Ye Olde Inn

Hi everyone,

First post here after lurking around the place for quite a while !
Here I am with some homebrew about new abilities for the original roster of the base game. It was mostly made with the new edition in mind, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work with the classic version.

The idea sparked from searching around for some premade abilities for said monsters, as I wanted to give them a bit of uniqueness in battle. I wasn't really 100% pleased with what I ended up finding, so I figured I might as well try it out myself !
This really isn't anything new in the whole HeroQuest community, but I tried to make stuff as balanced and thematic as possible with my own spin, and in my opinion I did kind of manage that

Here's a breakdown of each monster's ability in plain text, with a bit of explanation about the thought process behind each one :

>> GOBLIN :

- Melee -
Throws 1 additional dice when attacking for each other Goblin standing right next to the targeted hero.

This was inspired by many people's idea that goblins are skitterish little creatures that function best as an angry mob holding pointy things. In this case, the strategy with goblins is to swarm any individual hero to get as many chances as they can to break through their defense. For clarification, "right next to" does mean goblins that are immediatly adjacent to the hero (so no diagonal here).

>> ORC :

- Frenzy -
When attacking, can reroll once any number of obtained black shields.

Pretty self explanatory here. Orcs are pretty notorious for usually being brutes, so it would make sense for them to have that bit more punch to give. That tiny chance of a reroll feels fair for a foe that is so regularly encountered.

>> ABOMINATION :

- Mutated Strength -
Upon inflicting damage to a hero, can push them away by up to the same number of adjacent empty tiles.

To me, abominations as they are depicted today really feel like hulking beasts with no sense of subtlety. Having that ability to throw around heroes in the room really reinforces that in my opinion. Plus being able to make a mess in the heroes' usual formation makes for some interesting strategy opportunities for every player involved.

>> ZOMBIE :

- Regeneration -
Gains X BP when defending (before any damage is applied), where X is the number of obtained black shields.

Zombies are pretty flismy foes (as they should!). That said, I felt like it would be an interesting dynamic for them to really show how their crumbling body is in a constant fight to make their flesh stand up against the rot. It would make sense to me that, in response to getting hurt, whatever force that keeps those fellas alive gets a sudden urge to regenerate any lost tissue, resulting in some instances of the zombie going beyond its original health pool. Since it has pretty limited defensive capabilities, that surge of Body Points never really got out of hand as far as my testing went.

>> SKELETON :

- Sweeping Blade -
Attack ignores 1 white shield per targeted hero.
Can split its attack dice between two heroes currently in range.

Pretty obvious choice here, although I didn't go with the usual "can attack diagonally" rule that many tend to think about. I feel like scythes are more specialized that just something that would give extra range. First off, ignoring a white shield from the defending hero is a way to represent to ability of the scythe to curve around any shield or weapon the hero might use to defend. Additionally, the ability to split the attack dice seems like a fair way for the skeleton to be able to hit multiple heroes in one cleaving action (note that "in range" means the skeleton still cannot target heroes diagonally). Since it has few attack dice, both of those abilities feel quite balanced in my opinion, and allow for smart plays from Zargon/Morcar.

>> MUMMY :

- Resilience -
Defends itself by obtaining white shields instead of black shields.

Nothing much to add, really. The idea behind that was to reflect the quite high number of defend dice the mummy has. Using white shields gives it that bit more chances to tank the heroes' hits. I imagine the dry, leathery skin of mummies wrapped in thick bandages would be quite the pain to damage !

>> CHAOS WARRIOR :

- Retaliation -
When defending, can inflict as much damage to its assailant (if they are in range) as the number of obtained white shields.

Now that's a pretty strong one, and I feel like that's deserved for a monster of that nature ! I was pretty bummed that those vicious looking guys in blackened armor didn't always land a punch. Since those warriors are as skilled as they are brutal, I imagine they would make full use of their abilities to bash any hero foolish enough to attack them at close range.

>> GARGOYLE :

- Arcane Fury -
Can spend X MP to throw X additional dice when attacking OR to cancel X incoming damage from a hero.

And now for the main baddie... While the gargoyle does feel like quite a threat on the tabletop at first glance, it can really fall flat from time to time (especially with coordinated attacks from skilled/lucky heroes). As a monster that's used for boss battles, it definitely needed some survivability and additional punch for it to feel right to me. I find the Mind Points to rarely be useful, but in this case I interpreted them as the magical essence that animates the cold hard stone of this creature. As a construct made for pure violence, I thought of this idea of Zargon/Morcar spending the Mind Points of the gargoyle either for tanking some extra hits, or as a way to lash devastating attacks at the poor heroes. With those abilities, the gargoyle definitely has a chance to stand up againt fully kitted heroes, and the scare factor definitely comes back.

And there it is for all those monster abilities

Now that's not the end of it... I did make a couple PDFs (both in English and French) for print-out versions. They're pretty rough for now and I'm pretty sure they don't fit the usual playing card size, but I figured I might as well keep it like this until I'm 100% positive there is no modifications to make. On that note, please feel free to give me any sort of feedback, I'm very open to suggestions and I would be pleased to discuss about any aspect of everything I just presented.

(Also : since English isn't my first language, there's good chances some of the wording could sound quite broken, so please tell me about it so I can rectify !)

>> Here's the Google Drive link to download them :
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Cwpnd8st5lqiR5fD73nnYfXyJ0r7Q2Hd?usp=sharing
(hopefully it should work...)

Here's also a preview of the cards (not the full page size) :


(note : there's an tiny issue with "Français" being written at the bottom of the page of the English version... for now I'm too lazy to fix it)

! EDIT : Forgot to write this down when I first made this post, but I think I should definitely mention that this set of abilities may be best experienced when playing with one of the many rulesets (official or not) that allow fallen heroes to not immediatly die... I'm used to this kind of system as I'm not a fan of players too easily losing their character during long campaigns. With the accumulated damage monsters deal with their new abilities over the course of a quest, this all can be quite brutal ! Also, I would say that implementing systems that allow for more ways to heal would also elevate the playing experience when trying out those rules. So yeah... keep that in mind !


Thank you all very much for reading through all this, hopefully I will have provided a cool homebrew addition to HeroQuest !
Once again, please share your thoughts !!