Ye Olde Inn

So, we all agree the variable BP system is a bit odd.
I am reworking the Ogre stats but also considering the EQP Ogre (new one). There are a couple of posts about Ogre stats already, but no one was considering this.
In the remake, they reduced the BP of this ogre from 10 to 5, which is a good thing in my opinion, as it was really overpowered.
Also the ogre pictured on the new 2022 version of the card (in the EQP) is looking more like an Ogre Chieftain than an Ogre Warrior: same weapon, same hairstyle. He is missing the chainmailed spiked fist but he has a spiked shoulder plate attached with a chain. So much common points for me!
Also his stats are more similar to the Ogre Chieftain, with just the exception of a lower defense (4 dice instead of 6).
Going back to the ATOH questbook, we can notice the first (and only) Ogre Warrior in quest 1 has 4 Body Points; I set 4 as a starting reference value for Ogre Body Points. Progressing through the other quests, we can meet more Ogre Warriors featuring 2,3 or 4 Body Points. Occasionaly this value is 5 (but usually when there is a Champion or a Chieftain on the map) and even 1 single BP value occurrs sometimes. I was tempted to set an average score of 3 BP for the Warriors, but I left 4 instead because I still want them to be though monsters even if they are the lower level of the Ogre range. Anyway, I preferred to downgrade to 4 his attack value. This is because his rudimental weapon (just a big staff with a spike set on it) is surely less dangerous than the axe owned by the Ogre Champion. It creates a substancial difference beetween the Warrior and the Champion, which are identical in their original release.
I didn't change the stats for the Ogre Champion, and for the body points I set a value of 4 again. He looks like dressed as the warrior, not valid armor to justify an upgrade in his defence, but has a better weapon so he can preserve his 5 dice in attack.
Now, the Chieftain; as for the Champion, we didn't see any clear reference inside the questbook about his body points. But considering the ogre card in the Elf Quest Pack (as ayd before, it looks like a chieftain from ATOH), I think his BP are good at 5. He has the same weapon of an Ogre Champion but can count on his spiked ironfist too! So his attack value of 6 is well justified. I set BP at 5, as in the EQP, it is a good improvement for someone that passed from Champion to Chieftain. For Defence, I was considering both 5 or 6 values. I think I will use 5. It is higher than a Champion, it can be because of the chainmail around the left arm and also he has 1 more body point than the previous 2 ogres. It's the only different value I used from the EQP ogre but can be justified by his "chieftain" role in this pack too. Also I didn't want to make the Chieftain too much similar to the Ogre Lord. In the original questbook the only difefrence is made by Mind Points.
The Ogre Lord is left as the original, he has 5 Body points in the questbook and I didn't change it.
For movement, I left the original value to all of them. Chieftain and Lord are probably occupying a better position in the ogre society so they eat more food and are a little slower than the other two.

(The Total A in the table is the sum of all the character stats while Total B is not considering their movement.)


And for reference, the new Ogre card from MOTM:

Nice.

I know nobody seems to like variable body points, but how about just rolling 1d6 to find out how many BP each ogre you meet has? (granted, it's messy, now you have to keep track of them all).

it can be confusing with a lot of ogres in the room to remember which one has rolled 3 and which one rolled 6.
Also if a six is rolled is too much boody points for an ogre warrior.

Without looking to their miniatures, these are the vanilla and incremental Ogre stats I defined for and adaptation of AtOH to be played with the remake, attending to the new Body Points values of Mage of the Mirror ogre warriors and AtOH classic ones, even their infamous Body Points bars:

- Ogre Warrior: M6 AD5 DD5 BP5 MP1
- Ogre Champion: M6 AD5 DD5 BP6 MP1
- Ogre Chieftain: M4 AD6 DD6 BP6 MP2
- Ogre Lord: M4 AD6 DD6 BP7 MP5

However, it is true that maybe those stats should be revised for better fit with the rest of Monsters. For me is quite difficult to accept an Ogre with 7 BPs and a Black Dragon with just 5 BPs... something similar about the Attack and Defend dice stats, they are quite high compared with a full armoured and trained Chaos Warrior or Gargoyle, for example. The only practical way I could take to understand it is considering the HeroQuest Ogres are some kind of Giants.

I dig the idea, and also am curious how or if, AH will do this should they update AotOH for the latest version of HQ.

I know I've seen Ogre stat cards in the past (pre 2021), but I don't have them in front of me at the moment. I may be thinking of the NA conversion for AotOH from Phoenix?

Anyway, how do these compare to those cards?

here are the stats used by Phoenix:

It wouldn't be THAT confusing when you consider there are only going to be four Ogre warrior models to put on the board (unless you're adding dozens and dozens of them I suppose), right?

So it's no more difficult to manage than if you wanted to give your four Chaos Warriors different stats in a quest (or maybe your four skeletons if you were only using the game system monsters and not adding in the extras from ROTWL). One doesn't need to create custom "Heroclix" style bases for all of them to make it work...

There's only one each of the Ogre Champion, Chieftan and Lord, too. Then again some people don't like to keep track of things, then again we have character sheets & Pencils, so why not? It's just a couple of numbers. Zargon may not be constantly scribbling notes, but the heroes are writing stuff down every turn just about as they lose/add body (and more rarely mind) points, treasures, etc.

I use the following Ogre stats as I also dislike the variable BP mechanism



I decided on these stats because The Eyes of Chaos Quest suggests using the above stats for the Ogre Warrior and Ogre Chieftain*, and as the Ogre Champion otherwise has identical stats to the Ogre Warrior I gave him an extra BP to reflect his champion status. These stats also seem to broadly match those given in AtOH on average with the exceptions being Tograk who is named Ogre Chieftain so gains an extra BP (to 4) compared to the usual Chieftain and the Ogre Lord who probably should be a named monster, but strangely is anonymous, who gets an extra BP (to 5)

*except that I have reserved the low Movement value to the bulky Ogre Lord with 4BP only as the Chieftain has the same 3BP value as the Champion so should have the same Mv value.

I agree about the final Ogre boss having 10 body points in the AH version. It's the only way we are (almost) sure he will not be defeated in a single round.
But as HispaZargon pointed out before, it is denigrating for a gargoyle or a Frozen Horror, which have much less BPs.

lestodante wrote:I agree about the final Ogre boss having 10 body points in the AH version. It's the only way we are (almost) sure he will not be defeated in a single round.
But as HispaZargon pointed out before, it is denigrating for a gargoyle or a Frozen Horror, which have much less BPs.

Indeed, this is an important point to keep in mind when altering monster stats. Let me just add that the ratio between the body points of the Frozen Horror and the Ogre Lord is preserved as 6:5 in my monster tables, and I always found that appropriate. (I don't post the numbers here directly to leave them at least somewhat concealed for future players.)