More than four Heroes

[Daedalus]

You mentioned Morcar and having the D&D FABG, so I'm assuming you're using the EU rules. If that's right, make sure you use the NA Body Points for the monsters (if you don't already). I second (or third?) Sjeng's idea of doubling Morcar's turns. You won't need to add new monsters that will only slow things (already slowed if you use NA BPs). Those extra moves and attacks should even out the extra 50% Heroes pretty well. If you notice the game going all Heroes, then add in some extra monsters to compensate like Goblin King suggested.

[bastianbux]

I'm actually American. I just prefer "Morcar" to "Zargon" because... I always felt "Zargon" sounded like a space alien name or something, whereas "Morcar" sounds like something out of Tolkien. Also I like that there's precidence in Warhammer lore for Morcar.

But yeah, I'm using NA rules.

Tonight was our first night (and my first time playing the game in over two decades!) and it went interestingly. I had decided that for the first quest I wouldn't really add any additional monsters or extra Morcar turns... and I nearly wiped them all out! We only had five Heroes (the guy who was going to play the Cleric I had created couldn't make it). It got so bad that it was obvious they would all fail the first quest, so I suggested the guy playing the Elf go ahead and have the Cleric enter from the staircase and use his Resurrect spell to bring back the Dwarf (the Wizard was also dead, but he had used up his good spells). That helped them come back from the brink of failure. Mainly it was due to this one girl (playing the Ranger I'd created) going around and opening all of the doors and letting the monsters out. I think she learned her lesson near the end.

[torilen]

Yeah...if certain players haven't played rpg's before - even HQ, as a board game, in this particular example, I would consider it
an rpg - if certain players haven't ever played one, and they don't run their character the right way, horrors and pain and death can come
on pretty quickly. You're right...maybe she learned her lesson...no adventurer in their right mind just goes around opening
doors.

If I might make a suggestion - if it looks like a player is going to do that in the future, you could always make the door locked,
and start placing keys that have to be found. When they find the key, describe it specifically, and then they can start looking
at the door locks, or some other indicator on the doors to say which key goes where. It will keep them from getting slaughtered,
it will keep you from having to bend the rules TOO much, and teach them to search better and be more cautious.



bastianbux - I have to admit, I've never wanted to use Morcar for the evil wizard, because I'm in NA, and I always felt it would
just be wrong for me not to use Zargon. But never heard anyone say that Zargon sounded more like an alien. Now that you
say that...I kind of agree. I may have to go to using Morcar. Rats!

[bastianbux]

That's a great idea about the locked doors. If she does that again in Quest Two (Ragnar) next Friday, I will implement that. But I THINK she learned her lesson when a couple of the other players started heavily hinting that this was the reason almost all of them died.

As far as Zargon vs. Morcar... mainly it's just that Warhammer actually mentions Morcar and not Zargon. But I might start saying Zargon because all of the materials are in the NA format and some of the newbies got confused when they saw "Zargon" on their cards and stuff.

[Patroclus]

About the 6 heroes, I have played with 5 heroes and 1 npc and all was very smooth. Sometimes we didn’t roll for movement, and we were placing the heroes right out of the door, when the room or corridor was cleared from traps, but it wasn’t necessary.

If we are talking for more than 6 then it could be a problem, but I don’t see any reason to put initiative in HQ. The AD&D have less battles and are slower and the initiative works, but for HQ I don’t think so.

Of course put some more monsters of the same kind in every room if you feel that it’s too easy for them. But on the fly... If for some reason they have a bad luck by losing many damages in traps or whatever, don’t make their life harder with more monsters and long battles. They will beat you, face the truth

[bastianbux]

Well, there were supposed to be six Heroes, but one of them couldn't make it. So I decided that since it was only five to not bother with Morcar having two turns, nor adding any additional monsters. In fact, they nearly all died. The Elf, Dwarf, and Wizard all died leaving the Barbarian and Ranger with very few Body Points... it looked like they were about to die as well. So I suggested that someone take up the Cleric since that guy couldn't play, and have the Cleric "arrive late" at the staircase and resurrect the Elf who could use the Flashback spell on one other Hero's turns which turning the tide and let them finish out the quest.

I forgot how brutal that first quest is! It took three hours! Looking over the next few quests, it's clear that the American designers meant to show off how difficult the game could be. I think they purposefully redesigned that first quest to kill off most of the heroes.

Anyway, I'll probably have to start adding monsters in the future, but haven't had to yet. If we do get that other guy to play the sixth character, I might start giving Morcar a turn after the third Hero.

About Initiative: I ended up deciding against it because it seemed to just add one more extra complication. Really, I'm surprised that HeroQuest even has them rolling for movement. It seems like it would have further simplified things to give them a set movement for each Hero. Oh well.

I'm really looking forward to this Friday when they play the Ragnar quest, I remember that being a fun one with the alarm opening all the doors and all the monsters chasing them to the staircase.

[torilen]

I have no idea where it would be...but there has been at least one thread talking about movement.
A lot of folk here at the inn have decided to use just a base movement for the heroes. Some have given
each hero the same amount - maybe 6 or 7, 9 or 10...some have given each hero a different amount.
For example:
Barbarian = 10 spaces
Elf = 8 spaces
Wizard = 6 spaces
Dwarf = 4 or 5


Maybe someone else might be able to point you to the actual thread, to give you some more ideas and
the thoughts behind the choices.

[bastianbux]

I've seen movement attributed to the various Heroes somewhere as well, but I worry that such a thing would mess with some other mechanics of the game. Some spells and such limit or improve upon movement by adding or removing a die. I didn't want to fiddle around too much with what's printed on cards lest I confuse the players. They already got confused enough as it was when I read them the intro with "Morcar" but then they kept seeing "Zargon" on all of their cards. Haha, oops.

[knightkrawler]

I went with a compromise between full die rolling and rigidly set movement points.

One movement die for the hero's race:
* 1d8 for an Elf
* 1d6 for a Human
* 1d4 for a Dwarf
and so on, you get the idea.

plus a number of set points for the hero's class:
* 4 for a wizard
* 5 for a barbarian/warrior
* 6 for a scout/thief/ranger
are examples

So, for the standard four heroes, that is:
(Human) Barbarian: 1d6+5
(Human) Wizard: 1d6+4
(Elven) Ranger: 1d8+6
(Dwarf) Scout: 1d4+6

These movement points are not only spent on movement alone, but also on some minor actions. Examples:
* 2 points for giving an item to another hero
* 2 points per square to jump over a pit (or any square a hero wants to jump over after announcing it [he might suspect the square trapped])
* 3 points for reloading a crossbow
and so on.
After I made this Spend Movement points rules I learned that it rules out other houserules (for reloading a crossbow) and nonsense original rules (jumping over a 1-square pit trap you SEE and YET risk falling in... I find that quite unrealistic).

[bastianbux]

That's a really interesting and well-thought-out system, but it's a bit too different from what I love about HQ: the pure simplicity and quick-paced game play. When I first played Advanced HeroQuest I thought: "Why did they have to muck up HeroQuest with all of these endless dice rolls and adding these points but subtracting these other points?" It just seemed so overcomplicated whereas the original HeroQuest was so super simple. I do think, though, that they could have gone one step further and given the characters specific movement points to start out with. That would eliminate all of that red dice rolling. I also find it strange that there are some spells that say "roll one red dice for each of your mind points, with a 5 or 6 the spell is negated". Um... why not just tell the Hero to roll combat dice for each of their mind points and if a white shield is rolled then the spell is negated? Same probability... weird.