Ye Olde Inn

Thanks for everyones input on this. I think I've come to decisions on all these points for my own laminated rules.

American rules state the following:

Potions, page 17 wrote:As a Hero, you may drink a potion at any time. The way a potion works and how long its effects last are listed on the potion Treasure Card, and sometimes in the Quest Book. You may drink more than one potion at a time. Healing potions are very valuable. I fyour Body Points are reduced to zero, you may drink a healing potion before you die and save yourself by restoring 1 or more of your Body Points. You may give one of your potions to a fellow Hero, but you may do so only on your turn.

The last sentence is further clarified in the Mage of the Mirror and Frozen Horror Quest Books:

Passing Items, MM page 8, FH page 7 wrote:A Hero can pass a potion, artifact, weapon, or any other item to another Hero only if the 2 Heroes are in adjacent squares and neither Hero is adjacent to a monster.

I am pretty sure the Potion of Resilience specifies that you can drink this at any time. Anyway I agree that once a Hero is on 0 bp, they are dead, sometimes are Morcar/Zargon is nice and let us off by 'If any hero can feed this fallen hero then he is revived, only 1 turn for each hero and they have to be on an adjacent square.' .
Because we play with 2 extra heroes ( warrior priest and assassin ) the priest can pray, protection dice roll needs to be 6+ and the player that the priest gives it to has +2 defense and plus the wizard wouldn't go in an' attack.

One further idea on this (sorry to keep going on)-

I'm typing out my unofficial rule booklet and got stumped at this issue of allowing potions to be drunk at 0 or fewer body points.

The problem with the official (UK) rules is that if you're a wizard you can only ever get a 3 body point boost from your water of healing, heal body, or healing potion, because your last opportunity to use it is at 1 body point, this sucks and it doesn't make complete sense that the power of his own spell would be more than he ever needed to fully recover himself.

What if the wizard was given 5 body points to start? This makes sense because then you have a smoth distribution of BP values on the heroes-
8 (barb)
7 (dwarf)
6 (elf)
5 (wizard)

This makes the wizard more appealing to players too. This improvement is still tempered by his lack of ability to use the better equipment (max 2 attack, 4 defend vs any other hero's 3 attack, 6 defend + crossbow).

Instead of giving 5 body points to start with, why dont you introduce an artefact or special item for the Wizard that boosts his body points to 5. A special headband or some sort of magical armour perhaps. Another idea maybe to automatically upgrade the Wizard if he completes a set number of quests.

That would certainly eliminate the need to produce a new character board.

I wanted to revive this thread to address a question I haven't seen discussed elsewhere:

HOW do you throw a weapon? The description of a throwable weapon says "this weapon can also be thrown" etc., implies that an attack action is required to throw the weapon, but it isn't explicit to the extent of how that happens.

Is the weapon thrown from the hand that is holding it, or directly from the inventory, not interfering with what the hero is holding as their weapon or shield?

If the idea of a "equipped" weapon comes to mind, one way to play it is the weapon must first be equipped by the Hero to be thrown, and then the hero is unarmed after throwing the weapon.

I ask this question because in my ruleset, changing equipment is an action, and recovering a lost thrown weapon is an action (similar to searching for treasure, it cannot be performed normally while a monster is present), so knowing if a hero must first equip a weapon to throw it, and if a hero must equip another weapon afterwards to be armed again is useful knowledge.

How do you play it, and how do the particulars of thrown weapons make sense or fit into custom rules for you?

First of all, my rules state that WYSIWYG. That means, a card represents exactly one specimen (of equipment type, spell, etc.).
To discard means you use it and everyone has to comply with its effect.

To throw a weapon in my rules thus means that an equipment card with the Thrown Weapon icon must be discarded and the combat then resolved.

Related to that, I have the hand icon.
An item that is wielded with one hand, lists one, an item that is wielded with two hands, lists two.
The rules state
1) you can only attack once (unless overruled, of course)
2) you can only use two hand icons during a round (which replaces all weapon changing and equipping rules I've ever read). On a sidenote, that means you can use the same weapon with the thrown icon first in melee, then throw it, but not the other way around or throw it twice.

I also have this optional modular rule:
Thrown Weapons
If you want to allow thrown weapons to be regainable after a ranged attack has been made with them you can put a card stand holding the respective discarded card into the room or corridor section the attacked villain last occupied or is still occupying immediately after you have attacked. Any hero who ends their move in that room or corridor section before Morcar's next turn finds the thrown weapon and is given the respective equipment card. If that is not the case or if the attacked villain moves out of the attacking hero's line of sight after the ranged attack during that same round, the weapon is stolen and lost, and the card is now discarded into the Equipment deck.

Here's how I see it: If both hands are full, you cannot throw a weapon without freeing up a hand. If this is the case, I would say that a weapon can be dropped and a throwing dagger used in one turn. The reason being that the daggers would likely be kept readily available so this would be fairly quick. I don't think this would apply to dropping a shield as you have a forearm strap that you would have to contend with as well, where it could get snagged on your sleeve, gloves, etc. After you are finished throwing your dagger (or daggers if you used multiple turns to throw more), you would still need another turn to pick up your dropped weapon before you can use it again.

As far as other, larger thrown weapons, I'd say you need a complete turn to equip them, one to throw them, then one to re-euip your original weapon. So using your daggers would effectively save you one turn over this route, but daggers are typically weaker so it's a trade-off.

I would agree that recovering thrown weapons takes another turn.

My system is essentially the same as Knightkrawler's, save that my thrown weapons are "drained" when used.

Draining a card uses it up for this quest only. It's a nice "once per quest" mechanic. This actually fixes thrown weapons to make them useful. It also covers other mechanics such as the Armband of Healing and the Spell Ring.