Ye Olde Inn

Something I thought of a couple of days ago, and managed to formulate it into a coherent thought
this morning. Make four NEW characters for the new 25 anniversary pack for the inn. I've always
felt that splitting heroes up by race, instead of by "profession" or class or skills, makes more sense.
So, here is my idea:
Humans - 6 body, 4 mind
Dwarves - 7 Body, 3 Mind - also has resistance to magic and poison
Elves - 4 Body, 6 Mind - can cast one spell group naturally

To start the game, each hero picks skills (some of use have been making skill cards):

Warrior - can use all weapons and armor
**From here, future skills enhance combat abilities

Wizard - gets 3 spell cards
**Future skill enhance casting ability

Rogue (adventurer or dungeoneer, maybe) - some weapons and armor, natural trap disarm
**Future skills enhance combat and/or other rogue skills

Priest - gets healing and turn undead
**Future skills increase these and/or other priestly abilities.

As you see - you can make the original four heroes, though the barbarian hero would be
slightly different, unless you wanted to add in Barbarian as a race, with 8 Body, 2 Mind.
Wizard would be a little better, elf would be a little weaker...because of the different
ability point scores. I think those could be offset by something else, though, to make up
for the difference.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other things that could be added/changed to allow better and easier play:
chaoticprime created great body point cards, I believe. Instead of writing
on a character sheet, swap out body point cards.
Say a hero has 6 point...the player has the 6 card.
Hero loses two points - put the 6 point card away, take the 4 point card out.

Weapon and armor cards, instead of writing down on a character sheet. Of course,
there would have to be enough for everyone to have what they want/need.

Gold Coin cards (would need to be created) - groups would need to have a couple of
sets of these - have to base cards start at 25 gold and increase by 25, up to a few
hundred or so. Then have a couple of 10's and 15's to offset any odd amounts, when
needed.

All of the above would make character sheets almost not needed at all.

I like your points about races. Standard stats are good, then classes can add modifiers to the starting stats.

So that the wizard would give -2 BP, + 2MP as he has been neglecting physical activity in order to benefit his studies.
The Barbarian would give +2 BP - 2 MP, because he is the exact opposite. And so on.

This would mean that you could play an elven mage, but this would give him only 2 BP. Yet, he can cast 4 schools of magic. That might be a little harsh, so I 'd think the elves should be at 5. At least then they would not (probably) die to a single wandering monster if they weren't very unlucky.

This would mean that the rogue could have +1 BP, +0 MP, trap disarm. And if you were an elven rogue (which is sort of what the original elf is in my opinion) You'd start with 6 BP and the equivalent of a free toolset. Plus one set of magic.

I don't know how turn undead works in HQ, but an innate ability of the priest could be to create holy water between quests. Stats could be -1 BP, +1 MP, Healing spells + Sleep. This would give a human cleric 5 BP, 5 MP and a nice set of spells which would make a durable support class.

It would be a simple, (in a good way) easy system to balance positives and negatives.

As for the cards, I don't agree. A handful of tokens are better for keeping track of BP and MP. These spring to mind:


Same with the gold. If you use only cards to keep track of the gold, it will be very difficult to remember what each person had when the next session comes along.
Character sheets are not so bad. And during a quest, the players can always just keep the treasure cards in front of them. Sum them up at the end, and use a pencil/eraser to put the total down on their sheet for future reference.

I'm not quite sold on these ideas. They are by no means bad at all in their own right, but I think they are starting to drift too far away for it to even be HQ anymore.
New heroes, introduction of skills, no character sheet, new cards and tokens? What's even left other than a stripped framework of basic rules?

By all means put these things in a homemade game (e.g. SpaniardQuest!) or implement them in your house rules, but personally this is not what I imagine the HQ25 pack should be.

Goblin-King wrote:I'm not quite sold on these ideas. They are by no means bad at all in their own right, but I think they are starting to drift too far away for it to even be HQ anymore.
New heroes, introduction of skills, no character sheet, new cards and tokens? What's even left other than a stripped framework of basic rules?

By all means put these things in a homemade game (e.g. SpaniardQuest!) or implement them in your house rules, but personally this is not what I imagine the HQ25 pack should be.

I have to agree. I am all about adding new content for the HQ25 pack, but not changes to the core mechanics or atmosphere of the game.

In regards to new classes in general, I am all for it. I feel that skills are against the nature of the game though and I would recommend replicating the effects of wanted skills with new spells and tools. Turning undead as a reusable skill during a quest could become very hard to balance, but a new group of spells each with one use that target undead specifically, priest only weapons that bonus vs undead and such would be good alternatives.

Over all this is an interesting concept and I will spend some time this weekend deconstructing the original classes and see if I can come up with some balanced new classes that can be added for house rules.

I went the exact opposite ways by offering players classes/disciplines/professions and a shitload of minis to choose from where they can freely choose their race and sex.

The turn undead and heal, and other "skills" I offered are ideas I put up in my skill cards:
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2040&p=32671#p32671

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2059&p=30725#p30725

viewtopic.php?f=34&t=2142&p=32682#p32682

Most allow things only once, unless you take the skill again to allow more uses. The use of skills, though, allows for
great increase of play-ability of the heroes as the complete more and more quests...more uses of the skills and
greater ability of the skills.

(Thanks to gimmeyergold for sparking off the skill card ideas I've had - thanks for giving me a good model on how
to design them

I have found, through making the skill cards and various discussions, that skill cards can add to the rules of HQ without
really adding rules that people need to remember. Almost all of the rules needed are right there on the card in front of
the player.
So, really, it's not necessarily changing the rules of HQ all that much.

For what it is worth, I do have a lot of special magical items that simulate a lot of the effects of my skill cards,
as well. I feel the need to have very basic hero types, though, even for the use of these specialty magic items.
Barbarian, an elf that can fight and use magic, and a dwarf with trap disarming skills - these are getting specific
in terms of hero types and the skills they use.

I know that is how basic HQ was designed, and I understand the reasoning behind that design when HQ came out.
But, think about it - are ALL the dwarves in the HQ the same - they all use weapons and armor and all disarm traps?
OR...do some pick locks...are some priests....are some straight fighters who hack their way through goblins?

Aren't there some elves that specialize in the bow? How about wizard elves with very powerful abilities?

You all see what I'm getting at, right?

Well, yeah, everything in HQ is a representation.
Barbarians are generally strong fighters, dwarfs have a knack for mechanical stuff, wizards are excellent casters and elves have some magical abilities.
Of course some dwarfs pick locks, are priests, fighters and even hairdressers. That doesn't necessarily mean every possible profession should be represented in the game.
We have 4 archetypes. Not elaborate D&D style, no, but 4 different heroes none the less.

I can easily follow why and how you want to make a division between races and classes. If I were to make a light RPG dungeon crawler I would probably do exactly this myself.
But this is HQ after all, and doing this is simply messing too much with the core.

Goblin-King wrote:Well, yeah, everything in HQ is a representation.
Barbarians are generally strong fighters, dwarfs have a knack for mechanical stuff, wizards are excellent casters and elves have some magical abilities.
Of course some dwarfs pick locks, are priests, fighters and even hairdressers. That doesn't necessarily mean every possible profession should be represented in the game.
We have 4 archetypes. Not elaborate D&D style, no, but 4 different heroes none the less.

I can easily follow why and how you want to make a division between races and classes. If I were to make a light RPG dungeon crawler I would probably do exactly this myself.
But this is HQ after all, and doing this is simply messing too much with the core.

Exactly, this is a boardgame and although it's leaps and bounds better than Monopoly or Connect 4 it is just a board game. The rules and the archetypes they include are to maximize the benefits of working as a party to over come Zargon instead of competing against each other to win.

For those of us old enough to remember Dungeons and Dragons represented Dwarves, Elves and Halflings as unmodified archetypes as well. To be honest the HQ version of Dwarves and Elves are very similar to old school D&D. Elves all were exactly the same - could wear any armor, use any weapon and had the ability to cast magic user spells. Dwarves were rugged fighter types who had the ability to detect traps and new construction in a dungeon, could wear any armor and use any weapon. It was not until Advanced D&D that they let you choose your race and class and even then races were limited to what classes they could choose.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of new classes and races for HQ, but I would like mine to be as streamlined with the original rules as possible.

As for skill cards, I could see them being used exactly like spell cards in a rules context. This keeps the feel of the game but allows for a more diverse experience.

Eh, I tried. I'll leave it be, and use this sort of idea for my own HQ gaming.

Thanks for the input and thoughtful responses, at least.