Somewhere on the boards I noticed a post suggesting an idea for a Hero mine and an Overlord Fortress, I liked the idea and decided to play with it a bit. I decided that Tamalir does not need to be the only town to have upgrades. After all if there really was an Overlord trying to take over the world or destroy it, I think more then one city would be looking to stop him. So I have come up with special upgrades that the seven other cities have to offer. Let me know what you think.

The first three offer services to the heroes.

This one offers a relic to the heroes that one of them can equip to combat the forces of the Overlord.

The last three cities have actively training recruits to help the Heroes in their battle against the Overlord's minions (again I owe credit to the original concept of the Archer, Swordsman & Mage, but I unfortunately only have the images and am unsure if it was the old or new boards they were posted on) [These were created/modified using photoshop].

Hirelings
Each hero may have one Hireling (note that there are currently only three hirelings available if all three city upgrades are purchased). Each hireling costs 100 gold to hire and 50 gold per week to keep. During a dungeon or encounter a hireling can only act if the hero who has hired him is currently in the dungeon or encounter (not the town or incapacitated). Hireling stats are equal to the campaign level (Copper/Silver/Gold). Hirelings may use active glyphs to travel to and from Tamalir, but cannot activate them. In Tamalir they may only perform a Temple action to heal, the cost is the same as it is for a hero. Additionally hirelings may not pick up treasure, potions or open chests. If a hireling loses its last wound they return to town like a hero and the party must pay 25 gold for its resurrection, if the party does not have 25 gold then the hireling is returned to its home city and would need to be rehired.

Your oracle card refers to a "fate" card. Did you mean "feat"?

Hirelings:

When and how do they activate? Like a familiar after the owner´s turn?

Do they always Advance, or can they Run or Battle as well?

The Oracle is referring to a feat card not fate. Thanks I misssed that.

Hirelings act after the hero who has hired them, but before familiars. They may only advance in the same way as monsters.

Shouldn´t the swordsman get a speed upgrade in gold level, like the two others do?

In general, with speed 3 he is as slow as a troll, ogre, giant or kobold. Doesn´t seem to fit.

The Swordsman's armor and health increase faster. The Mage and Archer recieve the mobility increase instead.

Now for the Overlord. I like the idea of the Overlord building Fortresses over dungeons, so I have revised the Fortress concept to the following:

Fortress
Instead of moving each of the Farrow's may instead place their Fortress at the dungeon location that they are currently located. If the dungeon has already been explored by the heroes it may be explored once more. Each Fortress grants the Overlord the following benefits:

• Increases the danger level (colour) by one, red encounters instead allow the Overlord to draw an extra encounter card and select one of them for the encounter.
• Every dungeon within 1 space of the Fortress gains the reinforcement bonus noted in the Fortress's description.
• Any city within 1 space of the Fortress has its defense rating reduced by one.
• The third floor dungeon leader in the dungeon where the Fortress is located is the Fortress Commander; he gains +1 Armor and +1 Power die equal to the campaign level in addition to his normal rules.

If the heroes defeat the Dungeon Commander the fortress is removed from the game and the Heroes gain 3 additional conquest and 500 gold. If the heroes flee the dungeon, the Fortress remains and cannot be re-entered.

Also i have made some marker tokens for the Hirelings:

What is Dark armor, swiftness and pride?

They are all Overlord Treachery Power cards included in the expansions.

Not bad, like the concepts. The biggest problem I have with expanding the Overlord's options (something we've toyed around with quite a bit as well), is that unless the OL focuses on the core upgrades early on he is no good later on. However, if you plopped those fortresses around the main keep near end game and sat all four of your Lts on the keep itself you now have 6 power cards in play and 15 extra threat for the final dungeon. Pretty good, especially if you can make sure to buy those upgrades in the three weeks leading up to the end game, where the heroes can't properly get rid of them....

I like the ideas of Town Upgrades and Hirelings as well as fortresses. Just one Nit Picking thing though. Dawnsmoor is an Orc City, thus getting Archers from there dosen't make sence. Instead Orc Warriors would be a better hireling idea. As for the archer or solider you should be able to get both from Riverwatch, after all it is the city of trade, lots of mercenaries to hire.

I really like your idea of hiring companions to help the heroes in the dungeon and encounters, are you thinking doing something like renting horses, pets or summoning skills?

Hirelings: These need to be worth one Conquest Point when they are killed. In addition each time they are brought back they should come back with a cumulative Curse token, so each time they die they are worth more Conquest, forcing the Heroes to eventually abandon them, rather than exploit them with reckless abandon. Additionally, they also shoudln't count as Line of Sight for Spawning. They're also overpowered at the top end - they don't need special abilities, just upgrade their regular rank by one instead.

Vynevale Relic: I'm not keen on the Heroes possesing "White Curse" - that feels more like the preserve of the Overlord. Command 1/2/3 (Level Dependent) would better reflect the Heroes (building up not knocking down) plus immunity to Black Curse.

The Oracle: Not much good if you don't like or plan on using Feats. An alternative might be "Frostgate Brewery" for 2 XP. The Heroes may draw two Rumour cards and choose which one to keep when they visit the Tavern, until Frostgate is eliminated.

Thanks for the thoughts Jake,

I know what you are saying about the hirelings and I can't completely disagree. One of the points of not making them worth 1 conquest is the Overlord could continually attack them to gain free conquest, they are not overly tough since they do not equip gear. I will need to play around with them to ensure they are not too powerful, they are also a drain on the heroes gold which I find to be the more important resource for the heroes, so there is a cost and if they die too often the heroes will quickly find they are short on gold to increase their own effectiveness. Another thought could be for each hero with a hireling, give that hero a curse token.

As for the Relic, don't forget that the relic is made innert when Vynevale is razed and I like the concept of the holy light being distracting to the Overlord's minions. I don't get the same impression from granting a command ability.

I like your suggestion for the Oracle. I'll have to rework the card when I have a chance.

Amazing stuff.

I had to use those ideas instantly (and I'm the OL in our game).

Just a few questions:

Can you get us higher quality jpgs of those cards/markers so we can print em ourselves?

How about introducing wall/defense or arket upgrades for other towns, like repair items which were destroyed (Forge, 4 xp), for a train action at the market.

Or a Vynelvale Cathedral upgrade (4 xp) giving Heroes a blessing for +1 range/+1 damage for all attacks while defending cities from lieutenenants.

Swimming Training in Dawnsmoor (Training area upgrade, 6 xp), allows heroes to gain the Swim skill (500 coins, 5 xp (may pass water squares for 2 mp, roll 3 power dice appropriate to campaign level, all damage ignores armor). Yeah, I know this changes one of the basic game mechanics, but I just absolutely hate the reasoning why heros can fly or jump over lava or pits, but can't pass water (haha) squares.

I wouldn't fiddle with CTs on hirelings. I personally would absolutely go for total-hireling-kill strikes each and every round.

First, they would gain the OL easy CT,

second, if the players respawn them, they drain their money quickly (which is something they have a lot of currently in my campaign).

Thanks for the comments RustyDust. I would love to hear how they work in your games and what your players think of them.

The images are the full versions I have used to print. Make sure to click on the image to open it in a new window and you should be able to save that image to print at a good quality.

Your blessing idea is cool, it could even be a better option to use then the holy relic idea. As for additional city upgrades, they could be included and would work the same as the ones for Tamalir.

One of my side projects is redesigning RTL. It is a pretty hefty overhaul that is incorporating some aspects of Sea of Blood and is mainly intended for my group since we would like to have the game a little more balanced and a different atmosphere. I know many would disagree and rightfully so, since every change I make may/will have dramatic affects on the game balance that will be difficult to forsee. It is still in design, therefore not tested and I'm sure some will dislike some of the concepts. Some examples of changes for RTL2.0 (very original I know ):

• Dungeons may only be entered if you have a rumor (quests) for them (up to 3 rumors at one time).
• Select plot cards are drawn randomly after a fixed amount of total conquest is reached.
• Home cities - the city closest to a dungeon is considered your home city not always Tamalir (ties are selected by the heroes).
• Divine Favor, reduced fatigue upgrades, no treachery in Lieutenant encounters, swimming in encounters and randomized treachery are some of the house/SOB rules integrated.
• The skills listed on a heros card are limits, which means heroes usually cap at 3 skills and prevents melee heroes from having magic or subterfuge skills, this increases cross skilled heroes as they can create certain combos.
• Cities are not destroyed, but instead switch loyalties granting benefits to the side they are allied with. Heroes may also not assault Overlord cities to free them (this is done through a special encounter map).
• Overlord does not gain free conquest as easily.
• Lieutenants resurrect at the Overlord Keep or Fortresses, but take time before they are able to leave the Keep to spread evil again.
• No Tamalir seige win for the Overlord.
• Markets only carry the last campaign level treasures for purchase (I suspect this will be a one many would challenge, but one benefit is that gold treasure will not run rampant).
• Revised Final Battle proceedure and Keep reinforcement.
• and much, much more...

Darkspell - thanks for posting these great cards and ideas. We are incorporating your town upgrades into a just newly started RTL campaign. I love your work. I've seen the Avatars etc. that you have posted and intend to use those down the road as well, they are all fantastic. If you would want to share what else you have incorporated into RTL, I for one would be most interested. I understand why you may be reluctant to post some of your changes, in regard to those who would challenge, disagree and dislike them...nuff said. So please feel free to email me at [email protected].

So far, my son bought the Barracks upgrade and hired a Swordsman. We're at copper level. He helped out in a couple of dungeons, in total killing two regular skeletons, but I don't know if he earned his keep. He's a little slow of foot, as you know. But well armored, that's for sure. His attack isn't overly lethal either. I don't know if I'd consider him worth the trouble/expense at copper level or not. But it was worth trying. We re-set a couple of his aspects, as well. It didn't make too much sense to us that he couldn't move if the hero who had hired him was in town or otherwise engaged. After all, he's a human, and not a familiar or animal companion. Especially in the case of the swordsman who is so painfully slow already. So we went ahead and dropped that restriction. Also, we changed the price of resurrecting him at the temple to 75 gold. 25 gold didn't work for us and 50 didn't seem a lot better....although 75 may be a little pricey. At any rate, once he was killed (and although he only killed two skeletons what he also did was to draw fire away from tanks in marginal situations where they may not have been scratched anyway.., but at least he did that) my son elected not to revive him, and so now he's nothing but a distant memory.

But a very nice add on and thanks for sharing all of these. We haven't tried any of the others yet as it hasn't come up, but we will. As the OL in this campaign I'm looking forward to erecting a fortress, big time.

Thank you again, and I appreciated your post about some of the other changes you made to RTL (especially intriguing is the 3 Rumor/dungeon idea). I'd like to hear about the entire re-design, if you would be so kind as to share that.

Thanks for the info Schmiegel. I'm hoping to get some time over the holiday season to continue my work on RTL2.0. The hard work is always making the dungeons and I don't get a lot of time to play test. So some designs are more or less winging it until I can get a real feel for how well they work.

I saw the Swordsman as more of a defense a caster could hire and keep close to them, the Archer was more for cleaning up a monster with one or two wounds remaining and the Mage is the heavy hitter of the group. The main reason I restricted the hirelings movement when a hero was out of the dungeon was to prevent them from using just the hireling to attempt to clear a dangerous area (I know it isn't overly a feasible idea), but this was an earlier issue with Furr. Basically if the hero isn't around the mercenary slacks off, but your insight is valuable balancing them is very tricky and can throw the balance dramatically. The cost for resurrection is low, but gold I find is a very restricted resource for the heroes, but will probably have the costs restructured to scale with the campaign level and I'm considering removing the upkeep cost per week.

A little more insight on the 3 rumor idea; The heroes won't just dungeon delve randomly. They will only be able to enter a dungeon with a purpose - Rumor, Lieutenant Fortress or Plot Quest Item locations. Giving more of the RPG quest format. The hardest part of this is designing the encounter maps for the cities; these will be used when the heroes attempt to free the city from the Overlord's clutches.

Darkspell said:

I'm interesting to read your RTL 2.0. Can you post this, especially the rule for the 3 rumors at one time (heroes "buy" each rumor as normal ?)

Very cool thanks for your work