Ye Olde Inn

Monsters & heroes open/close doors when they want.
Final point to me too.

I usually go with the rule that a named monster is essentially and evil hero and can then open doors. Witchlord, Skulmar etc... should all be able to open doors. The minions shouldn't. Gives the strong monsters tactical options without rendering the generic monsters broken.

HeroQuest is a game. A game has rules. The rules are very clear. Monsters can't open doors. The means by which the monsters were discovered doesn't matter.
HeroQuest is not a roleplaying game where the monsters have to behave "logically". They are flavorful chess pieces.

The scenario from OP: A room with monsters is discovered by pass through rock. There is a single door that leads to the corridor where the heroes are. The monsters open the door and engage.
Another similar scenario: A room with monsters is discovered by pass through rock. This room has 4 doors. None of them lead directly to where the heroes are. The monsters open all 4 doors, release a whole bunch of other monsters and scatter all over the place.

If discovered monsters could open doors in a room discovered by PTR, that would mean they could potentially open doors leading to undiscovered areas.
There's a reason that rule is there in the first place.

What Goblin King said.

That said, feel free to change the rules for certain monsters. Just be clear about the impact that can have. Monsters that attack first deal more than triple the damage in average than Monsters that are being attacked by the heroes. A monster opening doors is equal to monsters from the neighbor rooms which attack first.

I have an Goblin with a trumpet that has this special ability, alerting one neighbor room. If I use him, I carefully plan the quest so that the outcome will be bad maybe, but at least planned so.

Monsters that can open doors are always clearly specified in the notes. If any could open doors anyways then that extra text is useless. Why would MB bother specifying?

Anderas wrote:I have an Goblin with a trumpet that has this special ability, alerting one neighbor room. If I use him, I carefully plan the quest so that the outcome will be bad maybe, but at least planned so.

I prefer a battle horn and the GW dwarves an Chaos Wariors come with plenty of these extra bits.

basically, don't let monsters open doors but do some exceptions. The master can change rules but do not abuse... only change rules to make the quest more exciting, not to cheat and kill the heroes!

lestodante wrote:basically, don't let monsters open doors but do some exceptions. The master can change rules but do not abuse... only change rules to make the quest more exciting, not to cheat and kill the heroes!

Yes and no... Can't go changing the game willy nilly, that's cheating. A few here agree to adding small minor changes mid game but others seriously frown upon it. If not playing it HeroQuest style EW vs Heroes mid game changes could be allowed but otherwise they'd all have to be prequest.

Monsters can open doors, it would be silly to think that they can't. BUT! That's not what the mechanic represents. People are often confused by this. "why would they wait there" " why wouldn't 1 monster alert all the others, opening the doors" etc! It's not that the doors are 'locked' to monsters, it's that the Quest book dictates an unfolding story, regardless to what ever that story is, the moment the Heroes confront said monsters, will always be in that room.

Upon entering a dungeon, 2 orcs in the 2nd room, could of been in the 4th, rushing towards the Heroes. The Goblin with them could of seen the Heroes enter and ran to alert them. Regardless to what the Heroes do, how long they take, they will always encounter the 2 Orcs and Goblin in the 2nd room. It's up to the players imagination to construct the fantasy around this or non at all.

The time line is replaced by a place line.

'Monsters can't open doors' is just an extremely simple and perfect way to handle the concept. Especially for kids.

Another one "surely the monsters in the next room would hear the heroes!" Who's to say they don't, awaiting an ambush? Who's to say they are even in there yet?

I did get the idea off Heath from Rainn Studios for a Snitch. Tiny Snotling Character who can open doors, very fast, a must for the Heroes to catch and kill. He can be revealed in a quest via the activation of a Character token, Chaos Tokens from my mods (Advanced HeroQuest tokens ported into standard HQ).

I agree when you say that 'Monsters can't open doors' is just an extremely simple and perfect way to handle the concept.
They are able to open doors but they are just simply busy at their own things so they are still in the rooms, while monsters in the corridors are just wandering or doing the guards.
This is how my point of view explain why monsters "usually" don't open doors except in some limited situations.