HQ2 – Doing things without skills (2013)

Submitted by Michael Lewis on Sun, 19/05/2013 – 16:13

I’m going to give Heroquest a try for the 1st time and had a question about skills. The genre is old school D&D. How do you use a skill if its not on your character sheet? Some examplesTo see if you see or hear somethingTo resist a spellHow do you know if something should be under your keyword like wizard or Warrior or if something is unrelated and deserves a rating of 6?

Submitted by Newtus on Wed, 22/05/2013 – 09:47.

I’d echo pretty much what Tim  & Charles said. So much so that I did a HQ ‘genre pack’ for old school D&D full of examples, class keywords, spells, monsters and even and example adventure;

Regards

;O)Newt

http://d101games.co.uk

Submitted by Tim Ellis on Mon, 20/05/2013 – 09:47.

It’s good to think about these things before they come up in play!

One thing you might consider is which “skills/abilities” would naturally come under which keyword.   – If you have the basic D&D Character Classes “Fighter”, “MU”, “Cleric”, “Thief” you might, for example assume they cover the following areas (you might want to give them more descriptive names, but for clarity I’ve stuck close to the D&D “abilities” )

Fighter

  • Kick Open Doors 
  • Bend Bars
  • Resist “Physical” Magic

Thief

  • Pick Locks
  • Find Traps
  • Listen at Doors
  • evade “Dodgeable” Magic

(Good) Cleric

  • Resist (Evil Cleric) Magic
  • Cast Clerical Magic

MU

  • Resist “Illusion” magic
  • Cast Arcane Magic

This at least gives you a “starting point” for some of the more common “skills” that you might need in dungeon exploring …

Are perception roll necessary?

Submitted by RoM on Thu, 23/05/2013 – 11:09.

I agree with Tim, but I would allow my players a much wider range of uses:

  • The fighter could seduce somebody by showing off his/her physical qualities.
  • The thief probably knows lots shady people in town.
  • The good cleric could use his/her professional keyword as an augment in almost all civilised encounters. He/she might be a good singer, too.

When it comes to perception you can also assume that certain professions train you in various awareness abilities. A fighter should always have the chance to detect camouflaged bandits on the road. A thief could always guess in which pockets the rich merchant holds his money. When the fighter could get a penalty though, if he walks through an elf infested enchanted forest. Same goes for the thief if he wants to steal from a person in strange robes he/she has never seen before.

However, in many situations you might want to drop perception rolls entirely. Failing a perception roll is certainly realistic, but is it fun too? Failing to see the Orcs behind the rock might be, failing to see the hidden door that leads to the dungeon’s next level might not. Heroquest suggests that the narrator always checks if a failure would be fun. If yes, go for the roll. If not, give the players an automatic victory (but let them bleed for it).

hope this helps

Submitted by Charles on Sun, 19/05/2013 – 21:16.

It’s all done by plausibility tests: does it feel right to most of the people in the game?

Say for example, that in your game you expect a warrior to be tough as part of the warrior keyword (this can be explicit or implicit). Then, if the spell sounds like it is doing a physical thing that might damage the warrior, the warrior can resist with tough.

Note that HeroQuest abilities are much broader than skills. A skill is something a hero can do. In comparison, an ability might be ‘hated by orcs’, which the Hero can use to achieve certain goals.

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