Beneficial changes:
> Heroes cannot storm every single room with impunity. A monster that will not die in one hit, will always get the chance to hit back.
> The Wizard stands a fighting chance in the middle ranks. Players who dislike the Wizard's low BP and who change that with house ruled equipment will find such trappings no longer necessary.
> Fire spells Ball of Flame and Fire of Wrath are no longer nearly worthless. The ability to cause two Body Points of injury is now astounding.
> No more anti-climaxes during boss fights. Bosses are guaranteed to hang around long enough to cast off all their spells, and give Hero players more memorable battle experiences.
> The Barbarian's eight Body Points bears greater significance--he can survive twice the number of enemy attacks as the Wizard.
> In a game rife with references to "1 Body Point of damage" it furthers continuity of design.
Notes:
Irresponsible Evil Wizarding can lead to bad games regardless of the rules used. The Evil Wizard is not an arbiter role-playing the actions of the monsters fairly and logically. The monsters are the Evil Wizards pawns, and the only logic that should be applied to their control should be the earnest desire for victory.
On searches:
Searches are actually a bit too abstract, and they don't utilize other components of the game in ways that would not only be more simple, but more sensible as well. Searching for treasure has to have better conditions. Rooms do not have the capacity to be searched once by each Hero and yield results for each one. Factors concerning the interior contents of rooms determine how many times it may be searched.
Contents....Searches
Monster(s)........ +1 search
Furniture......... +1 search per item
Trap............... +1 search / trap
Searching a furnishing or trap requires that the Hero be adjacent to it, but otherwise functions like usual.
Quest-mandated searches exempt furniture items described by the text.
On treasure:
Adding more treasure to the Treasure Deck may seem fun. The original Treasure deck contained nearly one "bad" card for every "good" one. Wandering Monster x6, Hazard x4, Money x8 and Potion x6. To keep things right, you need to add one Hazard or Wandering Monster for every Potion, Gold, Gem, etc card. If you get into printing out the many types of potions, I find it useful to replace all the potions in the Treasure deck with these:
On artifacts:
Artifacts are cool, but the game just has too damn many. How I rule is that once a group of Heroes finds an artifact, it goes into a cache. Heroes are each only allowed to use one artifact at a time. At the start of a Quest, each Hero picks out an artifact to use. If a Hero dies and the artifact they held is then lost (by the rules), it is up to the Evil Wizard to relocate that artifact (or perhaps make a Treasure card featuring the finding of a lost one).
