Monster's defend dice

[Bareheaded Warrior]

My intention in introducing the pair of changes that I suggested above, both the all defend on AND the as an extra skull, was part of a set of changes (including the "snake eyes" wandering monster rule and multiple BP for monsters listed below) attempting to fix the issue identified right back in the early days of HQ, that if the players co-operated the game was too easy.

1BP =
2BP =
3BP = (and most named monsters)

One of the things that I really like about HQ, is that many games have simple rules and the emergent play is simple (Snap!), others have complex rules and the emergent play is complex (great if that is what you like), but for me HQ falls neatly into the "Goldilocks zone" of relatively simple rules producing a relatively complex play. However issues emerge, not through a problem with the game itself, but when these mechanisms are so subtly woven into the game that some players miss them entirely and start to introduce house rules to fill in the gaps in the game, where no gap exists. For example, introducing an advancement system because HQ doesn't have one (even though it does), or removing the movement dice rolls and then introducing initiative rules even though the characters roll for movement combined with monsters fixed movement provides an initiative system.

Onan, I get your point about the asymmetrical combat system (in the broadest sense) that HQ covers by using two different mechanisms the asymmetrical BPs and the asymmetrical shields, but I feel that the end result makes the game too easy, assuming players co-operate, so removing one of those mechanism entirely, and rebalancing the other, is my way of retaining the essential asymmetrical combat system, but just reducing the asymmetry a little.

I'm not sure that I would describe the body point imbalance as being "hidden", after all if they had wanted to hide it, they could have left the comment in the rulebook that says "all the monsters have only 1 Body point, they are killed by any roll of a skull that is not cancelled by rolling a black shield" and removed any mention of Body points from the monster cards altogether, but they didn't.

I also agree with you that the initiative system that HQ uses is a great one, whilst the characters don't always have the initiative (and working together is irrelevant) it tends to be in their favour far more often than not.

Where I'm not sure that we agree (and this might just be because I use the classic edition rules and you may have been referring to editions in general, including the remake) is when you say that the HQ advancement system breaks the combat system. The changes made to the advancement system in the remake, partly the increased opportunity for treasure searches, but more importantly the removal of the "cards limit supply" mechanism results in the all members of party, excluding the Wizard, being equipped with a battle axe, plate armour, helmet, shield and crossbow, so 4CD in H2H attacks, 3CD in missile attacks and 5/6CD in defence. I agree that this does "break" the combat system, but the advancement system itself, without the changes introduced in the remake, works absolutely fine with the combat system.

This is because of HeroQuest's binomial distribution combat system. Let's call a result of 2 or more skulls a "critical hit", short crit. The 1 body point + black shield defense rules make it very unlikely for a monster to survive a crit, no matter its defense stats. In DnD like D20 systems the crit chances don't increase automatically with the hero's combat strength. In HeroQuest they do: 1 attack die has 0% chance of a crit, 2 AD have 25%, 3 AD have 50%, 4 AD even 69%.

This piece I'm not following and it may just be me. A critical hit is generally a roll that produces extra damage or kills a monster outright, I assume in this context you are referring to the latter (as HQ doesn't have critical hits that produce extra damage) and assuming 1BP per monster that happens only when the attacker rolls more skulls that the defender has defend dice. If I roll two skulls against a Goblin who only has 1 defend dice, then he is killed irrespective to the outcome of his roll, a "critical hit"? So in HQ "critical hits" if you wish to use that term, are based on two factors, the number of attack dice used (i.e. the maximum number of skulls) versus the number of defend dice used. So the character using the Battle Axe, has 0% chance of a critical hit against a Chaos Warrior or Gargoyle, but increasing odds as you go down the DD scale, so why choose 2 or more skulls as a "critical hit"?

[Onan]

I'm not sure that I would describe the body point imbalance as being "hidden", after all if they had wanted to hide it, they could have left the comment in the rulebook that says "all the monsters have only 1 Body point, they are killed by any roll of a skull that is not cancelled by rolling a black shield" and removed any mention of Body points from the monster cards altogether, but they didn't.

Yes, the monsters use 1 BP, instead of saying that a single skull kills them, but I think during play it is easier to forget about this unfair aspect than with multiple BPs. You don't count monster BPs and remove the monster on a hit, so their BPs are not a topic during play. That's why I said that the 1BP monsters hide the players' advantage. The players want to forget about the unfair combat system and feel heroic, and I think the 1BP monsters help them with that.

This piece I'm not following and it may just be me. A critical hit is generally a roll that produces extra damage or kills a monster outright, I assume in this context you are referring to the latter (as HQ doesn't have critical hits that produce extra damage) and assuming 1BP per monster that happens only when the attacker rolls more skulls that the defender has defend dice. If I roll two skulls against a Goblin who only has 1 defend dice, then he is killed irrespective to the outcome of his roll, a "critical hit"? So in HQ "critical hits" if you wish to use that term, are based on two factors, the number of attack dice used (i.e. the maximum number of skulls) versus the number of defend dice used. So the character using the Battle Axe, has 0% chance of a critical hit against a Chaos Warrior or Gargoyle, but increasing odds as you go down the DD scale, so why choose 2 or more skulls as a "critical hit"?

Yes, I should explain in more detail why I consider 2 skulls a crit, regardless of the monster's defense stat. Critical hit usually means that you roll a natural 20, and the opponent needs to roll a natural 20 to defend and/or gets double damage if he fails. There is no concept of critical hits in HQ, but the combat system creates a similar effect: You don't roll to hit, then roll for damage, but you roll both at once. You can create "double damage" or even "triple damage" by rolling 2 or more skulls. Against 1BP monsters the double damage is worthless, but you decrease its defense chances to almost zero.

The chances of a monster blocking 3 skulls are negligible, even with 6 defense dice. The chances of a monster blocking 2 skulls are very low. This is because on a die there are 3 skulls but only 1 black shield.

Defense dice (DD) vs chances of rolling 2 black shields in percent:

Code: Select all

DD  2 black shields [%]
1    0
2    2.8
3    7.4
4    13.2
5    19.6

A Chaos Warrior with 4DD has a lower chance of blocking 2 skulls than a goblin of blocking a single skull, although he has 4 times better defense. So when a hero rolls a "crit", he expects the monster to go down. As Zargon, in bigger fights I get tired of rolling defense against 2 skulls with the 2DD monsters and simply remove them without rolling. When a hero rolls a single skull, there is still tension. You expect a goblin to die from a single skull, but an Orc has a reasonable chance to survive.

During play, when a hero rolls 2 or more skulls, he feels relieved because the monster is gonna die almost for sure. If he rolls a single skull, he has to pray that the monster fails its defense. I think that both situations are good for gameplay. But if you use 4 or more attack dice, the most probable result is a "crit", and combat gets monotoneous. Using 4 attack dice feels great, but the effect wears off after a while.

That's why I said that the equipment (at least the battle axe) breaks the combat system. It takes the variety out of the possible results (single hit or crit). You can rebalance the missions for fully equipped heroes to fix the decreased difficulty, but you lose something. With 4 AD the players become like chess pieces. You move them to the 1BP monster and remove the monster. Yes, you still roll, but the result is quite predictable. This is an advancement and makes the players feel strong, but it becomes dull. That's why I think they should get 4AD only towards the end of a campaign and start fresh on the next campaign.

If you continue play with the 4AD party, then I think you should change the monsters' defense to white shields or use the HQ Gold combat system.


Some speculation from my side:

I can imagine that at some point during development they tested the "dark company defense" as a general rule for monster defense. With this rule black shields were not simply a weaker defense, but a completely different mechanism: A single black shield cancels all skulls. This means that the monsters ignore "crits". Giving 6DD to a boss means that he has 66.5% blocking chances, no matter the heroes' attack dice. So buying the battle axe increases your hitting chances a bit, but has no impact on the monsters' defense.

The 1BP bosses with high defense feel to me like the "dark company defense" was the idea behind their defense. Also the black shield/white shield distinction might be a hint that black shield defense was a different mechanism than white shield defense. If they considered this, why did they drop it? I would say because rolling 2 or more skulls feels great and feels like it should make a difference. Also, new players might get confused by this more complex rule. And the higher monster survival chances lead to a slower game, which is also not desired.

When using only 3 heroes and the "dark company defense" for monsters, the European GS missions become a lot more challenging. Good luck with Karlen's rock skin

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Ok, I think I understand your "critical hit" scenario now, thank you.

Routinely rolling 2 or more skulls in attack, pretty much guarantees the death of any monster irrespective of DD (assuming 1BP monsters). Anyone equipped with the Battle Axe is routinely likely to roll 2 skulls, hence "broken" (or least sub-optimal).

Under the classic edition "cards limit supply" means that only the one character with the battle axe will be routinely in this scenario, which, whilst better than the remake where most of the party are likely to have battle axes (although under the remake monsters don't necessarily have only 1BP), is still not great as that character will probably be participating in more than their fair share of combat.

Which is why I introduced my triplet of house rules: all defend on , as extra skull & the relatively small increase to monster BP. If you run the numbers (or play test extensively), please do try it, you'll find that early on, for less equipped parties, a single CW presents enough of a challenge that you need to do something different on top of a standard single hero attack, like use a potion, use a spell, or use the advantage of numbers, double or triple up 2:1, 3:1, but then as your party advances through equipment, you reach the point where a single character can take on a single CW on a "level playing field", but by that point there might be two CWs in the room, along with a Goblin backstabbing you along the diagonal with his spear and a Skulker sticking you with arrows from behind a table, oh and you didn't spot the pit trap on the way into the room, oops...congratulations on your advancement through equipment and welcome to hard mode!

Dark Company Defence Approach

In terms of the "dark company defence" speculation, it is certainly an interesting idea and I'd be interested in seeing the numbers, but even if it was equivalent to my own system, I think I would still prefer my own, possibly, just because it feels simpler to grasp for new players, because it makes hero defence and monster defence consistent.

My gut tells me (not as reliable as running the numbers, but far quicker!) that this approach would simply end up reversing the issue. Instead of combat being reduced to just how many skulls does a hero roll and monsters defence roll being largely irrelevant, you would end up with combat being reduced to how many shields does a monster roll and heroes attack roll being largely irrelevant.

EDIT: I initially misunderstood your "critical hit concept" which lead me to what I think is a potentially interesting observation...although I'm not sure how best to explain it.

The number of combat dice thrown in attack is based on your attack weapon.
The number of combat dice rolled determines the maximum number of skulls rolled
If the number of skulls rolled exceeds the defence value of the monster then you have scored a "critical hit"
A critical hit means that whatever the outcome of the defend dice roll the 1BP monster will die, so ignore the defend roll.

[2AD] Shortsword, Spear, Hand Axe etc -- critical hit possible against -- [1DD]
[3AD] Broadsword & Crossbow -- critical hit possible against -- [2DD]
[4AD] Battle Axe -- critical hit possible against -- [3DD]
[5AD] Special -- critical hit possible against -- [4DD] (and many "bosses")

[Onan]

Routinely rolling 2 or more skulls in attack, pretty much guarantees the death of any monster irrespective of DD (assuming 1BP monsters). Anyone equipped with the Battle Axe is routinely likely to roll 2 skulls, hence "broken" (or least sub-optimal).

Yes, exactly. I like it best when the most probably result is a single hit, and the hero is hoping that the monster's defense fails.

The number of combat dice thrown in attack is based on your attack weapon.
The number of combat dice rolled determines the maximum number of skulls rolled
If the number of skulls rolled exceeds the defence value of the monster then you have scored a "critical hit"
A critical hit means that whatever the outcome of the defend dice roll the 1BP monster will die, so ignore the defend roll.

That's also something we do. When the monster can't theoretically defend, we don't roll for defense. Also when a hero with 1BP and 2 defense gets hit by 3 skulls.

But because in practice 2 skulls are sufficient to kill a monster with 4 defense, I consider 2+ skulls a critical hit. 3 attack dice means 50% chance of a crit, so this is the turning point for me. With 3AD you're really strong against 1BP monsters, with 4AD you're OP I think. It's like playing DOOM with the plasma gun. You mow down hordes of enemies. This is fun, but only for a while.

When we play we don't put skull tokens on enemies, so as soon as there are 2 or more monsters with >1BP on the board, it gets confusing. My advice is that if you like the comfort of 1BP monsters, keep the heroes' attack dice low.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I understand that this "dice pool with binary outcome" mechanism could be applied to combat, and I proposed the same mechanism for non-combat under the Of Mice and Mystics: Action Dice because it is consistent, easier to learn and remember, and more easily extendable that the existing mechanism.

However when it comes to combat, the existing mechanism which has three variables (AD, DD, BP), and multiple outcomes 0...X, so is a richer mechanism, both in the sense of it providing more scope for designers, three variables to consider for monster generation, and in the sense of multiple possible outcomes, so I think that using the "dice pool with binary outcome" mechanism instead would be a downgrade.

When we play we don't put skull tokens on enemies, so as soon as there are 2 or more monsters with >1BP on the board, it gets confusing.

I think provided that you use the skull token (or supply your own token) system and only place the tokens under a multiple-BP monster's base once they have lost at least one BP, then it works fine.

Back in 2013 when I first discovered the AtOH and WoM campaigns (and the 1990 remake rules), I was initially delighted, and then confused. It was clear to me that the design team that created AtOH and WoM were not the original designers and were aware of, possibly inspired by, the 1990 remake version and that this was an attempt to introduce the best of the 1990 remake ideas, multiple BP monsters and Chaos Spells, into the original game. Something that I thoroughly support!

However when you start to look into how they went about this you are first struck by how half-baked or experimental and unfinished the rules appear to be, and then by the weird inconsistencies.

For example: Multiple BP monsters - it would have been very easy to include a cardboard insert with Skull tokens and just adopt the 1990 remake method of handling multiple BP monsters, but instead they seems to develop a token-phobia at this point, and instead came up with the sub-optimal "personality monster" multiple BP tracking system, and it was clear that wouldn't work for "non-personality monster", so they introduced the ugly "non-personality monster" variable BP tracking system, but then when it came to introding monster spells, they abandoned the card system standard adopted by both the classic edition and the 1990 remake, and instead developed a token-philia approach, by adopting a toekn approach to spells, but then when developing WoM they abandoned that system that they introduced and returned to the standard of using spell cards!

The whole AtOH and WoM approach to rules, feels like a "discussion over a lunch break / water cooler" approach, so I treat these rules as "experimental".

Maybe whilst the monster-designers were busy working on the plans in the depths of their dark dungeon basement, a group of heroic adventurer-bean counters, managed to sneak into the dungeon, disarm the traps, defeat the monster-designers, retrieve the plans and publish them to get their grubby mitts on the gold coin reward for successfully completing their quest!

Personally I have introduced (copied) BP tokens, which I use for tracking BOTH remaining BP for multiple BP monsters (after they have lost their first BP) by placing the tokens under the figure AND I use the same tokens, placing the full number on the character board at the start of the game for charcaters and removing or restoring them throughout the game. This means that at my table the charcater sheets are used only to track charcater progress, between quests, and not in-game at all, less admin = more fun all round.

[Onan]

The whole AtOH and WoM approach to rules, feels like a "discussion over a lunch break / water cooler" approach, so I treat these rules as "experimental".

Yes, the deep pits and the fireburst traps don't make sense. We have just played through WoM with our old books, and we did indeed check the body points in the book back then! The crosses are still there...

During the boss battles I forced myself to use the spells. The most effective action would be to simply attack with 5 dice, but that wouldn't be thematic. The last mission is pure chaos. I couldn't even cast the summon something spells, because all monsters were on the board And when 10 merecenaries were lined up in a corridor in front of a door I would shout "Zweite Kasse bitte!".

It was lots of fun, though!

I think they didn't use skull tokens because you have up to 5BP monsters. It's difficult to move a miniature standing on a pile of 4 skull tokens

Personally I have introduced (copied) BP tokens, which I use for tracking BOTH remaining BP for multiple BP monsters (after they have lost their first BP) by placing the tokens under the figure AND I use the same tokens, placing the full number on the character board at the start of the game for charcaters and removing or restoring them throughout the game. This means that at my table the charcater sheets are used only to track charcater progress, between quests, and not in-game at all, less admin = more fun all round.

We use a 4-digit dial for the hero body points, controlled by Zargon. And nothing for the monsters, all clean and easy with no pen and paper.

We have played GS with american rules several times, and first we liked the tougher monsters (except for the 2BP wandering Fimirs that you often have), but we have shifted back to 1BP monsters because it's quicker and easier. Sometimes the others still say "my have 3 BP" and it's ok.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

There is so much in AtOH and WoM, especially the former, that doesn't make sense, it is probably easier to try and identify the parts that do make sense but I'm not going to list them all out here as this isn't the topic!

I've never been sure whether those "master" chaos sorcerers are supposed to have 4 or 5BP, as the tracker show 5BP in the individual quests but 4BP in the final quest, not sure whether that is intentional or not, but either way, it can be difficult to move a miniature standing on a pile of 3 or 4 skull tokens. That said my house rule that considers the as an additional "hit" does help reduce the frequency and number of skull tokens in play at any moment as the increased damage improves the odds, particularly around 2BP , that you kill them in a single-shot.

I'm pleased that we are both using a BP tracking method for the characters that reduces admin, but whilst that was exactly my rationale for using BP tokens on the character board, I have consistently found, and I'm not sure of the psychology, that players having to hand over / discard physical tokens when they lose BP, and seeing the pile physically diminish, appears to make them more conscious, more precious, around their BP, they seem to feel the loss more for some reason.

During play, when a hero rolls 2 or more skulls, he feels relieved because the monster is gonna die almost for sure. If he rolls a single skull, he has to pray that the monster fails its defense. I think that both situations are good for gameplay.

I agree, ironically this dynamic between these situations that you describe is the very reason why I like the multiple BP monster "feature", however we track them, provided that you keep them in the lower range of 2-3BP, 4BP I only use for very rare bosses like the Ogre Lord and the 4 Master Sorcerers (which to be honest are so rare that you could use the "personality monster tracker in the quest book" for those)

Let me try to explain in a bit more detail. This "critical hit" or "one-shot kill" or whatever you want to call it, and the rush/relief/excitement that it generates, only occurs when you roll more "hits" that the monsters defend dice + BP total.

:1DD+1BP=2
:2DD+1BP=3
:3DD+1BP=4
:3DD+2BP=5
:4DD+2BP=6
:4DD+3BP=7

As you can see from the table, this final number at the end is both the total DD+BP for the monster AND the minimum number of hits required by a character to achieve a "critical hit" or "one-shot kill" AND the minimum number of attack dice / attack strength needed by a character for a "critical hit" or "one-shot kill" to be possible.

So you can see by these figures presented that lower level monsters can be one-shotted by lower level equipped characters, all the way up to and including a for characters equipped with a battle axe, whereas characters attacking higher level monsters beyond that point will either need more than one shot (or more than one character), or a missile attack in advance, or will need a boost, like a potion, courage spell or a special ability like orcs' bane.

And where a "critical hit" or "one-shot kill" isn't possible, or is possible but you didn't roll enough "hits", then that leaves you in "pray that the monster rolls poor defend dice" situation far more often.

I "ran the numbers" for this a long time ago, which seemed to bear it out in theory, but it was only when I dug up my very old HQ Arena rules (which were created more for the purposes of testing combat rules than an actual game in themselves) and applied these values that I started to get the feeling that they were sound and balanced.

EDIT: Forgot to add the link HQ Arena

[Onan]

I've never been sure whether those "master" chaos sorcerers are supposed to have 4 or 5BP,

It feels intented, because Morcar barely saved them and they are not at their full strength.

Let me try to explain in a bit more detail. This "critical hit" or "one-shot kill" or whatever you want to call it, and the rush/relief/excitement that it generates, only occurs when you roll more "hits" that the monsters defend dice + BP total.

I would say it occurs when you roll more hits than the monsters' BP (regardless of its defense), because it would need 2 to survive, which is improbable. So 2BP monsters are a way to keep the suspense at the same level when the players have 4AD, at the cost of a slower gameplay with fresh heroes, and at the cost of the wizard going kung-fu fighting:

The table cheers. This European chaos warrior just learned a lesson about laughing at the wizard's 1 dice attacks. His colleague from the US keeps laughing.



I keep thinking about the "Black Company Defense" rule. If the monsters block all skulls with a single shield, then the weapons only increase the heroes' chance to hit, but don't affect the monsters' chance to block. With normal defense rule more attack dice also means that the monster has lower chances of defending, because it might have to roll 2 or more black shields.

So even with 100 attack dice and a near 100% chance of rolling at least 1 skull, an Orc still has a 30% (11/36) chance of blocking. With normal defense, an Orc would have close to zero chances of blocking, because with 100 AD you will most probably roll 3 or more skulls.

Let's assume that "Dark Company Defense" was the default rule at some time during development. Now imagine that the Orcs Bane was "forged" in these ancient days As pointed out in the thread about the Orcs Bane, Stephen Baker's intent was to have it allow 2 attacks against a single Orc. Then, why make things so complicated instead of just giving it 4 AD against Orcs? Because Orcs Bane should be really strong against Orcs, and with "Dark Company Defense" 4 AD are weaker than 2x 2AD!

With normal defense rule a 2AD attack has a 59% chance of killing an Orc, 2x 2AD has 83%, and 4AD has 85%. So there is not much difference between 2x2AD and 1x4AD. With "Black Company Defense" it is 52% with 2AD, 77% with 2x 2AD and only 65% with 4AD.

I could be totally wrong, but "Dark Company Defense" provides a good explanation for the black shield/white shield distinction, and it explains Orcs Bane's odd rule of 2x 2AD attack against a single Orc.

The Talisman of Lore also seems to rely on other rules. It is supposed to "enhance the wearer's understanding of magic", but mind points are not related to magic. The character sheet suggests that you keep track of your mind points, so maybe 2 more mind points meant 2 more spells per quest under prototype rules.

So it looks like the artifacts were designed under different rules and not adapted to the final rules. For Orcs Bane the effect remained: 25% higher chance of killing an Orc, but changing it to 1x4AD against Orcs would have led to the same effect with faster combat and less confusion.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Allowing for the fact that it is hard enough to decipher the designers' original intentions within the published versions, so even harder to work it out in relation to any earlier theoretical unpublished versions, I do agree with you that using the "Dark Company Monster Defence" method, of rolling multiple defend dice and counting at least one as a full block, makes Monsters Defend Dice more effective and more relevant to the game.

Whilst I personally prefer a different approach of applying the characters defend dice mechanism to monsters (the and multiple BPs) I do think that either your method or my method results in a better outcome than the hybrid method presented in the official rulebook, where it uses the as the face that counts but only blocks a single rendering monster defence largely irrelevant.

Let's assume that "Dark Company Defense" was the default rule at some time during development. Now imagine that the Orcs Bane was "forged" in these ancient days As pointed out in the thread about the Orcs Bane, Stephen Baker's intent was to have it allow 2 attacks against a single Orc. Then, why make things so complicated instead of just giving it 4 AD against Orcs? Because Orcs Bane should be really strong against Orcs, and with "Dark Company Defense" 4 AD are weaker than 2x 2AD!

I think you are ignoring the ability of Orcs' Bane to attack either one Orc twice OR two different Orcs once, but that aside it is a valid point.

The Talisman of Lore also seems to rely on other rules. It is supposed to "enhance the wearer's understanding of magic", but mind points are not related to magic. The character sheet suggests that you keep track of your mind points, so maybe 2 more mind points meant 2 more spells per quest under prototype rules.

This is where we disagree, however I think my argument here potentially supports your "Dark Company Monster Defence Mechanism" further. I have posted about this ages ago under the Change of Mind topic but in summary despite the rulebook presenting the Mind Point mechanism as a twin of the Body Point mechanism, by far the main use of the "Mind" value in the actual game, bar a couple of quest specific exceptions, is to defend against the "magically induced coma" that is the Sleep spell.

Sleep
This spell will put one monster or player to sleep. He may try to defend himself by rolling one die per Mind point. If he rolls a shield he is unaffected. Once asleep he may not defend if attacked. He will awake if he rolls a six at the start of his turn, or if attacked.

It is for this reason that I disagree with your statement that "mind points are not related to magic" but you will notice that mechanism presented for using the Mind value here is effectively "rolling one combat die for each point of your Mind value, roll at least one to block the effects" which is exactly the same mechanism for monster defence as your "Dark Company Monster Defence"!

For me this means that despite what the rulebook says about Mind points, the main way in which they are actually used in the game, is as the exact equivalent not to the Body point mechanism but to the Defend dice mechanism (and more specifically the "Dark Company Monster Defence" method)