What's the harm in adding a 5th hero?

[cynthialee]

I have never had the benefit of a 5th player but there are a number of the more difficult quests where even an extra meat shield won't be much help without serious tactics on the players side. Especially if they have not geared up, or have poorly geared.

A second Wizard may seem OP....but have you ever played a game where the wizard has had every combat spell fail and the Elf rolls nothing on the Genie? Sucks hard. Just happened to me last game. (The Lost Wizard is a hard one with limited gear.) While it got pulled off my Dwarf almost bit the dust twice and used up every heal potion discovered to date. Going into the Fire Mage with no heals other than the 2 heal spells the wizard will have. A 5th player would be very welcome in such instances.

Be glad when they get this App filled out with all the quests for all the books. I like it how it is giving me a first hand view of certain quest difficulty. I may have been a little brutal with how many Champion level monsters I place in the game. (Champion Monster at my table means they defend on White Shields.) But when 2 party members have cross bows, and they are good at placement and tactics it feels apt.

[Kurgan]

(Thanks Anderas!) To cynthialee, Two Wizards might seem OP at first but Stephen Baker's questbook (Prophecy of Telor) allows a Potion of Magic that restores three full spells. Additionally while instructions aren't given, the new Mythic Heroes seem to be meant to be stand ins for one of the classic four each possessing 3 spells.
In the official rules for Spirit Queen's Torment (Abadia's questbook) the Bard is able to replace one dead hero one time in the campaign.

So you could use that as a gauge to see that the number of spells in the group need not be limited to 12. Finding spell scrolls, restoring lost spells, the fact that the Mythic Heroes each have a way to regain one of their used spells, etc. seem to indicate it could work. Now you could say Two Wizards won't work because there aren't enough spells to distribute between them. But it is also true that there are three new spell groups in the Wizards of Morcar AND there is a set of Elf Spells in the EQP so you could divide those up. That's a lot of magic though and you may want to tweak the quest...
Even so, some quests are so hard that this might just make it more fair rather than "too easy."

Then again more cards for a player may mean more time deliberating on a turn, which makes the game longer (even longer than adding a 5th hero who is "pure combat").

[cynthialee]

if you need spells for a second wizard just dig out the various scrolls that are exact word for word of the spells, just call them spells not scrolls and it is golden