Playing with 5 or 6 Heroes, buffs and de-buffs

By LeighPouse, in Imperial Assault Campaign

Posted at

So I've been looking through the forums here and on BGG and have seen some great ideas for 5 and 6 Hero campaigns, here are my 2 cents. As with the 2 and 3 Hero campaigns there will be a title card applied to each Hero but a bonus buff card will also be applied to the Imperial player.

- 5 Heroes

"Soldier" (Rebels)

* Apply -2 Health to your Hero (Healthy and Wounded)

"Darth" (Imperial)

* At the start of each mission, gain Threat equal to the lowest Hero's Deployment Value halved (Rounded Up)

* Start the Campaign with 1 bonus Influence

* Increase the Threat Level of each Mission/Side Quest by 1

- 6 Heroes

"Amateur" (Rebels)

* Apply -4 Health to your Hero (Healthy and Wounded)

"Emperor" (Imperial)

*At the start of each mission, gain Threat equal to the lowest 2 Hero's Deployment Values halved and added together (Rounding each value up) (I'm sure I could have worked this number out but I don't have the cards in front of me at the moment)

* Start the Campaign with 3 bonus Influence

* Increase the Threat Level of each Mission/Side Quest by 2

So that's my variation on this idea, what do you guys think?

Thanks for reading, LeighPouse

Edited by LeighPouse
Posted at

We're planning on starting on 5 rebel player campaign. I started make my thoughts here but decided on a separate thread instead as what I was planning is quite different.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/179551-5-hero-campaign-rules-with-hot-seat-ally-hero/

I think in order to balance something like yours you need to consider:

1. What is the hero's deployment value? This isn't defined for heroes - just their skirmish equivalents which are quite different.

2. Too many activations for heroes is overwhelming - unless the imperial player gets a lot of extra influence and units you'd need to limit rebel actions to 8. (With 5 rebels, 2 players only get one action each round).

3. Arbitrary changes to influence and threat levels is hard to balance as things change as heroes 'level up'.

The bottom line is that I think any rules will work if everyone is playing for fun (especially the imperial player - i.e. as a "GM") and not to necessarily to win. If the imperial player is willing to give everyone a good time, then they can adjust could be allowed to change things on the fly (starting with some kind of structure) to ensure that a mission is challenging but not overwhelming for the rebels.

Edited by drleets
Posted at

The 2 and 3 player balance mechanics seem to play on the premise that the Imps have a fixed HP pool they need to wear down, and the Rebels have a fixed number of actions to meet the objectives. The Cash rewards are balanced by the fact that 4 heroes can acquire a cool item in half the time (or twice the gear overall), but use it half as much. XP gain is mitigated by same principle. The 45+45hp and 8 action paradigm is what all the missions were essentially written to.

So: I would think leaving threat and rewards alone, cutting HP by 2, and forcing a rotating hero to skip activation* would keep things on a fairly even keel for 5 heroes.

For 6, you'd want ~9hp each, but to keep it to 8 actions it would get weird. Making two sit out every round is not super fun sounding, but if you try to counter the extra action advantage with more threat, that's not going to be a symmetrical equation. Some missions will tilt one way or the other more dramatically than intended depending on the objectives; some favoring the extra actions, some benefiting more strongly from the extra troops. And as drleets stated, the as the combat effectiveness of a hero activation is increased by XP and items, which means a flat bump would start to lose its effectiveness. Cutting rewards might be a better mechanism for keeping their combat prowess in the 2-4 player 'zone'; but a reduction in movement could be necessary to mitigate their ability to be more places and throw more switches per round than intended.

[edit] *Why skip one hero and not share activation between two for 5p? Because then each hero could bring their class skills, rewards, and items to bear every round; this would act against the balance concept in the example of two players getting to use half as much twice as often.

Edited by ArbitraryGamer
Posted at

So that's my variation on this idea, what do you guys think?

Removing health from the Heros is a very bad idea. Especially the Heroes with already low health (Gideo and Jyn) will become paper targets. It will be trivial to wound them with one activation of a group. This make the game evolve into rocket tag, which isn't fun for anyone.

My take, instead of gimping rebel health pools, would be:
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* New mechanic: limited ammo and out of breath
Weapons now can not be used indefinitely.
Pistols can be shot 2 times before out of ammo.
Rifles can be shot 4 times before out of ammo.
Melee weapons can be used 3 times before user is out of breath.
To reload weapons or catch breath, you can spend 3 movement points.
This mechanic only applies to rebel heroes.
After each attack, put a strain token on your weapon to keep count.
If you take more than one weapon with you on the mission, you treat each weapons pool seperately.
Jyn can still use surge abilities from "empty" pistols.
Numbers need to be tweaked to accurately reflect the bonus actions Rebels have with an additional (2) hero(es).
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* New mechanic: cover
To determine LoS, draw 4 lines from a corner of your figure to all 4 corners of a space occupied by the target figure.
If one line intersects an edge fully covered by a wall, a figure or blocking terrain, apply -1 accuracy to your shot.
If two lines intersect an endge fully covered by a wall, a figure or blocking terrain, apply +1 block to the defense rolls.
Adjacency is not affected by this mechanic.
Imperial figures are affected by this mechanic.
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* New mechanic: choose your destiny - optional
Constructing the Side Deck is different now.
Side Mission deck now changes in size based on how the rebels play. Also the IP can purchase Agenda and Forced Missions at a discount.
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The threat level is raised by 1 for every mission.
The imperial player receives 1/2 (round up) threat level at the start of each mission and may deploy one non-unique deployment card as an optional deployment. If he is allowed an optional deployment via mission rules, these take precedent.
The imperial player recieves +1 open group per mission.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Some of it might not be balanced, but for 5 heroes, this could work. I realize that these new mechanics favor melee characters, though with the 3x weapon usage, I am not so sure anymore. Still, it keeps the core balance of how many activations it takes to wound a hero intact. And the movement points to reload/catch breath should be good to limit their progress towards mission objectives enough. In the worst case one could increase the movement point requirement to reload/catch breath by 1 or decrease it by 1 if it's too limiting.
In all, I like this a lot more than flat out reducing health and increasing threat, because some missions then just break down with more heroes.