More than four Heroes at a time... (6+ players)

[hightechartist]

I regularly play with more players, I just upped the difficulty of almost all monsters in my games. Out of 6 games with 5 or 6 Heroes, there have been 4 deaths so far, though I maintain that each of the deaths was easily preventable with a little more caution and less selfishness.

[lestodante]

To balance the level without putting too many monsters on the board you can make some monsters defend with white shields instead of black ones.

[Oftkilted]

To balance the level without putting too many monsters on the board you can make some monsters defend with white shields instead of black ones.

Or you could use the “Dark Company” blocking rules where one black shield can block any amount of incoming damage. Or allow them to block on white and black.

[Kurgan]

Or be fancy and use Blue Dice. I create a "Potion Card" for the bad guys that let's them switch to Blue defense dice for the duration of the Quest, if I feel its warranted (mostly for boss characters). random Elite Monsters...

I haven't played Dark Company yet. There's also the idea that a 2 body point monster requires scoring two Skulls to kill, that if you get only one they heal by the next turn (from Japanese Game System rules).

Then again some Quests may be difficult enough that multiple Heroes will only make it more fair (EQP/BQP).

[The Admiral]

5+ Heroes is fine if they are weak and the quest is strong, but even then it may be too much for them. otherwise it would require some kind of levelling up of the quest of which there are numerous house options: Evil Wizard cards, Adding monsters, Upgrading monsters, remove a healing potion from the treasure deck, no recovery/shopping between obviously sequential quests and options above.

It is all about tailoring the quest to give a satisfying result.

[Kurgan]

Agreed, there are many options (and much good info on the first page!). As for quests designed for more Heroes... the Dark Company ("Advanced Quest"), Wizards of Morcar and the Barbarian Quest Pack were designed for Mercenaries.. which can add another 12 Body Points to the Hero's team. I would say that EQP and BQP are so unbalanced in terms of difficulty already that it wouldn't really be cheating to have an extra Hero or two in them. You could probably get away with it in the Trial as well without modifications.

A bunch of Barbarian level Heroes might make things a bit too easy, but if they were Wizard or Elf level, that would seem reasonable to me. I think you can have it be challenging without too much of a problem. Random elite monsters and other things can enhance the difficulty without making it too hard to manage or make it feel unfair.

[The Admiral]

Agreed, there are many options. As for quests designed for more Heroes... the Dark Company ("Advanced Quest"), Wizards of Morcar and the Barbarian Quest Pack were designed for Mercenaries.. which can add another 12 Body Points to the Hero's team. I would say that EQP and BQP are so unbalanced in terms of difficulty already that it would really be cheating to have an extra Hero or two in them. You could probably get away with it in the Trial as well without modifications.

We played the Elf and Barbarian packs with no recovery, shopping or spell replenishment. In each there was a very powerful main Hero (Elf or Barbarian) joined by 4 standard Heroes of post basic quests level, plus a pre-prepared special Hero (the female charcater) plus 16 henchmen. They were tough but great fun. In the Elf pack the only survivor was the main Elf with 2BP's and a healing potion. The Main Barbarian lost the Dwarf (obviously), and both the other barbarians.

[ajjohnsen]

The first thing I did when adding "home brew" outside of the Evil Wizard cards was to up some BP for monsters. Orcs going from 1 to 2 BP is an instant difficulty increase from quest 1 onwards

[The Admiral]

The first thing I did when adding "home brew" outside of the Evil Wizard cards was to up some BP for monsters. Orcs going from 1 to 2 BP is an instant difficulty increase from quest 1 onwards

Yep, I call them Orc Champions and use the orcs out of Warhammer quest. They also get +1 on att and def.

[Kurgan]

They may not have 2 BP, but "Elite" Orcs (all same stats, but roll Black Dice for attack, Blue Dice for defense) are very dangerous. Blue Dice means they defend like Heroes (two Black Shields on each Die instead of the usual one). Black Dice means a slightly greater chance of a Skull (like counting Black Shields as Skulls in attacks).

The system I use for Elites is that each Game System monster (not counting summoned or wandering monsters) gets a one time 1 White Die roll by Zargon, and if it's a Black Shield, he gets to be an Elite. Normally I use this system for Champions (upgraded Heroes). But maybe with a Heroic band of more than 4, you could get away with having these random Elites roaming around. I designate the upgraded Monsters with a special token under each one.