Search for Treasure & Secret Doors

[Daedalus]

If I understand this houserule rightly, it's possible for all treasure searches for a room to be exhaused without revealing a present secret door if a secret-door card isn't drawn.

You understand wrong. There's no secret door card(s) in this idea....

I should learn to not submit comments when I'm up too late. Cool idea, knightkrawler.

It doesn't really make sense that searching for treasure is more likely to produce a wandering monster than other searches. An alternative wold be to take all of the wandering monsters out of the treasure deck and roll a combat dice with any search, a black skull triggers a wandering monster.

...Another Idea I had was when searching you always drew a treasure card. If something bad came up, that happened. If something good came up then you searched as normal. All traps and secret doors are revealed regardless of what was drawn. This has not been tested so it may be bad towards the end of the quest if all the treasures have been removed... Maybe replace all the 'found' treasures with 'nothing' cards as they are removed from the deck so that it doesn't become super dangerous to search for traps... who knows.

I like both of these as well. Gold Bearer's is direct and consistent, while JasonMCM's makes good use of the Treasure Deck's availabilty and variety.

My own agenda seeks to introduce more game time for searches as a matter of believability/immersion. As I see it, moving 30 feet and/or mangling a monster is much quicker than searching a room. To help meet that criteria while capitalizing on this thread's content, I think I'll try drawing a Treasure Card for all searches. A negative Treasure Card's effect is applied and ends the Hero's turn for all searches, not just a bad treasure search. Unlike a treasure search, a Hero can search for a secret door or trap in the same room again on another turn. However, he wouldn't reveal it's presence or absence until a positive card was drawn. Both positive and negative Treasure Cards are shuffled back into the Treasure Cards for secret door and trap searches.

Like JasonMCM noted, a problem arises after many good Treasure Cards have been removed. I think this would serve to encourage players to wait until the end of a Quest to search for treasure after all other searches were completed. This is anti-climatic and unfun in its predictability, in my opinion.

JasonMCM, I like your suggestion to replace a drawn-and-removed, good Treasure Card with a "You found nothing" card. You've found a way to make secret door and trap searches later in a Quest no more risky and not delay treasure searches. However, you can tweak this and have the Treasure Card deck continue to become more dangerous for treasure searches, as it was designed to do. Simply add that if a "You found nothing" card is drawn for a treasure search the player draws again until a regular Treasure Card is drawn. Then shuffle the "You found nothing" card and any negative card (if drawn) back into the deck.

[Malcadon]

It doesn't really make sense that searching for treasure is more likely to produce a wandering monster than other searches. An alternative wold be to take all of the wandering monsters out of the treasure deck and roll a combat dice with any search, a black skull triggers a wandering monster.

I have had this Idea as well.
With my Chaos Counter idea whenever a hero searched the Evil Wizard got one (and could spend them on nasty things later)

Another Idea I had was when searching you always drew a treasure card. If something bad came up, that happened. If something good came up then you searched as normal. All traps and secret doors are revealed regardless of what was drawn. This has not been tested so it may be bad towards the end of the quest if all the treasures have been removed... Maybe replace all the 'found' treasures with 'nothing' cards as they are removed from the deck so that it doesn't become super dangerous to search for traps... who knows.

I was working on a house rule for that. Well... Working on the card art. Basically, the EWP rolls a CD each turn, and if it rolls a , then the EWP draws an Event Card. Events maybe good or bad. You might find some helpful items, but you are likely going to face some strange types of hindrances. (The notes are in the description.)

[Gold Bearer]

Sjeng made some evil wizard cards, I'm using them for my P-b-P game. These are the rules I'm using.

At the start of each of my turns I'll roll a combat dice and on a black shield a wandering monster will be placed on a random square in sight of an adventurer that's adjacent to an out of sight square that's connects to an unexplored area if there is one and the dice will be rolled again. On a white shield I'll roll a standard dice and use the table below.

1 - Wandering monster! A wandering monster attacks a random adventurer.
2 - Monster patrol! The same rules as rolling a black shield except that the monster can imediately take a turn.
3 - Trap! A random adventurer looses 1BP on the roll of a skull and 1MP on the roll of a black shield.
4 - The GM draws a random evil wizard card.
5 - A random hero draws a treasure card.
6 - A random hero finds treasure. Roll a combat dice. On a skull they find D6x10 gold coins, on a white shield they find a random potion and on a black shield they find a random scroll from a random spell set.

When the dungeon is clear (aside from anything that needs a secret door to access) I'll stop rolling the combat dice on my turn and you can dhose to leave at any time without having to move to the exit.

[cornixt]

My players now do a single search per room rather than doing three searches per room, so the game is sped up a bit. They rarely shirked from treasure searches since the deck is really only stacked against them in the last few rooms of the quest if they have been lucky in the first few. It also makes more sense that they would search for everything at the same time - surely traps and secret door triggers are near identical in many cases, so why would you find one but not the other? And you'd certainly find hidden stuff like treasure while looking.

Here is the table I am currently experimenting with. Not had much chance to playtest. I think it is a bit too heavy on the good stuff at the moment.

1 Wandering Monster Place a wandering monster next to the character. It may immediately attack.
2 A Trap is Triggered Lose one Health point.
3 Purse 25 coins
4 Loose coins D6 x 10 coins
5 Valuable artifact Worth D6 x 20 coins
6 Potion Roll a D6:
1. Nothing useful.
2. Potion of Health
3. Potion of War
4. Potion of Haste
5. Potion of Sorcery
6. Holy Water

[Schmidt]

EWP rolls CD and have 3 card piles:
Bad things!
Gold!
Potions!

[GimmeYerGold]

Summary of Our House Rules for searching for traps, doors, and treasure:

- Search for Traps and Secret Doors is a combined action, also reveals traps on chest/furniture.
- Each Room can only be search for treasure once. period.
- Each chest/piece of furniture can be searched separately for treasure. No special treasure means a draw from the treasure deck.
- Hallways cannot be searched for treasure.
- All special treasure is handled with quest notes.
- The treasure deck is reshuffled when a "bad" card is returned to the deck.
- Similar to "searching for treasure in a piece of furniture," a hero can also parley with an adjacent lone monster. There is a deck for this to be drawn from, with similar monster-related hazards, and some of the more unique treasure cards.

[cynthialee]

EWP rolls CD and have 3 card piles:
Bad things!
Gold!
Potions!

I really like this idea!

[Schmidt]

Use and improve as you like.

[cynthialee]

Use and improve as you like.

Always and forever. Such is the lot of the Game Master of the group is it not?

[Malcadon]

...or this:
= One of the Heroes got tanked form drinking too much potions, and discharged a cocktail of it on one of the boots of an adjacent figure. ~ "WTF, man! You cannot get that out of fur!"
= Get to use the "little Hero's room", FAST! (Roll to see if you can hold it in.) ~ "Last time I eat at Orcby's"
= Oops! One of the female replacement Heroes (if used) had a slight "wardrobe malfunction"! "Oh my!" ~ ~ "Sweet!"