We had another session the day before yesterday. Actually, it almost didn't happen. The Elf forgot all about it and had a friend visiting, but they just brought him along. Rather than playing the previous random guest's Dwarf, Colton played the Wizard. I gave him 1000 gold to use on either Armory or Alchemist's Shop stuff.
We then dove into KK Quest 2. For those who don't remember, it's a nearly perfectly symmetrical dungeon that allows you to take either the left or the right path when you enter. On the left side there was a secret door which led to a Weapon's Rack holding 2 Magical Throwing Daggers, which the Cleric found, and I could finally reveal why it was that I had to change the regular Dagger rules mid-way through the base game, because I had been accidentally allowing them to use Daggers as if they were the magic variety. They finally understood and I think the bad blood from that rule change is finally water under the bridge.
Also, I had penciled in an extra room via secret door on the mirror side from the Weapons Rack secret room, and in it I placed an Alchemist's Desk and a goblin with a note saying that the goblin wasn't interested in battle and was instead an Alchemist willing to sell to make for them any of the potions in the Alchemist's Shop... but they never explored that way.
I finally decided that they should be able to regain their spells between Quests even if I'm not allowing regenerated Body Points, so I advised them that while they had to continue with whatever Body Points they left off with from the previous quest (the Barbarian had only 2 left!) they would start with all of their spells. I didn't let them know this was a house rule.
And as it works out, I think it helps to perfectly balance their overpowered-ness. Only one of them died (the Barbarian) but she had a Potion of Healing, so that brought her back. The Cleric got down to one BP and had to use one of his three healing spells upon himself.
The guest Wizard played well, but almost never used any of his spells. The one time he did is when he entered the central room all on his own and discovered the four "enchanted suits of armor" (Chaos Warriors) in the corners. I played it out a little more different than the quest book advises--which is to simply tell the players that they're enchanted suits of armor, but treat them as Chaos Warriors. Instead, I read them the bit about those being suits of armor used for the training of Dwarves but let them think they were lifeless. On the next Morcar/Zargon round I left those enemies in their corner and let the Wizard fall into one of the many traps instead. A second Hero entered on that round and so on the Morcar/Zargon turn I told the players that the suits of armor were filled with enchantment and attacked them. The Wizard wisely used Pass Through Rock to get out of there.
The only other thing of note is that I added a brand new enemy--a Troll--to patrol the corridor near the exit door. As many have mentioned on the forums: KK seems a little bland in comparison to some of the other quest packs, due mainly to the lack of introducing new enemy types. So I had decided long ago that I'd add a new type of Greenskin and since Trolls aren't in any of the other HQ packs, yet feature pretty prominently in the Warhammer world, I utilized two different fan-made sets of stats for a HQ Troll for reference:
http://aginsinn.yeoldeinn.com/monsters/troll.htmlhttp://aginsinn.yeoldeinn.com/monsters/troll2.htmlAnd came up with these stats instead:
Attack: 4 Defense: 4 Body: 3 Mind: 2 Movement: 8
-If left with even 1BP by Zargon's turn, it regenerates all BP back.
-If any Fire Spells are used against it, it loses the regen ability.
What I didn't know was that this was standard D&D rules for Trolls? And they are seasoned D&D players... so after their first round of attacking but not killing it, and seeing the "Hit" tokens get removed on Morcar's turn... they immediately knew it was a Troll and the Cleric advised the Wizard to use Fire of Wrath on it. They the made quick work of it and exited the quest.
In summery: while I'm all for following the rules to a "T" in most instances, I'm very glad I added the Troll and the "Heroes don't get their BPs restored between quests in KK" rules because otherwise I think it would have been a sort of bland quest.
Posted: June 19th, 2013, 7:49 pm
