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In Search of the Perfect Scalability

Discuss new Rules for HeroQuest.

In Search of the Perfect Scalability

Postby Azure » Monday December 16th, 2024 2:16pm

Prepare yourselves because this post may be quite long and exhaustive.

This post will be about a general sense of SCALABILITY.

:blueorb: Prologue :blueorb:
After 2 decades of playing various TTRPGs, Boardgames, J-RPGs and C-RPGs, I am once again jumping into the crazy world of homebrew content. As adventurers, we are always longing for absolutely epic adventures, incredible discoveries, fantastic challenges, character progression, and the enhancement for our main hero's Power.

Veterans of HeroQuest, like me, have already seen so much. After playing 45 quests or more, the HQ board becomes mundane, repetitive, and we can all guess where the objective room is after wandering in the dungeon for a while.

Most of us end up creating homebrew content, attempting to renew the flavor, renew the excitement of HeroQuest.
Now, I am working on something, not necessarily "Level-Ups", but Advancement Points for your Stats. I am looking for the sweet spot of scalability as a system that can be implemented/improved/tweaked.

:redorb: My prototype :redorb:
4 ATTRIBUTES TO LEVEL UP.
STRENGTH : The potential to add Attack Dice :skull: with each THRESHOLD
VIGOR : The potential to add a Body Point :redheart: with each THRESHOLD
FINESSE : The potential to add a Defense Dice//+1 movement square :whiteshield: with each THRESHOLD
MIND : The potential to add a Mind Point :blueorb: with each THRESHOLD.

I did some tests on paper, in my notepad. It seems to work. It also enables your hero to be balanced according to your needs.
After EACH QUEST, each hero receives 2 points to distribute, in the STAT they want. However, they cannot put 2 points at once in one single STAT after the Quest. The player needs to do 1 STAT >>1 point, for 2 different STATS.

In order to RECEIVE THE BONUS mentioned above, the player needs to activate PIPS, in a THRESHOLD.

STRENGTH// OOOOO//OOOO//OOOO//OOO//
VIGOR. // OOOOO//OOOO//OOOO//OOO//
FINESSE. //OOOOO//OOOO//OOOO//OOO//
MIND. //OOOOO//OOOO//OOOO//OOO//

As you can see, the more the player will keep activating the PIPS, the faster the progression will happen, corresponding to the bonuses that the player selected.

Here is an example after 20 quests with the BARBARIAN
STRENGTH// XXXXX//XXXX//XXXX//OOO//
VIGOR. // XXXXX//XXXX//XXXX//OOO//
FINESSE. //XXXXX//XXXX//OOOO//OOO//
MIND. //XXXXX//OOOO//OOOO//OOO//
In this situation, over 20 quests, this hero gained 40 Points to distribute.
He then benefits of the following gains : ATK +3, BP+3, DD +2, MP+1, Static movement +2

I kept distributing points after this test, to mimic an extra 5 quests (total 25 quests), which would provide a grand total
of 50 Points. He got a final total of ATK +4, BP +4, DD+3, MP+1, Static movement + 3.
STRENGTH// XXXXX//XXXX//XXXX//XXX//
VIGOR. // XXXXX//XXXX//XXXX//XXX//
FINESSE. //XXXXX//XXXX//XXXX//OOO//
MIND. //XXXXX//OOOO//OOOO//OOO//


This actually allows the following thing with Scalability >>>>>>> it enables the heroes to eliminate very basic mobs at incredible speed and efficiency, and intermediate mobs "somewhat faster" and elite monsters and bosses prove to be a "little bit less dangerous".

The main problem I see in Action RPGs and J-RPGs, is that when we level up, it becomes significantly easier to destroy the mobs by every level. And it happens a super high speed. The basic mobs in J-RPGs are a cakewalk, but in HeroQuest they still have the potential to kill a hero if the dice are aligned.

What I don't enjoy in HEROQUEST, as is, is the fact that your progression is ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT on your GEAR and ARTEFACTS. You have no choice regarding the advancement of your hero. So I am attempting to correct this aspect.

Additionally...STATS like STRENGTH and FINESSE could activate their very own benefits. For example, FINESSE could allow you to re-Roll the damage dealt with a Bow/Crossbow/Dagger. STRENGTH could allow you to wear a heavier armor set. MIND would allow you to resist MENTAL CONTROL/MENTAL ENFEEBLEMENT much easier.

Tell me what you think....
More to come....
Azure

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Re: In Search of the Perfect Scalability

Postby cornixt » Monday December 16th, 2024 3:58pm

I've tried something along these lines:
skillaanditems.png

It does the opposite of HeroQuest and puts everything on skills instead of items so that you can use whatever model you like and not worry about whether they look like they are holding the weapons or wearing the armour that is written on their character sheet. Each type of hero can max out in different skills so you don't get a whole party where every member is awesome at every aspect.

One thing I made sure to do was to have it be much tougher to reach the next level than the one before, so you can still improve but the growth becomes slower.
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Re: In Search of the Perfect Scalability

Postby MonsterMotor » Thursday December 19th, 2024 3:08pm

This topic is a long-standing question, but impossible to resolve, of course. For instance, to pick just one of your examples, body and mind points are handled equivalently in the scaling, but in the standard HQ game these stats are of hugely different utility. Body points are far more important than mind points, so the game would require other adjustments in addition to balance this.

Never mind, you won't find perfect scalability (using simple relations between standard stats, like linear scaling) in HQ ever. On the other hand, if you would invent something utterly complex, it might scale the power increase at level-ups really well, but that would then not be fun to play with. I have thought about such things long ago and came to the conclusion that it is better to have imperfect scalability and be able to preserve the simplicity of HQ than adding a lot of complexity.

Now to conclude this, in my own set of rules I arrived at 3 main attributes that heroes can scale up equivalently as they complete quests. Note that body and mind points are two of these three attributes, too. However, I also promoted mind points a lot compared to body points (also because HQ gameplay overall benefits from this), partially through general rules, partially by adding special situations in quests where mind points become very useful. The advancement is ultimately capped at 80-100 quests, at which point the heroes will retire (if they don't perish earlier). That is a decent improvement over what the standard rules can offer, and it's maybe not too far from your ideas. All in all, it works really well, plays smoothly and is very simple to handle. But it is never perfect! I have made a few revisions along the way that were especially in order to improve such scaling issues, and there will likely be a few more in the future. Look the stuff up in the respective thread here if you are interested in the details.
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Re: In Search of the Perfect Scalability

Postby Azure » Thursday December 19th, 2024 11:29pm

Which ''situations'' are you referring to, while talking about Mind Points ?
- - because I have Evil Sorcerers who are using Mind Crushing spells to paralyze the heroes, or to order them to attack the allies (other players). Mind Points become really useful in these cases. Mind Points can also be used by the Wizard to Recast one of his previously spent incantations.

Yeah you are right, scalability is one hell of a specimen, truly difficult to properly balance. Sometimes there is no point in balancing it.
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Re: In Search of the Perfect Scalability

Postby MonsterMotor » Friday December 20th, 2024 1:20pm

Yes, I count encounters with chaos warlocks among these special situations where mind points matter to fend off harmful spell effects. But I also like to make mind points important in more mundane situations. I won't write anything specific here, but you can look into my rework of the Barbarian Quest, which you will find among the other THQ stuff (see also the Quests forum page). Look into the TBQ solo quests to find different examples. And, of course, try them out if you have a volunteer at your board game table. They are pretty fun and all feel very different to the hero player.

In general, I want mind points to matter in not as many situations as body points do (That is almost always.) But if they do become important, having enough of them should or may matter a lot for the course of the quest.

Also the original designer of HQ apparently had already in mind a much higher importance of mind points from the outset of his game design. The later HQ expansions went somewhat along that path, as you surely know.
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