Some of my house rules; 1. I give the Wizard character three "Meditate" tokens, by cashing one in he can skip a turn and reclaim any previously spent spell card. Helps to keep the Wiz more involved. 2. If you roll a shield when attacking through a doorway, you can choose to knock an enemy player backwards one square. Stops doorways becoming choke points. 3. I roll all the search options (traps, treasure, secret doors) into one "search" action instead of separate ones. Stops the game becoming an never ending search-fest-slog. 4. Since we play the EU rules, I always add extra hit points to any monster other than Orcs, Goblins and Skeletons. Stops the heroes just steam rolling everything. 5. I have rules for an "Assasin" hero, who attacks with 3 dice if attacking from directly behind an enemy or 1 dice if attacking from any other adjacent tile. Also has three "smoke bomb" tokens, which can be used to escape an attack or teleport directly behind an enemy.
@@EHeathRobinson The original UK release had slightly different rules to the US version. Most notable being the fact that monsters only have a single hit point. Even the Gargoyle and Choas Sorcerer.
@@EHeathRobinson The US version is generally considered the "better" version but the original UK version has it's charm. The fact that you are allowed to attack and cast spells on your fellow heroes is quite fun.
@@EHeathRobinson Some other differences: we never had a sort of reference sheet for the equipment so armoury wasn't unlimited, if you bought a weapon you kept the relative card, and you were the only owner. We never had Chaos/Dread spells. There even was one single treasure card called "Nothing" which basically says you searched everywhere and you found nothing.
Perhaps when the wizard or elf run out of spells, they can (if no monsters are in their location) skip a turn and memorize a spent spell of their choice.
My three rule changes/clarifications: 1) Wizard/Elf: After casting a spell roll 2D6. If the total is less than or equal to your current Mind Points then you may retain the spell. 2) Fire of Wrath can be cast on any player/monster anywhere on the board (as in original UK rules.) 3) The heroes can move in any order during their phase (if there is disagreement then Zargon settles the dispute.)
I always put offensive spells on a 6 turn cool down. Op stuff like genie get burned. But as Zargon you can limit spells or buff them depending on the map. And when I say limit or buff , I just mean which spells are put into the cool down rotation.
You can always have on Zargon's turn, he draws a treasure card. Which he could then play. If you draw Wandering Monster, place it as normal. A potion, use when you want, perhaps on a boss. Trap, just place a revealed Pit Trap on an unoccupied square. Keep the gold, perhaps you can hire extra monsters, or just discard it. Or just have the Zargon treasure as a bonus for completing if any thing is unused.
Something like that would be a quick way to integrate the Descent-like card mechanic into the game. The Heroes will not be happy if Zargon draws their Potions of Healing!
Create a Chaos Event deck that Zargon will draw from every turn, which can include wandering monsters, traps, spells, and maybe random item card losses for the heroes.
I feel especially the last one is on point. When there were no monsters on the board, for instance after clearing a path to a dead end, we always used to abandon movement altogether, because Zargon had no turns anyway. Just picking up the hero miniatures and setting them up at the last remaining closed door always felt pretty cheesy.
With magic, we've been trying a time based replenishment system. We are playing The Dark Company quest, which uses the space of four boards and is an ongoing campaign. The wizard was next to useless, so we tried when a spell is cast, in 4 turns it replenishes and can be used again. This turned out to be a bit to quick, and effectively the wizard had all spells available for every encounter. So we have doubled the cooldown time to 8 turns, which seems to be a bit better balanced while still fun.
To allow more aggressive game play from the wizard and not over complicate the rules and sticking to the randomness of the game feel, after the wizard cast a spell create a discard pile, once the pile reaches 3 cards, the wizard can take an action to reclaim a random spell on a dice. Dice roll 1-2, the top card, 3-4 middle, 5-6 bottom. If the discard pile has more than 3 cards Zaragon can blind shuffle and the top 3 go in the selection pool. If the cards are sleeved with non-clear sleeves just shuffle the cards and deal one card as the returned spell.
If you want to give zargon more to do I suggest daggers and timers. I allow goblins to throw daggers and dread knights to throw hand axes. Adding ranged enemies changes everything. I run a d4 timer all game. Every 4th turn a random (weak) enemy wanders into the dungeon from the entry point. Putting pressure on the heroes to obtain their objectives rather than just poke around and giving zargon the fun of chasing down the heroes more frequently lol
Re: magic The new characters from the crowdfund campaign each have a spell/ability that can be regained when a condition is met. When I started playing, I allowed the Elf and Wizard to pick one spell from each element that can be reused. I didn't bother attaching conditions to their reuse, because I'd rather keep things light than make it too challenging. No one in the group had played the original game before, so I want them to have fun instead of constantly facing defeat. But as they advance through the first quest book, I am starting to cast spells as Zargon and add a monster here or there.
-1 mind point each time you reclaim a spell. Each time you reclaim it cost you an extra mind point. So, if you reclaim Genie, 1st time, costs you 1 mind point, 2nd time 2, 3rd time 3, etc.
I try to incorporate the occasional puzzle and riddle into HQ. It makes it a bit more fun while still keeping the fast-paced combat and exploration without going too much into role playing (which my peers don't like). They like riddles though. For example, some doors don't just open, but you have to find the right key for it. But the key is in a chest that has a lock that can only be opened via solving a riddle. The mind points of the wizard can be used to get clues from Zargon if the heroes are stuck. Depending on the difficulty of the riddle, rolling 1 or more skulls gives you one or more clues. That way, the wizard - being the brain of the group - has a higher chance of actually figuring out vital clues that help the group solve a difficult riddle if they can't figure it out themselves. I might also have the occasional scripted encounter (e. g. a doomed prisoner, a friendly Goblin, a crazy old man, a ghost etc.) as part of a riddle. For example, in one of our last adventures, the heros tried to kill a headless ork ghost that would keep returning after being killed (much like the horseman in Sleepy Hollow). By decrypting a scrambled rune inscription on his sarcophagus, they eventually figured out that they need to find his head/skull to help him find peace in death. As long as the head was not found (it was in one of the chests), the ghost would return when killed because he can't be killed for good unless you return his head at which moment he will stop all hostility. I simply respawned the ghost in his sarcophagus whenever he was killed and had his laughter echo through the dungeon to let the heroes know that he was, in fact, not dead yet and on his way to find them. This created a little bit of a being "hunted by the T1000 feeling". I also give the wizard 9 and the elf 3 mana points that they can use to cast any spell in their inventory. A spell costs 1 mana point. It's easy and yet allows them to cast a spelll several times if they want to, while still putting a limit to how much they can cast spells. I simply give them a stack of poker chips (9 and 3, respectively) that they have to hand to Zargon when casting a spell.
I agree that the wizard needs more magic, but I would tie it to the treasure system with two changes: 1) I would make it so that the potion of healing could be used by the wizard (and only the wizard) to allow them to drink the potion to regain one element of magic. This means that their spells are rare, but not too rare, and would give the wizard a bit of a dilemma. "Do I use this potion to regain the spells or save it for health." Allowing the Heroes to purchase one potion each in between dungeons for 100 gold would also help. 2) I would add to the treasure cards blank scrolls. The wizard can use their action during their turn to write a spell onto their scroll. They could do this after they've cast the spell or pre-emptively, and they can pass it to others to allow them to use the scroll if they wish. There would be three blank scrolls in the treasure pile, and the wizard could buy blank scrolls for 200 gold each from the shop.
Hey. Ive made some changes to HeroQuest. I gave the barbarian a Powercard (Barbarian Rage). It goes like this, can be used at any time when your hps are equal or lower than your current value in Mind. It increase your melee attack pool by 1 dice and last until you get any form of healing. When you get fully healed you will gain the powercard back. This rule introduce both importance of mind and give the Barbarian something that makes him unique except from having the most hps. The Dwarf got a number of powercards equal to his value in mind. The card can be played at any time and last until the start of his next turn. The power itself add one Defence dice. Its a minor addition and the dwarf starts with 3 of these cards in normal case. If he has higher value in mind he gets more of them. I had the idea that all heroes should be needing mind so when they get any form of mind increase artifact or potion or something that the hero party need to discuss where to use it. I also been adding rules for furniture so a mage who search treasure in a room with a bookshelf will get one random spell he allready has used back. This rule I havent told my player group about, thats something they have to figure out along the way. Heroquest has a very good game to introduce changes to. But I've been conservative to not give away to strong powers, but still to give each class unique feel to it.
Use house rules for the wizard. Mind Points After a spell a cast, the wizard MAY use a Mind Point to return the spall back to them Likewise Mind Points in general, I like, a hero may use a mind point to re-roll a combat die in attack or defense. When Mind Points reach zero, their movement is reduced to 1 D6 instead of the usual 2
Some house rules I use: Some minions have shields (defend on "good" shields) All heroes have an ability: Wizard can always fire a 1 die ranged attack (magic bolt) Barbarian adds a die to his first attack in any encounter (charge) Dwarf adds a die to his first defence in any encounter (tough) I've replaced the elf with a hobbit with slightly lower stats - once per encounter he can attack part way through a move i.e. won't be stuck toe to toe with a chaos warrior holding a shield (stealthy) - he also has a sling - 2 die ranged attack
I found that just giving the elf and wizard their full respective decks (elements for the wizard, elf spells from motm for elf) made both players much less worried about wasting spells because they both had plenty of options, but that confidence ended up costing the wizard his life several times which used up the excess of healing spells, kind of balancing itself out.
I dont mind the Magic, combat or movement System. The only thing i find problematic is that Zargon has no options when there are no monsters on the board. Some sort of element that forces the heroes to hurry a bit is required imo. A simple solution could be to let Zargon roll for wandering monsters each turn there are no monsters on the board. If he rolls a 1 on a d6, spawn a wandering monster. This will slowly drain on the resources of the heroes if they are too slow
one of my house rules is that somewhere in the dungeon there is a seller. there you can buy potions or weapons with the money you have found.especially useful if you only play 1 game and are therefore nothing with the money
If you ask me instead of trying mana or any point system for spells I think there should be a "magic potion, an item that returns spells back to wizard's hands" The casting would be conservative as the game is designed but still allows casters to kind of cast more than once their magic.
Something like that could work too. Or a potion of some particular elemental magic that could be found that would restore all the spells from that element. That would be a little more limiting than getting them all back.
I created a Cleric that has 4 Body points, 6 Mind points, 2 Attack Dice, and 2 Defend dice and the special ability to Lay on Hands, Roll three Combat Dice and Heal 1 Body Point for each Skull rolled, each time the cleric uses this ability they lose a Mind Point. Also they cannot use it on themselves.
Cool vid, I've been thinking about the following: 1. If a wizard or elf finishes a quest with spells left over, then they can receive mana tokens (plastic thingies) for the next quest. When they cast a spell in the following quest, they roll a white dice. On a roll of a (good) shield then they can retain that spell after casting it. Lose the mana tokens of course though - as you use them. Also, they could just receive a spell scroll for the spells not cast for next mission. But that's not quite so flexible... 2. To help with the randomness of combat dice - depending on the quest level (number), players can have that many re-rolls of the combat dice per quest. E.g. Quest 4 has 4 rerolls split amongst the players. When re-rolling, they can re-roll all or some of the dice. Adds a bit more heroic feel to it. Could call them Fate re-rolls or Hero points. Perhaps players have opportunities during the quest to earn more through heroic deeds, selflessness etc. 3. Movement. Have the heroes only roll 1 dice and then add on a fixed amount. Elf(5), Barbarian(4), Wizard & Dwarf(3). Perhaps minus 1 from that for heavy armour. 4. I don't like the fact that you can't search for traps on the first square you land when going through a door. I feel that the 'searching' aspects, areas and LOS should be more refined, here are some suggestions: i) If you search for TRAPS at an open door threshold, then you should also cover the square directly adjacent through the door. Bearing in mind, when a monster is visible and in the room, then no searches can be made. That rule alone will settle a few frustrations ii) LOS and Fog of War - You should be able to listen and look through key holes of closed doors. Only making monsters or furniture visible directly in front of the door. iii) When a door opens, you should see everything in a room, however for ranged attacks, standard LOS should apply. A lot faster that way. If HOWEVER you wish to darken the room or have monsters hiding quietly, then you should also make them hidden until a hero goes into the room. Other noise triggers could auto open some doors too... Zargon dependant. 5. There should be a hard limit on ranged attacks for each dungeon, dependant on ceiling height. I would say 10 squares standard, but lower if the ceiling is lower. Down to 6 maybe. Each quest should detail this. 6. Standing Strong - a rule for heroes who choose not to move during a their combat turn (both before or after combat roll) and are in melee combat, should get to reroll one of their combat dice, if they wish. Allows for more bully-boy and stoic combat tactics. 7. Sharing treasure and coins can be done automatically (not during combat turn) so long as all players in the exchange are in the same room/passage or an adjoining room/passage. There has to be physical access. Plus exchanging of coin and equipment during combat can be done as an action when directly adjacent (orthogonally and diagonally) to each other. 8. I think you should be able to jump a square (even if you don't know there's a trap). It should be done as normal, dice rolled. The player will not learn if there's a trap unless of course they fail the roll, and there was actually a trap there. 9. With regard to suggestion 2 above. Each time a hero uses a FATE or HERO re-roll, then Zargon should automatically get a boon too. This could simply be a re-roll of their own.... or perhaps a quest specific boon? Could be quite thematic. 10. Equipment - Used during exploration phase (non-combat), and can allow a hero to descend safely to the bottom of a pit trap unharmed. Got a few more, but that's a good start.
Hello there :)! My somewhat "fix" of the magic system would be like that: The mage uses a spell and turns the spellcard for 180 degrees. In his next turn, he can use one action to turn one of his (or maybe all of his spells?) 90 degrees back. Once he has used two of these actions, his spells are ready again to use. He has the possibility to do everything he wants but also has to have an eye on his spells to have them ready again when he needs them. I think that would be a simple way and some additional mana points would not be necessary. :) greetings from switzerland and thanks for this interesting video!
That is an interesting idea. It would keep from adding the complexity of the mana points to the game. But, I think it might have to be combined with a system that makes Zargon more active in the game and can keep pressure on the heroes. Otherwise you run the risk of the heroes stopping for a few turns after every room for the wizard to reset all of his spells.
@@EHeathRobinson haha sorry for coming back so often but I'm playing HeroQuest a lot lately. So another idea how Zargon could put a bit more pressure on the players is pretty simple: A round counter. Every time players and then Zargon finish their turns, Zargon gets 1 Point. Maybe, put counters on the table, a die, what ever. I may even build a counter wheel. So Zargon can spend all his points to do the following: - spawning a monster in his turn (1 per turn only). 1 point is to spend per defense die. - make a player reroll one of his walking die for 1 point - add an attack or defense die to a monster for this turn for 2 points - placing a mimic door on the board for 5 points. If players try to open it, it attacks with 3 dice and then disappears. (Points are spent in secret, so players wont notice when a mimic door is placed) I think that would add a lot of fun pressure on the players, gives Zargon something to do and is also not something which requires you to put extra stuff on the table. And it would fit with the magic system I posted above. And of course the list could be expanded with cool thematic ideas for each adventure. Thanks for making me so interested in HeroQuest with your videos! Greetings from Switzerland :)!
@@Nahaufnahme24 Yes. This is something I¨m thinking about also. By keeping some time pressure on the heroes they cant minmax every position and always search for traps before treasure and so on. There is something to this, I read through your ideas and see what I can borrow :)
My magic system: the elf gets any three spells regardless of element. The wizard gets all the spells even the ones the elf picked.(I have two sets of cards) The wizard and elf can spend a mind point to regain a cast spell. However in my game dread knights and undead have a constant aoe of dread corruption. You have to save(4, 5, or 6) or you lost a mind point from the dread corruption. Spending mind points is dangerous. However there is mind restoring antidotal affect by drinking holy water.
Here is the fix for spell casting. Roll to cast. If you get a black shield you roll a d6 on a spell mishap chart. 1 is backfire one damage to caster, 2 is random target, 3 lose spell till end of quest, 4 is fizzled spell, 5 is slowly turn into sheep and lose your next turn and 6 is lose one mind til end of quest.
The glory of this is you can cast anything you want. No keeping track of anything. Just take the mishaps as you get them. It also make the game a little grittier because you could die trying to pull off something awesome.
Another idea for the attacking System. I got Heroquest a few days ago and was able to play the game with my girlfriend via the new app. So my idea for the attacking system would be as follows: The heroes can renounce their walking action and instead transform one of their attackdice into one direct hit. The role the other dice as usual. The monster of course can defend with their dice as usual. That would mean heroes can profit from good positioning. Like a storming barbarian has his usual three random dice, but once he managed to focus, he can use this action to put more damage out and turn one of his dice into one sure strike. I would leave the defense mechanism as it is. I think it can be frustrating to players if they cant put one damage on a monster with three dice. And with that mechanic you could increase your chance.
The combat dice randomness are what makes it fun to me lol. I love the panic that ensues in the first quest when you open the room with the two dread knights lol
Found a version online where Wizard has an ability to recharge a spell once per quest by rolling a dice and missing a turn. If they fail they can miss a turn again if they succeed that ability is used until next quest. When the Wizard aquires the Wizard cloak and Wizards staff they gain two more additional chances to recharge a spell. Giving up a mind point for a spell recharge is good too!
1: I would give Fire of Wrath, Fireball, and maybe Swift Wind to have the ability to recharge on the roll of a 5 or 6 on a red die. 2: The issue with Auto-Skull, is a lot of monsters have only 1 Body Point. Removing the chance to botch the Barbarians roll, would result in a lot of deaths among the Goblins, Skeletons, Zombies and Orcs. Perhaps just a once per combat one die reroll for the Barbarian. 3: Advanced HeroQuest gave the "Dungeon Master" fate points when the players succeeded. He could cash these in to create new traps, or give monsters a better attack. 4: Expand the dungeon. The problem with the classic board is its rather claustrophobic. Heroes often choke point monsters in the one space wide corridors or in a doorway, which often leads one player to be the only one actively participating in combat! ....whew!
how about this, as an action, when there are monsters on the board, the wizard or elf can roll a red dice for each mind point. On a 6, the wizard gets a random spent spell back
@@megamonstercookies they said wizard or elf. Then the next sentence says just wizard. It could be assumed they meant both but they said just wizard. It was just a joke.
Tried a lot of stuff with Heroquest, but in the end it always got too complicated. My group prefers to have a drink and talk while playing, not paying 100% attention to the game. So simple is key. I did add some custom stuff to the characters to make them feel more unique, but kept it to 1 or max 2 things (like rerolling dice or defending with black shield for specific characters). That seems to be working quite well. For the more complicated stuff, I just go with Pathfinder 2E. But thats a whole different story and requires a different mindset / type of player, even if you do a dungeon crawl there (like Abomination Vaults).
Love your ideas. For movement we roll the 2 red dice plus one. Some random elements and static. For the wizard the can burn mind points to keep the spell or recast.
The solution my group uses for spells is that the wizard has all 4 schools of his own magic and the elf has all 8 of the elf spells. We also have a spellshift system, where the elf/wizard can sacrifice 2 of their spells to get back a spell they already cast as an action. So in between fights, if the wizard wants genie or a heal spell back, he can give up two spells in his arsenal to get it back. The issue you're going to run into if you just let a player get spells back for free is that the wizard will just make all difficulty meaningless. There's nothing stopping the wizard from just healing all the damage the party takes after every fight. It takes any and all challenge away from the monsters unless you power creep the monsters to compensate for the additional healing magic the wizard has.
I think the biggest problem with HQ is that the heroes can walk into a room and clear it with not even taking a shot sometimes.. I love idea of Zargon being able to upgrade his forces at times as well.. I also like the idea that there are multiple goals in each quest! Main goal and sub goal... and consequences for not accomplishing the secondary goals ( For example.. Lets say you have to rescue someone but you have to clear every monster as well , IF you dont then every quest there after Zargon can place that many BP worth of creatures extra onto the board ) The door jams are another problem that seems to be fixed when we use double doors..
Making the Barbarians start 3 Attack D6, just be 2 Attack D6 with the 3rd an auto skull, is a geniusly simple idea. Now he doesn't lose his edge later game once all the other heroes have extra equipment. Especially if making it that he doesn't start with the broadsword, once he gets that it's 3 Attack D6 with a 4th always a skull. I'm loving this idea. For the Evil wizard, the tokens from Advanced HeroQuest are easily modded into the game.
An easy fix for attacking is to switch to D6’s. Each character rolls the same amount of dice, but instead of hitting at 50% (4’s or better), you could say the barbarian hits at 3+ and the wizard gets 1 die and hits at 4+. Etc. Same with defense. Default is defending on 5+, but helmet gives you 4+, shield and a helmet defends at 3+. Etc.
My House rules, partly to make this a bit more fun for the kids. Move: if you rolled less than 4, your 'hero' was distracted, draw a treasure card. Maybe the distraction was a wandering monster or maybe it was a shiny bauble. Spells: The wizard/elf can spend an entire turn and lose a mind point, to take back a spell. Since the British/Australian version had no effects from the mind points, was a useless stat, it seemed like it was the original intention somehow. Since also the Brit/Aus version all monsters had 1 HP, it seemed ok to keep the combat as it was. if there were more HP for some monsters, then yes, having some kind of auto damage would take care of the difference. There are so many Dungeon Crawlers out there now, I own like 30 of them, so I don't feel that the market needs a more complex HQ, yet vice versa, I'd like to see a more kid friendly HQ, yes Coraquest is awesome for my 8+yr old, but its too much for my 5yr old, where HQ is very playable for the 5yr old.
I always hated the movement rules. Instead of rolling, the Dwarf has a move rate of up to 6, the elf has a move of up to 10. Everyone else gets an 8. Any character can sprint at 12, but only a limited number of times per game before becoming fatigued. The elf can sprint 3 times, the Dwarf can sprint 5 times. The rest can sprint 4 times. I use bingo chips as sprint tokens.
Thank you for creating this entertaining video.Thoughtful observations on this board game fill my heart with joy. I always play as the elven heroine and I have a feeling it is easy to get overwhelmed by a huge number of monsters. Spells being one time use only also make it quite hard for heroes to survive.
Here are my house rules. 1. Each Hero rolls a white die for searching \ treasure finding. If a skull is rolled, they can perform that action. 2. The group can only search for treasure once per room. If Wizard pulled a treasure card, no matter what it is, no other Hero can pull a treasure card for that room. 3. When no monsters are on the table, each Hero can move 7 squares. 4. If a Hero is killed, roll a white die for each item they possess. If you roll a skull, that item is gone. For gold, roll percentile die to determine how many gold is lost. 5. A Hero has X amount of lives. X equals Body Pts \ 2 rnd down. Therefore, the Dwarf, with 7 Body pts, can be killed 3 times before he is permanently dead and out of the campaign. If the group are in a room and they want to search for secret doors and no one rolls a skull, essentially, no one can find a secret door even though one does exist. And yes, that could mean the group fails the quest because that is the only way to complete the quest. You cannot win them all.
Maybe the wizard have could a recharge spells ability where you roll to recharge a number of spent spells instead of movement that turn. The roll to move is also good too because it means players don't get bogged down over planning moves and telling other players where to move exactly on their turn.
Some of the changes and/or additions I’ve thought up Spell casting: a simple way I’ve came up with recovering discarded spells is to have whenever a hero spell caster rolls to move, the dice may also allow them to reclaim a discarded spell: - Assign a value between 1 and 6 to each spell group, the rest will be left unassigned. - Whenever a spell caster rolls one of the assigned values on either of the movement dice they may pick a discarded spell to recover from that group. - The hero may only recover spells from the spell groups they chose at the start of the quest. - If a roll covers 2 different spell groups then they must choose from which group to pick a discarded spell from. - Only spells that have been discarded can be retrieved, ongoing spells need to be broken before they’re considered discarded. Combat: watching this video got me thinking about the combat probabilities and after cranking some numbers I noticed how the simplicity of the combat design essentially combined accuracy and damage into a single roll. For clarification on the next part, I consider a miss when no skulls are rolled. The Wizard doesn’t just hit the weakest, he’s also the most inaccurate with their attacks as they only land half of the time before you even have to consider the defensive roll of their target, the Elf and Dwarf don’t fare that much better since they can still miss 25% of their attacks with their default equipment and the Barbarian has the best starting accuracy with only a 12,5% chance to miss their attack. For every attack dice you add the chance to miss halves, Battles Axes miss 6,25% of the time, a Barbarian with Courage would miss barely over 3% of the time and a combination of a Battle Axe and Courage would miss just ever so slightly over 1,5% of the time. I personally don’t agree with how the hardest hitting weapons also become the most accurate so I came up with an alternate combat system that would normalize the chance to hit/miss across all weapons: - When attacking, roll 2d6, if 4 or greater the attack hits, otherwise it’s a miss. This sets the chance to miss at around 8,33%, slightly worse than the Battle Axe but better than the starting equipment of the Barbarian with the old system. - Reduce the number of combat dice rolled for all attacks by 1 - Roll any number of combat dice remaining - Total damage output will be 1 + (skulls rolled) With this system, all the weapons can still hit as hard a before, but none are more accurate than another. Optionally I would set the to-hit value of monsters to 5 or greater as the increased monster accuracy might be too much to handle for the heroes in some missions. Chaos/Dread Player’s turn: I’m not familiar with Descent but the description you give reminds me of the Alien Event cards in the Space Crusade game. At the start of the Chaos player's turn they will draw a card from this deck and play its effects, mostly bad for the Space Marine players, rarely good. The Chaos player could even keep certain cards to play them on a later turn. Applying something like this to HeroQuest wouldn’t be too hard as they have many similar cards in the existing Treasure deck.
When the wizard cast a spell they puts it in front of them. Whenever they want to cast it again they must discard under it a number of magic cards equal to the cards in its pile. So the second time the cost is one spell, but on the third time they want to cast it, the wizard needs to get rid of two other spells in order to cast one.
Another simple rule is allow players to do an action move and search on a turn Instead of move action or search It speeds the game up Say they walk down a hallway search for traps find nothing they have plenty of movement to make it to a door and open it and go in As it is the player stops and waits a turn cause they used search now they cant attack By letting them do all three on a turn they can go in and attack Or after they cleared out the room they can search for treasure or traps secret doors not having to wait another turn then after that search wait another turn to go to the next room They come in kill the monster do the search and next turn move to the next room
We play that a magic user has to roll as many dice as his mind points to cast a spell - every spell has a different cost in skulls: 1, 2, or 3. If he fails, he loses the spell for the rest of the quest. So no need for mana: the mechanism is very simple.
With the spell casting I let my wizard use all of there spells then I pick 2 at random for them to use again and repeat that, maybe a little OP but at least with it been random they can’t plan what they want
Changes I would make: 1. There seems to be very little variety in the attack pattern of the low-level enemies (goblin, orc, skeleton, zombie). They all can only attack an adjacent hero. I understand that one of the purposes of Heroquest is to simplify the overly complicated mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons. However, if I were designing the game, I would add a ranged attacker (such as a Goblin Archer), and a monster that can attack diagonally (an Orc Spearman?). They would have only 1 Body Point and reduced attack and defense die in order to make them easy for the heroes to dispatch. 2. With regards to the Magic system, I would have Recall potions available in the Treasure Card deck. These potions will allow the Elf or Wizard to regain a spell they previously cast. 3. Also with regards to the Magic system, I would have new Spell Books available for sale between quests so that the Wizard can learn more powerful spells. A lot of Hero Quest hobbyists online have thought up creative spells that could be used.
I used to roll a dice for the treasure so that if a certain treasure had just come up, it didn’t mean I would come up soon. Also if there hasn’t been a trap or wandering monster for a long time, I didn’t mean one was bound to appear soon or vice-versa if there had been a lot, that there wouldn’t be many more for a while.
can you throw the cast spell into the search for treasure deck? Basically the wizard needs to find the spell components and/or the wizard is actually meditating or resting.
I just got the new Hero Quest and my son and I are trying to mash it with Massive Darkness. I love both games, but I think the best of both, combined would be amazing. I love the darkness and grind feel bonuses of MD and I love the tactical team play of HQ.
I'm thinking give each spells its own cooldown. fire of wrath can be cast again after 2 turns, ball of fire after 4 turns, genie eithere one time use or somethjing big like 10 turns. you could print this out on each card too.
My rule modifications are the spell casters get spell casting power when someone rolls a black shield. Then the spell caster has to catch the power by moving to the square where the battle happened. As for Zargon being proactive, when a hero rolls more skulls than is nessisary they made too much noise. The nearest monsters open a door to investigate. I'd add two more changes. Heroes gaining XP and initiative rolls. I have rules for those, XP requires tokens and initiative require colored dice. For every body point a hero scores they get a token. A tokens gives the hero one extra one time use dice per game. (This could cause an imbalance so modifications are in the works). For initiative each hero has a colored base ring and a colored D6 and a black D6 for each monster. The lowest roll goes first. Ties allow the heroes to attack at the same time, pooling their rolls, ditto for monsters.
HeroQuest is like a classic horror film. The scantily clad woman runs in the woods and the killer just keeps the same slow pace. Little does she know that she rolled a 2.
we have a few home rules if you roll the 2 red dice and get the same numbers say each dice is a 3 . you get to roll the dice again . gives you more movement. also skeletons block on skulls. makes them impossible to fight. we call it chang chang
My main ones are : move numbers with addition of sprint mechanic. Unlimited casting but each time they roll an attack dice if they get a skull they lose a mind point. Searching for treasure can only be down in rooms and only once, only a roll of 5+ on a d6 do they find something.
I run Games for a group of friends, i see Zargons role more of a dm in roleplaying games. BUT the game need definatly something. 1. I will add a card mechanic to the game to ensure the players have to hurry a little more (Zargon gets to draw 1 card on his turn) In later Expansions that mnay be increased. The cards spawn Wandering Monsters, let the Monster reoll dice, heal a monster and such stuff. 2. Magic in the basic Adventures are not many monster and the Wizard is quite good, in the later Expansions the Wizard and elf have a bit too few spells, so i decided to buy a second set of spells for the later adventures, so each spelcard will be duplicate with this, there are more spells to cast, not more options (wizard has enough with 9 Spells) and easy tracking.
i jumped straight from the core game(new version) , which was fairly easy playing with the companion app but then went straight to frozen horror. even with the extra solo mission they released its just too hard. i found myself running away from the dread warrior in the second solo quest while shooting with the crossbow but could not for my life kill him. he eventually caught up to me. then i just died to dice rolls.
Well, I have always liked a certain degree of diceyness in my games. And besides that, the use of multiple dice does bring statistics to bear instead of the pure randomness of rolling a single die. Personally, I have been thinking about implementing the following house rules: 1. Movement becomes a mix of a fixed base value plus dice. -- In my case, it is a base movement of 2 spaces. -- Now the player rolls 2 dice and adds that value but I use different dice for the heroes. -- Dwarfs role 1D4 +1D6; Humans role 2d6 and Elves role 1D6+1D8. In addition, I'm, thinking about having armour downgrade one die to a smaller one for every two additional defence dice. So a barbarian with 2 extra dice due to armour would only role 1D6+1D4 for movement. This needs playtesting, however... 2. Casting magic is different in my games. -- A spell behaves just as normal BUT is neither automatically cast nor lost after one casting. -- All casting always requires attack rolls and the spell is cast as soon as at least one skull is rolled. A caster may use as many dice as his current Mind is. AND may cast spells as long as he still has Mind dice to roll! -- Also if the same number or more black shields come as skulls then something happens. If the same number of skulls and black shields are rolled then the spell is cast but lost after casting. If the number of black shields is higher than the number of skulls the hero takes one damage to mind and the spell is lost. 3. I allow any hero to attack multiple enemies. BUT he must allocate his combat dice. So a barbarian with 3 combat dice could attack 3 goblins with only one action by attacking each one with only one dice.
Several seconds before bout monsters. Is giving my ideas for my campaign adventure for FFG Star Wars AoR,F&D and EoTE. Right now I just home brewed the rules. I’m working on the game character sheets. I’m getting there slowly but surely. For a person who is on SSI it’s very impressive. I remember HeroQuest in 1989. I bought one copy. Played with my nephew. The game Quests were hard. I’m glad that Hasbro bought out Avalon Hill and the rights of HeroQuest. They did redesigned the game. Made the original quest a lot easier. Figures alot thicker. Pieces not lookin like cardboard cutouts. Which were flimsy. But!! Solo expansion quests are unfair and they cheat. Multiplayer expansion packs(Kellers keep&Return of the witch lord). Those aren’t unfair or cheat.
We treated the game less like a board game with fixed rules and more like a role playing system with the game master acting like … a game master. Anything was possible.
Here an idea for the wizard and spells ...everytime the wizard casts a spell he chooses an element and can only play those spells of that element until they are all in the discard.... Whenever he wishes to start a new school of spells of a different element ....he has to always rotate a set of elements (eg all fire spells) out of his hand to draw another set of element spells back into his hand (eg water spells) thus he is always rotating to 2 sets of spells of which he can use and has to be more selective of which spells to use for the sitaution..... Also the player who plays the elf...only get one set of element of spells ....so maybe after their spells are used up they have to give up a turn to regain those spells perhaps
The mana system you're describing is more or less the way a sorcerer in dnd works compared to how the wizard works similarly to the wizard in this game (spontaneous vs prepared). How they balanced it is that wizards get higher level or more impactful spells while sorcerer gets to cast more of the lower level ones.
I let my heroes trade in spells from other elements to recast other spells. So far haven’t had anyone spamming Genie. My Wizard friend enjoys killing with his stick too much, dude is a menace to goblins everywhere.
The problem of balancing the spells by mana points is a thorny one because the spells are so variable. My solution has just been to give the wizard more spells through levelling, which gives them time to learn their new spells slowly.
Something like this happened with our Barbarian last night. His rolls were terrible, just awful. It went from uncannily funny to just plain sad and frustrating. Some kind of modifier would have made sense to negate this problem because there was a larger portion of our game he was laughably worthless.
This Game doesnt need any Rule chnages because there is Advanced HeroQuest from GW and thats it how you play the Game even solo....Simple Heroquest is for Kids and a GM is needed and the new HeroQuest ist to Warcraft epic Style shit and lacks the GW Warhammer style and feel. I recomend the orginal version :)
I'm only new to heroquest with the modern reprint edition. So far the only thing that jumps out at me as a feature of the game I am starting to not enjoy is doorway traffic. I mean, when one hero is in a corridor fighting a monster that is inside the first square of the room, it can lead to the other three heroes having to wait or skip their go as they can't move through monsters. I'm not sure if house ruling to allow characters to also move through monsters would potentially help this problem without causing other unforseen problems.
We have not ever had to create a house rule to deal with that issue. In fact, Zargon often engineers this situation because it can be a very dangerous situation for the heroes. In a situation like that, since monsters can also move and attack or attack and then move, it means every monster in the room should be able to cycle through on Zargon's turn and attack the hero making the stand in the door. That can potentially deal out a lot of damage. Now, on the Hero's next turn, he can attack and then move out of the way, allowing another hero to move in and fill the gap. Unless the hero making the stand in the door was the last in the lineup. Then, if he moves, Zargon can have the monsters flow in!
@@EHeathRobinson It's no possible for every Monster to "cycle thru" and attack on one Zargon turn, when a monster is at the door. Only two monsters could feasibly attack. The first would attack and the door and then move out of the way. The second would MOVE into that space and attack. Then he's "stuck" in that doorway position until Zargon's NEXT turn to move him.
Each hero is "special" in different ways - the casters cannot be replaced (at least in the stock game) but the barbarians benefit (most combat dice attack + bodypoints) become less important with equipment - eg the dwarf becomes barbarian after purchasing the broadsword -1 bp. Perhaps barbies "special" could always be 1 skull -1dice. We have an ability set for barbarian that uses incoming damage = points to spend on abilities and the points disappear out of combat. Think rage from wow. The idea here is to keep opening doors and fighting in order to keep rage tokens to spend. Abilities are reusable with a cooldown. Obviously a huge jump from +1 skull.
Roll and Move suggestion: static value + d6 roll. Humans 4, Elf 5, Dwarf 3. Heavy armor penalty makes the static value = 2. Magic System idea to start working with: Spells available always. Categorize it applying Difficulty points (for example from 0-2), 0 most common spell, 2 most powerful spell. When attempting to cast roll an attack die, for each skull scored a caster allocates one damage point to himself Combat mechanics/Active Defense current is okay, otherwise: introduce some kind of leveling system or learning a skill by spending a gold that will allow you modify single dice from roll. Zargon: You are Game Master = You are environment. You can do whatever you want trying to be entertaining, for example: "Elf hears that somebody opened a door. The creaking sound that comes from the deep silence means that something might came out from the dark. You not feel safe anymore." :)
An orc just got a string of lucky rolls and my barbarian unlucky rolls, killed my barbarian in the second room, I also healed him during. I really dont feel like trying to finish the quest without the barbarian.
Or, we will sometimes just let the Heroes moves to any location they want if there are no monsters active and they are walking through areas which they have already walked over (so no traps).
The app works great for taking over the role of zargon and allowing all players to play as heroes. The problem is that it strictly limits you to four heroes. I ran a larger group for the high school I teach at, so we ran anywhere from 4 to 8 heroes on a given night. I would just add monsters and traps to balance against the added hero strength, but the app doesn't allow for this.
@@EHeathRobinson you can somewhat get around it by doing some extra hero movement. The app is very liberal with what it allows you do with movement. It still tracks actions per turn, and is especially great for tracking each hero's searches. But you can move as much as you want, in pretty much any order you want. So I would usually insert my spell caster classes (it's also fantastic for line of sight determination), and then use whatever hero icon is in no danger of being attacked to "pretend" to be the Frontline tank. The monster AI is actually pretty good, but you can be smarter. So it might look like it's attacking your bard, but as long as you know the "bard" is actually your dwarf, you can work around the limitation. But it's MUCH more tedious to do that.
The attack is much less random than the defense. There are 3 skulls on one dice, so the chance per dice is 50%. Defense is 33% or 17%. But automatic shields would be to powerfull.
I THINK you can use the new app to play solo. I have not gotten to check it out yet, but I will. I think it will allow you to take the game out for a solo spin.
As Zargon, as a way to keep the pacing and prevent heros from slowing down and being a bit too meticulous. I have a coin token with with a monster on one side. At the beginning of Zargons turn, I flip the coin (I just flip it over, this isnt a coin toss) and when the monster side comes up, I spawn the wondering monster for the map outside of sight of the heros, and take my turn as normal. The coin merely acts as a reminder to spawn a “wandering monster” every other turn. I exercise some discretion when deciding whether or not to use this. But it is an effective tool to keep the constant sense of pressure and need to progress on the heroes. They really have to weigh out the value of taling a few turns between every room to do a full sweep of searches, as well as take the time to stack up in front of the next door, in a way that gives them the most advantages and actions before zargon would even be able to act
I think that is a good idea. I think there needs to be a stream of monsters like that are showing up to keep the pressure on the heroes and preventing them from playing an optimal strategy.
I loved this game when i was a kid and want to introduce my son to it - what age do you guys think a young boy should start playing this game, and what are the best models to 3d print for it?
I got started playing really early. I was may be, seven? Somewhere in there. My brother was younger than I was and he playing with us. Which models are best for 3-D printing is going to be a bit subjective, but I did happen to notice that on Facebook there is a group about 3-D printing HeroQuest. So there is a community that fully prints their sets. There’s probably a lot of information on that around.
I'm new to hero quest. Didn't have it as a kid. Bought it because I now have 3 young sons who love anything medieval. I don't understand the rules for purchasing extra equipment. Can you only add one equipment card to gain one extra dice per dungeon or can u keep adding cards so the hero can have 5,6,7 attack or defend dice per role?
New equipment that you purchase should not go away in between quests. So, yes, as Heros get more gold and buy more and more stuff between quests, they will get more and more attack and defense dice. But, it is important to notice what equipment gives you a flat number of attack and defend dice and what grants you extra dice. For instance, the dwarf starts the game with a short sword and so has an attack of 2 dice. Later, the dwarf can buy a broadsword. That would give the dwarf an attack of 3 dice (not 5 dice). Items like shields and helmets do, however, grant *extra* defense dice to be added in.
Could you have the wizard use the spells in a reduced manner like half power you keep the spell but full power it gets discarded as normal ? And I think the ring item can hold two full spell uses if I remember. Oh and I Agee with ur roll and move explanation the monsters sort of have a home dungeon advantage lol
Maybe they could be rewritten in such a way. One obstacle might be that there’s rather a little granularity in the HeroQuest system to double or half power. But you might find a way to make it work. And yes, the ring is a great artifact for the wizard to have.
I love the thoughts here, I will nr playing next week with some friends. I am curious about your Incantris game, do you have any more copies of that game for sale?
