Zargon's Hero/Hero's taking too long

[Wyldrogue]

This is my first post but, I had an idea from another game that might help a few things. Like if you wanted to have more heroes or if you don't really like your heroes lining up the perfect spot before entering a door. I haven't tried it yet - so you may want to tweak it to your liking.

House rule - patrolling monsters

Zargon, The Evil Sorcerer's Turn
1. If there aren't any monsters to move or perform actions you gain a skull tile for each hero that is alive.
2. You may use your skull tiles immediately (or save them) to buy 1 body point of monsters per skull tile. (you do not have to spend all of them).
3. You may place the purchased monsters at closed doors that are already placed on the board or at the entrance/exit stairs.

How Zargon Reacts to Hero movement
1. When a hero opens a door, place on the gameboard the monsters, treasure chests, and any other items that belong in that room
2. You may the use your skull tiles to buy 1 body point of monsters per skull tile. (you do not have to spend all of them).

As an example... The group has the standard 4 heroes. They all align up at the door and then it is your turn with 4 skull tiles. You could place 2 Mummies at a nearby door or you could wait till they opened it and add the Mummies to the monster group inside.

Please let me know what you think or if you would have any tweaks that could make it better. Thanks.

[TMU]

Hi and welcome to the Inn!

I personally think it would be a bit too overpowered for the DM. I would give one skull tile per round, so he could add one monster to one room, or save for more monsters to some other room. Or if that makes it too weak, give half skull from every hero. Just my

Once again, welcome and I'd be happy to see you posting around

[knightkrawler]

3. You may place the purchased monsters at closed doors that are already placed on the board or at the entrance/exit stairs.

Welcome, Wyldrogue. Love the name
The part I quoted above is where the rule is overpowered from where I stand. While it makes for some more fights which is a good thing most of the time, it will make a quest whose objective is actually achieved very tedious if the only thing left to do is strolling back to the exit where 16 chaos warriors have piled up, to exaggerate a little what could happen.

But I really like the mechanism that connects skull tile values to monster Body points.

[Wyldrogue]

Thank you for the welcomes and advice.

After I posted it I was debating about making it one skull tile per two heroes rounding up, so I am going to take your advice TMU. I like it.
That may take care of Knightkrawler's problem too (even though I don't have 16 chaos warriors ) . Seriously though, I will take it off the stairs too. Good call.

So here is the revised...

House rule - patrolling monsters

Zargon, The Evil Sorcerer's Turn
1. If there aren't any monsters to move or perform actions you gain one skull tile for every two heroes that are alive (rounding up).
2. You may use your skull tiles immediately (or save them) to buy 1 body point of monsters per skull tile. (you do not have to spend all of them).
3. You may place the purchased monsters at closed doors that are already placed on the board.

How Zargon Reacts to Hero movement
1. When a hero opens a door, place on the gameboard the monsters, treasure chests, and any other items that belong in that room
2. You may the use your skull tiles to buy 1 body point of monsters per skull tile. (you do not have to spend all of them).
3. You may place the purchased monsters in the remaining spaces in the room.

As an example... The group has the standard 4 heroes. They all align up at the door and then it is your turn with 2 skull tiles. You could place a Mummy at a nearby door or you could wait till they opened it and add the Mummy to the monster group inside.

Thanks again guys.

[Gold Bearer]

Sotiris came up with a good rule for this. Every ten turns the DM gets a chaos token that can be used to draw a treasure card if there's no monsters on the board. If it's something good it gets ignored. If it's a trap that then a pit trap tile is placed on the board. If it's a wandering monster then it's a wandering monster. It may not be direct enough to help though. Maybe the DM could get a token every turn that there's no monsters on the board.

Greetings Wyldrogue.

[TMU]

Thank you for the welcomes and advice.

After I posted it I was debating about making it one skull tile per two heroes rounding up, so I am going to take your advice TMU. I like it.

As an example... The group has the standard 4 heroes. They all align up at the door and then it is your turn with 4 skull tiles. You could place 2 Mummies at a nearby door or you could wait till they opened it and add the Mummies to the monster group inside.

Thanks again guys.

He gets two skull tiles

[Daedalus]

Hello, Wyldrogue. You have some good ideas here. I have a couple of suggestions.

...So here is the revised...

House rule - patrolling monsters

Zargon, The Evil Sorcerer's Turn
1. If there aren't any monsters to move or perform actions you gain one skull tile for every two heroes that are alive (rounding up).
2. You may use your skull tiles immediately (or save them) to buy 1 body point of monsters per skull tile. (you do not have to spend all of them).
3. You may place the purchased monsters at closed doors that are already placed on the board.

Rather than halving the number of Heroes and rounding up, why not cost 1 Body Point of monsters at 2 skull tiles for easier calculation?

What if all doors are opened and the Quest objective isn't completed? This is possible if a secret door was missed. An easy fix would be to allow monsters to also be placed behind secret doors.

[mitchiemasha]

I seem to always have this urge to combine tiles and cards from other games. I'm sure the fate, trap, escape, ambush and character tokens from AHQ could easily be brought into the game for this.

When there's no monsters in play, on every rotation of Heroes, the DM picks one out of a bag.
Or... An egg timer!!!
When there's no monsters in play, every 4 minutes, the DM picks one out the bag.

Every rotation would deter Hero players using lots of goes for positioning. Every 4 minutes would speed up the game overall, deterring Hero players from spending ages discussing what to do. I like the Egg timer version. When Heroes advance and get stronger, decrease the gap between pick times.

This could be an essential extra element of game play for the DM especially when the DM has nothing todo. The surprise of picking a token and choosing when to play them can add so much stratergy. It even spices up game play for the Heroes, that big "Oh No!" when finally charging into a room and getting a bunch of characters; or just about to make it out with all the treasures and Bam! Ambushed in the exit room!!!

The character tokens could be considered Zargons Hero or Similar!!! I'm going to have a longer think on the others and I will be adding this into my House Rules expansion i'm working on.

[Sjeng]

I've found the evil wizard deck is a good incentive to move along. Each turn Zargon can't do anything, he draws a card, and most of the time, some negative effect happens.