D&D 4E HeroQuest to 4ed

[DeadGod]

Remember the old Milton Bradley + GW board game?

To make a long story short, I have a friend who likes combat and tactics, but doesn't really like "all that talking stuff" involved with roleplaying. It seemed that a story-light, "kick in the door" style dungeon crawl like HQ fit the bill. My attempt here is to borrow a few mechanical concepts from the game and insert them into 4ed.

Here are some rules tweaks I am thinking about-

Searching for secret doors / traps:
In HQ if you search, you auto-find these things. This facilitates simple rules and faster play. Unfortunately, it leads to players spam-searching in every room. That never sat with me quite well.
My idea:
Have the players make a search check. If they succeed they find the door/trap. If they fail they still find the door/trap, but they took too long doing it and have a random encounter. This should provide a mechanic to disuade searching every room every time.

Searching for treasure:
In HQ if you search for treasure, you auto-find any treasure that was placed in the room. If there is no placed treasure, you instead pulled a card from the treasure deck. This deck had both treasure cards and hazard cards. The interesting thing about the mechanic is that once a treasure card was drawn it was removed from the deck, but hazard cards were shuffled back in. The more treasure you found, the more dangerous it was to continue searching.
My idea:
Construct my own treasure deck using treasure parcels and traps/monsters. I will reserve some treasure parcels for placed treasure (namely magic items, as it is important for the party to get ahold of these things, but some money-based parcels as rewards.) Money and disposible item parcels will go into the deck. There aren't enough parcels in a single level to build a sizeable deck, so I will include both level 1 and level 2 parcels in the deck at first. Between adventures I will "refill" the found parcels with the next available parcels on the list. (So, for example, after the first quest for every treasure card pulled I will start replace it with a level 3 parcel.)

Any critiques on these rules ideas? Any additional ideas?

 

[Tenniel]

Remember the old Milton Bradley + GW board game?
If they fail they still find the door/trap, but they took too long doing it and have a random encounter. This should provide a mechanic to disuade searching every room every time.

Oh, yes... good times.

Might be a predictable for a random encounter each time. How about a random event deck, containg (lots of) random encounters, cave ins, lights going out, equipment failure, periods of anti-magic, excuses to lose healing surges, DM power ups (one off +2s, Action Points, bonus minions to use in upcoming combats) and just blank cards.

 

[Alex319]

Searching for secret doors / traps:
In HQ if you search, you auto-find these things. This facilitates simple rules and faster play. Unfortunately, it leads to players spam-searching in every room. That never sat with me quite well.
My idea:
Have the players make a search check. If they succeed they find the door/trap. If they fail they still find the door/trap, but they took too long doing it and have a random encounter. This should provide a mechanic to disuade searching every room every time.

This sounds like a really good idea, and might even be useful more generally. Even in regular D+D there are two main problems with searching:

1. There's no drawback to searching, and thus no reason not to spam-search whenever you can. This often tends to slow down the game, and also eliminates any strategy about when to search.

2. Having a percentage chance to find something means that if there's any item crucial to the adventure, you can't put it in a hidden treasure chest or behind a secret door because that means that if they don't roll well enough, they're screwed. Also, if there's something there that they don't find, it might as well not have been there at all - it will play no part in the adventure. Essentially the search skill becomes a simple "random chance to get bonus treasure" rather than a strategic element of gameplay.

Your system solves both of these problems:

1. The drawback to searching is that you run the risk of a random encounter.

2. Since players are still guaranteed to find the item if they try, you can put a plot-crucial item behind a "search wall" and not run the risk of making the adventure unwinnable.

 

[DeadGod]

A couple of additional rules considerations I'm having:

There will be no extended rests. Quests will be designed with 4 to 5 standard encounters in mind. This eliminates any "sleeping in the dungeon" issues. If you can't finish the quest, you always have the option of coming back later (for which I will essentially design a new quest with the same objective and theme.)

Short rests are instant (instead of 5 mins.) Essentially, after there are no active monsters or traps left, characters regain per-encounter powers, etc. Characters will have the chance to fire off any remaining healing abilities before their powers refresh. The intention of this modification is to keep the game moving. The logic of stopping for a short rest can often lead to extraneous conversation and actions. ("We head out of the dungeon, rest for 5 mins, and then come back . . .")

There will be no keeping track of healing surges. If a power requires you to have or spend a surge, it is assumed you have one to spend (this includes the second wind action.) After combat everyone automatically heals one surge worth of HP. The intention of this is two-fold. Firstly, I would like to build in a little fudge room for the "no extended rests" above. Secondly, I would like to remove the book keeping that comes with tracking surges. (It will be hard enough on a new player to have a fist full of power cards, a pool of HP, and a token to represent an action point.)

I have three questions:
#1. Regarding the "no short rests" rule, should I allow players to fire off unused second winds after a combat too?

#2. Does the single free healing surge after combat seem like too much/not enough recovery?

#3. Is there any additional criticism or suggestions anyone cares to offer up?