Ranger

[cynthialee]

having the arrow counters caused my Ranger player to consider if he really needed to use an arrow and occasionally he would dart into stab with a dagger instead of maneuvering and shooting an arrow

[Tott]

I don't get it. 1 extra dice is not a nuke, it is a chance at 1 more Body Point damage. As many of the monsters only have one body point as is, they are already dying from single shots. So the ork dies with 3 or 4 body hits instead of 1 or 2...dead is dead.

I'll second that notion. I've seen KK and others argue in favor of awarding the Barbarian a bonus of +1 to his melee attacks, and pretty much nobody bats an eye at that. Giving a congruent +1 to the Ranger's archery is really not so much better that it needs special consideration. Sure, you can get the drop on each new room of monsters with a more powerful attack, but that advantage will only last for one or two turns before the monsters close with the Heroes. The crossbow from the original Game System can't be used against adjacent opponents, a restriction which tends to carry over into other 'homebrew' bows. Thus, once the monsters start attacking, the Ranger has to either switch weapons or start walking backwards.

We also used arrow counters. The Ranger has not run out yet, but one mission he did get rather low.

Using an ammunition system, by the way, puts a hard and fast limit on the amount of tactical advantage the Heroes can gain from projectile weapons, no matter how many bonus dice you roll while using them.[/quote]

one more dice is a 50% chance at one more skull the monster has to block, and HQ dice only give monsters 1/6 chance of blocking anyway.
Im assuming the description of the ranger without any other home brew rules, just the weapons in the additional armoury. base heroes start with 2 attack dice, melee, while the ranger starts with 3 at range. already a big advantage there. if you're playing european rule and all monsters have 1 body point, then yes your right, 1 extra dice is wasted, dead is dead, but by that logic, why bother rolling at all? cos some monsters can defend. for lots. even so, not many would be able to withstand a ranger shooting at them with 3 dice from range. as soon as he gets an upgrade? nothing stands a chance.

Ive seen the argument for the barbarian +1 attack by default - and i used to be in that camp, play testing stopped that, especially when you get the barbarian a battle axe, its just TOO powerful! gargoyles and ogres dead in one turn. and theres functionaly no difference between a chaos warrior and a goblin. if the barbarians the first in the room its often empty by the time all the other players are in. and that's +1 in melee, which i don't think is as powerful as ranged attacks. if you're setting up a situation where there is never any point in the target rolling defence, because they cannot possibly survive no matter what you roll, what is the point in even rolling the dice? is there even any point in putting those monsters down on the board? an arrow/ammunition system puts a check on it, but then you could end up in a situation similar to the wizards spells, with players saving their spells until the end however, i think with an archer you'd have the the players saving arrows for the stronger monsters and one shoting those while the other heroes plough through the weaker monsters. i dont think either is ideal to be honest.
whats the rules on line of sight with a range weapon? a good ability for an archer is to ignore other heroes when considering line of sight.

[knightkrawler]

True, my barbarian (Berserker) maxes out at 5 attack dice with the battle axe. But he's also restricted from wearing plate armor and using any kind of ranged weapon, or else he'd be overpowered indeed.
Correspondingly, a hero with +1 on ranged attacks (Pathfinder) will not be able to use a melee weapon for more than 3 attack dice. That only touches on the special rules for heroes given on the rolesheets that deal with which hero can use what equipment. Welcome to my little world of giving fantasy stock character cliché some love and trying to keep balance in the game.
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For all those interested, an example for rolesheet special rules wording, case in point - The Pathfinder:

Unarmed Attacks
When you make an attack roll using no weapon, skulls are hits.

Ranged Attacks
When you make an attack with a ranged weapon, you have a base attack score of 1.

Pathfinder's Restrictions
You cannot use any weapon that adds more than 3 CD (that would be the modifying +3 Longsword instead of vanilla HQ's absolute value 3 AD boradsword/longsword) to your base attack. You also cannot use any armor that adds more than 1 CD to your base defend.

Pathfinder's Equipment
Before your first quest, take the Equipment cards 'Shortsword' and 'Leathershirt'.
The shortsword is your starting weapon, the leathershirt is your starting armor.

Gifts
At the beginning of each quest, discard any 3 skills from the Hero Skill – Gift deck. The remaining deck of 3 skills is at your disposal for the next quest. After it, complete your deck and discard any 3 skills again.

This is still in beta state, but you get the idea.