What order should the quest packs be played?

[herman_the_german]

I still think KK before ROTWL is madness.
KK is hard, while ROTWL is a cake walk. Orcs and Firmirs attack with 3 dice, skeletons and Zombies attack with 2, makes a huge difference. The only hard part of ROTWL is the first quest at the start with all the rooms opening at once, if you survive that you'll walk the rest of the expansion.

Use Rust Spells or such on your heroes before ROTWL to remove some of their power:

www.heroscribe.org/thealchemistsbench/g ... trong.html

[alyndavies]

I still think KK before ROTWL is madness.
KK is hard, while ROTWL is a cake walk. Orcs and Firmirs attack with 3 dice, skeletons and Zombies attack with 2, makes a huge difference. The only hard part of ROTWL is the first quest at the start with all the rooms opening at once, if you survive that you'll walk the rest of the expansion.

Use Rust Spells or such on your heroes before ROTWL to remove some of their power.

Their not in the UK game mate, no Chaos Spalls at all.

[Kagekaze]

I still think KK before ROTWL is madness.
KK is hard, while ROTWL is a cake walk. Orcs and Firmirs attack with 3 dice, skeletons and Zombies attack with 2, makes a huge difference. The only hard part of ROTWL is the first quest at the start with all the rooms opening at once, if you survive that you'll walk the rest of the expansion.

Use Rust Spells or such on your heroes before ROTWL to remove some of their power.

Their not in the UK game mate, no Chaos Spalls at all.

And honestly it doesn't help much with good heroes. I did everything I could to strip my players of armor, but even then Kellar's gives a 500g reward. All my heroes have 2 weapons and all the armor, they only buy potions at this point. I've pulled every trick I can think of short of outright cheating and it's been hard. It doesn't help my group is pretty crafty.

[lucasdp]

I just finished the Witch Lord trilogy in the original questbook (Quests 12-14), and holy crap, undead monsters are no threat at all to any well-equipped hero. Throughout all three quests, my heroes were never in any real danger until the Witch Lord showed up at the end.

For these reasons, I think I'm going to run my heroes through RotWL before KK (I haven't told them that the Emperor is trapped yet, so the thematic element of saving the Emperor first is inconsequential, I think). I'm also thinking of house-ruling that undead will defend on white shields, otherwise I'm afraid RotWL will be very boring for this old Zargon.

[Kagekaze]

I just finished the Witch Lord trilogy in the original questbook (Quests 12-14), and holy crap, undead monsters are no threat at all to any well-equipped hero. Throughout all three quests, my heroes were never in any real danger until the Witch Lord showed up at the end.

For these reasons, I think I'm going to run my heroes through RotWL before KK (I haven't told them that the Emperor is trapped yet, so the thematic element of saving the Emperor first is inconsequential, I think). I'm also thinking of house-ruling that undead will defend on white shields, otherwise I'm afraid RotWL will be very boring for this old Zargon.

As someone who's group is currently doing RotWL just after KK, I can agree with this sentiment. KK appeared to be the first one in sequence mainly due to the reward at the end that RotWL is lacking. Considering I didn't know there were more packs out there, this was a pretty easy mistake to make. Unfortunately undead are just no match for heroes with a full set of chainmail+shield+helm if you're using basic rules. The odds just don't add up, 2 monster attack vs 5 hero defend usually means a 1 skull to a 1.5 white shield ratio. My group today is about to go into the Lost Legion quest, if the spell caster doesn't have rust I'm thinking of giving him 3 casts of it to try and even the odds. This is just after the Halls of the Dead quest where the heroes lost a lot of gold so this might make things a little even if only for a quest or two.

Sad thing was watching a shackled Barbarian and Elf with NO armor survive a whole room of skeletons with little to no damage. It breaks my evil wizard heart.

[Gold Bearer]

KK is supposed to be first. Read the epilogue in the main quest book. It tells you right after you kill the witch lord that he isn't proper dead and you need to do it again, but first you must travel to KK. I'm not saying you shouldn't play RotWL first, just that KK is meant to be first.

Sad thing was watching a shackled Barbarian and Elf with NO armor survive a whole room of skeletons with little to no damage. It breaks my evil wizard heart.

Even using the BP in my sig won't help much, it's mostly skelies if I remember right. Instead of changing the white shields for heroes/black shields for monsters theme you could combine the increased BP with the doomguard rule from tDC (they defend all skulls if they roll at least one black shield).

[Kagekaze]

Even using the BP in my sig won't help much, it's mostly skelies if I remember right. Instead of changing the white shields for heroes/black shields for monsters theme you could combine the increased BP with the doomguard rule from tDC (they defend all skulls if they roll at least one black shield).

Yeah it was 12 skeletons and 2 chaos warriors if memory serves.
I kind of like the slight BP increases your sig uses. I'm tempted to try it as we move forward. Since they'll be fighting ogres soon, I'm not sure if it'll be too much or just right. We can always test and I can be a generous GM and allow some survival if it does screw over the heroes too much.
I've seen the idea of using black shields for critical blocks, little concerned it would make games that already take several hours go even longer. Will keep it in mind though.

[Kagekaze]

Ugh, just checked Forgotten Legion and it's tons of skellies and the boss monster is just a slightly more beefy chaos warrior. Thankfully there's a small amount of mummies and zombies, so if I use the increased BPs they should at least live a little bit longer. Thinking of giving the boss one more BP just to be safe and then giving him 3 casts of rust anyway. If this messes the heroes up too much I'll let them find missing equipment for my error.

[Gold Bearer]

You could use the doomguard defence rule just for the boss.

The boss is Skulmar, that's one freaky coincidence. viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2450&start=120

You could always use this rule:
When an Undead Monster is reduced to 0BP, place them lying down on their square. Downed Monsters don't block LOS or movement but you can't end a turn on their square unless you're attacking them. The EWP rolls a dice for each Downed Monster at the start of their turn. On a skull it gets back up but can't take a turn that round, on a white shield it stays down and on a black shield it gets back and can take a turn that round. Downed Monsters always get back up with 1BP. An Adventurer can finish off a Downed Monster by moving onto their square and using their attacking action.

It's from my monster skills: viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3284

[Kagekaze]

So I want to report that the updated body points did help a little bit. Skulmar died in one round, but mainly because I put him in harms way in order to get a rust spell off. It was an very good series of rolls from the Barbarian and Elf that felled him, nothing from the wizard this time around.

The good news is I did manage to get 2 potions off the heroes. One heroic brew (part of Skulmar's demise) and one healing potion from the elf thanks to the Chaos Warrrior wandering monster.

I think I'll have to keep a close eye on how things go in the Ogre Horde due to the toughness of the ogres themselves, but I must offer my thanks again Gold Bearer. I'm pretty sure I mentioned you by name to credit you when the video eventually comes out on YT. If I didn't I'll make sure to put a note in.