Traps on the other side of the door

[Jalapenotrellis]

Also, they could just jump back into the hallway and send someone through with pass through rock on a spell ring.

[wallydubbs]

Anderas and myself have come up with different ways in dealing with the Yeti problem in Xanon Pass, his involves mercenaries, mine involves a dagger and numerous Healing potions. You can find such discussions here:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3955

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1051

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4615

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4452

I've also playtested through the solo quests for the Elf Quest pack and have made several adjustments regarding finds (Treasure searches finding equipment and potions) within the quests. I've tried to make the solo quests doable for an unequipped Female Barbarian and Elf, respectively.
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4421&start=10

[mitchiemasha]

I was away for a day and what did I miss!

I don't house rule. Stick to the rules.

Many people say that about lots of games... until they realise they were playing it wrong. In anycase, coming up with house rules is the rules... That's part of designing quests and expanding the game with new artefacts etc. I only change 1 rule outright, the Short Sword. Most are expanded, and there's lots of that... also, the rest are "interpretations" of original UK x US wording, for instance, how I play traps, toolkit, searching, disarming etc. Quite a few here use the 1 treasure search per room, that could easily be seen as "Rare is a find in these forgotten depths, each room can only be searched for treasure once" Quest note. It's not really changing the rules, it's designing your quests to work better, which is the rules.

If they wanted to do that for blocking purposes only, they should have made much more creative use of them .

UK version? Are you implying that wasn't the intention due to the lack of creativity of use in that way? To me, the falling infront or behind is clear in attention.

And one can argue of course that expanding on a rule is also a kind of change to the rule. Oh well.

Totally, but that kind of steps out of the point I was trying to make, which is too hard for me to explain, if someone doesn't get it. The quests and items do "expand" the rules not quite "change" them as in break them*, just like owning a shield allows you to roll an extra defence d6.

*Edit: obviously they are changed but my point is to distinguish 2 different types of "change". Like not using combat dice or removing the squares, that would be a different game.

[wallydubbs]

Anyhow, regarding the traps on the other side of the door, I've allowed the houserule to search the first space. However I've started to grow irritated by this, as my brother is constantly assuming there's a trap on the other side of the door or the first space down a new hallway. It gets to the point where he's remembering every time there is a trap beyond the door, but forgets every time there isn't. He plays as the Dwarf and assumes there is a trap beyond every door, sometimes using his disarm ability before actually searching (sometimes he guesses right, if not he wastes an action. But there's always hesitating before entering a room filled with monsters because he cannot search. Since the elf has a crossbow I can't just sit back and wait for the heroes to enter, which gives them the whole bottleneck strategy.

[Jalapenotrellis]

When the monsters get ranged attacks, the bottleneck can actually be beneficial since you can protect your ranged guys and get in 3+ attacks per round rather than 2, depending on how many ranged guys you can stack directly in front of the door and move away after they attack and then move in a melee for shield.

[Maurice76]

For the yetis: can't the hero just use a crossbow and kite them to avoid the hugs? The hugs would obviously be read to the player as an ability of the monster. Also, it can't hug two things at once, right?

A hugging Yeti can't choose to release the hug and chase another target, as it seems. Even so, kiting it would be possible - as long as you have the room to do so. It could become a really annoying stand-off or cat-and-mouse game, though, if the EW chooses to hide the Yeti from line of sight while chasing the Barbarian (if even) to avoid the Yeti becoming a simple time-consuming pincushion.

Also, for the falling block traps that do block the doors, I noticed the notation is different in Against the Ogre Horde. They have arrows, whereas the other quests don't for this type of trap, right? I find that confusing.

Difference between the American and European versions of the Trap. In the European version, there's a trigger marker on the map, with the arrow. A Hero passing that tile will cause the rocks to fall, into the spot where the Falling Rock symbol is placed. Never really understood that design, by the way, the American version (which basically combines the trigger and target tiles into the same symbol) makes much more sense to me.

Then, aren't there spell scrolls that they could get with pass through rock on them? I think I remember reading that at some point. There is also ring of return.

Situational at best; the Quest can't rely on the Heroes actually having them, unless they're provided in the blocked off sections somewhere, somehow.

Alternatively, the wizard could be the one who does that room with a trap disarm kit, or whomever gets locked in could pass their equipment to the character who does pass through rock to "rescue" the equipment.

That's another discussion, really. Can you remove a Trap that has already been triggered? People are divided about this. I'm on the side that says you can remove the trigger of a Trap, but once a Trap has been sprung and causes a change to the board, the change will remain till the end of the Quest. In other words, you can't remove sprung Pit Traps or Falling Block Traps.

UK version? Are you implying that wasn't the intention due to the lack of creativity of use in that way? To me, the falling infront or behind is clear in attention.

What I meant to say was that they'd need to implement it better into the Quest. There's a few - like Quest 12, Barack Tor, where there's a Falling Block Trap that only triggers after the last Hero has passed that tile. There's no point in causing harm or a choice of where to end up with respect to the Falling Block Trap, if it's intended to split the Heroes, since then the Falling Block Trap becomes a Quest device, not something to harm the Heroes in a direct sense.

[j_dean80]

The arrow is actually where the block lands. The falling block symbol is the trigger.

[Jalapenotrellis]

That is very confusing. If that's the case, it doesn't do damage, then, right? You trigger it on a separate square from where it falls.

[Anderas]

That is very confusing. If that's the case, it doesn't do damage, then, right? You trigger it on a separate square from where it falls.

It is. The mechanic of it is a beauty but the choice of symbols is a mess.

[Maurice76]

The arrow is actually where the block lands. The falling block symbol is the trigger.

Right, it's indeed as you say, I messed up the order of things. Still, it's a mess.