Hello all,

I'm nearing the latter half of my custom mini campaign (fully co-op, no 3rd party elements required), and I'm spitballing ideas for the finale. Generically enough, it has to do with fighting a Dragonlord. To spice it up, I want to add a little "monster hunter" esque mechanics where different parts of the dragon can be targeted. I've been very careful (I'd like to think) when making my quest rules so that they are rooted deeply into the rules/mechanics of the game so that there is little interpretation or ambiguity. So here's what I'm thinking:

You'll be instructed to place 2 different colored objective tokens next to the Shadow Dragon monster card. One color is X part, one color is Y part (details aren't too important right now.) I feel that attacking the parts outright just interacts oddly with the steps of combat, seeing as the parts aren't on the map. It also leads to questions about Blast and if you could hit multiple parts. So I'm thinking somewhere in Step 5, after the damage is calculated and before the damage is suffered, the attacking hero my choose to have the hearts dealt to the "body part." This also means I don't have to give the body parts their own defense pool, and I don't have to worry about blast too much. Does anyone have a better way to do it? Would that cause issue with other game effects? I could of course just write something basic like "when you attack the shadow dragon you may attack a part instead and use the dragon's defense pool." But like I said, I like to be very clear with my quest instructions.

How about "When the shadow would dragon take damage, instead of that, the damage may/must* be dealt to a body part".

That way you cover not just attacks, but any skills or abilities that would deal damage to it, and it does not interfere in any way with combat or any other rules.

IIRC, some quests already have similar mechanics.

The way I would tackle this kinda hinges on this being a massive figure (3x2).

• Have each "body part" correspond to orientation of the figure and the exact space that is targeted.
• For sanity/bookkeeping, limit it to 3 sections at most: head, body, tail (front 2, middle 2, back 2 spaces)

And here's my warning against doing this ...

• This is going to create a lot of additional book keeping any way you slice it. Now, instead of 1 health bar, you have 3 to manage.
• In a normal play ruleset, I can see this being a lot of additional math with every little enjoyment payout. (i.e. are you selling the experience of attacking a massive dragon, or are you selling the experience of tackling an ISO9000 form?)
• In order to make this worth it, you NEED to have additional gameplay elements to justify the slowdown that results from the additional hassle. Either tie it to the story, or grant the dragon double-edged bonuses for each region that turn into a negative once it's lost.

So yeah - possible for sure. Just be sure there's gameplay fun that you're adding.

2 hours ago, ssorgatem said:

How about "When the shadow would dragon take damage, instead of that, the damage may/must* be dealt to a body part".

That way you cover not just attacks, but any skills or abilities that would deal damage to it, and it does not interfere in any way with combat or any other rules.

IIRC, some quests already have similar mechanics.

This seems like the least messy solution, but it depends how you intend the parts to function. Is there incentive for the heroes to attack different body parts? Is it harder to attack one part than the other? Does other damage (like lava), or non-attack damage (like conjurer skill Vortex) go on a body part?

To accomplish the above, you'd want:

Setup:

Place 1 red and 1 blue objective token near the [MONSTER TYPE] card. These represent [DRAGON'S NAME]'s [BODY PART X] and [BODY PART Y], respectively.

Special Rules:

(If attacks only): When a hero attacks [DRAGON's NAME], if the attack deals at least 1 damage, the hero chooses to place that damage either on [BODY PART X] or [BODY PART Y].

(If any source of damage): [DRAGON'S NAME] does not suffer damage as normal. When he would suffer damage, the active player instead chooses to place the suffered damage either on [BODY PART X] or [BODY PART Y].

You'll also need some kind of victory condition, or more special rules if there is a mid-quest effect:

If [BODY PART X] has [N] damage tokens on it, immediately [EFFECT OF BODY PART X BEING DESTROYED].

2 hours ago, ssorgatem said:

How about "When the shadow would dragon take damage, instead of that, the damage may/must* be dealt to a body part".

That way you cover not just attacks, but any skills or abilities that would deal damage to it, and it does not interfere in any way with combat or any other rules.

IIRC, some quests already have similar mechanics.

I don't find that wording to be all too great. Very vague and inconsistent with the game language. For example "take damage" is usually written as "would suffer (hearts)" or "If an attack deals at least 1 (heart)." You do bring up a good point though, because the damage could be taken from sources outside of attacks so I may use something like this for damage outside of attacks.

56 minutes ago, thinkbomb said:

The way I would tackle this kinda hinges on this being a massive figure (3x2).

• Have each "body part" correspond to orientation of the figure and the exact space that is targeted.
• For sanity/bookkeeping, limit it to 3 sections at most: head, body, tail (front 2, middle 2, back 2 spaces)

And here's my warning against doing this ...

• This is going to create a lot of additional book keeping any way you slice it. Now, instead of 1 health bar, you have 3 to manage.
• In a normal play ruleset, I can see this being a lot of additional math with every little enjoyment payout. (i.e. are you selling the experience of attacking a massive dragon, or are you selling the experience of tackling an ISO9000 form?)
• In order to make this worth it, you NEED to have additional gameplay elements to justify the slowdown that results from the additional hassle. Either tie it to the story, or grant the dragon double-edged bonuses for each region that turn into a negative once it's lost.

So yeah - possible for sure. Just be sure there's gameplay fun that you're adding.

Yeah, this would probably be too much. Orientation has never been in D2e (which maybe it should have been) and I'm not going to write it in for 1 quest haha. Also, this is going to be AI-based and that just leaves a lot to the player on how to orient the figure (unless I do a lot more writing in the AI rules).

I think Zaltyre has the right of it. The "does not suffer damage as normal" is a crucial line to use here. Also, there would obviously be effects tied to each body party, but I'm only using base game for this campaign so I don't feel comfortable adding abilities like "stealthy" to the the wings seeing as it does not appear in the base game. The wings would probably give the Dragon a free retreat action at the end of the round, or maybe a 2nd activation altogether. Now I have to decide if breaking the parts is optional, or required to kill the dragon. I also have to design the quest that's before this one, I'm getting a little ahead of myself 😋

given it's an AI setting (lost track of that when making the first suggestion) - here's a suggested Plan B

• Just give the beastie 2 or more health bars
• So he comes out, has his rule set, heroes defeat him ...
• then he does the JRPG "this isn't even my final form" deal and the combat progresses with him discarding all health and having a new rule set.
• alternatively, you can change his rule set once he accumulates X-number damage

it's not quite monster hunter, but you can sell a closer approximation to that vibe by dialing back the scale. Flavor text can go a long way with that aspect.