HQ25 - The great TO-DO list

[Sjeng]

Thanks for this list GK!!

I think I volunteered for the Greenskins arc. Some ideas for a storyline are always welcome though.

[cynthialee]

Greenskins are just a simple people who have been caught up in a war to complex for their simple minds to completely grasp.

I see Orks and Goblins as people, but not the Fimirs due to how they are created. They have wants and desires just like any other species. They love their families and fear mankind's ever forward encroachment on their ancestral lands.
They are vicious and ruthless in battle and have earned a perhaps undeserved reputation for evil.
I would try and kill heroes if they tried to infiltrate my lairs, kill my leaders and steal my tribes treasures.
In the lands of greenskins the humans, dwarves and elves are the evil ones.

[GimmeYerGold]

I've gone through the Spell crafting thread and collected a list of 9 magics for the Swamp Spell deck. In alphabetical order:

• Acid Rain: This spell generates a shower of corrosive black rain. Each Hero in the same room as the caster rolls one red die. Unless a 5 or 6 is rolled, one of that Hero's weapons or armor, chosen at random, becomes rusted and useless. Not effective against Artifacts.
• Acid Spray: This spell sprays a corrosive green mist at any Hero within Line of Sight. It will inflict 1 Body Point of damage to that Hero.
• Cloud of Flies: This spell summons a cloud of flies to fill any room or corridor. Until the caster's next turn, Heroes in that room roll one fewer Combat Die when attacking or defending.
• Fever: This spell will inflict a terrible fever upon one Hero within Line of Sight. He rolls one fewer Combat Die when attacking or defending. The victim may try to recover by rolling one Combat Die on each of his turns. If a white shield is rolled, he returns to normal.
• Insect Swarm: This spell summons many biting insects to attack one Hero within Line of Sight. The insects roll three Combat Dice to attack. Heroes defend against this spell with two Combat Dice. The insects then vanish.
• Noxious Spores: This spell fills one room or hallway with hallucinogenic spores. Until the caster's next turn, whenever a Hero attacks or defends in that hallway, he must reroll all Combat Dice once and take the worse of the two rolls.
• Slime: This spell causes a sticky slime to engulf any Hero's feet, binding him to the ground. That Hero becomes unable to move. The Hero may roll one red die for each of his remaining Body Points at the beginning of his turn. If a 6 is rolled, the Hero breaks free of the slime, ending the spell.
• Slough: This spell may be cast on any one Hero. The ground beneath that Hero's feet suddenly turns into a slough! Put a Slough trap tile beneath the victim. The Hero may try to climb out of the Slough normally on his turn.
• Summon Basilisk: This spell summons a Basilisk to do the caster's bidding, which appears on any square adjacent to the caster. The Basilisk may move and attack at once.

I tried to get a good mix of the spells suggested in the original thread. Anyone else can suggest changes if they think something really needs one, but if nobody has any such qualms I would suggest moving ahead as though these are complete.

I'm almost done with the formatting for these cards--I'll stay tuned on the final wording based on GK's suggestions...

Has any other card art been worked on? I'd be happy to do all the cards for this whole pack, by the way

[Count Mohawk]

I'm very happy with the selection of spells. Good work!
A few comments though...

Acid rain: Need clarification on WHICH piece of equipment is destroyed. Hero's choice? Random? Morcar's choice?

Cloud of flies + fever: I think it should be worded "rolls one less combat die".

Slime: Is rolling a 6 on a single die too overpowered? How about rolling 1 red die per remaining BP?

Summon Basilisk: The basilisk is indeed one of the new monsters for this pack, so the wording is fine.

Thanks for the feedback. I edited the Spell text in my original post using blue text to show what changed. Or as a TL;DR: I made Acid Rain choose a weapon or armor at random because it makes more sense than a Fimir sorcerer doing pinpoint rainclouds a la Eeyore. Also, if I remember grammar correctly, "less" is used for continuous numbers and "fewer" for discrete numbers, so I left that alone. And I took your suggestion for Slime as written.

Now for the Monsters. There are six new ones agreed on by the forum in general: Chaos Dwarves, Beastmen, Minotaurs, Chaos Cultists, Kobolds and Basilisks. Daedalus did a good writeup of potential stats which I mostly agree with (it's post #101 in the thread you linked from the OP). In that order:

Chaos Dwarf
Mv 6 | At 3 | De 4 | Bo 2 | Mi 3
Two or more adjacent Chaos Dwarves each roll one extra Combat Die in defense.
This is the monster people have the least amount of issues with. I don't foresee needing to change him any further.

Beastman
Mv 7 | At 3 | De 3 | Bo 2 | Mi 2
A Beastman immediately counterattacks when an adjacent Hero reduces its Body Points to 1.
I went with Daedalus' wording to keep the Beastman's power down and because it makes more thematic sense anyway. If you kill a Beastman in one blow, he probably doesn't have the time to counter you or he would have done a better job blocking. I added the word "adjacent" to cater to the Heroes' ranged weaponry. Incidentally, if crossbow spam becomes a concern, an alternative ability would be "A Beastman rolls 1 extra Combat Die in attack while it has 1 Body Point left."

Minotaur
Mv 6 | At 5 | De 3 | Bo 4 | Mi 2
Instead of attacking normally, a Minotaur may attack two separate Heroes with three Combat Dice each.
I worded the ability specifically to avoid walking into the "Heroes may only defend against each monster once per turn" rule some people like to play. Incidentally, splitting attack dice evenly between two targets is a good tactic for Heroes to kill multiple monsters, but not good for Monsters because they deal less damage on average, which is why I changed the Minotaur's attack options to "hit one Hero for 5 dice" or "hit two Heroes each for 3 dice".

Chaos Cultist
Mv 7 | At 1 | De 1 | Bo 1 | Mi 3
Each Chaos Cultist starts with one random Chaos Spell chosen from the 12 Game System Chaos spells, excluding Escape. Only one Cultist may cast a spell each turn.
A lot of people made suggestions as to how to handle the Cultists' spellcasting. I think the text I settled on is sufficiently simple without being overpowered. Note that the 'special' Cultists in my various Quest Notes are differentiated from the normal ones by their gaudy robes and the ability to collectively cast powerful rituals in addition to their one Spell each, albeit only if the Heroes don't kill one of them first.

Kobold (Reptilian?)
Mv 9 | At 1 | De 2 | Bo 1 | Mi 1
A Kobold rolls one extra Combat Die when attacking a Hero for each other Kobold adjacent to that Hero.
I bumped the Kobolds up to 9 move as a minor aesthetic thing. 8 Move (or 1 Defense if you go that route) is perfectly acceptable. I suggest that only one of the Kobolds and the Cultists should have 2 Defense, though. As for the ability, note that four Kobolds moving to surround a Hero will attack with 1, 2, 3 and then 4 dice, which on average is less damaging than 4 Orcs. If the 4 Kobolds start adjacent to the same Hero, that's a different story - but that also requires either horrible attack roll luck or abject Hero stupidity.

Basilisk
Mv 8 | At 3 | De 4 | Bo 3 | Mi 2
A Basilisk may attack any Hero it can "see" with its petrifying gaze, rolling 3 Combat Dice to attack. Heroes defend using Combat Dice equal to their Mind Points. The victim loses 1 Mind Point for each undefended skull, and skips his next turn if any Mind Points were lost. Heroes reduced to 0 Mind Points this way are turned to stone.
I am a little concerned that the Basilisk may be able to stone the Barbarian a little too easily. With 3 dice against 2, the Hero will lose 1 Mind Point about 35% of the time and both Mind Points about 28% of the time. Additional input on this is welcome. My suggestion would be to flip the Basilisk's Attack and Defense dice so the Evil Wizard player attacks normally more often, which also conveniently makes it so all 6 monsters have different stat lines. (Or we could invent a "Potion of Unstone" that restores 1-2 Mind Points and cures stoning.)

Fortunately, we don't need to put the entirety of the above rules text on the Monster cards themselves. As evidence, I point you to the Yeti from the Barbarian Quest Pack, whose "Hug attack" is only written as "Hug attack" on the card but is described more fully in the rules themselves. For example, the Beastman's ability would be shortened to "Counterattack", while the Cultist would say "Starts with one random Chaos Spell".

That's all I got for now. I'll work on either the Traps or the Artifacts later.

[cynthialee]

Why can only one cultist cast a spell per turn?
It doesn't make sense to me to limit casts per turn. We do not rule that only one hero can cast per turn.

[Count Mohawk]

I put that there as a balancing mechanism, so that when the Heroes walk into a room with three Cultists, they don't get hit immediately by three Chaos Spells (or just two if they kill one first). Thematically, the idea is that Cultists are not great at magic and need to work together to accomplish their feats of sorcery. If you have a different suggestion, though, I'm all ears.

[Goblin-King]

Once again, good job Mohawk!

As far as I'm concerned, Chaos Dwarf, Beastman and Kobold are definitely done.

*****

The Minotaur will only be able to use it's special ability if two heroes are standing on a line with one square between them?
Can we fix this?
I'm just throwing this out here... The minotaur hits all heroes, both orthogonal and diagonal, with it's attack?
It's a beastly attack yes, but it can still be relatively easy avoided by clever placement of the heroes.

*****

Should the basilisk's gaze perhaps simply stun the target for 1 round? You get hit, you loose your turn. No MP reduction, just a stun.
Loosing the barbarian for a turn is a heavy loss, but he won't get insta killed. And we don't have to get into the zero MP in-shock-rules.

*****

And then we have those cultist guys...
I don't mind the rule as such, but I'm not looking forward to remembering which cultist got which card. You killed the one with "Escape" (I think)...
I share your assessment about the cultists being weak casters - I sort of imagine they chant to receive demon powers
I'm not really sure what would be a good way to handle them...

*****

Noxious Spores: This spell fills one room or hallway with hallucinogenic spores. Until the caster's next turn, whenever a Hero attacks or defends in that hallway OR ROOM, he must reroll all Combat Dice once and take the worse of the two rolls.

Now that I re-read this one... Is it perhaps a little convoluted?

How about only black shields counts as a successful roll?

That means (if my math is correct) that an attack die goes from a 25% chance of rolling a skull to just 16%
Defending on the other hand goes up from 11,1% to 16%

[cynthialee]

I put that there as a balancing mechanism, so that when the Heroes walk into a room with three Cultists, they don't get hit immediately by three Chaos Spells (or just two if they kill one first). Thematically, the idea is that Cultists are not great at magic and need to work together to accomplish their feats of sorcery. If you have a different suggestion, though, I'm all ears.

I think the proper balance issue is to not send heroes into a challenge they can not face.
Multiple spell casters is a great challenge for a more advanced hero. So two of the party gets harshed right out the gate? Worst thing that can happen is two get fragged and the other two are left dealing with the fallout. But that is highly unlikely.

The rule just feels forced and unnatural. If it takes multiple Occultists to cast a spell, then the spell should be much more powerful than standard issue spells and all cultists in the room who take action are involved in the spells casting.
Increase the scope of the spells effect when cast by multiple cultists and it would be easier to accept the premise as presented.

[GimmeYerGold]

I've gone through the Spell crafting thread and collected a list of 9 magics for the Swamp Spell deck. In alphabetical order:

• Acid Rain: This spell generates a shower of corrosive black rain. Each Hero in the same room as the caster rolls one red die. Unless a 5 or 6 is rolled, one of that Hero's weapons or armor, chosen at random, becomes rusted and useless. Not effective against Artifacts.
• Acid Spray: This spell sprays a corrosive green mist at any Hero within Line of Sight. It will inflict 1 Body Point of damage to that Hero.
• Cloud of Flies: This spell summons a cloud of flies to fill any room or corridor. Until the caster's next turn, Heroes in that room roll one fewer Combat Die when attacking or defending.
• Fever: This spell will inflict a terrible fever upon one Hero within Line of Sight. He rolls one fewer Combat Die when attacking or defending. The victim may try to recover by rolling one Combat Die on each of his turns. If a white shield is rolled, he returns to normal.
• Insect Swarm: This spell summons many biting insects to attack one Hero within Line of Sight. The insects roll three Combat Dice to attack. Heroes defend against this spell with two Combat Dice. The insects then vanish.
• Noxious Spores: This spell fills one room or hallway with hallucinogenic spores. Until the caster's next turn, whenever a Hero attacks or defends in that hallway, he must reroll all Combat Dice once and take the worse of the two rolls.
• Slime: This spell causes a sticky slime to engulf any Hero's feet, binding him to the ground. That Hero becomes unable to move. The Hero may roll one red die for each of his remaining Body Points at the beginning of his turn. If a 6 is rolled, the Hero breaks free of the slime, ending the spell.
• Slough: This spell may be cast on any one Hero. The ground beneath that Hero's feet suddenly turns into a slough! Put a Slough trap tile beneath the victim. The Hero may try to climb out of the Slough normally on his turn.
• Summon Basilisk: This spell summons a Basilisk to do the caster's bidding, which appears on any square adjacent to the caster. The Basilisk may move and attack at once.

I tried to get a good mix of the spells suggested in the original thread. Anyone else can suggest changes if they think something really needs one, but if nobody has any such qualms I would suggest moving ahead as though these are complete.

Here's a preview of the NA versions of the 9 Spells:

[Goblin-King]

Excellent work Goldie!

But remember we are gonna use original artwork.
But I assume switching the images is an easy task once we get some new drawings done?

*********************

I'll get on doing the HS icons tomorrow.
Does any of them already exist?

Chaos dwarf?
Minotaur?
Beastman?
Kobold?
Cultist?
Basilisk? (We agree the basilisk is a 2-square monster, right?)