Yesterday, me and my friends finally managed to sit around a gaming table together and fire up a new session of HeroQuest, the first time in about 25 years since we last played it. We added the Advanced Rules into play and we all considered it a valuable addition to our gaming experience! There's a lot more strategy and especially the Wizard player enjoyed the added versatility to his class, even though he still has to grow into that versatility. We most definitely will continue using it.
However, despite all the fun and strategical considerations it brought, we did notice a few flaws in the design, that we're going to house-rule differently than the Advanced Rules state. I'll list those here:
Test of WillThe Test of Will requires the owner of the miniature to roll
and add the totals. If this is higher than the current Mind Points of the miniature, the test
fails. That's a problem for most non-Heroes, if you realise that except for a few Monsters, they don't exceed 3 Mind Points. Even the Barbarian and the Dwarf will have a hard time beating that test, especially when they've suffered Mind Point damage during the game - not uncommon, especially with the Hazard cards that do Mind Point damage. Any character - Monster or Hero alike - with just 1 Mind Point will
never succeed in passing the test; even at 2 Mind Points - the default of the Barbarian - they will have just a 1 in 36 chance to pass it. One of the compounding problems is that rolling 2D6 has an outcome that gravitates towards 7, with other outcomes being increasingly unlikely, the further away from 7 it is.
There is one particular case in which this is exploitingly devastating, especially for the monsters: the Elf Spell "Hypnotic Blaze". In order to break free, characters have to pass a Test of Will but with most monsters having no more than 2 Mind Points to begin with, the Elf can lock down an entire room, including named Characters and essentially give the entire party a free round against the monsters, without them being able to even defend against it. Even on their own activation, the chance of passing a Test of Will is insignificantly small, causing them to remain frozen for the next turn of the Heroes as well.
Then there is a Dungeon Event that is extremely hard for the Heroes to overcome: "Forbidden Musk". It requires a Test of Will, which will be extremely hard for the Barbarian and the Dwarf to overcome. The Elf will have a hard time shaking that one off and even the Wizard has a less than 50% chance to overcome it, especially if he already expended Mind Points on Spells and/or Mastery Tests.
As such, we're house-ruling this one differently: In order to pass a Test of Will, the character rolls just
. If the number rolled is less than or equal to the current Mind Points, the Test of Will is passed succesfully. This means it's a lot easier (but still not trivial) to pass a Test of Will; only for the Wizard and Chaos Sorcerors the test is trivial, as they automatically pass it. The advantage is that even characters with just 1 Mind Point have a chance to succeed, even if that's just 16%.
Also, we're house-ruling that Undead are immune to its effects.
Elf Spell: Hypnotic BlazeAside from the problems with the Test of Will mentioned above, the Advanced Rules version of this spell suffers from two other things. The original Spell had a saving throw when the spell was applied, but this version doesn't. When we played the game yesterday, the Elf player realised how he could exploit this during "The Rescue of Sir Ragnar" and then applied said exploit in the two missions that followed it. In "Prince Magnus' Gold", he entered the central room and locked it down, allowing the other Heroes who came in after him, a free round of attacks against defenseless monsters. Before the monsters could act, both the Fimir and the Chaos Warrior had been cut down. In "Lair of the Orc Warlord", they did something similar in the room just before the Warlord, because the Barbarian wasn't close enough to assist the three Heroes when they opened that room. Furthermore, there's no expiration timer - is this supposed to last just 1 round then? The original one expired in 3 rounds.
We're house-ruling this one to bring it closer to the original: the Test of Will is made when the spell is cast, as well as when the character is activated. If the test is passed, the character breaks free and can act normally again. Otherwise, the spell will last for up to 3 turns of the affected character.
Event Cards: "Forbidden Musk" and "Oppressive Heat"These cards have ongoing effects that last until the character is finally able to break it. With the changes to the Test of Will as suggested above, the first one might be doable, but "Oppressive Heat" is going to be a major hurdle for the Wizard to overcome. At maximum hitpoints, he only has a 1 in 6 chance to pass the Test of Strength. Depending on the number of injuries suffered, that drops to 1 in 12, or 1 in 36. In other words, the Wizard is likely to suffer the crippling effect of Oppressive Heat quite long.
We're going to house-rule these two Dungeon Events to last at most 3 turns, if the Heroes haven't been able to shake it off by then.
General Dungeon Event balanceOne shortcoming we noticed, but one we've not been able to come up with a fitting solution for, is the overall balance in the way Dungeon Event cards work. Danger usually increases when the main objective has been accomplished, but in the three missions we played, the main objective was completed at the same time the dungeon was cleared of its inhabitants. Most Dungeon Event cards, however, either affect monsters that are still around somewhere, or can manipulate combat in a way that's detrimental for the Heroes. With most Dungeon Event cards coming after the main mission objective is completed, but without monsters to apply it to, many Dungeon Event cards become useless. We noticed this during the "Prince Magnus' Gold" quest, as well as the "Lair of the Orc Warlord" quest. I ended up piling up a number of Dungeon Event cards as the Heroes made their way back to the stairwell, but I had nothing to use them on, as I didn't have any monsters left and combat didn't occur anymore.
We're not sure how to change this, other than to perhaps add a number of "Wandering Monster" events to the Dungeon Event cards as well. At this moment, there's only one of those, "Ambush".
at hand to mount a rescue attempt?
