategy would have done well, although at a slower rate. My biggest flaw, however, was not giving enough victory tokens each time a chest was opened.
The bottom floor of the ziggurat needed some big revisions as the boss monster actually blocked the halls that the party traversed. D'oh! Yeah, I failed on that point. After some on-the-fly revisions, I came up with a few changes which made the board much more usable. I'll see if I can't post a copy of the map tomorrow to share with you so you can see what the full dungeon looked like.
Oh, one final note: I'll also post a link to the Descent level editor which I use to build my dungeons. The players are experienced enough now to try their hand at acting as Overlord in either a pre-made dungeon or building one of their own, and I'm looking forward to acting as a hero for once. That, or I'll start learning the Advanced rules for the Road to Legend expansion.
Some details behind the cut.
The premise of the dungeon was to take a large dungeon and break it up into smaller, elemental themed areas to explore, finally returning to overcome a large boss. I think about 80% my game design worked, but the parts that were flawed bogged the game down. I'll get to that in a minute, but let me discuss the players first.
Nick played an agility based fighter. For the most part, he was the core damage output of the group, functioned as a healer, and was pretty resilient. His main ability came from his skill which allowed him to choose one of two treasure cards each time a chest was opened, giving him better equipment than his companions, allowing for even more abilities.
musikub played an agility based character with some skill in magic. He could inflict more damage against monsters by exploiting Line of Sight (LoS) rules to emulate a 'sneak attack' effect. He gained further bonuses by using Ranged attacks (not physical or magic), and acquired some rather powerful group-affecting staves. Essentially, he was the party's sniper.
mahannie57 was the full fledged mage. Her innate ability inflated the cost of my Overlord powers, and she fortuitously acquired a Bag of Holding making her a constant debuffer and inventory specialist. Furthermore, she had the ability to choose which players received the treasure chest awards, reducing the chances of players getting useless equipment. Oh, and let's not forget her animal companions, the ferrets whom could run around the map and collect all the potions and gold I set out without fear of harm from any enemy or trap I set. She became the core support of the group.
G played an odd character whose armor stat was based on his damage output; the more skill points he had in his melee stat, the better his armor became. Adding to this was his ability to inflict more damage as he accrued injury and a high movement rating which essentially turning him into a berserker. One of his traits gave him the Acrobat skill, which ignored ALL of my obstacles (pits, water, boulders, passing through enemies, etc.), he became a terrifying whirling dervish of absurd speed.
That was what I was up against. Luckily, they had weaknesses!
Nick wore too many hats, and was often rushing to many places. When I started using my Cursed Artifact ability to swap out his treasure cards for cursed relics, he became hesitant. When I used Crushing Blow to outright break some of his shiny weapons, he slowed down further. Overall, he was a solid character that was spread too thin in too many roles.
musikub was squishy. Sure, he had great AC against ranged and magic attacks, but he had almost no AC against melee attacks. I just needed to send my melee monsters in to take him out. Yes, that was tough to do, but it worked.
mahannie57 was used to playing a tank/fighter, so her skills as a mage weren't fully utilized. While her ferrets were great early on, after a while they were useless and she actually began to forget moving them around on her turn. Her role as Inventory Manager kept her *very* busy, and in hindsight I should have performed a Crushing Blow on her backpack to destroy Bag of Holding, eliminating the amount of items she carried which would have destroyed the party's funds.
G simply had bad luck. About 60% of his attacks missed, his AC/damage trick worked against him as his AC was so high that he never took any damage to boost his attack, and he had three different weapons break by various means. He tried to function as both high damage fighter and high speed explorer, but those sets didn't really work well together. Yes, he was quick to open chests, but I often had trap cards causing them to explode when opened. I think that was how I did most of the damage to him.
Before the game had started, I customized my Overlord deck with monster enhancing abilities, item destroying cards, cursed relics, and several key Overlord Powers. The most notable was Urgency, which let me go through my Overlord deck at twice the rate I should, and I drew this card on the first round of the game. When I draw my last card I would reshuffle, causing the players to lose more Victory Tokens than usual and if they ran out, I won. Thus, I was gaining power extremely quickly and was how I won at the end of the game.
I tried to keep my levels fairly streamlined, but the Water and Air stages were particularly troublesome. Water was a bit too large, and Air was filled with LoS limiting fog walls and numerous pits which had to be jumped over using precious movement points. G had Acrobatics, so he ignored everything, but felt that Air would have been 'impossible' if it wasn't for his ability. I disagreed, pointing out that there were plenty of platforms, but truth be told he did choose to go in ALONE. Two players utilizing a double-move/attack strategy would have done well, although at a slower rate. My biggest flaw, however, was not giving enough victory tokens each time a chest was opened.
The bottom floor of the ziggurat needed some big revisions as the boss monster actually blocked the halls that the party traversed. D'oh! Yeah, I failed on that point. After some on-the-fly revisions, I came up with a few changes which made the board much more usable. I'll see if I can't post a copy of the map tomorrow to share with you so you can see what the full dungeon looked like.
Oh, one final note: I'll also post a link to the Descent level editor which I use to build my dungeons. The players are experienced enough now to try their hand at acting as Overlord in either a pre-made dungeon or building one of their own, and I'm looking forward to acting as a hero for once. That, or I'll start learning the Advanced rules for the Road to Legend expansion.