Ye Olde Inn

How do you handle the condition where a hero's body points may go negative? E.g. you have 1 BP remaining and a monster slams you for 2 or 3 damage.

My players have been taking advantage of the EWP by calling this 0 and then drinking a potion! I plan to fix this by tracking negative BP and even prohibiting self admistered potions / spells if you go negative.

We play where you are dead if you have 0BP on Zargon's next turn. But the question is universal.

We interpret "may drink potion at any time" as "you can drink a potion during Morcar's turn", NOT "you may drink a potion after you are dead".
If you reach zero BP you are DEAD DEAD DEAD.

That's how we roll

"You" is the player. The person is only a player as long as his hero is alive.
That means, "any time" applies only up to the point where the hero loses their last body point.

I have a different ruling, however, presented somewhere else,
where your figure is put flatnosed in the square you lost your last BP in,
and a different hero can save you until the beginning of your next turn.
Then, your figure is taken from the board, and basta.
That, however, will need some playtesting. I'm a hardassed Morcar, but there might well be reason to change it back to original, i.e what GK says.

As I use tokens for body points, there is no negative number of BP ever.

Goblin-King wrote:We interpret "may drink potion at any time" as "you can drink a potion during Morcar's turn", NOT "you may drink a potion after you are dead".
If you reach zero BP you are DEAD DEAD DEAD.

That's how we roll

Yes, and in that rule set you fight 1BP monsters.

In the US rule set it is stated that you can save yourself immediately using a healing potion OR a healing spell (if no action was taken during the previous turn).

So in that case, how do you interpret negative BP? If I would have -1BP, drink a potion (roll a red die) and get only a +1... Then the save failed! However this effect requires that we track negative BP total because EWP has clearly gone first. Right now my party does this non-negative math... I'm thinking I need them to be more afraid of 0BP so they can't sock pile Healing Potions or hold their healing spells, etc.

whitebeard wrote:In the US rule set it is stated that you can save yourself immediately using a healing potion OR a healing spell (if no action was taken during the previous turn).

So in that case, how do you interpret negative BP? If I would have -1BP, drink a potion (roll a red die) and get only a +1... Then the save failed! However this effect requires that we track negative BP total because EWP has clearly gone first. Right now my party does this non-negative math... I'm thinking I need them to be more afraid of 0BP so they can't sock pile Healing Potions or hold their healing spells, etc.

The US rule about using a healing Potion or Spell upon reaching 0 Body Points does not have to be mutually exclusive with the idea of "negative Body Points". In the example you used, where a Hero gets knocked down to -1BP and drinks a random Potion for what turns out to be only +1, the flavor explanation would be that the wounds he sustained were too great for the meager healing in the potion he quaffed to reverse. Of course, if the Hero had a second Potion on hand, he could drink that as well since he is still in the process of dying.

If you don't play with negative Body Points, lesser healing Potions get a lot stronger because the incremental value of each additional BP healed at once is much lower. Thus, a set of four +2BP potions becomes a lot better than having two +4BP potions. This is because each individual potion, in addition to the nominal healing it performs, can also negate 'overkill' damage from a particularly strong Monster attack. For example, let's say the Barbarian, who is at 1 BP but has four +1 BP potions, gets smashed in the face by two Chaos Warriors, who each deal three Body Points of damage due to some lucky dice. If the lowest he can go is 0 BP, all the Barbarian has to do to save himself is drink one of his +1 potions for each Chaos Warrior blow, effectively healing three Body Points per potion instead of one by nullifying their overkill damage.

I wouldn't advise removing the US HeroQuest "save yourself" clause as Goblin King does, however. Among other things, what's the poor Wizard to do if somebody hits him for four unblocked Skulls? Attack rolls that cause three or more Body Points of damage are fairly rare in this game, but they do happen sometimes. Having a small but nonzero random chance to for a Hero sitting at 3BP or better to instantly die seems like one of those "feel-bad" game design decisions.

(For the record, I don't play with negative Body Points, despite the impressive wall of math I posted two paragraphs ago. Instead, I make lesser Potions more expensive to counterbalance their increased utility. My Heroes generally prefer to get the standard +4s anyway.)

Count Mohawk wrote:(For the record, I don't play with negative Body Points, despite the impressive wall of math I posted two paragraphs ago. Instead, I make lesser Potions more expensive to counterbalance their increased utility. My Heroes generally prefer to get the standard +4s anyway.)

I though the "wall" was the obvious conundrum in the original problem statement.

So you vote for non-negative math... because any hero (and the wizard in particular) might get knocked down past 0 when sitting at 3? No, that was only the argument against rendering such players "unconscious" and unable to save themselves. You could keep the negative math, but you've been doing it this way for a while now and decided to just charge a premium for lesser +2 healing potions. Got it.

I don't sell healing potions to the heroes, which expansion is that? You might consider making what is available at the shop limited and subject to a roll of the dice. The new armory I'm working on has rare (1-2 on a red die) and very rare (1) items (roll at the beginning of the quest).

In response to your concerns, perhaps moving the "unconscious" threshold to -2 BP would give the needed room? Forcing anyone at 1BP to drink their potion. And -3 BP would be instant death, requiring the Elixir of Life?

whitebeard wrote:I though the "wall" was the obvious conundrum in the original problem statement.

D'oh. Sometimes I use a lot of words to say nothing at all. Let me try addressing your original concerns directly this time:

whitebeard wrote:My players have been taking advantage of the EWP by calling this 0 and then drinking a potion! I plan to fix this by tracking negative BP and even prohibiting self admistered potions / spells if you go negative.

This quote indicates you view the current situation (with BP only dropping to 0) as a problem. Tracking negative BPs, by itself, only solves the problem of making better healing potions sufficiently more valuable than lesser ones. If you want to further encourage the active drinking of potions, rather than the Heroes saving them to stop death with that one US rule, then yes, prohibiting 'reactive' potion use at 0 BP or less will certainly do the trick.

whitebeard wrote:In response to your concerns, perhaps moving the "unconscious" threshold to -2 BP would give the needed room? Forcing anyone at 1BP to drink their potion. And -3 BP would be instant death, requiring the Elixir of Life?

That would help, yes. For your playgroup, that might be a little too generous even; perhaps instead:

1 BP or more: Alive and able to drink potions normally.
0 BP: Dying, but conscious enough to drink a potion.
-1 BP: Dying and unconscious. Better hope your allies are nearby!
-2 BP or less: He's shuffled off this mortal coil; this is an ex-Hero!

Heroes sitting at 3 therefore don't have to fear unconsciousness except from taking four points of damage at once, which will only happen from the strongest monsters' physical attacks. That seems fringe-unikely enough to not have to worry about as a gameplay concern. ( vs deals 4 damage about 1% of the time, but 3 damage around 8-9% odds. Firestorm also exists and deals 3 damage 44% of the time.)

whitebeard wrote:I don't sell healing potions to the heroes, which expansion is that? You might consider making what is available at the shop limited and subject to a roll of the dice. The new armory I'm working on has rare (1-2 on a red die) and very rare (1) items (roll at the beginning of the quest).

The various US expansions have Alchemist's Shops selling four types of hideously overpriced potions on the inside cover of the Quest Booklets (different ones in each pack). However, since you asked, my particular system is basically slev's 2008 rendition of HQR, but with colored dice and altered prices. I have considered having a limited Armory, Alchemist's Shop, etc., but have not yet implemented one (although I also haven't discarded the idea).

Count Mohawk wrote:The various US expansions have Alchemist's Shops selling four types of hideously overpriced potions on the inside cover of the Quest Booklets (different ones in each pack). However, since you asked, my particular system is basically slev's 2008 rendition of HQR, but with colored dice and altered prices. I have considered having a limited Armory, Alchemist's Shop, etc., but have not yet implemented one (although I also haven't discarded the idea).

And if you wanted to try that, you could use the 2016 version of HQR, with the advanced rules
</blatent-self-promotion>

whitebeard wrote:How do you handle the condition where a hero's body points may go negative? E.g. you have 1 BP remaining and a monster slams you for 2 or 3 damage.

My players have been taking advantage of the EWP by calling this 0 and then drinking a potion!

Yep, this is exactly how we play, and how it is in the US rules. UK rules...now that's another debate that I have already had thankyou!

Simple!!! Dead!!!