Metagaming / exploiting the rules

[Zenithfleet]

G'day all,

Have you run into any examples of 'metagaming' in HeroQuest?

Because the game is so simple and intended for children, it's very easy for devious players to abuse or exploit the rules. Often, the evil wizard player will introduce a house rule to mitigate it (such as a random chance of a wandering monster appearing if players are wasting too many turns doing metagamey things).

But this thread isn't about stopping it or fixing it. I'd just like to hear about all the different ways it's possible to game the game system. The sort of thing that makes the Morcar/Zargon player want to throw all the hero players down a pit of darkness in real life.

Here are a few I've heard of:

- Waiting at the door with the Barbarian to fight monsters one at a time, instead of entering the room.
Okay, this is more an obvious tactic than an exploit, but it's annoying enough to list it here. The original game seems to have been designed with the assumption that players would enter rooms to fight monsters amongst the cool-looking furniture, not wait outside for the monsters to come to them.

- Before opening a door, rolling your move. If it's a low number, refusing to open the door and waiting until next turn to roll again. Only when you roll high do you open the door and charge into the room.
Annoying because the heroes might have to skip several turns waiting for a good roll, so if you do this at every single door it gets tedious fast.

- Arranging the heroes' formation so that whoever is about to search for treasure is safe in the corner, surrounded by other heroes. This way if a wandering monster appears it can't be placed adjacent to the searcher, and therefore isn't allowed to attack immediately (at least under EU 2nd edition rules).
This is dodgy because it exploits the rules of the game rather than making any kind of sense in real life. How does a hero search the whole room if he's stuck in the corner?

- Entering a Quest, getting some gold through searching or an early treasure chest... then leaving by the stairway tile without bothering to complete the mission. Restarting the Quest and doing it all over again. Effectively, farming or grinding for gold.
Technically possible, but seems all but guaranteed to make Morcar/Zargon spit the dummy and refuse to cooperate. Or make some nasty modifications to the Quest for the next time...

I'm sure there are more. What can you come up with? The more absurd and munchkin-like the better!

[Kurgan]

Form heroes in a line... first one shoots with crossbow, passes crossbow to next one in line, moves to the back, repeat?

Rogue sells a dagger drawn from his bandolier back to the armory at half gold price (12 coins). But the Bandolier says it means he always is considered to have one dagger. So sell it again... and again... and again... etc.

The rules say you shouldn't have more than one character type in the same party at one time. But it doesn't actually say you can't have more than four heroes at a time ("2-5 players" refers to the players, not the number of characters you control, after all, one person could control multiple heroes). So how about a party of let's say... 12 heroes? Dwarf, Barbarian, Elf, Wizard... Bard, Druid, Warlock... Knight, Monk, Rogue... Berserker, Explorer... who cares if that's what, 72 BP? If this is Mage of the Mirror, don't forget to hire all 17 mercenaries (12 from frozen horror, 4 from rise of the dread moon, and the ogre from against the ogre horde... if these are all "available to you").

Why are you wearing armor? It doesn't say you are limited to wearing only one helmet! Why not buy 6 for yourself...

There was an old discussion once about how many attacks you can do per turn. Only one, right? But what if you use two (or more) weapons at the same time? This is even more ridiculous, but if you believe that weapons can stack, why not just use all your weapons at once with a single attack? Two broadswords together makes 6 attack dice. Three makes 9 attack dice. How much does a dagger cost... 25 gold coins... so ten of them cost 250? Throw all of them at once for 10 combat dice.

The Bard is an Orc right? He's a monster, therefore just have him stand next to you and your Courage never runs out.

There was another theory that you could just have one hero kill all the others, loot the bodies, and sell the stuff back to the armory, repeat. Trouble is this forgets that you can only attack other heroes like this in the EU edition which doesn't let you sell stuff back to the armory to get more gold like the NA edition does (in the NA edition the rare Command spell let's Zargon force one hero to attack the others, but that's it).

I mean with enough creativity you can do anything, but at the same time Zargon just has to out imagine them, because he has total power in the game.

Zargon can change stuff on the fly, especially if he thinks they are trying to cheat. So I'm not saying he replaces the treasure deck with only bad cards, or uses dice that have a skull on every face. Not putting all the bad cards at the top of the treasure deck. Nobody is saying "rocks fall, everyone dies." But the GM could for example, let's see... replace a trap with an undetectable trap. Heck, he can put these wherever he wants, including in doorways.

Weak monster icon on that map? Upgrade it to the next one in line (goblin becomes orc, orc becomes fimir/abomination, skeleton becomes zombie, etc).

Monsters can't get to you? Wrong. They have diagonal weapons, or ranged weapons, maybe both! Killed greenskins come back as undead. Killed undead come back as ghosts.
Give monsters move-attack-move ability. Give them spells.

Cast Command on a hero who has magic (deplete his mind points to make it easier if you want)... have him cast pass through rock on himself and park himself inside solid rock.

Double wandering monsters. Did I say double? How about triple?

Zargon can always just decide an alarm sounds, activate a room. Remember all those rooms that are just "solid rock" on the map? No longer. those could be full of monsters, just waiting to be activated when he wishes.

Reinforcements have arrived: Spawn a couple of orcs on the stairway each turn. After awhile it will be much harder for them to leave the party!

Also, the Armory prices have increased. Good thing you "ground" all that gold, now you actually need it!

Poison cards from the expansions... Put these into the treasure deck. All of them. Barbarians go into shock quickly. In fact, add all the bad cards from the expansions but not the good ones.

Spawnlings. Lots of Spawnlings.


Also, if the heroes try to replay the "unfinished" quest just to grind gold, simply remix it (like you're supposed to). The room is full of traps and the door slams shut behind them once they re-enter the quest. They have to leave by another door (on the other end of the quest of course) to win. I guess the heroes could beat you by using Genie to force the door open. So you say immediately the heroes are magically "captured" and all of their equipment, potions, and SPELLS are off somewhere else in the quest to find. Now they can't open that door and will have to take your alternate route.

[SirRick]

I usually arrange my heroes in such a way to avoid getting attacked by a wandering monster, as mentioned. I usually do this once per room, either to protect the Wizard, or for whoever happens to have a search coming and can benefit from how the other heroes are positioned. I don’t play musical chairs for the safe spot, cuz it just takes too long. In FL however, in a room with a cupboard, I always set up a safe spot and have the leader in there to be the first to search. This gives 3 heroes the opportunity to kill the one or two monsters that inevitably jump out of the cupboard.

Now that I think of it since FL is a base set that introduced new rules for the Fireplace, and the Cupboard, does this count as official rules from now on? Or just FL only?

The other “exploit” I have done was related to unfinished quests. Normally, I wouldn’t consider starting a quest to search for treasure, then leaving to come back again. There are times in which this did happen unintentionally (its the best way I can describe it). One occasion we had a group game and started the first quest of PoT with starting heroes. The Zargon player did not read the rules carefully enough. Over the quest the Bard (and Talisman bearer) was slain, and the party was very beat up. We felt we couldn’t complete the quest in our condition, so we left early. My Barbarian got the Talisman, the Elf took the Rapier, and the Druid (who replaced the Bard) got the Elf’s Shortsword. So even though we did benefit it wasn’t on purpose. It was only later we discovered the bearer of the talisman isn’t supposed to be able to die.

Another time was when I was when I was solo-playing in the app during RotWL. The Halls of Vision quest mentions the Keys of King Agrain. In the NA quest book the Keys are not required to finish the quest, just a special reward if you can solve the nonsensical “puzzle”. The app seems to think it’s a requirement to finish the quest. I am not sure if the EU versions require them to be found or not. If you needed the special keys to open the door to advance, it would make sense, but its not mentioned anywhere. So I failed to figure out the puzzle on my first attempt, and the app instantly considers you to have failed the quest, and you are booted back to the quest select menu. I called BS and considered my heroes to have left the quest early, and to return later after the puzzle reset. I kept all the treasure I found while searching, and searched more when restarting the quest, so you could say I got double the random spoils, so I did benefit. I also looked up the solution in the quest book so I wouldn’t get stuck repeating this quest a third time.

The Rogue selling daggers from the Bandolier is dubious at best. It could be interpreted this way I guess, but I feel being considered to have a dagger is different than actually having the Dagger equipment item. It’s like in Munchkin when a character is using the Fake Beard item. They are basically considered a Dwarf for various things, but still not actually a dwarf. If a player would try to do this, I might let them sell daggers until they sold a 150 gold worth, and then say they no longer have their Bandolier anymore (the equivalent of selling the Bandolier itself).

One tactic I have heard a friend mention is to frequently change equipment on the fly. I mean ridiculous stuff like wearing chain mail while walking around. Then walking up to a monster and changing into plate mail. They then attack with a battle axe, and after the attack switch to a sword and shield, all on the same turn. There is no rule or restriction preventing this, but I am sure any Zargon would not let this happen. I’m fine with a hero carrying a Battle Axe, and a one-handed weapon and shield as a back up, but if they attack with the axe, they should be still holding it through Zargon’s turn in my opinion.

[Zenithfleet]

Another time was when I was when I was solo-playing in the app during RotWL. The Halls of Vision quest mentions the Keys of King Agrain. In the NA quest book the Keys are not required to finish the quest, just a special reward if you can solve the nonsensical “puzzle”. The app seems to think it’s a requirement to finish the quest. I am not sure if the EU versions require them to be found or not. If you needed the special keys to open the door to advance, it would make sense, but its not mentioned anywhere. So I failed to figure out the puzzle on my first attempt, and the app instantly considers you to have failed the quest, and you are booted back to the quest select menu. I called BS and considered my heroes to have left the quest early, and to return later after the puzzle reset. I kept all the treasure I found while searching, and searched more when restarting the quest, so you could say I got double the random spoils, so I did benefit. I also looked up the solution in the quest book so I wouldn’t get stuck repeating this quest a third time.

Going off-topic, but... yep, sounds like the app is wrong. In the EU version of 'The Halls of Vision', you don't need to find the Keys of Agrain either. (They're gems in the EU version, despite their name.)

But what did you find nonsensical about the puzzle? The intent seems fairly clear: the Keys are a reward if you figure out that you shouldn't kill the Mummies. You're given several Mummy rooms to figure this out.

Unfortunately, the quest can break and leave the heroes with no way to progress, if they use the typical door-blocking tactic to fight the second or third Mummy across the door that will disappear when it dies. The quest seems to have been written on the assumption that the players will enter each room before fighting the Mummy inside.

The NA edition adds an extra secret door, probably to make it less likely that the heroes will break the quest. But they could still accidentally stuff it up when they meet the third Mummy. On the other hand, Morcar/Zargon could just say, "Tough luck--use your brains next time!"

The Keys are also worth less in the EU version (100 gold each) and the one hero who picks them up can "replace the missing doors" themselves, in some vague unspecified way, rather than the evil wizard player doing it.

Amusingly, if you know beforehand what the Mummies do, you can exit the Quest early, by not killing the first one you meet.

(When we played RotWL, I'm pretty sure this quest killed the hero who was carrying the Spirit Blade and we had to go find it elsewhere. )

[SirRick]

It seemed to me the doors behind me seemed to disappear when a mummy was slain, so when killing the last mummy, the door in front of me disappeared and my reaction was “WTF?” There was no way to tell which door was going to disappear.

So, yes it seemed very nonsensical since you could not deduce the outcome from what was happening playing through the quest.

[Parzival]

Right now I have a Dwarf carrying his own little arsenal: A crossbow, a longsword, a battle axe, a broad sword, and his original shortsword. He’s wearing armor, has a helmet, and carries a shield for the times when he doesn’t use either the crossbow or the battle axe.

Personally, I think that’s all overkill. But the rules allow it.

[Onan]

When I play 1 vs 1 and I suggest some quest from RotWL, one smart player says he uses only the wizard. Then he casts Pass Through Rock and walks through the first blocked square. Quite often this bypasses most of the monsters.

[Kurgan]

The old exploding gold trick! That wily Zargon...