The Unkillable Party

[Parzival]

Before playing with others (me as Zargon), I’ve been using the Companion App to test drive each of the official Quest expansions. And while the AI for the App is not the world’s greatest tactician, I seem to have resulted in a party that’s nigh unkillable. It just doesn’t seem to lose. I’ve got a stockpile of healing potions, almost all the Artifacts you can find, a full suite of equipment, and gold out the wazoo. I even throw some away buying one-use things like Holy Water and Daggers.

My party wades through opponents like they aren’t there. Over the course of five quest books, I’ve had maybe three Dread Spell casters manage to get off one round of magic before the Barbarian splatters their brains against the wall. Most of the time I open the door, send in the Barbarian, catch the villain at the end of whatever monologue he’s spewing, and severe his head with a battleaxe swing. If Notconan doesn’t do the trick, the Dwarf follows up. Then I spend a couple of turns mopping up the minions, and it’s “Next quest!” My Wizard’s go to spells are Genie (for the attack), Tempest, and the odd Ball of Fire.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m doing it wrong.

I do admit that I had misread the Courage spell’s ability as lasting until the recipient couldn’t see any enemies at the end of his turn. So I’d save it for a Big Fight with lots of foes, and he’d be rolling 6 dice each time he attacked until all the visible foes were soon-to-be chalk outlines. With the First Light set I learned that reading was wrong. But at the same time, I only had the spell for one time in one fight per quest, and most of the time the recipient never fought more than four foes (if that). Then it was gone.

The real thing that seems to make this team unkillable is all those healing potions. I shrug off four or so wounds, roll a die, and average about 4 back. Search the next room, et voila— typically, I’ve got my potion back.

My tactics— I search everything until I judge the Treasure Card discard pile is high, then I only search rooms where a significant foe or event occurs. I move slow— Barbarian first (with Crossbow) as point. He’ll Search for Traps (if no foes). Dwarf follows up for trap removal. Elf next, Wizard last; Wizard never searches for Treasure if at all possible. Wizard’s function, aside from spells in combat, is to search for traps or secret doors, whichever has not been accomplished. Nobody opens a door until it’s a fresh set of Hero Turns. I lose some big movement rolls that way, but in the end the “muscle is always first” approach works well.

And of course, I carry over artifacts, equipment, etc.. into subsequent quest packs.

So I’m wondering if the game expects that, or if it’s really intended for each quest book to begin with a bunch of newbs as Heroes— that you’re not supposed to carry over the party from Kellar’s Keep or Return of the Witch Lord into the Prophecy of Telor set, but start anew?

[MonsterMotor]

No, you are not doing anything wrong. You are merely discovering the limits of the game. While the app may have their own issues, the HQ board game indeed has problems with character progression and difficulty scaling. I remember we recently had a similar discussion here which you might find of value:
viewtopic.php?f=143&t=6873

[Parzival]

Thanks— joined that discussion, too.

[Kurgan]

Are Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror among those "easy" quest books? Because if you are flying through those with no problem (whether in the App or not) I do question what's going on, because those are NOT easy booklets, and very unfair (as written), unless you have the luckiest dice in the world (when using the heroes but not the other way around).

Avalon Hill intends that Courage lasts for a single attack, meaning it's like a weaker version of the Potion of Strength (if monsters move out of sight, the spell is wasted). I personally prefer how it was in EU 2nd edition (and this interpretation is still plausible up until the release of First Light which specifically precludes it).

I am curious to hear what all you're doing... like you played with the four basic heroes starting in the Game System, then played onto... what next?

Are you allowing your heroes to buy things that are sold in later expansions early or use items from those other expansions before you reach that one?

I guess in theory you could play all of the easiest quests first, and maximize your gold, etc (each room can only be searched once per hero, and "good" treasure cards are discarded). A hero who dies away from allies automatically loses everything (it's a little unclear if a monster has to move in to claim it in the original rules, but the App and First Light make it clear that if you die alone anywhere, all your stuff vanishes from the game, it can't be recovered...* however a new replacement hero in the next quest starts with basic gear). A max of three healing potions can be found per quest from searching, but you don't get to purchase them until much later. Gold is in fact limited (there is enough gold found theoretically within the GS to give each of the four classic heroes the best equipment they can use).

* except artifacts which are supposed to be a special treasure found early in the next quest (some debate this point whether it applies to all artifacts or only "needed" ones however defined. I take that to mean that you can replay the quest but if you found and lost the artifact, you simply get it again easily rather than having to find it yet again in the remixed replay of the quest you last died in. Zargon is supposed to remix any quest that is failed, but it would be possible to find an artifact that is part of the objection, then die and lose it or have it stolen and "lost."

A full set of artifacts is only ever found in the GS, though you can find "most of them" by playing several of the expansions (namely SQT, PoT, and either CoPD or ROTWL OR First Light you find almost all of them, but FL is generally harder than the GS even if it is shorter, and that also means you find overall less gold).

That's not to say you couldn't have an easy time, but mostly I hear this sort of "complaint" when people are just playing the game system, or have some house rule that makes the game easier without realizing it. The early App certainly had terrible monster A.I... it would never take shortcuts to reach the heroes, or move out of disadvantages places (like pits), or just simple things like moving the weak monster out of the way so the strong monster could get an attack in and back the next turn, etc.

"monsters attack weak" is much better, but it also has the unintended disadvantage that if a monster is out of range of its movement it won't even try to get closer, while a human Zargon would at least get them into a better position for attacking on future turns or at least herd the heroes into a place where they could be in more trouble.

Then again, the phenomenon of a single "boss" character, a guy with a handful of spells, getting killed in a single round, often before he's had a chance to harm anyone with a spell, is actually pretty common. But what I don't see is the entire quest book being "easy" up to that point and the fight going like that as well. Instead, usually the campaign will be hard, with heroes dying many times along the way (even if you don't count a "death" as having to save yourself from dying with a potion or spell last second) and then all of a sudden the supposed "final battle" is an anticlimax.

The "solution" to the "anticlimax boss" thing is pretty easy to fix. Don't go by what the app says, give them a buff like "boss dice" (defend like a hero, and say two out of their three skull faces on the dice are double skulls).

Actually the App lets you make the game much harder, by giving all monsters an extra BP, attack die, defend dice, double wandering monsters (doesn't care if you run out of a specific monster...), etc.

Again I'm not saying you're cheating or misreading the rules, nor am I saying that TPK needs to be frequent (that can frustrate a lot of players when that becomes the norm and they're actually trying to win), but I am curious to learn more.

[Parzival]

I’m playing quests in order of inclusion with the Mythic Tier, and then as released. So that’s GS, KK, RotWL, and ToP. I haven’t yet tackled SQT, CoPD, TFH, TMotM, RotDM, AtOH, or JoD. I did do FL with a new classic quartet for review purposes.

I have strictly used the original quartet— B,D,E,W in that playing order. However, I have used a house rule to allow Hero movement in any order (which the App allows), as being more realistic. Honestly, that hasn’t mattered all that much, as I typical move in a B,D,E,W pattern anyway, the idea being that B spots (or accidentally triggers traps), D disarms, E looks for secret doors and W is a fill-in as needed for those tasks. When I come through a door, the progress is almost always B, D, E, W. E and W (who have diagonal attack weapons, move in last to these “safe” positions, or on either side of a doorway to attack via the diagonal.

Early on I failed to shuffle the Treasure deck before every draw. But I realized I was mistaken in that fairly quickly. I do take the expedient of not shuffling after draws of actual treasure, as the hazards and WMs remain undisturbed anyway, so why reshuffle? Adds nothing, subtracts nothing.

The current party status:

Barbarian: Chainmail, Shield, Helmet, Spirit Blade, Crossbow, Scroll: Heal Body, Potion of Healing.

Dwarf: Borin’s Armor, Helmet, Crossbow, Battle Axe, Longsword, Shortsword (apparently he’s a hoarder), Rabbit Boots, Fire Ring, Scroll: Pass through Rock, Anti-Poison Quill, Potion of Restoration

Elf: Helmet, Shield (could have sworn I got her Chain Mail; if I did I failed to note it), Longsword, Broadsword (Why? I don’t recall), Talisman of Lore, Armbands of Healing, Scoll: Fire of Wrath.
Uses Water Spells (as recommended by rule book).

Wizard: Bracers, Wizard’s Staff, Wand of Magic, Spell Ring.
Uses Earth, Air and Fire Spells (Ba-dee-ya, Dancing in September….)

I misplaced their original character sheets upon completing PoT, so I don’t know their current gold status. (Been looking everywhere for those dang sheets…).

I have operated on a rule that I don’t go to the Armory in quests that have immediate successor quests that are supposedly on an elaborate underground cavern system, as Kellar’s Keep largely is. Just never made sense to me— what, the dungeon has a fully stocked vending machine, run by enterprising goblins?

I’ll continue on with The Olde Skool Heroes as they are. The App AI has improved a little… maybe the luck will run out.

[Kurgan]

I thought the rule book recommended Earth spells (for the beginner Elf)?

That might be your issue there.. many things are "allowed" by the App, but not actually allowed within the quest books that it is based upon. You may not have known that of course. The App is on the honor system first off, and second it lets you (mostly) use all the perks from every expansions anywhere you are... except in a few select places (it doesn't let you use mercenaries or animal companions all of the places you COULD use them according to what the books/PDFs say... and some of the First Light perks only work inside First Light, Alchemy only works in ROTDM despite Doug suggesting it could be used anywhere Zargon wishes).

Yeah the rules say to shuffle the treasure deck before every search. Different people have different notions of what "shuffling" means of course and the rules never specify beyond that you're supposed to do it before each treasure search that calls for a draw.

While KK, ROTWL are not exactly easy, I can't speak for PoT (or SQT). But the rest of the quests you'll find in the app (other than the solos) are quite challenging (unless you are using heroes who have saved up a lot of potions or gold to buy potions that is).

Allowing free hero order every round is in advantage for the heroes, as you can maximize your movement. By default this was never allowed except where it was introduced in JoD (a particularly challenging quest pack).

I would say the App has been a cake walk until the last couple of versions (when "attack weak" was added). It's still not as great as having a human Zargon, who will adapt (and adjust) to players who are bored and having too easy of a time. If you have rounds where none of the monsters move, or only one of them attacks you, that's a sign it's still imperfect.

[Kurgan]

The current party status:

Barbarian: 5 defense, 3 attack (4 vs. undead) adjacent, 3 attack at range. 4 (action)+ 1d6 (free) BP healing.

Dwarf: 5 defense, 2-4 attack adjacent (3 attack at range). Immunity to 2 fire spells. 1 BP + 1 MP (free) healing.

Elf: 4 (or 5 with Chainmail) defense, 3 attack adjacent (+ diagonal). 5 total MP. +2 BP self healing per quest. +4 BP healing per quest (self or others with action). (6 BP total healing)

Wizard: 3 defense, 2 attack (plus diagonal), two spells per turn, 1 spell duplicated per quest. +4 BP healing (self or other with action) per quest.

Right?

Guessing you gave the Barbarian's starting broadsword to the Elf, and sold off the Elf's shortsword to acquire 75 gold towards another purchase. I forget exactly but finding equipment is actually very rare in official HeroQuest (mostly occurs in solo quests), so let's say you probably spent at least 3,300 coins, which is certainly a plausible haul from a thoroughly searched GS (variable also depending upon how many bounties you took in the Bastian of Chaos/Dread... the one quest where you can clean up on Wandering Monsters at 30 coins a pop!) to say nothing of KK, ROTWL, and PoT. You might have in the ballpark of another 8,500 gold between the four heroes lying around., depending upon how much you did search there and how many potions you purchased along the way to cut that total down. KK & ROTWL use the exact same Alchemist shop though PoT has a bit different one. Only one legacy potion is discounted in the alternate one provided with ROTDM.

And while the quest you've been playing aren't easy per se, they are not as hard as the ones you have left to play via the App (other than the one-offs which are pretty easy). And interpreting Doug's comments it makes sense that they'd add these one offs as a way to help a brand new group that wanted to start a particular pack first (skipping the GS) "gear up" that much faster. Of course that also means you don't really "need" to play Knightfall before ROTDM, but still (secret tip: ROTDM's last quest is much harder if you haven't played the GS or SQT + PoT or First Light prior, I won't say more for fear of spoilers).

I have operated on a rule that I don’t go to the Armory in quests that have immediate successor quests that are supposedly on an elaborate underground cavern system, as Kellar’s Keep largely is. Just never made sense to me— what, the dungeon has a fully stocked vending machine, run by enterprising goblins?

Actually as a house rule that does make things a bit more challenging. You can't spend your gold for 9 quests in a row there for KK, which means no more potions of restoration (+1 Healing) except what you find by searching. Did you use this rule for any other quests? Historically some fans used this for ATOH but I'm not sure where else. The only pack that officially limits such shopping is ROTDM, and not every single quest (plus some give you an option to visit a merchant/shop within the quest itself). Had you not shopped between quests for awhile, you still had an opportunity to stock up every 10 quests.

But yes I would say any party that has survived 48 quests is going to be absolutely loaded (or else had all of the potions they could ever need) unless Zargon imposed some handicaps along the way.


Thanks for sharing, this helps me understand a bit more where you are coming from with these. It makes sense that you would carry the stuff you acquired from one pack to the next. Of course back in the day PoT didn't exist, so the group was going to max out after 34 quests in order to "survive" the punishing next 20 quests of the infamous 1992 packs (two more were planned, another 20 quests we never got to see, though 6 of them would have been solos of course).

While no official direction is given on paper, and the "official story order" differs somewhat from other considerations, to me thematically it makes sense that SQT, PoT and CoPD are taking place a long time after the GS/KK/ROTWL run (and CoPD perhaps completely independently of anything, as if it were a brand new party), meaning I would probably let the heroes keep their equipment gear and artifacts but reset their gold and potions. But I think other than the GS/KK/ROTWL to MOTM/FH pipelline (or core set/KK/ROTWL to ATOH/WOM pipeline in the EU lineup) I think they were designing expansions to be played with a fresh party, or just one that had played the GS.

The '92 quests I guess getting off topic here, but if you take out the solo quests, you'd have ended up with 28 quests [only 14 with what they released] that are very tough, but the solos really work better as a way to "prove" an existing hero to buff him (rather than gear up a brand new Elf, Barbarian, etc. that inexplicably joined the party with nothing but basic gear and no sharing allowed?). They wanted kids to buy all four packs to have the "ultimate" version of each hero who had special potions and artifacts only he could use, and those would be strong enough to face the challenges (but also didn't start those solo challenges "naked" so to speak).

And yet, as time went on it became more and more absurd to imagine that most players owned or had played everything else before and saved their sheets, hence AH's new strategy. But without scalable difficulty (a few tidbits thrown at you with the App settings, or the death save ideas thrown into Jungles of Delthrak) it becomes very easy for those who have ground through many adventures.

TL;DR? If you want a challenge closest to the intended one, start each quest booklet off with a fresh set of heroes with only basic gear and no spare gold/potions.

[Parzival]

I thought the rule book recommended Earth spells (for the beginner Elf)?

Right you are! My mistake. It may have been that for one of the quests I decided to swap Earth for Water for the Elf, and stuck with that. I will say the “Water” spells feel more “elfy” to me than the Earth spells.

But even so, it’s still just the same number of spells, so any change should have minimal effect.

That might be your issue there.. many things are "allowed" by the App, but not actually allowed within the quest books that it is based upon. You may not have known that of course. The App is on the honor system first off, and second it lets you (mostly) use all the perks from every expansions anywhere you are... except in a few select places (it doesn't let you use mercenaries or animal companions all of the places you COULD use them according to what the books/PDFs say... and some of the First Light perks only work inside First Light, Alchemy only works in ROTDM despite Doug suggesting it could be used anywhere Zargpm wishes).

I realized you could “cheat” the App if you wanted to right off the bat, by simply claiming roll results you didn’t actually roll, or even doubling up on actions. I did very quickly adopt the “Heroes move 8 if no monsters” approach, or if all the rooms had been cleared, I would simply take each hero as many squares as it took to return to the staircase/exit door. If there’s no opposition, there’s really no point in not just declaring the exit accomplished (the App did do that for at least one quest). (In the app, I suspect one could just claim to have and use a Ring of Return for a quick exit in some quests.)

Yeah the rules say to shuffle the treasure deck before every search. Different people have different notions of what "shuffling" means of course and the rules never specify beyond that you're supposed to do it before each treasure search that calls for a draw.

Quirk of my own, as I know that cards require far more shuffling to achieve apparent randomness than most people think (for a deck of 52 cards, shuffling 11-15 times is the recommended amount to break an existing pattern in the deck). Granted, the Treasure deck is only 24 cards, but that’s still probably 7-9 shuffle throughs to break a pattern. Most people probably max at 3, regardless of deck size, or do that ridiculous “slap cut” pattern that doesn’t randomize anything.

So to speed things up, I only shuffle if a WM or hazard card was drawn on the previous search.

While KK, ROTWL are not exactly easy, I can't speak for PoT (or SQT). But the rest of the quests you'll find in the app (other than the solos) are quite challenging (unless you are using heroes who have saved up a lot of potions or gold to buy potions that is).

PoT is a mixed bag. Honestly, I found some of the quests a little railroady and even boring. Others were quite brutal and challenging, or even clever. The plot, however, was a tad confusing. I confess, I’m not fond of adventures where a player’s agency is taken away from him and his character just becomes a pawn controlled but he GM. Playing solo, that was fine. Playing with a group, I know many people would complain— and I wouldn’t blame them.

Allowing free hero order every round is in advantage for the heroes, as you can maximize your movement. By default this was never allowed except where it was introduced in JoD (a particularly challenging quest pack).

I think I actually read of it as a common house rule practice. Honestly, it seemed more reasonable. To me the table order for initiative thing feels like somebody couldn’t shake off the typical boardgame progression from Monopoly, etc. and allow for tactical considerations, or didn’t think kids would grasp such a thing. Which indicates they didn’t actually play with kids much.

I would say the App has been a cake walk until the last couple of versions (when "attack weak" was added). It's still not as great as having a human Zargon, who will adapt (and adjust) to players who are bored and having too easy of a time. If you have rounds where none of the monsters move, or only one of them attacks you, that's a sign it's still imperfect.

I will say I was pleasantly surprised when the app’s Zargon had monsters move past the Barbarian and Dwarf to go after the Elf and Wizard. “‘Bout time,” was my initial reaction! Now, I definitely plan for that in my maneuvers.

As a side note, I’m very conservative with spells. My Wizard uses very few on a quest, and will have many left over. One thing I’ve noticed is that the app’s monster dice seem to get spell break results at a higher rate than seems likely. But I haven’t kept a record.
Early on, the app didn’t handle certain spells well at all— Pass Through Rock and Veil of Mist were rendered useless, as they would wear off during Zargon’s turn. So the Wizard (acting last) would cast PTR on the Barbarian, Zargon would take his turn, and then the app would erase the spell status from the Barbarian. Very annoying. Same thing for VoM. This has sense been fixed.

Sometimes special events in quests didn’t function well in the app— a shapechanging monster didn’t change; it just declared it did and then disappeared. I think this has been fixed, as First Light deals a lot with this sort of thing, and it works fine in the app. (What didn’t work well were some sequences where the players controlled monsters as combat henchmen— very buggy and unclear how to do it, or if the heroes got to move as well. I’m still not certain I did it right.)

Well, as I said, I shall soldier on!

[Kurgan]

Yeah the App (last I checked) gave you the victory the instant Sir Ragnar hits the stairs, when in reality this (and most quests) don't actually end until the last hero either dies or exits. You're supposed to be able to continue searching and wandering about. In theory you could die from traps/wandering monsters/hazards even after completing the other objectives.

As kids we always played the quest till the end (even if it took us another session to do so), but adults are more of the "c'mon, let's just say we won" sort I've found. For one it's the victory lap (or the "100% completion" temptation) while the other is fatigue/boredom winning out. Avalon Hill's "no roll to move when no monsters out" was a trick to speed up playtesting, and it really doesn't hurt anything here.

Yes, there are later quests that you "win" after killing the boss. But after the GS, exiting through the doorway is supposed to be the way to end the quest. Either way, the stairway or door are supposed to be there in quests even where "leaving" isn't the objective, because you are allowed to exit the quest early, let's say to avoid an otherwise Total Party Kill. I don't think we ever actually played it so that the Entrance Door was also an early exit, but the app allows that too, but that's fine. There are a handful of small little things in there that to me facilitate different styles of play or different interpretations of the rules (many variants over the years), but a few things don't quite make sense but are there because that's the limitation of the app (for instance we never put out a tile when you detect a trap in the NA rules, but the App does it because they figure you won't remember if it just showed a digital hand briefly point to a square with some audio which would literally fulfill the way the rules are written).

"Monsters attack weak" sounds good, but it literally is based on lowest body points, nothing more (no distinction is made between a character that is wounded vs. one that naturally has a low BP max, hence mercenaries tend to be targeted first). The bug in the last few versions (haven't tested it lately) is with this on monsters who don't have range to the "weakest" enemy simply won't move at all. But I don't think they'd prefer closer targets either, they'd move away to get to the lowest BP even if it was less advantageous. I also think I recall seeing a monster take his attack and stand there, rather than move out of the way so the next monster in line could attack (UNLESS it was an "advanced goblin" or other monster with a built-in "move-attack-move" perk). I guess you could force the App's hand by moving heroes who are in the area to be attacked by the monster you think, or something?

Early on we always had the "shuffle 7 times" rule (we weren't coordinated enough to do the "riffle shuffle" but for the sake of the durability of the card deck I'm glad we didn't try, if we even knew what that was!). "Cut the deck" afterwards was more of a tongue-in-cheek thing we did after the 7 shuffles that was done when we played with guests outside the family. But yes, as kids we didn't read the rules carefully enough to realize that the shuffle is supposed to be before every search. So in actual practice we did the thorough shuffle only at the start of each new quest. I think at one point we started shuffling it when a "bad" card was drawn as well, but still not as often as the designers intended. Oops! Now with my streamed version I shuffle before each play session, unless the audience requests another shuffle (anytime) then I do it again.

The Wizard saving all his spells until the end of the quest has been pretty common too but there are a few Wizards that played more aggressively, which is always fun to see. Placing the spell castors early in the turn order we've found is actually more advantageous (as long as the Wizard isn't also always searching for treasure before anyone has done anything).

Yeah the controlling of monsters by the heroes was pretty buggy (last I checked some monsters you're only supposed to be able to control for one turn are controlled by you "forever"). I should do a thorough test (got some time before the official re-release of CoPD which will probably be the next time we see the App updated officially right?).

[Parzival]

I did an update last week, but I don’t recall when it was posted— I had taken a break from the app for awhile, and did the First Light quests on my phone rather than my iPad. (The iPad is a better app experience.)
My purpose with the app is to experience the quests before I run them as Zargon, and it works fine for that. I wish it were more challenging and less buggy for solo play purposes— though the “bugs” are really more problems in dealing with unique or outside-the-norm quest events as morphing monsters or weird traps/secret door triggers, where obviously new code has to added to the existing programs and subroutines. I commend them for putting quests up quickly, but a bit of debugging/playtesting would go a long way with that stuff.

Next up: Spirit Queen’s Torment. I think I’ll restore some of my party gold be reviewing what they would have found in ToP— I recall it being a bit lighter on gold treasure than some, but that could just have been my impression.