[Solo quest][Wizard] The Magic Trial

[JCool]

I'm planning to run this tomorrow night for a friend of mine who is new to HeroQuest. He likes dungeon crawlers and adventures (currently playing Gloomhaven) but isn't the biggest fan of dice rolling/luck to determine his fate. I'm hoping that this intro quest for the wizard will give him some confidence in the game and show him that playing the wizard can be a lot of fun!

I'll report back with feedback based on how it goes. I like the ideas that were mentioned a few posts ago as well, I may look to incorporate those too.

[ClemGrt]

Thanks, nice of you!

[JCool]

So I ran this quest for my buddy on Friday night. He was a good sport about being introduced to HeroQuest - his mantra is that he'll try any game once. And after playing through the solo-wizard quest from ClemGrt, I might just be able to convince him to join for another round with a bigger party.

He was a big fan of the various spells, but was very cautious about which ones to use. He felt that being a squishy wizard, that his best path forward would be to rush through the dungeon, opening every door he could on his turn - even if that meant skipping entire rooms/enemies. It wound up working well for him until he got stuck in a battle against the evil wizard about 2/3 through. It became a "roll to see who can do damage first" kinda thing and Morcar let him win (...I doubt Zargon would have been so generous!). He expertly used Pass Through Rock to escape a room of Fimirs and Goblins which I thought was clever, even though he had no idea what might be on the other side.

I think there's ways to improve and/or RP this quest a bit. After passing by the first room with all the enemies my friend turned to me and said, "Well, isn't it the enemies turn now?" So while I said "Yes, in a normal game it most certainly would be" I had to mention again that this was a training quest. He asked a couple times what the objective of this quest was, and I fumbled through him having to rescue the others from a party. Maybe in that vain you could say that the party decided to go without their wizard (fools!) and now the wizard has to go rescue them all!

Fun stuff though and it was great to have HQ hit the table as it hasn't made it there in quite some time. I like solo quests as it's a great way to train and gear up new characters. That said, there were many times when this quest would have been overwhelming if the wizard had tried to stay and fight off every monster. It was also a very linear path, so maybe a few more path-splitting options could be fun. Oh, and I think there's a door missing from the one room in the bottom right to get to the corner room

Thanks for sharing! I might pull this one out again with my cousin at some point who is a HQ fan, he loves playing a spell-caster!

[ClemGrt]

Thank you very much for testing this quest and for taking time to give your feedback on it.
Actually there is no door missing, this room is where the Pass Throigh Rock spell is supposed to be casted...

[JCool]

Thank you very much for testing this quest and for taking time to give your feedback on it.
Actually there is no door missing, this room is where the Pass Throigh Rock spell is supposed to be casted...

Ahhh - that makes more sense. My wizard player used Pass Through Rock in the next room just after realizing that he didn't want to face the 3 monsters staring down at him! (I had added a door since I thought it was missing at the time)

[Drew]

Im the GM of my group, as most of you know its hard for 5 people to get together often, so I decided to make solo campaigns for each (8 solo quests per Hero).
This quest is included in my Wizard solo campaign, it will be the first quest obviously.
I will rework it a bit (more EU and based mainly on the game system so no weird spells).
What the quest really misses is a story, can be as simple as "The Trial" but you gotta make one.
I will post my rework of the map by the way. Hopefully ill test it with my Wizard soon too.
Will let you know what "errors" i could find and what improvements could be made for version 3 (hopefully the final version).
by the way can i have a photo of the map in better quality so I can rework it?
Thanks for sharing this interesting quest

[ClemGrt]

Thank you for your interest in this quest and for your answer here.
By the way have you had a look at the map on my Blog. If the map is still not good enough i'll be back home this weekend and i'll be able to send a better version of it.

[Drew]

So I reviewed the quest and all the people's proposals in this topic.
So as many people already suggested I too believe that this map should only be for the 4 elemental spells and be based in Game System. (maybe do a sequel for the other spells)
Starting from there here is what I suggest:
-Write a "story", it can be very simple since its a starting quest. A guy already wrote one for you and its pretty good. My take on his story:
"I have received a message from a fellow Wizard deep within a dungeon. His dying breath was used to tell me of a group of adventurers who are in trouble. They need magical
help, and fast. Their party was trying to rid their land of an evil Sorcerer. Wizard you need to kill the evil Sorcerer, and rescue the Elf, Barbarian, and Dwarf. Loretome has
foreseen that this is possible, but the Wizard will need to use magic wisely in order to succeed."

-Notes changes I'd make:
C. This Chaos Warrior rolls 1 extra dice when he attacks.
If the Wizard searches for a treasure after the Chaos Warrior is killed he will find a Potion of Resilience in the warriors corpse.
D. This chest contains 3 scrolls with the spells of Earth.
H. If the Wizards decides to help the Dwarf and they defeat the forces of the undead, the Dwarf will reward him with 50 gold. (Don't tell the Wizard beforehand.)
J. Inside the tomb lies a potion of Heroic Brew.
X. (Add a library or something)
This is the evil Sorcerer. He uses the Fire spells, once he is defeated the Wizard can study the Fire spells from the Sorcerer's table. He has the following characteristics:
Attack 1, Defense 2, Movement 5, Mind 4, Body 1
K. I believe 500 gold is way to much, getting 50 from the Dwarf and a lot more from the Treasure cards plus 500 is wayyy to much. Id propose like 150.

-As I said Id remove the 3 extra spells, by doing that there should be done some rearrangements in rooms and probably remove a couple monsters, what I suggest is:
5. Leave this hallway empty, move the chest to room 7.
7. Have the Earth spells here in the chest (remove library and move it to room 9.)
9. Move the elf from here to room 11. Put the healing potion and the library from room 7 here.
11. Have the elf here, the elf will give the Air spells here. Remove (G) and library.
12. Just remove the chest and (I).
13. Add the sorcerer's table here so that the Wizard can take the fire spells once he defeats the Sorcerer.
17. As you saw in the notes above I replaced those spells with a potion of Heroic Brew in (J).
X-14-15-18. Since the Wizard is more weak without the extra Spells you can remove a few monsters from these rooms.

-Add a "Wandering Monster" you must have forgot. I'd propose Goblin cause dont forget the Wizard is weak af, especially if lots of wandering monsters come to the first few rooms the he doesnt have lots of spells.


I hope you find my "rework" useful. Cant wait for V3 hopefully it will include some (or many lol) of my ideas. Dont forget my ideas only apply to the scenario that you decide to actually make this quest for only the Elemental spells and stick to game system as many people suggested before me. Will give more feedback once its tested but it will probably take a couple weeks since my Wizard is on vacation. Please let me know what you think also good luck with this quest, cant wait to see how it turns out.

[ClemGrt]

Thank you again, now I really need to find time to work on this v3...

[Drew]

I can do my rework if you send me a good quality file of the map (i tried the one from ur blog too and its not good).
Also would save lots of time if you sent me the text too. Maybe send me in a private message when you can? thanks