Hello all, our Frostgrave group came up with an alternate rule that we have been playing for the last year and we wanted to share. The players in our group have fairly high level wizards and so we wanted more of a challenge. Before implementing the rules we did away with experience gained from killing creatures and stuck only to xp from treasure removal and from rewards through the use of ulterior motive cards (which we love).
The major new rule we revised was the placement of treasure. Instead of each player placing treasure at the beginning of the game, we excepted the idea that there could be an almost infinite amount of treasure on the board that needed to be searched for and found. We decided that a warband member could search a part of the terrain that contained a ruin (building level, rubble, grouping of barrels) as an action looking to see if there was any loot hidden or tucked away. That warband member would then roll a d20 which would correspond on a table which would determine what they found. Since the possibility of finding an almost infinite amount treasure would make the game less enjoyable to play, only a roll of an 18+ would produce a treasure, anything below a 20 normally provoked a monster to spawn at the site of the search, a trap or nothing at all. Even the roll of a 18-20 created a treasure but with a random monster spawned with it.
For example, if a player rolled a 14-17 they would then have to roll on the Table 3 of the random monster chart. If they rolled a 1-4 it was a trap, if they rolled a 5-9 they found nothing, 10-13 would be a level 2 monster chart roll and so on. We discovered that most of the time when people searched they ended up in combat and so treasure wasn't as easily found as we thought it might be. What ended up happening is that warband members that searched ended up in a lot of instant base to base action with some tough monsters...which we all loved. In addition, to make things more interesting we gave thieves a +3 to their d20 roll and treasure hunters a +1. (any roll over a 20 gave the searcher an unencumbered treasure.) This also helped the lowly 20gc thief stay relevant in higher level campaigns but at the same time, a thief suddenly in base to base with a Frost Giant is fantastically entertaining.
Another rule we instituted was random Barbarian encounters. At the end of every turn, every player on the table would roll a d20 and on a roll of 14+ that played would have to roll on the random encounter table of the Forgotten Pacts book. Our gaming table normally has about 10-12 buildings on it and we numbered each building. Once a player had rolled to see what the Barbarian encounter would be, they then would roll a d10 or d12 to see what building they would pour out of.
Needless to say, after a few rounds of bad rolls, the board was rife with bad guys and monsters. Invariably, the games generally lasted about 5-6 turns before the war bands had to retreat due to both casualties inflicted and just the sheer number of enemies on the board, which ended up making the games a quicker more focused affair. Normally once a warband had gotten 3 treasures, it was time to leave.
Again, our warbands were pretty advanced and so we wanted something more challenging at later stages of the game, our players would sometimes engage each other, but with so many bad guys on the field, it lead to some interesting alliances and team work...and yes the occasional betrayal.
15 May 2009, 04:01:23 PM