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Death Saves: Video game style

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Death Saves: Video game style

Postby Kurgan » Saturday December 9th, 2023 5:31pm

So there seem to be two rival camps that will never see eye to eye on this. 1) Those who prefer the way the EU editions didn't allow death saves... no elixir of life, no last minute potion or healing spell, when you reach body points of zero you are D-E-A-D and your character is removed from play (well, unless you're playing the Dark Company, perhaps)... and 2) Those who favor the NA/Remake way of doing things, where you can save yourself with your own healing ability or item, and they only quibble over exactly which ones count and when (like can you use a healing spell if you were killed on Zargon's turn? some say yes, others say no, or witness the recent Wandering Monk discussions about his Twisting Torrent ability to avoid damage, etc). The Japanese edition handled it differently (and some great threads on that if you wish to search for them). This debate over which is best will never die (pun intended) and that's fine.

But what about this? I played at a table where a volunteer for Avalon Hill (from another game company) was playing it so that if your hero died you were NOT allowed to save yourself from death, period. (if anyone else was there, it was KnightFall at the 2023 convention).

However what he did do was have it so that the character is simply "down" or "bleeding out" and you had until the end of the hero's round (or the next hero's round if you were the last hero in line if I recall correctly) for any ally to walk adjacent to your character's "body" (we tipped the mini over on the square where they "died") and then apply their healing potion or spell to revive the character.

This sort of thing should be familiar to many players of video games released in the late 2000's to today (well I can't say today because I am not up to date on the latest console games that are popular, sorry). In a multiplayer game you typically walk up to your "dying" teammate and apply a first aid kit or simply hold a key to slowly revive them. Thus while foreign to HeroQuest it could seem familiar to players familiar with that common game mechanic.

Thoughts on this? I suppose you could role play it further by allowing a monster to "attack" a downed hero and finish them off by rolling any skulls (since they can't defend in this state) making their death certain without any revival ability. Of course none of this accounts for what he would do with the Elixir of Life...

Of course why do death saves at all? Because player characters die and it stops them from playing and they want to keep playing! In arcade games there was the "continue" feature that let you (at the cost of additional coin) pick up where you left off or try again, which was profitable for the game owners! In HeroQuest some heroes die because they made stupid mistakes or played carelessly. Others did everything they could but went down swinging. What happens if your hero character dies for good? Another hero takes his place on the next quest (and it can still be controlled by the same person!). But many players feel the "loss" of their character and they want extra chances. Do we as GMs give it to them and if we do, how? That's up to you!


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Re: Death Saves: Video game style

Postby Bareheaded Warrior » Sunday December 10th, 2023 3:52am

I'm not convinced that there are two rival camps that will never see eye to eye on this, for me personally the Elixir of Life (which is the same elixir referred to the "EU" edition - Dark Company) is something that doesn't prevent you from dying, on the contrary you die and then it later brings you back from the dead so I don't see that as part of the "saving yourself from dying" topic.

And whilst I use the "EU" edition rules as my base, I do allow a hero that has been reduced to zero BP, if equipped with a healing potion that can be used "at any time", to use that healing potion at that time, at the point of dying, to restore himself to 1BP and thus "save himself from dying", so I'm not sure that I sit in either camp on this.

But in terms of the proposed mechanism...
Kurgan wrote:if your hero died you were NOT allowed to save yourself from death, period. (if anyone else was there, it was KnightFall at the 2023 convention).

However what he did do was have it so that the character is simply "down" or "bleeding out" and you had until the end of the hero's round (or the next hero's round if you were the last hero in line if I recall correctly) for any ally to walk adjacent to your character's "body" (we tipped the mini over on the square where they "died") and then apply their healing potion or spell to revive the character.


This would give a considerable advantage to the last hero in line, as he would have 3 allies that could save him whereas the second last would only have one. Perhaps a better implementation would be that they stay "dying" until their next turn, at which point they actually die.

I don't think you need to walk next to the character to apply a healing spell, but that aside, this could work (although you might have to watch how dying heroes are handled in terms of blocking squares, line of sight, landing on squares on the other side of traps that are blocked by a dying hero and similar situations resulting from introducing a 3rd state) but for me too much generosity around death saves reduces the risk of dying in the game which in turn makes it less exciting. If you consider how low the odds are of a hero death in the basic game, and then combine that with the potion hoarding rules of the NA edition then it would become highly unlikely that a hero would ever actually die, which would ruin the tension for me personally.
:skull: = white skull, one "hit"
:blackshield: = black skull, one "hit"
:whiteshield: = shield, cancels out one "hit"

HQ Editions: 1989 Classic Edition (First Edition [FE] and Second Edition [SE]), 1990 NA Remake [NA], 2021 Reprint [21]

HQ Golden Rules Rule Fixes based on the Classic edition.

HQ Common Notification System to identify squares on the board


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Re: Death Saves: Video game style

Postby Kurgan » Sunday December 10th, 2023 3:25pm

He probably meant "that dying hero's next turn," then.

These are my recollections of a house rule, of course, but I think he was pretty firm on needing to be adjacent to the downed ("dying") hero, similar to how it works in popular video games. It was a really fun (if long) game with his house rules, and very refreshing to experience it within the Avalon Hill booth itself, again, kudos to them.


The Companion App handles potions in a weird way, like you are administering it to the target (more like casting a spell), as opposed to the NA game it is emulating which has the active hero passing the item to their partner who can then use it anytime.

I'm doubting that the heroes will bring the EU version of the Elixir unused out of the Dark Company adventure, but that's the only place I could imagine a notoriously vague item like that could lead to any confusion. You're right that it's not so much a "death save" as "death undue" after the fact. ;)


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Re: Death Saves: Video game style

Postby Kurgan » Thursday September 26th, 2024 7:13am

Jungles of Delthrak questbook made it official with the incapacitated rule... and gave a couple variants to appreciate.

In the harder "Heroic" mode, the downed character gets a skull tile, and you have a round (until that hero's next turn) to heal them OR (in "Story" mode) once monsters are off the board every downed hero regains a lost BP and comes back (unless you're all down at once, then it's effectively still a TPK).

And yes, you can cast a healing spell at a distance to the square where the hero went down to revive them, or move adjacent to administer the healing potion ONLY if that square is not also adjacent to a monster.


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