Quest 6 - all gold stolen

[Count Mohawk]

Losing ALL your gold is indeed a heavy price to pay. Coupled with the Artifact-destroying mist in The Cold Halls, one has to wonder if the Heroes were intended to exit Return of the Witch Lord at a lower level than they started. The next Quest Pack in chronological order is Against the Ogre Horde, though, so this is probably not a good thing...

Fun fact: The total value of the gold in the Quest Notes of the first five Quests of RotWL sums to 2,000 gold coins, half of which can be found in the Gate of Bellthor alone. That is quite a windfall! Something tells me they put that much gold in deliberately to heighten the sting of losing it a few Quests later. The latter half of the Quest Pack only contains 1,100 gold coins in the Notes, although the bosses do tend to drop useful Artifacts if the Heroes kill them. For comparison, the entirety of Kellar's Keep contains 1,450 gold coins, 600 of which is in the semi-optional Quest "Belorn's Mine".

Most of the monsters in Return of the Witch Lord are Undead; therefore aside from the Witch Lord himself, the only people who would have use for the Heroes' Gold would be the Chaos Warriors, and especially the Doomguard who start appearing in Quest 9, "The Last Gate".

Not being at your table myself, I'm not sure what kind of market forces are prevailing on your Heroes, but I would be a least a little wary of giving them a chance to get their gold back. Several thousand gold coins, which is about how much I expect the Heroes will lose, makes a big difference in the amount of alchemy and equipment the party can purchase once they off the Witch Lord. At the very least maybe remove the secret treasure room in Bellthor's quest, as that is 1,000 gold coins the Heroes should have no expectation of keeping. Or, alternatively, write down how much gold the Heroes lose and let them find about half of it later.

[Goblin-King]

Another issue I have with this quest is that it seems arbitrary that the Wizard and Dwarf start off together and the Elf and Barbarian must be rescued. Has anyone come up with a reason for this that I may not have thought of? In my group, the Wizard and Dwarf are sometimes running a few minutes late... Might switch it around and have the Elf and Barbarian be the rescuers instead.

It's a fighter and a caster...
Barbarian is primary fighter and dwarf secondary.
Wizard is primary caster and the elf secondary.

In many ways the barbarian is also the poster child for heroquest.
Makes sense to incapacitate him and show he needs his party as much as they need him.


Also... BELLTHOR!
Greatest special character ever! BELLTHOR!

[Anderas]

Isn't that you generate exactly the title picture of the game in that quest?

[knightkrawler]

Isn't that you generate exactly the title picture of the game in that quest?

I would bet my arse on that.

[Goblin-King]

Of course, but what came first? The quest or the painting?

[lucasdp]

Of course, but what came first? The quest or the painting?

@Count Mohawk: I hadn't factored in the large sum of gold found in Bellthor's quest. For sure, that gold should not be recovered.
Maybe I dug myself into a hole by playing the questpack as a series. It doesn't feel right to take all of their gold when they haven't been able to spend any of it for the last three quests or so. In other words, it's not really an appropriate punishment for hoarding; they've only been hoarding because that was their only option.

I'll have to think on this some more. I still don't like taking all their gold, but I hear what you all are saying as well. There's a lot of gold in the first five quests, because they're not supposed to get to keep all of it. That is by design, I get it. But I don't like taking it without giving them a chance to spend it. Maybe the simplest solution is to break my "questpack-as-a-series" and let them go shopping before Quest 5...
Or just find a spot later in the questpack when they can recover about half of their gold. I kinda like that idea as well.

[kyrrahn]

Solid arguments all round. personally I think that stripping them of their gold adds to the game as it unexpected and give some pathos to the situation. It give a more lasting repercussion to getting captured than just having to escape.

[Alby87]

Trying to create lore to mantain the rules as written:

To me, Mentor has one great magic: he can usually teleport people from "checkpoints", back and fort. This is why the armory and the alchemist shop are available between quests, except when the rulebook explicity tell Zargon the heroes can not shop.

This magic is a limited resource for Mentor: no sending armies trough it. The one way is always working from Mentor's studio to Heroes. Between quests, maybe the magic user meditates to create a "spawn point" where Mentor can send replacement heroes. This "updates" the Loretome, so what always been written is available to be read by Mentor.

Also, when meditating, it's necessary to use some sort of trinket (a ring, a talisman) to create a way of return: if you are in jail with everything removed from you, no way of return! So, no shop between quest 5 & 6 in RotWL, no shop in prison in GS (not remembering the quest number right now). This explain why no magic teleport from prison, and why not "Prison->Studio->Armory->Prison" and doing those quests fully armed.

Also the Alchemist shop near Mentor is expensive, this explain the difference in prices between quest packs.

In PoT, the Loretome is unavailbale, and in SQT you're under Silvanna, so you need to backtrack (when possible, so when questpack allows it) the old way to nearest city shops, that's less expensive that one near Mentor.

I don't know how the other quest books story unfolds, I hope my in story explanation keeps working goind trough next quest packs.

So, to conclude, I think only the gold acquired in Quest 5 should be crossed out, as everything until Quest 4 is safe