Lair of the Orc Warlord

[Daedalus]

. . . Another idea is to give each Hero their starting attack dice (B 3, D 2, E 2, W 1), but 2 skulls must be rolled to score 1 BP of damage. The Wizard would then take at least 2 turns to take out a 1 BP monster.. . .

The house-rule for unarmed attacks above needs amending:

A Hero uses his starting attack dice when attacking without a weapon, but you must reroll skull results.

It's similar to the original suggestion but drops special BP tracking to keep it fast.

[lestodante]

I let them roll the same amount of dice as described on their character's card but they must roll BLACK SHIELDS instead of skulls to attack.
But the rule to re-roll the successfull dice is also good.

[Daedalus]

Yeah, treating the player charachters/Heroes like monsters with intrinsic attack values feels like the right call. While your faster roll-once method sets the Barbarian's odds equal to the Legacy of the Orc Warlord rule, my reroll approach sets the Dwarf's and Elf's chances as the median equivalent. I'm okay with the Barbarian being a bit better with his natural attack over a puny dagger--look at the muscularity!

[banjo_oz]

I really like the "stun" concept.

For something more simple out of the box, though, I personally go with rules as specified (one ATK die for unarmed combat) but *all* monsters gain an extra DEF die in combat against an unarmed hero.

My reasoning is that it's realistically just as easy (or hard) to hit someone with your fist as it is a dagger, but it's easier to defend against harm from an unarmed opponent than against a weapon.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Two interesting and fundamental aspects of HQ are raised by the special circumstances in this Quest so a great topic.

Unarmed Combat

Whilst this situation only crops up rarely so the handling may be considered less important by some, the handling of unarmed combat is important as it acts as a baseline for the weapon/combat system, in a way much like the "invention" (or discovery?) of zero does for number systems, unfortunately most of the solutions I have seen are complicated (for me HQ is about simplicity) or are simple but are flawed particularly when you compare them to combat with a weapon (and I have never subscribed to the trope that 'martial arts' practitioners are more effective unarmed than armed, ask one, it is completely and obviously false).

I have tweaked a couple of aspects of the system for my own HeroQuest House Rules (HeroQuest Gold link in signature) but in essence I have decided that the best approach to handing unarmed combat is as follows:

A Hero stripped of his weapons will improvise a weapon using anything to hand; table legs, broken bottles, lengths of chain, metal bars, brass candlesticks, discarded torches, suitably sized rocks or the bones of the fallen. These improvised weapons are treated exactly like a Dagger

This means that, as being unarmed and being armed with a Dagger, are the equivalent in effect, I have split the existing "Dagger" into two weapons, the "Dagger" close combat only and zero cost, and the "Throwing Knife" that can be used in close combat and thrown at a cost of 50GC (note: weapon, equipment & armour costs have been amended in general, click for more details Heroquest Gold - the Armoury Scroll

This also resolves the issue of how the Wizard, who has spent his time learning spells rather than the martial arts (which is the usual reason given for him not being able to use anything other than the most basic weapons) and yet he has taken the time out to learn how to throw knives!

It does mean that the combat-specialist Barbarian when unarmed is the same as any other Heroes except that I have given him a special ability of "Battle Rage" as standard (and downgraded his starting weapon to a short sword) and this would apply whether he is armed or not:

Battle Rage: As you attack a foe you fall into a berserk rage, sacrificing your own safety to press home frenzied attacks. Whilst in this state your attack strength increases by 1 extra die, but your defensive strength reduces by 1 die. This state ends when, at the start of your turn, there are no monsters visible to you.

Incidentally the modified weapon and armour prices shown on the document linked to above, the extra weapons and all Heroes (except the Wizard) having a starting weapon of a shortsword all combine to improve/extend the advancement system

Spells requiring a Physical Aspect

There is no mention elsewhere in HeroQuest of spells having a physical aspect, you don't have to purchase or carry spell components, and even the majority of carrying capacity house rules ignore spells for the purposes of calculating carrying capacity. HeroQuest's Spell System, like that of D&D is Vancean in origin, based on the principles of magic used in Jack Vance's Dying Earth Series, in which a wizard is limited in the number of spells that can be simultaneously remembered and forgets them once they are cast is based on memorising spells so I agree with the OP for the reasons that he has given, that our casters should NOT lose their spells at the start of this Quest.

Incidentally the HeroQuest Gold Wizard has 5 BP and 5 MP (well technically Mind Dice rather than Mind Points but that is another story)

[Kurgan]

I used to hate the idea that the Wizard and Elf's spells could be taken away, but now I'm over it. In fact, it works quite well for my "De-Magicified" mod (where they are alchemists using devices most of the time anyway). You could try to imagine that instead of them being magical books that recharge, that are written in a language only these characters are trained in (perhaps the magic words change each time they regenerate) but you could keep the "innate ability" thing by saying perhaps there is a temporary spell cast upon these characters preventing them from using their magic until they enter that room to destroy the source of the magical block (destroy an object that dampens their ability? perhaps a rare and secret method) to remove it and enable their spells to work again.

[Shark]

For unarmed, I like the idea of improvised weapons, which use 1 CD. Again this keeps it simple.
They cannot be thrown or used diagonally, were as a dagger can be thrown, and I allow diagonal.

For me making the barbarian better in unarmed because of strength does not translate to when they use weapons. A short sword is still 2CD no matter who uses it.

[Kurgan]

You could issue them german dice...

Barbarian: purple
Dwarf: black
Elf: white
Wizard: Green

[Zenithfleet]

I see this has already been discussed upthread (many moons ago), but ...

Spells requiring a Physical Aspect

There is no mention elsewhere in HeroQuest of spells having a physical aspect, you don't have to purchase or carry spell components, and even the majority of carrying capacity house rules ignore spells for the purposes of calculating carrying capacity. HeroQuest's Spell System, like that of D&D is Vancean in origin, based on the principles of magic used in Jack Vance's Dying Earth Series, in which a wizard is limited in the number of spells that can be simultaneously remembered and forgets them once they are cast is based on memorising spells so I agree with the OP for the reasons that he has given, that our casters should NOT lose their spells at the start of this Quest.

I interpret this in another way: as evidence that spells in Heroquest do have a physical component, such as a book of spells carried by the Wizard and Elf. Call it the 'Elemental spellbook'. While the spells clearly work on Vancian principles, you have to memorise the spells from somewhere. I'm pretty sure that in classic (Basic) D&D the magic-user toted around a spell book or other source to reread and re-memorise his or her spells after each hard day's dungeoneering. A D&D dungeon might take days or weeks to explore, so he or she would need to bring the book or whatever along for the journey.

In the case of this quest in HQ we can assume that since the heroes have probably been in the cell for a while, and each spellbook (or parchment or Elven amulet inscribed with poetic magical rhymes or whatever) has been nicked by the Orcs, the Elf and Wizard are unable to re-memorise the spells they presumably used up while fighting against their captors during the capture.

This opens up some simple ways to add new spells into the game: all the Wizard and Elf need to do is find or buy a new spellbook somewhere, in order to gain access to a whole range of new spell decks.

On a related note, there are items carried by the heroes (in the EU game) that are ignored for all game purposes and exist purely as background, like the crystals that glow red and let Mentor contact you in Kellar's Keep. These were edited out of the NA edition, probably to avoid awkward questions about whether to list them on your inventory, whether they could be lost during the game and what happens then, and so on.


Also, re this comment on the 'Advancement - how to do it?' thread http://forum.yeoldeinn.com/viewtopic.ph ... 1&start=10

2. The room in which the Heroes find and recover their lost equipment should be on the critical path but isn’t. The problem with it not being on the critical path is that Heroes can successfully complete this Quest and achieve the objective and move onto the next Quest with or without recovering their equipment (if they fail it doesn’t matter as they have to replay the Quest), which means the difficulty of the next Quest and subsequent Quests becomes impossible to balance. The next Quest would either have to be easy enough that the Heroes could complete it without their equipment, in which case it would be too easy and dull for equipped heroes or vice versa, making it extremely hard for Heroes without their equipment. That would lead to them failing and retrying the next Quest or Quests repeatedly, possibly losing Heroes as a result, causing a serious dent in their progression from that point forwards, all based on whether they went left or right at a particular junctions.

Well, as you know BW, you and I have different opinions about the importance of a 'critical path' in (EU) Heroquest ...

In this case, there are two factors that mean it's fine (in my opinion) that the room isn't on the critical path:

1) Mentor's parchment text says "you must find your equipment and escape". Strictly speaking, finding your equipment is the goal of the Quest and it's not completed unless you do it. If the heroes just leave then it would count as a fail. It's like those NA quests in Kellar's Keep that specifically say the heroes MUST find the piece of the stone map before leaving.

Of course, this can be ignored--and I would probably ignore it because it's more fun to let the players decide whether to just flee or not.


2) Many of the base game EU quests are designed to be reasonably survivable even by starting heroes. This is probably so players can pick one to play instead of needing to play through all of them in a sequence, and also so that any hero who dies and is replaced during a campaign isn't totally useless and defenceless.

If you're rebalancing the base game so that it properly scales up in difficulty as you play through the campaign, this will obviously become a problem ... but I don't think it was too big an issue in the original design, precisely because the base game didn't scale up in difficulty as fast as the heroes levelled up.

In this case, the next Quest is 'The Stone Hunter'. The only tough challenges are getting past the stone Chaos Warriors and the Gargoyle later on. The Warriors will be fought one at a time (two at a time for the first pair) and the Gargoyle is by itself too. Otherwise it's a handful of undead. There is an abundance of riches in this one to start re-buying gear with - 200 gold in a chest, 100 gold coins each upon returning, and Borin's Armour! Again, speaking of the published base game here.

The next two are 'The Fire Mage' and 'Race Against Time', which are both quite playable with starting heroes in the EU game. At least from memory 'The Fire Mage' is, and I recently ran through 'Race Against Time' with four starting heroes to test my simple timer mechanic. 'The Fire Mage' is fairly linear so the heroes will probably be staying as a group for much of it even if they're feeling competitive, which helps to compensate for any lack of equipment. 'Race Against Time' has a couple of tough rooms, but they're on the optional side-branch for the gold, not the, uh, critical path.
'
It's not until 'Castle of Mystery' that you hit a difficulty spike (because this one splits the heroes up with the teleporters to different rooms of monsters) and then 'Bastion of Chaos', which is just chockers with creatures.

Besides which, my own design preferences lead me to say the equipment room should not be on the critical path. If it is, then the players aren't really doing any genuine exploring, but are simply following the (disguised) railroad laid out for them. The fact that they can leave without finding their equipment makes it feel more like real exploration. They actually have to stop and say, "Hang on - this is the exit but we haven't found our gear yet. Should we keep looking or just run for it?"


The one issue that does present itself is: if the Elf and Wizard's spells are somehow locked in Grak's cupboard (e.g. as spellbooks), but the heroes leave without getting them back, are the Elf and Wizard doomed to play without their spells for the rest of a campaign?

In practice I think players would just get those heroes killed as fast as possible in order to replace them with fresh ones. Foreseeing this, it would be easy enough to rule that the Elf and Wizard get their spells back for the next quest (having found replacement spellbooks or whatever in town).

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Firstly, on unarmed combat and how it works, I’ve made comments previously on this thread that I won’t restate, but people’s preferences are heavily influenced by whether they are used to the EA edition(s) where your starting attack properties are innate or the NA edition where they are equipment-based, but for me a Barbarian for example who is less effective in combat when armed with a shortsword than he is when unarmed is just another example of the “Unarmed Martial Artist Myth”, so common in RPGs…(rant below is copy & pasted from a long, long time ago in a topic far far away)

[rant]
The Unarmed Martial Artist Myth
I understand that a Dagger, due to its small size and ease of concealment can, in situations where everyone (else) is unarmed but you have a concealed dagger, be advantageous.
However, for HeroQuest these situations don’t really occur, it is a rare occasion when the pretty, 5ft tall, slightly built, long blonde-haired princess drops her cloak to reveal she is actually a 7ft tall, heavily armoured, battle axe touting Dread Warrior…
Ask yourself this, if you had to fight Chuck Norris (he appears to be the internet’s preferred choice of martial artist) would you rather he was
a) Unarmed
b) Armed with a foot long dagger
c) Armed with a 3-foot-long sword
Anyone that would list these in any other order than (a), (b), (c) doesn’t really get the concept of fighting.
In many cultures even in situations where you may be expected to go voluntarily unarmed you were usually not required to yield your Dagger as it was considered a weapon in name only
So can we please abandon the notion of Heroes (and Monsters) – e.g., Dwarf Brawler, Monk, Priest, Wrestler, “Ninja”, Assassin who fight more effectively when unarmed or armed with only a Dagger(s) than they do when armed with a proper weapon. There might be strictures in place for religious reasons (for example against the use of bladed weapons as they shed blood, so these are dodged with blunt weapons) or for practical reasons (speed of movement and agility leading to an aversion to heavy weapons and armour) but any Hero (Type) that chooses to go into a dungeon filled with heavily armed and in some cases heavily armoured denizens with only his bare hands or a puny Dagger can and should expect to die rapidly*
*Even true of the Wizard if he wasn’t protected by a bunch of other Heroes
Yes, an assassin-type on a secret mission to sneak into a hideout disguised as a tailor may for valid reasons choose to carry a concealed dagger and garotte only, but that same Hero would not venture into a Dungeon (or Battle) alongside other heavily armed warriors without a weapons upgrade!
[/rant]