First off, let me say that Dungeons is a great game. They seem to have fixed some of the problems with Rebellion and Conquest, and the whole system just lends itself better to a Dungeon setting than an open field battle.

That said, there are still some problems inherent in Dungeons. I'd like to point out my observations and hear how people have fixed these problems with their own house rules, or whether they have just lived with them.

(1) The spawn tokens and movement: At first, the movement seemed very slow, especially when they had to move through doors and such. We upped the movement to 6, and the tokens moved too quickly, massing on the players as they reached the first or second room. It was a slugfest that usually resulted in player annihilation. If they survived, they had the whole roam of the dungeon with little to no opposition. Any comments or suggestions on moving tokens?

(2) Moving spawn: it is odd when one team enters the other half of the dungeon. Our house rule is that you can only move spawn and spawn tokens on the other half of the dungeon. However, once you cross over to the other half, it gets weird. You can move spawn away from your path of travel. One solution is to have a third person play all spawn. The problem there is the number of actions. We gave the Spawn player 2 actions in each half of the dungeon, and each party the normal number of actions. Again, this resulted in a swarm of monsters hitting the group in the first or second room. We are thinking about players having to give up an action to the spawn player to use in the opposite side of the dungeon or even using the stones/push system. Any ideas as to what you have done?

(3) Counterattacks: In general, these work fine. In some instances, though, they are problematic. A monster or player gets as many counterattacks as the number of attacks. Is this fair? If a party of 4 heroes surrounds a monster, they each get an attack, but it gets 4 counter-attacks as well. Against the right monster, the counterattacks can wipe out your entire party. Ideas here would be to require a push if any counterattack is made beyond the first counterattack or limiting the number of counterattacks. Anyone else have any thoughts?

I'd love to hear responses from everyone as to their problems and solutions to the above as well as any other aspect of the game. Other areas include:

Is magic blast too powerful? How do you limit it?

Is venom to problematic and unrealistic? How do you change it?

Are the floor traps in the 3D dungeon tiles too easy to disarm? Are they too easy to avoid?

Thanks and I look forward to hearing your responses.

Don

Personally I find that the game works fine the way it is. I believe that they need to change a couple of things IE. Make Ram Optional, and do a little rewording on the rules, but other than that the play seems to be very well balanced.

I think the WMT have plenty of movement. You gotta remember that if you use an activation to move a WMT then you lose that activation for a hero that could be doing something.

Part of the strategy is being able to move Spawn out of where a chest is and being able to get to it. Of course the opponent can always move it right back in.

I have seen monsters in D & D take out a whole party also so I think the attack/counterattack is well balanced(If you play your cards correctly this usually does not happen, even though with some bad dice rolling it could). If there were no counter attacks after the 1st then the monster would just be cannon fodder.

In regards to your questions, in order:

(1) Mage spawn tokens do move somewhat slowly, but remember--entering the tile they're on automatically converts them into actual Mage Spawn, so they only need to be fast enough to move onto a tile with a Hero, not to actually move into proximity with one. If you've been placing them well during set-up, then they should be in spots where they can be converted without much need to move them at all...unless, of course, one team or the other is spending loads of actions on moving the Mage Spawn tokens out of their way. In that case, the counter-strategy is clear--just steal treasure, kill monsters, and gain levels while they're busy shoving little cardboard tokens around. :)

(2) The rule in the book is that you can't give activations to Mage Spawn on your tile or adjacent to one of your Heroes; in most dungeons, this usually means there's at least one or two "bottleneck" spots where combat becomes inevitable. In addition, keep in mind that frequently combat is desirable in Dungeons; you don't win through collecting victory points, like in Rebellion or Conquest, but gaining levels gives you much better odds of survival in the endgame where you'll usually have to duke it out with your opponent's party of Heroes, and that means fighting monsters. There shouldn't be any reason why the players are going that far out of their way to avoid Mage Spawn, unless you're using a lot of Tough tokens.

(3) Counter-attacks do lend a new element of strategy to the game, and they can be somewhat hard to adjust to at first. Some things to keep in mind when preparing to attack a mage-spawn:

One, ranged attacks only provoke a counter-attack if the mage spawn is capable of hitting with its ranged attack. An excellent strategy for defeating monsters is to shoot them from outside their threat range, thus never giving them the chance to counter.

Two, only attacks from the monster's front arc provoke counter-attacks. Surrounding a monster remains the best way of defeating it--no matter which way it faces, someone's always available to stab it in the back.

Three, the monster takes its damage before counter-attacking; if you have a Hero who has a good chance of hitting and does a lot of damage, they can usually face down a counter-attack without fear, since by the time the monster gets a counter-attack, it will have very low stats.

Four, counter-attacks never provoke counter-attacks of their own; this gives you several clever options with Sweep, Flame/Lightning, and Shockwave. If you can hit multiple monsters with your counter-attack, they'll be helpless to respond.

As to the other questions you posed, there's no question that Magic Blast and Venom get much nastier in Dungeons than Rebellion--Magic Blast, in particular, is quite scary given the amount of blocking terrain that exists in the game. Even so, the 1/2 range limit keeps it from being truly abusive, and Venom is subject to the same limitations as most attack powers--ie, its attacks provoke counter-attacks, so you'd best be sure you can hit and do a lot of damage. Personally, I'd consider these powers to be "good", not "broken", but that's a narrow and fuzzy line. :)

I don't know about the 3D tiles yet; to be honest, I don't think I plan on using them, just because they're larger than the 2D set and Dungeons is already a fairly space-intensive game. They do look pretty, though. :)

Hope that answers some questions for you!

Henchman

Korak:

I definitely don't want to bring D&D into this discussion. I'm not so sure about the new rules and the D20 system, but from what I remember it was incredibly unrealistic. Fun at times, of course, but not really rational.

Ram optional would be a great idea. However, why would a spawn move away from a chest to let the player get to it? I guess if you are looking at this as a game and how to play it, then it is fine. If you are trying to create a game based somewhat on a dungeon trek, then that is where the problems come in.

Also, as to counterattack, the problem we had was with Corpheus. His counterattacks did us in. Maybe they should have. He is one of the most powerful figures in the game, so maybe it is fitting. Anyway, thanks for the response and anyone else out there, please chime in. It is great to hear everyone's review and ideas.

Henchman:

Great reply, and thanks incredibly for your insight. As a new player, I'm not as familiar with the rules, and on top of that, the group I'm playing with has a few house rules added in, so it is sometimes hard to tell what is a true rule and what is a modification.

One of the biggest problems I had with counterattack you addressed perfectly with strategy. As I mentioned in my other post, we had a team against Corpheus. Not knowing too much, we were all in his front arc. We should have move someone past him down the hall into his rear arc, even if it meant taking his counterattack hit, to get someone in that position. If that was our best fighter, then he would have to turn to face him, exposing his rear arc to everyone else. This might have meant the difference between survival or death.

As to the 3D tiles, they are great. You are right that they use up quite a bit of space, but it is well worth it. A full set to play with will run $80 to $100 by then time you get everything, but again, the visual effects are incredible.

I also agree with you that Magic Blast and Venom are powerful, but not "broken" as that word is used. They make some heroes great (Mage King), but throw in a magic immune spawn, and it is rendered useless.

Thanks again for the insight.

As far as the WMT and chest go remember that they are "Wandering". :)
I look at it that when you move the token out the monsters do not know that you are there yet and are just rambling around.

Corpheus is definitely tough! You would not want to take him on with a bunch of 1st level figures. This is where strategy becomes involved. Always try to get a free shot if you can. Use an activation to turn him with his rear arc facing you before you move into the tile with him and then shoot him in the back. I know that sounds like a wimpy way to do it, but lets face it unless you are a crazy barbarian or a non-fearing Cavalier or Paladin, who would want to run to face a dragon head on! :) I would rather use the thief like approach and at least get one sneaky shot in. :)

go hunt down my old threads on MK Dungeons. I did quite a bit of study on game balance when the game first came out.

Originally, what many of us were finding is that both parties were getting wiped out. This was due to too many WMTs on the map.

We reduced the count, and then parties were living long enough for someone to get something out.

Generally, the monsters are meant to get in the way. You burn activations on WMTs to slide them out of rooms you want to enter. The enemy slides them back and sticks them in the doorway.

Counterattacking was invented so figures could fight, without having to burn an activation. This works well on monsters, such that you don't need to always give them an activation for them to do damage.

I have written a set of rules called MKD Adventures. It details running a game with a monster master player. PM me if you want it.

Janx

My thoughts on this issue:

First of all: The dungeon wins!
Due to some people have mentioned the roleplaying aspect I make some considerations. Why dungeons are built? They may be a lair, a restplace, an ancient site, a cavern complex, a real dungeon below a castle... A dungeon is built to guard something from the outsiders... And the dungeon really "wants" to not let outsiders get what it guards. We don't need to be upset when both parties lose... At least your opponent didn't win.:p

Wandering Monsters:
How is the nature of the wanderer ones? They don't guard anything, they don't stay long on the same place, they don't have reason to move to a certain place. Wandering monster tokens are like this. Moving toward your heroes or fleeing from them is just the nature of the "wanderer". Four Speed points are fine to represent his.

Mage Spawn:
You won't sacrifice your hero activation to move a Mage Spawn unless you know it's a good move. In our games, we usually only really activate MS (and WMT) when we have a free activation (i.e. one of our heroes died). Most of the time we let the Attack-CounterAttack mechanics work.
Of course, if there's a Manticore in play...;)

Counter Attack:
Explained above.

Special Abilities:
Too powerful? No. Not at all. They are the line between the mundane and magical worlds. We are talking about Dungeon Crawler, and we have fantasy as the main setting. SAs are true balanced here.

Fermmoyle:

I disagree with just letting the attack/counterattack mechanism work. One problem we had was having the monsters spawn just to be beaten up and killed quickly for some quick xp with little/no threat to the players. The more powerful monsters excluded, any decent hit on a spawn takes it down to the point where it isn't a threat, so if you attack first, you win. That's where the idea of a third person playing the monsters comes in, but also creates problems with activations that we haven't fully worked out yet.

Here's something else to chew on as well. Do any of you think 50 xp is too much for disarming chests? 25 xp is more appropriate, and maybe 10-15 only for setting off the trap. This makes the game a bit more challenging.

A real good hit usually does get most spawn down to where they are not quite so tough. Remember that the opponent can always move the token into your tile and then attack first with the spawn.

I usually do not go totally after the opponent with spawn unless the opponent has a couple of bad rolls and I have a chance to knock one of his/her heroes off. I find that Spawn are better used for time killers, while I have my heroes try to get the gold and escape the Dungeon (That is the name of the game). :)

I will chime in, as Dungeons is my favorite version of the clickies.

4 speed points is just plenty for wandering monster tokens. We tend to pile on the doors, artifacts and other paraphenalia that we own, so it is tough for the WMT to get through the DUngeon, which is how we like it.

Magic Blast and Venom are really good abilities, and they cost a lot on the figures that have them. We have talked around and back again about Venom's automatic damage ability, and decided that it was okay as is. I wonder how an all-Venom tam would do.

Magic Blast is a toughie, but so far only Ember has it at a decent range, so we are pretty safe. Actually, Ember is one of the most abusive Heros, shooting 12" in the Dungeon. With his Flame Lightining, this is even worse as he can tag a Mage Spawn that is fighting one of your opponents heros, and deal damage to all.

Corpheus is Robo-Tough to play in the Dungeon, and I would imagine that he would clean your clock almost every time you play.

In fact, anything that makes the dungeon survuvable is good in my eye. Sometimes we take the "bad" tokens from the artifacts, because we get beat up so badly.

For your lastest comment on attack / counterattack: If you are man or woman enough to step up to an unflipped WMT to get first hits, you should be allowed to...just dont come complaining to me when it is the Master Adversary!!! If you see a yellow Marsh Zombie trudging around the dungeon....enjoy your free x.p.'s....those levels come and go pretty quick.

If you are troubled by the attack / counterattack favoring the heros, play with orcs in your Mage Spawn pool...with all those juicy clicks of Battle Fury and Beserk, I will let you have all the free hits you want! 1@20 flips a tough crusher, with a 4 damage in his beserk slot!

To be honest, we find DUngeons to be the most even game of the lot....house rules are always fun, but nothing really needs fixing, IMHO.

I will, of course, chat it up all day long!! LOL

if your worried about putting the first hit on mage spawn try that with were creatures your just making them stronger for the counterattack. that could turn out bad as i have seen.

I have to admit, DHKnecht, it makes more sense that you all got wiped out by a monster now that I know which one it was. :) Corpheus is, as many have already noted, a truly nasty piece of work; whenever any monster of over 100 points enters the Dungeon, by whatever means, there's a good chance that it'll result in a double-loss as the monster wipes up the floor with both parties. This is why we rarely use "Master Adversaries" in a game, unless they've been placed in such a way that parties have a chance to level up a bit before encountering them. (Some under-100s are pretty lethal as well; the Wind Minion, with his 19 Defense and Invisibility, can wipe out a party, and the Chimeric Worms are surprisingly terrifying for their point cost.)

I've seen the 3D tiles, and I agree that visually they're stunning (at GenCon last year, WizKids set up a full 3D dungeon with the prototype tiles, and it was jaw-droppingly pretty)--I just find that visual impact isn't as important to me as playability, and the 3D tiles don't have too much of an edge over the Dungeon Builder Kits. I have enough tiles to play a five-player game; to get enough 3D tiles to replicate that would set me back a pretty penny, and I'm not quite ready to do that yet. This is, of course, just my personal preference, and I don't pretend to advocate that others not buy the 3D tiles. As always, YMMV.

As for "letting the attack/counterattack mechanism work", as one person put it, I do think that's another important piece of strategy. There will be times when you definitely want to give up one or two of your actions to press the advantage against your opponents' Heroes, but there'll also be times when it's not worth losing the action. Sometimes leaving a monster as a "harasser", letting it simply counter-attack and force the opponent's party to waste precious turns beating it down, is the best call. (Animated Mud and Magma Guardians make great harassers, since they have deep dials and high defenses.) Sometimes, you're going to want to beat down your opponent's party with a monster, rather than let him rack up easy XP by pummelling it. (In a recent game, my opponent walked in on a Stone Boar with a range-heavy party--rather than give him 40 free XP, I used actions to get it into base contact with his party and forced him to deal with it.) I don't think a "monster master" is needed to make Mage Spawn effective, though...which isn't to say that you can't come up with a fun variant that uses one, of course. :)

As to the 50 XP for successfully disarming a trap, I think it has one important advantage--it makes thieves worthwhile members of your party. If it was 25 for a successful disarm, and 12-13 for a fail, thieves would almost never see play--why bring along a thief, when he/she's only going to net you an extra 12-13 XP per chest at best, and you could instead send in a spare healer or fighter to deal with whatever negative consequences failure brings? By making a successful disarm a major bonus in and of itself, it brings the thief into his/her own as an important part of the party, which helps add that "old skool D&D" flavor to the game. :) But if you think parties level up too quickly, then by all means change it. I've always maintained that the best way to play any game is the one that the most people you're playing with enjoy.

Henchman

I can shed a little light on the points DHKnecht has brought up. I taught DHKnecht a version of the game that a couple of us have been tweaking around with. I ended up with a couple of sets of the 3D tiles and we have been playing exclusively on those. So it changed some aspects of the original game. The effectiveness of Magic Blast is proportional to the length of corridors between rooms. The longer the corridors the further apart the rooms are, the less effective Magic Blast is. The paper maps have very small corridors and Magic Blast can reach further. The tiles lack terrain, i.e. hindering and water. This makes Stealth and Aquatic less useful almost to a point of worthless. We didn’t like the aspect of moving WMT or Mage Spawn away from your party, more so the Mage Spawn. I’ve played a couple of games were we played “move the manticore away”. I didn’t like it. With the 3D tiles we made a central chamber that both sides had to connect to when building their half of the dungeon. So we came up with a rule: “no controlling WMT or Mage Spawn in the half of the dungeon you started in”. DHKnecht commented on that in an early post. For those that play by the book that might have sounded a little weird. With those rules he couldn’t break away from Corpheus and move it away. With Corpheus’s back against a door it was go time for his team. I’ll admit that his team was too low to fight Corpheus at that point. So he would attack, miss or do 1 click of damage and Corpheus would counter attack. Wasn’t pretty. But, I’ve played other games were Corpheus was not as effective. We tweaked the WMT speed up to six. We felt that four was not fast enough to react to the opposing team. Move 1, open door, move 1. That’s it. It also helps another aspect I don’t like. WMT can’t move, spawn and attack with four move points. They’re supposed to end their activation when spawned, I don’t like that either. Heroes can move up on a WMT, it spawns, hero attacks and either kills or seriously wounds Mage Spawn. But WMT can’t do that. Why? With six move points a WMT at least has the potential to move next to a hero, spawn and attack. It makes the game a little tougher. You’ve got to use doors and corridors to your advantage.
I’ll post more later.

Henchman, that is a very, very good observation about the chest and experience. I always try to have a thief(+6 to open slowly), if it only netted my 25 experience on a disarm you can bet that I would be sticking another healer or fighter type in the game.

Nitro, as far as Were Creatures go, I usually try to pass thru and get a hit and then attack. Hopefully you will get a couple hits and do something like 6 clicks of damage. That will take the bite out of most Were Creatures.

I still in favor of leaving the WMT at 4. That way if you want to attack you gotta use another Activation. The 6 speed points for a WMT would give a player that chooses only 3 heros for his/her team some advantage. They would still get to use 2 activations and have the Spawn attack instead of just 1.

The WMT usually get stuck as close to the opponents entrance as possible in our games anyway. They don't have far to go to find some prey. :)