KevinTMC on RPG.net was about to play his first session of
Hero Kids, and he asked for
clarification of some of the game's rules. It strikes me that the clarification I provided there would also be useful here:
"1) Split attacks: Is a player allowed to use both attacks against the same enemy?"
Splitting your attacks is against 'multiple' targets ("Split your melee dice you attack multiple adjacent targets (at least 1 dice each"), which means that the attacks should be against more than one target. Perhaps this would be clearer if it specified 'separate' adjacent targets, instead of 'multiple'. Either way, the intention of the attack is for separate targets to be attacked, especially when combined with the Teamwork special ability for the male and female Warriors.
"2) Combat Roll: As I understand it, any character can take an extra move on their turn, in place of an Action. So if the Rogue chooses this Special Action for her Action phase, that's simply a different way of doing the exact same thing... except that the Rogue can also move through enemies with this Action. Correct? (And the Rogue still can't move through enemies in her regular Movement phase, right?)"
Correct. By using the special action ("Combat Roll: Move up to 4 squares, including through enemies.") as her main action, a rogue can move through enemies. After that she can still have another move action.
"3) Healer: If I'm reading it right, a party with a Healer will automatically fully heal itself a the end of each encounter, unless the GM feels that they are in a tremendous hurry, yes? (This makes Rest irrelevant whenever the party contains a Healer, of course.)"
Yes, this is correct. If they have time, they can heal up to full by using the Healer's Healing Touch ability between combat encounters. But in more constrained circumstances, you could rule that they don't have time to heal the additional damage.
"Also, should the Herbs icon on the Healer's card be presumed to represent enough herbs to replenish a potion after each encounter...or just once during the adventure?"
I've hedged here a little bit. As written, the herbs are enough to replenish a potion after each encounter, which implies that given enough time the healer should be able to replenish all used potions between encounters. Alternatively, replenishing a potion could use up the herbs, which would change the wording to "Once per adventure" instead of "After an encounter". I've tended to err on the side of being more generous and 'forgiving', so I've used the RAW interpretation. The herbs in the inventory are also a trigger for creative role-playing.
"4) In the Glossary under "Hit" it mentions "either highest dice for normal play or the sum of all dice for advanced play". This refers to advanced rules that appear (or are to appear) in further supplements, I presume?"
My fault. In early playtesting there was an alternate set of advanced rules which switched the dice mechanic to cumulative dice and broke the game. So I removed it. Unfortunately I was not careful enough! Thanks for pointing it out, I'll fix it in the next release.
"(I bought the Ultimate PDF Collection, but that doesn't contain the latest couple adventures/supplements.)"
The increasingly poorly named 'Ultimate PDF Collection'. :-) I'll be re-jigging the bundles once I've released the next couple of adventures (another normal one - Glade of the Unicorn - and another 'premium' adventure).
"5) I can easily imagine two or three children at the table all wanting to be, say, the female Hunter. Is it a big problem to allow this sort of thing? How about number of players...the scenarios seem to envision from one to four players, but does it still work okay with five or six?"
Players are free to double up on the heroes. I've heard of a player who as 7-year old triplets (!!!) who all play healers. Imagine that!
The scenarios are designed for up to four players. They will work with more
if you add more monsters but the maps will be too crowded. If you have more than four players, then I recommend that you use a dry-erase map and draw bigger versions of each of the encounter maps as you go.
"6) Should I have the players decide who's entering the room first, second, etc. before starting an encounter, so I know how to place the heroes on the map? Or, with this age group, is it better for the GM to just put them down at the starting position in no particular order?"
This can have some mechanical implications, so allow the players to choose their heroes starting position and initiative order amongst themselves if they want.
"I also have one quibble. The game is nicely laid-out, well-edited, quite professional-looking...but you're killing me with the "a dice"/"one dice" business. The singular of dice is "die"! (Or is this just one of the quirks of non-American English that I'm not aware of? Apologies if it's entirely proper and customary where you are.)"
My fault. I'm gonna give myself a good dressing down. :-)
Check out
Hero Kids and its adventures at DriveThruRPG:
Hero Forge Games at DriveThruRPG
