Monsters jumping pit traps?

[Davane]

Yeah I suppose we could start selling "coil of fine rope" (DragonStrike) at the Armory that lets you step into and out of a pit trap safely or something.

The Dwarf in WHQ starts with a rope to get Warriors out of pits...

[iKarith]

The Dwarf in WHQ starts with a rope to get Warriors out of pits...

Do WHQ rules say anything about using the rope to carefully climb into the pit instead of trying to jump into it? I guess in WHQ that would not be necessary as passages are double-wide in WHQ, unless pit traps are too.

I dunno, I've never seen WHQ pretty much ever—in fact I checked a couple FLGS sites and they don't even sell Citadel paints. It's all Army Painter.

Seriously, Army Painter? I don't actually know anybody who recommends Army Painter paint, save for their washes, in a "if you wanna save some money at the cost of having it take a day and a half to dry, this stuff looks good and is comparatively dirt cheap." I've heard that Reaper paints are good for n00bs, that Citadel makes a basic paint job pretty easy and a complex paint job quite achievable—all at a cost, that P3 and Vallejo are make many excellent paints for a great price but maybe aren't as good for new painters… And if you say Army Painter, people seem to just chuckle and say, "I mean, if it's all you can get, it's all you can get…"

First world problems, but … I have the Internet. Theoretically I can get anything else, but I'd rather fund my FLGSes if I can. I think it's gonna mean having them order stuff though, and that's always a PITA.

So anyway, I've never actually seen WHQ, the original, any of the "limited release" newer games (LOL), none of it.

[Davane]

In WHQ, pit traps weren't something that you could find on a map - unless the GM put it there, a pit trap was a random event, either by card or table, that stated that you could use the Dwarf's Rope to get out of it. If placed by the GM, the GM could say whatever was reasonable...

Of the various example actions in the roleplay version, there was an Make Rope action...

[iKarith]

In WHQ, pit traps weren't something that you could find on a map - unless the GM put it there, a pit trap was a random event, either by card or table, that stated that you could use the Dwarf's Rope to get out of it. If placed by the GM, the GM could say whatever was reasonable...

Of the various example actions in the roleplay version, there was an Make Rope action...

> C - CLIMB OUT

YOU ARE NOT IN A PIT. HOWEVER, THAT CAN BE ARRANGED.

[j_dean80]

The Dwarf in WHQ starts with a rope to get Warriors out of pits...

Do WHQ rules say anything about using the rope to carefully climb into the pit instead of trying to jump into it? I guess in WHQ that would not be necessary as passages are double-wide in WHQ, unless pit traps are too.

I dunno, I've never seen WHQ pretty much ever—in fact I checked a couple FLGS sites and they don't even sell Citadel paints. It's all Army Painter.

Seriously, Army Painter? I don't actually know anybody who recommends Army Painter paint, save for their washes, in a "if you wanna save some money at the cost of having it take a day and a half to dry, this stuff looks good and is comparatively dirt cheap." I've heard that Reaper paints are good for n00bs, that Citadel makes a basic paint job pretty easy and a complex paint job quite achievable—all at a cost, that P3 and Vallejo are make many excellent paints for a great price but maybe aren't as good for new painters… And if you say Army Painter, people seem to just chuckle and say, "I mean, if it's all you can get, it's all you can get…"

First world problems, but … I have the Internet. Theoretically I can get anything else, but I'd rather fund my FLGSes if I can. I think it's gonna mean having them order stuff though, and that's always a PITA.

So anyway, I've never actually seen WHQ, the original, any of the "limited release" newer games (LOL), none of it.

Army Painter spray on primer and varnish both work well.

[iKarith]

I have heard good things about both the Army Painter primer and varnish upon occasion. And given the curing time consideration, the washes they offer I've heard are great too. It's the paints people keep scoffing at.

[Daedalus]

I forgot since they automatically jump traps (don't need to roll) and never take damage from them, a monster would never "try" to jump over a hero, fail and fall in, and then be "standing on his head" in that scenario. If a monster voluntarily enters a pit, he doesn't take damage, but he then has the same disadvantage as a Hero would from within a pit if he stays there to attack/defend.

The choice then becomes whether the "hero in a pit" is an impassable square for a monster, or not (or the monster in the pit is passable for a hero). I'm inclined to say they probably didn't intend for it to be passable, but if it was, no big deal? After all, under Zargon's control, monsters can do whatever he has them do, they're not acting on instinct to always attack the nearest target.

Like iKareith, I favor allowing a monster to pass over a Hero in a pit trap. Consider how a Hero can search for treasure or secret doors in a sprung pit trap ". . . as if it were a seperate room unto itself." I liken a monster jumping over a Hero in a pit trap to a monster in a corridor passing by an open, one-square room with a Hero in it; the path is clear in either case, whether the Hero is below or adjacent to the monster. Line of sight is unblocked, as well.

The hero jumping over a monster (in a pit) scenario presents a difficulty, because the hero COULD fail and then land on the monster. What happens then?. . .

A pit trap with a Skeleton, Zombie, or Mummy waiting in it would make a cool trap! Whether the Hero springs such a trap or fails to jump it, for combat both the Hero and monster apply the one-die penalty to thier rolls (tight quarters.) But it would be best (and nastier) for Zargon to move the monster adjacent to the pit and then attack on his turn. This allows both figures to be properly represented on the board.

. . . And as another aside, despite what the NA rules explicitly say, there is absolutely no point in searching a "pit room" for secret doors. I guess you could contrive some custom scenario where the Hero was forced to fall into a pit, and couldn't get out, but could find a built-in secret door, that I guess would either teleport them to some other location on the board or reveal a secret, subterranean level on another board?

A pit trap with a secret door could serve as an intelligent way for Zargon to hide a treasure room, since a monster can access the room without penalty out of game. On the other hand, the Heroes aren't likely to search for secret doors in a pit trap, but there is a good chance they will either disarm, avoid, or fail to discover the pit trap. These likelyhoods should hide optional treasure effectively and can even cause the failure of a Quest objective if the Heroes aren't persistent.

Nice idea for a thread, Kurgan!

[iKarith]

. . . And as another aside, despite what the NA rules explicitly say, there is absolutely no point in searching a "pit room" for secret doors. I guess you could contrive some custom scenario where the Hero was forced to fall into a pit, and couldn't get out, but could find a built-in secret door, that I guess would either teleport them to some other location on the board or reveal a secret, subterranean level on another board?

A pit trap with a secret door could serve as an intelligent way for Zargon to hide a treasure room, since a monster can access the room without penalty out of game. On the other hand, the Heroes aren't likely to search for secret doors in a pit trap, but there is a good chance they will either disarm, avoid, or fail to discover the pit trap. These likelyhoods should hide optional treasure effectively and can even cause the failure of a Quest objective if the Heroes aren't persistent.

Nice idea for a thread, Kurgan!

If I were a player in such a quest, I'd call BS on that without some STRONG hints that we needed to be finding and exploring pit traps ahead of time.

The other factor is … we just had a play through Prince Magnus's Gold. Now we've been playing with alternate maps, but I think he said this one was almost verbatim the original map. It was such a frustrating slog to get TO the objective that once we got there, I didn't have any desire to "properly finish the quest" by having everyone walk out. We ended it there. Most people would, since you've probably found everything anyway and you're just going to make a beeline for the exit, right? Simple enough, so why not end it there? Anything more is anticlimactic, and even if you had to fight your way out … there's little reward since you've probably searched for all the loot you can find.

Thing is … we'd previously played it. It was only five or so rounds to get out, and we have a threat mechanic. Something interesting could happen, right?

We calculated out that it would be 30+ rounds assuming above average rolls to get us out with the only action being a couple of secret rooms that the threat mechanic WOULD have opened (we wouldn't have searched for them—we were done) revealing … a couple weak mobs the wizard would have no problem taking out since they'd come as separate groups with chance to use some healing between.

We've got one extra quest under our belts and, being a party basically under my control, we've pooled our gold to focus on DEFENSE. Armor is the best thing heroes can spend their money on in this game, by the way. It means that for the first half of the quest book, the goblins, orcs, and skeletons are low threat until you encounter a whole bunch of them in the expansions.

But if not for our homebrew, there wouldn't have been even the brief distraction wouldn't have been there. it would have just been roll after roll after roll after roll after roll after roll… When it felt like that was the case just to get to the objective, it wasn't fun.

Searching every room and hallway for a hole and then searching every hole (with a forced lost bodypoint because nowhere do the rules allow you to actually carefully climb down into a pit even if it costs you your whole movement to do it… Y'know what, no, I take it back, even with hints, no. You're basically creating a disincentive to look for traps, which are intended to catch the unwary, and then forcing them to stupidly and deliberately set them ALL off, take damage, waste time searching for something that isn't ever there otherwise… If we did that, it would double the time taken to play any quest, and it would deliberately waste the character's very expensive resources and the player's time.

It might be clever to put a secret door in a pit, but not a random, secret pit the players can't find and don't know they're supposed to open, and which makes deliberate self-injury over and over again part of "solving" the "puzzle" of the quest. "I'm going to search for traps." "That space seems suspicious." "Okay, well since I need to find a door in a pit trap, I'll go to that spot." "A spear shoots out and stabs you for 1 BP." "Screw this!"

[Davane]

You seem to call BS on a lot of things, iKarith...

Personally, I wouldn't think of looking for secret doors in a pit trap, unless the pit trap was in a weird location, or there was nowhere else to go.

I believe WD had an AHQ quest that featured a secret door in a pit trap. Can't recall off the top of my head, but GW was notorious for stuff like that. They knew how to make things challenging, that I imagine iKarith would call BS on, like putting a chasm right in front of a quest room, so you had to jump over it before you could enter (instant death if you fail) and there was only room for one model in the doorway. WHQ often pulled similar shenanigans with published quests.

I think it's not necessarily BS if you are going in with such expectations. Maybe it's just me and dealing with the instant kill rooms of the '80's (now that was some crazy BS), but some thing to make quests interesting, like putting secret doors in pits, could be fun.

I think all of this is a case of HeroQuest going more in the direction of D&D, and away from being a board game.

As an aside, if you are being really nasty, AHQ had a grate as a Hazard, in which you could often find another room entirely, below the room of the grate. If you didn't have rope and use it to go down, you were stuck in the lower room waiting for a grisly death.

Also, I picked up a copy of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage Adventure Board Game a few weeks ago, and I'm kind of hankering to get some of those into HQ... Beholders, anyone?

[iKarith]

You seem to call BS on a lot of things, iKarith...

What's your point? If your goal playing the game is to make it not fun, I don't want to play a game that's intentionally made not fun. A trap in this game is literally like holding on to a lit firecracker and letting it blow up in your hand. There is a way to avoid that happening, but the suggestion here is that if you use it, YOU FAIL. So unless you literally do that, again and again, repeatedly, without being told to do it, you "lose".

That's not fun, and if that's how the game is played, then in my opinion it's the wrong game.

And if you don't like my opinion, you're certainly welcome to play YOUR game differently. But if I were one of the players and that was how the game was being played, I wouldn't play another with those people.

Personally, I wouldn't think of looking for secret doors in a pit trap, unless the pit trap was in a weird location, or there was nowhere else to go.

I believe WD had an AHQ quest that featured a secret door in a pit trap. Can't recall off the top of my head, but GW was notorious for stuff like that. They knew how to make things challenging, that I imagine iKarith would call BS on, like putting a chasm right in front of a quest room, so you had to jump over it before you could enter (instant death if you fail) and there was only room for one model in the doorway. WHQ often pulled similar shenanigans with published quests.

I think there are chance of instant death traps in published quests, actually. Or Gandalf on the bridge You Shall Not Pass really hard encounters that require a hero either take a potentially fatal gamble or fight an extremely difficult enemy.

Seems a little different than "you have to somehow divine that the space you were told 'looks suspicious' is a specific kind of trap, and that you must trigger it (and everyone must intentionally take damage despite the fact that any reasonable person would carefully climb down (perhaps with a chance of slipping and taking damage), then search for a room.

That's particularly unreasonable given that most of the world had a game where one cannot search inside a pit trap anyway.

And For what it's worth, if someone else flags your comment for a moderator … I didn't. It seems you have some kind of axe to grind against me. If I've misread you, then I apologize for that. Still, whether you do or don't, after some of the crap I've been through in recent years, you're not likely to manage to personally annoy me even—I've kinda got much bigger (and more dangerous) concerns. I don't have time or interest for teh soshal dramaz. As far as I'm concerned, you're entitled to your opinions. I'm certainly not shy with my own.