Descent: The Road to Legend — Preview #7
From the Bat–Cave
The overlord has many weapons in his arsenal, but the most basic and the most oft-occurring are the legions on monsters at his command. Journeys in the Dark features twelve distinct monster types alone, with each expansion since then adding a handful more. Road to Legend won't be adding any new monster types (unless you count lieutenants, of course), but it will be completely changing every single monster you know and love in a number of important ways.
Here are some core tenets to keep in mind:
- Monsters now come in three types. There are humanoid, beast, and eldritch monsters. For the most part, which creature falls into which category should be obvious, but there are some corner-cases. (Sorcerers are eldritch, for example, not humanoids.) When an overlord upgrades monsters, he'll upgrade an entire type at once. Since dungeon levels often give the overlord flexibility as to which monsters to spawn (and since, with treachery, he can selectively add and subtract spawn cards to his deck), it's not necessarily a given that the overlord will level all three monster categories.
- Monsters have four levels. All monster types start at copper level, and can then progress to silver, gold, and (for only a single monster type per campaign), diamond. Higher-level monsters hit harder, can take more damage, and often have more powerful special abilities.
- Every monster so far released is covered here. Every monster in forthcoming expansions will be added. For those of you keeping track, Road to Legend has copper through diamond stats for twenty monsters. Future Descent expansions will include Road to Legend stats for all monsters they introduce.
- Everything you know is wrong. Every monster has been reexamined and reevaluated for its place in the advanced campaign. Some basic things still hold true - beastmen are fragile, but hit pretty hard. Ogres still have knockback, razorwings still fly. But the heroes can no longer rely on their assessment of the monsters as they existed in Journeys in the Dark. Some monsters, such as dragons and manticores, may demonstrate surprising new abilities. Some may be stronger, some weaker than you remember.
To demonstrate some of these concepts, let's look at the humble razorwing.
In Journeys in the Dark, the razorwing's primary function is as a spoiler. Fast and tough, the razorwing can block more valuable monsters, squat on glyphs, and guard treasure chests. They can also use their flight and high speed to strike more fragile characters, but their low damage output means that they're no real threat to many heroes.
- Monsters now come in three types. The razorwing is a beast-type monster, a class it shares with bane spiders, hell hounds, dragons, and others. Beasts include melee, ranged, and magic monsters, so it's a versatile category to upgrade, but the razorwing is the only beast that has a single-square footprint.
- Monsters have four levels. As the razorwing improves from its humble copper beginnings, all its stats go up. This is actually not generally true - beastmen, for example, stay at the same 4 speed their entire upgrade path. But what is true is that the monsters get better at their schtick. Since being fast is part of what razorwings are all about, they get faster as they upgrade. Their attack dice get better and their health increases by a factor of four as they reach diamond level, too.
- Everything you know is wrong. Razorwings aren't the weak little flying rats you remember from Journeys in the Dark anymore. They've claimed their place as a second-tier monster and they're not going anywhere. Rolling red-green at copper level means they're hitting, on average, for a little under 5 damage a bite, and they're capping out at 7 hearts. (Compare that to their previous maximum of 5 damage!) By the time it's diamond level, a razorwing is a fast-moving, hard-hitting, hard-to-kill assassin.
Of course, the entire monster-upgrade system means that the relative strength of spawn cards is constantly in flux (you might see an overlord discarding a beastman war party to get enough threat to spawn his bane spiders!), but even at copper level overlords and heroes both will have to consider every monster in a new light.
Look back at the preview "Right-Talon Man" and ponder Sir Alric Farrow's card in light of this new information. How many of you foresaw him spending threat to bring in additional razorwings prior to reading this article? How many of you can see him doing so now?
Join us next time, when we answer a few final questions.
Read the other articles in this series:
Preview #1: The Quest for Adventure »
Preview #2: Right–Talon Man »
Preview #3: Home Sweet Home »
Preview #4: Lord it Over the Heroes »
Preview #5: Mordrog Lord-Smasher, Champion of Terrinoth »
Preview #6: Packing for the Road to Legend »
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