Like many others, my group has found the game to be way too easy, so we've been looking around for house rules that increase the challenge, and here's a few that we really liked. (You don't have to use all of them, I'm just listing them here so you and your group and cherry pick and decide which one's you'd like to try) (If I didn't give credit where it's due complain at me and I'll fix it asap)
Also feel free to post other house rules for others to try out here, even if they're not specifically designed to increase the difficulty. I just think it would be really nice to have a dedicated thread for custom rules to spice up the game!
Party and Travel (Thanks to Sehyo)
To add a sense of the party being together, have the party all start at the same location. I always lay the locations down in a straight line. That location can be selected by the party and is always the left most location in the line. I also like the idea of the locations reflecting some distance, but instead of making the characters have to move to only adjacent locations I wanted to make create a sense of distance and with increasing distance comes greater risk. So the following rule,is added.
To move to a new location roll a D6. If you roll the distance traveled or less on the D6 you encounter a random monster from the box. So if you move to the adjacent location your distance is a 1 and the monster only appears if you roll a 1 on the random move monster die. If you are moving over two locations then the monster appears on a 1 or 2' and so forth. I would keep the locations in a straight line until you play with 6 or more locations and then I would make then in a circle.
If the monster is not defeated then the character can't move nor can he explore that turn. If he defeats the monster the he continues his turn as usual.
Also the levitate spell allows you to move without making a check.
You may adjust the difficulty of this rule by changing the die you roll for travel. Our group uses the die=locations rule, so you roll a dX to travel where X = Total number of locations rounded up
3 or 4 locations = d4
5 or 6 locations = d6
7 or 8 locations = d8
Blessing of the Frauds
Any card or ability that states "add X die/dice to a check" (such as Blessing of the Gods) should be interpreted as "add Xd4 to a check". For example; Blessing of the Gods would become "Discard this card to add 1d4 to a check" and Blessing of Calistria would become "Discard this card to add 2d4 to a noncombat Dexterity check"
This is because having too many heroes together means fighting a tough enemy becomes a nonissue. Encounter a villian, throw 5 or 6 Blessing of the Gods on him and he melts.
You may adjust the difficulty of this rule by changing the die rolled
Limited Assistance
The official rules state "Each player may play only one type of boon on a single check", instead however, try "Only one type of boon may be played on a single check"
This is another rule dedicated to preventing "BotG Spam" on powerful enemies.
What this means: If you play a Weapon and a Spell in a check, another player may play a Blessing or an Item to help. This means no stacking blessings from multiple different players.
You may adjust the difficulty of this rule by only limiting Blessings to once per check.
Lose More Than Your Dignity (Thanks to H4appy)
Normally if you die you lose your character, but if you lose a round nothing bad happens. This house rule states "If you lose a Scenario by running out of time, each character must shuffle their character decks and Banish 1 random card for each remaining open location."
This rule exists because losing a scenario should have a consequence, especially since death's consequence is so harsh. Thematically, think of it like this; As your group accepted defeat from the swarms of enemies you quickly fled from the battle, dropping whatever you could to escape.
Rest
Once per turn, if a player hasn't moved to a new location or searched his current location, he may Rest by recharging a random card from his discard pile, he must end his turn immediately after Resting.
This house rule is deceitfully pleasant. You can spend a turn to heal 1 card, there are many ways to heal much more than this, but it's good to have in a pinch, however, it's still just 1 health back and the blessings deck is going to ever deplete, abuse this Rest action too much and you'll quickly find yourself out of time to complete the Scenario.
There's one other that I think would fit your set, which we use in RotR:
If you take damage and have no cards in hand at the start of the "take damage" step then you must bury one card from the top of your deck.
So, if you take 6 damage and have 1 card in hand, you just discard one card. But if you have no cards in hand and take 1 damage you will have to bury the top card of your deck.
This alone makes people think twice about a lot of their actions, especially exploring with an empty hand which normally has relatively few side-effects until late in the AP.
Assistance Falloff (Thanks to John Davis 2)
Blessings played by other players can only add d4s to a check, blessings you play on yourself are unaffected.
Thanks for putting these all in one place. You may want to edit the post on party travel to explain how evading works (you can evade the random monster and make it to your new location) and what happens with closed locations (still count for distance moved) per our previous postings.
Thanks for putting these all in one place. You may want to edit the post on party travel to explain how evading works (you can evade the random monster and make it to your new location) and what happens with closed locations (still count for distance moved) per our previous postings.
I would love to, but it seems I can no longer edit the original post :P
Strange. Are you logged in. Believe you have to be logged in as the poster to edit the post.
Editing is only allowable for 60 minutes after you post I believe.
Edit: I had said 30, but then checked the FAQ and saw I was wrong. Since it was still with in the 60 minute time frame, I edited my post.
Blessings Per Location
When setting up the game build the blessings deck based on how many locations there are: The first 3 locations add 20 blessings and each additional location adds 3 blessings to the deck.
[3 Locations] 20 blessings
[4 Locations] 23 blessings
[5 Locations] 26 blessings
[6 Locations] 29 blessings
[7 Locations] 32 blessings
[8 Locations] 35 blessingsThis change is designed to make the blessings deck more relevant when playing with fewer players and slightly less destructive when playing with a lot of players.
One that we use is if you take more damage than you have cards in your hand you draw that much less on your draw step. Example. I have a hand size of 6 and only 3 cards in hand. I take 7 damage I only draw 2 cards in draw step. Its a lot like H4ppy's rule but it'll cost your character on their next turn.
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If you fail to defeat a monster and take more damage then you have cards in your hand you send cards from the too of your deck to the discard pike equal to the remaining damage.
Example: Valeros is fighting a Constrictor Snake and fails to defeat it, taking two damage. Since Valeros only has his weapon, he discards it and sends one card from the top of his character deck to the discard pile.