Here is a link:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=176&esem=4

 VERY interesting… hmmm… though I can't measure the scope yet… I am just going to have to play the game ;-)

Of course, I think that 1st Edition is still better, but this has potential, esp with the conversion kit! THAT I like! :)

As always FFG, you find new ways of draining my bank account… :-S

Looks very interesting. I am still bothered a bit that hero death seems so to be even more trivial than it was in 1e. Yeah I know it will slow down heroes, but I don't know. It seems more than a nuisance than something to really fear, which is what should be the case. I was really hoping they would change hero death to be a bit more punishing, but the rest looks good. Can't wait to try it out!

After seeing all the previews over the past few weeks, there weren't any special surprises with the rules. By and large the mechanics feels like the original descent.  

It seems like games will be significantly shorter than first edition because of several factors, some of which are:

- Few "Areas" (encounters) per quest  / smaller maps

- Generous movement and line-of-sight rules mean 

- Fewer die rolls & less surge handling

- The Overlord is more limited in spawning monsters. 

This should be fun to play!

I personally don't like several changes from D1 including:

1) Large monster movement and its mechanics - although the simplified rules should result in less arguments

2) The way pits and lava are handled

Of course, the above concerns may be mitigated by what the "maps" actually look like for the quests.  It is disappointing not to have access to the Quest Guides; it would help address some of the questions my group has.  Guess you can't have everything.

any2cards said:

What don't you like about pits and lava?

 Hello,

I am just happy to finally see the rules so i can get playing on release day without to much delay.

Atraangelis said:

As am I, I just finished reading the rules and took a good amount of notes for things that have changed from D1e to D2e. I came out with about 1 ½ pages of listed notes, lol.

Even though I always play the Overlord (I occasionally get to play a hero), I enjoyed these changes:

1. Trading during a quest doesn't require movement points
2. Carrying an unlimited amount of items in your pack (points 1 and 2 really slowed my games down with determining how/when to trade)
3. Unlimited O.L. hand size

Scy800 said:

If anything, "death" in 2e is harsher than it was in 1e.  Don't be fooled by the less harmful sounding terminology of "knocked out."

In first edition, when a hero died he was teleported back to town - a safe haven where the Overlord could not touch him - and given full health and fatigue, as well as having all lingering effects removed.  Basically, he was restored to full power and transported to a position of safety which he could emerge from at his leisure.  The only limitation was that he could only return to the map through one of a few specific spaces (namely activated glyphs), but that was rarely a huge inconvenience in my experience.

In second edition, a hero who is "knocked out" is forced to remain in the space he was "knocked out" in (a space that most likely has monsters nearby.)  He only regains a portion of his health and fatigue (as determined by die roll) when he stands up, rather than everything.  Note that the rules state that a hero who is "defeated" (aka Ko'd) immediately loses all fatigue and all health (important if he was "defeated" by something other than losing his last hit point.)  So it's not like there will ever be a situation where he's only down one or two fatigue and laughing off the die roll.

The hero must also burn an entire turn standing up (or else one of his allies must burn a single action while standing adjacent to him.)  And the Overlord gets a free card for having KO'd him, to boot.  The only part of this sequence that is equal to first edition is the fact that conditions (aka "lingering effects") get discarded.  Nothing about it is better for the heroes.

The biggest hit in 2e's "death" rules is probably the action/turn required to stand up.  We know from first edition that the greatest measure of hero power was the number of attacks they could bring to bear against the monsters, and the combat rules for second edition seem similar enough based on the rulebook that this is probably true in 2e as well.  To get a hero back on his feet requires at least one action, possibly two (the KO'd hero's whole turn, or potentially an ally forced to use a Move and a Revive to get him up.)  In first edition, getting back on your feet required no actions.

Seriously, the only thing that's "more trivial" about 2e's death mechanics is the fluff terminology used to describe it.  If you don't like heroes getting "knocked out" you can just start calling it "death" and the revival process becomes "resurrection."  Fluff is grim and bloody again, mechanics are unchanged.  How does a hero revive himself if he's thematically dead, you ask?  Obviously, all serious heroes make a point of getting a magic amulet that allows them to revive themselves before setting out for glory and riches.  The amulet takes time to heal your wounds, otherwise an ally can pour a res potion down your throat (heroes keep plenty of those in stock too, sadly they have no effect on people who aren't dead.)

It's as realistic as heroes materializing in the temple back in town as soon as they die, perhaps moreso because there's no mysterious omnipresent teleportation of bodies going on.  At the end of the day, it's a magical fantasy setting, after all.

Well, the obvious and important way in which the 2e death rules are more forgiving than 1e is that there's no conquest tokens, and therefore no limit to the number of times the heroes can revive.  How that pans out will depend heavily on how the quests and their victory conditions are structured.

Finished my first read-through (except for the campaign rules).  Noticed several things that are interesting, many of which might be errors:

1. The rules seem to say that the heroes choose their turn order at the start of the round, unlike in 1e where you could wait until the first hero finished his turn to decide who goes second.

2. It's unclear whether a hero who "stands up" can use fatigue to move.  Standing up is "the only action" the hero can perform that turn, but suffering fatigue for extra movement doesn't take an action and can be done even when you don't perform a movement action. However, the rules for standing up also imply that doing so ends your turn. That would maybe still allow you to use fatigue to move before standing up, except that being knocked out uses up all your fatigue, disables your abilities, and prevents you from being targeted by any effects that don't revive you, so there's probably no circumstance in which you can have fatigue available while knocked out.

3. Attacks target a space (as in 1e), BUT the targeted space must contain an enemy figure. No more centering Blast attacks on empty squares, or moving allies around with knockback attacks (of course, knockback seems to be gone anyway). That will make Blast a lot less powerful.

4. Unarmed attacks must target adjacent spaces, but are never described as "Melee" attacks.  So, unlike in 1e, any bonuses that apply to "melee attacks" apparently won't work on unarmed attacks.

5. Line of sight is blocked by "the edge of a map tile".  The puzzle-shaped connectors that link to other map tiles are specifically referred to as "edges" in the box on page 5, so, as written, you can never attack a non-adjacent space on a different map tile, even if it's a straight shot down an empty corridor.  Pretty sure this one's a mistake.

6. Range determination is retroactive again.  Similar to 1e, you determine whether you have enough range to hit in step 3, but get to include extra range from surges spent in step 4.  (Actually, what it technically says is that you miss unless you can increase your range with surges; it doesn't actually say you need to exercise that option.) That probably doesn't cause many problems in actual play, but it still bugs me - why the heck didn't they just write it the other way around?

7. The effects of missing aren't clearly defined.  If you roll an X, "the attack is considered a miss" AND "all other results are ignored".  If you have insufficient range, "the attack is considered a miss" but it doesn't say to ignore other results.  It does not spell out (anywhere that I can find) what "considered a miss" means.  Presumably it prevents you from dealing damage, though nowhere does it actually say that.  Could you still, say, spend a surge to recover a fatigue? Having insufficient range apparently doesn't prevent you from spending surges, since otherwise you couldn't use surges to get enough range - though in 1e they eventually errata'd in a rule that said if the attack doesn't affect anyone after you finish spending surges, then all of those surges retroactively have no effect.

8. When "using skills or moving", you can only suffer fatigue up to your stamina.  "Any other game effect" converts excess fatigue into damage. That means that if you can find any items, hero abilities, heroic feats, search cards, or quest-specific actions that cost fatigue, you can pay for them with damage instead (once you're out of fatigue).

9. Large monsters get a free rotation as part of their move.  This can effectively be used to increase the monster's movement range, by choosing a "front" space to count from when you start moving, and then using it as a "rear" space when you stop (the example on page 17 specifically shows this - the ettin with speed 3 moves a distance that would have taken 4 movement in 1e). Furthermore, you get this "free movement" each time you end or interrupt your movement - the more reasons you can find to "interrupt" your movement, the farther you can move for the same number of movement points.

10. Figures in a pit only have line of sight to adjacent FIGURES.  Note "figures", not "spaces". Um.

11. Only adjacent figures can see a figure in a pit, but figures in a pit still block line-of-sight normally.  Or at least I can't find anything that says otherwise.

12. Heroes that end their turn in lava are immediately defeated and move to the closest empty, non-lava space. Fair enough. But you may have noticed that there were several other effects up to this point that move a hero to the closest empty space and do NOT specify "non-lava". For example, if the overlord knocks out a hero adjacent to lava, and then manages to position monsters in that hero's space and all adjacent non-lava spaces, then when the hero stands up on his turn, he is forced to place himself in a lava space, where he will presumably instantly die again (and the monsters will presumably move on top of him again so that he never gets out).

I do actually want to compliment a few points in the rules, though:

• They actually do have a rule clarifying which effects on a skill card are subject to the card's fatigue cost and which aren't - any effect that requires an action, says "exhaust this card", or says "use this card". I still think that could stand to be clearer on the card itself, but at least there's a clear and explicit rule.
• The order of set-up steps is clearly specified (all hero steps before all overlord steps - not that anyone is actually going to do it that way, but at least if there's a sequencing question it will have a clear answer)
• They resolved several issues with doors and walls that were problematic in 1e. Spaces on opposite sides of a closed door are NOT adjacent, and range cannot be counted through walls or closed doors even when line-of-sight is not required.
• Terrain with game-mechanical effects has colored outlines around the affected spaces - that seems like a very good idea.  I remember having several arguments about which spaces were or were not "mud" on the ToI outdoor tiles in 1e, and I didn't even play RtL or SoB.

Some other observations about the gameplay:

• It looks like 2e has around 72 skills, which is twice what 1e had in the basegame. However, under the basic rules, only 8 of those skills can ever actually be used (the 1 starting skill for each class).  Also, it appears that the basic rules have no money and no way to get any items other than your class's starting items.  So unless you're using the advanced rules, the character variety is incredibly rudimentary compared to 1e, and your character and class are the only decisions you make at setup. I'm very unhappy about this.
• No vitality potions (or any other potions, for that matter) - that probably means heroes will be doing noticeably less on a typical turn than they did in 1e.
• Resting is no longer interruptible, which means if any heroes have a stamina higher than their speed, they will probably be using rest actions a LOT more often than move actions. It also means that having one of those high and the other low will probably be better than having both medium (even moreso than in 1e).
• On the face of things, monster group sizes sounds like a better way to do player scaling than the minor health boost 1e tried to use. However, none of the monster groups have more than 1 red mini available, so I have a hard time imagining that "one group" will really be equally dangerous regardless of party size. (Also, the one reinforcement mechanic we saw in a preview earlier didn't appear to scale at all.)
• Overlord has no hand limit, which means if any of the quests are long enough, he could hypothetically hold all his "bad" cards in his hand to keep reshuffling and drawing his "good" cards over and over. Though that probably won't be worth it in a typical quest. Also, you reshuffle the discards as soon as you draw the last card from the deck, so it's a bit unclear what would happen if you actually had all 15 cards in your hand at once.

Steve-O said:

Steve-O said:

As it is now with the 2nd edition death rules, a hero can never really die, even if he was swallowed by a dragon. He just stands up next turn on the space (or nearby) where he was sliced to little pieces. I find that cheesy.

Well maybe you are right, that 2nd ed. death rules are in every aspect except description harsher than 1st. But I still dont like them very much. For a narrative game and consistent gaming environment another rule solution would have been better. (eg. using one of the unused character sheets after dying, representing that a new hero is arriving at doors of the dungeon or at a certain teleportation point or such)

The rest of the new streamlined rules, I really like. They are nice and easy to read.

 Steve-O, you make some good points, and it may seem harsher, but as you said yourself, thematically I find it terrible. Though I wasn't too fond of the death rules in Descent, at least in vanilla, the heroes would lose after several deaths. As for the Advanced campaign, the Overlord would become stronger (gain more XP) and in (lieutenant) encounters hero deaths was the way the OL could win the encounter. Now the OL gets a card.

Imagine: The big shadow dragon unleashes his fiery breath on the poor hero. Yep, you're knocked out. Just don't like it. I want the heroes to fear those wound counters on their hero sheet, it should have huge implications.

Don't know how it will balance, but I am already contemplating removing the hero action of standing up. You're dead unless another hero revives you. If all heroes are dead at the same time, the OL wins the encounter. But I'll  first play it with vanilla rules to see if anything else needs to be changed to balance this playstyle.

Scy800 said:

I think I'm with you here.  In fact, you could say that 2nd edition doesn't have death in it at all - instead you merely fall unconcious due to your wounds.  The 'penalty' for doing so is, IMO, negligable.  Course, you could argue that you're playing a group of *heroes*, and that death has no part to play, but without risk, some of the *feel* suffers.

A shame, but nothing's perfect, eh?

superklaus: Well, remember that a big part of the game is the campaign mode, and instituting death and replacement with a new characters swings that WAY in the favor of the Overlord….

Antistone: Your number 8 isn't quite correct.  Look carefully at the wording: you may only suffer fatigue up to your Stamina, and it's converted into damage when a game effect forces you to take fatigue beyond your Stamina.  Thus, you can only take Fatigue (and thus damage) beyond your Stamina when you're hit with a negative effect, same as in RuneBound.

But otherwise, yeah, good list.  I'll add something odd that I noticed: doors block line of sight, so, generally, you can't attack through them.  But the rules for Blast specifically state that you do not need line of sight to the spaces adjacent t your target for them to be hit.  So you can Blast through doors, but only when attacking someone on the near side, which seems, um, strange.  ("Drat, he shut the door, we can't attack him without spending an action to open it."  "Well, my attack has Blast, so it can go through doors."  "Alright, go for it."  "Well…I actually need someone else to be standing on my side of the door."  "What…?")

Antistone said:

Wow - you are the very *definition* of rules-lawyer.  :P  ;)

I'm pretty sure your #1 is just bad wording, and that the heroes can choose their turn order on-the-fly as they could in 1E.

#5 is certainly due to bad wording.

#8 is very obviously not intended the way you describe.  As someone above said, it's only *enforced* loss of stamina that is converted into wounds; you can't choose to pay stamina costs in wounds if you have no stamina left!

#9: Yes, this is a bit stupid and I might have to house-rule this.

#11: I presume it is implied that if non-adjacent figures cannot see the figure in the pit, then they do not block LoS for that figure.

Your observation on only having 8 skills: I don't get your complaint.  The "advanced rules" are exactly what you are describing as wanting to have - a method of allowing the heroes to have more advanced weapons and skills in a non-campaign game.  So what is the problem?  That's *all* the advanced rules are - how to start a game with better "stuff".

There are still potions - they are part of the search deck.

Walk said:

The "up to your stamina" limit is specifically only for moving and skills, so at best, other "optional" fatigue use has no rule specifying what happens.

I agree that the intent was probably to limit voluntary fatigue use and convert involuntary fatigue loss into damage, but that's not what the rule says.

Walk said:

Untrue.  Spaces on the other side of a closed door are specifically NOT considered to be adjacent.