BQP: The Frozen Horror Remake Main Thread!

[Vorimir]

The big issue with this was exposed time ago: it had 0 playtest back in the day and was rushed ti be published ASAP.

But we add AH just released it just like it was with 0 changes and playtest. They added some weak magic items to.boost a little but men, tbe box is great but the quests and monsters are crazy hard.

By the way, Stephen Bajer stated in an interview he is not a fan of the No defense against 2nd attack

[wallydubbs]

I'd suggest using Hopkins Rest for both Frozen Horror and Wizards of Morcar.

The Frozen Horror quests are long, tedious, unforgiving and in some cases, nonsensical. Mercenaries with only 2 body points will easily freeze in the icy river.
My suggestion is to do away with hiring mercenaries between quests and only hire those within the quest. Sure, you can play them off as members of the Dark Company, which will just make things more difficult, but when you make so much progress up the mountain trail, you need to suspend imagination that the heroes will run back down and buy more mercenaries. You're also reducing the difficulty
The Wizard will find himself a lot of nothing to do when his spells run out, which is why I suggest Hopkins Rest, 4 spell sets could even things out for him.
Reduce Wandering Monsters to 1. With some of these monsters we're just dealing with way too many body points and too much damage.
Get rid of the double-quest, run quest 10 as quest 9 and quest 9 as the final quest.

Some of these quests are all over the board, where heroes don't necessarily need to fight the boss to get to the exit door. I've remade some of the Frozen Horror quests. I figured I'll post them here.

[Thrasher79]

Hello,

we used to play BQ according to the original rules. And as often mentioned here, it is sometimes really brutal and unfair. The Barbarian player really wanted to get the Amulet of the North, so the group had no choice but to play BQ;-)
The last time we played it, we changed some rules to make it easier and also to remove unfair parts.
Here is an overview of the things we changed:

1. Ice River: These were completely removed. They are just unfair and don’t make any sense, except for the Heroes to gain Body Points.

2. Ice Slide: Ice Slide is completely laid out as soon as it is in the sight area. The effect remains, but the Heroes can see where the Ice Slide is and can thus avoid it.

3. Polar Bear Attack: He can attack 2 times. Either 1 Hero or 2 that are next to him. All attacks are rolled separately and can also be defended separately.
4. Yeti Embrace: If the monster embraces the hero in a powerful hug, this hug means the loss of 2 Body Strength points. The hero cannot defend himself against this attack, nor can he perform any actions. The monster cannot make any other attack while embracing the hero. It holds its victim until it dies or is killed by the heroes. The victim can try to escape the embrace at the beginning of its turn by succeeding in a Strength test.
This means that the Yeti does 2 Body Strength points of damage with the embrace, no matter how many rounds it holds the hero.
Strength test is resolved as follows:
The hero rolls a W12. If the result is equal to or lower than his current Body Strength points, the test is passed. If it is higher, the test is failed. If he rolls a 12, this is considered a catastrophic failure. This can trigger a trap or the like. This also applies if the hero has 12 or more Body Strength points.

This was quite playable. I should mention that we did not play the 3 Solo Quests. Neither the heroes nor I were in the mood for it. We did try one once, but stopped quite quickly. That was over 20 years ago, and we have always skipped it since then, whether in BQ or EQ.

We have not yet played the new editions of AH. We’ll see if we have time for that.
I would like to do it again, but there are still so many quests that need to be played, so unfortunately there is no time for it at the moment.

But we will definitely go back to the Northland at some point:-)

Greetings Thrasher79

[Daedalus]

The big issue with this was exposed time ago: it had 0 playtest back in the day and was rushed ti be published ASAP.

But we add AH just released it just like it was with 0 changes and playtest. They added some weak magic items to.boost a little but men, tbe box is great but the quests and monsters are crazy hard.

By the way, Stephen Bajer stated in an interview he is not a fan of the No defense against 2nd attack

Could you please provide a link to this interview? I'd like to read his thoughts.

[wallydubbs]

The big issue with this was exposed time ago: it had 0 playtest back in the day and was rushed ti be published ASAP.

But we add AH just released it just like it was with 0 changes and playtest. They added some weak magic items to.boost a little but men, tbe box is great but the quests and monsters are crazy hard.

By the way, Stephen Bajer stated in an interview he is not a fan of the No defense against 2nd attack

Could you please provide a link to this interview? I'd like to read his thoughts.

I haven't seen or heard this interview either, but I can attest from meeting Baker that he's generally against monsters not being allowed to defend. This came up when I questioned him about Orc's Bane.

[Vorimir]

I read it in this forum, maybe as wallydubbs said he was talking about orcs bane but he said he designed the game with the all attacks can be defended idea. It was latter redo by AH because Frozer Horror rules.

[Thrasher79]

Hello,

I just checked the Quest Book again. When the polar bear attacks, there is no mention that you cannot defend against the second attack. At least not in the new edition of AH.
In the old Quest Book, he can only defend once. As I understand it, a hero can defend once. Now, this is a matter of opinion:
1. Defend once and one attack cannot be defended.
2. Defend once and wait for both attacks and count the skulls. This would be the same as being attacked by 8 dice.
If it is point 1: Can the hero decide which attack he defends? Maybe the bear fails miserably in the first attack...

My heroes would definitely prefer option 2. Strangely enough, I roll poorly in attacks with monsters that are allowed to use many attack dice:-)

But if you play the new edition, you should not have this problem anymore.

Best wishes, Thrasher79

[Vorimir]

Look on the Rules clarification sectiion. You have the mechanic explained with the Polar warbear as an example.

[Thrasher79]

Oh, thank you very much for pointing that out!
I only checked the list of monsters at the back.
So unfortunately, that part hasn’t changed.
What remains, however, is how this defence is handled. The statement in the notes does leave some room for interpretation.
Unfortunately, AH also failed to correct this in the online quest ‘To the Northland’.

Regards, Thrasher79

[Vorimir]

Yeah, Frozen Horror had cool miniatures, components and atmosphere but terrible rules. It's ok to be hard for heroes but not that crazy level.
I had to double the number of potions in the quests and add a special power to the barbarian if the could reunite the 4 special items from the pdf mini expansion but the items had to be discarded after the final quest.
Basically he could attack blue monsters with an extra dice and blue monsters attacked him with onlenless dice so he could tank warbears a bit easier.
AH shouldnt have published a flawed and not playtested product.