Goblin-King wrote: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.
That's not a bad idea. Going straight out multiple attacks with all 5 dice would make the Minotaur potentially stronger than a Polar Warbear, though. How about:
Minotaurs can also attack diagonally adjacent Heroes.
Instead of attacking normally, a Minotaur may attack all Heroes within range, rolling three Combat Dice against each.And the descriptive language on the Minotaur card itself would read "Can attack diagonally. // Berserk rage: Attack all Heroes within reach using 3 Combat Dice each."
Goblin-King wrote: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.
I think that works better; thanks for the suggestion! We can reword the ability as:
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. If the Basilisk scores one or more undefended skulls, its victim must skip his next turn.I know someone was working on a Quest where the Heroes run afoul of two Basilisks and get stoned and captured. Although the change Goblin-King suggested doesn't allow for a non-scripted "bad end", an easy scripted end would be that the Heroes have never seen a Basilisk before, are therefore unprepared and thus get stoned immediately as soon as Zargon/Morcar's turn starts.
Other possible minor changes to the Basilisk would be to pin the strength of its gaze to its own Mind Point count (and bump its MP to 3 or 4 to compensate), or flip over its Attack and Defend scores to 4/3 instead of 3/4.
Goblin-King wrote: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...
cynthialee wrote: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.
I don't think anybody knows how to handle those wacky cultists. But let me get one thing clarified here: How dangerous are these cultists supposed to be, exactly? We've set their physical might to "frail" at best, so the totality of their threat level comes from how much magic they have and how strong it is. If they're supposed to be weak and cowardly, then they need to have less magic available and/or less powerful magics. Whereas if a quartet of Heroes walks into a room, sees 4 Cultists and proceeds to soil themselves, then the possibility of Firestorm-Summon Orc-Cloud of Chaos-Lightning Bolt all in one turn is A-OK. I don't have a solution for this one yet, but I'm working on it.
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.
Goblin-King wrote: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%
I may have worded it poorly, but the intended effect of Noxious Spores is "The Hero rolls his attack or defense roll twice, and takes the set of dice, first or second, which has less of the relevant skull/shield faces showing." I.E., it compares whole rolls, not die-to-die. I'll let you process that one again before I suggest any fixes.