Equipment progression. Again.

[torilen]

An idea I'll put out there for using different colored dice. Since, the colored dice are
a pretty good path away from the basic game anyhow...you could move to using just plain
six-sided dice. Anyone can get a set of these for $20-$25 dollars...white, maroon, orange,
black, yellow, red, blue, green, pink, and purple...ten of each of them.

These would allow some very small steps for change between dice. Example:
purple - must roll 6
pink - must roll 5/6
white - must roll 4/5/6
green - must roll 3/4/5/6
blue - must roll 2/3/4/5/6
yellow - must roll 4/5/6 - 6 equals two points of damage (2 skulls)
orange - must roll 4/5/6 - 5 and 6 equal 2 points of damage
red - must roll 4/5/6 - all equal 2 points of damage
maroon - must roll 3/4/5/6 - 4/5/6 equal 2 points of damage
black - must roll 3/4/5/6 - all equal 2 points of damage

Just a thought. It takes a bit more "rules" but is easy enough to remember once it
has been used a few times. And it is small enough to be written on a card.

[knightkrawler]

I'm tired right now - so take my comments lightly for the moment.
I like what I am seeing, I think. I agree with cynthia that using the special dice
is questionable. I've wanted to come up with rules using those myself, and if I ever
get my hands on some, I most likely will. Most will not have those, however, and so
any rules using those will be ignored by most folks here, probably.

You were tired, indeed.
The rules stay the same. Heroes roll white shields, monsters roll black shields, everyone rolls skulls for attack.
In that, the colored dice are impeccable in concept.
The second advantage is that you can add weapons and functions modularly without destroying the integrity of the vanilla rules.

Examples:
"Zombies in this entire quest pack roll blue dice instead of white ones for defend."
"In this quest, chaos warriors roll black dice for attack."
"This weapon allowas you to roll 2 black and 1 white die for attack."

What I'm trying to say is there are no rule changes, but additions in quests and new cards that make these worthwhile.
No need to change anything existing if you don't want to.
But now, when heroes are maxed out and exisitng questbooks will be too easy (as early as Kellar's Keep)
you can now let the monsters "defend on white shields" elegantly without destroying the "monsters roll black shields" mechanic.
Even I, with my completely refurbished, relatively vanilla rule system could now easily inlcude the use of colored dice.
It's a thing of a few sentences here and there in quest notes, and on new cards, and a thing of printing some old cards anew.

That's what makes these dice stay attractive even though I don't like them because their very concept intuitively counters
the original combat system's simplicity and integrity. But that's more nostalgia than it is reason, really.
And no one - no one - wants to use regular dice instead of HQ combat dice.
There - I just defended the colored dice.

[Anderas]

That said...the biggest problem I have with what I see here is the color on the weapon
cards. You created cards to match the base game, but then went and put color on them.

Yes. You're right.
I know what you mean.

I thought a lot about it, in fact. Once i was so short of only using black and white dice just for keeping the style of the cards.
Also the colored dice have a real disadvantage: They are bigger and heavier than the original wood dice. Meaning, they make more noise and more earthquake on the game board. The originals are quite silent and don't rearrange your gameboard so much. And, in the end, most people won't use my cards if i use the colored ones.

On the game table, it is for sure the simplest way to restrict yourself to one color, so every player can use any die that is lying around somewhere.
You can also emulate some of the functions of those dice with the whites.

Yes i am very aware about the disadvantages.


I want colored dice, because of pure selfish reasons: because i ordered them...
Also, writing rules like

Rapier:
Diagonal.
Roll to attack.
count as .

Just feels awful if you have those dice lying around here.

There is one thing you can't do with the originals. It is what the yellow die does. It has the same average for skulls, but due to the symbol distribution he is more piercing against Monsters with a lot of armor than the normal white die.
That's interesting. For me.


Besides, the guy selling the dice is home-producing them. He buys colored blank dice, he has a set of stamps at home, and then he stamps the dice with the symbols.
I guess it would be easy to order those dice directly custom printed nowadays.

[Count Mohawk]

I want colored dice, because of pure selfish reasons: because i ordered them...
Also, writing rules like

Rapier:
Diagonal.
Roll to attack.
count as .

I haven't made a full-blown Armory card set yet, but I have made sure to include "white-dice only" variations on my sets of Spell cards. The way I see it, spending a little extra time making two versions of a card is OK if it means the paupers and dice purists among us can still use my stuff.

There is one thing you can't do with the originals. It is what the yellow die does. It has the same average for skulls, but due to the symbol distribution he is more piercing against Monsters with a lot of armor than the normal white die.
That's interesting. For me.

I'll drink to that!

I would try to think of a numerical or letter value to replace the colors, if possible.

Well, if we're using HQModern already I could always just make some more icons...

As an aside, do you want to know what my ultimate "special combat dice" fantasy is?
8-sided combat dice.
Think of the probabilities! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[Thor-in]

Count Mohawk wrote:
As an aside, do you want to know what my ultimate "special combat dice" fantasy is?
8-sided combat dice.
Think of the probabilities! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I like your thinking, only what came to mind for me was a D10 or D12. The possibilities are endless .

[Anderas]

Finished the 3-dice-weapons.
following the critique, i prepared a white version for every colordice version as well.
Same is in preparation for the 2-dice and 1-die weapons.

They don't wield exactly the same result, but it's close enough.
Big thanks to GimmeYerGold for the Longsword and the Mace, and to Slev for the Halberd.

As always, if someone is interested in printing resolution or probably downloading all of it, just click on it.

[Anderas]

And the last two weapons i will do for this thread.
I decided to cut the very last step because there is too much power creep involved for my taste. So the last two weapons are these:




With that, the overview looks like this:

you can find the pure-white special rules in the cards.


Next progression topic is the Armor.
I want: More options, but i want to limit to six dice.

Helmet, Shield, Chain Mail, Plate Mail

The base game says:
Base armour
Chain mail replaces base with
Plate mail and Borins Armor replace the base with

Shield and helmet both give an bonus +1
That's not overly complicated and leaves some design freedom if i want.

One fan system has to be taken into account:
Sotiris has a really nice system.
Every armoury item just gives one additional white die. All of them can be worn in layers over all others of them.

Base:
Helmet: +
Shield: +
Chain Mail: +
Plate Mail: +
Borins Armour: +

It's super simple. You just count your cards and roll the dice.
It is so attractive that i can't just overlook it, and i am really tempted.


But i also want to introduce intermediate steps. As Money sink for the heroes, as much as for the pure joy of choice.

A Black or blue makes 0,5 whites. Simulating would be "defend on black shields"
a Green makes 1,5 whites, simulating "defend on all shields"

Both is not really feasible to simulate if you use a handful of white dice.
After rolling, which one counts on all shields and which one counts normal?


What i thought introducing as intermediates are:
Leather helmet (less expensive, blue die)
Closed helmet (extra espensive, green die)
Buckler (as expensive as the shield, blue die in defense, but activates the special rule of the rapier)
Tower shield (-3 movement, green die in defense)

Plus, i could put the leather armour and the scale mail between the other equipment items.
Borin's armour will be like Plate mail, but without penalty.
The power creep will be limited by removing one die in base defense everywhere.

So base = 1, Chain = 2, Plate/Borin =3 dice in base defense.
That means, leather will get 1,5 and scale mail gets 2,5.

Nice, but...

Ahhh, i don't know! Mixing dice is nice if you have all of them noted on one card.
Mixing dice can be a pain in the ass if you have to look up each die on a different card.
Currently i am thinking about using the zombicide dashboard to hold the equipment. If i use the 5 backpack slits for armor, i could note all the dice at the upper border of the card. You would see all the dice on the first glance. However, it would break the design that i already applied to some 100 cards. Would it be ok if armor items are just different from the rest?

[Anderas]

First three cards are done. They are all helmets.



So those cards can give you the ability to reroll a in defense, or they can give you additional dice.
I invented a new symbol, that one:



which is pretty much self explanatory once you read one of those cards.
I place the dice or the reroll symbol right on top next to the title, so that you can stack your cards like that:


Well. You can't stack three helmets on top of each other. But you can stack cards.

The buckler, with artwork from Talhoffer's Fechtbuch which originates somewhere in the renaissance or even later. The normal Shield, with the same function as the original. And the big shield (how is that thing called?) that allows one walrus reroll and an additional white die. With artwork from Gary Chalk.

The Buckler is the only defense item with a special rule, so that the intended card stacking will be no problem.

Now, base armor:
Leather, because it is just cool. It adds a reroll to the base defense. Second, Chain mail. Two whites. Third, Scale mail. Two whites and a walrus reroll. Fourth. Plate Mail. 3 Whites.
Leather and Scale are both Gary Chalk art, for the Scale i even copied the boundary extension on one part of the picture.


If you have all items, you have 5 whites in defense and two walrus rerolls. that is roughly 5.7 whites. If you manage to get three walrus rerolls, it is roughly like 5.9 whites. Target achieved:
* No Power creep in the defense sector
* more than double the options
* No angry forum because of only white dice used!

The Wizard can have this alternative:

Then the basic wizard has a leather armor and this robe, a buckler and a rapier.
He may like to exchange his Cloak of Protection with the Wizard's Cloak. Rapier / Buckler will at some point in time be exchanged with some Artifacts that enhance his magic; like the wand of magic. Until he found them, he is well served.

Borin's Armour is in good base game tradition at the same strength like the plate mail, but without movement penalty. Other than the cheap plate mail, it is just so good manufactured, that Cynthia's men can do acrobatics in it. Even the Wizard.

[Anderas]

To finish this topic for the time being, i add my non-armoury equipment and a link to download everything including .psd files.

The answer to "why buy the toolkit"


...and the toolkit. I was thinking about adding another variant of it so we have one bad and one good, but, naaah.

Besides, my standard dwarf has the same rule, plus the addition "If you use a toolkit, you may reroll this test."

And a collection of shoes. Some had been artifacts, but i want them to be equipment.
Function: Money sink. Frustration reduction.
Elven boots. They wear off quite fast if used with plate mail, besides. Then, good standard shoes so you don't have to soil your sandals. Then, the better variant.


I feel that my equipment collection is pretty complete now. If i encounter too-rich heroes, i might add another layer of weapons, but i would prefer not to.

Only thing missing is a hammer. For the dwarf. But he shall have a different behavior from other weapons, otherwise it is superfluous. Maybe one small hammer with 3 dice and a big hammer comparable to the battle axe?

If you want to download all of it, go to my dropbox, there is a zip file.

Here is the link.
Normally it should work around one o clock when the upload is finished.

It contains:
* All Equipment cards in colordice and white dice variant
* all of them as PNG ready for printerstudio and as PSD ready for Photoshop
* The Equipment cards are made for 44mm x 67mm = Zombicide card format.
* don't open the .psd files without downloading HQModern. Otherwise you will have no fun with them.

[mitchiemasha]

What I'm trying to say is there are no rule changes, but additions in quests and new cards that make these worthwhile.

That's what I love about any mods for HQ.