Up Grading the Dungeon

[cynthialee]

I use a number of methods to alter the challenge of any particular dungeon. Some are more powerful than others. Some are virtual party killers.

The most obvious is to increase number of monsters or to alter the wandering monster. Easy enough to do.
Next is to allow boss monsters and named villains to defend on White Shields.
To make it a truly deadly dungeon, all monsters are given the White Shields to defend advantage. Now all monsters with this advantage are considered seasoned soldiers.
Changing out weapons available to a monster type will be a serious buff. Especially things like ranged combat and weapons that allow diagonal attack.
The most deadly of my monster mods is move hit move. A monster with this skill may take 1/2 or less of their move, attack then finish their move. This change is a complete game changer, especially if coupled with ranged or diagonal attacks.

Then there are trap modifications...
Hard to find traps require a mind roll to find. The player rolls the heroes Mind Points (+4 for the Dwarf) looking for a Black Shield to find the trap.
Hard to disarm traps require a Mind Roll and a tool Kit looking for a Black Shield to disarm. Again the Dwarf is allowed a bonus of 4 dice.
Impossible to disarm traps...You must jump the trap or just suck it up and take the damage.

Locked doors. They require a key, to be found on one of the monsters in the dungeon. Locked doors may be bashed down by the Barbarian for the cost of a Body Point.

Magic Locks. To defeat these one needs 2 spell casters working together. Each must spend 2 full turns doing arcane stuff while both are adjacent or diagonal to the door. Some powerful locks require the sacrifice of a spell from a particular school of magic. {I also use other situations where the two casters must work together to defeat a magic trap, monster or other trouble. Typically I will swarm in a few monsters for the dwarf and barbarian to deal with as the casters occupy themselves with making the magic happen.}

then there are Evil Wizard Cards....there is a thread on these forums all about them. They are worth the effort to print off and incorporate into your game.

[Goblin-King]

A monster spawner can be truly deadly.
I made a quest once where Morcar could roll a die. On a skull he could place a goblin. A g-o-b-l-i-n
You may laugh, but unlimited goblins chipping away was insanely overpowered.

[cynthialee]

A monster spawner can be truly deadly.
I made a quest once where Morcar could roll a die. On a skull he could place a goblin. A g-o-b-l-i-n
You may laugh, but unlimited goblins chipping away was insanely overpowered.

I love it!

[whitebeard]

Any time the monsters move and attack first is devastating. Let the boss room door open automatically on EWP's turn! two bosses / two boss encounters also tends to be difficult.

[mitchiemasha]

I frown upon monsters defend with white shields. Instead an Orc mod is, "in the presence of a chieftain, waaagh, any skulls rolled in defence are hits against the attacker." Thematically this is seen as, instead of defending the blow the Orc lunges at the Hero, the Hero defends as normal.

For Chaos Warriors. "Ancient magic enchants the warriors armour through it's orb. Each black shield rolled against them in attack negates a skull." this is in effect until the sorcerer is killed or what ever artifact might hold the magic is destroyed.

For Undead. "The curse on this tomb is strong, the undead are easily reanimated and must be finished off". Undead reduced to 0BP are laid down in their square, don't block LoS or movement. The EW rolls 1cd6 for each start of turn. Skull: Reanimated. Shield: Nothing Happens. Black Shield: Explodes. A failed attempt at reanimation but each adjacent/diaganal Hero rolls 1Cd6 and loses 1BP if failing to roll a white shield. To finish off a Hero Must move onto the monsters square and spend their action. This creates some crazy room stand offs and Hero choices to finish the room.

Each monster has a standard ability, check it out here.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzUqo ... FhLaG9hS1U

[mitchiemasha]

The most deadly of my monster mods is move hit move.

This is why we give goblins MAM... the weakest Monster but also the fastest. Small slippery lil buggers. Now deadly. ESPECIALLY ONES WITH BOWS. So much more fun to play.

[cynthialee]

The most deadly of my monster mods is move hit move.

This is why we give goblins MAM... the weakest Monster but also the fastest. Small slippery lil buggers. Now deadly. ESPECIALLY ONES WITH BOWS. So much more fun to play.

Yep, my fav as well. I call them my run and gun goblins. Punk goblin archers get a 2 dice short bow and the commander goblin archer gets a 3 dice crossbow. I never go more than 4 of these dudes at a go. I have tied up a party and dragged them around the dungeon chasing a pack of these dudes for a number of turns. Great stuff.

[Anderas]

I give one or two goblins per dungeon the MAM ability after finding out that they get quite strong with it. It's a killer and it is fun at the same time.

Each Monster gets more interesting with Agents and Bosses.

Agents are like Necromancer's: they have the ability to get help. There is the goblin musician model that uses his instrument to get help. There is the orc shaman who can, in my ruleset, conjure a fixed number of orcs depending on the hero's equipment. The original summon orcs spell was broken, in my opinion, so I changed that one to be a fixed number.
There are fleeing monsters who get help should they reach the quest entry point. Thanks Cynthia for the tip, that one is worth gold. Chasing the agent is always fun.
For skeletons and Zombies there is of course the necromancer, who sometimes has the necromancer spells and sometimes I just give him a conjuring ability for free.
Chaos Warriors sometimes have the ability to call some Mercenaries. Not too often, though, as they are sufficiently hard, especially as Pack.

A good boss motivates his team and imprints his vision of the future into the minds of his minions. That's another concept than the 'big one'. Of course a big variant of the normal monster is always fun in the end. I talk about a different kind of Boss, not the biggest in the pack but a real leader.

As long as he is there, monsters that he leads get special abilities. My monsters all have a special ability that they normally may not use. I can activate them by discarding an evil wizard card, that's one way. Or there is a leader in the room who unleashes his minions. To have it not too repetitive, I sometimes give them other abilities in the presence of their Boss, too. That makes interesting choices for the players - do I move to that really bad position over there to kill that mini-boss? Or do I stay here in safety but endure all the specials?

The Orc Warboss makes stronger orcs, by letting them reroll black shields in attack. The ancient king (read: special mummy) makes stronger skeletons. A Vampire King may lead some Mummies. The Necromancer may give the Zombies a kind of self assembling ability, giving them more Body Points. The orc herder makes the goblins run really fast. The high mage might have enchanted the chaos warriors to defend on white shields, or blue dice. Mercaneries can attack with a die more and are immune to bribery as long as their Chaos Warrior Boss is there watching for them.

Though those abilities are pretty standard, for the players it is interesting because they might switch those abilities off by killing the mini-boss. Each mini-boss should appear twice or three times maximum: The first time, the players learn something new. The second and third time they may employ what they have learned, making them proud of themselves, ultimately strengthening their addiction to the game. As soon as the mini-boss becomes normal business, retire him and think of something new.

The only disadvantage is that you need somewhat bigger rooms to play out a minion-boss relationship. On the original board there are only one or two rooms big enough and those are already heavily overused. Maybe print some overlays with 5x5 size or 4x6 at least, so that the encounter can happen anywhere on the board.

[knightkrawler]

The most deadly of my monster mods is move hit move.

This is why we give goblins MAM... the weakest Monster but also the fastest. Small slippery lil buggers. Now deadly. ESPECIALLY ONES WITH BOWS. So much more fun to play.

My goblins are the tiny mini-minis from Red Box Games and I couldn't resist.
They now have only 1 Attack die (which leaves room for many more basic monsters in the 2 AD niche),
but MAM by default.

I have regular ones with sword and shield, some with spear (diagonal), and some with bow (ranged).
Great source of fun, these little *Play-Doh Factories*.

[cynthialee]

Love it, keep them coming!

Just thought of a new idea...
Give a pack of orks each a bag full of throwing knives...have them attack and fall back a few times...The players have a choice...close distance and face normal ork attack dice, or try and take them out at range. At range the orks are certainly harder to kill, especially early on when only the wizard and elf has range ability.
To up the challenge, trade out the 1 dice knives for the magic throwing daggers that always inflict 1 Body Point with out a roll...