I had this house-rule idea and wanted to know what others think of it:

1. Pre-encounter, add two Find a Secret Passage cards to the search deck (assuming you have the necessary expansions)
2. If the second such card is drawn in a Secret room (i.e., the heroes search and find the first card, then pass an attribute test on a challenge token in the resulting secret room and find the second card), then they "find a hero" (i.e., a prisoner is found deep in the dungeon...or a similar backstory).

Details that I'm trying to work out:

• Who would the hero be? (e.g., selected randomly? overlord's choice? hero's choice?)
• What class would they have? (e.g., random of the unclaimed classes of the hero's type?)
• What skills? (e.g., skills with a total # of experience points that the heroes already have? starting skills only?)
• How much health and stamina should the hero have (e.g., determined by two red power dice, as in a standup action)?
• Should the found hero be able to recover health after being knocked out, or should they be removed from the game (I vote the later)?

Interested to hear what others think!

Its an interesting idea but before figuring out what the reward is, you should consider how likely it is to actually happen. Its not easy to do the math as you have to make a few assumptions but lets start with on average there will be two tokens with an attribute on in in a secret room Then assuming the hero is not one that is biased towards passing attribute tests, its a bit less than a 50/50 to pass an attribute. So figure unless you are gaming it with something like Lindel you will typically only get one successful search in a secret room. Also note there are two plot decks (baron, raythen) that have plot card which could prevent this from happening.

if the heroes wanted to rig it in their favor they could play lindel as a treasure hunter and wait until they see both secret passages on a draw before triggering it and then lindel is very likely to pass any attribute test. So if you make the reward to strong they can stack it to be in their favor.

With that said if you are looking for ideas how to do it I would suggest if you have the expansion the allies are in they can pick one of those as there new buddy with same rule as allies normality have. So if you kill them they are out. Then for each time after the first that the find it the can select a new skill from the 3 available. Those are not as strong as regular heroes and its not likely heroes would game it too much.

If yo do a regular hero you would need to work out gear and skills for them,

I think your idea has potential.

With that said if you are looking for ideas how to do it I would suggest if you have the expansion the allies are in they can pick one of those as there new buddy with same rule as allies normality have. So if you kill them they are out. Then for each time after the first that the find it the can select a new skill from the 3 available. Those are not as strong as regular heroes and its not likely heroes would game it too much.

Thanks, I'll have to look at the way allies work (I haven't played with them yet), and see if I can mimic it with a regular hero...may be hard.

Regarding the Likelihood: You're right, it's rare as-described. Another idea to consider: they find a hero if the second secret room card is drawn in the same encounter (not just via the challenge tokens)

Regarding the balance issues (Ceasarsalad101): it is not my main goal for this to be a well-balanced feature of competitive Descent play. I hope to use this homemade mechanic only in campaigns where the Overlord doesn't mind losing in favor of ensuring the heroes don't get too frustrated or bored. But true, the skills, gear, and health of the extra hero would need to be attuned so that they do not tip the scales too far in the direction of the heroes.

Since this is such a rare (and powerful) event, what about working it in with a higher occurrence and lower impact as part of a quest and/or series of quests?

In other words, rather than implementing this as a house rule, why not write a quest or set of quests which revolve around the heroes seeking out an ally who then joins their team?

Thanks! I think a quest + rumor card might be perfect to implement this idea. I'll have to work on it...might take me quite some time (months), given the time/week I spend with Descent.

Hmm...specifically you could just use the Serena/Raythen Allies, with all Ally abilities.

true, but it'd be nice to introduce other heroes this way