HQ: Heroes & Villains (knightkrawler) - DISCUSSION

[cynthialee]

My only issue is that gold simply disappears at death. ??!!
What is that?

If a fellow hero can get to the dead guy then he should be able to completely loot the corpse.
Now I would have a monster attempt to loot the hero before the other heroes can get to the corpse.

But disappearing gold? Yet the artifacts stay....
I'd say that is a little backwards. Zargon teleports away the gold, but not the magic items?! Oh hell no, if the EW can teleport away something from a corpse after death, I should rather think that the magic items would be the items teleported away.

Is there any explanation as to why gold simply vanishes, or is it just a mechanism to let the players know they do not run the game? muhahaha....

Sorry it just seems to be too much of a 'bend over' moment for the players.

[Count Mohawk]

Does the gold disappear even if the dead Hero is saved right away, as by drinking a potion or receiving a healing spell from another Hero? And if so, how does the Elixir of Life play into this? Even in rulesets where death is punished by inventory losses, I opine that use of the Elixir should be a no-hassle, one-time get-out-of-death-free card. Otherwise, there's no advantage to using the Elixir over generating a new Hero.

[cynthialee]

Does the gold disappear even if the dead Hero is saved right away, as by drinking a potion or receiving a healing spell from another Hero? And if so, how does the Elixir of Life play into this? Even in rulesets where death is punished by inventory losses, I opine that use of the Elixir should be a no-hassle, one-time get-out-of-death-free card. Otherwise, there's no advantage to using the Elixir over generating a new Hero.

That is a solid point.

Pretty good stuff so far. I really only have a few issues and only the loss of gold but not artifacts thing sticks in my craw.

[knightkrawler]

Well, when you guys put it that way...
Thinking about the gold. Up to now my players didn't have a problem. When asked about this, I answered:
"Well, there's your inclination to actually keep playing a hero after he's grown on you that much that he's something akin to rich."
It's all in the mechanism of choosing a new hero when you die. I wanted one little thing that keeps them struggling when down to 1 BP and desperately wanting to play the hot Elf chick next.
I know it's completely illogical. But it's a game mechanism that's just there, one of those instances of stylization.
I like that you like it apart from that point, Cynthia.
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@ The Count:
It's all in the order of doing things, hopefully conveyed in the text as soon as I rub your nose in :
1. you die and lay down your mini
2. he does regain body points and does not start the next turn with 0 body or mind points (except he loses them again that is)
3. so his gold is not immediately discarded and he keeps his quid

I'll work on this and the Elixir.

[Count Mohawk]

@ The Count:
It's all in the order of doing things, hopefully conveyed in the text as soon as I rub your nose in :
1. you die and lay down your mini
2. he does regain body points and does not start the next turn with 0 body or mind points (except he loses them again that is)
3. so his gold is not immediately discarded and he keeps his quid

I'll work on this and the Elixir.

Oh, I see. The gold is discarded at the same moment the figure is removed from the board. That makes sense.

[cynthialee]

When one is adventuring and your fellow hero passes on it sucks and it makes the adventure that much harder. The only mitigating factor is that one could theoretically loot the dead guy, take his coin, potions and magic items and make off like a bandit.
Now I know you don't do RP style, so there would be no opportunity to use the dead guys coins as a bribe, but those coins would spend rather nicely at the armory and alchemy shop.

[whitebeard]

So the first thing a slaying monster does is lift your purse. I like it!! Not applicable if the hero can immediately save with a potion or unused spell? I would leave the gold in the room if the slaying monster is also killed on the very next turn. If not the gold is passed on and hidden (and thus now part of what you find when you search rooms).

[sajungzak]

Perhaps the heroes agreed that, if they were to die, their gold would be given to their family back home if possible. Any other possessions that might aid the surviving heroes is fair game.

[cynthialee]

Perhaps the heroes agreed that, if they were to die, their gold would be given to their family back home if possible. Any other possessions that might aid the surviving heroes is fair game.

Screw their families! They were not in the crud, neck deep in goblin sweat and zombie entrails with the heroes! They stayed behind in their safe villages while heroes answered the call to duty. If my hero carries the gold out of the dungeon, it is the hero's coins.

[Big Bene]

Well taking away the gold is obviousely just a game mechanic.

When a hero dies, the player creates a new hero. Now, as there is no advancement of character stats in HQ, if the new hero gets all the equipment of the old one, he basically is the old one with a new name. Or, if a different class of hero is choosen, he/she is at least a similar advanced hero with some different abilities. There's no point in dying (or surviving) anymore.

The purpose of Kk's gold-is-lost rule is to prevent this situation by providing some drawback in dying.

It's the old topic of rule mechanics vs. ingame "realism".
Sometimes we start with a problem of ingame logic and have to translate it into a working rule mechanic ("my players want to use this hammer in room x to break a hole in the wall, how should I handle this?").
Sometimes, as in this case, we start with a problem of rule mechanics and have to translate it into something that doesn't stress the suspension of disbelief too much in the inherent logic of the gameworld.

We have a rule that, as a rule, makes good sense - it gives the death of a character and the creation of a new one some impact in the game mechanics. So we want to use this rule or a similar one.
Now, we want to find some explanation that makes the effect of this rule believeable in the gameworld's "reality".
This step may be more impartant to some (Cynthia) than to others (Kk), but it's a valid point in any case.

So, I'm with both of you - I think Kk should keep this rule (or a similar one), but provide an in-game explanation for it.
Now, Sajungzak has come up with a fairly good explanation:

Perhaps the heroes agreed that, if they were to die, their gold would be given to their family back home if possible. Any other possessions that might aid the surviving heroes is fair game.

Screw their families! They were not in the crud, neck deep in goblin sweat and zombie entrails with the heroes! They stayed behind in their safe villages while heroes answered the call to duty. If my hero carries the gold out of the dungeon, it is the hero's coins.

I would not get over-critical about it. Of course, the surviving heroes could argue the way Cynthia described, but they don't have to. We should try to find a working in-game explanation for a perfectly working game mechanic, not to avoid it. We could still elaborate it a bit deeper, something like "In your culture, it's a strong tradition to give a dead fighter's money to his family. You sometimes secretly questioned this tradition in the back of your head, but actually keeping the gold would be unthinkable. Nobody would want to have anything to do with you after such a skandal".
Or, you may come up with another, but similar rule. You may as well take away artifacts or equipment, if you think it would be more realistic. It would serve the same purpose in rule mechanics, perhaps even better. Perhaps it would make the heroes too unbalanced, I dunno.