by Fullork345 wrote:The new things don't bother me to much. I just hope they don't make the original characters weak.
I don’t think they will. The new characters don’t seem universally “stronger” to me than the original four Heroes; more “different”. And with all of them having new Spells/Skills, “more complicated”, which could be something some players just immediately dislike and choose to ignore. The new characters have to balance both mechanical function and player appeal. The original four will have a great advantage in the contest of appeal, yet for the new Heroes to work at all, they do need to be able to replace the originals.
Personally, I’m happy we have more options. Changing up the Hero roster has already led to me inventing new characters and redefining the default “main” nations of the game, the Empire and how it came to be, and will require significant story adaptation to run a campaign like The Frozen Horror without a Barbarian. Even if players prefer an entire campaign with a party exclusively made of Bard/Druid/Warlock/Knight, and Zargon maybe gives one player a free toolkit and allows Elemental Spells to be divided among the Warlock and Druid like the Elf and Wizard traditionally; I don’t see this as some kind of awful “anti-HeroQuest blasphemy”. HeroQuest has always been about every group of players running the game the way we want, and this is no different. The new things can be adapted or even completely ignored, to suit our own preferences.
As I wrote this, I decided that if I were running the Druid and Warlock as Wizard/Elf replacements, I would probably require that they mix the Elements. The Druid would have to take both healing spells (Water of Healing and Heal Body), and probably Rock Skin. The Druid would become the healer of the party, and this magic unavailable during Shapeshift. Some spells, like Courage/Swift Wind/Pass Through Rock/Veil of Mist, I’d limit the Warlock to using only on herself, not allies. I’d allow the mechanics of Genie, but make it a Demonform power rather than a genie doing something. I might even make the Elemental Spells in the Warlock’s possession only usable while in Demonform. So the Warlock only gets those “extra” spells in Demonform, while the Druid loses access to those spells when she Shapeshifts. Played with standard rules, they have no Elemental Spells at all, and those spells are baked into the core game mechanics, so I suspect the new characters are limited enough that the OG Heroes are still relevant.
I don’t see any downsides to Avalon Hill adding options, even if the dynamics do ultimately change over time. As long as they faithfully re-release reprints of all of the old NA/EU Quests first – and maybe Japan, that could be interesting – I even think they could create future Quests and monsters that require new Heroes. At that point, players who only want to play the original four Heroes could tweak them so that they could work. As long as it remains adaptable at the core, I think more options are always welcome for me. I’ll take what I like and ignore what I don’t.
This reprint is such a long time coming. I just can’t feel anything but celebratory about all of it. It’s an exciting time, and I’m in no hurry to throw a blanket on my excitement.
