When to give heroes or ewp cards

[torilen]

Gimmeyergold has been coming up with a LOT of special cards...some sets that would allow
the EWP to have special abilities on his turn or the heroes turn.

I've come up with some cards of my own - I've posted three skill card sets here at the inn.

Typically, my skill cards (and most upgrading for heroes) is done by the number of quests completed...
typically 3 has been a fairly regular number of quests to complete. Gimmeyergold gives the EWP a
special card during turns in which the heroes move and there are no monsters on the board. These
cards can then be used at will.

Can anyone think of other good ways to dish out cards to the heroes and/or the EWP? Just curious.
The current ways of doing this work - I am just wondering if there are any other good ways of doing it.

[FainFlynn]

EWP? What's that mean?

[Count Mohawk]

You could do some of the following:

• Add a couple of traps to the Treasure Deck that explicitly give the EWP one or two more cards. Similarly, have Quest Note traps that do the same thing.
• Allow him to start with a certain number of cards, either a static number or a variable disclosed at the top of the Quest Notes.
• For the Heroes, Potions that allow Heroes to regenerate Skill cards would be ideal.
• Killing certain monsters, or a specific number of them if you care to keep track of that, could also be used as a trigger for additional Hero Skill cards.

EWP? What's that mean?

That's "Evil Wizard Player". See also "Zargon" or "Morcar", depending on which side of the Atlantic you hail from.

[slev]

I had the idea a while back to have a deck of cards, the EWP can draw one per turn INSTEAD of using Monsters.

Of course, if there are no Monsters, this is no penalty o the draw, and they can build up a nice hand of cards to really spank the heroes later.

This also puts a time preasure on the Heroes and makes movement abilities actually useful.

[torilen]

I'm thinking maybe I would use a die roll - roll a combat die, and if I roll a black shield, then
the EWP gets a card to use whenever he wishes, as long as the instructions on the card allow
for it.

What do you think?

[Daedalus]

Sure, rolling a die could work, but it will lessen the pressure on the Heroes to speed things along. Drawing an encounter card on Morcar/Zargon's turn whenever there are no monsters on the board has worked well for Sjeng. You could combine the two to lessen the draw: roll a combat die when there aren't any monsters on the board and draw a card if a skull is rolled. I don't know if this frequency would work better or not for you, so it would need playtesting.

I've written a deck of encounter cards that are drawn sort of like 2nd edition Descent. M/Z draws a card every turn. He may have no more cards in his hand at the end of his turn than there are Heroes on the gameboard, so a discard may be necessary. A card may be played when the conditions at the beginning of its text are fufilled.

Most cards are pro Zargon and are played with 1 to 4 other cards as a cost (the effects of the other cards are ignored.) This means it takes more turns to set up a deadlier card. Some cards are pro Hero and are simply played immediately. Other pro-Hero cards must be played with all other cards in Zargon's hand. Such cards are more likely to foil a slow-building hand needed to play a costly but deadlier pro-Zargon card.

As for the Heroes gaining skill cards, maybe you could require a side Quest of some sort to earn one. You could still set side Quests after every 3 regular Quests. A side Quest could be as simple as a drawn Personal Quest Card that details the requirements to gain a skill which is fufilled during regular Quests. A more elaborate approach is to design the side Quest as a solo. If you wanted, you could even make up specific Quest requirements for each skill--remember CP's idea about killing X number of monster Y or foiling Z number of traps in a Quest?