Descent - Road to Legend - Replayability?

[Thanee]

I'm considering to get the whole Descent package soon and am interested in opinions about the much-praised Road to Legend expansion and in particular about the replayability offered by it?

Is it always the same game pretty much, or does it have enough flexible elements so you do not know everything inside out after a couple games?

Bye
Thanee

 

[MerricB]

There are

6 different overlords (choose 1)
3 different overlord plots (choose 1)

So, that's already quite some variety. Add the 26 PC choices (choose 4), plus the host of skills and abilities... then you have the dungeons (randomly generated) - from 40 floorplans and 4 monster choices each, for 160 dungeon layouts in all - and you have variety.

The Road to Legend campaign is long - probably about 60+ hours. After a couple of complete games, you probably have more than your money's worth.

Cheers!

 

[Thanee]

Sounds good. Thanks, Merric!

Bye
Thanee

 

[Punnuendo]

Everyone I know that has/plays Descent was pretty much said they won't play vanilla Descent anymore. Road to Legend makes a decent game much much better.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Everyone I know that has/plays Descent was pretty much said they won't play vanilla Descent anymore. Road to Legend makes a decent game much much better.

I agree 100% with this. I am currently running a Descent campaign using RtL and it has been a blast. I can't wait to finish it so I can start another one!

 

[Felon]

Descent RtL is definitely a great addition. One of the big problems with default Descent was that there was this huge dungeoncrawl that almost never got finished. Players held their breath in anticipation of getting gold treasure weapons that they would get so little use out of. And forget spending money on training altogether.

RtL definitely improves those areas. OTOH, most of the overpowered stuff in regular Descent is still overpowered in RtL, it can be a real problem for a campaign.

But I love it. I probably enjoy playing Descent RtL more than D&D these days.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Descent RtL is definitely a great addition. One of the big problems with default Descent was that there was this huge dungeoncrawl that almost never got finished. Players held their breath in anticipation of getting gold treasure weapons that they would get so little use out of. And forget spending money on training altogether.

RtL definitely improves those areas. OTOH, most of the overpowered stuff in regular Descent is still overpowered in RtL, it can be a real problem for a campaign.

But I love it. I probably enjoy playing Descent RtL more than D&D these days.

But with the ability of the Overlord to increase the power of his monsters (the level 5 creatures from regular Descent are where the monsters start in RtL - they can be upgraded to silver & gold versions which are 2-3 times more powerful) I don't think some of those over the top weapons and items are going to be as much of a problem as they were in regular Descent. I mean even the lowly kobold, at gold level, has 14 wounds, iirc! The Overlord, ime, is really tough to beat and my group has to use smart tactics and teamwork to finish every dungeon with a minimum of casualties.

 

[Felon]

But with the ability of the Overlord to increase the power of his monsters (the level 5 creatures from regular Descent are where the monsters start in RtL - they can be upgraded to silver & gold versions which are 2-3 times more powerful) I don't think some of those over the top weapons and items are going to be as much of a problem as they were in regular Descent. I mean even the lowly kobold, at gold level, has 14 wounds, iirc! The Overlord, ime, is really tough to beat and my group has to use smart tactics and teamwork to finish every dungeon with a minimum of casualties.

Well, 14 wounds is nothing at the gold level of the campaign. Heroes rip through that just through surges. The consensus of experienced players over on the Descent forum at FFG is that if the OL lets the campaign go gold, he's pretty much lost. Assuming both players and GM are competent (obviously, when people don't know what they're doing, you can't address strategy), the game is made or broken at the juncture where the copper level campaign jumps to silver, with the OL trying to amass lieutenants on Tamailar before the heroes can actually avail themselves of silver treasures.

But I was largely regarding treachery (in particular Crushing Blow) being the overpowered element, particularly with how treachery applies to lieutenant encounters. The most recent expansion, Tome of Ice, is an attempt to address this issue. Haven't had a chance to play with it though.

 

[Nebulous]

While i enjoyed Descent well enough, it sort of felt slow. For what it's worth, i think that 4e D&D handles the combat and rpg aspects better. But Descent has the best room tiles and little plastic monsters, so it's still worth picking up.

 

[weem]

I bought it for me and my friends to play but we never got around to it before 4e released. Now, I use a lot of stuff from the game in the 4e games we play (the minis, the tiles sometimes, and the markers ALL THE TIME)