Combat Stats & Weapon/Armor

[torilen]

in D&D, targets have a set defense, typically known as AC (Armor Class). The attack roll, usually a d20, attempts to
meet or exceed that AC. In old school, basic D&D, you had to meet or get below the AC, if I remember correctly...
because the AC's ran from high to low, starting at 10 and running to as much as -2 or -3.

I've actually considered attempting to do something like this with HQ...in fact, I was going to do an attack value
and a defense value for all monsters and traps, and the heroes would be the only ones rolling. It would make things
a little clearer for the combat, and speed things up by eliminating some of the rolls needed.

I found it difficult to make it work, however. It would require some serious analysis to make things balance out
so that the only thing you were changing were the monster statistics.

[knightkrawler]

For me, it's the most important thing to preserve the hq spirit.
By that I basically mean the combat dice and the combat system. Even if I someday make a full-fledged RPG out of Heroquest, I will base as many mechanics as possible on those dice.
Really, they are the heart of the game. No way I'm gonna change that.
I won't even allow the German-style colored combat dice.
And as the GM, I want to roll. I wanna be part of the game, and much of the fun stems from everybody rolling dice and hoping for a little luck.

I'm a DIEhard DIEpurist!

[el_flesh]

I agree on that! Early on Beernut suggested percentiles, but we rejected it cos we LOVE seeing those SKULLS come up!
Now you have situations where we gotta roll the dice several times, picking out the bad results and keeping the skulls there until the roll is done! Much more long than percentiles but infinitely more COOL!

Also I recently painted my skull dice carefully with acrylic paint. They look almost like new, although the skull shields got a touch messy. I don't want to cover them with anything as I don't want to affect the rolls any more than I already might have...

[knightkrawler]

You could also not allow the elf to use the battleax - it's not an image we expect!
I usually give him a 'bow' anyway (crossbow would be for the dwarf or a flunky...)

Funny you should post that.
I have already written down those rules, but I want to preserve this here thread for discussing the combat and equipment mechanics.
In a nutshell, I broke down the four original Heroes into Hero Classes - 4 warrior types, 4 scout types, 4 spellcasting adventurer types, 4 full-fledged sorcerer types.
In a group of 4 players, each of these four groups must be presented. Each class has different advantages and disadvantages, of course.
Additionally, I wrote down some rules and advatageous/disadvantageous attributes for playable races.

e.g.:
only the warrior classes wear platemail,
a swordmaster has to have more Attack than Defend dice through equipment,
a berserker (barbarian) will not use any projectile weapon,
some of the scout classes get a +1 AD bonus on bows, but not on any other ranged weapon,
dwarfs need not sacrifice an action or movement points for reloading a crossbow,
different races are assigned different dice for movement,
different classes are assigned different movement bonuses
-> the combination of the last two is modelled after this: Elven Warrior has 1D8+5 Movement points, Dwarven Swordmaster has 1D4+6 Movement points per round.

And many more. Probably I'll open a thread for Hero-building when my skill system is finished.