How to Get the Most Variety Out of the Basic HQ dice

[Count Mohawk]

But you are right... Every piece of equipment needs to consider stuff like Heroic Brew and Courage. But I'm more concerned if it becomes broken OP, than if it wastes potential.
A weapon like "Roll 2 dice in an attack. Each skull counts as two skulls" would become exponentially overpowered the more you got buffed.

For weapons like those, I usually prefer to parse the ability text in the style of "Damage +2 if you roll three or more skulls". That way, the bonus remains the same no matter how many dice you roll.

[whitebeard]

You could easily add special effects much like that using just the normal dice.

Sword of Power: Roll 3 dice in an attack. If you roll a skull on all dice the attack cannot be defended against.

I see what your trying here but again, the wording is critical... if you a roll a skull on ALL dice. what happens if you've drunk a heroic brew or had courage cast on you?
what's the statistical probability that 3 skulls get rolled on three dice, what is it on 4 dice? is that a deliberate difference or not?

The heroic brew and the like is where your Game Master just steps in comes up with a reasonable behavior. There are always ambiguities in the rules. I would suggest rolling three dice separately for the weapon to see if the special ability is triggered. And add the extra two on top of the result. Not easier of harder to trigger the special, but better all the way around. Do you count the additional damage as un-defendable? Do the monsters simply defend the extra damage? Or do they need to defend all the original damage before they can defend the extra bit? Does not really matter much. The critical is absolutely devastating.

[Big Bene]

When a player uses the heroic brew combined with a magic weapon for a "overpowered" synergetic effect, I would consider this a wise use of resources. It doesn't make the weapon OP per se. The heroic brew will be used up, so this is a one-shot. If the opponent turns out to be not so tough after all, the brew is wasted. If one exceptionally strong opponent is killed in a single blow, this is a deserved reward for a good idea. If there is a boss monster, and killing it this way would utterly break the quest, give it just one body point more than the heroic-brew-plus-super-weapon combination could do.
If the players really could combine the effects to "construct" an OP weapon, this could endanger the balance of the game, but as the effect doesn't last, they just can't.

[Anderas]

When a player uses the heroic brew combined with a magic weapon for a "overpowered" synergetic effect, I would consider this a wise use of resources. It doesn't make the weapon OP per se. The heroic brew will be used up, so this is a one-shot. If the opponent turns out to be not so tough after all, the brew is wasted. If one exceptionally strong opponent is killed in a single blow, this is a deserved reward for a good idea. If there is a boss monster, and killing it this way would utterly break the quest, give it just one body point more than the heroic-brew-plus-super-weapon combination could do.
If the players really could combine the effects to "construct" an OP weapon, this could endanger the balance of the game, but as the effect doesn't last, they just can't.

Fully agreed! after all, you should think once about the effect and how it affects your quest. Then, if the result is to formulate it waste-ish like GK or watertight like Count Mohawk or if you accept the multiple buff as is, is a conscious decision with the consequences clear. And then, all three variants might be good.

[Lemmeron]

Green die has 3 2 1
So white dice equivalent = swap &

Black dice has 4 1 1
So white dice equivalent = hit on or defend on

Purple has 1 2 2 1
White equivalent = for and is either or depending on attack or defending.

Orange Has 2 1 1 2
White equivalent = if attacking or if defending = skull if attacking or if defending

Blue has 3 2 1 so morcar counts when defending with white dice.

[knightkrawler]

The only area where I'd consider using colored dice is weaponless attacks for heroes - or even with an additional set of stats for monsters, too.
My rules as they stand: a weaponless hero attacks with one die, Barbarian hits on and , Dwarf on , Elf on , Wizard on .
The Wizard may only attack weaponless if neither a different action is possible nor he may try to move to escape from the fight (regardless of the opposing monster's movement rate).
A weaponless attack only ever can result in the loss of 1 Body point, buffed by spells or skills or not.

There it actually makes sense to use colored dice, if only for the one reason to make the whole weaponless attack shindig more ... interesting. Can't really explain that.
There's something about each Hero having a dice pool of a fitting color of his own, aside from the white common pool. Then again, the colors of those dice are utter horseshit and intuitively mean nothing close to what they try to convey, except for the black and the pink ones.

Still, the reasons for using them is more elegance than anything else, and if I start there, I have to expand to weapons and effects and spells and card texts and special rule texts get more complex and cards have to be printed bigger again and then we go full RPG once again.
I thought complicated three years ago and wanted to make everything about the game "realistic" until I saw the error of my ways.

Oh, and Slev, I read your rules months ago and what I see before my eyes when I think of them is all those nifty little icons in the rulebook, so I mistook that picture for you using all colored dice. Took a gander again, and there we go. You do not exaggerate their usage.

[Goblin-King]

The heroic brew and the like is where your Game Master just steps in comes up with a reasonable behavior. There are always ambiguities in the rules. I would suggest rolling three dice separately for the weapon to see if the special ability is triggered. And add the extra two on top of the result. Not easier of harder to trigger the special, but better all the way around. Do you count the additional damage as un-defendable? Do the monsters simply defend the extra damage? Or do they need to defend all the original damage before they can defend the extra bit? Does not really matter much. The critical is absolutely devastating.

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with you on that one. Morcar shouldn't have to "game master" stuff like this.
Any piece of equipment should be written in a simple way and be read and understood in an equally simple way.
If the card says something; that's exactly what you will do. My example shows this philosophy well:

Sword of Power: Roll 3 dice in an attack. If you roll a skull on all dice the attack cannot be defended against.

It is worded as "all dice". That means all dice and nothing else. Getting buffed with extra dice doesn't change anything.

It is the creator's job to determine how equipment will synergize with other equipment, spells etc.
The way he words his equipment determines how it plays out.

"Any X rolled does Y" synergizes well. More dice makes Y trigger more often.
"All dice must roll X" synergizes poorly. More dice makes it harder to trigger the effect.

You may have your preferences on how you like your equipment, but HOW they work with buffs should always be a simple matter of just reading what the card actually says.

[knightkrawler]

Sword of Power: Roll 3 dice in an attack. If you roll a skull on all dice the attack cannot be defended against.

It is worded as "all dice". That means all dice and nothing else. Getting buffed with extra dice doesn't change anything

While I agree with you on that text in HQ shouldn't be interpretable in more than one way, this is faulty.
"Roll 3 dice" means this weapon cannot be buffed, for starters, after your own prerogative. If the Heroic Brew text overrules this one, adding two dice, "all dice" still refers to the "3 dice" in the preceding sentence. It's ambiguous at best.
It's why I changed all weapon stats from absolute values to relative ones (modifiers) and broke down hero stats into base stats and modifiers.

[Goblin-King]

"roll x dice in attack" is the form the game uses, so wouldn't wanna mess with that unless I were to remake the entire game (but that would be crazy, right? )
And golden rule in games: any card that differs from the basic rules trumps the basic rule. Even though weapons are a fixed number, the special abilities still allows you to modify said number.
No confusion so far as far as I'm concerned.

And all dice still means all dice. If it were referring to three dice it would be:

Sword of Power: Roll 3 dice in an attack. If you roll 3 skulls the attack cannot be defended against.

There you have it. Now the weapon benefits from buffs to make it's effect easier to trigger.
It's doesn't have to be that complicated...

And "3 skulls" means 3 or more. 5 skulls are still also 3 skulls.
Only "exactly 3" is needed if I want to be specific. "3 or more" isn't needed.
One of them would be nice (but not needed) for clarification though.

Good discussion though

[whitebeard]

Like I said, and KK illustrated, there will always be ambiguities in the rules as written. The best written card can be overridden or modified by many others and the effect is not always 100% clear. The best you can hope to do is play consistently.