Plate Armour

[Zenithfleet]

Well this thread is a rollercoaster

As usual I have my own wacky idea for Plate Armour (in the EU edition) that goes for the simplest possible fix:

Just remove the movement penalty entirely.

Plate armour allows you to roll four combat dice in defence.
Cost 850 gold coins
May not be used by Wizard.
ARMOUR

Now before you recoil in horror ...

In the EU game we have the following issues:

a) Heroes run out of things to spend their gold on.

b) Plate Armour is by far the most expensive item in the game, at about double the cost of the other expensive items (Chainmail 450gc, Battle Axe 400gc). Therefore it ought to be a worthwhile thing to save your gold for.

but

c) The movement penalty stops anyone buying it.

d) There are Pits of Darkness traps in the Ogre Horde and Wizards of Morcar EU expansions. The only differences between these and regular pit traps is that they can't be disarmed and that they inflict more damage the more armour you're wearing. Because Ogre Horde is a tough expansion, it would be more interesting if players have to weigh up (as it were) whether to wear plate armour, knowing they will roll an extra defence die against monsters, but occasionally have to jump unavoidable pits of darkness and possibly get very hurt. Unfortunately this never arises because hardly anyone bothers with plate armour.
(Actually I think the writers made a mistake with the Pit of Darkness rules--they're less dangerous than regular pit traps if you're wearing no armour!)

e) In the EU game, there is also the question of whether you can buy an item if someone else already has the card for it. This is one of those things that tended to come down to houserules. Strictly speaking I think the intention in gameplay terms was that only one shield is available, one crossbow, etc. (however unrealistic that may be). If only one player can buy Plate Armour, because there is only one card, then having no movement restriction doesn't unbalance things too much, because only one player will max out their defence dice. Effectively Plate Armour becomes a way for ONE player to buy their own equivalent to Borin's Armour (which is a freebie).

f) Classic EU Heroquest is a very, very simple game and one of its great virtues. One of its design features is that it has virtually no modifiers: no -2 penalties or things like that. You add up gold, you subtract body points and you get extra dice from equipment, but that's about it. I think the most advanced bit of maths in the game is multiplying a die roll by 10 on one of the treasure cards.

g) Besides which, there's the 'realism' argument that plate isn't really as heavy and cumbersome as some make it out to be. I'm not so fussed about realism in HQ, though, as it's a very boardgamey boardgame to begin with.

So rather than fussing around with ways to get a milder movement penalty, I'd just cut this Gordian knot and remove it entirely.

Even in the EU game you can't wear more than one kind of body armour at a time, so no Chainmail plus Plate. (Though the game doesn't specify what counts as 'body' armour and it's left up to players to use their common sense. Presumably the designers meant for the Wizard to wear both the Cloak and the Bracers at once.)

In the NA game there are other factors to consider (like the Armory), so just removing the movement penalty might not be such a great idea. But I think it would work in the EU game.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

With my last generation of players, not the current one, we did exactly as you have suggested and scrapped the movement penalty associated with plate armour, which was an improvement but left the question about what to do with Borin’s Armour, so I replaced Borin’s Armour with Borin’s Amulet that gave the wearer an extra BP and all was well with the world.

With my current group of players we are using my new version of HeroQuest Gold (not yet published as we are play testing it) that isn’t radically different in terms of rule modifications, it is just built on the EA Second Edition rather than the NA Edition so the play testing is more concerned with making sure I haven’t missed stuff out of the rulebook when reverse engineering!

However, one of the new HQ2021 Quests (don’t remember which one off the top of my head, New Beginnings maybe) comes with a Ring of Protection (I think that is the name) that has exactly the same properties as my Borin’s Amulet, which whilst it isn’t a massive problem, I prefer artefacts to be unique. So, this raised the plate movement / Borin’s Armour question again.

After considering restoring some form of penalty for plate, what I have ended up doing is keeping plate penalty free, swapping the position of Borin’s Armour in the GS with Rabbit Boots from ROTWL, converting Rabbit Boots to Boots of Speed (+1 jump, can reroll your movement dice, cannot be worn with Plate Armour), and making Borin’s Armour have the properties of Plate Armour but granting the wearer an extra Mind Dice for the purposes of defence only. This change not only meshes well with the increased use of Mind Dice in my edition, mainly around spells but also including some Lich powers for the Witch Lord and Wraiths (the Death Mist), but means that you get Borin’s Armour after you have probably bought plate already (or have made a decision not to buy Plate) so this avoids the give-away of the most expensive piece of equipment in the game which harms the advancement system (especially if that give away happens as early as the GS).

Personally I think these modifications are improvements, whichever version you are playing.

Regarding "Pits of Darkness" - when the EA First Edition became the EA Second Edition they changed the falling block trap from doing 1BP to doing 3AD damage, but left the pit trap as still doing 1BP. I changed that so that the pit trap does 2AD damage, (so all trap do xAD of damage - consistency) so when I hit AToH, I have just made the Pits of Darkness into a standard pit*. This gets around various unnecessary complications with Pits of Darkness as written.

*Subtle distinction here in my edition rules. A pit is a hazard that is placed on the board, usually as a result of a pit trap being sprung, but in ATOH they are hazards placed on the board like furniture. As they are hazards they cannot be disarmed as disarming is a process used for traps. This distinction means that you can always disarm (or attempt to disarm) a trap but you can never attempt to disarm a hazard (as well as pits, chasms, blocked squares, slippery ice tiles and similar are all classified as hazards). I find the logic of 'traps are devices that can be disarmed, apart from sometimes when they aren't' to lack consistency and clarity.

One related subject that I have flip-flopped between two options over the years and would value your input on is the following

Option 1: Chainmail and Plate armour give you 3 DD and 4 DD respectively and cannot be combined with each other (or any other body armour, although as you mentioned it isn’t clear what other body armour there is, so that might just be cannot be combined with each other)

Option 2: Chainmail and Plate armour give you +1 DD each and can be combined with other Body armour (including, possibly exclusively, each other)
Other factors to consider:

Whilst it isn’t stated, many people agree that there is an implicit ‘basic’ armour type in the game that all the Heroes start with, call it ‘Leather Armour’ or ‘Padded Jack’ or whatever that gives then their starting 2 DD or at least 1 DD of their starting DD. I’m not convinced of the benefits of explicitly calling that out in the game (giving it an entry and value in the armoury / equipment cards and so on) but the concept does raise the question as to whether I am putting on chainmail over my padded jack in the original version or whether I am taking off my padded jack and replacing it with chainmail…

I do NOT have a sell-back rule for reasons that I won’t go into here but this is something that I am adamant about

Option 2: effectively makes Plate more expensive without actually changing the cost on the card which helps with the eternal advancement balance question

Any thoughts?

[Zenithfleet]

One related subject that I have flip-flopped between two options over the years and would value your input on is the following

Option 1: Chainmail and Plate armour give you 3 DD and 4 DD respectively and cannot be combined with each other (or any other body armour, although as you mentioned it isn’t clear what other body armour there is, so that might just be cannot be combined with each other)

Option 2: Chainmail and Plate armour give you +1 DD each and can be combined with other Body armour (including, possibly exclusively, each other)
Other factors to consider:

Option 2: effectively makes Plate more expensive without actually changing the cost on the card which helps with the eternal advancement balance question

Any thoughts?

Hrrrm ... now you've got me flip-flopping between the two options as well!

Although Option 2 is helpful in terms of advancement, I think it might feel counterintuitive to some players, especially younger ones. They look at a full suit of armour and go, "Surely it's harder to hurt me if I wear that than if I'm wearing a bunch of rings?" They might also feel that combining the two would be too bulky, even if it's not in real life.

On a related note, if you're in the mood for more detail, you could add a rule that chainmail doesn't give you an extra defence die against bows/crossbow attacks. As Terry Pratchett once said, to an arrow, chainmail is basically a shirt made of holes.

Re: other types of body armour - I think only Borin's Armour would count, but under official rules that wouldn't change your dice anyway even if you combined it with something else, since neither it, plate nor chainmail gives you additional dice.

I do NOT have a sell-back rule for reasons that I won’t go into here but this is something that I am adamant about

I agree with the no sell-back rule.

One other thing I've sometimes considered is a 'no freebie giveaways' rule, meaning that hero players have to buy equipment cards off each other if they want them, rather than just giving them away. (e.g. if the Wizard finds a spear in a quest he can't just hand it over to the Elf; the Elf has to pay for it.) I decided not to have a rule about it, though, because it's better left up to the players whether to be generous or miserly--just as they can decide whether to cooperate or compete.

Whilst it isn’t stated, many people agree that there is an implicit ‘basic’ armour type in the game that all the Heroes start with, call it ‘Leather Armour’ or ‘Padded Jack’ or whatever that gives then their starting 2 DD or at least 1 DD of their starting DD. I’m not convinced of the benefits of explicitly calling that out in the game (giving it an entry and value in the armoury / equipment cards and so on) but the concept does raise the question as to whether I am putting on chainmail over my padded jack in the original version or whether I am taking off my padded jack and replacing it with chainmail…

I'm uneasy about saying there's a starting basic armour type. The Barbarian clearly relies on his MUSCULARITY rather than armour, for instance. The starting defence dice seem to encompass a range of things depending on the character. Could be armour, could be height (Dwarf), could be agility / dodge skills (Elf), could be magical protective charms (Wizard) and so on.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

My tentative position, at the moment is option 2, although that may only be because my focus at the moment is the eternal advancement balance question

I have previously considered the detail around penetrating weapons versus blunt weapons but rejected that due to, in my opinion, the added complexity outweighing the added richness (and it smacks a lot of the 15th century weapon versus armour race - use of hammers, mauls versus longbows and I see HQ as being set in an earlier, simpler era), that said I've never disliked a quote from Sir Terry

My point around the implicit 'basic' armour type (and I also am not planning on making that explicit) is that chainmail replaces that 2DD with a 3DD, whereas the helmet adds 1DD to that 2DD to make 3DD, the same end result but the counter intuitive argument could follow that "surely chainmail is more powerful than a helmet"

'no freebie giveaways' rule

Bearing in mind that gold can be shared freely, I'm not sure a 'no freebie giveaway' rule would work logically, if you, as I do, regard gold -> equipment as the advancement system, then as long as the gold has been earned by the group how they distribute it internally, whether as gold or bought equipment, is up to them and also provides a useful balancing/levelling up mechanism (either for replacement heroes or if someone wants to give the Elf a hand me down shortsword, because he never gets to search as the Barbarian and Dwarf always get there first)

[Bareheaded Warrior]

After wrestling with this one for years I had finally decided just to scrap the Plate Armour Movement Penalty entirely and give Borin’s Armour a different bonus +1MP in defence, when I spotted this post below.

Edited by HispaZargon: Thread merged with thread "Alternate movement penalty for Plate Mail (Chainmail too)" since both threads treat the same topic. All posts from the second thread have been moved to this thread.

Would like some opinions on my alternate way of dealing with movement penalties for armour, using Body Points as a measure of a Hero's strength.

Chain Mail - movement cannot exceed the Hero's starting body points.

Plate mail - movement cannot exceed the Hero's starting body points -1.

This means that Chain Mail reduces the average movement from 7 to approx;

6.5
6
5.5

And for plate mail instead of 3.5 to approx

6
5.5
4.7

Would this add too much complexity? / Messing around just to add a little differentiation between Heroes.

The other option would be -1 movement for chainmail and -2 moment for plate mail. But this makes them too slow I feel. I want chainmail to have a minor movement penalty.

This introduces two new ideas, a new concept of a movement penalty that caps movement rather than reducing the number of dice rolled or giving a negative penalty*, and a second step beyond the basic cap of having a cap related to Starting BP.

*I was never keen on the negative penalty approach, that is roll 2D6 and -1, -2 etc, as in HeroQuest, whilst there are situations in which you increase or decrease the number of dice rolled and some situations in which you change the odds by making different faces of the combat dice a success or failure but there are not, I don’t think, any situations where there is a negative penalty, a -1, -2 applied to a roll so I was reluctant to introduce one.

1. The cap, I like this, but assuming we are not yet considering coupling this to Starting BP, what do you set the cap to. Personally 9 feels the right value to me, as this prevents you making full use of a roll of 10, 11 or 12 and the odds of any of these outcomes on the standard 2D6 move is 1/6 which neatly fits with ‘excluding’ one side of a six-sided dice (a common HeroQuest probability usually phrased as ‘roll anything but a black shield to succeed’) so it feels like it fits in with existing HeroQuest mechanisms, and it feels about right in terms of balance between there being a penalty but it not being so steep that it makes the equipment no worth buying.

2. Using starting BP as the basis for the cap, I’m less convinced on. The Barbarian with an 8 is no so different from the 9 proposed above so I could live with that, the Dwarf with a 7 feels to low, both thematically as with his build you would imagine heavy armour would have no significant effect, rather than a more significant effect (and if you give him a special attribute of being able to ignore this effect then you still need to do something with Borin’s Armour or accept it will be of no use for the Dwarf – and if Borin was a Dwarf this makes even less sense). For the Elf this would equate to a cap of 6, which effectively renders Plate Armour un-wearable, which may be the intended effect and an unplated Elf I can live with. The Wizard obviously can’t wear plate anyway. Turning aside from our Heroes for a moment, you face a problem with this rule for Monsters, as Monster starting BP is rigged for game purposes, your Chaos Warrior, who certainly looks like he is plated up, would be capped at 3 squares of movement under NA rules (and 1 under SE rules) so again you would need to make a special exception.

So in summary, coupling the cap with starting BP would be fair for the Barbarian, would probably require an exception for the Dwarf, is irrelevant for the Wizard, would render Plate unwearable to the Elf and would require exceptions for Monsters, this feels too complex and messy to me! But I do like the rule below

Plate Armour caps movement to a maximum of 9 squares.

But I still need to consider how this would work with the Swift Wind Spell and the Potion of Speed...

[Bareheaded Warrior]

One related subject that I have flip-flopped between two options over the years and would value your input on is the following

Option 1: Chainmail and Plate armour give you 3 DD and 4 DD respectively and cannot be combined with each other (or any other body armour, although as you mentioned it isn’t clear what other body armour there is, so that might just be cannot be combined with each other)

Option 2: Chainmail and Plate armour give you +1 DD each and can be combined with other Body armour (including, possibly exclusively, each other)
Other factors to consider:

Option 2: effectively makes Plate more expensive without actually changing the cost on the card which helps with the eternal advancement balance question

Any thoughts?

Just been having a side-conversation about cards that state "can only be used by the Wizard" and how that is limiting if/when you expand the range of heroes available and having tentatively suggested that the Plate, Chain Mail and the Cloak of Protection Cards could all be labelled BODY ARMOUR so that they could not be combined ... and now realised that might be another point in favour of option 1...