The first expansion in Paizo's GameMastery™ Item Cards line, Hero's Hoard contains 110 playing-card–sized cards to help GMs track important treasures. Each card features a beautiful full-color illustration of an item (weapon, armor, wondrous item, etc.) on one side, with a text description and room for notes on the opposite side. A GM can hand these out when their PCs get treasure and watch as players learn to love managing their booty. A code on each card helps GMs track which card corresponds to which treasure.
Useable by experienced GMs and novices alike, this product fits perfectly into any GameMaster’s arsenal.
Hero's Hoard booster packs contain:
1 armor (cards 01–15)
2 weapons (16–39)
2 potions (40–57)
1 scroll (63–72)
1 wand (79–88)
2 wondrous items (89–110)
1 ring (58–62) or 1 rod or staff (73–78)
1 foil card, which may be any card from the set.
Display boxes contain 12 booster packs.
Complete sets include a complete set of the foils along with a complete set of the non-foil cards. In addition, there are duplicates of some of the non-foil cards.
Sample cards. Click to enlarge.
Illustrations by Vincent Dutrait.
If you have questions, that last thread would be a good place to post to get them answered.
B: The word "random" doesn't properly convey the structure of the packs.
In addition to the foil, which can be any card, each pack should contain:
1 armor (cards 1–15)
2 weapons (16–39)
2 potions (40–57)
1 scroll (63–72)
1 wand (79–88)
and 2 wondrous items (89–110).
Half of the packs also contain 1 ring (58–62); the other half contain 1 rod or staff (73–78).
C: A few of the "reviews" below are from people who apparently don't have actual firsthand experience with the product. (Note phrases like "I was... ready to buy this until...," "As far as I know," and "I... blew this off as a no sale.") You might want to consider that when you weigh their opinions.
Good:
1. Great artwork.
2. Fantastic cards. Well done, though pencil doesn't completely erase off of the white area on the back.
3. The starter with 54 non-random was really nice. Exactly what a DM would want.
Bad
1. The random boosters. Granted, I bought a box of booster and got decent distribution. Can't complain there, though I didn't get them all.
2. Pricey to collect the whole set, unfortunately.
Ugly
1. Don't have anything for ugly, just wanted to make a Speghetti Western reference.
Suggestion: Don't make them random. I like the idea of "kicker" sets like the previous guy said. Also, it would be nice if there was a place where you could go to trade or buy individual cards to complete sets.
they call it "random" yet most packs are nearly duplicate of another.
if each pack is 11 cards, and there are 110 cards in the set, then in theory, with 10 packs, you should have the majority of the set.
they should simply release a large set with the most common tools of the trade.
definatly going to use my own index card system.
This is a good product even if the randomness means you can't buy exactly the cards you want. The cards are not distributed with different levels of randomness (i.e., there are no commons, uncommons, rares) and the format was chosen due to the constraints of selling such a product (not to try and bilk poor ignorant customers). There is a thread discussing the process for designing this product for those interested in becoming educated about the product's constraints.
The cards are well illustrated, have plenty of space to write, and are a useful game aid.
Random packaging pioneered by WoTC with Magic, then followed up with their D&D minis and now everyone is trying to suck more $$$ out of us RPG fans by making everying "random".
Big corporation greed showing little concern for the long time fan/players of the game.
This idea was a brilliant one, until they tried to make it into a collectible card game. I was completely ready to buy this until I looked at the price and smelled something fishy. Then I looked at the fact that each pack contains "randomly selected cards" and groaned in frustration. The full 110-card set would have been perfect...but I have absolutely no desire to try to "get 'em all". I want the confidence to know that what I buy is what I want. A smarter move would have been to make "kicker packs" like potion and wand packs or a magical weapon pack. This....ugh, I just don't know. I guess it's good for a person who wants to randomly stock their dungeon...
At first, I was pretty turned off by the idea of a 'random' aspect to these cards. As a GM, I have no need for a 'random' or 'collectable' distribution format. I'm going to distribute the treasure I want to distrubute on pretty much any factor other than what card's I happen to own. I ranked this item at 1 star out of 5.
I'm going to pump this up to a 3. Here's why. I still don't like the randomness and I'd still prefer a complete set. The good news: there's going to be a complete set (at least, that's the word), so I'll get what I really want there. That's not so important as the real idea behind the booster packs, which is their disposability.
With my item pack 1, I'm a little hesitant to use them, since I've only got what came with the pack. If I want to give them out to players or write on the backs, the boosters give me that possibility without feeling like I've defiled my precious cards. So I THINK that's what we're looking at here, it's just a question of whether that's worth $3.75 to you.
The Idea of being able to have nifty cards that the DM can "pass out at the table" to help get players to view their treasures as more than filled in slots on the paper is an excellent one. I would love to be able to ask my players to hand me the card for the "potion of Heroism" or whatever they want to use instead of saying, "oh, I think I remember you used that two encounters ago, but I see its till on your list, so I'll have to pretend you still have it, but erase it right now." Only to miss the player fudging the system by re-filling the slot while I take a bio-break at the next session. Back in 1992 I had a very similar idea with various colord poker chips and game tokens for keeping track of potions and the like, and then had index cards made for the really cool weapons and armor that my players were hauling around. I thought maybe this would be a good replacement for what I lost in the flooding we had here several years ago, but as soon as I saw the words "booster pack contains xx random cards" I immediately blew this off as a no sale. Give me a whole set of 110 cards in one shot and maybe some 10 cards "boosters" for weapons, potions, wands, staves, rings, and then armor that aren't a total crap-shoot and we may have a deal. Especially when those notes on the back start making dagger A way cooler than dagger B and the rogues just want to filch it from the wizard that got the lucky draw.
The card mix is horrible. I bought 4 booster pack and only recieved 5 cards that we not duplicated. Second off, If I wanted more of what was in item pack 1 I would have bought a second item pack 1.
I will wait till the third expansion comes out before I buy any more pakcs.
I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed with these. I bought a booster box at GenCon and my first "surprise" was to discover that all of the cards from the original fixed deck are in here as well as the new ones, so net result is about 50% new cards. It would have been nice to know that in advance (I now have 4 sets of the plate armor...). Second, the mix on these is horrible. Out of 12 booster packs, there were at least 3 pairs of packs that were almost card-for-card identical and there were at least 3 other packs in which the foil card (and why do we even need foil cards?) duplicated one of the regular cards in the same pack. Woot! Two more sets of magic platemail! The old art is great, the new art is fantastic, but the mix REALLY needs to be addressed in future expansions.
Recent Posts
