Creating houserules and easier quests for young players?

[Foilfodder]

Most custom campaigns and new rules I see are focused on making HeroQuest more challenging. Playing with my kids means I usually have to make the game easier.
Has anybody spent time on quests and houserules for the younger players?

My kids got through the original Hero Quest campaign two years ago, since I had played previously and was doubling as Zargon I was able to ease the game for them. I occasionally cheated the monsters of defense rolls to allow the kids to inflict additional damage on monsters.

We have started on First Light and are using the App to run the game, so the quests are new to me as well as my kids. Party coordination is something I have to actively encourage as my kids are treasure-hungry. Traps, paticularly chests, end up stinging them fairly often when they search for treasure before traps. I'm running as an Explorer rather than the base Dwarf, so that helps a bit, but we are still burning through loads of healing potions.

Any players want to share tricks to use with inexperienced teamates?

[cornixt]

Share all treasure equally, kids tend to be selfish in games and fight over everything instead of putting the party first, which will make them more likely to make bad decisions like searching for treasure before traps. Ignore line of sight unless it really makes sense to follow in a particular situation.

The main rules aren't too complicated for the base characters. It's a learning experience for them, make sure they know they shouldn't expect to win every time.

[Parzival]

Share all treasure equally, kids tend to be selfish in games and fight over everything instead of putting the party first, which will make them more likely to make bad decisions like searching for treasure before traps. Ignore line of sight unless it really makes sense to follow in a particular situation.

The main rules aren't too complicated for the base characters. It's a learning experience for them, make sure they know they shouldn't expect to win every time.

If the kids get rowdy about sharing treasure, use the old D&D rule of springing Wandering Monsters on the noisiest characters (that is, the noisest kids). A little dying goes a long way to straightening out such things. Losing is a learning experience; it teaches thoughtfulness, self-control, and humility.

[MonsterMotor]

You could use the old European rules from the 90s, in which almost all monsters have only 1 body point. Also, do use respective old quest books because they often contain fewer monsters and traps than their US/2021 counterparts. The US/2021 versions were made noticeably harder than the old European edition because the designers had deemed the latter too easy (which was actually the case for the most part).

Or just play the monsters a little dumb and ineffective in their tactics if they have no commanding chaos warrior or boss with them.

[Foilfodder]

I appreciate the suggestions! We are probably too busy for play this weekend but hopefully we can give another quest a shot next week!

[Kurgan]

Death saves...


When a hero dies normally they can only survive going to 0 Body Points if they have a healing potion to use immediately, or else an unused healing spell and they haven't yet committed an action (even if it's Zargon's turn they can do this). Otherwise they're dead for good.*

* meaning the player can grab a new hero in the next quest and give them a new name. Also remember that if a hero dies like this, any other hero or some other types of allies who are in the same corridor/room where the death occurred can claim that gear and carry it until such time, if any, that another hero can use it. A more lenient interpretation of this rule would say as long as one of those allies gets there before a monster does, they can claim the gear... but if a monster claims it, it's removed from the quest. STILL even so, any Artifacts that hero was carrying that are stolen by monsters are found as a special treasure early in the next quest according to Zargon's discretion.

You could implement some of the alternate rules suggested by Jungles of Delthrak.

If you want them to keep playing try:

"Heroic" instead of removing the character from the board when they die, put a skull tile where they fell. You have until that character's turn (after the round if they died off turn) to have another character heal them back alive again. Another hero can only administer a healing potion to them if there is no monster adjacent to them or the skull tile.

"Story." No skull tile. As long as there is at least one hero "alive" then the party can survive. If there are no visible monsters on the board, then each "dead" hero gets 1 body point restored and is brought back to life.

You could take a suggestion from of Rogar's Hall: Pull all of the "Healing Potion" cards out of the treasure deck and give them to "Mentor." If a hero ever dies in the quest, the Mentor character (who doesn't engage in fighting) automatically uses one of the Healing Potions to bring that hero back from death. The limitation here is that there are only three such potions and they are based on the roll of 1 red die.

Or from Doug Hopkins himself when we played a custom quest last year at GenCon:
When a hero dies (and fails to do any death save), he can take control of a Mercenary (or Animal Companion) figure who begins at the start of the quest. In theory you can keep this going until you don't have any more spare figures.

My ideas:
Inspired by Warhammer 40K... you could say a hero has failed all his death saves but he gets ONE MORE CHANCE using an "invulnerable save" where if he rolls a 5 or 6 one red die, he survives with 1 BP.

Or he takes a "Fate Roll" and rolls one combat die... if he gets any kind of shield, he survives with 1 BP instead of dying.

For these above two suggestions... you could be tough and say it's only once per hero, per quest... or you could say whenever they die (without a healing potion/spell) they can do this one time to try to survive.

Or you could just say that the next time someone searches for Treasure, they find the Elixir of Life and this could be used to restore a dead hero (of course there's only one such artifact in the deck).

Then again if characters dying is a real problem and people can't handle it, you could just get rid of the restrictions. Say a dead hero can just be saved by another hero who has a healing spell, either immediately or on that character's turn.

In the end though it's all up to Zargon. If you fail a quest, you're supposed to replay it, but this time Zargon has remixed the quest to preserve surprises. First Light suggests in the event of a failure (either because the survivors escaped the maze without completing the objective, or a total party kill/wipe) that Zargon can make the next version of the quest easier, by adding more healing potions and/or removing some of the monsters (or I would say downgrading some of the monsters to easier ones like replacing Orc(s) with goblin(s) or zombie(s) and mummies with skeletons, etc).

[MULE]

Rather than change any of the quests we developed a new Hero for the youngest adventurer... The Sneak. Loads of Body points, can attack twice per turn and can't get trapped or left behind... Its become a table favourite. I've uploaded it here if you want a 'print at home' try yourself. https://maister-mule.itch.io/1989-heroq ... rew-heroes