I have noticed that several people have felt that crushing blow was powerful and my players are feeling the same way. In road to legend, they feel they have to have an extra weapon and an extra armor piece in the backpack slots. They can't carry anything extra, since they need to have a slot open for treasures and other thigns to pickup. To combat this, I was wondering if this "house rule" seemed out of balance or the completely wrong way to go.

For Silver Age : players gain an extra backpack slot for a total of 4.

For Gold Age: Players gain an extra backpack slot for a total of 5.

Thoughts?

Brian

Are you aware that in the advanced campaign, Crushing Blow is restricted to one copy?

If not, that might make your games much easier.

Or you can draw treachery cards in random.

Crushing Blow is a very powerful card, to be sure. It's not broken, though. It's purpose is to get rid of those uber-powerful gold items that the OL is otherwise powerless to stop. Of course, used on any copper items or most silver items it will seem unfair since those tiers, by and large, are not powerful enough to warrant the response. In an Advanced Campaign where each tier of gear is drawn out over several sessions, CB is going to show up a great many times before it's really needed (ie: before the heroes get to gold equipment.)

Your idea of boosting backpack space by campaign level doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. In theory it gives the heroes more room to carry loot back to town to sell, but in my experiences with the advanced campaign money isn't something the heroes are terribly lacking in anyway. Besides, if you're doing this exclusively to give them some room for their backup gear, it probably won't matter anyway. I'd say this particular house rule is probably safe if it keeps the game interesting for your group.

You could also forbid the use of CB until the gold stage of the campaign. Technically the OL has every right to use it before then, but as I was saying above I don't think there are too many items worth using it on before Gold.