Questions about Hero Wars/Quest

[dunlaing]

When my group played Hero Wars (soon after it came out) we had a lot of fun with it and a few issues. Mostly fun.

I'm wondering if anyone else had these issues and solved them satisfactorily (unless that's not a word) and/or whether they are to be resolved/changed in Hero Quest:

1) We found magic to be too hard. It was simply too difficult for starting characters to actually get their magic to do anything. A big factor in making this extra annoying was the fact that you were as likely to give yourself a -2 to something as you were to give yourself a +2 when you tried.

2) We found followers to be too good. Someone with followers just had way too many action points.

3) We found followers to be too good, continued. Since followers were based off of your highest skill, it was much more effective to hire followers with a skill than to learn a new skill and characters with a bunch of followers were much more capable in the long run than characters with a bunch of skills.

4) I know there was something else, but I can't remember what it was.

I loved Hero Wars. The character generation just blew my mind and I still think of it as the best character generation method I've ever seen, and there was lots of goodness in the actual play as well. If Hero Quest can address some of my group's issues, I'll be pretty excited.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there!

I hope some of the other people who've played will chime in, because everyone has tweaked Hero Wars slightly regarding augmentation.

In our group, for example, augments could not bring a character's chances down. I'm a little puzzled why you think there's a 50-50 chance of doing so anyway, because people tended to use abilities at 18 or mastery-plus for augmenting, which means you almost always get a +2, and often a +4.

Considering also that Affinity magic, for Initiates, is mainly about augmenting mundane abilities, this led to a hell of a lot of successful magic in our game.

Followers do indeed make a difference. However, I think people forget that a follower is an NPC, not just an ability. He or she has to be played kind of differently from either a PC's ability or a traditional-game's typical NPC.

In our game, for instance, we decided that the player will decide what the character's follower will do, but the GM decides what the follower thinks and says about it. The GM also can state stuff the follower does which does not contradict what the player says.

This leads to followers' effectiveness being real, yes, but also their presence in the game also being pretty worthwhile. I didn't mind the increased effectiveness at all ... for instance, take a look at one of our PCs after over a year of play:

Njarl, Kolati shaman
Azzogk, his troll buddy
Nya, his wind-nymph lover
Herkald, his shieldman personal backup
... and a couple of shamanic assistants

This guy - and any long-played Hero Wars character - isn't just a "guy" any more. He's a full-fledged "party" all by himself!

Personally, I like this aspect of the game greatly. I think it makes for a much wider and richer range of character interaction, as well as for thinking of characters as sociopolitical "units" rather than "just guys," which I think is consistent with the themes and issues of the game.

Best,
Ron

[dunlaing]

As to the 50/50ish nature of augments, I seem to remember a lot of the people who were doing augments having 14s in their Affinity. They'd typically try against a target of 10, which certainly gives them an advantage, but not one that was noticable in play (in part due to bad die rolls and such). Also, I think people with 1W were overestimating the difference between 1W and 20 at the time.

After not all that much time and quite a few instances of characters using their magic and magic items to make themselves less effective, we ended up going with something similar to what it looks like Hero Quest will use, which was that you could just take a bonus that would have had a lower target number than your score instead of rolling.

As for the followers, I seem to remember it being a big problem with the shaman character. I don't remember if that was because he kept getting spirits as followers or if it was because of something in the Magic rules, but it seemed like he could get new abilities at much higher scores than normal people could.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi,

I'm wondering if anyone else had these issues and solved them satisfactorily (unless that's not a word) and/or whether they are to be resolved/changed in Hero Quest:

One problem with the "what will be included in the upcoming book"-kind of questions is (of course) that the few people who know the answer either cannot or will not tell you. I have had the privilege to see a few selected chapters of HeroQuest. Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to tell you anything except to say that I am very excited about it. I think it will improve vastly upon an already wonderful game.

1) We found magic to be too hard. It was simply too difficult for starting characters to actually get their magic to do anything. A big factor in making this extra annoying was the fact that you were as likely to give yourself a -2 to something as you were to give yourself a +2 when you tried.

Yes, augments are somewhat annoying in Hero Wars. Barbarian Adventures introduces the following optional rule: If you do not want to roll for an augment, just take a +1 bonus (or +^2) per 10 in ability rating. No roll necessary. (Augmenting is still an action, however.)
Examples: A hero using Sword Help 14 to augment his close combat gets a +1 bonus.
A hero with Sword Help 21 gets a +2 bonus.

However, remember that you can use magic for other things than augmentations. Use your feats or spells as abilities in their own right.

Finally, magic should make things easier, not harder, IMHO. In general, a hero with a Jump High feat can jump higher than a hero with a non-magical jumping ability.

2) We found followers to be too good. Someone with followers just had way too many action points.

I agree with Ron. Many AP is fun. Also, I think you are overestimating the importance of AP. The 10W2 guy with no followers and 50 AP will most likely win over his opponent with an ability rating of only 13 but a zillion followers and a total of 150 AP. Besides, player heroes aren't the only ones with followers.

3) We found followers to be too good, continued. Since followers were based off of your highest skill,

I am convinced that this problem will be fixed in HeroQuest.

it was much more effective to hire followers with a skill than to learn a new skill and characters with a bunch of followers were much more capable in the long run than characters with a bunch of skills.

Hire followers? Wait a minute. A follower is someone that your hero has a personal relationship to. You must pay Hero Points to get followers.

Cheers,

/Peter