HeroQuest stages and rewards

[PhilHibbs]

I find the rules for HeroQuests rather vague and unhelpful. Cults of Glorantha basically just says "you do all the stages, and you get some kind of reward".

I think it makes sense to use Hero Points as the currency with which rewards are purchased. You gain Hero Points by doing the stages right, lose them for getting it wrong (e.g. winning where you are supposed to lose), and at the end you get a shopping list of possible rewards that you purchase with Hero Points - those you gained on the quest plus any you already had.

This then leads to questions about numerical scale. How much should Rune Touched cost? Should they all have the same cost, or should some of the clearly more useful ones (e.g. Man Rune) cost more than others? How much are various magical rewards, e.g. a blessed item, a spell matrix, a POW crystal? What if a player wants to increase their skills, should he be able to purchase IRs with Hero Points?

I'm going to be running a quest tomorrow, I'll probably make these details up as I go along, and will post the outcome here. Your thoughts are welcome.

 

[PhilHibbs]

It occurs to me when thinking about the Hero Point cost of Rune Touched that they should be lower than Heroic Abilities. As it stands, a HeroQuest might award the questor with being Rune Touched, or it might give them the insight that is prerequisite to purchasing a Heroic Ability. The Heroic Ability still has to be purchased with Hero Points. So, in a points-mean-prizes Hero Quest, those two - getting Rune Touched or qualifying to purchase a Heroic Ability - are rewards that are on a par. Either that or I upgrade the Hero Quest award so that the ability itself can be purchased with the Hero Points gained, so the points awards from stages have to be sufficient to come out with between 8 and 12 Hero Points.

 

[sdavies2720]

Phil,
I'm on the road, so away from my materials -- I haven't used RuneTouched, so from memory I can't really comment on the balance issue.

I'll throw one other idea out there: I've been giving players an option to sacrifice POW for their characters to fully enter a heroquest. A character who does not sacrifice POW can still 'go' but does not participate fully in the quest (no goodies for them, but they can help the group achieve goals).

* On my HeroQuests, all skills are reduced. Usually they are divided by 1 + POW required to be sacrificed. So the players get an early warning how tough the quest will be.

* If successful, they get the POW back in some form -- sometimes they can win the actual characteristic back. Other times it manifests as magical weapons or other treasure.

It's been a way for us to have really high-powered characters who still get challenged in battles and a way for players to have some idea what kind of a challenge they are getting into, and the level of likely reward.

Steve

 

[PhilHibbs]

Also I don't have a clear idea as to how many Hero Points a quester should figure on spending to do a quest "right", it could be quite a lot. If a stage requires him to, for example, lose five times in a gambling contest, and he has a fairly high gambling skill and keeps winning, that could burn through loads. I'm thinking that one of the benefits of having supporters is that questers can call upon supporters' Hero Points.

I'm also wondering what benefit I will give for having a Trickster along. I'm thinking that for a start I will let him use anyone's Hero Points for any purpose. Maybe I will let him make a Lore roll to "catch" spent Hero Points for re-use.