by The_Immortal
This post is about the unfortunate but very significant failure of the Overlord level-gaining system in the Descent 2nd edition (henceforth Descent-2) campaign. I will first briefly outline the problem and then discuss options for repairing it.Short version: The 3 Overlord upgrade paths are completely out of balance with one another and any competent Overlord will always pick the same one.
Problems of balance between individual cards and abilities is nothing new to FFG games - and certainly, original Descent (henceforth Descent-1) was no different. However, the problem is particularly acute in Descent-2 because, for reasons unknown, the designers seem to have removed many key mechanisms that provide inherent robustness (this observation applies widely throughout Descent-2, a topic I will perhaps address more fully and more generally at a later date). For Overlord upgrades in Descent-2 - that is, the purchasing of additional cards with the Overlord's XP - the problem arises because the Overlord has full choice without any aspect of randomization. This is fine IF the competing upgrade paths have been expertly tuned to each be viable choices that require different, but ultimately equally effective, playstyles.
Furthermore, it also bears noting that the Overlord's level-up's are on a 'swap' basis - any card he buys is meant to REPLACE one of the 15 default cards (technically he is *allowed* to not remove any cards and play with a larger deck, but this is obviously sub-optimal). Another consequence of this: there are inherent diminishing returns to card purchases, because in order to make room for more cards, you are replacing progressively better and better 'default' cards. Therefore, for the Overlord level-up to have any meaning, the purchasable cards must be clearly better than most (if not all) of the default cards, and the more expensive purchases *significantly* so.
Unfortunately (but predictably), Descent-2 does not do well on either of these counts. A very small number of Overlord class cards are absolutely stellar. Many are little or no improvement over the default deck.
Head and shoulders above all other cards is Reinforce, at the top of the 'Warlord' class tree. It is literally a game-changing card. Descent-1 was virtually about spawning - it was the game's primary strategic consideration. Descent-2 took it out...except that there it is, sitting atop the Warlord class.
Meanwhile, at the top of the Saboteur deck, there's a card that maybe kills ONE hero when he opens a door or chest but probably not. Is THIS a game-changer? Web traps are excellent, but are the first cards available in this class, providing no incentive to specialize any further.
Magus class - do some insignificant damage and then fetch the NEXT best card in your deck. Obviously, this would be quite good if you already HAD a game-changing card (like Reinforce), but the rest of the Magus line is so poor that you don't.
The result is that building to Reinforce as quickly as possible is the only choice that is even HALF-sensible for the Overlord, with a tiny dilemma about side-tracking to the excellent web-traps or not.
So, what to do about it?
A similar problem existed in Descent-1, with Treachery cards. These were nowhere near-balanced, but there was a simple and elegant fix which I (and I believe many others) used: deal out a small random subset of the cards and select only from that subset for each individual quest. However, because in Descent-2 the Overlord is supposed to maintain his purchases between quests and slowly build up a "specialized" deck, I don't see a straightforward analog. Furthermore, many of the cards are of a questionable value to swap in even if they were free, especially given the diminishing returns on card purchases.
I am really seeing no alternative but to tweak the effects of the cards themselves. There are just so few of them that they need to be vastly better balanced at an individual level than they are right now. I will be the first to admit this is an undesirable solution, since it requires over-riding existing information on specific published components, but I'm not seeing any other way.
My feeling is that Reinforce should be taken as the 'gold standard' and the other 'top of the line' cards need to be rebalanced from there. I could be wrong here - perhaps Reinforce itself is too strong and some middle ground is needed. But I feel like the top level card in each class SHOULD be a game-changer - one that fundamentally changes the flavour of the game once it goes into the Overlord's deck. Reinforce, at least, does this successfully.
I will be working on a re-engineering that attempts to change as little printed text as possible and I may post results as I hopefully make progress on this problem.