What Are Your Homebrew Rules for Searching?

[GimmeYerGold]

This topic might be in another thread, but I could not find it in the search. (ironic, right?)

Do you have special rules that to streamline traps/secret doors searches so players are not needing to search every single room? Or is that something to be expected?

[Sjeng]

We play it according to the rules: every room may only be searched once per quest. Chests are seperate searches (for both treasure as for traps). The quest notes should specify if a chest is trapped or not, and if it contains something or not. No extra card is drawn for chests. Hallways may not be searched for treasure.

[Goblin-King]

Our homebrew rule is that you have to stand adjacent to a chest to search/open it.

We also play that a room can only be searched once EVER, not once per player.
As you may be aware, the EU rules are trying to get the players to be dicks to each other by having to "ask permission" to pass through each other.
This plays nicely into that mentality by having the players sometimes abandon each other to be able to be the one who gets to search a room! It's great to watch

[Sjeng]

Our homebrew rule is that you have to stand adjacent to a chest to search/open it.

We also play that a room can only be searched once EVER, not once per player.

Yup, same with us too.

[Sotiris]

If you have problem of searching every room add the same rule as "search for treasure": draw treasure card when nothing's found.

[GimmeYerGold]

Our homebrew rule is that you have to stand adjacent to a chest to search/open it.

We also play that a room can only be searched once EVER, not once per player.
As you may be aware, the EU rules are trying to get the players to be dicks to each other by having to "ask permission" to pass through each other.
This plays nicely into that mentality by having the players sometimes abandon each other to be able to be the one who gets to search a room! It's great to watch

I tried out all of these and they work great. Very smooth. Especially the pass through permission. Like what if a Hero sprung a trap while opening a chest, just to see another hero scoop it up? It can happen, but the permission rule sort of keeps "dibs" on chests if you're already in position.

[Redav]

We play it according to the rules: every room may only be searched once per quest. Chests are seperate searches (for both treasure as for traps). The quest notes should specify if a chest is trapped or not, and if it contains something or not. No extra card is drawn for chests. Hallways may not be searched for treasure.

So far we've played it as Sjeng says however I have come up with another searching method but it's not been play tested;

Searching
Searching a room is as per original rules.

Searching in a corridor;
- player announces they are searching
- they move half the number of squares that they roll (rounded up)
- they reveal both traps and secret passages as they go
- human's see one square away
- Elf and Dwarf see two squares away
- you may search if a monster is present but you must stop searching if you move within four squares of one

Unless noted otherwise, secret passages are discovered closed.

Some people think that it's possible to search with monsters in the same room. As I have only played the EU rules and they explicitly say that this is not possible so I use this clarification. I have read the NA rules and due to the wording they use for the searching, I understand their point of view but I wouldn't apply it.

[torilen]

I like the idea of having a quick table for what can be found during a search,
and having the players roll to see if they find anything. This certainly does not
streamline things, though, so if quicker and easier is what you're after, do not do that.

Certain the "one search ever" rule works good. I do know anything about that whole asking
permission to pass by another hero. I would stress to my players that the heroes are just
that...heroes. They are friends (or at least "colleagues" of sorts, and should be working to
help each other and all of civilization, not out to see who has the most gold at the end. That
is NOT what heroquest is - there are other games for that...munchkin, for example.

[Daedalus]

This topic might be in another thread, but I could not find it in the search. (ironic, right?)

Do you have special rules that to streamline traps/secret doors searches so players are not needing to search every single room? Or is that something to be expected?

Couldn't find the old thread, but here's what my old group used to do after a Quest was completed and all apparent rooms were explored with the monsters defeated. This could also work if a group were apparently dead-ended before completing a Quest.

• A player declares his Hero is searching the board for any possible secret doors.
• If there is an undiscovered trap on the revealed board, place the Hero on that square and spring the trap, ending his turn.
• If a trap isn't sprung and any secret doors are present, place the closest secret door with the searching Hero in front of it.
• Place the other Heroes nearby in the same room or corridor.
• Any Hero may open the door, which resumes the normal turn order starting with that Hero.

This process could be repeated until all secret doors were discovered. Our thinking was the Heroes had all day and wanted to be thorough, but the players wanted to avoid the tedium. We didn't use trap auto-searches as a balance, but those could be allowed as well.

[GimmeYerGold]

I like this idea--I think we inadvertently went to a system like this on our last few games.

But now that I've added the Evil Wizard card deck, and there's a chance monsters can be spawned when none are present on the board... I MIGHT have gone backwards on the "streamline" process

I do have that each person can search a room or furniture only once. It's not as tedious as I imagined it to be. And now I have the lone monster deck the heroes can draw from when parleying with a lone monster, so that helps speed things up, and distributes treasure another way instead of having to search.