My group's core hero rework ...

[Jonfreeman]

Our group (me and gf) loves the game. The hero player (my gf) felt a little restricted by the heroes. So ... I added a couple passive/active abilities to each hero that seems to work out quite well (keeping with simplicity as much as possible). I'll explain the logic behind each ...

NOTE: we play the rules "2 actions per turn" instead of "move and act". This is more the player's request - following suit of other modern dungeon crawls.

BARBARIAN
- Immediately before each attack, he may move up to 2 spaces.
- Once per turn he may reroll one red die
...
Intention: we figured that the extra mobility really just lets him solve every problem with his sword


DWARF
- still solves traps with ease
- always searches for traps/doors in 1 action
- if the dwarf rollls a black shield wall defending, that counts as a skull back against the attacker (who only negates it if they rolled a black shield while attacking)
...
Intention: the trap/door search I've seen elsewhere. The last one was my attempt to make the dwarf ... more dwarf. So giving him a grudge/retaliation ability seemed to work dash in that personality.


ELF
(note, this only works if you implement a system that soft-penalizes heroes for dilly/dallying through the dungeon)
- still gets her 3 spells
- action: roll 2 battle dice. for each skull, an adjacent hero or yourself recovers 1 BP.
...
The healing primarily solves the problem of spell-set selection (opening up more load out options). It also enables the use of some of the tougher variants out there. Of course, you need to cap it, so here's a couple options ...
a) half way through the first adventure, I cooked up a system that discourages taking your time. Basically, every time Zargon has a dead turn he draws a card he can use on future encounters. It's fun, I'll post it after we play test all the cards.
b) The easier answer is to Zargon to say "You can't use that ability again until there are no more monsters on the board."


WIZARD
- gets his spells ... but boy howdy are they worse than I remember when I was a kid
- Once per turn, if you don't cast a spell this turn, you may perform a ranged attack (2 dice) targeting a non-adjacent monster in your line of sight. The monster's defense value is their MP.
...
So, the hero player realized the wizard's generally the worst of the starting heroes. The wizard's abilities are all one-off misfires, aside from the utility spells For example: fire has 2 damage spells, and one of those is a 66% chance to do 1 point of damage. So, intention with the Zap abiltiy (named to go along with the wizard's fabulous hair) is "absolute minimum base level that the wizard can feel like he's still useful." We'll go through and rehash the wizard spells later to make them feel more worth of "one-off abilities."


... anyhoo, that's that.

[Jonfreeman]

posting a couple playtest updates ...

a) wizard's "always available" skill is now:
- Once during your turn, choose a monster within line of sight and roll 1 die. If you roll a skull, that monster loses 1 body point. (you cannot use this skill during the same turn where you cast a spell or perform an attack). Do not discard this card after use.
...
explanation: it's roughly the same odds. cleans up the process to a single die roll.

b) dwarf's retaltiaon was cleaned up to a double-sided skill card.
- FRONT SIDE: Short Temper: If you lose 2 or more body points while defending against a melee attack, immediately perform a melee attack targeting the attacker. Then flip over this card.
- BACK SIDE: Grudge: Roll 1 additional combat die during each of your attacks. When there are no monsters in your room or corridor, flip over this card.
...
explanation: it's a very dwarven self-courage spell that recycles itself. The overlookable drawback is that it requires the dwarf to lose 2 body points in 1 go ... which means you can't really control when it fires off (in that way making it a little worse than some of the berserker's skills), and the dwarf doesn't naturally have a way to heal himself.