Change of Mind

[Bareheaded Warrior]

So, my assumption has always been that Mind & Body Points are corresponding values (based mainly on the GS, KK and ROTWL, as the other expansions I didn't discover until I found then here!) but I'm now considering a change of mind

• Each represents an initial or starting value for a reserve of points that can be lost and restored by various events during a Quest
• The two added together total 10 for all the original 4 Heroes
• Body points being reduced to zero kills you (there is a special rule that allows two ways to avert death by using Healing Potions & Healing Spells to restore you to at least 1 BP)
• Mind points being reduced to zero generally kills you, you have to read between the lines a little to work this out and there are loads of exceptions in Quest Packs (and logically a special rule should exist that allows you to avert death by using potions or spell that restore Mind Points, but I haven’t seen that anywhere)
• US Character sheet doesn’t allow tracking or lost or restored Mind Points, which doesn’t really matter until you get to the expansions, but no updated character sheet is offered at this point
• Some tests exist that use Mind and Body points as part of their effectiveness, for example ATOH dread spells, strength of body tests in some expansions, spell break tests and similar, in many cases they either don’t specify whether they are referring to starting or current values or where they do it seems to be a mixed bag, some places opting for starting other places current!

A friend of mine who started playing HQ recently, one of the 2021 generation (as I call them), was asking me how it worked as he thought they might have been playing it wrong (which they were) but his ‘misinterpretation’ may actually be a cleaner version than the official messy version.

How about this for an idea…

The Mind attribute is just a value, call it MD ‘Mind Dice,’ like AD and DD that doesn’t have any associated points pool like BP and is just used to determine the number of dice you roll when using your Mind to attack/defend same as AD/DD although using the same value for both the Attack and Defend.

Anything that attacks your Mind, and you fail to roll enough shields on your Mind Defend roll, resulting in the original rules with potentially lost Mind Points, instead you lose Body Points.

This removes any and all need to have anywhere to track lost Mind points, any need to worry about whether something is referring to starting or current Mind points as the value always remains the same, no need for confusion around the effects of zero Mind points or restoring Mind Points between quests or any need for special exceptions to save yourself from Mind Point death…

I must confess I haven’t thought it through thoroughly (what a sentence!) but it makes me think…

Although in terms of surviving Mind attacks under this new system who would be better the 6MD, 4BP Wizard or the 2MD, 8BP Barbarian?

I suppose it would depend on the nature of the attack(s), a single or small number of power mind attacks might favour the Barbarian, his low Mind value wouldn’t save him many lost BP but then he has a bigger reserve to spare, however a larger number of lower-level attacks might favour the Wizard where his higher Mind value would have a significant reduction on each attack?

[Kurgan]

Phoenix's versions of Return of the Witch Lord and Kellar's Keep handle this differently than the official NA printings of those quest packs. In one (ROTWL?) 0 mind points means the character is unconscious. Nothing about being able to restore a mind point to raise it above zero to get back active in the quest (Zargon's call there I suppose). Kellar's Keep is more severe, saying that the character is dead for real unless an Elixir of Life is used. So it doesn't seem the same "last second save" for Mind Points was included here akin to the Body Points saves for usual character death.

EQP (Mage of the Mirror) and BQP (Frozen Horror) handle it a different way with the character "going into shock." No clarification was given until recently with the free quest "Into the Northlands" which clarifies the intention (of the modern designers at Avalon Hill anyway) that anything that restores Mind Points above zero removes the "shock" condition immediately.

Would you as the GM decide to implement different rules retroactively in these situations whether you possess those later written expansions or not? It all depends on what you want to do of course. Sometimes a character being out of the quest (but not dead, just waiting for the others to "win" so they can get back in the next one) would be safer than walking around greatly diminished in power.

I think my tendency would be to just handle it according to the rules of that particular pack. My own house rule is the "uncommon feat" wherein a player's plausibly introduced scenario could be resolved with a 50% chance of success on a die roll (for instance, seeing if using a mind point potion at the last second might save a character from going unconscious). But that's me. As the other packs acknowledge, you as the GM have the final authority in your HeroQuest world!

[Bareheaded Warrior]

you as the GM have the final authority in your HeroQuest world!

Whilst I agree with that statement unequivocally, as I have mentioned elsewhere on this site, one of the many functions of a forum like this is to provide us, a collection of Zargons, with a place in which we can share our own individual interpretations of unclear rules and our own individual fixes for problems we have encountered, as then use that to compare, contrast and discuss the merits and unintended consequences of these proposals with the hope of
arriving at a best solution or failing that 2-3 equally good alternative solutions, that people can choose which one to implement.

If 5 people state that they handle a particular issue that crops up in their own individual and different ways, then I want to compare and contrast all 5
methods and see if one is better than the rest or whether a better one can be made by combining various elements of them all.

By 'better' I am referring to fixes that resolve an issue more fully, more cleanly, without introducing unintended side effects that themselves then lead to further issues, a single minimal change that resolves several problems might be better than an individual fix for each of those problems, one that enhances or at least retains the game play experience would be better than one that diminishes it.

For me personally some of the things that make HeroQuest great include simplicity (and consistency must be part of that) and the fact that it is a Game System rather than just a Game i.e. you are actively encouraged and provided with material to create your own Quests.

I think my tendency would be to just handle it according to the rules of that particular pack.

For me, as a Quest creator, I would expect that anyone playing my Quest would just use 'the standard rules' unless I chose to make a special exception to them (in which case I would explicitly state that and include the new rule in the Quest Notes and they would apply to this Quest / Quest Pack only)

It just so happens that I am creating a new Quest right this moment and am happy to use the standard rules, (except if I wanted to make special exceptions that I would state explicitly in the Quest Notes / Intro, play test and so on) so there should be no need for me to mention anything other than any special exceptions, as 'standard rules apply unless otherwise stated'. So how would players (Zargon in particular) know how to handle the following in my Quest;

Heroes Mind Points get reduced to zero... no special rules in the Quest (or Pack) so look it up in the rulebook - no mention of how to handle this situation in the rulebook, look it up in the expansions ... different rules apply, am I supposed to use the Shock Rules from EQP / BQP or am I supposed to use the ROTWL's unconscious version or Kellar's Keep's death option (or do I read between the lines and say that the ROTWL unconscious version is specifically intended for that particular quest as a plot device to allow the Heroes to be captured and therefore I should assume that the 'harsh' version from KK, is in fact what the designers of KK thought was the official version that should have been in the rulebook and therefore the 'shock' rules are special exceptions applicable to those Quest Packs only?)

Can the Heroes in my new Quest use the Alchemist's Shop, if so can they buy a Potion of Restoration, if so (or if not but they already happen to have one of those potions with them) then can they use that to save themselves from the effects of Zero Mind Points? Is that an automatic death save, like the Healing Potion death save from zero BP in the rulebook?

Which 'Passing Items' rule am I supposed to be using, as a rule appears, and appears differently, in various Quest Packs and doesn't appear at all in the rulebook?

Same for rules on Treasure Sharing, The Iron Entrance Door, The Wooden Exit Door, Spiral Staircase, Hiring Mercenaries, Multiple Attacks, Large Monsters, Selling Excess Items?

Do I need to add an ever increasing list of standard rules to every new Quest that I produce (as the official versions have done, the latter ones having pages of these rolled-on rules - Frozen Horror has 10-12 that aren't, probably, specific to that Quest Pack) and then if I add a new one to a future quest do I need to retrospectively re-edit all my old Quests, or do I need to produce a separate PDF listing all my rule versions that are applicable to all my Quests, if so then whenever I play a fan-created Quest should I expect to have to locate their own separate PDF of "standard" rules to make sure I am playing it as the creator intended?

I suppose this long rant is my way of saying that I think Avalon Hill missed a golden opportunity to fix this, or at least chose not to take the opportunity, so should we be creating a Living Rulebook ourselves? (which wasn't really the point of this topic, but I guess I derailed myself)

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Back to the actual point of this thread...

The first time that Mind Points are used in a situation that can result in the death of a Hero is towards the end of KK (Quest 9 to be precise) and that doesn't happen again until you get to ATOH.

ATOH is the first of the later Quests where it appears a conscious decision was made to finally fully utilise Mind Points (possibly off the back of feedback from the earlier packs)

At the same time it appears that a decision was made to implement the Shock Rules which appear in the this and the later quest books, Frozen Horror (BQP), Mage of the Mirror (EQP)

Some members of the forum have also stated that they use the Shock Rules for WoM also (although they don't actually appear in that Quest Book)

This isn't an exception to a standard set of rules used for a single Quest or Quest Book, it feels more like a permanent switch to a new ruleset, so you have to ask yourself why the change?

The answer to me appear obvious

The starting Wizard with DD2, BP4 is intentionally the weakest of all in terms of physical survivability and scrapes the bottom of the barrel in this respect, his stats represent the minimum practical for a Hero in terms of this aspect of stats. Later, certainly by the time you get to ATOH, even he is upgraded to 3DD or 4DD, possibly more depending on your edition, but still thematically represents the minimum practical values for a Hero in this aspect.

Then in ATOH and onwards where the decision is made to actually fully utilise MP, it rapidly becomes obvious that our Barbarian with his 2MP (effectively 2DD and 2BP in corresponding physical terms) is woefully under-powered, not just weak in that respect which is thematically desirable but is half the strength of our starting Wizard's stats, the minimum practical standard for a Hero (and by that point the Dwarf's Mind aspect is also half that of the Wizards current body equivalents) so the method is revealed as flawed hence the creation of the shock rules

What I am proposing is that we replace the Mind Points [MP] characteristic with a Mind Dice [MD] characteristic (all values remain the same) and that Mind Dice [MD] characteristic works in exactly the same way as Attack Dice [AD] and Defend Dice [DD], although it is the same value used for both Attack and Defend, and that Body Points [BP] remains the pool of points that get lost and restored and dropping to zero results in your death.

This would mean that any reference to losing (or restoring) Mind Points would become a reference to losing (or restoring) Body Points

This clears up the discussions around needing to create a new Zero Mind Point rule for the rulebook (and how that is applied in the various Quest Books), needing a change to the character sheet to track Mind Points, needing to define another special exception to the 'saving yourself from death' rules and removes the need for the 'Shock' rules in their entirety and rebalances the game with respect to Mind so that it can be fully utilised in any and all Homebrew Quests.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Having play tested this change (summarised below) for a few months now, I thought I'd provide some feedback.

Replace the Mind Point characteristic with a Mind Dice characteristic (all values remain the same). The Mind Dice characteristic works in the same way as Attack / Defend Dice, that is the value indicates the number of combat dice rolled for Mind Attack / Defence. The Body point "pool" mechanism remains unchanged but becomes the sole indicator of your "health".

To be honest I'm surprised at how much, this seemly small change, simplifies the game.

1. Making Mind points into Mind Dice removes all confusion in the existing Editions around whether "Mind points" refers to Starting or Current Mind points at various places in the text (Spells: Sleep, Arrows of the Night, Mind Lock, Dominate, Mind Blast

2. It removes the need to track current Mind points, which whilst the rules state that this should be done on your character sheet, many versions of the character sheet do not actually contain anywhere to record/track your current Mind points. This simplification of only needed to track current Body points has encouraged me to replace tracking these on the character sheet and simply to hand out green 'Body point' counters to each Hero, 8 for Barbarian, 7 for Dwarf and so on, at the start of the game. These are just handed back in as they are lost, and returned if they are restored. For some reason, and I'm not sure of the psychology behind this but physically discarding Body point counters/tokens back into the box as they are lost, and seeing your pile physically diminish has a much more emotional impact than just crossing out a box or scribbling out one number and replacing it with another.

3. It removes any and all confusion as to whether artefacts such as the Talisman of Lore increase your current, starting or both Mind Points values

4. It enables Mind Attacks to use the same well-established and understood mechanism as physical attacks, in that the attacker rolls a number of combat dice shown by their Mind Dice value, scoring for skulls, and the defender rolls a number of combat dice shown by their Mind Dice value, shields cancelling skulls, the difference either results in damage, a loss of Body points based on excess skulls (for example "Mind Blast") or the difference determines the duration of spell effects (for example "Sleep", "Mind Lock", "Dominate")

5. It removes any confusion around the effects of being reduced to zero Mind points which varies between editions and quests, as you are never reduced to zero Mind points. Which also removes the need to add complications to the "saving yourself from death" rules where death is caused by the loss of Mind points. It also removes the need for the Shock rules introduced in later NA edition quests and any related complications and eliminates any confusion around Mind point recovery between quests or through the use of the Elixir of Life.

The cumulative effect of this makes Mind Dice much simpler to handle than Mind Points opening the door for them to be more utilised in homebrew quests that they are in the official versions.