by Callidus
Hi folks!When strategizing either as one of the valiant team of heroes or as the evil overlord, it can be frustrating to see the most brilliant schemes thwarted and stomped into the mud by sheer misfortune, as has happened to me and my group on many a game night we spent together playing D2E.
Descent is a game with many intertwined mechanics, so many options and so much resources and different tools available to either side of the competition (at least if you've been crazy enough like me, and spent your precious money on every last piece of plastic and cardboard FFG published for D2E since its release). For such a quite complex game, assuming reasonable balance (not always the case for most official quests, I know), winning or losing mostly depends on bad and good decisions made, efficient use of resources available, and one important point most people neglect: Enough information to make the right decision most of the time.
What helped me a great deal in Descent 2E, playing on either side, was, to know the odds of a specific outcome when rolling dice. If the best move you can pull off at a given situation e.g. has only a chance of 20% or less of being successful, most of the time I found it best to consider the second best option, which has a much higher probability of not resulting in a waste of resources and still brings me closer to my goal.
There is no way to completely eliminate the once-in-a-while frustrating blow out when in critical situations a good roll of one side meets a bad roll on the other, or an unbelievable strain of luck or misfortune ruins a quest for good. But making decisions based on a good understanding of probability helps to increase chances of winning, as with most games with similar mechanics.
For those who consider this a truism, I have nothing else to say
For all the others, I wanted to share with you a couple of spread sheets I made, that helped me a great deal as a competitive D2E gamer - amongst other things like following the invaluable insight shared by many people on this forum!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B17zSnU8E5OLfl90elZUQmtweV...
The sheets contain the following:
1. A list of expectancy and maxima for typical D2E dice pools
2. Odds of success table for attribute tests
3. Odds of success table for attribute tests (Lindel the Scout)
Looking forward to some feedback or discussion!