Ye Olde Inn

The official rules of the Finnish edition of the game do not clarify the policy on heroes dying in quests. What is your practice, or is there an official rule in other editions, which states, if the hero can be brought back to the game? When I played as Morcar as a kid, I allowed my players to buy new hero with a certain sum of gold coins.

In the North American edition, a potion may be taken at any time, thus, a dying Hero may drink one to save themselves should they have one. A new artifact called the Elixir of Life may be used to revive a fallen Hero. If a Hero does happen to die and there is no Elixir of Life, then their equipment may be taken by a Hero in the same room as the dying Hero. If there is no other Hero present, their equipment is lost. At the beginning of the next quest, a new Hero may be made to take the fallen Hero's place. If their equipment was retrieved, the Hero who found the equipment may give it to the new Hero (should they wish to do so). Otherwise, the new Hero starts with beginning stats and equipment.

A variant I was looking at regarding the retrieval of equipment, etc for a dead hero, was this. They have four catagories of items. 1/Normal armour and weapons 2/Special Items 3/Money 4/Potions. Whether it is the hero who is brought back to life, who is searching, or one of his comrades, they must roll one combat die. A skull regains 3 catagories, white shield 2 catagories and black shield 1. That way they may have to forfeit something as punishment for getting killed in the first place.

The rulebook also says that a hero can cast a healing spell on himself when reduced to 0 Body Points as well, even if they would not normaly be able to cast a spell at that time, Like during Zargon's turn. But we decided that doing that was a little far fetched, and limited it to the healing potions. If your players are smart / lucky they will end up with a small stockpile of healing potions to keep themselves alive.

We played that a dead hero was dead. A replacement had to be brought in after each death. Poor replacements never got any Artifacts either.

-SadKitchen

UK rules, and my own modified rules are that as soon as they reach 0 body points they are dead (and the only way they can come back to life at that point is by a ressurection spell).

The player may then create a new character to begin the next quest if his compatriots completed the quest he died in.

Or, if they all died they can retry the same quest with all the equipment, gold etc they had when they started it the first time (like having a save point at the start of each quest).

drathe wrote:In the North American edition, a potion may be taken at any time, thus, a dying Hero may drink one to save themselves should they have one. A new artifact called the Elixir of Life may be used to revive a fallen Hero. If a Hero does happen to die and there is no Elixir of Life, then their equipment may be taken by a Hero in the same room as the dying Hero. If there is no other Hero present, their equipment is lost. At the beginning of the next quest, a new Hero may be made to take the fallen Hero's place. If their equipment was retrieved, the Hero who found the equipment may give it to the new Hero (should they wish to do so). Otherwise, the new Hero starts with beginning stats and equipment.

I agree with what is paraphrased from the North American rules above. It certainly is reasonable to assume that equipment (armor, weapons, and any artifact) can be given to a new Hero. That being said, if you want to include a penalty for death, then rule that armor, weapons, and general artifacts not specifically used by one Hero can't be given to a new Hero. Technically, only gold coins (p.16 How A Hero Searches For Treasure), potions (p.17 Potions), and certain artifacts that may only be used by a specific Hero (p.17 Artifacts) are allowed to be given to another Hero (as only they were discussed). A new Hero would then only start with his beginning weapon, unless gold coins were donated to purchase weapons and armor from the Armory (p. 23 What Happens Between Quests?).

You could also make a piece of armor or shield or even a weapon totally destroyed by the killing blow as well.

Or you just state the armor doesn't fit the new hero.
But again, original rules do not include any penalities.

I think the best and more comfortable way should be the loss of all gold coins as a penalty for the Hero. However, the equipment is necessary for him as the quests could be very difficult for a "nude" hero.
I also like the idea of picking the equipment from another hero and the give it to the new character.
As a last and fair idea you can choose either to continue as above or start the quest from the beginning (as a saved checkpoint) but Morcar should change the place and the amount of monsters or objectives (p.ex. the Blade of Spirit in another room) in a way that it does not make the quest harder.
I also agree that unfortunately the rules book doesn't clarify any kind of penalty.

PS : My first post.Glad to be among you guys..!

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So far, my party has never recovered any gear or gold from fallen heroes. It was just lost. We got over it.