JUNGLES OF DELTHRAK discussion

[Vorimir]

Spanish edition (Las junglas de Delthrak) is up on Amazon Spain as presale with a September 9 release date.

[Kurgan]

Yeah the way I understand the Spawnlings is that you stack the tiles on your hero's character card... and if you just use your attack, it hits and destroys all of them at once if you roll even one skull. Is that right?

[Vorimir]

Or you destroy one for every skull?

[QorDaq]

Yeah the way I understand the Spawnlings is that you stack the tiles on your hero's character card... and if you just use your attack, it hits and destroys all of them at once if you roll even one skull. Is that right?

I have scoured the various videos currently available. The rules for Spawnlings are spread over two separate pages; Page 5 discussing the Spawnling tiles, and Page 48 (I think) under Monster Notes. Both deal with how and when Heroes take damage from the Spawnling tiles; at the end of a Hero's turn, they take 1 point of BP damage for each tile on their card--and you cannot defend against these attacks. That's pretty much all I can find.

This makes me think that AH assumed that it was a straightforward process for eliminating the tiles. i.e. A normal attack, where the Spawnlings have 0 Defense. If it were more involved, I'd have thought they'd spell it out. Particularly since the go to some pains to make sure that the way Spawnlings are spawned, moved, and damage a Hero, is quite clear.

I suspect that the cumulative tiles equate to 1 enemy with x BP, where x equals the number of tiles. Thus, a Hero with 3 tiles on them would effectively "Fight" one 3 BP enemy, with no defense roll. Like any other enemy, each skull rolled for the Hero's attack, would reduce the BP of the target by 1 point.

NOTE: I cannot prove this, as I have found no direct reference in the rules that I have seen. There could be more details on a page which has not been shown yet (or that I missed). So yeah, while absence of evidence is not in itself proof, neither is it confirmation that the rule for eliminating a Spawnling tile is meant to be any more complicated (or esoteric) than a typical attack roll.

But admittedly, without clarification from AH, we are all really just guessing.

[LucaRocks]

Thanks for the research you put in!

[wallydubbs]

Although we haven't read the entire quest book yet, this quest pack doesn't exactly fit in with it's predecessors. There's usually a faction of villains the heroes face like Greenskins, Undead, Ogres, Elves, etc. But these special monsters are primarily animals of the region going crazy over the blight. I guess this being a regional thing likens it to Frozen Horror. But unlike Frozen Horror there's no particular antagonist leading the charge that we know of. The Giant Gorilla seems more like a Muscle Bound Boss, but not a subsequent leader. There are cultists that seem to progress the blight, but this does lead me to wonder who's the main bad guy. Can't wait to find out.

I'm also hoping this quest pack reintroduces the anti-poison quill or venom antidote, seems like it would come in handy for snakes and spiders. This potion is curiously missing from the Alchemy deck. Holy Water is also missing from the Alchemy deck but can still be crafted with a Sacred Plant.

The introduction of the Explorer hero makes this feel more like Indiana Jones or Forbidden Temple. Don't get me wrong, the story seems great, I love the little tie in to Keller's Keep with Dwarven Refugees, so it makes sense to add a Dwarven hero. However we already have a Dwarf hero. I feel they could've made a hero class then Explorer. He doesn't sound like the type of hero you'd use in another quest book. I'm not saying this character sucks, on the contrary, asides from his inability to wear armor and 2 less body points, he has the same trap disarm as the Dwarf along with skill cards that protects him from all types of traps... And he has a whopping 5 Mind Points, making his spell resistance superior to that of the Elf, Rogue, Bard and Monk! He practically reduces the importance of the Dwarf, just as the Berserker does to the Barbarian. I'm actually feeling bad for some of our original heroes.

So far the monsters of this quest wouldn't lead me to make an additional faction for Hero Quest Risk.

[SirRick]

I believe they did not include the Venom Antidote because they included the Minor Healing Potion in the Alchemy Deck, which is cheaper, and heals the same amount of damage. It also heals any damage, not just poison.

I had considered coming up with ways to make the poison healing items more useful. Such as possibly reducing a hero’s max BP by the amount of poison damage received, and requiring an anti-poison potion or item to heal that damage and restore their proper BP maximum.

Since this quest pack contains poisonous creatures, I can test if this approach will work. In previous quest packs I think it would work fine since the only poison you encounter is from furniture traps, and the Poison! treasure cards.

Edit: I like the Explorer. It seems interesting, but in most cases I would prefer the Dwarf. Mind Points rarely come into play, but I do find it odd the non-magic using character has more resistance compared to most of the spell casting heroes out there.

The Berserker does seem superior to the Barbarian for the most part. Not being able to use a Crossbow may prove to be more painful than it seems, but otherwise the only things the Barbarian has going for it is the 1 extra BP and the Amulet of the North. I would like to point out that a person shouldn’t base a character’s overall effectiveness on stuff like artifacts you may or may not receive, particularly if you are playing custom quests. A Zargon could easily come up with alternatives such as a Berserker’s Bracelet that does the same thing, or a Zargon may consider a Berserker to be able to use Barbarian only items (much like how the Warlock can use Wizard only items).

[LucaRocks]

I believe the Goblin Warlock may be the big bad for the expansion
Like they cast the spell that blighted the land

[Kurgan]

Regarding the new rules on 'Death Saves' in this pack...

So it appears you can play this as you play the other quests OR you can try one of the slightly different modes. In Story and Heroic any unused healing spell you have can be used to save from death EVEN IF you've already used an action that turn. Easier...

But you don't get to use a potion to save yourself at the point of death. Instead your potions would fall into your equipment tile... now you are "saved" either by another hero with a potion walking up to (or onto) your tile and administering the healing to you (which brings you back to life, aka remove the "skull" tile). They have a round to do so (from the time of your death until the beginning of your next turn... otherwise you are dead for good). Requires teamwork... if all heroes are incapacitated, then you also die "for real."

In Story it's even easier... no skull tile so heroes just lie there until someone comes to revive them, OR if no monsters on the board (keep in mind this pack some monsters can spawn other monsters, so not a guarantee) they regain 1 BP and can come back. I'm not quite clear if that is meant to happen on that fallen hero's next turn, on any other hero's turn or on Zargon's turn specifically. So to save your buddies you can also just wipe out any monsters on the board rather than being forced to search for potions (and possibly trigger more wandering monsters).

So both modes would promote heroes to each collect potions as before but also keep together, AND to use healing before they are too close to death unlike other expansions where it makes perfect sense to just wait until you die and the potion is a guaranteed revive. Now "saving" a healing potion for the revive would be encouraged by these alternate rules.

I kind of wondered if an "incapacitated" hero (who turns into a pile of equipment) can be further beat up on by monsters. I'm guessing that wasn't the intention as it doesn't say anything about this. I was imagining a fiendish monster standing over the hero and "finishing off" his fallen foe before the others can heal him.

However it also says the healing (from others) removes "any" skull tile. So I guess you could imagine a monster keeps attacking the body and adding skull tiles, but the healing potions removes them all (so the monster's actions were pointless, move on to attacking "living" heroes) or else maybe it only removes one, requiring multiple saves to bring them back? This is all Zargon's speculation since it doesn't really say, so probably they didn't account for this happening. Also, nothing about the monsters moving on the Equipment tile to "pick up" (and thus steal, losing forever to the party... other than any "Artifacts" or "necessary" Artifacts depending upon how you treat that "Lost Artifacts" passage in the GS Rulebook!) their gear. You could instead imagine that once they are dead "for real" the possibility of their gear being stolen by monsters comes about as normal... any foe gaining entry to the room/corridor before any good guy, permanently steals the gear.

The Elixir of Life would still be an option to save a "really dead" hero, assuming you have one, of course.

The implementation of the Berserker and Explorer is indicated as possible to each replace one of the Game System heroes (without any duplicate characters). This implies that the pack was not written with any of the other "new" heroes in mind, but I imagine that the App version will not restrict this, we'll see... and those who want to use the Bard, Knight or whomever I'm sure will have no problem doing it.

Just noting from the spoilers: I see Quest 1 specifically prepares the way for "new" heroes not just experienced heroes, based on choice [Even though the storyline text in Mentors introduction clearly says "Champions" implying at the very least you have completed Quest 14 of the GS before this]. So they do expect that you might have a brand new ("basic") character, not just necessarily one of the new heroes. I see repeated Artifacts and basic Armory equipment showing up early on.

So storyline wise, you probably have the four classic heroes (maybe with one or two swapped out for the Berserker and/or Explorer), but they still make allowance for 1-3 heroes (with increased difficulty) plus an Animal companion (either Saberfang or Raptor). There's a power later that summons the Raptor even if there are 4 heroes, at least one time.

Edit: Actually while I think they probably intended to use the same "optional/playtest" rules of Into the Northlands, you could argue it's saying you can have one animal ally per hero (for parties under 3). So you could have 3 heroes and two allies (one controlled by each of two heroes for a total of two). Despite their increased BP, the Animal Companions have limitations (more so than the human mercs from Frozen Horror and much more so than the elven mercs from ROTDM). It doesn't use any of the death save stuff above to apply to them... though some (like me) would apply the general "Hero" stuff to mercenaries as well, so would you allow the incapacitation rules for these characters too? Unstated, so possibly not intended, but Zargon's call once again... these characters will never have healing spells or potions (they can only have potions administered to them... the whole "administered to" is a pretty new thing with the remake series, in the past you had to have a potion passed to you on that hero's turn and then you use it anytime). But it makes sense... if you prevent these allies from being able to carry or use items, still having a way to heal them is helpful in keeping them alive during a quest (of course I would still restore their BP/MP between quests same as the Heroes and of course you can cast spells upon them too).

Regarding healing, it only says "spells" in most of these instances (spell scrolls or artifacts that have the same function as such a spell would be counted no doubt), but a "skill" that heals could also be considered, if Zargon allows it (I would).

Some of this depends on how willing Zargon is to consider a Mercenary or other ally to be treated like a hero in most circumstances. Encarmine's suggestion for ROTDM was to focus not just what on the text says for them but also what it doesn't say. If a restriction is not outright spelled out, then it was implied to be allowed, in their intention.

[Kurgan]

Regarding spoilers... so thanks to HappyFridays on youtube reporting from UK Gaming Expo... we have the full quest notes for all 16 quests (apart from some details of one quest note in quest 15 being obscured by a glare). He also clarified the remaining cards text, other than the Sapphire Skull artifact (whose exact mechanism is still not yet revealed that I could see, unless someone has posted it since...?).

However, the quest MAPS are not visible for most of the quests... only Quests 1, 2, 3, and 16. We can see the entrance, corridor in Quest 4 and Quest 11, and while a little bit is visible of the maps in 5, 6, 9, 10, 13, and 15, they're not really playable. So anyone wanting to playtest now would be making it up as they go!

For those curious about general difficulty, it's hard to say as you're offered those alternate modes of death saves to make the game easier (impressions so far have been these modes are not really needed to blunt extreme difficulty if that was the fear, more of a preference and style thing for different play groups... we used some of these rules at GenCon last year while playing KnightFall in fact, under the watchful eye of Avalon Hill's own booth!). Monster BP totals seem to range from the high 20's to the 60's so nothing too incredible, and on par with ROTDM. Of course quest map gimmicks can change things but the more important aspect is that there are many spawning monsters (not just Spawnlings) that throw off pure monster counts, and many monsters have various abilities. The "choose your own adventure" nature of this expansion also means different paths of quests, and the heroes may have a different combination of characters as well.

Mentions are made of Kellar's Keep but as to whether this is intended to be set (story-wise) after Kellar's Keep specifically is not yet clarified, if "official play order" matters to you. AH have clarified in the past that they don't mind if people play quest packs out of order and each retail quest pack only requires the GS to run (even though there are notes in the Alchemist Shops of FH and MOTM encouraging you use other Alchemist Shops as well, or MOTM suggesting using mercenaries from other packs available to you in the group quests).