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My group of friends have now played almost a few dozen games of Dungeon! and we have consistently noticed that the Cleric wins.

  • The Cleric has a target of 10,000 and works very well across all levels till level 4.

  • The Rogue has a small target too, but it cannot perform very well beyond level 3.

  • The Fighter has a larger target of 20,000, but can perform as well as the Cleric (till about level 4). It gets difficult in level 5 or 6.

  • The Wizard has a very high target of 30,000, so its best bet is level 5 or 6 to gain a lot of treasure very fast.

So I am not sure if the game is biased towards the Cleric - any thoughts?

3 Answers 3

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I have not crunched any numbers for "proof" but experience and a quick sort through the monster deck would tend to support your supposition.

Rogue hit numbers are notably lower than the Cleric's and their secret doors special power is not good enough to compensate, especially given that it's not reliable and can be replicated with certain treasure cards.

Fighter hit numbers are only notably higher than the Cleric on low-level monsters. So it's more a case of being more reliable than really adventuring at higher levels. That doesn't seem a good enough trade off for the extra 10k gold.

Wizards can do much better than Clerics, but it's a crapshoot: draw monsters that happen to be vulnerable to your spell selection and you'll win easily. Don't, and you're monster bait.

But to be honest, you don't play Dungeon for the sort of strategic gameplay where balance is important. You play it for laughs, for stories and for being about the only family-friendly boardgame with an unashamedly geeky theme.

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  • Only? I don't even think this would make my top 10 of family games with a geeky theme.
    – bwarner
    Feb 11, 2014 at 13:59
  • How about let's impose a constraint: only Rogue gets to play in 1, others cannot. Only Cleric and Rogue are allowed in 2. Anyway None of the other characters have much to do in 5 or 6, maybe fighter has some hard choices in 5, 6 is almost impossible for others. How does that sound?
    – Neel
    Feb 12, 2014 at 5:08
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We have just played 5 games back-to-back, and were looking for a reason why the cleric sucked. He consistently lost with the exception of the game where the two clerics went head-to-head and one of them got double-sixed on the retaliation. The rogue and the hero fare much better in combat...and the wizards spells (provided he get a decent roll) are uber!

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  • Very interesting! But when you say head to head - what do you mean? I never really felt there is a sense of opposition, although there is a sense of competition.
    – Neel
    Jun 2, 2014 at 22:25
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According to this review of the game if you have a fighter go straight to level 4 and stay there, they tend to win more often.

In our 4 games we have played so far, with 6 players, the wizard won once, the cleric won twice, and the fighter won once.

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  • there you go! :)
    – Neel
    Aug 27, 2014 at 22:01

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