Managing Hero Power Creep : Gold & Equipment

[mitchiemasha]

Weight Lifting : You must flee a dungeon rapidly or ride a rickety old boat. You must leave equipment and/or gold behind (players choose which) to reduce weight.

I used something similar in a modular HQ using AHQ tiles. The Heroes have to build a rope bridge. There is also plate armour in the armoury, the 1st time they find it, which should be suspicious as the Heroes always pick a card randomly from the armoury deck when encountering the weapon rack. If a player has the plate armour in their possession when crossing the bridge, the bridge is destroyed, which blocks the waterway, the room fills with water. Any Heroes left the wrong side of the bridge must discard all their items to swim to safety...

The Heroes joked about the bridge collapsing but the dwarf of the team still insisted on keeping the armour. Luckily he was the last to cross.

Here is the quest pack for those interested.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzUqo ... FkyU1BJT0k

I didn't design the maps, it was downloaded and heavily modded to interlink the story of each quest to suit our table. Some new players, with the Quest introducing new mechanics to the game.

[cynthialee]

I don't know how happy my heroes would be with me if I had them have to leave gear behind to survive...That may cause bad blood.

May I offer a modification:
"The {obstacle} in front of you is dangerous. Should you divest your hero of all equipment save their basic weapon there is no doubt survival is assured. However you may chance carrying your gear across the barrier. Should you fail you will die."
Make them roll a Combat Dice 2 twice. Once to enter the barrier and once to exit. If they roll anything other than a Black Shield they survive. If a black shield is rolled on either roll the hero dies.
Or for a seriously dangerous barrier they must roll a White Shield on both rolls.

This way...it is on them. If their gear is worth their life...then they made that choice. They can opt to leave all gear behind and auto survive.

[mitchiemasha]

They'd of got all they deserve for being greedy... Initially in the Quest notes the carrier of the plate armour should of drowned. With the others yet to cross having a choice, die or discard everything and swim to safety (they always get to keep starting weapon). He nearly let himself die, he really didn't want to let go, it was a great game.

It was important to be quite strict here as i wanted the Quest notes and clues to be paid close attention too.

The reward they were still trying to get from the Quest before was a hefty one anyways. The idea being unless they played everything well they'd simply break even.

[Daedalus]

...As play continues beyond the original 14 base quests the issue of heroes maxing out the armory and having nothing left to buy becomes a concern. Kellar's Keep "solves" this by making ridiculously expensive potions available which have only minor benefits relative to the ones found in the treasure deck which are presumably worth on the order of 45 gold coins....

Listen here, friend. Why risk the dangers of searching for valuable treasures when Sneet the Goblin merchant already do'ed it for ya and is selling' at rock-bottom prices? Potion of Healing:150 gold coins; Potion of Heroism: 75 gold coins; Potion of Strength: 50 gold coins; Potion of Defense 35 gold coins.

Allow the players to purchase and draw any remaining potions from the Treasure Card deck in-Quest. As you only plan a coin sink every 4 Quests, accumulation shouldn't pose a problem. Alternatively, any potion bought from the merchant spoils after the Quest is finished; paying double buys a preserved potion, instead.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Some ideas for delaying power creep;

1] Restrict searching for treasure to rooms only and only once per room (not once per hero per room), this will reduce the rate of gold and therefore equipment in the first place managing hero power creep

2] Increase the amount of Equipment available, particularly single or limited use items, such as throwing weapons*, and other single-use items that could be rebranded as Equipment Cards - Elixir of Life (1000gc), Potion of Healing (500gc), Dust of Disappearance, Magical Throwing Daggers and similar from the existing game, and create some new ones like Potion of Luck, which would give the heroes more things to spend their gold on beyond the Game System.
*Combining this with mods to make throwing weapons a little less easy to lose would make this even more efficient

3] Introduce an advancement mechanism for the Wizard that requires him to spend gold, for example to purchase additional spells or spell sets, so that he has something to spend his gold on, instead of just giving it to the other Heroes

4] Do NOT introduce the sell-back rule for Equipment as this makes the problem far worse, effectively halving the real cost of all Equipment purchased. In HQ purchasing Equipment with Gold is the advancement mechanism that improves their stats, the idea of being able to sell back purchased upgrades makes no sense.

5] Swap the placement of Borin's Armour and the Rabbit Boots so that you avoid giving away the most expensive Equipment so early in the game, giving it away mush later means it will likely be an upgrade for a Hero who has already purchased Plate Armour rather than just saving them in the range of 1000gc

6] Quest Rewards - Change the Quest Reward for Bastion of Chaos so that they receive 50gc for each Chaos Warrior killed (200gc in total) rather than the existing reward which amounts to an excessive 410gc. Other Quest in the Game System with disproportionately large rewards are 7 "The Stone Hunter" and 8 "The Fire Mage" where for some reason the Quest reward offered is per Hero which doesn't make sense, why would a reward for information/rescue or assassination be based on the size of the team that carries it out. The Empire might be willing to offer 150gc for Balur's destruction, but trying to claim 3000gc because you took a party of 20 heroes might be seen to be taking the piss (especially as the rule book states that taking less than 4 heroes increases the difficulty but increases the reward as less heroes to split it between!) I would restore these to a total Quest Reward of 100gc and 150gc respectively.

7] In addition to a general expansion of the Equipment Cards available you could also introduce some of the other powerful magic items, as purchasable Equipment Cards that were promised but not delivered...

Wizard: Since there are so few things that you can buy from the Armoury, it would be wise for you to save your money. Other powerful magic items will be offered for sale in future adventures (in the Quest Packs). You may wish to spend your money on those items.