Thanks for the feedback, it's definitely appreciated! I have a lot of respect for the amount of time and effort you've put into your own variation along with many information and interesting posts across this forum and BGG. Part of the reason I made this available so early was to encourage myself to reflect on things and try and be more objective when continuing to improve and expand these house rule.
You are correct in saying that heroes can't close doors when running (the exact quote is 'A model that runs cannot open or close any doors.'). I only left the statement in my document as clarification as I specifically state that if the Heroes roll a 12 or enemies roll a 1, the can both run and close the door as a major advantage. It's redundant as it's already referenced in the main rules however I will probably continue to have a small number of clarifications of exiting rules refernced in my house rules if I feel it might make it clearer for newer players.
As for the random placement of monsters and heroes, I think the decision to have randomised position based on dice rolls solved many of the issues I had struggled with in my own mind. Any time I have to make a decision on behalf of the GM (Playing solo of course), I find it very difficult to decide and end up agonising over minor things that are completely removed from my control when they are totally decided at random.
The dynamic for random enemy placement I feel is more signifigant as it's less likely that the heroes can actually take on each enemy straight away as often the death zones of the enemies prevent this from occuring. On the flip side, if the heroes are surprised, they are likely to be surrounded but more often then not are not huddled in a group. For instance last night in a lair, my wizard and elf who are the weakest physically were both isolated and the dwarf and barbarian were huddled together. Being able to adjust 1 square allows for some minor tactical tweaking before being attacked but ultimately each and every encounter is very different.
Personally I havent found there to be an issue with the extra few dice rolls as I use 2 x D10 dice with different colours. I always assign the same axes (Left to right, bottom to top). When an axis is only 5 long, i simply cycle the numbers of a d10 (6=1, 7=2, 8=3, 9=4, 10=5) and If im using any custom maps they are generally all 12x12 which is easy with 2 x D12. Your comment in regards to dragging out with many enemies again hasn't bothered me as of yet and generally most lairs and wandering monster encounters average between 3 and 5 enemies when using the standard tables offered in the EAH and official rulebook. This has never taken me more than a minute to setup a room which personally isn't much when most encounters take much longer than this to complete. I can tell that this is something however that bothers you and I can understand that additional dice rolling isnt for everyone but so far I've yet to feel this way and it has increased my enjoyment of encounters signifigantly. I can however appreciate that you have spent many years playtesting your own rules and I personally think your doorway exploit fix is very clever and think its what I would fall back to using if I decided against randomly placing figures during combat.
As for whats 'wrong' with the original magic system, I dont think that its broken, bad or needing to be fixed, I just personally found it to be too cost prohibitive when first start playing and needing to have the exact component is quite punishing as often your not sure you want to use an exact spell until the opportunity arises. My initial response to wizards when reading the original rules was that I wouldn't bother using one and would just stock up on potions instead. On the other hand, the 'tremors in the warp' system created for EAH I think is really cool but overall i found myself spamming spells in easy encounters with weak enemies and having to really ration during difficult and long encounters. These reasons coupled with the fact you can basically heal your entire party after every encounter seemed a bit too unbalanced. The alternative I created simply makes spellcasting slightly cheaper and far more flexible as it combines all components into a simple mana stat. Having the stat increase after learning a new spell seemed like a logical upgrade and the ability to recharge all mana between quests means that at a minimum, even a new wizard would have 4 spells to use every quest. Overall I think its a nice middle ground without changing the actual gameplay from the original. You can still spam spells in 1 encounter if you feel its worth it and the prospect of recharging your spells after the final quest room definitley incentivises spellcasting in the final battle. By changing just the cost of a mana potion however, it can drastically change the way the system works. I felt that 50GPs for 4 spells was fairly reasonable as its not an insignifigant amount of gold however this is the part of the system I had the most trouble deciding on and would defintiely appreciate any feedback on this particular point.
The set of experimental rules are definitley not rules I have put much playtesting in to and to be honest are mainly there as a short list of ideas as they pop up. The idea of only rolling for reinforcements when numbers are equal or less was more if a player is finding the base difficulty of the game too hard. By opening up combat signifigantly by using the combat rules I have outlined, its more likely that players will be surrounded that if one was playing the vanilla rules.
"If the GM rolls successfully for reinforcements, these additional monsters will enter from the doorway to the room and engage in combat abiding by death zones and the One-on-One rule. Place monsters at the beginning of the passageway leading to the room if 1 or more heroes are situated there." . I'm guessing this is what you wanted to be clearer? I probaly could have written it more like "If the GM rolls successfully for reinforcements have these enemies begin their turn at the doorway and enter the room while still adhering to their speed stat and not ignoring death zones or the one on one rule if possible. Alternatively, if there are heroes still in the passageway leading to the room, or blocking the door, place monsters at the beginning of this passageway/s and begin their turn from here". To me this just makes sense themeatically as to when the reinforcements are encountered, either in the passageway or at the entrance to the room. I hope this is a bit clearer?
The heavily obscured rule I'm not sold on as it both improves the viability of ranged attacks while altering the tactics. After experimenting with much larger maps that are between 12x12 and larger, the standard rules for line of sight I think are more interesting, however in close quarters with many enemies in 1 small room, ranged fighters become awkward to use and the heavily obscured rules assists with this.
Lastly, overland maps in AHQ. I 100% agree that it changes the game completely. I think if the idea on paper doesn't appeal to you then you probably wouldn't enjoy playtesting but i'll share my thoughts:
-If using well designed battle maps such as those I'm using (Loke Books), you have so many unique maps to choose from that its no effort to open a random page and begin an encounter.
-the gameplay is very different in a large, wildnerness type map and becomes more like a skermish game. It actually reminds me of playing something like final fantasy tactics.
-Ultimately my end goal is to have the overworld mainly as a way to break up dungeon crawling while still feeling like its own thing. Having a single, stand alone encounter is actually quite enjoyable and I think that having matrices with more archers and enemies with high speed could make for some very dynamic combat.
This is a great review of one of the sets I have
https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/18/18885.phtml . The baked in scenery works really well as line of sight obstacles and allowing enemies and heroes to move behind walls etc to mix up tactics. So far its been a really enjoyable experience playing around with different types of scenery. Even using elevation to gain an advantage as an aracher is fun too.
This portion of the project is definitely not for everyone, however I think that if you enjoy the combat system of AHQ and want to try something a bit different, its definitely worth checking out. Ill continue to add to it and I think that custom matrices using more appropraite enemies will help to improve it further.
Again, thanks for your feedback and I hope I've provided you with some of the answers you were looking for!
Cheers
But it's important that it doesn't slow down the game too much.
