Enhanced difficulty using Japanese damage rules

[Karlssonontheroof]

Hi has anyone experience playing the Japanese damage rules?

That is, in order to kill a monster all the body points must be removed during that turn.

I am thinking of upping the difficulty of the main quest line and think this might be worth trying out (US monsters)

Would a better way be letting monsters defend on white shields or

Dark Company rules (if any black defend dice are rolled all skulls are blocked.

[Super Saiyan Musashi]

Curious. Would:

Dark Company rules (if any black defend dice are rolled all skulls are blocked.

work both ways (ie both Heroes and Monsters get a 'Full Block' on a single )?

Are you planning on being the DM, or the Heroes?

[HispaZargon]

I am thinking of upping the difficulty of the main quest line and think this might be worth trying out (US monsters)

Hi, just one comment about this. The Japanese damage rule was designed for monsters with the Japanese Edition atributes, where i.e. Chaos Warriors and Gargoyle had only 2 body points in the Japanese monster cards instead of 3 as in NA rules. You will probably had noticed that but, if not and you use NA monsters atributes, at the begining of the basic system campaign only the Barbarian could defeat them since the rest of heroes only have 1 or 2 combat dice for Attack, which I think is too difficult.

Anyway, of course I think the Japanese rule is quite interesting to be used and it should not be too difficult to implement in a balanced way with some adjustments.

[Kurgan]

Special use (potion/spell/skill/artifact effect) German colored dice that have some faces with multiple skulls might come in handy with this rule variant. Interesting stuff!

[Karlssonontheroof]

Curious. Would:

Dark Company rules (if any black defend dice are rolled all skulls are blocked.

work both ways (ie both Heroes and Monsters get a 'Full Block' on a single )?

Are you planning on being the DM, or the Heroes?

No, does not work both ways.
I will play DM.

I am thinking of upping the difficulty of the main quest line and think this might be worth trying out (US monsters)

Hi, just one comment about this. The Japanese damage rule was designed for monsters with the Japanese Edition atributes, where i.e. Chaos Warriors and Gargoyle had only 2 body points in the Japanese monster cards instead of 3 as in NA rules. You will probably had noticed that but, if not and you use NA monsters atributes, at the begining of the basic system campaign only the Barbarian could defeat them since the rest of heroes only have 1 or 2 combat dice for Attack, which I think is too difficult.

Anyway, of course I think the Japanese rule is quite interesting to be used and it should not be too difficult to implement in a balanced way with some adjustments.

Good points. I think the tweak I could do would be that a monster is defeated if all the BP are removed after all heroes have had their turn. This would force cooperation, and hurt the door blocking strategy.

[Super Saiyan Musashi]

No, does not work both ways.
I will play DM.

I see. Well, ultimately it doesn't matter to me how anyone out there plays, but I would advise getting consent of your players for something like this, and making sure they know what the "canonical" rules are.

Personally, I wouldn't want to play that way.

[Pancho]

Monsters only being defeated when lose all their BP that turn sounds very interesting. Much better than the Dark Company rules or letting monsters defend on white shields.
If you say that its after all Hero turns for that round then that should give them a chance against the US edition and . You might hit a few problems when you encounter ogres and the sorcerers of Morcar etc. Needs a few play testing sessions I think. If they prove to be too hard to kill then one possible solution is to class all monsters with 5 or more BP as being “special characters”, which lose BP cumulatively in the usual manner.

[Karlssonontheroof]

Good idea

[TVC-15]

Personally i'm a huge fan of letting monsters defend with the white shields (especially with the UK BPs, but also with the US ones). Sometimes the heroes get bogged down, but i think it works great. I didnt even know about the Japanese variant, i'm very tempted to give them a try.

[Karlssonontheroof]

If you do plsytest please let me know.

Have you tried using Dark Company rules? (If a single check shield is rolled when all skulls are blocked).