Feedback regarding Custom Rules and Difficulty

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Pit Traps

The fact that you can climb out of a pit trap unaided suggests to me that it isn't a real pit trap so I have two traps;

a) Where the Quest Map indicates a pit trap I interpret this as a Stake Pit trap - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Punji_stake_pit.jpg - hence no searching possible, but does block LOS, attack and defence with one less die.

b) My own quests have proper Pit Fall traps that you fall into (at least 2x2 squares and two squares deep) that you cannot climb out of without assistance or a rope and grapple - and also similar such things as Wolf Holes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trou-de-loup.png

Trading

We play that you can pass a card to another player on your turn provided your Hero is adjacent to the Hero you want to pass the card(s) to and neither of you are adjacent to a monster (free action)

Your comment on continual quests - sounds like you are introducing Fate Points - welcome to Advanced HeroQuest

Undead

With regards to challenges around weak Undead (I assume that is why the Doomguard were invented), I did create a Ghoul at one point but haven't used it yet but one of its abilities was to 'ambush'. Ghouls were not placed on the board when the Heroes looked into a room from the doorway, but once they took a few steps into the room they were placed and attacked immediately (which also partially compensated for the lack of missile armed Undead) - I think this ability could be used to liven up (bad pun sorry) Skeletons after all they are animated and could animate on demand if you see what I mean.

[Kagekaze]

I was editing the footage of one of the last quests my party went through. It was Quest 5 in RotWL "Halls of Bellthor" and it's made me think I need to add in a new custom rule for bosses. I'm thinking I need to make any boss monster immune to "Tempest". Some have it already in the quest book (rarely) but without it, most wizards just never use it until the very end and then the heroes get 8 attacks on a boss who may only have 4 BP. When you've got a Barb with 3 dice, Dwarf with 4, Elf with 3, and wizard with 5 (Genie) and possibly more, it seems nigh impossible to offer a challenge when the boss can be made to just miss his turn

I don't think this would be terrible to put in, thinking of not telling the group and just let them try to cast and say it's ineffective. I'm sure they'll figure it out by the 2nd time it happens

[alyndavies]

There has been some debate on the forum where I have said playing ROTWL before KK.

You kill the Witch Lord at the end of the first quest book, so his return would seem the natural progression. Also Orcs and Firmirs attack with three dice so KK is actually much harder and you can kill people in that expansion. with regards to ROTWL provided you make it through the start of the first quest where the "trap" gets activated and all the monsters come at the heroes at once they will walk the rest of the quests. The best way to play the game is to have the "bosses" have a similar number of body points and dice to the heroes, so at least you can hurt them, bearing in mind your still out numbered 4 to 1!

[MadMickyG]

Just wanted to add my two coppers in about dying players.

As I usually play the game with my kids, the oldest being 13, I had to change the dynamic as they would get very upset about their character being dead.

If their character goes down, they are unconscious. Another player can heal them, or make them drink a healing potion.
If no potion is available, they can be picked up and carried out of the dungeon. The one carrying the unconscious body moves 1D6 and cannot attack or defend.

Now with their gear, if another player was in the room when they became unconscious, their gear can be gathered.
If not, then all weapons, shields, potions and gold are considered looted and lost.
Surprisingly, despite how they react if they are 'dead', they totally accept the 'losing equipment' rule as long as they are still alive.

I have had characters die, so they make a new one and bring them in to the dungeon quickly to assist, in the hopes they can collect better equipment to improve the character.

[Daedalus]

So with all that huge exposition out of the way, I'm going to list my current house rules and see what you guys think and if you have suggestions that won't change or break the game too much.

NOTE: If you'd like to see how the current rules are being played out, or to see how my 'heroes' have been playing the game, the playlist is here with the most recent quest being The Cold Halls. We are actually on quest 6 of RotWL, so the videos are a bit behind.

I noticed before The Cold Halls you talked about Heroes being allowed to attack with more than one weapon on their turn. Found on p.13 of the North American Instruction Booklet under Action 1--Attack:

Important: You may only attack with one weapon at a time.

Treasure Searches for rooms containing Chests
Typically you can search for treasure anywhere in a room. However, I noticed some chests have traps nearby that wouldn't get triggered with this being the case. Therefore I put in a rule that treasure searches when a room has a chest, must be conducted NEXT to the chest in question to help preserve nearby traps.

That's sensible. Here's another way to approach it.

Pits and LOS
Players in a pit do not disrupt LOS. The rules allow for attacking out of a pit at a penalty of 1 die for attack and defense, this is preserved, but spells cannot be cast due to not being able to properly 'see' from in the pit. To keep things fair, monsters cannot perform LOS actions into the pit either.

What a Hero can "see" from within a pit trap was discussed in this topic.

...I look forward to any feedback or suggestions you guys might have. Thanks.

I hope some of this helps, even though you're now in AotOH!