Some Redesign Notes on Combat, Damage, Healing, and Wounds

[RECIVS]

In the end, as with any board game, AHQ is a mesh of what we understand as spirit and matter connected by a creator being with a certain intention, and my approach is about revealing the aspects of that “reality” through the powers of the mind, beyond mere observation and apprehension. Does this sound familiar?

That sounds pretty much like a mystery, Pythagorean-like cult, I know.

[Evil Frog Wizard]

In the end, as with any board game, AHQ is a mesh of what we understand as spirit and matter connected by a creator being with a certain intention, and my approach is about revealing the aspects of that “reality” through the powers of the mind, beyond mere observation and apprehension. Does this sound familiar?

That sounds pretty much like a mystery, Pythagorean-like cult, I know.

For this, if looking for stuff outside of AHQ to better understand some of the intent. I highly recommend looking into OD&D (Referred to as LLB, or LLB D&D, which stands for Little Brown Books). As well as the game Chainmail. There is very, very clearly the DNA of both of these games into AHQ. I'm not sure how helpful it would be. But I definitely think if you could break past the archaic nature of these old systems, you would definitely find it interesting. It's actually the reason I find AHQ so fascinating despite never playing it.



The combat system of AHQ has so much similarities to the 'man to man' combat system in chainmail (Seen above). In this combat system of chainmail (Chainmail has 3 separate combat systems) you roll 2d6 and attempt to roll the target number or higher to score a 'hit' with each hit doing one damage. As you level up, you gain multiple attacks equal to how many 'men' you represent.

And I see so much of this in AHQ's strength and toughness system.

And this is just one example. The entire procedure of play is almost 1 to 1 how original dungeons and dragons was played. I don't think people realize just how 'board gamey' original dungeons and dragons was. It was basically a board game + 'couldn't I do that?'.

Anyway, random food for thought.

[Evil Frog Wizard]

Level	Title	Fighting Capability	Fantasy Table Tier
1	Veteran	Man + 1	Normal Man
2	Warrior	2 Men	Normal Man
3	Swordsman	3 Men	Normal Man
4	Hero	Hero (4 Men)	Hero
5	Swashbuckler	Hero + 1 (5 Men)	Hero + 1
6	Myrmidon	Hero + 1 (6 Men)	Hero + 1
7	Champion	Superhero - 1 (7 Men)	Superhero - 1
8	Superhero	Superhero (8 Men)	Superhero
9	Lord	Superhero + 1 (9 Men)	Superhero + 1
10	Lord (10th)	Superhero + 1 (10 Men)	Superhero + 1

This is the chart for the 'fighting man' or fighter for chainmail+ d&d. You can start to see the similarities. Very clearly its been 'retooled'. But the DNA is there.

But the base is there, there also seems to be a concerted effort yo keep character beneath the 'super hero' tier (if you think of 2 wounds per man, the highest health you can have is equal to 6 men). Note that it's commonly observed that the 'game feel' changes weather you are a 'normal man', 'hero' or 'super hero'.

Edit: I misunderstood this. I was think 12 wound max. If I understand the system correctly, the max wounds you can have is 7.. so 3 1/2 men, which is actually below the rank of 'hero', so it's more acurate to say there is a concerted effort to keep player characters within the realm of 'normal men'.

[RECIVS]

For this, if looking for stuff outside of AHQ to better understand some of the intent. I highly recommend looking into OD&D (Referred to as LLB, or LLB D&D, which stands for Little Brown Books). As well as the game Chainmail. There is very, very clearly the DNA of both of these games into AHQ. I'm not sure how helpful it would be. But I definitely think if you could break past the archaic nature of these old systems, you would definitely find it interesting. It's actually the reason I find AHQ so fascinating despite never playing it.

The combat system of AHQ has so much similarities to the 'man to man' combat system in chainmail (Seen above). In this combat system of chainmail (Chainmail has 3 separate combat systems) you roll 2d6 and attempt to roll the target number or higher to score a 'hit' with each hit doing one damage. As you level up, you gain multiple attacks equal to how many 'men' you represent.

And I see so much of this in AHQ's strength and toughness system.

I'm curious how those systems dealt with bottlenecks. It's always been a problem and never supposed to be the norm in this genre, as far as I understand.

I don't think people realize just how 'board gamey' original dungeons and dragons was. It was basically a board game + 'couldn't I do that?'.

I know! In fact, that's important context for our purposes here, and it's why I tried to explain it in a post above. As mentioned, AHQ belongs to that tradition, with all that implies.

Anyway, random food for thought.

Thank you! I appreciate it.

But the base is there, there also seems to be a concerted effort yo keep character beneath the 'super hero' tier (if you think of 2 wounds per man, the highest health you can have is equal to 6 men). Note that it's commonly observed that the 'game feel' changes weather you are a 'normal man', 'hero' or 'super hero'.

Edit: I misunderstood this. I was think 12 wound max. If I understand the system correctly, the max wounds you can have is 7.. so 3 1/2 men, which is actually below the rank of 'hero', so it's more acurate to say there is a concerted effort to keep player characters within the realm of 'normal men'.

And it takes luck, time, and effort to have 7 wounds to begin with. Even with that, in-combat healing remains almost impossible in room encounters if doorways are not exploited. See what I wrote above:

I understand that the supposed sense of realism intended for AHQ is more about the adventurers being “as fragile as in real life” in relation to the weapons and armor used in the game, but we have shown how such an approach restricts the gameplay options to the point of making combat repetitive and creating more problems than it solves, unfortunately.

[Evil Frog Wizard]

For this, if looking for stuff outside of AHQ to better understand some of the intent. I highly recommend looking into OD&D (Referred to as LLB, or LLB D&D, which stands for Little Brown Books). As well as the game Chainmail. There is very, very clearly the DNA of both of these games into AHQ. I'm not sure how helpful it would be. But I definitely think if you could break past the archaic nature of these old systems, you would definitely find it interesting. It's actually the reason I find AHQ so fascinating despite never playing it.

The combat system of AHQ has so much similarities to the 'man to man' combat system in chainmail (Seen above). In this combat system of chainmail (Chainmail has 3 separate combat systems) you roll 2d6 and attempt to roll the target number or higher to score a 'hit' with each hit doing one damage. As you level up, you gain multiple attacks equal to how many 'men' you represent.

And I see so much of this in AHQ's strength and toughness system.

I'm curious how those systems dealt with bottlenecks. It's always been a problem and never supposed to be the norm in this genre, as far as I understand.

The short answer, as best as I understand it, is they weren't a problem because of the added 'couldn't I do that?' inherent to the game. I could break it down point by point. But there would be a lot and it's kinda off subject. To sum it up, 'couldn't I do that?' also has the corresponding effect of 'couldn't they do that?'. Couldn't they shoot you with arrows? Couldn't they call for reinforcements? Couldn't they just slam the door and brace it so you can't get to them or their treasure? Doors were also considered heavy, by the way. They weighed about 100lbs and would slam shut if not held open.


As for something more practical. I came up with something that might suit your needs, but because of my lack of actual experience I can't attest to weather it's a good idea or not. Assuming the tactics table is being used, consider the following:

Hand to Hand Weapons Only	Hand to Hand + Ranged Weapons
1 Reinforcements 2-6 Move and Attack 7-12 Attack and Move	1 Reinforcements 2-5 Ranged Attack 6-9 Move and Attack 10-12 Attack and Move

Added Rule: If Most Heroes are not in the same room as monsters, roll the d12 twice and take lower result.

This turns it the choice of 'camping the door' into a risk vs reward choice versus completely removing the tactic all together (again, you could just use double doors). Sure, you can camp the door, buuuuuutttt now you have increased chance of them shooting arrows, getting reinforcements, Or shuffling out so you can't just accumulate hits on one unit.

Maybe something like this will help some.

[RECIVS]

The short answer, as best as I understand it, is they weren't a problem because of the added 'couldn't I do that?' inherent to the game. I could break it down point by point. But there would be a lot and it's kinda off subject. To sum it up, 'couldn't I do that?' also has the corresponding effect of 'couldn't they do that?'. Couldn't they shoot you with arrows? Couldn't they call for reinforcements? Couldn't they just slam the door and brace it so you can't get to them or their treasure? Doors were also considered heavy, by the way. They weighed about 100lbs and would slam shut if not held open.

And the same holds true in AHQ—and also in more modern combat-oriented dungeon crawlers for that matter; you add options to fix combat bottlenecks, not to structure your games around them. I mean, players back then didn't start their sessions saying, "boy, we hope we get more combat bottlenecks this time!" did they? It was more like, "how do we prevent combat bottlenecks from happening too often this time?"

Modern players don't seem too fond of combat bottlenecks in dungeon crawlers either; I posted some links above where people treat it as an obvious, game-breaking problem. It's an obvious problem to me too, not an ideal feature that comes to mind when one thinks of a game of this type. For example, if you were to design a tactical dungeon crawler (like AHQ) for commercial purposes, would you make doorway fighting the rule or the exception? The answer is obvious by mere definition alone, isn't it?

By the way, AHQ is a dumbed-down version of D&D, and people nowadays don't seem to realize that when they say AHQ is "complicated." It's somewhat more advanced than HQ for sure, as it's supposed to be, but what serious dungeon crawler isn't, after all? Anyway, AHQ was pretty much a kids game to old-school dungeon delvers when it came out.

As for something more practical. I came up with something that might suit your needs, but because of my lack of actual experience I can't attest to weather it's a good idea or not. Assuming the tactics table is being used, consider the following:

Hand to Hand Weapons Only	Hand to Hand + Ranged Weapons
1 Reinforcements 2-6 Move and Attack 7-12 Attack and Move	1 Reinforcements 2-5 Ranged Attack 6-9 Move and Attack 10-12 Attack and Move

Added Rule: If Most Heroes are not in the same room as monsters, roll the d12 twice and take lower result.

This turns it the choice of 'camping the door' into a risk vs reward choice versus completely removing the tactic all together (again, you could just use double doors). Sure, you can camp the door, buuuuuutttt now you have increased chance of them shooting arrows, getting reinforcements, Or shuffling out so you can't just accumulate hits on one unit.

Maybe something like this will help some.

Thank you. I have my own system that I've been using for more than a decade with good results; I believe I posted a link above. As I said, this is more about provoking a paradigm shift than making people play AHQ in a certain way. It’s more about visualizing the whole context as objectively as possible to determine whether “realism” and (misplaced) nostalgia do AHQ any favor or justice, considering its essence, the tradition it belongs to, the intent behind it, and its potential as a sandbox game, for the reasons already posted; that's what this is mainly about.

As I've said in other threads, it's not about what we like or prefer in a dungeon crawler; it's not about whether we are okay with the vanilla version of AHQ either. That has nothing to do with the subject of this thread, actually, for the simple reason that merely stating our preferences here will take us nowhere! Preferences can be blind or uninformed, and they can change on a whim; that's not the reality I'm trying to reveal here. This is about AHQ, not about us! It's about analyzing a general approach to fixing it in accordance with its true nature, not specific game mechanics. As with everything, assessing the nature of AHQ is the first logical step toward fixing it.

As I also mentioned above, please let me know if I'm falling victim to confirmation bias myself.

[RECIVS]

In the end, AHQ isn't D&D; it's something between that and HQ, wargamey and solo-friendly, in a board game format, which was quite a novelty back in 1989 and gives it its unique essence and feel. As with many board games, unfortunately, it had to be rushed to market for some reason and ended up falling short, as discussed in other threads. It was ahead of its time, though, with lots of potential.

In more concrete terms, I guess the evolution I'm proposing for AHQ largely follows the organic development D&D has had over the years, from AD&D 1st Edition's character fragility to V5e's character survivability—something in between, with the tactical focus of the latter but keeping it simple and deadly, without “realism” wasting the game system's potential in any way either.

I was reading online that, back in the AD&D days, it was fairly common to boost character survival rates to balance realism and playability, so I believe these modifications fit within AHQ's scope, tradition, and intended sandbox capabilities.

Anyway, here's my solution in a nutshell, for context and as an example in connection with the subject of this thread:

*Give each adventurer 3-4 additional starting wounds, which cannot be trained any further. Note that adventurers can still die from a single blow, considering how critical hits and brutal damage work in the game (though it’s now less likely with average monsters—unless you increase their numbers), but they're now more vulnerable and exposed to damage in general, as detailed below.

*Allow movement through friendly models, and also diagonal movement only in combat turns and at double cost.

*Doors can be single or double, decided randomly upon finding one.

*Damage rolls of 10+ always wound unless the target's unmodified T score is 12, or if its modified one is 14+. In these cases, the attacker needs to roll 11+ to deal damage. It all comes down to balancing survival rates, right?

*Fix combat bottlenecks. What I do: if the Heroes are surprised, they're moved into the room a number of squares equal to the difference in scores and can move one additional square; the monsters are then placed as in WHQ and act first. If the monsters are surprised, they are placed two squares away from the doorway, and the Heroes can decide whether to enter. I see that's practically what the artwork depicts. Ultimately, it's all about obtaining the most variety of possibilities with the least complications.

*Implement flanking modifiers. What I do: a model is considered flanked if it has two or more enemy death zones focused on itself at the same time in hand-to-hand combat. Flanked models suffer a penalty of -1 WS when attacked by a third enemy, and -2 when attacked by a fourth or more. A flanked model attacked from behind suffers an additional -1 WS penalty. Note that, once a model is flanked, all its attackers apply the modifier(s) in the following turn(s) if the conditions are met. This helps compensate for high WS scores and keeps the game engaging for even the most developed characters, while making encounters more interesting.

*Monsters can push adventurers off doorways, which makes the exploit no longer viable. In fact, it may be a good idea to enter rooms when the monsters are surprised, depending on the situation.

*Death zones restrict enemy actions only when focused. This allows for magic and mundane in-combat healing in tight spaces in a balanced way, as it now requires more planning and luck. This also makes the death zone (and flanking) mechanics shine in room encounters while making positioning and initiative more relevant.

*Moving out of a focused death zone requires passing a Speed test. Escaping encounters becomes harder as a result.

*Add herbs or whatever to heal a couple of wounds in combat at a lower price than potions and spells, observing the restrictions mentioned above, of course.

*Healing potions act in the same activation in which they're taken. This alone can serve as a "valve" to adjust the game's difficulty easily.

*Adventurers are allowed to take healing potions when in a focused death zone by passing a Speed test. Healing potions remain expensive items, though not as much as FPs, which become less necessary for survival overall but still very helpful. Adventurers then become even more vulnerable, with their fate depending on a test roll. Keep in mind that healing spells still require passing an Intelligence test.

*Use my bestiary and its monster matrices, which are self-scalable, save time, and allow for more varied and unpredictable results. You can adjust it to your liking in any case.

*As for character development, which is too bland in vanilla AHQ, the idea is that combat becomes even more varied as the adventurers complete quests and gain new abilities, feats, and skills in exchange for FPs and GCs, which at the same time deals the other game-breaking issue of Heroes accumulating too many FPs. This may require adjusting the treasure tables to allow for extra GCs, though.

That’s pretty much it; note how all these tweaks are intended to work together, complementing and balancing each other out.

By making doorway fighting the exception in AHQ as detailed above, the game may become even more lethal, the sense of dread heavier, and the adventurers even more vulnerable, but room encounters (and combat in general) play out differently every time while offering more tactical depth and variety—keeping the complexity level appropriately low throughout.

[RECIVS]

By the way, I realized I had never summarized my whole approach like that in a single post, ever. What I propose is not really that complex or complicated after all, is it?

As mentioned in this and other threads, it's not about turning AHQ into a “different game” but rather about taking advantage of its already existing mechanics and possibilities to do its spirit more justice than in the vanilla version.

In my opinion, nostalgia can be such a hell of a drug that it can make us stick to whatever mechanics were included in AHQ simply because of that, regardless of their results or what the game is actually about. I’ve been there myself—that’s the paradigm I’m trying to shift here rationally, beyond our emotions and biases. Please bear with me.

[RECIVS]

The attached image depicts a game position that illustrates part of what I’m talking about in this thread. It’s from a random dungeon I played solo in 2019; you can see the original photo here. The Heroes won the surprise and decided to storm the room - we can see them acting as what they're supposed to be.

Note, for example, that due to the restrictions imposed by death zone rules, the dwarf can’t simply walk past the orc to his right to attack the character monster, so positioning matters. Also note how the situation allows for more than one course of action for both sides.

The way I see it, the spirit of AHQ (and old-school dungeon crawling in general) is more about these vivid details surrounding the execution of tactical actions in man-to-man combat, such as storming rooms or even dealing with traps, than anything else that could happen outside the dungeon, including whatever reason why the adventurers are in a dungeon in the first place. Under this approach, tactical variety and playability in combat encounters matter more and come first.

We could say AHQ is a combat-oriented, tactical dungeon crawler in a board game format, the first of its kind. It’s a pure dungeon crawler, though, focused on exploration, fighting monsters, and survival, with everything else abstracted, simplified, or randomized. Considering its context, we could also say it’s essentially a skirmish wargame in a dungeon crawler setting.

I mean, the game is more about fighting monsters and dealing with traps effectively than about the reasons why the adventurers are fighting monsters and dealing with traps in the first place, or which town or location to visit between expeditions. The latter is, in fact, completely irrelevant in AHQ, a game intended to condense combat-oriented old-school dungeon crawling into a board game.

That’s where the game design mastery and art lie, in my opinion, not in imitating full-fledged adventure RPGs and trying to do everything those games do in a watered-down fashion just to end up with unpleasantly long setup times and a myriad of components I find daunting, as I´ve seen happen in certain, more modern boardgame “dungeon crawlers”. Those titles are obviously intended to be more profitable but miss the point of the genre from a game-design perspective, if you ask me, and that’s why AHQ is such a unique and irreplicable gem to me from that point of view.

It all makes sense if we consider that AHQ was designed by a wargamer for an already wargaming company, in a time when dungeon crawling played more like skirmish wargaming, with the intention of capitalizing on the success of D&D and HQ and introducing people to the fantasy wargaming hobby.

It’s really just a matter of going through the AHQ rulebook to see where the emphasis and focus are. The fact that the rules cover and tell us more about squad leaders, positioning, death zones, line of sight, initiative rolls, free attacks, and over-the-shoulder firing than the names of the towns or shops the adventurers visit between expeditions is quite revealing.

The fact that AHQ was designed to offer entirely random, solo-friendly quests with no storytelling or backstory beyond a brief mission description is also quite revealing. What are those games supposed to be about, then, if not pure exploration, monster fighting, and survival? We don’t really need backstories or overland travel at all to enjoy that kind of gameplay experience as intended in AHQ, do we? That’s what it came to reveal to us!

Obviously, some tactical detail and variety were intended for the game, but they weren't well implemented in the end, as mentioned in this and other threads. I mean, repetitive bottleneck combat doesn’t seem to be the main intention, but rather the result of applying principles and features like “realism” and “character fragility” in a rushed-to-market design, which is not rare with RPGs and board games at all, as far as I understand. That’s the justice I'm talking about here.

By the way, the position in the image above was made possible by allowing movement through friendlies, which is a tweak I forgot to include in the features listed in a recent post above, but I just added it, along with a couple more items and insight into the reasons behind the proposed modifications. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.