Expansions--access to armories, extra spells thereafter?

[wallydubbs]

Lesto, what about the Wizard of Morcar spells?
Suppose your Wizard has the Wand of Galimanteus and the 4 Elemental spells. At what point can he use spells of Darkness, Detection and Protection?

[lestodante]

Later... they come later!
I did some special artifacts that allow the Wizard to increase his skills, like the wand of Galimateus. Only he can't use all at the same time or he will become too much powerful.
For example he can own other special staff related to an element in particular that will let him get a new set of spells or give him different skills.
Each staff is related to its element; for example a basic Wizard bearing the Sea Staff can chose 3 sets of spells but one must be Water Spells and he can chose the other 2 sets (Darkness and Fire for example) but at the same time the staff gives him the second set (Level 2) of Water Spells (still work in progress). So he owns now 16 spells in total: WATER, WATER (II Level), Darkness and Fire.
The Wand of galimateus (my version) gives the Wizards more power (4 sets of spells) but he is forced to carry the 4 classic sets, Earth, Fire, Water, Wind.
Also planning to do different artifacts that will assign him other spells (Darkness Ring for example) so he can equip some together with one of the Magic StaffS he prefer.
And here are the cards I did till now (also please check the text and tell me if I mispelled something in the text), drawings by Luis Octavio NB:

magic staffs.jpg

[Kurgan]

Cool ideas, lestodante!
Or you could do it this way... drop all the spells together and you get random draws. You might get a bunch of healing spells, some attack spells, or gimmicks that will be useless... !
Risky! Suspenseful!

"Ok Mr. Wizard, draw nine.... Ms. Elf, draw three"

[lestodante]

Yes, Kurgan, I never thought to mix the spells all together! Seems a nice idea to try

[Kurgan]

I have only played one quest with a mercenary so far (it was a solo Barbarian quest, but he played the "captured" Combat Card, so I improvised with an enemy crossbowman...). It wasn't bad. He got in a few extra attacks for the player's benefit, an Ice Gremlin stole his ranged weapon, and at the end of the quest, I removed him from the board.

I would say the "solo" quests from the BQP/EQP should be playable anytime. I am having those heroes play them "in real time" while in the middle of other quest packs with the idea that anything they gain there goes into the bigger campaigns. The only trouble is what to do if they "fail" (die), which is pretty likely considering the difficulty. I came upon a very "video-game" solution wherein instead of just erasing the character, or letting them repeat it, I hide some of their gear in the quest (as special treasure) but give them an extra healing potion and have them play it again. Instead of re-ordering everything, I just started them in a new location.

Anyway, I would say once they reach "champion" level (whether they die and revive or not), they can hire Mercs if there is gold and mercs available. I like the idea someone else suggested of "here are the guys who showed up at the tavern" and you can hire those (to prevent them hiring "too many"... though you still have the hard limit of how many minis you have to use).

Since I'm making an exception and NOT resetting a heroes' progress if he accidentally dies in one of the solo quests, they would retain their champion status and still be able to hire mercs later, miniature supply and gold permitting of course. I would "obey" the rules for mercs set by each of the packs. Once those packs have been completed, I am planning to just have random groups of mercs (so they might be the weaker mercs with only 1 body point that would be cheaper and the 2 body point ones that cost a bit more) that you can hire for other quests that maybe weren't originally intended to have them.

12 extra body points is a lot of extra advantage in a quest (the max allowed in either official pack that has mercs), but as I haven't played with big groups I'm still assuming most of those guys will get killed off pretty quickly, especially if there's a lot of monsters and/or a boss. Then again I also am using new custom heroes (all of which have either 4 or 5 BP, but each has limited magic abilities), so the extra help isn't going to be too much of an advantage overall for them. Now playing with more than four heroes in a quest, plus mercs would get a little crazy, but for that I created special tiles to help keep track of who goes with who. We'll see in actual playtesting how it turns out...

I'm also in agreement with the general opinion of the basic "quest pack order" and the "once you unlock something it carries over." As for how much gear, I would say one set of armor and two "big" weapons is what each character can carry. Once in awhile I might make an exception wherein they just are lugging around some extra thing temporarily (like an extra suit of armor they found) for another hero, but they can't use it.

I also am of the view that the EQP/BQP are so buggy/difficult that giving the heroes extra perks isn't a bad thing (I'd rather do that than modify those actual quests... with the exception of putting nice random goodies in the "empty" unmarked chests).

[Daedalus]

. . . And here are the cards I did till now (also please check the text and tell me if I mispelled something in the text), drawings by Luis Octavio NB:

magic staffs.jpg

Those are some beautiful cards! Do you still want some editing help this late in the game?