HeroQuest Discussion: House Rules in 2024!

[@off1k]

I've watched up to end of general tweaks and pretty good so far, I may incorporate some things into my house rules. Some of is very similar to my rules, so here's what I'm doing. You will need a polyhedral set of dice or at least a d12 and d20. Official Heroes: Movement ------------------------------------------ Basically it's Humans (1d6+5) Elves (1d6+6) Bard & Dwarf (1d6+4) Wearing Plate Armour (1d6+3) Barbarian: 1d6+5 Bard: 1d6+4 Druid: 1d6+5 Dwarf: 1d6+4 Elf: 1d6+6 Knight: 1d6+5 Monk: 1d6+5 Rogue: 1d6+6 Warlock: 1d6+6 Wizard: 1d6+5 Any character with Plate Armour: 1d6+3 When no Monsters or environment enemies (special tiles like boulder) are on the board, all Heroes (including Plate Armour) may move up to 10 squares. ============================================================================================================================= Searching ---------------- One Hero can only search for treasure once per furniture piece and must stand adjacent to furniture piece, player then draws a treasure card unless there's a quest item found. ==[Second Chance Draw]== A Hero can draw a second treasure card if they can roll equal to or under their Mind Points with 1d12. No Second Chance Draw if Hero draws a Wondering Monster card. Cannot search treasure for empty rooms. When searching the Weapon Rack, Hero draws card from shuffled Equipment Deck (unless there's a quest item) until they find the first Weapon or Armour card instead of drawing a treasure card. No second chance search allowed. When searching Alchemist Desk, Hero draws card from shuffled Equipment Deck (unless there's a quest item) until they find the first Potion or Scroll card instead of drawing treasure card. No second chance search allowed. If you have the Alchemy card deck from 'Rise of the Dread Moon' expansion, Heroes can craft certain potions from certain treasure cards they find at the Alchemist Desk. Remove 'Hazard!' treasure cards except poison traps, also remove 2 Wondering Monster cards. =================================================================================================================================== Inventory -------------- Heroes can carry no more than 4 potions and 4 items (Weapons/Armour) beyond what they are wearing. Scrolls can count as an item or potion. Heroes can carry and use X number of Scrolls equal to their Mind Points. Merchant --------------- Between quests Heroes may purchase items from the merchant, number of available items will be different each time. DM will roll 1d4+1d6+1d8+1d10+1d12+1d20 to determine amount of items available, shuffle Equipment Deck take top X number of cards for Merchant. 8d6 is another option but I find there's a more varied result with polyhedral set. This is based on Core game and ALL expansions, may need to adjust amount of dice suitable for amount of equipment cards available. Each card equals one purchasable item. Heroes can sell equipment/items/potions for half their value. Any unused Potions found in the treasure deck can be sold for 75 gold each. =================================================================================================================== Starting Spell Cards for Wizard and Elf ------------------------------------------------------------- Wizard and Elf start with spell cards equal to their Mind Points. Wizard can select any cards from Air, Earth, Fire and Water Decks, Elf selects cards from Elf Spell Deck from 'Mage of the Mirror' expansion. If you don't have 'MotM' expansion then both the Wizard and Elf select from any element spell decks one spell at a time taking turns (Wiz starts) equal to their current Mind Points, meaning the Elf can select 4 spells as a fresh Hero and the Wizard 6 spells as a fresh Hero. ONCE per quest the Wizard can replenish half of their USED Spells (rounding down) for the cost of 3 Body Points and 3 Mind points. The DM will shuffle the used spell cards and the top X number of spells cards are the replenished spells. ==================================================================================================================== Combat ------------- Hero Elf characters (Elf, Rogue, Warlock, Elf Mercenaries) have the ability to move through Monsters. The Rogue can Move, Action, and finish Move if they choose to when passing through Monsters but cannot 'Ambidextrous' skill. EG: Roll for 10, move 5 squares through a monster, attack, then move back 5 squares. Goblins, Skeletons and evil Elves have the ability to move through Heroes. Cannot use Crossbow or throw Daggers & Hand Axe's when adjacent (all 8 squares around the Hero) to Monsters, changing weapon costs an action or movement. Thrown daggers and Hand Axes are retrieved from dead enemies for successful hits after combat has finished (room or corridor cleared), failed thrown Daggers and Hand Axes are considered lost or damaged. Dungeon Master Wondering Monsters ------------------------------------------------------------- DM has a chance to add 1 'Wondering Monster' every round (up to 4 in total at any one time) providing there are monsters already on the board at start of DMs turn. If successful the DM places the WM at starting wooden door or stairway and moves immediately. DM rolls 1d20, score of: 20-09 = fail 08-07 = Goblin or Skeleton 06-05 = Goblin or Orc or Skeleton or Zombie 04-03 = Goblin or Orc or Abomination or Skeleton or Zombie or Mummy 02-01 = Goblin or Orc or Abomination or Skeleton or Zombie or Mummy or Dread Warrior or Gargoyle. Game speed is still pretty fast. I will watch the rest later on and comment :)

[@HeroQuestFans]

wow! I didn't detail everything, I do use some odd dice (digital anyway, thanks ribby) for drawing random things, like monsters that the audience "buys."

[@off1k]

​@@HeroQuestFans Interesting regarding audience?? is that dead players? so they can still be involved? I'm also toying with some ideas regarding searching for traps, eg: searching traps against your mind points could equal failed trap search. As well as initiative order and maybe interrupts for the DM. This might make it too tough for the Heroes. Other small changes are no revive when dead, so no using health potion to revive. So when your BP is zero you are dead but have considered using a revive with 1 BP option once per quest. All my house rules are designed for HQ decks, so no extra custom card decks. Having custom card decks does creates great twists to the game though. Edit - OK I've just watched more of your video, your audience is relating to your live streams. Edit 2 - I mix all the treasure (except remove hazard cards and some wondering monsters) and equipment cards from all expansions as there's less searching opportunity for treasure in my rules as you can't search treasure for empty rooms and only 1 Hero can search per furniture. Keep in mind I use 2 official decks of treasure cards so twice as many treasure hordes and such, I also remove 4 wondering monsters for 2 decks. Never liked that it was approx a 40 odd percent chance for a negative treasure card in official rules, it would actually put peeps off from searching especially if they were low health. I like the idea of a level up system and those black and green dice are an awesome idea.

[@HeroQuestFans]

@@off1k a "completely dead" hero would join the twitch audience for the remainder of that quest (he could grab another hero in the next adventure). as a host, if there were extra heroes already in play, I'd let them work it out amongst themselves if they wanted to keep rolling

[@HeroQuestFans]

@@off1k Treasure Without Doom and Twisting Torrent/Flashback or Luck (combat card) can be used to dodge a hazard. heroes can crowd themselves in a corner with three other characters to avoid a Wandering Monster attack much more easily (even without the "Knight's Challenge" once per quest). at this point my heroes have so many potions, it's tough for them to die this way

[@HeroQuestFans]

errata 3:55 meant to say sorcerer's table (not alchemist's bench). I lost my place there at the end, but you still get the general idea.

[@GuitarNewz]

What I do with the Wizard is he may recharge his exhausted spells. So a used spell becomes exhausted and is turned 180˚. Now a Wizard may recharge a spell, he throws a D6. On a roll of 1-5 he succeeds and the spell is turned 45˚. If the roll is a 6 the spel is broken and discarded and the Wizard suffers 1 Body point. I also give the Heroes a base movement and a D6 to move. Each equipment worn reduces the base move by 1. Also I use a Dungeon Event Table. So whenever there are no monsters in play at the end of their play, the Game Master receives a Skull Token. Then he proceeds to throw a D12. If the roll is equal to or below the amout if Skull Tokens, there's a throw on the Dungeon Event Table (anything from a GhostSpirit wandering monster to a Fire Skeleton Warrior to a moment to heal, etc…). Discard all Skull Tokens if the roll is equal or below the tokens.

[@HeroQuestFans]

sounds a little complicated (I guess maybe more like what Advanced HeroQuest did?), but if the system works for you, that's great!

[@Ribby00]

Good listen!

[@lucarocks7866]

So i was playing around with your elemental idea. I think i found a way to do it that i like. Basically, the Wiz rolls 6 D6 to conjure the elemental. Each die's value has to be assigned to one stat of the elemental (i e movement, att, def, bp, mp). And the six value would be how many turns the elemntal is on the board. I think that will balance it out if all 6s are rolled. What do you think? I was thinking of maybe giving each elemental a special ability. Wind can shoot at range, earth can phase, water can do two attacks and fire gives 1 damage to monsters who are in a squre next to him at the end of zargons turn. Maybe thats too much?

[@HeroQuestFans]

to me I'm kind of inspired by the magic attacks in "Gate of Doom/Dark Seal" arcade game. a super power, almost ridiculous level ability, that is time limited. the trouble is a very lucky roll could allow a good guesser to rampage through a big chunk of the quest, or utterly annihilate most boss battles. mostly intended for "unfair" quests that the heroes just need to bust out of. try it!

[@lucarocks7866]

​​@@HeroQuestFans I get what you're saying. So maybe the elemental's time limit (i.e. number of turns on the board) might be better using a D4? Or maybe d4 for all stats? Or since there are 3 cards per element, it should be limited to 3 turns on the board? I might like this option best

[@lucarocks7866]

Been waiting to find time to watch this. Good stuff. Some of it complicates the game a bit but I can see how the benefits far out way the complications. I will def look into some of those. Thanks! EDIT: Are the power up dice available in wood only? Links would help for some of these upgrades as well please.

[@HeroQuestFans]

Spielwarensaloon has been selling them in plastic for at least a decade from his page (in german). there's also several people on etsy selling versions of them (including in wood). STL versions are available on the various 3d print file sites out there too. the weakness of the "upgrade" system is that very few adults have a regular play group that is going to plow through 54+ adventures together (representing perhaps a hundred or more hours of gameplay). we pass around the character sheets from player to player to make it work. an easier way is to just nerf the harder quests and shorten them up if you want to have long campaigns.

[@lucarocks7866]

@@HeroQuestFans I found the dice I was looking for, thanks. I first tried Etsy figuring they would have some but the only ones were wooden. Weird that more people don't make a plastic version of them. Going to need to watch this a few times to take it all in.

[@HeroQuestFans]

forum.yeoldeinn.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=4898&hilit=upgrade I give permission to print for your own personal table use, but not to sell. thanks!

[@HeroQuestFans]

enjoy the video!

[@GeekGoneGiddy]

1:05:38 respect the work of others. I agree @Heroquestfans ©️

[@chrischristiansen6204]

I suppose if you pulled the hazzards out of the treasure type cards and had them as decks for zargon, zargon could roll a die and on a black shield pull a card from the relevant card type deck to keep the time cost/danger for searching built into the base rules. Not sure if keeping the nothing cards into the draw deck or a result of a black shiled would be a better way to handle it.

[@HeroQuestFans]

I hated the "nothing" card, but I kept it because it was an official part of the game once, and actually many players of the EU editions get a nostalgia buzz from it, so it has stayed ;)

[@chrischristiansen6204]

@@HeroQuestFans Maybe a nice replacement for the nothing card would be some kind of interesting detail or observation to set the scene that is mechanically equivalent to nothing found. Maybe useless fragments of a text, broken bottle, or a struggle with a particularly sketchy stuck drawer that makes a lot of noise but leaves you with nothing to show for it or a damaged/broken item due to the struggle of accessing it. The nothing card is boring in effect, but I think important mechanically to have a spread of good, neutral, bad outcomes.

[@paulcooper6048]

Too much. Just use Axion Quest.

[@HeroQuestFans]

sure, you can buy a big deck of cards to handle it all if you wish (from Axian who is part of our community, or anyone else). I'm just sharing what I made, and it's all free for anyone to use.