Power Creep and Retiring Heroes

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Just reading through the original post (and please bear in mind that I still play the classic edition from 1989 and not either of the two remakes 1990 or 2021 so there might be some conversion required for some of my suggestions - although I have heard that the latest remake does have cards like the original so there may be hope!) there appears to be a number of different but related issues, but most of what I can offer is prevention rather than a cure, which may not help you if it is already too late.

a) The remake editions removed the "cards limit supply" principle in the classic edition so that the adventurers (apart from the Wizard) can all be equipped with a helmet, battle axe, crossbow, plate armour giving them 4AD, 5DD & 3AD missile attacks whereas under the classic edition there was only one of most cards available, only one battle axe, one crossbow, one plate armour, one or two helmets (depending on 1st or 2nd edition).

b) The 1990 remake was nicknamed "the potion hoarder edition" early on and for good reason. Under the classic edition potion cards were kept until they were used and then they were discarded to be put back into the treasure deck in time for the next quest, or until the quest ended and then they were discarded. This second element proved unpopular with players, and for good reason, so the 1990 remake allowed you to keep them, but this lead to hoarding of potions which ruined the game. At my table, you keep a potion (and the potion card) until you use it and then it is discarded to be put back into the treasure deck for the next quest, if at end of the quest you have any unused potions then I make a note of these on the back of your charcater sheet, and you get those potion cards back at the start of the next game, so they are NOT included in the treasure deck for the next quest. This is a neat self-balancing mechanism that means that you cannot hoard, if there are only two healing potions in the deck, then there is a maximum of two healing potions in play at any time.

c) Limit the rate of gold acquisition: only rooms can be searched for treasure, each room can only be searched once

d) If a chest specifies a quest treasure then give that to the opening player, otherwise just draw a treasure card, if it is a potion, gold or something of value then give it to the player, if it is a trap then the chest is trapped (and empty), if Wandering Monster (or Nothing), then the chest is empty.

e) The Gathering Storm campaign (quests supplied with the basic box) is generally well-balanced in terms of advancement but there are couple of niggles: Borin's Armour is effectively a 850gc give-away, replace it with Borin's Helm (a helmet giving an extra defend dice AND and extra mind dice in defence against spells like Sleep) and the bounty rewards for Bastion of Chaos which give you gold for each monster killed (which effectively doubles the gold bonus) instead make that just a 200gc reward for killing all four Chaos Warriors. Finally the Stone Hunter and Fire Mage quests the quest rewards should be 100gc and 150gc for the party and NOT each.

f) The Gathering Storm campaign comes with sufficient gear for the adventurers to spend their gold on but the expansions particularly Kellar's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord don't come with any or at least not enough extra gear for the gold that can be acquired in those expansions, so create extra equipment cards, some ideas here Gear Up!

Note: As others have mentioned you can also ramp up the monsters, to increase the difficulty in later Quest Packs. There are many suggestions on how to do this in the forum, but I think that if you look at the full range of monsters in "Classic" HeroQuest there are a lot more than you think. It is easy to assume that there are just the 8 original monsters, the ones that you get monster cards for in the box (I assume for cost reasons they didn't include more Monster Cards in the expansions), but a little research into the expansions and a bit of lateral thinking and there are plenty more official ones before you even consider homebrew (I estimate around 24 monster types but that isn't an exact figure as I've ignored some unique ones like the Shape Changer and the Dwarf King's Skeletons, and some I have considered variants like Stone Chaos Warriors rather than their own type)

The Monster Mash

EDIT: Forgot to mention under (e) replacing Borin's Armour with Borin's Helm also enables you to get rid of the movement restriction associated with Plate armour

[Parzival]

Here’s an idea that could be a fun change: Make the equipment for sale in the Armory random between each quest. Do this by shuffling the Equipment deck, then deal out 8 cards, and flip them over. That’s what the good shopkeeper has today. The Heroes can only buy the revealed pieces of equipment. (In this case, players should be required to note their equipment on their character sheets, not keep the cards.)

Another idea would be to limit a Hero to two weapons total at any given time. If more are found on a quest, the player must declare which item are “stowed away” and cannot be used at all during that quest. In between quests, the players must declare which items they will keep and which items they will sell (for half price, rounded up).

This rule also applies to Artifact weapons. So if an Artifact weapon is found, it may either be immediately declared to be used, and any third weapon must be Stowed. Later the Artifact may be traded in— the value of an Artifact weapon being twice the value of its weapon type. (So the Fortune’s Longsword would be worth 700 gold in trade.) Traded Artifacts are simply returned to the Artifacts deck; they cannot be purchased.)

I just came up with both of these ideas— feel free to playtest ‘em.

[Kurgan]

Zargon is encouraged to "remix" a failed quest, and in First Light he's flat out encouraged to make the second (etc.) run easier in various ways. But there's no opposite advice in there when it comes to the idea of replaying a quest that was won "too easily." And yet that's always been within Zargon's power, to ease off on the kid gloves if the heroes are getting bored because the challenge is no longer there. That to me isn't saying anything in the game is broken, just that the needs of groups vary, and the quests themselves aren't necessarily written to encompass the experiences of all the other quests already written.


I suspect the original designers for the NA edition figured you'd play the first 14 quests with a single party of heroes... (maybe a few of them would die during the Trial but otherwise you'd carry them on). Then you'd play ROTWL & KK (order unimportant, but you'd play them both with the same heroes you had before... if a hero died, you could easily equip them with the extra equipment and gold from the survivors, effectively making them as strong as they were before).

THEN the idea was you'd play BQP and EQP (aka FH and MOTM) which were especially unforgiving, because the assumption was your heroes would be super powerful.

But the reality is that not everyone bought every box, much less played everything in some predefined order like that. Yes, the marketing plan was to release four "hero themed" packs, and you wanted people to put them all together and share alchemist shops and have four super powered heroes playing super challenging quest packs together. But the solo packs were still there to get "basic" heroes up to speed... which was weird, because you were thus assuming a new player to the table wouldn't get any excess gear shared with them by the supposedly welcoming old players. The Solo quests they designed were challenging to fully equipped, veteran players, and thus almost impossible to a basic level hero in the hands of a newbie player (who was more likely to get frustrated and quit before the "hazing" challenge was completed and they were "proven worthy." This was a far cry from the "trial by fire" of "The Trial" where the suffering of those party members bonded them together for the trials to come, sadly.

But Doug Hopkins explained something to me last year... Rise of the Dread Moon was written to equip a group of heroes. In other words, he assumed you'd be starting with a brand new party that had completed 0-1 quests prior, not 30+. Not every expansion is necessarily designed as a self contained adventure, but it sounds like this with a strong influence on their thinking. They make the quests a bit harder than the original 13 (not counting the Trial, because that was hard for just about anyone) but hold back from the difficulty of the unbalanced 1992 ones.

Yes, eventually if you have a party that has 1000's of gold coins, and therefore is buying a dozen healing potions each, yes they will seem "impossible" to kill with the way the quests are written if you make no changes.

The basic philosophy for HeroQuest now is you write each expansion as if only it (and the GS) exist. So at best you'd dealing with the heroes who have the 14 quests worth of gear, IF that. The wisdom there is that not every group has the kind of time or patience to play every single pack, much less in a specific order. Instead they're going to play what they want to play, might as well make most everything accessible. Hence why there are a few entry level stand alone quests to get people familiar with the rules then launch into the pack you want to play. You don't HAVE to start with The Trial (though that's traditional).

I do think that when the Mythic set was created, they assumed that veteran players were going to skip the familiar quests and go right to the new ones, hence finding all the old artifacts again more or less. So heroes are probably expected to play 34 quests max, before retirement. Otherwise Zargon should beef things up to keep it interesting. Notice how many of those classic era expansions stopped having you find new things. All you got was gold, and even then not much more than was found in the treasure deck. You were expected to spend what you found on potions and/or mercenaries (which were expected to be cannon fodder).

You could start over each new book with a new party of heroes. You could limit what's available to buy to the GS and that expansion only.

If your group is really in the mood for a challenge, try starting a new pack with a brand new set of characters. Maybe offer them to try some of the new Heroes AH has designed. While some seem powerful, others are quite challenging to use effectively for beginners... see the Warlock and Explorer for example. There's still fun to be had, and yes, as others have said, you can use mods, and create your own quests, specifically geared towards the players you know. Nothing stops you from giving your spell based bad guy 20 BP, unlimited respawning henchmen, or defense such that if he rolls one black shield he blocks all skulls. You can literally make the game unwinnable for them if you wish. But I understand you want the game to be more challenging as written... you just may have to consider tweaking what you have if you don't want to start from scratch, and that's okay, you're already kind of reaching beyond the limits of the game anyway, because they didn't write it with the belief that you'd finish 100 quests with the same party so each was going to be specifically balanced for characters with enough gold to buy as much healing as they wished, essentially.

[MonsterMotor]

The basic philosophy for HeroQuest now is you write each expansion as if only it (and the GS) exist.

That may be the official statement of the producer, but it is invalidated by an at least partially existing campaign storyline that indicates some expansions should be played after another with the same group of heroes as they venture through the fairytale. And that sequence often does not align well with the difficulty progression between the expansions. For example, the sequel of the very hard Elf Quest is the much easier Dread Moon expansion. All this does not add up well with the large amount of expansions now available in 2025.

[Parzival]

An idea that occurs to me is to simply lower the amount of gold found in treasure chests as awarded in the standard quests.
Often these amounts are a staggering 200-600 gold. Combined with the smaller amounts in the Treasure deck, and you get quite a haul. So leave the Treasure cards as they are, but simply cut the “big finds” down into smaller “big finds”— maybe half or even a quarter of what is listed. This makes those various superior equipment pieces that much harder to acquire. Combine that with my earlier random Armory draw, and the Heroes end up with a far more drawn out “improvement” pattern, without resorting to frustrating concepts like arbitrary thefts, taxation, inflation, every Dread sorcerer casting Rust, etc..

And of course, someone’s idea about letting the Heroes spend gold for a chance at a +1 BP gain… that’s genius, combining a reward with a hidden, subtler penalty. People love risks like that, even if the chance of success is not actually in their favor. (As every casino in the world bases its business model on… quite well.) So what if a Hero takes the risk and gains 1 or 2 BP over standard? That’s really a minor advantage compared to spending the gold on defense or offense improvements. Yet the player will love that it happened!