Ye Olde Inn

Barbarian quest 6 - the frosted path

!!! SPOILER ALERT !!!

Just played quest 6 - the frosted path - last night. My player used Barbarian, Dwarf, Knight, Wizard, and a mercenary swordsman. Most of their four characters have slugged it through the base quests + kellar's keep and have risen in the ranks, accumulating a decent amount of gear.

whoa, there were no shortcuts in this one - heroes were made to go through every room on quest 6! No choice but go through it all A-Z. NO SECRET DOORS. They kept searching for secret doors and I didn't have the heart to tell them there was no point searching for them in this quest - sometimes it's possible to avoid dangerous rooms (and leaving potential treasure on the table) by finding the wooden exit door early, but not this time. The only thing the heroes could avoid is running into two yetis in the hall pretty early on in the quest and not going into the room with the two polar warbears who guarded the room to the empty treasure chest with the poison gas trap !

My player somehow avoided the yetis, but faced the polar warbears - by this point they had run out of healing and attack spells and the dwarf was at 3 body points, the barbarian 5! They rely on the brunt force of their dwarf and barbarian too much in my opinion - I'd like to see them utilize their Wizard more.

The quest has good loot though and there is a potion of healing provided by the questbook about halfway through as well as a few spell scrolls here and there. The base set treasure card deck pulled a bunch of wandering monsters but also a fair amount of bonus gold as well as a potion of healing. Plus, the room where all the items ice gremlins had stolen from heroes can be retrieved, I thought was a cool idea - so my player's Barbarian got their talisman of lore back.

wandering monster was 2 chaos warriors - could you imagine that in a base quest?!
after defeating 10+ chaos warriors, a gargoyle, and 2 polar warbears, my player realized they had really come a long way since The Trial.

There's a bunch of mercenaries in this one, I give the heroes the option to buy them just the decrease the difficulty.
Also I generally limit the Wandering Monsters in these quests. 1 is tough enough.

If they're already out of Healing Potions they don't have a prayer making it through Heart of Ice. The double quest is insanely difficult if you're playing as is. I hope you're letting the Wizard use all 4 Elemental Spells, he could run out rather quickly in Frozen Horror.

Yes, I let the Wizard use all 4 Elemental Spells if the Elf isn't playing and you're right - they run out pretty quickly in Frozen Horror - attack and healing at least! We also use Heroic Adventures' Skill Cards in the expansion Quest Packs and since the Wizard has so many mind points, they get a good selection of those Skill Cards. Still, would be nice for a leveled-up Wizard to have proficiency in a particular Spell or an Element. Spell ring gives a bonus spell (which we seem to always spend on a healing spell - the one time I stored Fire of Wrath I regretted it) and Heroic Adventures' Wizard Skill has a single-use Re-try spell card, but would be nice to be able to use something like Fire Ball or Fire of Wrath several times in an expansion quest - especially since they only do 1-2 points of damage and can be defended against anyway... sure, they may take out a goblin or an orc, but Frozen Horror monsters have more body points. Perhaps one free use of certain attack spells and then subsequent attempts will require some % to cast successfully?

We're going to add the extra spells when we play Wizards of Morcar but still wondering if it's worth to kind of "level up" the Wizard with the standard elemental Spells somehow before then since they've been using them for so long.

Any time there's a Sorcerer's Bench and a hero searches for treasure in that room I allow the hero to draw 2 random spell scroll cards.
Another option you could do, is allow the Wizard to replenish all his spells upon reading from the sorcerer's bench

It really is the most brutal Quest Pack out of the box... glad people are having enough fun to keep going at least!

wallydubbs wrote:There's a bunch of mercenaries in this one, I give the heroes the option to buy them just the decrease the difficulty.

Do you mean the option to buy off the mercenaries encountered during the quest as opposed to just fighting them? That's a cool idea! After all, they're just blades for hire. The OG Frozen Horror Quest Book doesn't refer to them as Evil Henchman... just that they should be played as monsters.

wallydubbs wrote:Any time there's a Sorcerer's Bench and a hero searches for treasure in that room I allow the hero to draw 2 random spell scroll cards.
Another option you could do, is allow the Wizard to replenish all his spells upon reading from the sorcerer's bench

I like this. GM discretion depending on the difficulty of the quest, but maybe a d4 or d6 roll to replenish spells or a couple random spell scroll cards at alchemist's bench or sorcerer's table - maybe even the odd bookshelf. I get tired of saying, "The old books on this bookshelf are ruined by the damp and are of little of value" , "Orcs and goblins are poor historians and have little taste for literature", or "The Wizard and Elf dare not open these tomes of Chaos Magic." I kind of wanted the Dwarf to find some Dwarf lore in the bookshelves of Kellar's Keep that would somehow help them on their quest.

Kurgan wrote:It really is the most brutal Quest Pack out of the box... glad people are having enough fun to keep going at least!

Yes!

Well I was thinking, since this is a very difficult quest pack the difficulty could be somewhat neutralized by getting rid of the mercenaries. Instead of fighting them you could hire them. Perhaps from an earlier expedition if the Emperor/King sent Knights with mercenaries up the mountain prior to sending the heroes.

As the heroes progress up the mountain they get further and further away from civilization. So instead of the heroes going back down the mountain between quests, all the mercenaries the heroes can acquire (Except from Quest 4) are already up the mountain. As monstrous as the Frozen Horror and his minions are it seems highly unlikely that they'd be anywhere near a village to hire Mercenaries. I'm suggesting of getting rid of hiring new mercenaries between quests and the heroes find mercenaries on the mountain to hire. Since they're found in the room with the tomb one could say they had just finished burying their leader when the heroes find them.

Below is a copy of my version of the Frosted Path.