Disclaimer: To those who would read the title and be tempted, please don’t move this to the D&D room! Feel free to put it wherever the other Hero Advancement stuff has gone, though. To those who are tempted to read this post at all, ye brave lads and ladies, please see this as more of an article than a post - It’s a lot to read, I have a propensity to write like I’m speaking to an audience, and at times I sound like I know what I’m talking about!
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on Hero Advancement in conjunction with some research into D&D rules, esp. 3.5e - which are available under that Open Gaming License thing. I chose to look into D&D rules because they are widely used and thoroughly play-tested, they are freely available in the 3.5 Edition iteration (that’s what “Open Gaming License” means), and they are designed to account for a lot of varying situations. This last point is big for me, because I want a foundation that I can base a game around, not a loose framework that forces me to re-write dozens (if not hundreds) of cards each time I change some minor detail.
INTRO
Whenever I look at Hero Advancement, I think, “when a Hero gets stronger, he rolls more dice!” In a dice-based game that only makes use of 2 dice – the standard D6 “Red Die” (
) and the unstandard-but-still-standard, not-a-D6-but-still-a-D6, Combat Die ( 
), what can you expect? The fundamental problem with this, though, is that one can only roll so many dice before the game becomes, well, too dicey. And when a game becomes too much about rolling dice, you forget that the rolls actually represent orcs getting frozen in time by the Elf, having their insides cooked off by the Wizard, their bodies smashed into jelly by the Dwarf, and their heads chopped off by the Barbarian.Members have introduced and debated the idea of using different dice (D4, D8, D10, D12, and so on, and the various colored dice). Yes, I get the ideas behind them, but to me this would be just to un-HeroQuest-ey. What HeroQuest is to me is simplicity, and two simple dice go a long way to achieving that. I don’t like the idea of rolling 1 die that can give me a result of 2 Skulls instead of just rolling 2 dice because it’s still about rolling dice, only now it’s confusing because of all those colors. I also don’t like the idea of using assorted D-dice (D4s, D8s, D10s and so on), because those dice are about different percentages and larger ranges. Probability tells us, for example, that though a D12 SEEMS TO give us similar results as using 2 Red Dice (or 2D6), it definitely does not. When you roll a D12, your chances of getting a 7 are 1 in 12; when you roll 2D6, your chances are 6 in 36, or 1 in 6.
(No offense to anyone who favors the colored dice, I’m glad they work for you, but they just don’t work for me
.)Not to get too side-tracked, but my goal with expanding HeroQuest has always been, “How do I avoid making the game too complicated?” Many will argue that this is impossible, but that’s a pill I just won’t swallow. HeroQuest tries to do this by using cards and by expanding the rules with the expansion Quest Books. In other words, I can make a rulebook that is 100+ pages and covers all the spells, uses treasure tables, and has a huge appendix that covers monster stats, OR I can stick with a rule book that is 30-40 easy-to-read pages and explain the rest with simple-to-read cards. In the end, I want a game that is similar in depth to D&D while getting rid of most of the non-combat stuff that happens between adventures and simplifying the combat stuff. Yes, this may mean that the Hero players have to deal with a lot of cards, but if you ask me, having a game with a few small (10-15 cards each max) neat stacks of colorful and concisely worded cards beats having to own a dozen different rulebooks that you have to flip through endlessly during a “short” gaming session.
WHAT SHOULD ENHANCE WHEN A HERO LEVELS UP?
Ok, back on track. After reading through the rules found in the SRD for the 3.5e D&D (the documents that explain all of the D&D 3.5e rules), what I’m left with is this: When characters, and monsters for that matter, level up, three things happen – they can take a bigger beat-down (i.e. more Hit Points/BPs), they become more skillful with their weapons (i.e. they are more likely to hit but not more likely to cause more damage), and they find new ways to accomplish their goals (i.e. they learn feats). What is left out, then, is that they NEVER become more intelligent, stronger, quicker, and so on, through leveling up. These things can happen through acquiring new magic items, but by and large if your character is stupid at the start, when he reaches level 20 he’s still gonna be stupid.
HQ Translation: Leveling up should never increase a Hero’s Attack Dice or Defend Dice directly. Period.Now some may be thinking, “wait a second! I thought you just said that my Barbarian learns how to use his sword better when he levels up!”
Ok, ok, ok. So now we need to talk about what exactly goes into the Attack and Defend Dice rolls.Game systems usually divide combat up into 2 or 3 dice rolls as follows.
The To-Hit Roll. When the lowly goblin wearing his Drool-Stained Tunic of Tatters and Tears and armed with a rusty steak knife-that-counts-as-a-dagger walks up to the veteran knight in his shiny armor with his gem-encrusted Longsword of Instant Death to Goblinkind, you need to account for the fact that the goblin’s swing might actually not make it through to the knight. By the same logic, you also need to consider the fact that the goblin might trip over a rock after he makes his swing (miraculously managing to avoid damage from the fall by rolling a Black Shield on his one and only Defend Die), and in so doing that veteran knight happened to unleash his mighty swing a second too early, while the goblin was in the middle of his unintentional self-tripping attack.
The Damage Roll. This roll makes equal sense in that sometimes a sword swipe causes a little nick, and other times it removes heads from bodies. But what I’ve never liked about the damage roll is how damage is (inexplicably) NEVER reduced by the target’s armor. So when the mighty goblin manages to lose a hold of his rusty steak knife as he goes crashing to the ground thanks to that nasty Rock of Tripping, and his “dagger” goes tumbling through the air and somehow manages to find the weak spot in the knight’s armor and pricks his skin, it still does just as much damage to the knight as it did to the rat that the goblin had for dinner last night, which the goblin gutted from head to tail.
The Effect of Armor, a.k.a. the Armor Save Roll. Ok, I was a little out of line with that one… most game systems do account for the victim’s armor in some way. Warhammer (a game that I have grown to despise immensely, for all sorts of reasons
) allows for an armor save to completely block all damage, while in D&D it’s harder to score a hit on a more heavily armored foe (a target’s AC makes the to-hit number higher, and thus harder to roll).So what does HeroQuest do? We use 2 separate dice rolls, one to represent the chance of scoring a hit and causing damage, and one to represent the target’s ability to avoid the attack and any damage it may cause. The system is ingenious, in my opinion – not only does it allow for a target to respond to an attack (“Ha ha, you only got one Skull! Now I have my 5 Defend Dice to roll!”), but it takes the complicated math out of the whole equation (see the D&D SRD for the definition of the word “complicated”…). That being said, the Attack and Defend rolls account for the likelihood of connecting with the target, causing damage to said target, and avoiding or reducing damage altogether, be it by jumping out of the way or having the blow bounce off your armor.
Arguably, HeroQuest does not deal with increasing the likelihood of landing a hit. Unless you are dealing with a house rule weapon that allows for hits on Skulls and something else, an Attack Roll scores hits on Skulls, period. What’s more is that if your Hero is already rolling 5 Attack Dice, increasing the chance that he will score a hit by 30% will threaten to seriously unbalance things. By comparison, when a character levels up in D&D, at most he gains a +1 bonus to his to-hit roll, only… a roll that is made on a D20… which means that in D&D, a character’s chance of scoring a hit increases by just 5% per level, not 30%!
To control this you could just give the Hero an extra die to roll (this would mean he has about a 15% chance to score another hit, instead of a 30% increase to score a hit on ALL of the dice he rolls), but this leads to that conclusion I that I talked about at the start and that I want to avoid – rolling lots of dice. In the end, my conclusion is to drop this little bit of leveling up entirely. But don’t worry, we will balance this out in another way later on.
For monsters, however, increasing attack and defend dice is a given, and it’s not as complicated as you would think. Just give them weapons and armor! As a rule, never give monsters gear that is stronger than what the Heroes have, unless the monster is wearing/carrying an artifact that the Heroes can recover and make use of. This gives Zargons some ammo to avoid questions about why the Heroes can’t collect and sell off any weapons or armor the monsters have. You should always increase the monster’s attack and defend dice according to the exact gear they carry, too. If you are even half the miniature collector that I am, this gives you lots of opportunities to collect and paint new monsters, too. Understand that since monsters only defend on Black Shields, their equipment should be considered sub-par. You may also want to consider allowing the monster to use White Shields to defend at some point.
And Surprise! that covers the first D&D-to-HeroQuest level up conversion!
METHOD 2 – BPs and MPsThe second method that I mentioned above was to increase the hero’s BPs, and I like this one a lot. I like it because it translates well (just give an extra BP for every bunch of quests the Hero completes) and the theory is strong. See, hit points/body points aren’t just about how much damage a character can take, they are about what he can survive. When you think about this in real life terms, do our modern day warriors who spend enough time in the field become less likely to die from a bullet wound? NO! But they just might learn ways to take less damage in a fight. Someone who survives a few fights probably didn’t learn to survive them by hiding behind his bigger friends (we refer to these kinds of guys as “The Wizards”, in case you are just that new to HeroQuest). He probably learned how to survive them by learning how to survive them! And that is what increasing a figure’s BPs in HeroQuest means to me, for Hero-sized figures, anyway.
When you apply this to monsters, you get a multifaceted nature to the Body Point stat – it represents how much of a beating a monster can take, how well a monster can avoid damage that incapacitates him, and how puny the Hero’s attacks might be against a much larger foe. Even a lowly Wizard can hit a goblin hard enough to make his dagger poke out the back side of his skull, but what about trying to reach the heart of that thick-chested ogre? Maybe that dagger doesn’t quite penetrate deep enough, and to represent this we say that you need to score more than one BP of damage to slay the bigger brutes. With the Goblin who now has 3 or 4 BPs, well, this guy has probably learned how to avoid taking a dagger to the heart by now, since he’s been alive long enough to have grown to have 3 or 4 BPs. In the case of monsters whose biology means that they have a thick hide, increasing BPs means that their flesh gets tougher to slice open. And for those special monsters who have all of these qualities? Well, we call them “Dragons”.
For the purposes of HeroQuest, I would expand this mode of advancement to include Mind Points as well. The Hero type should determine at what rate the Hero gains these points (Barbarian = Body Points all the time, Mind Points = almost never). Since HeroQuest gives us a nice even score of 10 when you add the BPs and MPs of a Hero together, you get a nice ratio for awarding advancement – The Barbarian gains a BP when he advances to level 2, 3, 4 and 5, and then on level 6 he gains 1 MP. The Elf would gain a BP on level 2, then an MP, a BP, and MP, and then 2 BPs befors he gains another MP.
Monsters get a little more complicated since some of them would end up being virtual wizards if they are advanced using this method (imagine an orc with 3 BPs and 6 MPs!). Though MPs are often considered a measure of a creature’s intelligence, I will offer an alternate theory here – they are a measure of a figure’s powers of the mind. This can work in two ways – a figure with low MPs can be thought of as functionally stupid, or they can be thought of as mentally weak. Goblins, for example, may be thought of as clever, but when you try to exert some form of mental control over them, they snap like dry twigs. A highly devoted Chaos Warrior, on the other hand, could be represented as having 10 MPs. He doesn’t have to be the smartest tool in the shed, though – in fact, he may be the dullest wherein his unquestioning faith in the Great and Mighty Evil Wizard leaves him virtually immune to any attempt to mentally dominate him. With monsters, then, you want to take this into account when deciding if the creature should have extra MPs or not.
METHOD 3 – FEATS?
You may want to think of feats as being totally optional. Since there is no baseline for them in HeroQuest, you gotta start from scratch if you want to include them. Feats also take away from the simplicity of the game because you may need to pay attention to the finer details of what is going on in order to know when and if a feat applies or can be used.
That being said, feats were originally included in D&D because players were getting tired of spending months developing their characters only to have just one combat option – swing your sword (or spear, or axe, or whatever). Though feats don’t stop the rolling of the dice, they do add some color to an otherwise black-and-white engagement. Instead of just swinging your sword, now you can parry blows, string together chains of attacks to slaughter whole groups of monsters, and shoot the spiky globe off the top of the Chaos Warrior’s horned helmet before burying your next shot through his eye socket.
To avoid complicated rulebook searching, feats would be best in card form. That way, when a player wants to use a feat when he makes a particular action, he can just toss down the card and say he’s using it, and the rules will all be right there. Some of the feats do cover a lot of complicated rules that I like to avoid, but if you spend some time searching you can find a whole mess of fan-made feats that can be easily modified for a HeroQuest game.
OTHER STUFF – MAGIC AND EXTRA ATTACKS
Magic, to me, is easy to do – just let the Wizard bring a new spell with him every time he gains a level. If you are into using alternate spell groups, you can give him a new spell group, complete with 3 spells, for every 2 MPs he gains (the Wizard starts with 3 spell groups and 6 MPs so not exactly rocket science to figure this one out).
How do we balance this for non-magical heroes? Extra attacks! Allow a Hero to make an extra “Attack Dice Roll per Attack Action” for every few levels he gains, but give this extra attack a penalty (-2 Attack Dice) and allow a monster to roll his full Defend Dice against each attack if both attacks are made against the same foe.
THE ULTIMATE EQUALIZER – ARTIFACTS!
Let’s face it, a game without enough treasure is boring, but any RPGer knows that a game with too much treasure can be just as bad. In addition, if you are taking my advice and not increasing Attack and/or Defend Dice when a Hero levels up, then you need some way to boost his abilities. Be mindful of how this is done, though.
Magical arms and armor, in D&D, are just that – namely, arms and armor. A short sword that gives +2 Attack Dice should still give +2 Attack Dice no matter what. A magical short sword, however, might give +3 Attack Dice in addition to adding some sort of magical bonus ability to the attack. A lot of the magical weapons and armor in D&D are there for their special abilities, and not for their raw attack power. That being said, consider maxing out your attack or defend dice at 5 or 6 but give varying supporting effects. (Sword of Secrets – Longsword, +4 Attack Dice, whenever the Hero ends his movement within 2 squares of a secret door, Zargon must reveal the door’s existence, but not its exact location.)
So, how often should a Hero advance a level? That one’s up to Zargon, and it all depends on how long you plan on playing for, or how you want to play. If you want to run a whole 200-Quest long Campaign, then Heroes should advance slower than they would on a 50-Quest campaign. On the other hand, you could always keep the rates of advancement even, with the Hero group on the 200-Quest campaign facing much more difficult monsters. “See this goblin? He has 15 BPs, carries a Longsword and shield and wears a helmet and plate mail armor.” Granted the goblin with 15 BPs will take longer to slay if you only have 6 Attack Dice, but by now you should probably be wielding a Longsword that shoots flaming acid (each undefended hit causes 2 BPs of damage) while healing your Hero with each hit it scores, and you should be making 3 or 4 “attack dice rolls per attack action”. Oh, and your wizard now has 50+ spells to choose from, you have more Heroic Brews than the Alchemist who runs the shop, and your Healing Potions restore 3D6 BPs and 8 MPs each…
Thanks for taking, like, 3 hours out of your day to read! Comments/suggestions/input is much appreciated! This is a model that I am working on.
