Fighting in Doorways

[mitchiemasha]

1)

9) You've just gave that away. The Heroes would have to figure that tactic out and be in position to be able to do pull it off, hold required spells etc. I'd be OK with the mod, if it's some how theme'd into the quest. lets not forget the first time you meet the main boss, you can't even kill him, we have to go back. We have to be more creative about this, not just say you can't hit him first. The original quests take this mod to it's extreme, you have to do an entire different quest before you can target the boss, never mind first!

6) I like to include weapon damage... 'A bought weapon is broken when rolling Black Shields equal to its power'. Originally it was 'your weapon is damaged when rolling all black shields' which does sound simpler but there are very important reasons to the extra words.

4) I have read that some players wont reveal a room until a high roll, skipping turns but I've never seen it. The problem is, when do you flip the board on them? Instantly or do you allow a few turns pause. Pausing can serve in some situations and should be allowed. There's a few mods that work against Heroes who abuse this tactic. A Hero rolls for every turn, even if not moving. Double 1 is a Hazard, they risk losing a Body point. “You stumble on a loose stone!” “Rocks fall from above!” “In your desperate attempt to escape, the floor greets your face!”. This makes for some nail biting attempts to escape the dungeon, especially if battered and beaten. There's the Chaos Deck (amazing essential mod), I use the Chaos Tokens from Advanced HeroQuest instead.

If i was playing a group and they did actually camp, for a duration, we wouldn't be playing, who would do that... we wouldn't be friends, lol!

3) but Heroes can run into a hallway, are you concerned a hero can roll 4 Ad6, we can't just remove advantages because we don't like that it helps them. Well we can but! Lets be more creative about it.

I'm not a fan of room by room games or rules that lock you into combat. Might as well not even have the board. Move upto a monster 1 after the other, which is how most games play out but it's good to have the freedom of choice. Again... If it was a unique trait of a Quest or even a full Campaign/Quest book, a special artifact that can be destroyed or something, as long as it's themed into the quest, it would be a great inclusion.

2) Yes, I do like it's simplicity, that's very important. I'm usually quite open about the LoS and targeting, unless it's directly behind. I'd likely allow shooting over goblins heads too. You could add 'Unless directly behind another'. Now this works for me and only 4 words longer.

1) I'll expand. If you create the Mod 'Only the adjacent square can be attacked through the doorway' That's it! very simple, no extra words needed. Now ranged attacks and diagonal attack can't work through it, by default, due to their own rules. If you've seen my rule sheet, I like to keep things small and to the point, mainly to fit them all on 1 side. The full print out/book would have more details, examples etc.

[pemcode]

4) I thought rolling until you get 6s before entering a room seems reasonable but tedious, so we let heroes "fast forward" to roll 6s (except when there's something preventing it eg a spawned monster). I agree (double 1's is a hazard) is a different way to solve it.

3a) Finding an exploit in a game can be fun. But the internet has sort of ruined that because it's too easy to go online and look up exploits. So nowadays I think it's better to patch exploits (video game patches or tabletop game rules tweaks). Ahh the halcyon days.

3b) Here's the exploit. Heroes move into a room and attack (turn 1). Heroes attack then leave the room (turn 2). Repeat. Having only one crossbow reduces the exploit, but it still sorta breaks the game.

3c) Door force field attempts to fix the exploit. It also gives more uses to PtR/VoM (and Swift Wind). It seems less kludge than keeping the exploit, though there are probably other ways to fix the exploit. It's not necessarily a lot of verbiage... While a room has (a) monster(s), the room's doors have a one-way force field that blocks the exit as if it were a monster (ie can bypass with VoM or DoD).

2) Four scenarios for targeting:
* Room Spell
* Room Crossbow
* Hallway Spell
* Hallway Crossbow

Each could be handled different ways in terms of LoS blockers:
* no blockers {}
* enemy blockers only {enemy, furniture}
* enemy blockers and friendly {enemy, friendly, furniture}
* blocker exceptions (goblin, table, etc)

Thoughts on LoS:
* If we're not explicit, then LoS can lead to subjective corner cases.
* In a casual non-PvP setting, one way to solve it is to hand wave and not make a big deal out of it.
* To implement LoS in code ( http://mepem.com/pemcode/?p=864 ), I cast a ray from src center to dst center. The ray cast has a line slope (dx dy). We iterate the slope in sub-square increments until we (hit a blocker square) or (reach dst center).
* I sorta like nerfing the crossbow with room LoS. Otoh I like that (target anything in your room) dissolves LoS complexity (hallway LoS is trivial), and simplifies targeting rules to (room room, hallway LoS).

1) Thanks for clarifying. I see that "you can only target Adjacent through a door" implies "Ranged and Diagonal don't work through a door". The latter is redundant except to clarify.