Heroquest Town Center: Compiled Gear, Spells, and Classes

[mikemacdee]

UPDATED: New Armory in the form of cards instead of an unsightly chart. Download also includes custom classes, between-quest minigames, revised spell cards, and the Arden Daredevils campaign.

DOWNLOAD
UPDATED 9/11/2014 -- Town Center Prototype added. This hopefully makes the between-quests segment of the game a bit more involved.

It's annoying having to shell out tons of dough just to get a couple of expansion pieces (cards, figures, spell groups, etc), so I decided to make my own Heroquest Armory in document form. I think if HQ's resources were compiled into "D&D handbook format", it would allow easy access to the best of both regional versions' resources without forcing players to resort to slews of spendy ebay purchases. I'd also like to make the between-quests segment a bit more complex, compile a dice-chart for the treasure deck, and maybe even revise the rulebook, but that's a pretty big undertaking. So for now, here's most of the goodies from the Heroquest universe in list form.

The first section is an armory that compiles US and UK items from the Equipment, Treasure, and Artifact decks, from the base game AND several expansions, plus a handful of new items -- all have price listings (including Borin's Armor and Spirit Blade just for completionism's sake). The second section is the Academy of Magic, which assembles almost all of the spell groups from the base game and its expansions: I dissected the Elf Spells into two new spell groups called Time and Illusion. Both sections have a revised rule or two, like the mechanics for the Courage spell, and the "thrown weapon" mechanic.

CUSTOM CLASSES (12)
I revisited my custom classes: some got deleted and replaced with new ones, others were fixed so they'd make more sense.

[Count Mohawk]

I intend to come back to this and comment more later, but one thing jumped out at me that deserves a comment now: Potions of Healing should not be sold for 100 gold each. In Hero Quest, Body Points are the most valuable resource Heroes have; allowing them to convert gold to BP at sch a cheap rate dramatically increases their survivability to the point where they will come out of almost all Quests with effectively more Potions than they start with. It also makes most of the other Potions available from your Alchemist's Shop practically useless, as the benefit-to-cost ratio is much higher for Healing potions than it is for pretty much anything else.

[mikemacdee]

Really? And here I thought 100 was pushing it.

I changed 'em to 200g for the time being.

[mitchiemasha]

Thanks for the upload.

[knightkrawler]

Welcome back, lurker.
Now for the Armory: I wouldn't give the battle axe the edge of cleaving through. I'd prefer to see this in an artefact that only the Barbarian may use (a Greatsword where the mechanics seem more realistic to me).
And there's a lack of a 2AD ranged weapon (that is not lost when thrown). That's of course subject to style cause you might wanna try to avoid heroes making too many ranged efforts. In that case, your armory is near perfect.

[mikemacdee]

And there's a lack of a 2AD ranged weapon (that is not lost when thrown).

Do you mean retrievable thrown weapons are ill-advised? Or was there a 2AD ranged weapon that I left out?

I always felt the idea of "gone forever when thrown" was a little silly, as if the weapon disintegrates in midair. I did test the revised mechanic though, and it seems to work surprisingly well since heroes can't search when there are monsters in their line of sight: so they lose the weapon until the end of combat, and then they have to remember that they threw it. And of course throwing stuff over a ledge is always bad.

I'm having second thoughts about the battle axe cleave though, and might just make that a special skill for another class when using two-handed weapons.

[knightkrawler]

And there's a lack of a 2AD ranged weapon (that is not lost when thrown).

Do you mean retrievable thrown weapons are ill-advised? Or was there a 2AD ranged weapon that I left out?

Mainly, I mean that a ranged weapon with 2 AD that is not lost when used (like the shortbow I suggested) might be ill-advised, because it will still be relatively cheap.
That will have 3 of your players run around with a shortbow as a second weapon, all of them preferring to shoot in hallways, which limits your tactics very much. I included it in my armory nonetheless, cause I also have a projectile-buying/running out rule.
But you don't have the shortbow, so it's not an issue in your armory.

In a tactical sense, retrievable thrown weapons (the hand-axe) are ill-advised as they lift the heroes' power. And that is not needed.
A possible compromise would be that a thrown weapon is only retrievable if the attack was successful, i.e. caused at least one BP of damage, the reasoning being that in an unsuccessful attack the weapon hits the stone ground or wall, taking too much damage to remain useful.

Also, an idea of mine to give the Elf an edge with ranged combat: He may ignore the card saying that a weapon is lost when thrown.

[Schmidt]

....or roll a dice when picking the thrown weapon up:
perfect condition, no penalty
damaged, limited range when throwing it next time and/or less AD
broken, useless

A damaged weapon can not go back to perfect status so on a it will be the same as when you threw it the last time, & means broken.

Might be to complicated, but that's my

[Teldurn]

Just want to say your custom classes are top-notch! Bravo on that.

[Goblin-King]

You are the Revenant, a fallen hero who has risen from the grave to avenge himself. Being undead, you are weak to magic spells, but tough to kill: you always re-roll black shields when defending.

So if you roll ANOTHER black shield you can re-roll that as well?
If not I would consider another wording.

Gentleman... Just no...
My association with that word is a chap in a suit saying Daaaarling while holding a glass of wine. Da fug is he doing with a party of battle hardened dungeon crawlers?
I get what you are trying to do with the class, but the actual name is just unfitting for HQ.
Imperial Noble, Explorer or even Traveler or Wanderer...

Rest seems pretty good