AGAINST THE OGRE HORDE discussion

[Kurgan]

There was no female Dwarf included in this one, but that rumor came true in a fashion for September's "Jungles of Delthrak," which includes a female "Dwarf Explorer" hero (alongside the Berserker, a variant of the Barbarian).

Of course it will be interesting to see people adapting the monsters from that new campaign from the rules in this one too!

[LucaRocks]

They still haven't released the PDF of this quest book? Does it usually take this long?

[Kurgan]

Not usually. But then the Frozen Horror we had just German for quite some time...

[LucaRocks]

Darn it! Those Germans are always one step ahead!

[carthoz]

Darn it! Those Germans are always one step ahead!

Entschuldigung!

[wallydubbs]

They've really upped the ante with this one. The remake is much harder then the original. The Ogres are insanely strong with body points, attack dice and defense dice, their aversion to magic seems to be their one true weakness. Spells weighing off of Mind Points will work well against them, however Sleep is the only spell the Wizard could offer while he's limited in attack; but Rock Skin is nearly negligible when facing an Ogre, he'll likely break it on first attack; Genie and Courage most likely won't take out an Ogre unless he gets really lucky roll, an Ogre requires multiple attacks to take down; Tempest will delay an Ogre for a turn, but the Wizard's healing spells would be very useful. However the Elf has the most helpful options of spells with Deep Sleep, Hypnotic Blaze and Slow. The Warlock offers a helpful Fear spell while the Bard's Lullaby could also be useful.

I've been running through this quest pack with the Knight, Elf, Warlock and Berserker and despite the Knight owning Plate Mail and Berserker with Borin's Armor, the hit ratio of the Ogre's as well as Festral's personal guard is quite overwhelming. The Berserker has really had to scrounge for body points in this one and has refrained from using his Enrage ability because the dangers of losing body points far outweighs the likelihood of deadly attack dice.

To be fair this isn't Frozen Horror levels of hard, but it's truly more difficult then the Game System, Keller's Keep, Prophecy of Telor, Spirit Queen's Torment and Return of the Witch Lord. In fact, I think a group of heroes who have been through the previous expansions that have been able to save up potions of healing should be going into this. Unfortunately for me only 3 out of the 4 heroes have only gone through 1 previous expansion. So healing potions were hard to come by yet supply crates were greatly appreciated.

I threw in additional treasure cards from other expansions and found a loophole around pit traps with the Warlock's Demonform. The heroes also came in with 2 Reagent Kits, but in all of Against the Ogre Hoard the Alchemist Bench only appears 1 time... But I must say the Celerity and Frost Skin potions came in handy during the final battle with the Ogre Lord. Another adjustment I had to make came with Wandering Monsters, like Frozen Horror and Mage of the Mirror, they should be limited to 1. It's a difficult pack, you need to approach this with healing potions regardless of Armor.

[SirRick]

Its just a shame, for all that hard work the heroes don’t find anything of value. If I ever run this, I’ll have the blood-red Chain Mail that the heroes find be an artifact that reduces damage from fire and fire spells by one point, just so they can find something interesting.

[Aki]

The biggest mistake of this expansion and probably the only, personally I solve this problem by inserting here the artifacts that I miss from past adventures

[wallydubbs]

The biggest mistake of this expansion and probably the only, personally I solve this problem by inserting here the artifacts that I miss from past adventures

The artifacts have all been divided out. I played each quest from the Game System with a random group of heroes so most of the heroes had something extra by the time Keller's Keep started. From there I randomly drew 4 heroes to go through all of Keller's Keep, while another group did Prophecy of Telor, another 4 for Spirit Queen's Torment and 4 for Return of the Witch.

So by the time I was finished with the 4 smaller Expansions I had had 16 heroes nearly maxed out. I knew Ogre Hoard was gonna be tough and sent in 4 that were close to being maxed out so there weren't really any other unclaimed artifacts.

[Vorimir]

I was thinking about giving the weared of the red chain mail +1 BP but -1 Mind Point.