Attack without Defence

[Bareheaded Warrior]

As we all know under normal rules you get attacked and you roll defend dice, simple, but there are many examples in the game where certain types of attacks allow no defence, and damage is either fixed "lose 1 Body point" or is the usual variable "roll three combat dice in attack, defender loses one Body point for each skull rolled". Scenarios that include this variant include traps and “special attacks” such as spells and similar abilities.

The stone beneath your foot begins to give way and all too late you realize it is a trap. You fall into a shallow pit. Roll two combat dice, lose a Body point for each skull rolled.

Any character who moves through a falling block trap square will trigger the trap. The block will fall into the square marked with the arrow, blocking the way. Any character or monster in that square must roll three combat dice. The victim must lose one Body point for each skull rolled, and then move to an adjacent unoccupied square. If the victim cannot move to an adjacent square, he is killed by the falling block.

This spell conjures up a Genie who will do one of the following: open any door on the board (the room’s contents should be put out) OR attack anyone on the board. He will attack only once with five combat dice. This spell is then discarded.

The Sorcerer may hurl his spell at one target in sight. That figure automatically loses one Body point. Discard after use.

This thread is to explore this mechanism (or variant), its advantages and disadvantages, the underlying logic and how to apply it consistently!

What does the defend dice mechanism represent “in-game”?

Potential to reduce damage taken by an attack i.e., number of skulls rolled.

It is partially made-up by armour (including shield) and partially by other undefined factors (your base 2 defend dice) which may include your ability to dodge, parry, deflect or otherwise move your body to minimise the effectiveness of the attack.

It could also be considered that at least part of the defend dice due to armour is based on your ability to move and prepare, brace, change position, raise your shield and similar

In what scenarios could your defence be compromised?

1. Restricted ability to manoeuvre – example pit reduces your defend dice by one
2. Surprise! If you don’t see an attack coming, until the last possible second, then you effectively have restricted ability to manoeuvre, due to time rather than space
3. Complete inability to move at all – sleep, paralysis – no defence possible?
4. Different attack method, obvious non-physical, but also unconventional, magic, fire, chill, death mist, genie

Note: The extent to which your defence is compromised may vary, where this is simpler, like the pit example above then a rule to modify your defend dice can be easily applied, but where it is complex, we want a simple, internally consistent abstraction rather than complications like look up tables and calculations
Another factor to consider is that whilst ignoring defence is one aspect of this topic and similar and perhaps complimentary aspect to take into account is that rolling combat dice in attack contains intrinsic variability in the possible outcomes, but fixed damage doesn’t.

For example:

A trap that causes you to lose a fixed amount of body points, say 2, AND has no defend roll allowed will ALWAYS cause 2BP loss, there is no variability and absolutely no consideration of armour, personally I find that less desirable and would suggest that for all rolls where no defend is permitted the “attack” or damage would be better if variable than fixed. (maybe an exception here for Magic Throwing dagger as only 1AD)

Capped Damage

One significant advantage from the point of view of the Quest Creator of having some scenarios that ignore defend dice, is that it increases the chances of Body points being lost but caps that Body point loss, 2 Combat dice will only ever cause the loss of 2 BP

Auto-scaling

Another significant advantage is that as heroes gain more equipment, especially armour, then the lower impact traps and spells barely cause a dent, if you increase the combat dice (or body points) then novices will get creamed. Ignoring armour provides an auto-scaling, 2 combat dice in attack that don’t allow a defend roll penalises a novice Dwarf as much as one with Plate, Helmet, Shield

Maybe it would be better if all traps, damage causing spells and similar special attacks - fire and chill - did variable damage, with no defend roll?

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I do this from time to time, I question whether a particular game mechanism, is really the best way of handling something, I propose one or more alternatives, analyse them, try them, mull it over and then come to the conclusion that the original mechanism was in fact the best option (sorry: spoiler alert!), but I was just looking at it wrong all along.

It could be said that this circle of thought is a waste of time (although it seems I can’t help it) but in fact I think there is a benefit and whilst the end result is the same, the aspect that has changed is my understanding, so that at the end of the process I can view a mechanism with confidence and a renewed and deeper understanding where previously I viewed it with suspicion!

So, by posting this perhaps I can share that confidence with others and allow you to shortcut the time wasted going through the same loop (although of course you may never have been labouring under the same misassumption as me in the first place).

The mechanism of suspicion presently under the microscope is the “attack without defence” mechanism used in various forms throughout HeroQuest, that I always viewed as a variant of the standard combat mechanism, attack – defend, but without the defence aspect, i.e. attacker actively rolls # combat dice, defender passively does nothing, each skull reduces the defenders Body points by one.

Examples (some of these vary from the description above but are broadly similar in effect in the sense that they are all non-standard attacks/combat)

Ball of Flame
This spell may be cast at any one monster or player. It will inflict two points of Body damage. The victim may roll two dice. For each shield he rolls he may reduce the damage by one. The spell is then discarded

Fire of Wrath
This spell may be cast on any one monster or player, anywhere on the board. It will seek out your enemy and inflict one Body point of damage, unless your opponent can roll a shield on one combat die. The spell is then discarded.

Fireburst Traps
When a player enters an empty room, place a Fireburst token in the centre of the room. This will remain in place until the beginning of the Evil Wizard player’s turn, when it will explode attacking any figures in the room with 3 attack dice. It may only be disarmed with a Tempest spell.

Trap! (1)
The stone beneath your foot begins to give way and all too late you realize it is a trap. You fall into a pit and lose one Body point. You may climb out and move as normal on your next turn. The pit then closes. Return this card to the treasure pile.

Spear Trap
#From Game System: Evil Wizard Player’s Screen
Any character who is caught in a spear trap will lose one Body point if they roll a Skull on a combat die. The spear trap will only affect the first character to enter the square.

Pit Trap
#From Game System: Trap! Treasure Card (First Edition)
The stone beneath your foot begins to give way and all too late you realize it is a trap. You fall into a shallow pit. Roll two combat dice, lose a Body point for each skull rolled. The pit stays on the board as an obstacle.

#From Game System: Rules of Play
Any character who stumbles into a pit trap will automatically lose one Body point.

#From Game System: Trap! Treasure Card (Second Edition)
You fall into a pit and lose one Body point.

Falling Block
#From Game System: Rules of Play & Evil Wizard Player’s Screen
Any character in the square into which the block falls must roll three combat dice. The victim must lose one Body point for each skull rolled, and then move to an adjacent unoccupied square.

Treasure Chest Traps
#From Game System: Rules of Play
Any hero who opens a trapped treasure chest without searching for traps first will lose one Body point.

Dart Trap
#From Game System: Trap! Treasure Card (First Edition version)
You feel the gentle pressure of a trip wire against your leg, you spin around … but it is too late. Roll a combat die, on a roll of a skull you lose one Body Point from the dart that shoots from the wall.
#From Return of the Witch Lord: The Silent Passages
Any character opening the chest will lose one Body point as a dart shoots from the wall.

Unnamed Trap
#From Game System: Quest for the Spirit Blade
Any character who moves onto one of these squares must roll a die. If they roll a 5 or 6, they will lose one Body point from falling masonry. If the character is wearing a helmet, and has the helmet card, then they will only lose a Body point on the roll of a 6. Do not place the falling block tiles onto the gameboard.

Rolling Boulder Trap
#From Kellar’s Keep: The Spiral Passage
Roll five combat dice for any character hit by the boulder. For each skull rolled they must lose one Body point.

Swinging Blade Trap
#From Against the Ogre Horde
The trap is tripped when a character lands on a space marked with a black blade symbol: a huge blade swings down from the roof attacking any character in any one of the three spaces marked with a white or black blade symbol. These characters will be attacked with two combat dice which they may defend against normally.

Pits of Darkness
#From Against the Ogre Horde
Once they fall, a character will suffer damage depending on how much armour they are wearing. Characters not wearing any armour must roll one combat die to see if they lose a Body point; those wearing Chainmail or Borin’s Armour must roll two combat dice; and those wearing plate mail must roll three combat dice.

Magical Throwing Knife
Weapon, Artefact, Magic Attack, Throwing
Always inflicts 1 Body Point of damage when thrown at a monster a Hero can "see". Monster cannot defend. Dagger is lost once it is thrown and the card is then discarded.

Compare with standard combat

Standard crossbow shot – roll 3 combat dice represents degree of hit from all shields (miss), 1 or 2 skulls partial hit (hit but not optimal, winging, flash wound, arm or leg), all the way through to a direct hit 3 skulls – then having covered the “degree of hit aspect”, target gets to take into account their own armour and ability to dodge, but rolling defend dice to further reduce.

So standard combat consists of two distinct but combined aspects, the variable attack, representing a spectrum of possible outcomes from a complete miss, all the way through various degrees of hit, to a full maximum hit (all skulls). Then the defend roll which takes into account ability to dodge duck, block, parry and of course armour to deflect and/or absorb all of which combine into a single defend roll that has the potential of reducing the 2 hits scored potentially to nothing.

All good, but then when you turn to examples like magic missiles, whether spells like ball of flame or magic throwing dagger/knife attacks, you hit a difference, these are guided by magic and always hit, so really these should take the form of x hits (lose x Body points) unless you can roll something to reduce that. But what governs what you should roll.

In the case of a magical throwing dagger/knife you could argue you roll your defend dice as usual but that would make it a feeble attack, so perhaps as it automatically hits, so option here for no attack roll just assume a straight automatic hit, but then victim gets to defend. As this is defending against a magic missile, presumably they are harder to dodge, armour is less effective so fixed defence 1DD

But in the case of a Ball of Flame, bursting into flames, isn’t something that armour is particularly designed to defend against, gran full body covering of armour might help against fire, but equally a full covering of clothing might equally help, but that doesn’t correlate to your standard defend dice, so in this example we can’t use standard number of defend dice.

Trap inconsistency.

As you can see from the examples above, summarised below, there is considerable inconsistency around how trap damage works across editions, packs and even within the same edition and pack.

Automatically lose # Body points

• Pits – we have pits resulting from treasure cards and in the rulebook with an automatic 1BP loss (in second edition)
• Darts causing a 1BP automatic loss from second edition ROTWL
• Arrows - we have arrows and bolt traps resulting from treasure cards with an automatic 1Bp loss

Roll # combat dice, lose a Body point for each skull

• Pits that use roll two combat die, lose BP on each from First Edition
• Darts – roll one combat die, lose BP on each from first edition treasure cards
• Spear – roll one combat die, lose BP on each
• Falling Block – roll three combat die, lose BP on each from the rulebook
• Rolling Boulder Trap – roll five combat die, lose BP on each
• Pits of Darkness – roll one/two/three combat die, lose BP on each

Use normal combat mechanism

• Swinging Blade Trap – attack with 2 combat dice, defend normally (area effect)

And now for something completely different

• Unnamed Trap – GS – roll red die, lose a BP on 5 or 6, unless you are wearing a helmet, then lose a BP on a 6 only

I’ve never liked the inconsistency here so was considering replacing all these with a single consistent mechanism, the “attack without defence” mechanism above, when I started to question that mechanism itself.

Bringing it all together

So my next thought was use a “this attack causes x automatic hits, defender rolls x defence dice, each relevant shield reduces the BP loss by one”

And I liked this (and it seems to fit with the otherwise odd mechanism in HQ used for Ball of Flame and Fire of Wrath)

But when I crunched the numbers this is too potent and overpowered once you get above 2 (maybe 3) automatic “hits”, but if you counter this by restricting all examples that use this to only have strength 1 or 2, maybe at a push 3, then there isn’t enough of a range to support the mechanisms that need to use it.
Much the same as if you restricted all monsters to use only 1 or 2 combat dice in attack then there isn’t enough variety within that range to support the variety of monsters in the game.

So if my number of attack dice is too limited I need to do something with the defend dice to weaken the power of the attack. This is when I noticed that the NA edition designers may have been having parallel thoughts with this…playing around with things like roll one or two red dice in defend, need a 6 (or a 5,6) to block BP loss

Effectively for monster victim this doubled their chances of a defend (5 or 6), or for Heroes halved it (6) which if you adopt this approach universally allows you a little more room with attack strength (3s are probably ok)

I took this a step further and though what if we increase that save to a 4,5,6, that would open up the range of attacks to the full 1-4(5) of standard combat
So I had talked myself into a new “standard” mechanism for non-standard combat…

attack strength # (1-5), this tells you how many BP are lost, but the defender rolls same number of red dice, and the BP lost is reduced for each one scoring 4+

It works! But then I realised that translates into

Victim rolls # combat die, losing a Body point for each rolled

Which is exactly what many of the existing traps already use. The only change is that I previously saw these as “attacker rolls # combat dice, passive defender loses a BP for each skull”, when in fact I should have read that as “Victim rolls # combat die, losing a Body point for each rolled” passive (automatic) attacker, active defender (better description is automatic/passive attack – active defence)

So having gone through this long loop and arrived almost where I started I have got my long sought mechanism (one that was available to me in the first place) and I just need to apply it across the board for consistency.

List of Non Standard Attacks
All of these will now be converted for consistency to use the following wording and mechanism

Victim rolls # combat die, losing a Body point for each rolled

• Wand of Fire: #=2 (different from a standard short bow 2AD- as that can be reduced by defenders defend dice, this can’t)
• Ball of Flame: #=2 (with area effect - 9 squares*)
• Fireburst Trap: # = 2 (with area effect - 9 squares*)
• Skulls of Doom: #=2 (with area effect - 9 squares*)

• Fire of Wrath: #=3 (distinct from others as no LOS required)

• Lightning Bolt: #=3 (distinct from others as area of effect - 6 squares*)
• Death Bolt: #=3 (same as Lightning Bolt area of effect - 6 squares*)

• Arrows of the Night: #=3 Arrows of the Night
• Genie: #=4
• Spirit of Vengeance: #=4 (Orc Shaman equivalent of Genie but no door opening)

• Magical Throwing Dagger / Knife: #=1 (distinct from standard throwing knife / dagger as those are potentially reduced by targets defend dice AND this is magical)

• Dart Trap: # = 1 (why because a standard Dagger/Throwing Knife rolls 1AD)
• Spear trap: # = 2 (why because a standard Spear rolls 2AD)
• Pit: # = 2 (but this is distinct from spear trap as it involves a permanent feature)
• Swinging Axe: # = 2 (distinct from other # = 2 due to an area effect and a standard “hand axe” rolls 2AD)
• Unnamed Rock Trap: # = 2
• Falling Block: #=3
• Rolling Boulder: #=3 (this is effectively an area or moving attack version of falling block)

*WoM introduces the concept of template use for area of effect into Second Edition, for the Lightning Bolt spell and Earth Quake spell, both of which use a 1x6 square template, so 6 squares in terms of area of effect.

Add both of these and other WoM templates to component list
WFB Flame Templates
To expand on this I would suggest adopting a circular template 2” diameter template (1” in radius, 2” in diameter) like the one available free below, which when placed centrally on a single square partially covers that square and the surrounding 8 squares a total of 9 squares.

This gives us another dimension to include in spells and spell-like items and I would recommend converting the following to use that template that I’ll refer to as a “Flame Template”

“Flame Template” use (round 3 square diameter – 9 squares covered – stopped by walls)
• Ball of Flame: #=2 (Flame Template)
• Fireburst Trap: #=2 (Flame Template)
• Skulls of Doom: #=3 (Flame Template)

“Lightning Bolt Template” use (1x6 squares – 6 squares covered – blocked by walls)
• Lightning Bolt: obviously that is what it is designed for
• Death Bolt: same template and effects as Lightning Bolt

The added benefit of using this is it allows us to get rid of the awkward…affecting all in room, method which is stretched as rooms vary from as small as 6 squares in area to 30 squares in area and these spells typically add “cannot be used in passageways” which is something of a cop-out