As a (house) rule, I'm generally against house rules for cooperative games, particularly one so tightly designed as gloomhaven. The whole idea behind the battle goals is that they're designed to create conflict and demonstrates that the mercenaries have their own agendas that aren't always for the good of the group. Also, makes for some interesting choices in the game - I'm the only character who can make it to the treasure tile but in doing so i lose my battle goal. I can understand what you're saying about levelling up but you can always access the other abilities with a later character. I personally like that the game forces you to make difficult decisions sometimes. Makes for a more interesting game.
We now know Isaac (Gloomhaven's designer) made many changes in Frosthaven and in the forthcoming Gloomhaven 2nd edition based on known issues with the rules-as-written for this game, and has discussed them at length (example: Stamina potions were nerfed for JOTL, then nerfed again for Frosthaven. They will be in GH 2nd as well).
@@fallout1116 We played some Frosthaven and some of the battle goals are still more challenging than others.. while some being just super easy and some near impossible for some classes. However you do draw 3 now and pick one.. which helps with RNG so I guess "Neural Net Games" had its nose on the money on this one :D. Stamina potions were really powerful and its funny how much times they had to nerf them and I still think they are pretty strong even after the nerf. Thing with them is that they have 2 very powerful effects. one of them is being able to play a card you want 2 turns in a row.. which is really strong by itself. Another one is that you actually get an extra turn if you use it on a round with odd number of cards ( even after the nerf). I will not comment on the first version that was just hilarious :D. Both of these effects are in my opinion still on par with something like a healing potion or power potion so.... its still double as powerful. I would not be surprised if the stamina potion would eventually be choose 1: a) replace a card from your hand with a level 1 card in your discard pile b) return a random level 1 or x card from the discard pile back to your hand. This would be on par with a healing potion. Yes I think the healing potion is really weak. But it does not need to. The frosthaven version is alright enough.. it is okey some things are better than the others. Cheers!
The no looting BG is a double check mark goal. So by not looting (usually really easy) you are essentially buying two check marks if you think about it.
I agree. Any of the double check marks should be a little more sufferable. This guy is annoying. Just give him a check mark for starting a scenario and he will be happy
My favorite house rule when playing Gloomhaven at home with my wife is. 1. to have fun. 🤗😉🤗 Very dangerous rule because it's border line cheating. So I have to catch and remind my wife from time to time that rules are rules. But at the end of the day it's our game and our campaign..... 😅😅😅
I really like your Mulligan battle goals. Playing a Voidwarden can often gets me on the short end of the stick. Will ask the group to implement that one.
I saw on another house rule list they did something that I'm definitely putting in from now on instead of mulligans: You keep both battle goals instead of discarding one, BUT you may only complete one of them, you simply have to decide through the course of the scenario which one it's going to be.
@@Tarryk I think this is very interesting.. because I can see it go both ways.. for the better or for the worse. I can already see people who got a 1 perk and 2 perk goal first completing the 1 perk goal and then trying to do a second one basically doubling the amount of weird things they do :D. Also what if you get 2 of them whole scenario ones and you work on both just in case one of them goes wrong Increasing the chances for themselves but making it even more chaotic for the team. And then.... If everyone does this it even feels like it could be a disadvantage way more often than advantage :D. Quite cool! thnx for sharing :D. EDIT: Well since battle goals are basically a disadvantage... Well they are neutral at best for the completion of scenario. it would only make sense if you make them more flexible and more room to work with it would probably mean the scenario will get even harder... So cool :).
We also allow "respeccing" your level up cards, but only while in town. Once we set up the scenario, your card pool choices are locked in, although you still get to choose which cards from the pool that you want to put in your hand after getting your battlegoal and reading the introduction. Forcing you to lock in a choice before you've even played with a card is too limiting in our opinion, but at the same time, we don't want players to base their level up choices based on what scenario we're doing, since that normally wouldn't be possible. This allows us to have that "try a different build" option without allowing you to tailor it to the scenario beyond what any other player following that build would have.
My gaming group only gets together once a month, so early on we implemented a house rule with leveling cards similar to what you mentioned, because we likely would never play the same character again. When leveling you allways have access to both cards at your current level, however you can only bring one of them into play. So, for instance, if you're level 5, you have acces to all cards including level 5, but still respecting you characters hand limit, and only bring one level 5 card. When you then level again to 6, you can bring both level 5 cards into play, and only 1 of the level 6 cards, and so on. Essentially ending up at level 9 having acces to all cards all the time, but only one level 9 card into your deck. Sure, this breaks some of the hard choices you will be forced to make, but we all agreed that having to "waste" a level choosing the wrong card that you will never use, would be frustrating and just not fun. Also, with advantage/disadvantage we houseruled instead of the somewhat confusing and unfair RAW, we decided to have the last modifier card count if you have rollings in there. So on advantage if a miss is rolled, the other stack would count, and vice versa.
Next Gen username? I'm a big Star Trek fan!! And totally agree with being able to change builds for most people that will probably only play a class once! Thanks for watchin!
We run as if you can redo the choices you've made whenever you level up. So when you reach level 3 you could take either two L2's or a L2 and an L3. Once you're 4 you take your L2 pick, then pick an L2 or L3 then pick an L2, L3, or L4. You can't just redo every scenario since you can only do it when you level up, but it leaves a lot of room going "yeah, this isn't fun or working like I thought." It also let's you make some of those fun builds that rely on high level losses without gimping yourself for 20 scenarios.
Rolling modifiers and advantage was always so frustrating. We houseruled that right away, much like you did. That way, you’d want to take your perks and you’d always feel like advantage was a good thing.
Would love to play with the rule of you just getting access to all the cards you unlock to promote trying out different cards and strategys. Since Gloomhaven is an extremely time consuming game chances are you are only ever going to play a class once in your lifetime for most players, so it makes no sense to have mechanics that promote replaying a class when that is very rarely going to happen for most players. Im only playing the digital version so i cant run this myself sadly.
I love this. As you said, most people aren't going to get a chance to play a class again. I want to see what it has to offer before retiring. And as the other commenter replied, it's already limited use per scenario.
We did about the same thing on the card choice, with a slight variation. If you wanted both cards of a level in your hand, you have to sacrifice a higher level card. EX - At lvl 5 - if you wanted both lvl 4 cards you could not have a lvl 5 card. Or, if you wanted both lvl 2 cards you have to pick 3-5 and not take a card at that level. This is Similar to the actual rule choice you make when you level up normally, you can always say, I dont want any lvl 5 cards but i do want 2 lvl 2 cards in my pool. All of that has made for a very fun experience for my house.
Perks - I have thought that an option for unwanted perks could be to 'sell' the perk you get for 5 gold( or whatever amount is appropriate). Gives you a small incentive to keep achieving battle goals as you can use the gold for enhancements or equipment. Thanks for the great content James.
Another great video! 1. I like #4 Perks are optional. I am gonna bring this up with my group. It would make the game a lot more fun for us. 2. #2 with endurance potions seems like something to try. At first glance, when you showed them, I didn't realize that they were made by a third party. Of course I didn't recognize them and I thought that I had missed something in the game. 3. #1 Is an interesting house rule. I like the idea of not locking in card choices.
My wife and I have been playing gloomhaven periodically for over 2 years now and we decided on a nice house rule early on. We like to look carefully at what our first cards are that we are going to play (without telling each other 100% exactly what we are going to do) and then decide which hex to start on would be most optimal. That way if say I have to be on a certain starting hex to be in range of a monster or if I can soak up some damage to protect my partner's character (if they are squishy) then we can play it that way. (I'm not even sure anymore what the rulebook says exactly but I think you're supposed to pick your starting position first and then your cards for your first turn...anyway we don't play it that way. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong guys)
A thought my game group had for battle goals is there are 5 communal battle goals out there and they are all available to the whole team. Max of 3 checks per character. This increases the chances of getting goals that maybe could apply to you. Still might not but hey it’s worth a shot to try
@@neuralnetgames6540 will do! Ps you are by far my groups favorite gloomhaven guide! We have watched all of your videos when picking new character. Great job From Buffalo NY
My favorite house-rule for Jaws of the Lion specifically was this "Any gold left on the floor at the end of the scenario is picked up automatically and added to a "Group Fund", but they're each worth 1 less." You can do this in that version because you're allowed to trade items freely so you can buy stuff communally as well. We were also playing with 2 characters only, so we had fewer tokens on the board with which to pick up Gold and items in the first place, so it felt fair.
It might be a little broken, but we remove retirement goals from the deck after someone unlocked a class. That way, we're always unlocking something new.
Same but I thought that was completely by the rules too. What I did on top of that was remove Life Goals from the deck that are no longer attainable due to campaign progress because we don't want anyone to get stuck with a character indefinitely.
@@Linnir I only remove those city and road events that actually have the "torn card symbol" but I have to agree that having gotten the same city event 4 times now for a silly bless on the next scenario is getting very old.
Once my friend had the Protector battle goal (don't let allies exhaust) and I had Masochist (end the scenario on 3 or fewer life). When the last enemy fell I had just been healed up to 6 health by an ally, so I spent my last turn walking over 2 damage traps to go to zero and complete the goal. My friend almost flipped the table. A few scenarios later I got a goal to trigger or disarm a trap - I didn't get an opportunity during the scenario so I once again had to throw myself on a trap after the last enemy was defeated. I think that kind of sums up how dumb the battle goal system is, though it has been a bit of a laugh for our group.
That's hilarious actually. This is what makes gloomhaven so much fun. Yes, you're working together but you're also each working on secret goals that makes this game so unpredictable. Last game my wife asked if I needed a heal and I was like nah I'm good. Then I die xD and I'm like you've got this, you can do 1 damage to the last enemy. We are constantly second guessing each other which is something a cooperative game like this really needs. Otherwise one person just takes control. Could the goals be better, sure. But masochist just makes certain endings hilarious.
I had some one do that not realizing if we failed the scenario that the goal doesnt count. we probably would have lost anyways, but it was strange how quickly he just threw the game at the end
For my group battle goals worked pretty good, it does exactly what it was designed to do, introduces uncertainty and spices things up a bit. They are a choice and you do not have to do them if both of them suck and that is alright. Sometimes you get in conflict with another player, that is alright as well. Yes some of them require you to nerf yourself but if you look at them as some sort of challenge that you can but do not have to complete they are totally a bonus in the game and cannot be a downside by design. you get plenty of perks by just leveling up. That being said it is probably alright to draw 3 instead of 2 and then pick. That is how frosthaven does it. So pretty close to the mulligan house rule idea. as for your example. If you had to end the scenario on a 3 of fewer life and you were walking on 2 damage traps you could have stopped and ended on 3 life or 2. There was no reason to keep going and both of you would complete your goal. So not sure what happened there but your story is inconsistent. Oh and my group communicates and cooperates. Not sure how you got healed by 6 when the last enemy fell but in my group it would be enough to say: "I really do not want you to heal me" and that would be enough for the person not to heal so there would be no need to walk over traps.
@@TheNeomare There were 2 damage traps each dealing 3 damage, not an indeterminate number of 2-damage traps. My point about the silliness of the battle goals isn't that sometimes you have to inconvenience yourself to complete them, that's the whole point of the system. My complaint is about goals that you can complete with an incredibly arbitrary series of actions, particularly after the monsters are dead. Also, some goals are either free or impossible depending on the scenario, often based on hidden information that you wouldn't know unless you looked ahead in the scenario rules.
I underatand why battle goals can be so... obnoxious... you sacrifice a part of the game for a single scenario if you want to slowly improve your character. But I actually use a similar rule to my favourite form of XP in RPGs. Use of an ability. This means more upkeep, but for me it's worth it. If I turn a perk card 5 times, get a tick. If I burn a single card 3 times, get a tick. It makes me consider card burn in a more enjoyable way than I might normally, do I want that tick or not, which feels better than the DONT aspect of battle cards. Plus I have found some players almost refuse to use card burn abilities due to the effect on turn options, or a loss of a different ability. This added a good reason to consider using it. Plus also randomly using previous perks feels like a fun way to gain new ones by proxy... Of course this does rely on you inserting or replacing cards in your deck, rather than the removing, but thats why I also added the card burn aspect as well. Although ifmyou have removed 0s for example, this does give you a greater oppotunity to flip those perk cards anyway, so it does even out. It's a far from perfect system, but i find it more fun than battle goals. EDIT: Oh, if youre wondering how I track use, I use little tiny colored removeable stickers. So each time I use one, I add a sticker, when I hit the count, I remove them, add the tick and start again :) I sleeve my player cards and modifier decks anyway, so doesn't really mess with shuffles or being able to predict a card turn. EDIT 2: I just heard a house rule where you use both batle cards... I'll be trying that this weekend.
Personal Quest - just retired my first character and what an anti-climax. Completed the quest and went to the city, resolved other achievements like the sanctuary and prosperity - we hit thresholds on both and got the Sunkeeper from the prosperity achievement. Then it came to my retirement award - guess what, yep, the Sunkeeper, so I got a crappy random item to put into the shop instead. The item was poor, I’d never buy it because there are better items to buy first so I got nothing for doing my personal quest. The other rule we play, is if you draw the second quest that leads to a character that is already unlocked then we are allowed to put it back and draw another.
Advantage/Disadvantage: We draw two full sets of modifyer card(s) and then chose whichever is better/worse in this specific situation. The regular rules limit it in weird ways, making it possible to have a better outcome even if you are at disadvantage. Also: Stacking up disadvantages/advantages: If you get disadvantaged (is it this term in English?) twice, you also would need two advantages to even this out. You can also use 2 advantages to draw 3 modifyers, but that's not that useful.
Our House rules: We share the gold evenly. We control Summons There is no Gold laying around and no need for loot actions instead we each get gold (only if successful) based on enemies initially on the map. Rule of tumb 1 coin per enemy. cragheart’s Attacks involving obstacle are neither meele nor range, they can’t get benefits or drawback based on categories. Invisibility nerf enemies can pass through Heroes. And if necessary they can stand on invisible heroes resulting in a move 1 take 1 Damage for Hero ranged enemies rather change focus instead of attacking in meele to avoid disadvantage. Enemies don’t just stay around if there is no path. Example door is blocked or Heroes are surrounded, they will reduce the gap as much as possible. Edit and we do 2 stacks with advantage /disadvantage maybe we change to the Frosthaven rule in that regard.
That's correct. Only battle goals are secret. The rule book never declares that it must be kept a secret. Especially since some scenarios require a player to have a certain personal goal to unlock
We always kept them secret. Honestly don't really remember exactly why, but the house rule is more around not duplicating them for multiple people so that 1 doesn't get the unlock but instead gets the random item... very disappointing lol
It makes sense to find some use for the 5 gold tokens, but now you're picking up 3-5x as more gold then you supposed too. Doesn't that make it a bit to easy to buy items and enhancements? This should have been a rule though. Would make sense to get a better reward for elites and gold is slow, at least with our games.
advantage: pick the card you like Naturally there is a rule how to handle advantage that is relevant for monster/allies, but when you have advantage then it does not make sense to not simply pick whatever you like.
I definitely don't get the Protector perk. You have no choice but to become exhausted and long rest every 5th or 6th round. There is no way to prevent that. What do you mean though that you don't force players to lcok their card choices. Are you supposed to? I thougth you could change your cards every quest if you wanted to.
As for leveling up, we play that you gain access to both cards. At the start of each scenario (after reading the intro, but before revealing the 1st map tile) you choose your hand limit worth of cards from amongst all the cards you have access to. This allows players great flexibility, and allows them to experiment with more build options (oh, looks like having 7 summons in play sucked, how about I drop it down to 4 and try some more damage cards this time).
Same. Both cards go in your pool, and you choose your hand (subject to hand size) before each scenario. Can't change composition of it once in one, though.
We always change the advantage rule. We would pull all cards until you get a non-rolling mod, and then all cards until you get a non-rolling mod, and then compare the total damage amount between the two. Have to take the higher number. Feels much better than the base rules haha. Glad it got changed in Frosthaven too!
Invisibility not blocking door ways and changing the way Advantage/Disadvantage with rolling modifiers works are two obvious house rules (that Isaac is changing for Frosthaven).. Non-lost, no drawback kill cards are so good that there was one class I banned from being played because it circumvents the games difficulty and normal rules (just breaks scenarios with high health enemies like bear/golem/etc).. Seems like Isaac is removing this one as well... I guess he is also nerfing stamina potions which I disagree with.. Stamina potion at return one card is not good and inferior to a health potion most of the time(nearly anytime you are taking damage). Wish he would have just upped their gold cost instead. Beyond that I often just play with the house rule that you can run around collecting gold after the scenario ends until you get exhausted. (Barring a scenario where the tunnel collapsed or some other lore breaking reason for sticking around)... This is both logical and prevents you from purposely not delivering the final blow while you run around the map. If needed you can bump up the difficulty due to players having more gold for items/enchants.
Personal goals, some cannot be a achieved due to game state. So we have another achievement criteria: can retire at level 9 if played 3 scenarios at that level.
I try to play RAW but if i am going to pick 1 house-rule it would be something that makes the game harder (not easier). Probably invisibility nerf could be best choiche
House Rules (after playing 28 scenarios): #1 You control AI #2 Elite drops two loot (better equipment) #3 If a monster picks up loot and you kill that monster, it drops ALL loot. #4 Enhancements get reputation discount (up to 5 gold) same as shop.
Might dad and his buddies had a hard time with understanding the huge effect lost cards had on longevity and would exhaust often They did a house rule of always having your 3x cards with you, and your higher level cards just replace your level 1s Yes this gave Hatchet 13 cards, void 14 cards, and demo 12. Which is ridiculous but hey, thats how they played.
When you level up you are supposed to pick just ONE card to add to your available cards. For example, at level 2 you can pick only one of the level 2 cards, the other is supposed to be unavailable until you level up again, then you can pick the other.
@@plegge11 i understand. but if u are att lvl 9 u can just pick cards as u like att the start of each scenario. as long as u dont have more than the hand limit
@@tor1979 Even at level 9, you can only choose cards from the original level 1 set, the X cards, and the 8 you chose to use from each level up. If you want to just have access to them all then that is up to you but it's not in the rules.
@@sortehuse page 45 Therefore, at the beginning of a scenario, players must select a number of cards from the character’s available card pool equal to the character’s hand limit. Why would is say this if u cant pick the card u want? if u are att lvl 9 then you can select any cards depending on the enemys.
We use house rule #1 as well. Being able to switch out choices is essential for us to have that flexibility and try out new builds. A house rule we “inherited” from a friend: when you entered a room, and monsters in that room revealed their initiative, monsters only acted if they had initiative AFTER yours. This allowed you to “set up” your next turn, rather than giving the monsters a “surprise round.”
Also, with every level up, we gain a card. No switching out and keeping the sane stamina no matter what level you are the whole time. . It Makes the game no fun. So we add one stamina card for each level up. We also switch cards as we please once we've unlocked the card. So, at level 7 I don't play with my level 1 cards anymore usually. I have the strongest cards I've got access to thus far .
Deff play with a few house rules - think this game lives and dies by them tbh as there's far too much to remember and organize to get right 100% of the time. Here's what we do: Easier: We allow elements to be used twice in a turn - say for bottom and top action of cards. We allow choosing of any cards, so long as the rule of 1 per level set UNLESS you forgo a HIGHER level one (aka take both lvl 3 cards? Can't have a level 4 or greater somewhere) We allow level-ups if someone is like 1-3 exp off their next level...chances are you forgot to give yourself an EXP somewhere. We allow summons to move freely - it feels so bad to burn a card just to have it walk into a door and die for no benefit that no-one wanted to play any summon cards/classes. We don't let things summon on specific hexes if something is occupying that hex (aka enemy spawns every round on B, but someone is on B = nothing spawns) Harder: We largely ignore the rules where enemies are *supposed* to not move if a shorter path exists but is not reachable. We move em right behind their boys and clog up doorways. We often play at a higher difficulty than recommended We generally make the summoned enemies spawn in disadvantageous spots (for us) We don't allow the objectively 'broken' classes and combinations to exist how they're supposed to. Aka no music note curse + a certain song combo, no 3spears allowing for the strongest items to be re-used (only mediocre items) We don't even *vaguely* say what our plans our while choosing cards, just slow, fast, or resting And finally we play with one person (usually me) as a support-focused class. It leads to more enemies and more difficulty because I don't do much damage, but it works out in the enemies favour even though we're the ones getting the buffs/heals.
We don't waste turns looting. If we beat the scenario, we collect all gold at the end. Because who would leave tower after killing all enemies and leave the money sitting around? Seems stupid and unrealistic. We make it realistic. Lol. We grab the money after all the bad guys are dead and split it all.
Honestly I understood that no cards are locked in your hands, you can chose the cards you wanna play at the begging of the scenario. When leveling up, for example to level 3, I can take only one level 3 card, but instead I can not use this level 3 card and chose a second level 2 card. For the next scenario I can change this choice if I want to.
Nope. Card choices at levels 2+ are locked in if you play RAW. You choose it once and then you keep it. You can technically go back to a level and take the other card but you cannot continually swap them.
I hated the campaign written by that Brazilian guy. It was TOO gimmicky. The monsters had too many stacking conditions. also hate that the size of a players playable deck never increases. So many cards I would never pick because they were lost cards since the beginning decks on some characters were already a liability. I don't like the game because of this. I just want to sit down and have fun. The card management was never fun for me. I always thought playable deck size should increase by one card each level. At the very least every character should have the same size deck.
To each their own! I totally get why FC would not be for some people though! I think it would be really hard to increase the card size and balance the game so probably that's why it is how it is!
@@neuralnetgames6540 When you and your friends are spending most of your gaming time week after week aggravated by gimmicky change ups in the middle of the scenario, getting pounded by stacking conditions and not having fun then I'd say something ia wrong with the balancing. We liked the game in general but found ourselves frustrated too much of the time.
But...the card management IS the game.... Different characters have different hand sizes because their cards are completely different. Small hand classes get powerful actions on non-losses to make up for it, with the exception of the Spellweaver who has a small hand because she can get all her lost cards back. Large hand classes get less powerful regular cards, but can afford to play powerful loss cards. This provides a wide range of play experience, which is great for variety and long term enjoyment of the game. Yeah, there are some bad cards out there, but that's fine, just pick the good ones.
