Another search suggestion; WD+D6

[Bareheaded Warrior]

If one of my players search for traps or secret doors or for treasures in a room with one asigned they get it automatically but if they search for a treasure card tbey have to roll so many combat dices as their mind points and they need al least one skull to pick one treasure card. Its easy but from time to time they find nothing and it counts as their search for treasure axtion, they cant do it again in the same room.

I'm assuming you are allowing one search attempt per room per hero.

The problem with using MP is that it makes the Wizard the best at searching, which doesn't really make sense as there is no reason why a lifetime dedicated to mastering spell casting would make you a better searcher, surely the Elf with his keen eyesight or the Dwarf with his underground experience would be the better searcher.

That aside making the Wizard the best searcher means he ends up with the most gold, and he has the least Equipment to spend it on. Also if you follow the recommended turn order BDEW, then the last in the order, the Wizard, will stand the most chance of getting a treasure card, so the highest chance of getting a Wandering Monster, and that WM will get to attack twice, once when placed, then again immediately afterwards on the EWPs turn. So very quickly your best searcher will either die and/or learn not to search.

[burglekutt]

Implementing MPs for searches is tough & I've been trying to do it for years because MPoints suck in the game, but I do like the D6 deciding what remains a mystery in a room or not. I'm tempted to combine your CD & D6 though into a single (NA) CombatDie roll.

Scenario:
A room has two spear traps, one SecretDoor & a furniture treasure.
Roll a CombatDie:
= All things are discovered & you can either pull a Treasure Card or walk up to the furniture to gain its contents (similar to Chests).

= A Trap & SecretDoor are discovered & may pull a treasure card BUT... the 2nd trap & furniture contents are considered "unknown squares" that must be stepped into to discover what it is, or search again next turn or let another hero search.

= A Trap is discovered & you may pull a treasure card but the other three squares are "unknown".

If the unknown square is a trap & you step onto it, you must now disarm it.
With your system or mine we are leaving it up to the player who rolled crappy to either be patient another turn, step onto a square to risk what it is, or pull a treasure card & move on not caring because you think its just a trap that you don't feel like disarming. Let another hero take the risk with their roll.

I do see one big problem with my system though which is if a "Unknown" square is next to furniture, then the players will automatically know its a furniture treasure with no risk since "All things were discovered". Now I gotta think of a second roll to see if the furniture is trapped otherwise there's no gamble in it.

What if there's three Traps, two SecretDoors & two Furniture treasures?

Searching is one of the toughest discussions we've ever had on here.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Whilst I agree that Mind Points suck in the basic game*, I don't feel that rectifying that has anything to do with searching. Mind Points are clearly stated as being related to magic, spells and resistance to magic and spells and have absolutely nothing to do with searching for reasons that I have outlined previously.

*One issue with Mind Points is that they are rarely utilised, I rectified that to a certain extent in my own house rules by making more items and spells use Mind points and a few more spell casters and magic traps but then you fall into the second issue in that the Mind Point mechanism doesn't really work, which I guess wasn't obvious to the original designers or play testers precisely because they were so rarely utilised.

One way to work through the complexities of changes to searches is to be clear on what it is that you are trying to achieve with your modifications and I find that the process of working through that in your mind and then stating it in writing really helps.

As far as I can tell you want to introduce a conditional element to searches, so that every square of interest is revealed, but depending on your dice roll some or all will be fully revealed i.e. a pit trap exists on that square, others will only be partially revealed - the location is suspect, but not the nature, leaving heros with a choice as to whether to take a chance of moving onto those mystery squares and handling them or not.

Personally I think traps and secret doors are already "mysterious" by their nature of being hidden and not being placed on the board, all squares are "unknown" and potentially traps already, so all you need is a roll that determines whether they are handled successfully or unsuccessfully when they are stepped on, and you can scrap the separate search for traps and secret doors entirely.

I would be interested in better understanding what it is that you are looking to achieve by making changes here, what is the end result that you are aiming for, the problem you are trying to solve.

[burglekutt]

The simplest way to handle "Searching" is ONE search, all things are discovered & the hero simply choses to take the Treasure Card & move on.... or deal with the complexity of all the other things still in the room, ie Traps, SecretDoors, Chests, Furniture treasures etc.

All players feel a bit of jealousy towards the hero who gets the "Treasure Card" & sometimes there's even animosity, I never liked that. So I'm thinking it might be ok if some things are left behind in a room that another Hero might be so bold as to go after.

Consider the possibility that rooms can never be Searched enough & its up to the Hero to decide how far he's willing to go for a bit more treasure. Ill bring up knightkrawler's post from "Chests? How do they work?"

We play like this:
First search in a room: draw treasure card from the golden deck
- more money, less hazard, average potions
Second search in a room: draw treasure card from the silver deck
- less money, more hazard, less potions

Only two searches per room allowed. Period.

Except for furnitures (except tables).
One search per piece of furniture: draw treasure card from the blue deck
- less money, more hazard, more potions

Plus one search per corridor part (from one corner/crossing to the next): draw treasure card from the black deck
- very little money, very much hazard, few potions
--> the corridor treasure search is for the very greedy and bored heroes.

I have 6 sets of treasure cards, that I divided into these four decks.

I've been going down the rabbit hole of thinking rooms can constantly be searched if the heroes willing to risk it.

How fun to watch a player gamble with life or death for another 10$ Lol.
My minds been brewing on it the last couple months.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

All players feel a bit of jealousy towards the hero who gets the "Treasure Card" & sometimes there's even animosity, I never liked that. So I'm thinking it might be ok if some things are left behind in a room that another Hero might be so bold as to go after.

I've been going down the rabbit hole of thinking rooms can constantly be searched if the heroes willing to risk it.

I guess I'm wary of turning the game into "SearchQuest" with constant searches, of increasing the chances of heroes repeatedly missing and potentially never finding secret doors, particularly as in some official quests the objective cannot be achieved without find a secret door, and of increasing the treasure "yield" as that breaks the integral advancement system - increased treasure yield, leads to faster equipment acquisition, which makes the game too easy.

The animosity and selfish element of trying to grab the treasure first is an essential antidote to the alpha player problem that you may otherwise encounter.

My approach allows multiple search attempts by the same or different heroes, each attempt finding the nearest trap (if one is present), or the nearest secret door (if one is present) and only when there are no traps or secret doors then the treasure card. This still results in only one successful search resulting in a treasure card so they know the room is now clear (and keeps the EWP tracking of searched rooms simple) but it adds a little excitement to the rush to search the room first to get the treasure card as that may result in you finding only a trap...a classic "gotcha" moment, allowing a second search attempt by another player who gets the treasure card (unless of course there is a second trap in which case, the 3rd player may get the treasure).

[burglekutt]

Lower the amounts of gold per search to 2 or 5$, weaker potions etc.

and of increasing the treasure "yield" as that breaks the integral advancement system - increased treasure yield, leads to faster equipment acquisition, which makes the game too easy.

From "Jumping on the bandwagon"

1) The Wizard searches and finds the nearest trap to him, let's say one of the Spear traps, he is placed on that square, does a disarm roll, which either successfully disarms the trap OR sets the trap off and he suffers the consequences, either way that ends his turn and his search attempt

2) Next Hero, say Barbarian, then searches, finding the other Spear Trap same process

3) Next Hero, say Dwarf, searches finding the Secret Door as there are no remaining traps in the room*, he is placed adjacent to the now open door and his turn ends with the contents of the room or corridor being laid out

4) Next Hero, say Elf, searches the room and as there are no traps or secret doors, he draws the treasure card and the room is marked off as searched.

Based on this it looks like you've changed nothing about the Search mechanism to speed it up except to add that Hero's must now disarm all traps before gaining Sectretdoors or treasure.
It looks like each hero still must do one search per turn and now a player with one BodyPoint must risk being placed on a trap they have to disarm if they make a search at all. As the wizard I can say I'd never make a search in this case.

Another reason I can't get on board with this "forced trap disarming" is because I'm designing my quests for heroes to lead monsters into them or to come into use later in the game (still working on it).

A scenario:
All monsters are dead & its the last room.
All hero's have only one BP each. Logically all heros should skip their turns (wasted time) & let the dwarf search. How horrible if he dies here at the end disarming a trap & now since the other heroes don't know if there's another trap, they'd probably wanna draw straws to see who searches next lol, I am not understanding!

I hate asking you because you've explained it at length before.

SearchQuest lol!

[Bareheaded Warrior]

I'm happy to explain my rules, sometimes it helps me understand them better too!

You are correct I haven't done anything to speed up a search, just to reduce the number of searches players need to perform.

In original 1989 HQ you can search for treasure once per room and once per passage so very roughly 20 searches per quest, you can also search for secret doors and traps combined once per room and once per passage so very roughly 40 searches per quest

In the 1990 remake (US) you can only search rooms for treasure not corridors, but that is once per hero so very roughly 40 searches per quest, you can also search for traps in each room and passage once so another ~20 searches and again for secret doors so about ~80 searches in total (in fact in some quests you could probably spend more actions searching than attacking (hence SearchQuest!)

My changes restrict to one search in each room only so ~10 searches (plus additional attempts for each trap or secret door in a room) so maybe 20 searches per quest at the most which is 50% of the original game and 25% of the US remake.

You are correct that increasing the number of searches whilst reducing the yield per search would keep the balance for advancement, but why would you want to increase the already massive number of searches?

Yes searching with 1BP is a risk, so is moving with 1BP (and searching includes movement), if having 1BP isn't a risk then you remove the peril and excitement from the game...(and typing that has caused me to channel a little Python ... "Look, it's my duty as a knight to sample as much peril as I can"..."Oh, let me have just a little bit of peril?") so if you have completed the quest, killed all the monsters in the last room and the heroes all have only 1BP remaining then I would suggest a sharp exit.

Your comments around designing my quests for heroes to lead monsters into traps, when heroes generally don't know the locations of traps and monsters always do seems the wrong way around but as you say you are still working on that.

[burglekutt]

This just came to me how Mind Points should be used for searching even though the Wizard & Elf technically shouldn't be better than the Dwarf at finding Traps in a dungeon.

Searching is a free Cantrip for spell users

You could also make the argument that culturally Goblins, Mummies & Fimirs (as well as the exotic lands they live in) set different types of traps unknown to less educated heros haha.

The first hero to search rolls MindPoints,
Traps are automatically discovered upon searching and each discovers one more thing.
Two 's discovers both the Secret Door & Treasure.

The hero can chose to:
1#Disarm the Trap(EWP moves that hero on to the Trap square & the Hero rolls to Disarm),
2#Go through the Secret Door,
3#Or ignore his movement & pull a Treasure card.
He can only do one of these this turn though. To speed things up you could allow the hero to ignore the Trap (if it isn't in the way), pull a Treasure card and move through the SecretDoor.

I realize this allows a hero to find the Trap, be moved on to the Trap, & then to Disarm the Trap but hey, aren't we trying to speed up the Searching process? Just don't allow this in corridors if the Traps are really far away.

Again, MindPoints & the amount of spells suck and you should find as many ways to use them. Give the Wizard & Elf a free Cantrip!!

[burglekutt]

This just came to me how Mind Points should be used for searching even though the Wizard & Elf technically shouldn't be better than the Dwarf or Barbarian at finding Traps in a dungeon.

Searching is a free Cantrip for spell users?

You could also make the argument that culturally Goblins, Mummies & Fimirs (as well as the exotic lands & dungeons they live in) set different types of traps & have different types of dungeon architecture unknown to "less educated" heros haha.

The first hero to search rolls MindPoints,
Traps are automatically discovered upon "searching" and each discovers one more thing.
Two 's discovers both the Secret Door & Treasure as well.

The hero can chose to:
1# Disarm the Trap(EWP moves that hero on to the Trap square & the Hero rolls to Disarm), or
2# Ignore the trap(as long as it isn't in the way), pull a Treasure card & move through the SecretDoor.

He can only do one of these this turn though.

I realize this allows a hero to find the Trap, be moved on to the Trap, & then to Disarm the Trap but hey, that's the end of his turn & aren't we trying to speed up the Searching process? Just don't allow this in corridors if the Traps are really far away.

Again, MindPoints & the amount of spells suck and you should find as many ways to use them as we can. Give the Wizard & Elf a free Search Cantrip!!

[cornixt]

Maybe giving the Dwarf a reroll would help to make him better at searching.