After playing a lot of games with the heroes expansion, my wifes warrior looks as follows:

Her skills are Hack´n Slash, Blademaster and Riding, her equipped items are the Warding Bracer and the blade allowing to take all lore symbols as hits. Thus given, she fights with 5 base dice, hitting the target on 50 % and ignoring all terrain combat restrictions. Further she is allowed to ignore one SoS Symbol rolled against her, making her nearly immune to blue unit attacks (and attacking her is an act of suicide, due to here horrible battle back). She moves 4 hexes and is allowed to attack a second time after scoring a flag or forcing a unit to retreat, making it nearly impossible to avoid her.

Of course there is a way to defeat her: dropping a fireball at her worked once....but else? Attacking her is suicide, shooting at her is futile, avoiding her is impossible... So the most games I just hope to get some cards allowing me to hit her on lore symbols, while I watch her wrecking my whole army in a one woman show, her own guys standing right behind in save distance and cheering applause.

In fact playing with or against this ridiculous monster doesn´t provide any fun. Neither me, watching her doing my army all allone, nor my wife who always feels some kind of uncomfortable winning a game just due to one model and not because she is using a superior strategy.

What where the thoughts while generating the rules for the warrior? This is a serious question, I really wonder....

Why is a champion using the bracers better protected then any leader could ever be?

Why are the dice of champions in fact not reduced due to terrain restrictions?

Why has a warrior champion two base dice? Combined with Hack ´n Slash there is barely a reason to play the warrior as a leader - especially under the aspect to buy here the Warding Bracer after 5 or 6 games.

Those imbalances really cut some of the great fun the heroes expansion provides. Or did I get something wrong about the warrior?

If so, please tell me.....

That warrior definitely sounds like the stuff legends are made of !

The fireball was my first thought as well, although the Rogue would have a couple of cards that you could use, such as sneak attack or scatter, the warrior's Parry Lore card could be useful, as it brings the opponent's dice roll down to two. The wizard's "Slow" card does the same. But as you said, fireball is the way to go if you want to eliminate the hero.

That is the kind of hero that draws too much attention to itself IMO. Make an example out of him! ... I mean her!

how do you defeat that monster? he's right, no fun!

I'd consider it to be a "David vs. Goliath" type of challenge. Even the strongest of Warriors fall eventually. Plus this time around, David's got a Lore council!

That being said, if your wife plays Battlelore, consider yourself lucky no matter how bad things are on the Battlefield. At least you get to play often!

This is exactly what I was afraid of; heroes dominating the battlefield so much that strategy goes by the wayside. I hate the idea of a one man (or woman) wrecking crew.

Now, to be fair, I have not had a chance to play heroes yet, so I don't have any first hand experience. What about others who have played? Are you getting the same results?

Not to get this wrong: Heroes is a great expansion, and most of the other heroes fit good into the game without dominating it. The warrior as a champion is an exception - though an annoying one. Don´t hesitate to try the heroes, overall they provide a lot of variety and fun.

She's clearly a fearsome fighter.

Let's all remember, however, that this is a max-ed out hero, and the idea is that such a being should be powerful. This hero has the max # of skills, max # of artifacts, and the artifacts are also optimized.

A beginning warrior is not nearly so powerful, and a warrior champion is going to get killed several times along the way to becoming a one-woman army.

Again, sticking strictly to the rules, this hero will be forced into retirement pretty soon.

Even so, it does seem that this particular combo may be a bit too powerful...

A few other thoughts.

You mention a fireball that took her down once. When she died, she was supposed to lose all artifacts equipped. Did you do that?

There are some other hero skills that could be relevant, such as assassinate, and also some anti-hero artifacts. The thief and wizard abilities to destroy an artifact are relevant, but too uncertain to bank on.

Some potential house rules might include not allowing hack-n-slash and blademaster to stack. Also, it's pretty reasonable not to let the warder stack w/ riding.

Of course she lost all here artifacts. She took another weapon (in the first hand she used the sword of the champion with +2 dice), wich was the blade allowing lore symbols to count as hits and bought the bracers again.....

And assassinate is not a good choice - you have to go into close combat with her...same about destruction, thievery and anti hero artifacts. But of course you can try to force your luck....

A starting warrior with hack´n slash has 4 dice as a champion. As long as she stays in any terrain, she won´t die that often, but is still allowed to attack with 4 dice. Of course not as powerfull as a level 3 warrior with the bracers on a horse, but still a fearsome foe from the beginning on. If the warrior doesn´t play kamikaze style, she will reach level 3. Remember, she´s got 5 health points.

I have several level 3 heroes at this time and quite some experience with this expansion. Believe me, no other heroe has this potential of ruining a game than the warrior has.

I haven't had the pleasure of playing this expansion yet, so I'm out of thoughts.

It'll be interesting to see if Borg can shed any light on the situation.

jurge

From your posts, I take it you and your wife have played well over 20 adventures, perhaps many more. You are a lucky man indeed, to have a partner to share so many hours of BattleLore.

It also sounds like you have personally enjoyed creating and building up a number of Heroes to challenge her one woman army. There are ways to defeat a Hero no matter what skills or artifacts the character has, but for your sake, I do hope your wife has also vested some time building other Heroes, if not, when the one woman army is killed and it will happen, there is nothing worse than a spouse’s scorn.

I am sure others would be interesting to read about in what manner your wife’s character achieved such stature, I know, I would. Actually early on in the design of Heroes, it was my intent, to have a place for players to record the actions of their Heroes. But as we change publishers, the back of the Hero’s Character Sheet and a place on the BattleLore web site to tell the tales of Heroic acts, somehow got lost in the move.

I do hope others are enjoying the challenges of Heroes as much as you guys have.

Enjoy!

Richard Borg

After reading the above, giving some thought, and doing some analysis, my current tentative conclusion is that the Warding Bracers contain an error. They should be changed as follows:

Current: champion ignores one SoS

Modified: Unit attacking a champion rolls one few dice

For details about my reasoning, see this thread on BGG.

Basically, I'm not bothered by the warrior becoming very powerful and deadly. What I don't like is the warrior becoming virtually invulnerable. It strikes me as breaking the spirit of the game.

YMMV.

Thinking a little bit "out-of-the-box", after reading this topic I was tinkering with the idea of writing some kind of Adventure explicitly tailored to get rid of a similar Hero.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Heroes' expansion, for me, is that it allows some kind of lite roleplaying-metagaming in the style of great classics like Heroquest, or GW's Mordheim, even if the level progression of the Hero isn't as yet supported by a global campaign system, weaving scenario's premises and special rules with what's happening in "the days of our (gaming) lives".

After all, the Treasure/Experience/Artifact interplay is a way to set alternative objectives in a complex and game enriching manner (what in an Epic battle where personal motives of multiple Heroes conflict with the general strategy? What if the action of a Hero triggers some other events on the battlefield? I know, this was the intention of Battlelore design from the start...), and, really, such things as the Wound system already attempt to grant the retirement of a Hero when too strong.

Really, even while I find deserving the attempt to rework some rules, I find that using the problem as a hook to generate a "narration" more engaging...

For example, let's see something along these lines:

"Burn at the stake" Adventure

"The impressive exploits of a Hero attracted the unwanted attention of Holy Inquisition. Like Jean D'Arc, someone suspect that him (her) is in league with some dark creature, even amongst his (her) best friend. Without much clamor, the character is handed to the torturers, who try him (her) hard; a small group of his (her) most loyal followers, however, tries one last move tho save their friend."

Special Rules.

PREREQUISITE: Inquisition must find evidence of the diabolical pacts the Hero has signed. To play this Scenario, the Hero accused must have killed at least 12 FIGS as a champion in a single battle, and must have done so in at least two battles (accuser is obliged to prove his word).

AT THE START of the adventure the Hero loses all his artifacts and one wound. If this would kill the Hero, don't remove him yet, but wait till the conclusion of the adventure.

Place the Hero on one of the baseline hexes. He cannot move nor fight for this adventure (he's deep thrilled by the preparation of his own execution, after all!). The player controlling the Hero could place another of his Heroes or create one ex-novo to participate in this battle.

VICTORY CONDITIONS

The attacker must score (X) banner AND taking control of the Hero hex to win. The defender must score (X) banner to win.

If the attacker wins, the Hero is freed. If he lose his last wound at the hands of Inquisition, it could nonetheless retire in the Council.

If the defender wins, the Hero loses another wound; if he's dead, he's gone for good; if he's still alive, the attacker must pay a ransom to regain him.

So, we have a Scenario that allows to wound severely an hateful (or misinterpreted, poor boy - girl) Hero, speeding, hopefully, his retirement, while mantaining the freshest and creative approach of the expansion, in a fair manner (cause there are "prerequisite" to trigger it).

What do you think? I beg pardon if I somewhat hijacked this tread, but I was interested in exploring new territories...

I personnaly would not accept to play this scenario if it were my hero in the aim. What's the point in building up a hero's status through multiple game sessions only to purposely put him in harms way by playing a scenario designed to eliminate him?

But don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of speedy retirements myself. Hopefully mine!

I understand the critic, and more or less it's a matter of taste, I think. The intent was to trigger the chance to play the Adventure when, and only when, the Hero become a nuisance more than an enjoyment, for all the players involved, as in this case; or, if you prefer, when normally the players decides to rule out or rectify an artefact, hero, etc . The key to solve the ambiguity of my method would be fine-tuning the prerequisites. I choose a count of figs killed more or less equivalent to half the units to beat to win a standard adventure, and the fact that this has not to be an isolated happening, but a repetitive occurence. It requires some bookkeeping from the part of the "accuse", too.

Beside, being the masochistic human being I am, Ithere is another thing that could be unpleasant: the Scenario I suggest is a bit on the grim side of dismissing the Hero. Other options could be:

- Sanity: contemplating the ruinous and abhorrent murders of the Hundred Years War the Hero must do a Sanity check, beat cultists or reunite with cosmic entities more ancient that death itself (woooops, no, that's darker than before).

- D&D style boooming epicness: the Hero ascends to a higher spiritual status, more godling than human: but to reclaim his last reward, he must face his final challenge - like beat a really beefed up Monster-Dragon-Champion of Evilness-Doppelganger, etc...

<<But don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of speedy retirements myself. Hopefully mine!>>

I see nothing wrong here! Oh, sweet retirement ( )!

In what manner did she achieve her stature, hm, thats quite easy to tell.

She started with Hack´n Slash and a nonrelevant artifact. In the first scenarios she learned, that a warrior champion is ideal to seize the witches hut: she is attacked only with 2 dice, while she can retaliate each attack with 4 dice, making it very unattractive for any enemy unit to stand adjacent to the occupied witches hut. For the same reasons I most times decided not to take the witches hut by myself, for when I did the warrior caned me out of there with her 4 against 2 dice ratio. Thus she gained some extra experience and artifacts, helping here developing quite fast. Reaching level 2 she decided to take Swordmaster as second skill, for the Champion thing seemed to work quite good. Now she was most the time lurking around in some forests or hills to keep a 5 to 2, or in the worste case 5 to 3 dice ratio to here enemies. Anyway, she died once that way by bad luck. Later on she gained the bracers, giving her the opportunity to play more offensive and thus inflicting more damage. After some games she died again - a fireball dropped from the sky. She didn´t spend any money by the time, so she just bought the bracers again, together with a fancy sword. Taking riding as her third skill, things became pretty ridiculous. I described here abilitys in my first post...many games ended with here scoring 5, sometimes even 6 flags all on her own...

So at the end there are still the following questions:

Why can the warrior stack up skills to a number of 5 base dice, artifacts not counted?... (7 with the sword of the champion)

Why are champions dices not reduced due to terrain restrictions?

Why is a champion wearing the bracers better protected than any leader could ever be? At least a leaders unit has to suffer casualties from attacks, but attacks at champion with the bracers most times just vanish without any effect.

I didn´t find the edit function, so I start a new post.

To point some of the warrior issues up, I want to compare a maxed warrior champion with a warrior leader:

Both are level three and share Riding and Swordmaster. The champion uses Hack´n Slash, the leader uses Bruiser.

The leader reaches her maximum fighting power, when she joins a red cavalry unit. Both use the best protecting artifact for their role availible, thats the bracers for the champion and the orb, allowing to ignore one SoS Symbol from cavalry strikes for the cavalry leader. Now lets look at their stats:

- Both fight with 5 base dice, but the leader may roll an additional dice for each SoS Symbol rolled. One point for the leader - sadly, its the only on.

- Terrain: The leaders dice are reduced due terrain restrictions, in the case of forests, buildings or uphill down to 3 dice. The champion still rolls her 5 dice.

- Mobility: the leader moves 2 hexes and is not allowed to move trough friendly units. Champion: 4 hexes and friendly units aren´t obstacles.

- Protection: The leader ignores one SoS symbol from infantry or cavalry strikes. The champion does ignore one SoS symbol, that means from cavalry, infantry AND ranged combat (crossbows, long bows...) Further the leaders unit is still hit by helmets, the leader has to check a critical hit, if his unit is destroyed.

- Morale: The champion may reatreat 1-3 hexes to an convenient position even through friendly or enemy units (accepting their free strike, of course), the leader follows the rule of her unit, meaning in the worst case extra casualties.

Summing those above up, there really is the question: why should I choose my (warrior) hero to act as a leader? And other heroes do not even reach the fighting skills of the warrior leader. Of course they have distinct advantages, but the warrior champion overtops them all in profitableness on the battlefield.

She has more base dice than a red unit, nearly no restriction due to terrain (she has to stop on forrests and cant pass rivers, basically), has an outstanding movement speed, and with the bracers just lets any dice rolled against her perish without the slightest effect, unless she has very bad luck. And even if she has: there are 5 health points to lose.

To bring this to an end, I for myself hold the view, that this are too many benefits for the warrior as a champion to call this character balanced.

(By the way, I´m fine with the warrior as a leader)

For what it's worthy, my view on the thing is that the Bracers of Warding are "broken" but they are easy to fix.

Granted, a warrior can become a powerhouse, but if you make a small tweak to the bracers per my previous post, then the problems go away, IMO.

My feeling is that a warrior should be great at mopping up weak units, but if a champion wades into the center of a huge melee, that champ should figure on probably dying, bracers or no.

By making the little change I suggest, you accomplish exactly this. The champ gets good protection, but is still very kill-able.

As an aside, I'm considering a house rule that no champion can cause more than 2 figs damage in a any single attack no matter how many dice they roll. Then I'd replace the warrior skill assassinate with "battle fury" or some such to let the warrior do up to 3 figs in a single swat. This change, however, is more of a personal taste issue vs the warders just being clearly out of the spirit of the game.

I hope this doesn't seem blatant, but seeing Battlelore as a whole, things tend a balance themselves on a larger scope.

I've briefly reviewed Dragons'rule, and they seem to be (quite appropriately, I think) Champions bane. Everyone of these monsters could retaliate against your enemy's powerhouse without too much fear of retaliation, thanks its movement range and flying (well, the wife's Champions has an impressive mobility, but perhaps it will become less of a worry). Speaking of the ability, Poison could be a mild nuance, Ice could seriously limit movement and dice ot the Hero (I think the 2 dice cap apply in this case, but perhaps I misunderstood the rule) and Fire could to the same with a good damage dose to level the play.

Yet, this is a sort of expansion-counter-expansion argument, and could come out more annoying than resolutive... I hope for the latter, however!

"Burn the girl, Trogdor! we're on your side!"