NA 2nd Edition errata suggestions

[Oftkilted]

Suddenly the crossbow looks like much less of a good investment if you can never switch to a melee weapon...

Swapping between a ranged and a melee weapon is already in game. That was done with the Dark Warrior crossbowmen. They have a ranged attack, and a melee attack.

In the US we didn't get this "Dark Company" with the Advanced Quest edition of the Game System (thank goodness for the online Heroquest community!). But it clarifies a rule that appears in our own BQP (and EQP), that characters can possess and use multiple weapons. Would you argue this ONLY applies to switching between melee and ranged?

I'm going further and saying you can pass equipment (not just dividing up big gold rewards, potions, artifacts... or weapons when you first find them), and once you get that weapon, you can use it on your turn. I'd say the same about Armor. The only caveat seems to be that you can gift something on your turn only. So you first have to toss him the idol, and on his turn he can toss you the whip, Indy.

We’re basically having the same discussion that we had over in Crossbow--2 handed or can use a shield?

At what point can you swap something in inventory with something in use? If you’re in a room with monsters swapping to a weapon you didn’t have in hand when you kicked down the door isn’t likely. The crossbow? It’s on a sling for rapid use. Swapping two melee weapons? Not so much. Or two ranged weapons? Not sold that’s good. Swapping armor? Not at all. As soon as monsters are in the picture. You’re stuck with what you choose going into the fight.

That being said, there’s no rules for doing the swap. So clarification wouldn’t be bad. Either way, common sense would be good to use for the ewp. Make a call for your game and go with it.

[cynthialee]

When monsters are in the same area it is simple and a give to me:

Melee weapons are easy...swapping weapons is an action. You want to drop the crossbow and grab your melee kit then you do not get to attack.
Armor would not be proper to change in combat except the shield which I would allow one to equip the shield when dropping the crossbow to draw a sword

[Kurgan]

It's less a question of realism than about clarifying a slightly ambiguous part of the rules... for the sake of impact on difficulty and balance.

The only place it really matters is when it comes to the Staff, Battle Axe and shield (and Spear, if they're porting it over from the EU edition).



Update: Was reading the translations of the Japanese gamesystem (no expansions were released for it, so I guess you can just call it Japanese Heroquest) rules again, and while it's clearly based upon the EU version, it has many differences. But it does say in that version that you can sell back equipment at half price. It also doesn't allow heroes to trade Healing Potions during the game. Needless to say this version has many unique variations from the others. But it might be the earliest official confirmation of a "sell back at half price" rule, depending upon when it was actually released.

[Super Saiyan Musashi]

When monsters are in the same area it is simple and a give to me:

Melee weapons are easy...swapping weapons is an action. You want to drop the crossbow and grab your melee kit then you do not get to attack.
Armor would not be proper to change in combat except the shield which I would allow one to equip the shield when dropping the crossbow to draw a sword

This discussion makes me think of Chrono Trigger, where Marle, when the enemy is too close to fire her crossbow at, uses the stock of the crossbow as a melee weapon, for equal damage no less. Lucca on the other hand, pulls out a hammer when the enemy is too close to fire her gun at. Marle's way probably wouldn't make sense for HQ tho. I was however inspired to make this: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5515

[Kurgan]

Not that it matters much but there is a precedent in the official material if you look at the officially released HeroQuest PC game(s) which are based on the Game System and Return of the WitchLord.

These video games used an eclectic blend of EU rules and its clear they cut corners probably to save memory. Their solution to switching weapons is that you just do it, it's a free action. They let each Hero (yes, even the Wizard) carry one of each weapon (yes, the wizard restrictions go out the window in the pc game), which still means a lot of equipment!

In these electronic versions, you can go into your inventory pouch and toggle off the shield and toggle on the battle axe, attack and then toggle it off and toggle your shield back on. As long as you've got the shield "on" next time you're attacked, it factors into your defense. Same with artifacts. The PC game doesn't let you trade items between players and Morcar (Zargon) is completely automated. No sharing gold either! The monster AI is also very limited (can't leave rooms, doesn't see you when you're not onscreen with you, doesn't understand how blocked squares work, etc). And yes, since it's EU based, unused potions just vanish between quests (and no alchemist shop to buy them from). So maybe apples to oranges, but still...

[iKarith]

The Command Chaos spell, can the evil Wizard force a hero to use one of his spells if they're being controlled?

…

Specifications on the Courage spell. The debate never ends on how long it lasts.

I'd view Command somewhat like a stronger version of the D&D Friends or Charm Person spells. Those make the target believe you're a casual acquaintance. It just makes them friendly toward you, if you are friendly toward them. If you're hostile to them or start ordering them to do things that would harm them, it's not going to last long. And when it breaks they know what you did…

HQ lacks mechanics for playing all of that out and I did say stronger version… I think this comes down to the Evil Wizard being reasonable. If the hero would use a potion or cast a spell, then yeah, they use the potion of cast the spell. But the hero isn't going to chug every bottle, throw their weapons off into the void (where they'll be lost), cast pass through rock and plow off in a single direction until the spell wears off, etc. And honestly, if the EWP tries to play like that, get a new EWP! That said, if he's in need of healing, he's likely to use a healing potion if he was seriously wounded or other thing like that. Or if the hero would feel like they were in need of using something else, they might do so.

But e.g. my heroes are kind of hoarding potions a bit in case of emergency. And Zargon knows that. I'd expect if Command hit, they wouldn't get used unless the character could reasonably be said to be having one. That said, several of my heroes are known to back away and take ranged shots, and the wizard jumps into diagonal spaces to smack with a staff. Oh, and he does use his spells to benefit his friends and he does throw his spells at bigger targets in the most opportune moments. And the combat skill cards we use for the non-magic users … those guys have a couple of these, and they've been known to combine them in clever ways… So a Commanded hero is going to suck no matter who it is, because if they're going offensive against the other heroes, they're all pretty well equipped to be pretty annoying adversaries.

As for Courage … we settled on it dissipating at the end of a player's turn. Reason being that the NA rules essentially tell you a specific turn order that puts the wizard last. You don't have to follow it, but if you do the wizard casts a spell and immediately Zargon has a chance to respond. "I cast Courage!" "Oh, in that case, I just move all of the monsters out of the castee's sight! Spell wasted!" That's a perfectly fair thing for Zargon to do—he can move his monsters wherever he wants. But it's also an absolute dick move, particularly if the monsters did not see the wizard cast the spell.

That's happened once, with a vanilla NA wizard, no homebrew applied to him in that quest. It absolutely changed how I use magic (the wizard's got so little attack magic and the rest of his magic is better saved for "the boss fight", he's basically mostly dead weight until then…) There's just no sense in wasting the limited resources of a character who's got very little to contribute until it's time to debuff a couple minions in a boss room, put what buff on the hero you can, and stay out of the way. "I guess I'm searching … oh."

We've got homebrew that has given him back his equipment from the EU version, so he doesn't have to hide from the monsters now, but he's still got a very limited quiver offensively and defensively. Because I literally make a point of not looking at maps (which would be out of sight and out of mind the way my brain is wired differently, being legally blind, unless I memorized some directions) passing through rock has limited use because he can't take anyone with him, and he isn't strong enough to run ahead blindly… I guess it's good for running away from danger. Sleep's not useful against anything undead but occasionally really useful even against a gargoyle(!) Tempest is useful against the boss, usually. Courage (the topic) … you kinda have to use only when your enemy is cornered or they'll run away… Speed is kind of an emergency measure. And he's got some healing. Oh, rock skin is usually useful as a precaution when things get tough. It actually makes him more protected than some others at least in the moment, but it's a lot more useful now that he has his EU armor upgrades.

The problem fundamentally is that I have identified what's wrong, but not how to fix it. The wizard just doesn't scale well in the NA game.

I feel like I never understood the "look through the door" thing in the NA edition. I can understand using it to target someone through the doorway with a crossbow, throwing dagger or spell. But when you open the door, you're forced to step through (in which case Zargon places everything in the room that doesn't require a search), right?

It never made sense to me that you had to walk through a door when opening it and couldn't backtrack in EU rules… Anyone with pets who lives in a house with a yard has opened the door to let them in or out. And if there's a screen door, it opens outward while the interior doors open inward. So it works both ways. Since doors can't be closed again, if they open inward, I assume we're not doing opening them gingerly, as that would make us un-ready to fight what was on the other side.

[on returning good treasure cards to the deck after searching in EU 1E]

It wasn’t as much a mistake as a change in path.

One that might make sense (increases the peril of searching and searching and searching), but it also creates an incentive for metagaming. I know there's no more random treasure to be found, therefore I won't search. No sense in drawing hazards, traps, and wandering monsters. (Or even, I know the odds are high and I know what treasure cards remain. They're not worth it…) The problem is that you wind up not wanting to search any but obvious locations for quest treasures at that point.

Best solution in my opinion is a much bigger treasure deck with more and more varied cards. Keep the distribution of good to bad cards fairly even so that players are want to search but won't become too unbalanced. MB couldn't really afford to do that back in the day. The number of cards in the game is not really an accident.

Pertaining to line of sight we ignored it while opening doors. When you opened a door onto a room (or hall) every [non secret] thing in that room (or hall) was immediately placed on the board. But once it was on the board we followed the line of sight rules to the best of our ability without straight edges to make sure that the long diagonal shot through four doors suggested by the barbarian was actually not clipping any corners.

This is something they really out to clarify. There's two things to keep in mind as I play it: What is visible, and what your character has a clear line of sight to. What is visible might be better described as what's on the board, but in terms of exposing rooms and hallways, they effectively ought to be roughly the same thing.

This might be an argument NOT to e.g., place all monsters in a hallway but the first, but it's not. If I'm standing in line, I can see if there's more than one person behind me, in fact I can generally see how long the line is even unless it's really long. I couldn't turn around and shoot those people for some reason. (Besides, wouldn't I want to shoot the people ahead of me in line to get to the front faster? See, this notion of shooting people in line behind me just makes no sense, it's quite silly, and we should stop discussing it at once!

… What?



By EU rules, anything in a room is LoS to you if you are as well. Otherwise you actually figure LoS. That's dumb. Creatures block LoS to what's beyond them, but not visibility. I think it's fair that furniture doesn't except bookcases and cupboards which obviously do, I mean c'mon!

I still like the notion of the jumping up on the table rule. You gain combat bonus for being up there, but if the room's full of monsters, it's effectively wargaming rules: You just moved to a bigger base, willingly.

Seems to me that one should be able to heal and equip Sir Ragnar when he is discovered.

Only 2 Body Points left...tells me he has more and I would wager 1 less than Arctic Wastelands Barbie gets ... Certainly the chance to make him a capable fighter should exist

Kurgan decided that he could be, but only to 3 BP, arguing the chaos warriors have that and they're armored knights. That seems a little suspicious to me though because the wizard is a giant wuss and has four. The notion that the great hero Sir Ragnar has less than the wizard seems suspicious.

Of course he still won't move faster healed to full. Kurgan decided he is in shock, essentially, and needs mind points recovered too. We had ways to do that. But he still has no weapons and no armor, so he should be able to fight like an unarmed hero… what if you gave him weapons and armor? Basically how many excuses does he have until it's just obvious the fact is that he's a dirty traitor and he was so grievously wounded by torture that he suffered … a single body point of damage.

Oftkilted is right. The Instructions do indeed say that character specific Artifacts "should" be given to the Hero who can use them. And the same page does indeed say you can give a potion to another Hero on your own turn. Does that mean giving someone a weapon (and let him use it) is off limits in the game system? I think it's unclear. But I don't see why you'd have a problem with it, again, unless its being abused.

It does not say when or how. It makes sense that if you can give a potion, you can give something else. And there's no point in allowing heroes to pick up weapons (as several Quests do) if the players cannot use those weapons. I think this is the kind of thing that ought to be left to common sense: Of course you can switch weapons. Of course you can pass weapons like you do potions.

Where I'd call BS is if you're going to buy a crossbow and have the three heroes who can use one stand in a line and shoot then pass it down the line and repeat. Can you pass it? Not the same turn you're using it in an attack, no. This would constitute "abuse".

Expansions can be said to add to but also clarify rules, I think. So if the expansions clearly indicate that yes, actually, you can pass an artifact (which includes weapons and armor), then yes, you can do that.


[Daedalus notes the rules discuss one attack per round, and say that the roll is subject to the choice of weapon, which certainly implies a choice.]

Right and there are exceptions, as in Heroic Brew which allows two attacks instead of one (for one attack). It all builds upon itself. But if all you had was the game system, you can still make a reasonable argument that it's permissible even if not explicit... (talking giving a weapon to another Hero here, as opposed to swapping between weapons yourself, which I think should be pretty implicit).

That's rule resolution order for you: Rules specify the general for the game (you may search in rooms once each) which may be overridden by quests (you may not search in this one room.) Quest rules can be overridden likewise by card rules. That's just how it works. "You can only move 1d6 while carrying this chest". "But this card doubles my movement!" So it does.

Does anyone actually play the walk out of Prince Magnus's Gold in NA? There doesn't seem to be a point if Zargon says you've found everything, and the slog down to get it took us so long with bade movement rolls most of the way that it was tedious getting there on TWO dice… I don't know how much "temptation" there is to keep it in the EU version for the slog out, I just think this quest wasn't the best designed ever personally.

In the US we didn't get this "Dark Company" with the Advanced Quest edition of the Game System (thank goodness for the online Heroquest community!). But it clarifies a rule that appears in our own BQP (and EQP), that characters can possess and use multiple weapons. Would you argue this ONLY applies to switching between melee and ranged?

Realism here: Your sword turns to rust in your hand. You drop the worthless thing and draw another. If you have time to chug a potion, you have time to do that. What takes time is sheathing one weapon to draw another.

When monsters are in the same area it is simple and a give to me:

Melee weapons are easy...swapping weapons is an action. You want to drop the crossbow and grab your melee kit then you do not get to attack.
Armor would not be proper to change in combat except the shield which I would allow one to equip the shield when dropping the crossbow to draw a sword

The crossbow to a sword is the one weapon switch I can imagine being easily made, since you'd likely have it on a sling as has already been mentioned this thread. Going the other direction while in the presence of monsters, could be said to take an action.

Then again, we've not been treating it as such, and the way I'm picturing it is the Barbarian backs up to give himself room, stabs his sword into the ground, raises his crossbow fires, and retrieves his sword. We haven't decided how you have time to recock the crossbow after firing to fire again next turn … the ones depicted on the mercs clearly have an Instant Legolas style magazine on them, though, so the part that takes the least amount of time of cocking a crossbow you wouldn't have to do every shot.

[Kurgan]

What about Courage? Should it expire the instant no monsters are in unblocked line of sight, or just as long as there are any monsters in the same room/corridor with the Hero? Does another Hero block (and thus cancel) the spell if that's the only LOS monster to the one who is "Couraged"? If you kill all the monsters around you, can you use the movement left on your turn to run into, say, the next room (or around a corner in a corridor) to once again be LOS to some more monsters to keep your Courage buff "alive"? In the strictest interpretation, all a monster has to do is move around the corner, or barely leave the room and the spell ends, then backtrack and attack the Hero... should this be allowed? My personal opinion is that it should all be within the one turn, so there should be a check at the end of the Hero's turn (can he see any monsters? if "yes" then the effect continues, same with a monster's turn).

Since there are no spell scrolls to worry about, the question of whether you can stack a spell won't be an issue.
But Holy Water functions pretty much like a Spell Scroll... anyone can use it, and it takes an action, and appears to be a LOS attack. Holy Water is meant for normal undead creatures, so I presume if it's a special Mummy that has one extra defend die, you either can't use it on him or it's wasted with no effect, right? (or should it damage but not kill him?).

Who can use the Wizard's Cloak? It seems that the Remake will allow some of the new Heroes to use it, but does that mean they have to fight over it? Will the "Cloak of Protection" still be a purchasable item and how will it compare to the Artifact version in terms of who can use it and how much it costs? Or will this be bypassed by saying you can't use two of these types of Heroes in the same quest? The Wizard's Staff and the Wizard's Cloak are intended for the Wizard after all and the original quest notes say he should be given them when they are discovered.

I've always assumed it (but some may disagree) that Pass Through Rock lets you walk right through not only the white wall barriers, but also through Stone block tiles. It doesn't seem intended to let you walk through furniture (even if it's "made of stone"), but that could be an area of clarification. If you start moving into an area of "solid rock" should Zargon warn the player or keep his mouth shut and let the player end his turn there (and thus die)?

If let's say the Wizard has the Spell Ring that allows a spell to be stored (and used) twice in a single quest and he happens to designate the Pass Through Rock... if he gets "stuck" can he use it again on his next turn to free himself or is he "already dead" (even if he has a healing potion)? Having the Wand of Magic AND the Spell Ring would mean he could use two spells per turn AND one of the spells (that he stored from the beginning of the quest) could be used twice (but still only two spell uses per turn).

Should Orc's Bane allow you to attack two adjacent Orcs in the same turn if you want to? (I vote yes), and here I'm assuming Orc bosses still count.

How does Heroic Brew affect it? The "good for one attack" nature of Potion of Strength, does it just apply to the first attack or both (counting the two attacks of the Artifact as one?)?

While you can't shoot a crossbow at an adjacent foe, you can apparently throw a dagger at them... but why waste it when you can just hit them normally? But if the Crossbow is allowed to shoot diagonally adjacent, would there also be a benefit to throwing a dagger this way?

A side note:
You could introduce some kind of fate/feat roll system in which anytime the Hero wants to do something wacky, crazy, or unexpected, they have to roll (roll a Skull at 50% or some numbered dice I guess would work too) and if the odds are in their favor, they get to do whatever it is. Can I jump up on the table? Can I safely shoot over the dwarf's wee noggin? Can I toss the potion across the hallway to my friend without it breaking? Can I barricade the door for one turn? Can I search this square on the other side of the door for a trap just this once? Etc. I like using Combat Cards (homebrew) for these kinds of scenarios but these can only cover so much and the imagination can come up with more scenarios. Something to aid the usual "Hero Player: Can I please do this crazy/wacky/unexpected thing? Zargon: I'll allow it/no just accept it" exchanges.

The Potion of Alchemy ought to be usable to turn a rusted weapon into gold (whether you found it on a Weapon's Rack or a bad guy boss just used a spell to render it "useless"), but then this is a potion found only in Wizards of Morcar which isn't being remade.

Back to the expected rule clarifications/errata from the GS/KK/ROTWL:

The Crossbow is a great weapon, but as some have pointed out, it might be better if it were a little less powerful.

By default it can not only shoot off axis at any enemy you can see (from any range) but it also doesn't say you can't shoot the four diagonal-adjacent from your figure. Some have tried to mediate this by introducing some reason why you'd buy this weapon and a longsword. The longsword can attack the four adjacent squares its true but its special feature is to attack the four diagonals. They are the same price.

Rather than making one of these weapons "two handed" and prevent a shield being carried at the same time, a simple proposal would be to disallow the crossbow shooting the four diagonals (unless 1 square away from the target). Yes, this would weaken it and make it harder (since now you'd "need" to buy a diagonal weapon as well), but it could make the longsword more appealing as a second purchase.

A rule clarification of "what happens when all the monsters are dead, all the quest designated treasures found, all rooms revealed and all the Heroes have left to do is roll to the finish line" would be in order. As others have pointed out this is an anti-climax of a few quests including the Rescue of Sir Ragnar and Prince Magnus' Gold. Quests where all you do is walk into a room and kill some particular bad guy(s) are fine just being declared over (this is even in the quest notes for these particular quests spread out over the various official packs). But for these...?

Most likely they would agree with a lot of groups and just say "the quest is declared a victory" even though the objective says they only get their reward if they reach the stairs (which is no challenge if they're just rolling and rolling and rolling--threat cards/tokens are all homebrew after all).

The spiral staircase is still useful as a "way for the remaining heroes to escape alive if they're going to fail the quest anyway" and retain whatever loot they have to try again next time (after the board has been remixed).
Having more than one way to end the quest (besides everybody dying) is a good thing, in my humble opinion. The only caveat here is that heroes who are trying to cheat by collecting a little gold and then leaving to come back and get it again (grinding, video-game style, perfectly possible in the PC versions!) would have to be discouraged.

Having some extra (and strong) monsters spawn in once the main objective is complete but the stairs are not reached could be a nice option too, assuming no hidden reinforcements. The Heroes could just turn around and kill those monsters, then be left in the same situation as before, unless the new force is overwhelming and a strategic withdrawal (retreat) is the best option.

In the case of Prince Magnus, I guess you could just designate a new pathway to an exit door instead of a literal return to the stairs as the solution, but it might still bore people if again, you're just walking slowly along unopposed for several rounds of turns and Zargon has nothing to do.

KK: What about this rolling boulder? It can't be searched for or disarmed, as the quest notes indicate, but can a Hero use Pass through Rock to bypass it safely? Does it just bowl everyone over (it would seem so), passing through them and doing damage no matter what?


If there are no monsters left in the quest, but a Hero dies anyway (let's say from a Hazard card or trap), is his stuff still automatically "claimed by monsters" or can the other Heroes come pick it up?

If a Hero has a healing spell left and a Monster kills him on Zargon's turn, can he still instantly use the Healing Spell to save himself (even though normally actions can only be performed on the HERO'S turn)? We always thought so but some would disagree.

Optional rule for Fixed movement? (perhaps say when not in combat... that is no monsters on the board, Heroes could move up to 12 squares per turn for free)?

Clarification on Secret Doors: Obviously the intention is that you place the tile (instead of using an open door as I did for many years without realizing it wasn't how that worked). But is the room revealed instantly or just when you walk up adjacent to it (presumably looking through)? Or just when you step inside? I assume the room isn't meant to be revealed instantly, otherwise a monster could walk through and start attacking next turn even before the Heroes tried to do anything, right?

What happens in Prince Magnus' Gold when you pick up a chest? I do it like this:
Treasure search reveals the chest(s). Hero says "I'm picking up the chest" he uses his remaining movement to walk up to it, picks it up and then "resets" his movement by rolling 1 red die and he can move immediately with the chest. Having Plate Mail on doesn't affect the movement at all while carrying the chest. Declaring he's setting it down puts it on the square next to him (doesn't impede anyone) and he can move normally until someone else picks it up. But if he can set it down, can a monster try to move it (at halved movement?).

Presumably, Heroes can "drop" weapons or armor at any time. There could be a few reasons why (in one quest a player was tired of having the slow Plate Mail but when a room of big monsters was found he ran back to the spot to get it again), but does that thing just instantly disappear ("claimed by monsters"), or could someone else come get it? Would it be claimed by monsters if a monster reaches the spot first? Could another Hero find it via a Treasure search?

If things like Potion of Speed and Holy Water are going to be considered "Equipment" now instead of Treasure (again a notion I disagree with, they were in the treasure deck in the EU edition they originated in), does that mean you can buy and sell them like potions or weapons? Can you sell them back for full or only half price? (Nothing about selling back potions in the NA version of KK/ROTWL). Presumably you could stockpile potions like you always could, since finding it as treasure doesn't mean it can't appear in the treasure deck next quest, just like there's no limit on how many instances of one item can be bought from the armory (as long as you can afford it).

I don't see any mercenary figures in the Remake, so I presume there aren't any, though for all we know they will give us a "Sir Ragnar" type character or two using an existing figure that might help us for a quest. Maybe you'll get to hire some "friendly" orcs in Teos' pack (this is sheer speculation). But if so, this brings up again the question of "what exactly can they do?" Can they open doors and search for (and disarm; as in the case of Scouts) traps? Do they have a backup weapon if they lose the one they're using to a spell? Can they accept equipment or can you claim any when they die (in the original, they didn't say you could so presumably it wasn't intended as an option). Can you pass them a potion in lieu of healing them with a spell (assuming more than 1 body point; or to save themselves from death)? I presume they'll have thought of all this.

In KK/ROTWL quests that use the Steel Door as the entrance, could you use this like the Spiral Staircase as an "escape with your lives but not complete the quest objectives" option? Even if the door locks, in theory you could use the Genie to re-open it for this purpose, right?

Will Zero mind point Heroes be simply removed from the quest "unconscious" (GS/KK/ROTWL default rules) or go into Shock (EQP/BQP rules)? If they go unconscious I guess they're not truly "dead" but do they lose their gear if the party has to replay the quest? Or are we just going to assume they're "dead" in that case and lose their stuff and all the rest as if they had just had their BP reduced to zero? I could see if one or two heroes went unconscious but the others soldiered on, in the next quest they'd be alive and well (with their gear intact?). No share of the rewards though I assume...?
I mean, are you hauling their body back to the staircase as well?

Should rolling doubles a bunch of times mean anything? (That'd you'd get free parking, perhaps?)

[Kurgan]

Forgot all about this one... the NA instruction booklet ("Rules of Play") advises the Wizard to save his gold for powerful magical items that will be offered for purchase in future quest packs. These never surfaced. Yes, new spells and artifacts appeared, but nothing that the Wizard would be able to spend gold on.

So he'd be spending money on potions and mercenaries like everyone else, or just giving his gold to the other Heroes, once he's "maxed out" his gear.

[iKarith]

Metagaming is always going to be an issue of course because there's few players who haven't done it, but you have to decide somewhere how far to take fixing the fact that the rules are intended for a board game, not an RPG.

That said, does it surprise anyone how many of the rules that seem to have obvious loopholes/limitations relate to magic and magical effects wearing off? Why would a spell or a potion wear off when you could no longer see an enemy you know is present? Seems illogical, how does the magic know when to wear off? The answer dovetails with the other issue: If you can't see it, it doesn't exist.

There are exactly two things the game of HQ requires anyone to keep track of that do not have a physical gamepiece on the board: Whether a trap tile is in play or has been neutralized, and whether a given room has been searched for treasure.

Otherwise HQ follows a simple philosophy: If it ain't on the board, it don't exist. That is why if someone throws a knife, it's gone whether it hits anything or not. I mean consider: It hit that orc, he died. Where's your knife? Sticking out of the orc's face. Can you recover that? Rules say no. Missed him (rolled no skulls)? Where'd your knife go? Who knows, it's GoneTM. Can you search for it? No, a monster opened a secret passageway and grabbed it and ran off. Can I search for secret passageways? You find none? But I know there is one! Nope, it doesn't exist. But you just said…! OF COURSE you should be able to search for your trusty little blade if it weren't a board game. You'd probably find it. Roll to determine its condition. Like on it's damaged beyond repair.

Some of this stuff the creators didn't think too hard about. Probably the intent was that once a hero does, even right next to you, his equipment and loot is just *poof*. Because again, there's no way to keep track of it. What, your barbarian recovers the Spirit Blade in Q13 and then takes a homebrewed bolt of Zargon lightning to the face and dies? You'd better hope your table has homebrewed the corpse of your barbarian lies here and his equipment with him … oh, and BS on the spot that the Spirit Blade cannot be touched by evil so monsters will leave it be even if they take all else, yeah.

We can "fix" as much of this stuff as we want to. Some of it is genuinely creator's oversight, some of it is they didn't intend to come up with a solution, and some of it was handwaved as, "they'll figure out what to do if it comes up…" For the most part, we have. We're a pretty resourceful lot.

One solution to this is to give these effects a countdown timer in turns. But that creates something to keep track of. You could carry that to the fullest and effectively turn HQ into D&D with more an absorbtion combat dice mechanic. Interesting, I'd play it. But if you do that you're going pretty far beyond the rules as written, which is fine if you wanna go there.

Of course it means ultimately describing the rooms as your players enter them (which means coming up with descriptions) and having them jump up on tables to attack with some advantage or swing on a chandelier above a suspected pit trap or grabbing a burning hunk of wood from the fireplace and stabbing the mummy with the burning end. Badassery in motion! But how do you handle that as an attack roll? You're on your own there as far as the rules are concerned, so good luck with that! HQ is easy to play because you don't have to improvise or prepare anything.

Probably most people will stop well short of that. But it's worth getting clarification where we know what the rules are supposed to be before we decide that we're not following them at our tables!

[Kurgan]

HeroQuest isn't a strategic war simulation, it's true. But that doesn't mean it's silly or pointless either. But why is one game different than another? Ask the designers. I'm not saying HQ is perfect and has no ambiguity, far from it... hence our lively "debates."

There's a game called Warhammer Quest that I never played (and probably never will, due to scarcity and lack of nostalgia for it) that seeks to do what many wanted which was to layer on a set of RPG rules onto the basic HeroQuest concept even more so than the Japanese edition of 1991 did. Dungeons and Dragons has many "heroquest"-esque games out there, past and present, that seek to add more complexity to the "fantasy board game" type thing. HQ was always about simplifying and boiling things down, but you can use the assets for anything you want and many do, just like many take miniatures from other games and use them in HQ.

The GM decides how far this all goes. After all, when they retrieve the broken knife, can't they try to repair it? What about looting the gear off a dead monster? Why can't we send someone back to town while the rest of us stay in the maze and retrieve supplies? Why can't we re-arrange the dungeon and tunnel our way out or MacGyver tools out of the materials we find to do literally anything? It goes on endlessly until the GM puts his or her foot down, that's not allowed, because, because, I said so, that's why, next...

Sometimes the "lack of" realism makes the game more fun, other times it makes it less so, depending upon the player and what they are trying to get out of it. If the goal of HeroQuest was to be a fun board game for younger people and families and as an introduction to fantasy tabletop gaming, I think it does its job well and doesn't really need to be revised to make it more compliant with some other game's standards. However, many disagree and feel free in adding their own rules to "spice things up" however that might be to them. Many of us here use hybrid rules anyway just because we are trying to incorporate different things from different editions into the game we otherwise grew up with. Others have "moved beyond" HQ and still want to play it, but on the terms of some other standard they've grown accustomed to.

Lots of (some would say all of) the rules are in fact arbitrary, hence the difficulty in using "realism" logic to try to resolve them. The non-suspension of disbelief answer is of course that this game is trying to evoke the fun and flavor of the various "fantasy" tropes out there that people may have heard of. Thankfully they also made the game easily modifiable (though "toss the rules in the waste bin and use the assets for whatever you want" isn't quite spelled out, but it's pretty much the logical conclusion you can read through the trajectory of the various expansions). How does magic work? The card says it works via Line of Sight. What does "line of sight" mean? The rule book explains. Why is it that way instead of some other way? Because that's how they made the game. Is that good or bad? Depends whom you ask...

So when Shadiversity is playing as Zargon, the game will probably look different than if Stephen Baker is running it, or I am, etc.

Agreed that I like to know what the designers "always intended" but I realize too that there will be different answers since the game itself has gone through different regional editions over the years even prior to the Remake which is mostly in the hands of new people who may not have even played the original (for all we know; Baker excepted of course)... and even then I don't consider that the final word in how I will choose to play when it's my turn at the Evil Wizard's chair. So I'm one of those people who both would really like to hear Avalon Hill's "official answer" about how the crossbow works on Twitter (and have read it) but also insist that that's not the best answer for how I like to play, and you had other versions of the game handling it differently too.

I get the idea of making things as clear as possible for your entry level player who wants to just take it out of the box and play it as written and have a good time first, and they are holding this value in tension with wanting to keep the game as intact from the 1990 NA edition as possible just with a more modern looking texture overlay.

But that's ambiguity for you. The "errata" has been very interesting to read and I hope this content is put in front of the eyes of Hasbro and Avalon Hill employees as often as possible. We know the work-arounds, but they may not be too aware of them, or aware that we're aware... and this acknowledgment can help make the product better, especially for new players. I doubt they'll release an "Alternate RPG rulebook" expansion to be used with the original set anytime soon, but I wouldn't object to it, I just probably wouldn't buy it, though others would snap it up in an instant (and set about re-writing it shortly thereafter I imagine).