Ye Olde Inn

by **lucasdp** » October 13th, 2015, 5:56 pm

I found myself in the following situation, which some of you may be able to relate to...
We started a campaign and only got through the Maze > the Trial > the Rescue of Sir Ragnar. Then we ran into scheduling issues. Our Wizard and Barbarian are not available the same days as our Elf and our Zargon (me). (Our Dwarf apparently has a very flexible schedule :lol:

) The Elf, the Dwarf, and myself really want to keep the game going, and we have other friends that have expressed interest in playing. So I believe we are going to start anew without our original Wizard and Barbarian.

I would like to try Busby's Arena > (possibly a more exciting version of the Maze based on a design by EvilWizardCharacter) > the Rescue of Sir Ragnar. Since my Elf and Dwarf have already played Rescue of Sir Ragnar, I wanted to rearrange the map to keep things fresh. With that in mind, I present my first map designed with HeroScribe:

As I'm sure you'll immediately notice, I basically just swapped the two quadrants of the board, but I think that will be enough to give them a fresh experience. If memory serves, my heroes didn't even explore the quadrant not containing Sir Ragnar when we played it the first time.

Any suggestions on the map? Or other suggestions on restarting with players that have already played the first few quests?

lucasdp wrote:
Saiyaforthelight wrote:I had a very unpleasant elite Orc with a couple of special abilities in the stairway room when the heroes returned to it after raising the alarm to spice things up too. He drops some decent loot however.

Ooh, I like this. Especially since we may skip the Trial, I like the idea of giving them a "Boss" in this quest. Do you happen to remember your Elite Orcs stats or what loot he dropped, by any chance?

I know there are some stronger orc characters from the quests in the archives. If you want, you can search through the cards for them here and see if any fit what you'd like.

by **Anderas** » October 14th, 2015, 12:32 pm

What strength has your Hero Group?
I must confess, "The Rescue of Sir Ragnar"; i think it has quite the right difficulty for two Heroes.
If you go on and let each of them play two heroes so you have four in total, i would add at least 2 orcs and a fimir somewhere; and one or two Goblins in Rooms that are otherwise occupied by singletons like the one on top near the center of the map.

For the Boss Monster:

An Orc with AT3 DE2 2BP is nearly as strong as a US Fimir, three times as strong as a normal orc.
An Orc with AT3, DE2, 3BP is already a lot stronger than an US Fimir -
I would stop here as i guess that your Orc is not supposed to be as strong as Grak or Ulag.

After, you could think about giving him one of the Agin's Fimir Spells from this site; or maybe one of the Swamp spells from this thread
or one of the Orc Shaman Spells. However, don't give him Summon Orcs as this would make him a little bit too strong for an inexperienced group like that.

by **Saiyaforthelight** » October 15th, 2015, 8:02 am

The Boss I used was plus one across the board (Move: 8 Attack: 4 Defend: 3 Body: 2 Mind: 3) and rolled white dice in defence (all my boss characters do) and I gave him a potion of healing he could use. Think I was going to give him a cleave at one point, so he could attack 5 squares (the side and front squares), but it's not on my quest notes for some reason.

I usually increase the stats on named bosses such as Ulag and Grak, or add in extra abilities to make them a proper encounter.

Saiya :skeleton:

by **Anderas** » October 15th, 2015, 10:44 am

So your Orc was as strong as a normal orc with 8 BP.

Ok in the Rescue of Sir Ragnar there is lots of margin... you could say they needed it. :orc:

Don't you do that in the castle of mystery! :skeleton:

by **lucasdp** » October 15th, 2015, 11:54 am

I think I'm going to combine Saiya's and Anderas's ideas as follows:

When the alarm sounds (in addition to revealing all rooms/opening all doors), "a guard unit of one Fimir and two Orcs appear at the stairway. This Fimir is wearing the Pendant of Power and rolls one additional Attack Die. When he is killed, the Heroes hear a clanking sound as the Pendant falls to the ground. If there are no other monsters in the room or corridor, the Pendant is claimed by the Hero that slayed the Fimir. If other monsters are present, the Pendant goes to the first Hero to search for treasure after all monsters are killed."

Can I just interject here that I love this forum and everyone here! |_P

I'm doing more with this game now than ever before!

by **Saiyaforthelight** » October 15th, 2015, 1:00 pm

Sorry, did I miss something? A normal Orc is Move: 8 Attack: 3 Defend: 2 Body: 1 Mind: 2, so My boss was plus one to all stats. With the potion (which I only allowed him to use on his turn) that's still only 4 BP, as the potion would only heal him to 2 and is one use. Even with rolling white shields and the cleave (which I'm almost certain I gave to him) he was not too great a challenge for 4 heroes working together.

And yes, this forum is awesome - turns HQ into a whole new experience!

Saiya :skeleton:

by **Count Mohawk** » October 15th, 2015, 1:59 pm

Saiyaforthelight wrote:Sorry, did I miss something? A normal Orc is Move: 8 Attack: 3 Defend: 2 Body: 1 Mind: 2, so My boss was plus one to all stats. With the potion (which I only allowed him to use on his turn) that's still only 4 BP, as the potion would only heal him to 2 and is one use. Even with rolling white shields and the cleave (which I'm almost certain I gave to him) he was not too great a challenge for 4 heroes working together.

Anderas is probably comparing the average damage in Body Points your Orc Boss deals compared to the damage dealt by a normal Orc. Not to scare you away with giant tables of math or anything, but there (caution: this one leads to Old Scratch's forum) were several giant threads dedicated to the subject of mathematically determining how dangerous XYZ monsters are when pit against YZA Heroes. and not to toot my own horn or anything but i've made a very useful tool for wannabe quest writers with the fruits of that research. check the sig

That said, one Orc is not very dangerous to a party of 4 Heroes, so take the "8 Orcs" comparison with a touch of salt. With the stats you listed above, he's basically a slightly more resilient Gargoyle, which is not a bad place to be for an early-game boss character.