Dungeon adventures in the Warhammer world!
Warhammer Quest is the Spiritual Successor to Heroquest. A Dungeon Crawling Adventure Board Game set in a version of the Warhammer universe. Using modular dungeon tiles to create a series of endless dungeons, modified slightly each time to represent a different location for each adventure by placing different obstacles, doors, enemies and fixtures. Up to four heroes — the barbarian, the elf, the dwarf, and the wizard (Although there were other characters who could be added) — explore each adventure and play against the other player, who represents the forces of evil and acts much like a Game Master in that they know everything about the current quest in advance and reveal it as the players advance. The game can be a simple Dungeon Crawling game, or it can be expanded to include a role-playing element.
This work provides examples of:
- Absurdly Low Level Cap: The highest level for a character is 10 and if they've been lucky in accumulating gold - they can reach that limit really quickly. But for some characters, reaching the maxiimum level doesn't mean they can't continue learning new abilities...if they can pay for it.
- Acid Attack: The spell Acid Blast allows the caster to unleash streams of acid from their fingertips, causing damage to one or more models in its path as it burns through each victim in turn. Also if you have a Chaos Warrior, one possible mutation is an acid spit done in additional to their normal allotment of attacks.
- All Your Powers Combined: The Chaos Warrior can attempt to fuse his Chaos Artifacts if they're of the same type. This new artifact will have the same abilities as the previous two and in turn this new artifact can be fused with another Chaos Artifact and so forth.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Averted with the Chaos Warrior party member, his description mentions how the numbers of Chaos Warriors are legion and each are individuals with their own motivations and differing degrees of fealty to the Dark Gods. So your Chaos Warrior might actually be a nice guy.
- Armor Is Useless: Zigzagged. The bonus to Toughness from wearing armor is nice, but unfortunately many armor types have drawbacks such as penalties to Movement and Attack rolls to hit. Additionally, most armor is very weak and need to be stacked with other pieces of armor - and uniquely for the Pit Fighter, he'll have many exposed body parts until he can buy enough Pit Armor (which never covers the head). Plus almost all of the character classes are heavily restricted in what they can use. Finally at higher level dungeons, few monster roll less than 2 dice for doing damage.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Monsters with the Assassinate special rule are able to launch attacks with such precision that they totally ignore the bonuses granted by their target's armour, as they slip their weapons between the plates. Meanwhile Warriors have Dirty Blow or other methods to at least partially bypass armor.
- Barbarian Hero: The Barbarian is the leader of the game's default party, and the strongest close combat skill of the original Warrior characters. The model itself is sculpted to represent a typical barbarian hero with big muscles, long hair, wears nothing but a fur loincloth and a bear-skin cloak, and wields a large broadsword as a starting weapon. He also predates the retconning of Norscans into Chaos worshippers. In the video game version, he's replaced by the Marauder.
- Berserker: The Enraged skill, available to Dwarf Warriors, allows the character to enter a berserk state once per turn as they give themselves over to their fury. While in this state, the Dwarf has a chance to unleash extra attacks, at the cost of a penalty on his hit rolls, but also has a chance of going so out of control that he cannot hit anything. Many other characters have their versions of going nuts and attacking at greater intensity.
- Big Red Devil: The nastiest but most valuable monster to fight is the Bloodthirster, a gigantic horned red daemon with a magic axe and whip.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: The starting equipment for Pit Fighter Warriors includes a Fist Spike, a long blade attached to an armoured gauntlet. A relatively light weapon, a Pit Fighter can attack quickly with a Fist Spike, gaining additional attacks whenever it is used.
- Blow You Away: The spell Windblast allows a Wizard to unleash a gale of wind that smashes Monsters to the floor doing multiple Wounds in the process while leaving the caster's allies untouched.
- Boss Fight: Various campaigns end a battle with a ferocious monster.
- Bow and Sword in Accord: For the Elf Ranger, one skill he might get is Flame of Vengeance which lets him use a bow and melee weapon together in close combat.
- Brown Note: Warriors can learn the song "She was only the Emperor's Daughter" in an Ale House event. The song is so loud at the end, that once per adventure it can be used against an enemy worth 300 Gold or less - on a roll of 5 or 6 that foe dies instantly from shock.
- Chainsaw Good: What's a Games Workshop game without something that has a spinning blade with serrated teeth. In this case, one of the magic items you can find is the Rending Sword which is a magical chainsword that does extra damage and has some armor-piercing ability because of its rending teeth.
- Church Militant: The Warrior Priest is a member of the Church of Sigmar.
- Counterspell: Magic using Warriors are able to learn the Dispel Magic spell that, when cast, gives them a 50% chance of stopping any enemy spell cast upon them.
- Combat Medic: A Pit Fighter can learn the awful Quick Medication skill which can recover some Wounds for a Warrior, but it may fail and cause the poor guy to temporarily pass out from agony in addition to not recovering health. A Bretonnian Knight with the Bind Wounds skill can likewise administer first aid but much more safely.
- Combat Pragmatist: Some of the Warriors can learn skills like Dirty Blow or the equivalent, all Warriors that can enter an Ale House might get a random event where they learn some underhanded tricks.
- Darkness Equals Death: Being caught out in the dark taps into the Warrior's Primal Fear and they could end up fighting worse or be paralyzed with fear. This is why the lantern is such an important item for the party (though some characters have abilities or unique items that'll act as a lantern substitute).
- Dual Wielding: The Troll Slayer with the Ambidextrous skill, the Wardancer with the Twin Swords of Orion and an Imperial Noble with the Dagger skill can use their respective specific weapon in their other hand for extra attacks. The Pit Fighter starts with a weapon in each hand, but he only uses them one at a time and so there's no extra attack though if he had Knee Spikes and Toe-Blades (with the Kick skill) he can extra attacks off of those.
- Emergency Weapon: The Warriors' starting weapon, besides being a weapon that they'd prefer keeping over a superior magical item, are kept as a spare in the case they lose their main new weapons that they found or bought.
- Experience Points: Experience points don't actually exist in Warhammer Quest, instead gold functions like souls in Dark Souls. Gold can be used to pay for services and goods, but it can also be used to raise a character's level. What happens is the regular characters search for a mercenary camp or whatnot to get tutelage from a trainer there (specially bought characters like the Wardancer have their own special places of training) that lets the character tap into their incredible innate talent. The video game version uses the standard experience points and keeps gold only as money.
- Equipment Upgrade: The Chaos Warrior fusing his Chaos Artefacts is one example. Meanwhile the Wardancer can keep adding new Aspects to his Swords of Orion which will retain the previous ones, similarly Dwarves and Trollslayers can do the same for their axes using runes that have a chance of being permanent and Bretonnian Knights can accumulate blessings on their Knight's Broadsword.
- Family Extermination: One random event in the Wilderness has a convoy slaughtered by whatever evil group is rolled. Unfortunately for a Warrior, it turns out that among the convoy is some of your bloodkin. Mechanically, though this is a good thing as your Warrior will get the Hate psychological effect against the murdering group (ie Skaven, Chaos, Greenskins and etc.) and it's nice to have happen multiple times so that you can eventually hate all the available evil races.
- Fantasy Gun Control: Unlike HeroQuest, guns exist in this setting and the Imperial Noble especially gets a larger variety to buy from.
- Ghostly Chill: Spectral undead, such as Ghosts and Wraiths, have the Chill special rule, allowing them to automatically cause wounds against the Warriors as their deathly cold touch drains their life.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Chaos Warrior may get regeneration as one of his Chaos Attributes, the Warrior Priest's Jade Ring may heal him and some surrounding Warriors, and there's an Elf Ranger spell that'll continually heal him until he's either beaten into 0 wounds or finished the adventure. Additionally, if a Warrior has a Trance Stone and there's no enemies around - they can take a turn and use it to recover a single Wound - eventually recovering all their health if they do it long enough. Warriors can also regenerate if they're lucky enough to find an Enchanted Jade Amulet.
- Healing Hands: The Wizard Warrior has access to a variety of healing spells that they can use during a game, with each casting level between 1 and 10 having at least one Healing Spell that they can learn. These spells range in power form healing a single wound with Cure Small Wounds, to Heartbeat that can heal a random number of wounds for each of the Wizard's Battle Levels. The Elf Ranger has a Knight skill called The Healer which lets him restore Wounds to Warriors he touches.
- Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Averted for the Wizard, he's no worse with healing than he is with the other types of magic and is actually pretty decent with his healing spells so long as its on an individual basis - it gets tougher if he's the using healing spells that affect the group. Played straight with everyone else. The Witch Hunter has magical medallions that contain charges of weak healing magic, the Warrior Priest also only has weak blessings for healing and the Elf Ranger is mostly lacklustre at healing compared to some of his offensive magic. So Warriors should still carry healing potions, trance stones, bandages, food and whatnot when they can.
- Healing Potion: The Elf Warrior starts with a healing potion that allows the as part of his basic equipment and, if purchase of find the right healing herbs, they can create more between quests.
- Heart Container: Some random events can give you a one-shot permanent increase to your Wounds total, such as being blessed by the gods while praying at their temple. If a player is lucky, they could accrue quite a lot of extra Wounds on top of what they get for increasing their level.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: The adventurers will recover health when they eat. Some characters have unique food choices as well - dwarven characters can uniquely eat stone bread, which is a highly nutritious bread made with stone. The Imperial Noble can buy delicious dried sausages (and no he's not one to share).
- Knight in Shining Armor: The Bretonnian Knight can be added as an additional character. He is a questing Knight who has sworn an oath to always fight in a fair and just manner. He can RPG on various quests such as; slaying a monster, retrieving a relic, or rescuing a Damsel in Distress.
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: The Wizard starts off weaker than the others in the beginning, but perhaps barring the Chaos Warrior and Pit Fighter - he'll end up the most powerful adventurer once he has enough powerhouse spells in his repertoire. Basic brawlers like the Barbarian and Dwarf get shafted in how powerful their skills are as the game progresses.
- Loophole Abuse: Normally Witch Hunters can only use bladed weapons for melee, but from the Witch Hunter's Cabal they could get an Iron Talisman of Khardoz. These talismans are shaped as warhammers and are indistinguishable from one. In fact the Iron Talisman is used specifically by a Witch Hunter smacking their foes with it. Also while Trollslayers can't wear armor, they can wear magic items that increases their Toughness and regenerate health (for generic magic items, they're just restricted from using the ones that affect spell-casting).
- Magic Knight: The Elf Ranger will swap back and forth between being a Knight or a Mage depending on how their skill progression is happening. The Warrior Priest gets new blessings as well as grows better as a warrior.
- Master Swordsman: The Imperial Noble will also attempt to learn a new sword-fighting technique each time he gains level and this is in addition the skills he might get with his normal skill progression. However there's a possibility, the Imperial Noble could accidentally kill his fencing instructor or he may not learn anything new if the instructor attempts to teach a skill the Noble already knows. The Elf Ranger could luck into learning the skill of a Swordmaster of Hoeth.
- Maximum HP Reduction: There are random events that could permanently reduce a character's health, for example if the Warriors joined a Wardancer in going to a Wood Elf Troupe and an event had them welcome a disguised Chaos Warband - the Warriors would survive the encounter but permanently lose 1d6 Wounds. The inverse can also happen, there's a random event where the Warriors breathe in a vent of steam which permanently increases their Wounds.
- Money Is Experience Points: One of the earliest tabletop games to implement this system. Gold buys you an audience with a renowned trainer who works to improve your level. Gold also buys all the goodies to equip your Warrior.
- Money Sink: Your Warrior can buy things like Fortresses which are extremely expensive and have no relevance to the game, they're just a way to spend off your Gold once you've maxed out your Level and then covered your daily living expenses and resupply.
- Non-Standard Game Over: Some of the characters have this as a mechanic. The Chaos Warrior gets a call of Chaos each time they gain a level, they must roll to see if they ignore it and it becomes increasingly harder until they safely reach Level 10. If they fail they leave for Chaos Wastes to join the legions. If they have the Vampiric Thirst mutation and were preying on townsfolk, there's a chance they could be discovered and staked through the heart. Similarly, if the Witch Hunter no longer has any faith, there's a chance they'll leave the profession and adventuring. In a Settlement, there's a Catastrophic event called Settle Down - if rolled then a Warrior has decided to retire at the location.
- Pinned to the Wall: The Pinion Elf Skill allows the Elf warrior to pin an enemy to a wall with their arrows. While the Elf can only make one attack while using this skill successful, the attack stops the enemy from moving in addition to doing the normal damage.
- The Power of Hate: The Hate special rule gives models affected by it bonus attacks when fighting a specific race as they redouble their efforts to destroy their hated foe. On the downside, however, the frenzied attacks suffer a penalty to hit as the model attacks with abandon.
- Random Event: Good or bad random events can happen inside the dungeon, while traveling back from the dungeon and during the adventurers' stay inside a settlement Special characters like the Chaos Warrior, Witch Hunter and etc. can have their own unique set of random events.
- One-Hit Kill: One medium level spell for the wizard is Pit of Despair which opens a chasm under the enemy and if they've fallen in, it'll kill them instantly, the wizard's highest level attack spells Window of the Void and Vortex of Destruction will also kill instantly. If a Warrior has a Frost Blade, those can also instantly kill foes if it succeeds in causing at least a single Wound.
- Perpetual Poverty: Trollslayers can only have up to 4000 Gold and they'll dump most magic items that come their way.
- Rescue Arc: The Sacrifice quest for the Idol Chamber Objective Room sees an important relative of one of the Warriors kidnaped by Orcs, and the party has to save them before they are sacrificed. Upon reaching the Objective Room, the captive's relative will go mad with rage and attack the enemy monsters with abandon whether they are alive or not.
- The questing Bretonnian knight can be charged with rescuing a Damsel in Distress as part of the RPG element.
- Resistant to Magic: Some Monsters that inhabit the dungeons of the Old World have the ability to resist arcane energies. These Monsters have the Magic Resistance ability, which gives them a chance to ignore the effects of spells cast on them. Some of the Warriors can either have magic resistance as an innate ability or get items unique to them at their special location in a settlement.
- Robe and Wizard Hat: The model for the Wizard Warrior wears the flowing robes and wide brimmed conical hat of an archetypical fictional wizard, and the traditional outfit of the Grey Order of wizardrynote .
- Rope Bridge: The only way to cross the magma-filled chasm in the Firechasm Objective Room is across a dangerous rope bridge. When crossing this bridge, Warriors must test to see if they slip, and if they do, they must roll on the Firechasm Hazard Table to see what happens. Results on the Hazard Table range from automatic death to dropping treasure or swinging across the chasm completely.
- Shotgun Wedding: A medieval version of this can happen as a random settlement event. Angry brothers of a farm maid mistaken your character as the guy who knocked her up and hold you at knife point for a wedding to their disgraced sister. It's either leave the settlement or retire as a "baby daddy".
- Sprint Shoes:
- The Fleet of Foot spell enchants the caster's shows so that they can move slightly quicker for a short period.
- The Speed spell enable a magic user to increase an ally's metabolism, enhancing their movement characteristic by a large amount.
- Squishy Wizard: While that Wizard character gets plenty of spells to cast, he is very fragile and is a poor fighter who can be taken out with a single hit by the stronger monsters if they get close.
- Strong Enemies, Low Rewards: Players hate ghosts. While they're nothing for a high level party, these monsters are pretty dangerous for weaker parties as they have a number of special abilities. But the real reason, players hate encountering them is that ghosts uniquely have no gold! So you never get anything for fighting a ghost.
- Taken for Granite: The Stone of Transmutation is a one use magic item that the Warriors can find that allows its user to transform any single creature into a stone statue, killing it instantly.
- Talented, but Trained: All the Warriors are this, they're all possessed of incredible innate talent which is why they're pretty good even at Level 1 but they each strive to reach the maximum of their ability by paying for training (and yes, the trainer for a Warrior may actually be of lower level than them).
- Time Master:
- The War Crown of Tiranoc allows the Elf Ranger that wears it to briefly stop time so that they can chose to take their turn ahead of another Warrior once per game.
- The magical blade known as Heartseeker is able to rewind time if it misses its target, giving its bearer a re-roll to missed Attacks.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Your enemies can have their own racially-based magic items, regardless the adventurers can never use them as all enemy magic items are tainted and cursed.
- Weapon Specialization: Each character starts with their equipment of choice, if they lose their nice magical items - well it's okay as they cherish their starting crap the most. In fact some characters, such as the Witch Hunter and his steel gorget - can't swap out for something better.
- Weapon of X-Slaying: The magic weapon Undead Bane was forged to destroy the living dead minions of the Great Necromancer Nagash and does extra Wounds against any undead Monster.
- What the Fu Are You Doing?: Pit Fighter players hate the Pit Flail, it's only a little stronger than a regular flail but it's a very clumsy weapon that has a chance of the Pit Fighter hitting himself. Similarly if the Bretonnian Knight gets the Whirling Flail skill, he'll be given a Knightly Flail and in combat he could end up hitting himself or another Warrior with it by accident.
