Monsters jumping pit traps?

[Davane]

You seem to call BS on a lot of things, iKarith...

What's your point? If your goal playing the game is to make it not fun, I don't want to play a game that's intentionally made not fun. A trap in this game is literally like holding on to a lit firecracker and letting it blow up in your hand. There is a way to avoid that happening, but the suggestion here is that if you use it, YOU FAIL. So unless you literally do that, again and again, repeatedly, without being told to do it, you "lose".

That's not fun, and if that's how the game is played, then in my opinion it's the wrong game.

And if you don't like my opinion, you're certainly welcome to play YOUR game differently. But if I were one of the players and that was how the game was being played, I wouldn't play another with those people.

Personally, I wouldn't think of looking for secret doors in a pit trap, unless the pit trap was in a weird location, or there was nowhere else to go.

I believe WD had an AHQ quest that featured a secret door in a pit trap. Can't recall off the top of my head, but GW was notorious for stuff like that. They knew how to make things challenging, that I imagine iKarith would call BS on, like putting a chasm right in front of a quest room, so you had to jump over it before you could enter (instant death if you fail) and there was only room for one model in the doorway. WHQ often pulled similar shenanigans with published quests.

I think there are chance of instant death traps in published quests, actually. Or Gandalf on the bridge You Shall Not Pass really hard encounters that require a hero either take a potentially fatal gamble or fight an extremely difficult enemy.

Seems a little different than "you have to somehow divine that the space you were told 'looks suspicious' is a specific kind of trap, and that you must trigger it (and everyone must intentionally take damage despite the fact that any reasonable person would carefully climb down (perhaps with a chance of slipping and taking damage), then search for a room.

That's particularly unreasonable given that most of the world had a game where one cannot search inside a pit trap anyway.

And For what it's worth, if someone else flags your comment for a moderator … I didn't. It seems you have some kind of axe to grind against me. If I've misread you, then I apologize for that. Still, whether you do or don't, after some of the crap I've been through in recent years, you're not likely to manage to personally annoy me even—I've kinda got much bigger (and more dangerous) concerns. I don't have time or interest for teh soshal dramaz. As far as I'm concerned, you're entitled to your opinions. I'm certainly not shy with my own.

No axe to grind, iKarith - just that you tend to use that phrase a lot here. Makes me chuckle how it's becoming kind of like a catchphrase for you. Proper grognardy...

Like I said, the issue here is that a lot of this stuff makes HQ less HQ and more D&D, which is fair enough, but AHQ and WHQ, as well as a lot of other dungeon board games also go in this direction. I wouldn't say that this was necessarily BS, however, particularly with the case of pit traps.

I mean, it's specifically written in the NA rules that you can search in a pit trap as if it's another room, so the implication that you can search for secret doors in a pit trap is definitely there. Plus, there are rules for jumping into pit traps voluntarily.

Of course, a lenient EW would probably consider either allowing heroes to climb into pit traps without too much harm, or reducing the chances of harm when jumping in, but that's getting beyond the scope of the rules of HQ.

Now, here's the thing, in the EU version pit traps can be disarmed and removed, and in the US version, if you detect a pit trap and disarm it, it's a normal square. How would having a secret door in this instance work out? You could just meta it and say that if you disarm the trap, the secret door is now level with the corridor, but if you are going to do that, why not just put the secret door level with the corridor in the first place? Other than that, you just just say that the trap can't be disarmed, and it may be reasonable to reveal the pit trap first, rather simply having it sprung, or to counter your worst case scenario, at least allow the players to know it's a pit trap rather than just "suspicious."

Edit: The bit about how it might be unreasonable given a lot of the world had the UK version where you couldn't search in pit traps is particularly true. That said, many games are known to break their own rules, and often run off exception-based design in principle. For example, AHQ has the rule that you can only search for secret doors in the side walls of dead ends, yet this rule is broken in the first published adventure. I think a lot of this is because these games include a "GM" who can, and should, be able to react to situations and adjust the rules as necessary.

[iKarith]

No axe to grind, iKarith - just that you tend to use that phrase a lot here. Makes me chuckle how it's becoming kind of like a catchphrase for you. Proper grognardy...

I think when it comes to HQ, I might be (mostly) the opposite of that. I'm the one saying I'll buy the new thing to encourage Hasbro to keep working on it. But I'm also comfortable saying that if they put out somethig that's crap (and I do think the orc bard is crap—I've also said elsewhere why, and how I think you could play a "good guy orc" without D&Difying the game) I don't intend to play it. But if others want to, they're welcome to.

That said, I've also noted that nothing they come up with now takes away the game we've played for decades (or not played in decades in some cases…) If need be, it's parts for the game we already play, if need be. Which I suppose at least expresses a willingness to grognard it up.

Thing is, grognards tend to prefer older editions expressly because new editions have turned players into superheroes and there's little real risk. I think a good player will try to mitigate bad dice rolling when he can, but that's strategy and a board game for you. And what happens when you wind up using all your countermeasures and your dice roll poorly still? A character dies. It happens. Will be sad to lose one of these heroes though, I've grown fond of them. In a game without role-playing.

What really does irritate me though is stuff designed to punish the player for playing the game. I didn't like Prince Magnus's Gold because we worked out that it was going to take 35 or so rounds assuming good rolls to slowly slog our way out. Even if there was a good battle the whole way out, it was just designed to take as long as possible and make the players resent playing. In the EU version, theoretically, it was to tempt them to keep the gold I guess, but that's not exactly subtle and I don't think doing things that make players hate playing is great game design.

Perhaps that's my modern adult sensibilities in a world where there's a lot competing for my attention all the time, but I don't think I'd have liked it any more when I was a kid. Though I'm not sure I'm a fair metric for that since even at the time I was a programmer who was connected to others through my computer and a modem. I wrote code because tasks that seemed like they weren't worth my time were definitely worth spending more time than I'd have done just doing them writing some software so I didn't have to. (That's how programming works isn't it?)

Actually, anyone else remember getting into any kind of trouble and being assigned writing sentences? I was eight. And I couldn't write, so I did them on computer. Copy and paste? No, if the text editor I had back then had the feature, I wouldn't have known how to use it.

Code: Select all

10 FOR I = 1 TO 100
20 PRINT "I will not do this stupid sentence writing task because I don't have to and you won't know the difference anyway."
30 NEXT


I don't remember what I'd supposedly done, only that the teacher decided I had done something I had not, and "didn't want to hear any back-talk". Didn't do the crime, wasn't about to do the time. And I was freakin' eight. Seven maybe? Second grade in any case.

Like I said, the issue here is that a lot of this stuff makes HQ less HQ and more D&D, which is fair enough, but AHQ and WHQ, as well as a lot of other dungeon board games also go in this direction. I wouldn't say that this was necessarily BS, however, particularly with the case of pit traps.

I mean, it's specifically written in the NA rules that you can search in a pit trap as if it's another room, so the implication that you can search for secret doors in a pit trap is definitely there. Plus, there are rules for jumping into pit traps voluntarily.

It's also explicitly written in the EU rules, which were the only ones I'd actually played a game by, that you couldn't. And to my knowledge no HQ quests that were ever published by MB did that. AHQ might've, I don't know. I didn't know AHQ existed until 2011 or 2012 or so, and I originally thought it was an expansion like Kellar's Keep. When I discovered it was a different game, it got shoved back in the box and ignored until this year. WHQ I learned about around the same time.

So it might have been something they did, but it wasn't in my knowledge base or expectation playing HQ. (I'm also somewhat wondering if detecting trap is supposed to result in the players knowing what kind of trap it might be so that they DO NOT walk into every arrow or falling block trap because they're supposed to be looking for pits because "this looks suspicious". I also think that if you're going to start expecting people to look for things in pits, there needs to be a way for players to get down there without injury.

It might not be worth it to do that—playing Prince Magnus's Gold it was getting so tedious trying to get TO the room with the chests, when I got a good roll with the barbarian finally I just said f**k it, rounded the corner, did NOT stop to look for traps, and plowed through two or three spear traps in a row because they just weren't hitting me and I did not CARE anymore. He's got 8 BP and hasn't lost one yet. Tank the hits and let's GO already! But that was me being so damned annoyed with roll after roll of "2", "3", etc. and nothing happening that I wasn't even playing characters anymore. I was playing freakin' Monopoly and people insisted on playing with unlimited houses and hotels, and money on Free Parking, two house rules that are just about guaranteed to make sure that game Does Not End, and are so common that Hasbro started idiotically printing them inside the box lid, which should be burned, possibly along with the rest of the game.

Of course, a lenient EW would probably consider either allowing heroes to climb into pit traps without too much harm, or reducing the chances of harm when jumping in, but that's getting beyond the scope of the rules of HQ.

Now, here's the thing, in the EU version pit traps can be disarmed and removed, and in the US version, if you detect a pit trap and disarm it, it's a normal square. How would having a secret door in this instance work out? You could just meta it and say that if you disarm the trap, the secret door is now level with the corridor, but if you are going to do that, why not just put the secret door level with the corridor in the first place? Other than that, you just just say that the trap can't be disarmed, and it may be reasonable to reveal the pit trap first, rather simply having it sprung, or to counter your worst case scenario, at least allow the players to know it's a pit trap rather than just "suspicious."

Edit: The bit about how it might be unreasonable given a lot of the world had the UK version where you couldn't search in pit traps is particularly true. That said, many games are known to break their own rules, and often run off exception-based design in principle. For example, AHQ has the rule that you can only search for secret doors in the side walls of dead ends, yet this rule is broken in the first published adventure. I think a lot of this is because these games include a "GM" who can, and should, be able to react to situations and adjust the rules as necessary.

If you KNOW you're looking for a pit trap (or even "the secret is deeper underground than you think", and when you detect traps you know what they are and not just that you're walking into every trapped space blindly, and not left in a position where you can "fix" something using a normal game mechanic and, unbeknownst to you losing the game, that's something and it starts to become more reasonable. If you say that the dwarf or a hero with the toolkit can "fix" this trap so that it may be safely entered the way a monster would do so without harm … that makes that mechanic fair to the players, although it gives away the secret before the search, so I think that's not reasonable.

For what it's worth, the notion that the dwarf can fix triggered traps kind of makes sense if you stop to think about it. A pit trap, he can search for and find the closing mechanism somewhere in the vicinity of the trap and thus lock it. Falling blocks, he can dig them out. That kind of thing. But in that case, if the dwarf has fixed the pit trap, he ought to be able to "re-fix" it so that the trap is opened and on a successful roll, do so in a way that triggers how monsters would get down safely. And if you rule that possible on any pit trap with a successful roll, then you preserve the secret in case there is more than one pit.

That turns something that sounds like crap into something that might be a fun quest gimmick, provided you don't have to trek all the way across the board looking for any and all pits you fixed once you learn that you need to find a pit in the first place.

[Kurgan]

As a kid I'd be rollling and thinking about what I wanted to buy with the new gold I guess...

Using a pit trap as a kind of game event seems plausible enough, but it was just a weird thing dumped in there that was never used and not really thought out. Many have commented on certain quest packs being not that great... except for giving you a pile of assets to inspire YOUR OWN creativity.

Maybe the dragon ate you... darn. Well guess what, bucko, now he's eating everybody... turns out there's a maze in his belly and that's the next part of the quest!

[Davane]

I totally get where you are coming from iKarith.

The problem with quests like Prince Magnus' Gold is that it highlights just how little there is there for the EW to do without house rules, because the main mechanic for extra events seems to be the treasure deck, which works a lot like an opt-in event deck, and no smart player is going to actually opt in if they don't have to, because the the main reward for doing so is gold, which is kind of pointless after a while in HQ.

In fact, it seems to me that PMG was designed more to take advantage of the PvP aspects of HQ, as putting three chests in a game with four heroes, and only giving those who return a chest the reward, seems to be a vain attempt to turn HQ into a capture the flag-type contest that moves away from what HQ is - a dungeon exploration board game.

Both AHQ and WHQ had an "unexpected events" type mechanism, to add more excitement beyond the initial exploration of the dungeon. In AHQ, it was slightly more convoluted, because the GM would draw tokens, and then could play those tokens, rather than simply just going straight to whatever event or encounter was generated, as in WHQ.

A simple house rule for this would have been for the EW to roll a combat die, and on a they get to place a wandering monster on the board, with which they can move and attack immediately. At least, then, the tedious trek with the risky treasure chests would have been of some merit.

The differences between the UK and US rules seem somewhat baffling, as it seems like the US edition took out the PvP aspect, but then realised there's little in the game left, so they added extra difficulties and complexities to try and make the game more interesting again.

The thing is that, as you say, the secret door in a pit trap gimmick doesn't really work, because you either providing a reward for failure ("You fell into a pit trap, but hey, you found a way to bypass the monsters in the next room.") or you are heaping extra, potentially opt-in only, penalties for failure ("You not only fell into a pit trap, but there's a secret door to a room full of Skeletons you need to deal with too!"). If you can enter a pit trap safely, then it's not really a pit trap - it's just an interesting marker on the board that happens to look like a pit trap. As you say, this all stems from the way traps work in the game. It's about as useless as putting a pit trap in front of a treasure chest...

If you changed how pit traps worked, or the purposes they served, then you could justify it a bit more, but then you get back to the question of at what point are you playing HQ, and at what point are you simply playing a fantasy roleplaying board game using the HeroQuest board?

But that said, HQ is full of some of the dodgiest quests ever, even the official ones. Like the Spiral Staircase of KK - searching for traps in corridors only reveals the nearest trap? That's just slowing the game down to a tedious crawl, with nothing else to compensate for it... Despite the simplicity of the mechanics, the risk vs. reward elements of a lot of HQ seem to be pretty dire - but that's pretty standard, I guess, since it's the era of arcade games, hi scores, and the missed opportunity that was not having an official "I survived the Spiral Staircase and all I got..." T-shirt!

[iKarith]

The notion for a pit trap that can be entered safely was … after it has been sprung, there's a pit. It's not bottomless. It's not even particularly deep since you can climb out of it on your next turn. But if you can climb out of it, once you know it's there, you should be able to climb back into it without incurring additional health penalty.

Why would you? Because there's now a pit blocking the way in or out, and the game otherwise provides only this notion that you'd jump across with a mild to moderate penalty for failing to do so (which you're going to do statistically quite often.) Maybe it's worth taking the time. Or maybe it's got a secret door hidden in it. (I agree though if there's a door hiding in it, it's maybe something that shouldn't be a trap, but a hidden lever or something that opens it.)

This wouldn't reasonably be doable while monsters were standing there. But then, due to blocked hallways and turn order ensuring there's nothing else to do on a hero's turn, how many times have my heroes searched for treasure in the room they're in while monsters watched them through the doorway? Not in the same room, right?

The only real solution I see to that would be for heroes to choose their turn order and … that seems like it'd need some balancing. It could also cause a fair amount of arguing when the heroes are not all the same player.

[Kurgan]

There are lots of instances of undetectable traps in the quest packs. And of course the Hazard (called "Traps" in EU) in the Treasure deck that can't be detected (buy a homebrew Torch and you can avoid those!).

[iKarith]

There are lots of instances of undetectable traps in the quest packs. And of course the Hazard (called "Traps" in EU) in the Treasure deck that can't be detected (buy a homebrew Torch and you can avoid those!).

There are, I was looking over Phoenix's expanded rule book which covers the added mechanics from the quest packs. But nowhere in these are you required to fail to succeed, nor that succeding guarantees failure, to put it in the terms Davane so eloquently did.

(Not saying they wouldn't do it—particularly in the NA region, they don't seem to have done a whole lot of playtesting of the NA-exclusive quest packs from what folks are saying!)

[wallydubbs]

The notion for a pit trap that can be entered safely was … after it has been sprung, there's a pit. It's not bottomless. It's not even particularly deep since you can climb out of it on your next turn. But if you can climb out of it, once you know it's there, you should be able to climb back into it without incurring additional health penalty.

Why would you? Because there's now a pit blocking the way in or out, and the game otherwise provides only this notion that you'd jump across with a mild to moderate penalty for failing to do so (which you're going to do statistically quite often.) Maybe it's worth taking the time. Or maybe it's got a secret door hidden in it. (I agree though if there's a door hiding in it, it's maybe something that shouldn't be a trap, but a hidden lever or something that opens it.)

This wouldn't reasonably be doable while monsters were standing there. But then, due to blocked hallways and turn order ensuring there's nothing else to do on a hero's turn, how many times have my heroes searched for treasure in the room they're in while monsters watched them through the doorway? Not in the same room, right?

The only real solution I see to that would be for heroes to choose their turn order and … that seems like it'd need some balancing. It could also cause a fair amount of arguing when the heroes are not all the same player.

I kinda have to agree with you on this topic. The pit, in essence, should be able to be climbed. As Zargon, though, I would be inclined to give both hero and monster alike a 2 space penalty for climbing in and out of the pit. Perhaps I'm being even too generous with that and they should just lose a turn in the process (how long does it take to climb in and out of a pit?).
But then there are several mechanics here that need to be considered:
1.) First off, I get really OCD when heroes or monsters share a space. It was never considered with pit traps, so in such an event I generally let the hero step on his teammate's head to cross without taking damage. The problem with climbing in and out of the pit soils this mechanic. Only 1 hero gets the penalty and stops in the pit while the rest escape unscathed.
2.) This practically negates the usefulness of a dexterity potion. In my game play potions are a little bit cheaper then what the quest book lists them as. So heroes won't need to stock up on dexterity potions if they can just climb in and out. Unless in a dire situation, most would use the movement or turn penalty then spend the gold to avoid a chance at rolling.
3.) An intelligent monster should have the ability to climb in and out of the pit. Some monsters I give an allowance to: Goblins are quick and nimble so I allow them to jump a pit on anything but a . Gargoyles have wings so they don't need to roll and just fly over it. However I'm kinda on the fence when it comes to Undead. They're very slow, as is reflected on their movements squares, so jumping never really felt applicable to Undead. This would suggest they fall in the pit and lose a body point? I'm not comfortable killing off Skeletons and Zombies that way. Unless they fall in and break their neck... but I don't think they'd be able to climb out, which makes a conundrum. Maybe I'm thinking too much Walking Dead or Game of Thrones Whites on this...

[Kurgan]

It's not an issue of lack of playtesting in the NA editions, as undetectable (non-treasure deck) traps are also found in the EU exclusive quest packs. People always complain about the NA quest packs not being playtested (I don't argue with them) but many of the same features appeared in earlier EU installments. Were those not playtested either? Who knows.

Lots of people (who love the game) have things in Hero Quest they don't like, that were nevertheless intended by the game designers. And many of those people have solutions to fix those issues, and some disagree with each other on the solutions. That's okay. Your table, your rules.

The main issue with the EQP/BQP is that they are incredibly unforgiving played as written (especially with brand new characters). Yes, there are several unmarked chests (there's one in the official game system as well, even going back to the EU original). At one point the map-makers forgot how furniture traps work (making it actually easier, not harder in that case). Nobody's perfect.

But the EU exclusive packs aren't exactly easy on their own either. Undetectable traps, multiple wandering monsters, hard to kill enemies, bosses that break all the rules, all kinds of crazy stuff. So its not just an NA thing, the pure, original EU edition has difficulties and ambiguities as well. Most of us want to experience all the content that HeroQuest had to offer, and we do it with our hybrid editions. Each blends a little differently. Maybe one person wants to simplify the rules, maybe another person wants to supplement them with material from other games like D&D, AHQ or WHQ. Each to their own!

I do enjoy Phoenix's "combined rules" book, even though he doesn't really cover the differences between the swinging blade traps (ATOH) and swinging axe traps (BQP).

Yes, you can do away with rules you don't like. You can also create work arounds... this artifact lets you ignore this rule you dislike... or pay X amount of gold and you don't have to worry about it. This isn't without precedent in the video games world (even in the old days before microtransactions). It's not a cheat so much as earning something that improves the gameplay. Who wants to roll 1 or 2 dice to fight a monster when you can roll 6 or 8, right? Who wants to die when you can keep getting health back? Who wants to stay dead when you can come back unharmed, etc. What's reasonable and an improvement to one person is annoying or ridiculous to another, that's just how it pans out sometimes.

But it's not cheating when you create your rules and stick to them. Ultimately it's Zargon's (call him Morcar or the Demon King, same thing) call when things don't quite work out.

Maybe it's not fair that monsters don't get hurt by traps (other than the attack/defense penalty), but those are the breaks. You could make it so that the monsters have body points and defensive abilities equivalent to heroes. That would radically change the game of course... from the special forces epic heroes overcoming the odds to more of a deathmatch style arena where any opponent could mean the end of the game. No, the heroes don't start out as immortal demi-gods, they have to work their way towards that, but they start out with all sorts of advantages. It's still a game, after all, but if someone just wants to turn it into storytelling theater, that is quite possible as well.

Not bashing here (I actually enjoy these simple rule threads that often turn into debates), just saying, a lot of the more difficult things we find in EQP/BQP actually appeared in the EU quests first.

[iKarith]

It's not an issue of lack of playtesting in the NA editions, as undetectable (non-treasure deck) traps are also found in the EU exclusive quest packs. People always complain about the NA quest packs not being playtested (I don't argue with them) but many of the same features appeared in earlier EU installments. Were those not playtested either? Who knows.

Lots of people (who love the game) have things in Hero Quest they don't like, that were nevertheless intended by the game designers. And many of those people have solutions to fix those issues, and some disagree with each other on the solutions. That's okay. Your table, your rules.

As I said, I think some things have changed. We're not kids anymore, and we don't just need stuff to take up time for the sake of taking up time. Today's kids don't need that either. So things that were probably fine at the time seem less so now.

But yeah, that's one of the reasons I was after something that was kind of a generic foundation for games that work the way HQ does. Fill out the specifics, modify as needed, and play the game you're after playing.

The main issue with the EQP/BQP is that they are incredibly unforgiving played as written (especially with brand new characters). Yes, there are several unmarked chests (there's one in the official game system as well, even going back to the EU original). At one point the map-makers forgot how furniture traps work (making it actually easier, not harder in that case). Nobody's perfect.

But the EU exclusive packs aren't exactly easy on their own either. Undetectable traps, multiple wandering monsters, hard to kill enemies, bosses that break all the rules, all kinds of crazy stuff. So its not just an NA thing, the pure, original EU edition has difficulties and ambiguities as well. Most of us want to experience all the content that HeroQuest had to offer, and we do it with our hybrid editions. Each blends a little differently. Maybe one person wants to simplify the rules, maybe another person wants to supplement them with material from other games like D&D, AHQ or WHQ. Each to their own!

I do enjoy Phoenix's "combined rules" book, even though he doesn't really cover the differences between the swinging blade traps (ATOH) and swinging axe traps (BQP).

Ah, wish we had the source for that. It'd be good to clarify. (So even our own attempts at doing better wind up having room for improvement.)

I don't know why or how the rules need to be "simplified" personally. The rules are simple. The way the rule book is written though, there's a perception that they are more complicated than they are, and this results in people not following the rules as written without intention to do that. It's fine to play otherwise than the rules if you do intend to alter them … but trying to follow them and not doing so because they're made unintentionally seem to be more complex than they are…

When searching for treasure in a room, players do not move. Wait, does that mean on a turn you are searching for treasure, you lose your movement? No, it just means that you don't have to walk up to the treasure chest to search, because it's searched automatically when you take your action to do a search. (Which makes it seem odd that so many traps are in front of treasure chests.)

This isn't ambiguous, it's people reading stuff that isn't there because of the number of words used to convey a simple idea: When a player searches, the entire room or visible corridor section is searched, however the player's figure remains in place on the board. Simplifying the rules would be giving all monsters 1BP because you didn't want to include a metric for keeping track of wounds for cost or "that's too complicated" reasons. (Take your pick.)

Yes, you can do away with rules you don't like. You can also create work arounds... this artifact lets you ignore this rule you dislike... or pay X amount of gold and you don't have to worry about it. This isn't without precedent in the video games world (even in the old days before microtransactions). It's not a cheat so much as earning something that improves the gameplay. Who wants to roll 1 or 2 dice to fight a monster when you can roll 6 or 8, right? Who wants to die when you can keep getting health back? Who wants to stay dead when you can come back unharmed, etc. What's reasonable and an improvement to one person is annoying or ridiculous to another, that's just how it pans out sometimes.

But it's not cheating when you create your rules and stick to them. Ultimately it's Zargon's (call him Morcar or the Demon King, same thing) call when things don't quite work out.

Maybe it's not fair that monsters don't get hurt by traps (other than the attack/defense penalty), but those are the breaks. You could make it so that the monsters have body points and defensive abilities equivalent to heroes. That would radically change the game of course... from the special forces epic heroes overcoming the odds to more of a deathmatch style arena where any opponent could mean the end of the game. No, the heroes don't start out as immortal demi-gods, they have to work their way towards that, but they start out with all sorts of advantages. It's still a game, after all, but if someone just wants to turn it into storytelling theater, that is quite possible as well.

Not bashing here (I actually enjoy these simple rule threads that often turn into debates), just saying, a lot of the more difficult things we find in EQP/BQP actually appeared in the EU quests first.

I don't think I disagree with any of the above. It all comes down to expectations. When things start violating those, or players are placed in no-win situations … I said before: No reason to object to hard. Sometimes hard is good because it creates a challenge. Designed not to be possible … that's another story. (So is cheap "difficulty" through forcing players to repeatedly injure themselves over and over again to burn off their resources.)