Daedalus wrote:I wouldn't want my Hero to have to face a bloodthirster after wearing down from the rest of the Quest. The Guardian still must be killed to complete the Quest.
Still, your point about the last encounter coming off lackluster is on point. In an old topic, I chose to take a cue from the cover art and add the ability to cast a Pass Through Rock spell. That way the Gargoyle can bypass the tank and get at the weaker Heroes at the rear using the divide and conquer tactic. To work best, the square marked with an "X" should be moved to the right of the crag tile.
I'm a bit embarrassed about my original post now. The Gargoyle at the end of Grin's Crag pretty clearly
is meant to be a Balrog homage. You even fight it on a supposedly narrow path, like the showdown with the Balrog at the Bridge.
The trouble is that it's a feeble effort. The cardboard cliff's edge for Grin's Crag doesn't even do anything--it's just decoration.
I like your Pass Through Rock idea. In fact, I have that written down somewhere myself--maybe I nicked it from your old post! One slight hiccup is that the rules say the Guardian is immune to all spells, so technically it wouldn't be able to cast Pass Through Rock on itself...
Another idea I had was to make fighting on the crag tile feel dangerous, with a risk of slipping and falling to your death. Something like this:
Fighting on the narrow cliff path is dangerous. If a character on the cliff tile rolls three or more black shields when attacking, he slips and falls to his death. He is immediately eliminated regardless of how many Body points he has remaining. The Guardian is used to fighting on the cliff and cannot fall. The chance of rolling three black shields is very low (the equivalent of rolling a triple 1), so it's unlikely to actually result in a hero death. But the mere possibility could make the fight more tense. It might also encourage the hero players to use weaker weapons than usual, so that they only roll two dice instead of three or four.
Another possibility I mentioned in a different thread might indirectly help with this fight: have a time limit to complete Grin's Crag, maybe by using the Treasure deck as a timer (discard the top card at the start of every evil wizard player turn). If the heroes are hurrying to exit the quest and save the Emperor's army, and suddenly find a Gargoyle blocking their path, the battle may feel more intense without beefing it up at all.
Incidentally, there are some interesting differences between the EU and NA versions:
- In the EU original, the crag/cliff cardboard tile has no name, just a (badly drawn) graphic on the map. In the NA edition the cardboard tile is called the 'cliff corridor', so any custom rule for the NA edition should use that phrase.
- In the EU version, the Guardian appears much closer to the exit door than in the NA version. The trigger square is four squares from the door in the EU edition, whereas it's the far end of the cliff corridor in the NA edition.
- There is no X on the map in the EU version to specify where the Guardian appears. Instead, you put the Guardian on a square adjacent to the triggering square. This means it could appear
behind the first player to trigger its appearance, rather than always appearing in front of them as in the NA edition. It can bypass the tank this way, meaning a Pass Through Rock might be unnecessary. (The wording is a little ambiguous, with a typo, and it's not quite clear whether the player finishes their move before the Guardian pops out.)
- In the EU edition the Guardian has three body points (the first multi-BP monster in the official quests) whereas it has four in the NA edition.
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