Ye Olde Inn

Hello. Nice to meet you all. I'm videomaster21xx a new member to these boards.

I was talking with some folks on another message board in a thread about Hero Quest, and how I'm the DM for a group currently playing through.

First a bit about where we currently are. I'm sorry I tend to really write things out. ^^;

We've been doing a few things different. For one we have about five heroes, sometimes six if that player is able to make it. They also consist of an odd group of the heroes. The Rouge, the Knight, The Barbarian, the Dwarf, the Bard, and the Warlock. (The Warlock is there off and on)

We played through the main quest and I set out all the packs and asked them which one they wanted to go onto next. They chose The Frozen Horror which we have also now completed.

I want to tackle Keller's Keep and Return of the Witch Lord next as I feel those two are the quests you probably should follow the main quest with. (I don't regret giving my players the choice, and I enjoyed FINALLY being able to play the Barbarian quest. Something I just barely missed the boat on ordering back in the 90's.)

The issue I have now, is I don't feel normal monsters are going to cut it anymore. I mean they were going up against Polar Warbears and Yeti and generally managing to make it through okay. (Those last two quests of Frozen Horror nearly broke them though.)

I mean the Barbarian and Knight have like six defend dice each, so it's already difficult to get through their armor. I've been coming up with some tweaks to the monsters to make things interesting and if it's okay I'd love to lay them out here and get some feedback.

Its hard to recommend something since you have so many hero players, but I will offer some possible suggestions to consider.

I’ve been playing through the quest packs using the companion app in an order that makes sense to me, but not necessarily in the “official” order. Some quest packs I considered going on at the same time, such as KK and RotWL. I had my main party of heroes split while bringing new heroes with them, so there were two experienced heroes and two novice ones. So if you play one of those packs, consider half the players using their experienced characters and the other new (and different) heroes. The reason for this is two urgent things are going on at once, so you need to split up. I can say sending a completely new group into KK or RotWL will lead to certain death with 4 heroes. With 6 it might be possible though. You could say “while the other guys were off battling the frozen horror, these new guys are doing this stuff”.

Another possibility is to give the base monsters some special ability or have elite versions with a special ability. The companion app has options for Advanced Skeletons and Advanced Goblins. Turning on these options gives Skeletons the ability to attack diagonally, and Goblins the ability to move, attack then move again using the remainder of their movement. You could consider similar changes for other monsters.

You could consider doubling normal monster Body Points, and have some explanation for it. Such as “in the ruins of Kelos, the undead under the Witch Lord’s power are tougher than normal”.

How do you handle treasure searches? Do you allow each hero to search a room once shuffling the deck each time? When I realized this was the rule, I started playing that way and your chances of drawing bad cards increases dramatically very quickly. Sometimes you can almost double the amount of monsters in a quest from wandering monsters alone. Not to mention the automatic damage from Hazard cards. I found playing this way does increase the difficulty quite a bit. I can’t imagine doing multiple searches in the Frozen Horror pack. It just seems like suicide. I’m playing through The Frozen Horror now using the app, and I only search for treasure if there is a chest, or if I suspect a possible special treasure. If you already play it this way, then ignore this last part.

Welcome! What you report here is very unusual. But in short, you have basically completed the hardest available quest book with your group. HQ was not really designed to allow this to happen. I’d be interested in hearing a few details about how your group managed to get through the final double quest, e.g., the unavoidable wandering monsters, the long river, plus the boss fight.

Yes, do play Kellar’s Keep and Return of the Witchlord, by all means. These are good expansions. There are different solutions one could recommend to you a this stage of the game, depending on how far you are willing to depart from the original rules. The simplest way to increase the difficulty is by allowing the heroes to regenerate only every 2-3 quests (or not at all) and not letting them visit the market, either. This will eventually cause other issues, but it would fit very well to the storyline of these two expansions. Changing the monster stats will also work for certain. It’s all a matter of scaling, especially since you are somewhat off the standard measures with 5-6 heroes.

Yeah, I was surprised they completed The Frozen Horror right after the game system. One thing to consider is the heroes don’t really get “stronger” playing this quest pack because all the artifacts are worthless outside of the FH quest book, except the Amulet of the North. The other artifacts from the Into the Northlands have some potential value as well, but not in a way that changes difficulty. So the heroes won’t really be any stronger than if they played KK first for example.

The 5 or 6 heroes is what throws stuff off so much. If there were only 4, they could just play the quest packs with no adjustments. KK and RotWL do have some nasty situations that come up. I believe the closest I’ve ever come to dying was the first quest of RotWL.

Thank you for replying! First I feel I should give a bit of information, as I feel it'll help give you all an idea of what I know of the game.

So first off I'd like to point out I'm old, and in fact have been playing Hero Quest since I was a wee lad. Which means I've played through the original release of this game back in the 90s. Twice actually with enough time between both sessions that I couldn't remember all the details of the quest, and both quest packs right after that as well. So I'm very well acquainted with the original quests and KK and ROTWL. Which is part of the reason why I know with my current group of heroes, these two quests aren't going to provide much challenge. I've come up with many ideas to do some tweaking to make things more interesting. Let me lay out what I've come up with. I'm looking for any feedback on this as I'm trying to weed out any issues before hand. I've also told my players we'll be workshopping this as we play, so if we run into a problem, we'll adjust stuff until it works better.

So first here is what I have for monster tweaks I want to do:

For Keller's Keep:

Goblin. I'm thinking of giving them one more defense die. I'll keep their hitpoints the same.

However I'm going to use the Ice Gremlin figures from Frozen Horror and repurpose them as a 'Goblin Commander' I'm not sure if I should bring their hit points down to 2, but these commanders will have a special ability. They can blow a horn and summon more Goblins. I'm thinking I'll roll a 1d6 and whatever number I get, those are the amount of Goblins that show up.

I just need to figure out how often he can do this. Maybe when there are a specific number of Goblins left? Or maybe every other turn. Or maybe based on how many goblins are killed?

Orcs. I am going to give them another hit point at the very least. I'm also thinking of giving them the ability to attack diagonally. The only other idea I have is maybe a few might have crossbows. I don't think I want to give ALL of them crossbows. Just one or two depending on the group size.

Abominations. I want to add a poison ability to. I was thinking of having the apothecary person, in addition to the new potions they can buy, also have an anti-venom potion for sale. Maybe like 200 or 300 gold. This would give my heroes something to grind for, as they pretty much have nothing to buy anymore. (And none of them want to buy the tool kit). I was thinking of how to get the poison to work, based on damage it's doing, but I'm still workshoping it. Maybe I can roll a 1d6 and that's how many rounds it lasts. I could have them roll a combat die and if they get a skull it hits them for one. I could also have it slow them down. Say if they are poisoned they can only move with ONE movement die instead of two.

Frozen Horror gave me treasure cards for potions of warmth. I'm thinking of repurposing them to be mini anti-venom bottles. It'll stop the venom, but won't heal you. So they get movement back at least, which should make them want to use them.

I have the original board game and am tempted to add Fimir's to the horde, but I'm not sure what special ability I'd have them do. Maybe they could have a dread spell stored in their eye that they can cast? I'd have to figure out what dread spells would make sense for them to have. I could have a small selection of them and base a die roll on which spell the one they encounter would have. They'd be able to cast it, but then have to do damage to a hero before they could cast it again. (Or they can cast it again if they take damage but still live)

For Return of the Witch Lord:

Skeletons. I think I'll have it where if there is only one or two left, they can do a scream, but this scream will bring back some of the skeletons already defeated. I won't boost their stats at all, so it should keep them fairly easy to take out. I'm thinking of having myself roll a red die a lot. Maybe like 1 or 2 no Skeletons come back, 3 or 4 one skeleton comes back, 5 will be two skeletons, 6 will be three or more. So there is a chance he can bring all his friends back. Much like with the Abominations and the anti-venom. For most of the monsters in ROTWL I'm thinking the apothecary will now sell bottles of a type of holy water. (I can again repurpose those warmth bottles)

Holy water can be poured on your blade to allow one extra combat die during battle against undead, and any undead you kill can't come back. The Spirit Blade will just naturally have this extra ability. Since these potions do that, I'm thinking of having them be expensive. Like 500 to 600 gold or something per bottle. The 'warmth bottle' ones will keep undead from coming back, but not give the extra combat die.

Zombies. I'm basically ripping of Resident Evil Remake, and having them come back as 'Crazed Zombies' (aka Crimson Heads.) If you kill a zombie. I'll roll a combat die on my next turn or maybe wait two turns. If I don't roll a skull they come back as a Crazed Zombie and get one extra hit point and can attack twice. Maybe double their movement as well.

Mummies. The best we could come up with on the other board was ripping off Zelda and having them get a scream. Someone suggested they can do a stun scream, and the heroes need to roll a shield to block it. So I can have it the heroes roll a combat die and if they get a shield they block it. Might let that include the black shield. This will only stun them for one round. I think I'll also have to have the Mummy need to take damage or deal damage to use it again. Or maybe after five turns have gone if they are still alive by then. I really can't think of anything else for the Mummy.

Last of all I plan to add a unique monster to each quest pack. Something you might find only one of per quest.

For Keller's Keep I want a special version of the Chaos/Dread Warrior. I have those two quest packs that came with the translucent green and orange figures of this monster. I'll use one of those. It'll only have like 1 or 2 hit points, but when you kill it, I'll put a skull on the board or something and say it's armor just kinda collapses into a pile, as if there was never a being in it. Then after a couple of turns, it gets back up and starts to attack again. To kill it you have to find a statue of Zargon (because I have a figure of him and can't think of what else to use) that's powering the monster. Smash the statue and the monster is dead for good. I can be evil too and put the statue in a hidden room.

For Return of the witch lord, I want to use the same Zargon figure as a Vampire monster.
They'd have a set of two or three dread spells. (Again based on a die roll I make) and I'm also thinking one of those spells could be a homebrew 'Form of Mist" spell. Something that say a hero gets an attack that would kill him, he can go form of mist and negate that attack. Course they can only use these spells once.
I'm also playing around with the possibility of them being able to regain life if they sacrifice a monster. Probably not an undead one as I don't think that'd make sense. But if the quest happens to have something like an orc, my Vampire can kill the orc, drink it's blood and regain all health. Or perhaps he chooses instead to regain his spells.

Last of all I was thinking of having the Spirit Blade do five combat die to a vampire. Just to make my barbarian happy.

Those are the main tweaks I'm planning and would love any feedback. I have no idea if any of these might have problems I'm not seeing. (Well other than me trying to keep track of which undead can come back and which can't, but I'll hopefully manage)

I then have one last thing I'm debating on doing.

Like for ROTWL I'm thinking of again using the Ice Gremlins but they'd be normal Gremlins. When a party finds one, the thing will be holding a box. It'll cry. No! Mine! Mine! And run away. If they catch and kill it. The box could have a treasure in it.

I'll have my players roll a 1d6 and depending on what they roll is the reward they get.

1 or 2 you get nothing. 3 you get 50 gold (Or maybe 100). 4 you get either the anti-venom if Keller's keep, or the Holy water if Return OTWL. 5 will get you a Great Potion which I'll say heals for five points of damage, and this will be the only way to get them. 6 will get you a unique treasure.

For having this in Keller's Keep I'm thinking you can do this when you kill a Femir. Maybe I'll give the Femir two extra hit points just to make it more challenging to do. Or I could just have the Gremlin pop up in both.

The unique treasure will be artifacts designed to counter a couple of the new abilities I've given monsters. Like Keller's Keep will give you a Ring of Anti-venom. Making you immune to poison attacks, and the ROTWL will give you a Clarity Helm. It'll work defensively like a normal helmet, but will block the Mummy's new stun ability. Not sure if you should only be able to get one of these, or more.

That's all for that. As for details on how the Frozen Horror quest went for my heroes. Remind me later. There were special circumstances in play for those last two quests.

Beefing-up KK & RotWL? Nice!

I have been thinking about doing the same for HQ-vets who know the ins-and-outs of the old Quests, with new maps and Rise of the Dead Moon levels of anti-door huddle tactics. I can use all the spitballin' I can get!

I also recommend Super-Goblins (split movement) and Super-Skeletons (diagonal attacks). Also, Super-Abominations (treated as large monsters with diagonal attacks).

Kellar's Keep offers a lot of options for your basic green monsters--Zargon's core units.

I can see standard Goblins and Orcs armed like Mercenaries.
* You can have standard front-line Goblin & Orc Warriors armed with swords & shields (+1 DD) and the ability to boost an adjacent ally with +1 DD, if they are facing the same Hero.
* Goblin Spearmen & Orc Halbardiers who can attack diagonally, and the ability to boost an adjacent ally with +1 AD, if they are facing the same Hero.
* Goblin Archers & Orc Arbalists who can attack at range (adjacent attacks are one die less) and the ability to attack though an adjacent ally.
* Orc Berserkers with battleaxes (Movement 6 and 4 AD) and can make two attacks a turn.
* Orc Phalanxers with large shields (4 DD) can block a ranged attack if they just roll a single shield in defense, no matter how many hits were scored.
* Abomination with one-use fishnets (ideal if you have some sort of "Net" or "Web" tokens) that can ensnare the Heroes, preventing movement until the Hero can escape (free action on their turn, as long as no monster is adjacent).

I personally recommend making the Fire Ring work like the Ring of Warmth or Armband of Ice but for fire-based spells and heat-based hazards (like the Dwarven Forge room). On that note, make good use of the Dwarven Forge and Furnace Rooms--keep the heat up!

Additional options:
* Elite monsters could have an extra Body and Mind point or two and a 1-die boost to AD & DD, OR they could defend on a White Shield like a Hero.
* Commanders (officers and warlods) could have tactical abilities that can effect all green monsters in a room.
* Shamans could have Orc/Goblin-specific spells akin to Wizards of Morcar.

The best part about Return of the Witchlord is that you can drown the Heroes with basic undead. While week, a dozen Skelibobs can ruin the toughest of hero's day.

Here are some neat ideas (besides some retooled options from above):
* Rise of the Read Moon has a neat rule were you can throw more Zombies at the Heroes: The first time a non-undead monster is killed, roll a Combat Die. If a Black Shield is rolled (or White Shield if you are nasty), replace it with a Zombie. Any other result, the monster is killed as normal.
* Although, if you want Zombies to be nasty, like out of a George Romero movie, you can have it so that if a Hero get attacked by two or more Zombies in a turn, they held down. At once, and on each subsequent turn, the Hero rolls 1 Defense Die for each Body Point, and if the Hero rolls equal or more White Shields than any adjacent Zombie, the Hero brakes free. Otherwise, the Hero cannot move.
* If you like Crimson Heads, Castlevania has Skeletons that can get back up after getting taken down.
* The Avalon Hill version has a Bone Pile tile that could make for a great Skeleton-spawner (think of the Ghost Generators from Gauntlet).
* If you have a magic circle tile available (or note it to players), you can use use it to negate spells cast inside or into it, which is perfect for the Witch Lord (much like the final battle in Quest #14 in the Game System).

If you are going to add the Zombie gang-up rule, I recommenced coming up with a holy relic type Artifact that can force undead to keep their distance (ideal for the Wizard or Warlock).

If you are looking for a Poison rule, you should check my house rule. In my games, Poison Damage effectively lowers a Hero's max Body Points by one point each, until removed with a Anti-Poison Quill, a Venom Antidote or Potion of Greater Restoration, and it cannot be removed with normal healing spells and potions. As I'm not a fan of Artifacts being used as consumables (besides the Elixir of Life), I treat the Anti-Poison Quill (and Dust of Disappearance, and Holy Water and Potions of Speed) as common potions for the Treasure Deck. Due to how crippling this effect is, I generally keep poison-based furniture trap damage low (no more then 2 points or 1 for gas-traps that fill the whole room).

Funny enough, our next game night is this Saturday, so I'm going to be putting some of this into practice very soon.

I was thinking that for my Magic Armor Chaos Warrior (The one that gets back up after being killed till you destroy the magic source supplying it) It could be interesting to have it instead of being a statue. Since I have the quest packs with the translucent monsters I'm going to use the chaos/dread warriors for this purpose, it could be neat to use some of the orcs or abominations from the same quest pack, thus they'd be the same color. (I think it's undead for the other one that has orange monsters.) Either way I could use a monster of the same color and it's that monster you have to kill to destroy the magic animated armor. I just won't tell my players that. I'll let them figure it out for themselves, but I can still hide him in a hidden room.

I'm thinking of using the Yeti states for my Fimirs. Maybe I'll make it so they don't attack unless provoked. So it's up to my heroes if they want to tackle it for the prize. I also realized I can have one of the spells be the healing spell. Making it so they would have to gang up on it to kill it, as they'd have to attempt to do that in one turn.

Basically most of my ideas are to introduce a bit mores strategy into the fights.

I might just use the Yeti stats for my Vampire as well. Perhaps with a boost to mind points though. I debated using the Polar Warbear stats, but I think they'd hate me for that. I still might and just not give him the ability to attack twice.

One thing I want to do is have more spells going around. In the main quests I just had to throw more monsters at them to keep it challenging.

For Frozen Horror, the normal quests were pretty much a perfect difficulty for my group. I think someone asked if they searched for treasure, and they did. Every room still. They just took care of any Wandering Monsters. It was tough, but they managed alright with only two or maybe three close calls. (Not including the double quest) This is why I'm beefing up the normal monsters.

I see the new expansion has a poison effect in it. Seems it paralyzes you and makes it so you can't move, but can still defend/attack. So I think I'll go with my 'one movement die' idea. This would make it like a lesser venom than what they'll find in this later quest. I can have them need to roll a five or a six to get over the poison. Base it on their mind points. Just another reason to make mind points useful, as they rarely come into play right now.

(Also with the Berserker and Explorer classes now available, I might end up with those two replacing my Barbarian and Drawf. The way we work is when I get a new hero class, anyone that wants to play it basically can take over as that and just carry over any useful equipment they already had. It'll be up to my players of the Barbarian and Drawf if they want to swap, but I can see them possibly going for it)

I'm aware of the skeletons in Castlevania. I mean to be fair you also have the dry bones of the Mario games. I don't want my skeletons coming back in the same manner as my zombies though. I want each monster to have something DIFFERENT they do.

I'll have to iron out a few of the smaller details before Saturday. Getting the spells my Femir and Vampire can use shouldn't be too difficult. I guess my main issue is how often I should allow my Goblin commander to call in more goblins. Maybe if three goblins are killed, he does it. Or he can only do it every other turn. That one might work better.

Since this is a slow moving board, I'll go ahead and try to answer some stuff I was asked about.

I don't use the companion app because it naturally only allows for four hero players. I have five to six. So I'm not familiar with the 'super skeletons' or the like.

How do you handle treasure searches? Do you allow each hero to search a room once shuffling the deck each time? When I realized this was the rule, I started playing that way and your chances of drawing bad cards increases dramatically very quickly. Sometimes you can almost double the amount of monsters in a quest from wandering monsters alone. Not to mention the automatic damage from Hazard cards. I found playing this way does increase the difficulty quite a bit. I can’t imagine doing multiple searches in the Frozen Horror pack. It just seems like suicide. I’m playing through The Frozen Horror now using the app, and I only search for treasure if there is a chest, or if I suspect a possible special treasure. If you already play it this way, then ignore this last part.

We shuffle the deck and just pull from it as we play. I've never once had to reshuffle. No matter what we do, we always end up with like at least three wandering monster cards, usually more and a good deal of hazards. I have no need to re-shuffle after every search, and frankly that sounds annoying. I'm going to have to pass on that.

I’d be interested in hearing a few details about how your group managed to get through the final double quest, e.g., the unavoidable wandering monsters, the long river, plus the boss fight.

I'm afraid the answers are probably not that satisfying to hear.

I will say that for the three "Solo quests" My Barbarian tackled them and I let the Rouge "sneak after them" We tried to knock those out in one afternoon. I'm not a fan of this, and know I have to deal with it again with the Elf Quest pack. It's such a dumb idea to make it so only one player goes through the quest. Whowever thought of this, what the hell were you thinking?

We had to adjust the Yeti hug ability. Especially since if the Rouge wasn't there, if the yeti hugged the Barbarian in the solo quest, it immediately ends. Another reason why this was a stupid idea. For Yeti we had it where if I got a hit in, it hugged you. Then on the player (who is being hugged) next turn. -I- roll a combat die. If I get a skull, you take a point of damage. If I roll a shield. You can roll to break out of the hug. You have to roll your own shield. A skull doesn't mean you take damage, but you're still stuck.

So the double quest.

It was a special day as we had our Wizard with us. He had played through some of the quests with us before, but was only in town for some work thing for like a year or a year and a half. He moved back home and we ended up restarting the quests a bit later with new heroes. He was back for this one weekend, and it happened to be when we were doing the double quest. So because of him being back, some special stuff ended up going on.

For one thing, instead of clearing the board and re-setting it up for when you went 'upstairs'. Since I had the old 90's version of the game, and the newer release. I just put both boards out. I used the old assets for the old board, and the new ones for the new board. I just let them go up and down as they pleased. I did however let you re-gain your spells/hp/mp if you got to the second level. Since technically you are only supposed to 'end' quest 9 as a group. I just let them travel from the top to bottom as they pleased. This pretty much ended up with three going up, and three staying down.

The wizard was given some wizard artifacts to beef him up a bit. However he was the first to basically die as he went to go check out a door in the hallway. Only to hit a Wandering Monster trap and get killed. Being this was his first weekend back, and the only one he'd be in town for. I let him recover with only 1 hp after a few turns. He cast veil of mist, and I had it that he'd stay invisible until he attacked. So he could survive.

They got a LOT of Polar Warbears on the board in the first few minutes of the quest. I'm talking SIX of them. They did pull through though. They used pretty much every healing potion they had, and the bard had the artifact that lets you cast a spell twice, so he sang his healing song all four times he was able to get it.

We started the quest at like 2pm, and were still going at 10pm. Our knight got killed and I think the bard went down once. I let them revive the heroes if they got to them with a healing potion. The knight used all his abilities to stay alive on the first floor AND the second floor. Pretty much no one had much left by the time the quests were done.

Now here is the part where we get to why I say my answers might not be that satisfying to hear. Because at some point around this time I took all the wandering monster cards out of the treasure deck. I only did the ones in the hallway. (Though funny enough. I know there is a part where you can go through some rooms to get out a door to the hall, but there is nothing blocking you from going around the corner and bypassing those rooms. Our Rouge wanted to go through the rooms because they had determined that you only find Wandering monster traps in the hallways. Never in a room, and he didn't trust the hall. Our Bard didn't take heed and went through the hall. Triggering the trap. There were SO many I told you so's. Also this is where the Bard bit it for a while)

I don't think we had them take much damage from the ice river before the boss door. We were all kinda tired and just wanted to finish it at that point.

I didn't do anything to nerf the boss itself though. Gotta remember with six heroes with crossbows, they could basically pick him off while the Drawf ended up blocking the door. We did have a really fun moment. They had cast courage on the drawf to give him six attack dice. (He has a battle axe) and I cast command on the Drawf. Using him for a good two or three turns before he managed to break free.

Even with my heal spell though, they managed to take him and the other monsters down.

So we had our game this last Saturday. As I thought my Barbarian became the Berserker, and my Drawf became the Explorer.

They decided on Return of the Witch Lord. So far my tweaks seem to be going over okay. Will need one or two more before I know if they aren't strong enough, or too strong.

The Mummies being able to stun went fine. Them having to attack or take damage to use it again works well so far.

I loved my Crazed Zombies. I'm debating if I want to make it a 50/50 chance and include the black shield in letting them get back up. Right now I'm giving it three chances if they do. If I don't roll the white shield in those three attempts, they stay down.

The skeleton one worked rather well also. I have it where they laugh and more skeletons can come. My heroes have a habit of splitting into two groups, and both went for the 'fake doors' in the first quest. Then they both peeked around the corner to see the four skeletons. Since each encounter was so far apart I judged them as separate battles. So the front skeleton would attack, then (I set it so if there are three or less skeletons they can summon more. I have a sheet with what roll of a 1d6 gets for each number) the back skeletons would laugh and summon more. Of course if one summons a bunch then that makes more then three and so I can't summon anymore.

I had them encounter a vampire in the main room. It was just him and he went down without much fuss. I only got to cast one spell. I have another chart of which spells he gets depending on a dice roll. I remember I gave even numbers the mist spell I homebrewed.

I think I'll have him surrounded by goblins next time, that will act as his thralls. This way I can have him sacrifice one to gain health or spells back.

My Spirit Water I came up with (formerly Holy Water, but turns out there already IS holy water in the game) didn't really do much though. The only undead that come back are my zombies, and my heroes aren't interested in buying the potion for that. At least not for 500 gold. I'll probably have to come up with a new price for it.

The way I play on Twitch is different than how we'd just play at the table... those in chat are able to "interact" with the live game we're playing on camera. Those not controlling a hero can influence the game by "buying" stuff for Zargon or the heroes (without spending real money of course).

The most common upgrade I give to (random) monsters (or if the twitch chat "buys" an upgrade with "gold coins" the free channel points you build up over time lurking in the chat or following us) is the "Elite" monster. these monsters are the same as their regular counterparts except they attack with black dice (greater chance of skull) and defend with blue dice (greater chance of black shield... essentially double defense, the same as heroes).

Others we've done:

Goblins and Orcs become ranged.
Multiple Specters merge together into a Dread Wraith.
Abomination gains a single use of Ball of Flame
Mummy, Zombie each with a single use of Ball of Flame
Skeleton with a use of Fire of Wrath

Monster dies and has a chance to return as a zombie... zombie has a chance to return as a skeleton

Gargoyle turns to stone (becomes impervious to damage but cannot move and is treated as if it is a piece of furniture) to avoid damage, then comes back to life after the heroes leave them alone.

Monster calls out for help. A nearby hidden room is activated with some extra monsters in it.

Sometimes people in our chat will "buy" monsters... I try to make these bonus enemies appear in interesting ways. Sometimes they crawl out of pits, or burst out of cupboards or tombs, smashing through bookcases or coming out of the fireplace (ho, ho, ho?). Sometimes there isn't anything more than dropping down from the ceiling or out of the darkness. I've even had a monster split into two monsters (comic, but works). The most boring way of course is just to add them to an unrevealed room.

The audience can also buy Chaos Combat Cards that I often save for bosses and named characters as well as Evil Wizard Deck cards.