We’ve actually been having some problems with that to in our group. 4 is a pretty standard number for us, and some of the newer bosses are REALLY hard vs. 4. In the case of Spite, we got the “return H-2 ongoing or equipment to your hand” as his first Drug. One of our heroes was Fanatic, who never drew any of her Ongoings, so between Wraith, Mr. Fixer, and Visionary, they had to agree who got to keep a permanent that turn. It was really annoying. Don’t get me wrong, we like a challenge, but loss after horrible loss can really affect your overall enjoyment of the game.
That said, there is a fairly easy fix. Just decide before you begin what you want H to be. You can play with 5 players and decide that, for that game, H is 3, and just like that, your difficulty isn’t crazy. In our experience, playing with 3 people against most of the new bosses resulted in games that “felt” kinda like the old difficulty, so having H always equal to 3 essentially removes the scaling factor since the effects are some constant value regardless of number of players (just like the old bosses). I know in a technical sense that’s “cheating”, but if it increases your enjoyment of the game…shrug go for it.
I don’t really know about the new scaled difficulty. I actually kinda like it, but it does get really difficult with five heroes. We’ve been suffering some pretty crippling defeats recently, and a lot of it is because of the scaled damage. Then again, sometimes it’s because we use a hero that ends up being dead weight and just adding unnecessary points to H. I still like it.
Does anyone play with a minimum? Was doing a two man army challenge and (H)-2 was 0, felt a bit too easy there.
EDIT: Yes, a little under 2 months after I posted it I have edited this post, I forgot an o in too, it annoyed me when I was directed to an answer in this thread and I re-read this post
Well, you can do anything you want, really. But if you’re playing by the rules, you’re only playing with 3, 4, or 5 players, so yeah, H = 3, 4, or 5. 8)
So do whatever you want. You could try solo with H=3 and see how it goes. Then, after you’re slaughtered, try H=2 to see if it helps…