Ye Olde Inn

I've been thinking about including an ambush rule. I'm also unsure whether to allow heroes to ambush because the rules etc are kinda stacked in their favour. The rule would be to introduce surprise into the exploration of the map.

Ambushing - Monster
An unrevealed monster may ambush a hero if the hero walks past a corner and the monster is placed adjacent to the hero. The ambushing monster attacks immediately and unless the hero approached the corner while searching, they defend with one less combat die. If a hero stops their movement immediately before a corner and there is an unrevealed monster diagonally around the corner, the monster may immediately move to be adjacent and ambush the hero. A heroes turn ends after being ambushed


If I were to allow heroes to ambush, this might be the mechanic;

Ambushing - Hero
A hero may ambush a monster by waiting behind a corner for a turn without using an action. The hero attacks immediately but the monster doesn't receive a defence penalty. The monsters turn continues after being ambushed.

The benefit is for the hero to be able to retard their attack to allow them to attack in defence without giving the heroes to great and advantage.


Thoughts?

I'd think the easiest way to implement ambushes would just be to place "monster traps". Simply a square that triggers a monster that is placed and attacks immediately, ending the hero's turn.
If I recall correctly this is actually already included in the original rules in some expansion.

Either that or just through the quest notes.
A.) When this room is first discovered the hero's turn is ended and all monsters in the room immediately gets a free turn.

No need to invent special rules if it can be handled with existing rules

Goblin-King wrote:I'd think the easiest way to implement ambushes would just be to place "monster traps". Simply a square that triggers a monster that is placed and attacks immediately, ending the hero's turn.
If I recall correctly this is actually already included in the original rules in some expansion.

Either that or just through the quest notes.
A.) When this room is first discovered the hero's turn is ended and all monsters in the room immediately gets a free turn.

No need to invent special rules if it can be handled with existing rules

This, yes. I prefer the first method myself.

Goblin-King wrote:If I recall correctly this is actually already included in the original rules in some expansion.

Ah, okay. This I didn't realise. I have only played the EU and NA original and read the EU KK, RotWL, AtOH. I guess I should probably read through the rest and see what other goodies exist

Goblin-King wrote:Either that or just through the quest notes.
A.) When this room is first discovered the hero's turn is ended and all monsters in the room immediately gets a free turn.

I do like this and I'd imagine that I would do this however this rule was primarily aimed at corridor ambushes. That's brings up the point that I should be a touch clearer in it's implementation. I'd already elaborated / corrected some text in there since you'd read it.

Goblin-King wrote:No need to invent special rules if it can be handled with existing rules

Agreed. Over ruling can create ambiguity, something HQ already suffers enough from

I believe GoblinKing was referring to this rule from the EQP and BQP:



While on the subject, I'd like to mention a house rule of my own I was thinking of implementing for special rooms/corridors or certain monsters: "When a Hero moves adjacent to attack a monster, it may make a special attack first if the Hero's movement roll is less than the monster's movement score."

Daedalus wrote:I believe GoblinKing was referring to this rule from the EQP and BQP:

Rido, cheers. Guess it achieves a similar thing in a different way. One thing against it is that it's limited to the listed monster(s) whereas I could simply put whatever monster I wanted in an ambushing position. Now for something that could sound maddening, I think both rules could exist in the same game because I like the idea of being ambushed by more than one monster with a trap tile.

Daedalus wrote:While on the subjuct, I'd like to mention a house rule of my own I was thinking of implementing for special rooms/corridors or certain monsters: "When a Hero moves adjacent to attack a monster, it may make a special attack first if the Hero's movement roll is less than the monster's movement score."

Neat, I like that. That's a good way of identifying who has the element of surprise.

Daedalus wrote:While on the subjuct, I'd like to mention a house rule of my own I was thinking of implementing for special rooms/corridors or certain monsters: "When a Hero moves adjacent to attack a monster, it may make a special attack first if the Hero's movement roll is less than the monster's movement score."

I like your idea and it got me thinking. My rules have a provision for heroes charging so I'm going to allow monsters to ambush only if a hero isn't charging.

Sounds like charging meshes nicely with the surprise idea.

You make a good point that the Wandering Monster trap is limited to just the Wandering Monster of the Quest. A possible solution would be to use the Wandering Monster trap icon and include in the Quest notes for the ambush room that certain specified monsters appear instead of the Wandering Monster(s) of that Quest.

Daedalus wrote:Sounds like charging meshes nicely with the surprise idea

That's the hope. I still haven't play tested that. Once we've finished the original quest book, I might get them to pick their favourite quest and test some of these rules. I probably won't play my house rules with the original quests (at least certainly not first time through). They're (slowly) being developed for my own future quests.

Daedalus wrote:A possible solution would be to use the Wandering Monster trap icon and include in the Quest notes for the ambush room that certain specified monsters appear instead of the Wandering Monster(s) of that Quest.

Yes, I'd control ambush rooms through the quest notes. I was mainly interested in adding some excitement to the corridor exploration.