A group of friends and I have been playing through WotR recently and I got this back out at home to play solo. I was looking to try out different characters from class decks and other sets with it, and I wanted to create a challenge from the get go.
What I have done to provide this challenge is play with 4 characters but with locations set for 6 characters. It took me 2 tries to beat the first scenario, 1 for the next, and so far the third scenario has stumped me 3 times, though the last one was nearly a victory.
I don't quite remember the end scenarios too well, so I'm not to sure if this setup will become impossible to beat later on. I was thinking of keeping the ratio of explorations to turns the same as 4 characters by increasing the number of cards in the blessings deck.
Usually: 4 Characters = 6 Locations (60 Explorations) in 30 Turns [2:1]
Modified to: 8 Locations (80 Explorations) in 40 Turns [2:1]
It will give me more time, but I'll still have the same resources to complete it in, which will allow me to play less with the same level of aggression as a 4 character run, but I will need to exercise endurance with the increased amount of locations and turns.
Has anyone tried something like this before? Any advice on how to balance this?
In my home games we have house rule for increased difficulty. We do this with several rules, while this is more complex, the way you are doing it just focus on making characters that power explore better than others.
House Rules:
•Follow rules for current party size +1. Most likely this will result in one additional location.
•Replace five of the cards in the blessings deck with random monsters; when you reveal one, the current player immediately encounters it. The monster is removed from the blessing discard pile. The last blessing now counts as the blessing for this round. If the monster is evaded, return it to the box.
•If the players fail to complete the scenario, each player banishes 1 card at random from his deck for each location still open at the end of the game.
•Subtract the monsters adventure number from the current adventure number and add this to the monsters check to defeat. Example: During adventure #2 all base "B" monsters would be given +2 difficulty, while adventure one (1) monsters would get +1.
•If you take damage and run out of cards to discard, discard the top card of your deck. The discarded card from the top of your deck ends all damage remaining.
Pending House rules (In testing)
•Playing spells and blessings are limited to your location.
•Every Blessing Beyond the first adds a dice one size lower than the previous.
We are thinking of removing the 4th rule due to the complexity of it. It is not hard to do, but seems to mess up the flow. Thinking of pulling it for the two pending house rules.
It certainly does make characters with exploration powers much better, but seeing as this run I haven't picked any of them, it would seem it really won't ever change.
Those are some interesting rules there. The monster difficulty one might also be a little odd if they reproduced monster cards in a later deck.
I like the monsters in the blessings deck, seems like an interesting thing to do. Maybe I'll modify this to some extent in my play. Nice idea.
As far as the top of deck discarding for damage, can't really say I like that too much. Definitely makes armor more attractive but can definitely lead to a terrible time on a squishy caster.
Thanks for the ideas and the inspiration.