Heroica: Our Houserules

My son and I have been playing Heroica about every other evening these days. To make it more interesting and fun, I have made some minor rule changes, pretty much all of them regarding characters and boss monsters. Let's delve into them.

The Heroes

The Thief: Not much reason to change this guy. He has a knife and will get one gold piece whenever he rolls a crit in close combat.

The Archer: The change here is cosmetic: She's a she in our game. Crit during movement means she can fire an arrow five squares in a straight line, killing monsters at a distance.

The Barbarian: I intend to make him a her as well, there is a nice microfig for that. Before I get my hands on one, he remains vanilla: On a crit in close combat with two monsters adjacent, he can kill both. Which has never happened yet.

The Druid: He keeps his special ability, which is probably the most useful in the game: On a crit during movement he can choose to stand still and regain one HP.

The Knight: His original special power was redundant so instead he can now defend: When hit by any attack, roll a dice. On a crit, you receive no damage.

The Wizard: The same ability as that of the Archer but with only four squares of range. But his fireballs can go around corners.
 

The Cleric: No idea what this dude's deal was originally. In our game he can, on a crit during movement, instead of going heal one HP for an ally (not himself) within five squares.

The Prince: The prince gets the sword-lunge that the knight originally had. Roll a crit during movement and you can go one square to get adjacent to a monster that you then automatically hit.

The King: He is just nobility. So during movement upon rolling a crit, he can choose to remain standing and receive a gold coin from his vasals somehow.

The Boss Monsters

The Dark Druid: This boss got a bit of the short end of the stick originally: He just is a Str 3 monster. I decided that since he owns the Chalice of Life, he should be able to regenerate. And in order to be able to do that, he'd need more than one HP. So his HP-indicator is his hovering-cylinder. When he loses an HP, he gets down on the ground. Hit him again and he dies. If he hits you however, he regains his hovering and thus his second HP.

The Vampire Lord: He is the only boss that is interesting to fight right out of the box. If I interpret the rules right, he starts out as a simple Str3/1HP monster but if you kill him, he gets replaced by the Giant Bat. That thing has its own stat block, starting with 4 HP and doing damage equal to its remaining health. Not bad!

The Golem Lord: Another boring Str3/1HP-Monster. In order to give him at least some flair and since he owns the Scepter of Summoning, whenever he his a hero now and that hero gets pushed back, the now free square gets filled with a bat. That bat then instantly attacks because it's adjacent to a hero. The Golem Lord is thus still fragile but gets a bit of an offensive boost.

The Goblin King: This boss too has Str3 but with the helmet he is wearing, he effectively has 2HP. At least something there and since he is just a goblin, I'll leave him like that. However, I tend to give him a bit more military finesse, usually positioning two guards just inside his throne room so that a hero entering will have to fight both at the same time. This could theoretically also give the barbarian an opportunity to shine.

The Giant Spider: My first own megaboss, I wanted to do something similar but not too similar to the Giant Bat. The Giant Spider has 4HP and 2Str. In addition to that, when it hits you, you go into its net. While in the net, whenever it's your turn, you can roll a die: Crit means you're free. Skull with Sword or Sword means you're struggling for another round. Skull means you lose 1HP. When another caracter goes into the net, you're freed. This leads to interesting fights that favor two-player-interaction over a quick result.

The Camouflage Lizard: My son not only invented this megaboss but also made up the rules. As it is well disguised in the jungle, it can only be hurt by critical hits. It has 2HP indicated by the flowers on its back and deals 2 damage. A difficult beast to fight.

The Minotaur: Highly experimental and as of yet untested. This beast moves around on a fixed course in its labyrinth. When it smells a hero up to six steps ahead, it doubles its movement speed, which is based at 1 for each player taking a turn. When you attack it from the side or back, it's just a 2HP 2Str enemy but from the front only crits hurt it. If you roll a 3 you get bumped away (and then charged as it will take a turn after you). If it manages to charge you (rather than you attacking it), it deals three damage without a roll. As the currently only mobile monster we haven't gotten to test it with live heroes yet.

Miscelaneous rule changes

The Store: In our games you cannot just buy equipment just because you have gold in your backpack. You gotta go to the physical location of the store and spend your cash there. In smaller games (one-evening-one-area-campaigns) there is no store and thus no such backup. Tough luck.

The Inn: Like the store, you can go here to spend money. It's also where we usually start and where our backup characters wait. The inn sells a stout brew for one gold piece per pint and that heals 1 HP worth of battle damage. A cheaper alternative to a full-grown health potion (which is also more useful during adventuring and a limited resource).

No Cheesing Ranged Attacks: In theory, you could beat anything in heroica with bow or fireball staff without ever risking your own skin. Not in our game. When you see an enemy, you better be moving toward it or running away, not pacing back and forth waiting for a crit. Also, while bosses can be hurt by fireballs and arrows, they can now no longer be finished off with such cowardly attacks.

Friendship: We play this game not in competition but cooperatively. Conversely, you can exchange money and items if you're not too far away on the board. And we win together or not at all.

Permadeath: When a hero reaches 0 HP, they are dead. No getting back up. To make up for it, we get a backup character and can rescue other characters from the prison cells on larger campaign maps.

Terrain interactions: The base game already has some obstacles and interactions. We added to them. There are edible healing plants you can gather for one HP. There are traps that do a fixed amount of damage if you pass them. There are trap fields that you better avoid.