I love those house rules! I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t make up a house rule because I wanted to be a stickler to the rules. After losing or causing myself too much grief I realized I was actually causing myself to not want to get the game to the table as much because of how hard it was. Now I’m more lenient on house rules and it makes it WAY more enjoyable for me and my group which is what games are made to do.
I have a few house rules that I use. 1) When everyone is picking cards, we avoid talking. Without this rule our group spends way too long on everyone trying to pick the perfect combos and predict exactly there everyone will go. But if we can't talk then we have to pick cards that are flexible and it keeps the game moving. 2) You can switch classes freely until you hit level 2 and still keep your xp, gold, and get that classes starting gear. It's not fun to be stuck in a class that you don't enjoy. 3) Similar to #2, when you hit level 2 you don't have to pick an ability, you can take either one into combat (but not both) but when you hit level 3 then you have to lock in your level 2 card. This allows you to try them out before making a decision.
Oooh, I really like the one about trying out your level two abilities until level three. Do you have this testing period for every level or just level two? And I don't know if I'd like playing without any strategy discussion whatsoever, but it definitely sounds like an interesting experiment.
Agree on all the rules! it seems weird but when my group first started playing we spend way less time doing our action becuase everyone was just playing for himself. Now we waste way too much time to synergize. It is even stated in the rule books that talking too much isn't good for the gameplay. Not really an house rule, but it is certenly a good habit! :) I love the 3rd idea!
I like the No Talking rule, particularly for the plotters in our group, including me, though chatting definitely helps the younger players. I might try using a 1 minute sand timer or something similar.
I thought you could choose out of all available cards for every scenario you go into as long as it does not exceed your limit. I.e. put all level two cards into your hand and fill the remainder with level 1 cards. I haven't played yet but that's how I interpreted the rule book.
We did this on a hard level in Jaws. I feel some levels are unbalanced for 2 players because there are just too many hexes to cover and obstacles to destroy before exhausting all the cards and having a few less monsters doesn't compensate for that. We played the scenario a second time and my partner became exhausted before me. I was able to complete the main objective but not finish the remaining monsters. I said lets just say we won because I don't want to play it again. 😏
@@agamble1126 I agree, sometimes when you have spent up to two hours only to lose and exhaust by one round before winning is quite frustrating, so I let myself play another round or two until I win.
House Rules (after playing 28 scenarios): #1 You control AI #2 Elite drops two loot (better equipment) #3 If a monster picks up loot and you kill that monster, it drops ALL loot. #4 Enhancements get reputation discount (up to 5 gold) same as shop.
House Rule 6: Let the wookie win. Sensible things, and I like your explanations. I play solo; the "control your summon" makes really good sense for me particularly. Another great video. Thank you!
I have one more. Until AFTER first scenario you can return all items to the shop for full value. This allows new players (or a new group) to play around with various items. First scenario is not easy as it is - and being locked into a bad choice of item without any idea how to play the character is not helping.
I always found the los concept befuddling and ridiculous in most cases, how an enemy could snipe you around a corner. So me and my group decided to adopt the center of hex to center of hex rule. If the line touches a wall its a no go. Along with this, we added that if a aoe hex is out of los so long as the initial range hex target is within los, all hexes of that aoe are permissible. After all, if i throw a bomb into the next room, just cause i don't see the explosion doesn't mean the enemies aren't going to paint the walls with their entrails lol. Sometimes alittle rationality helps with your immersion.
We allow re-spec if you pick the wrong card for a new level and find out it doesn't work out when you test it in action. We don't allow re-spec other than that though.
Our house rule revolves around retirements; after someone has chosen a new personal quest after character retirement, any other cards that would unlock that class are removed from the game. Also, if you're dealt an 'Envelope X' card, you're free to discard it and redraw a new personal quest. Nothing worse than getting two personal quests for characters that are already unlocked.
I play this game with my dad and my brother in law and we ask my mother or my sister to check our personal quests after such to avoid people working towards the same character without having to spoil which one you are going to unlock. This plus being allowed to redraw if you get 2 characters that you already have unlocked makes the personal quests feel a lot more rewarding. We don't remove them from the game for if someone really likes the quest itself. We did this because me and my dad both had the 'circles' character and he unlocked it when I was around 70-80% done with my quest. There was no worse feeling than having your personal quest become redundant when you have already spent so much time and effort on it
Umm...you still get rewards for completing a personal quest where the listed reward has already been unlocked (like with bakugo's circles example). Admittedly a new random item design and a new random side scenario may not be as appealing, but you still get something for doing it.
@@RicardoKugo There is a LOT of stuff that can be easily overlooked or forgotten about for this game (not surprising when the rule book is 51 pages long). I do agree that having someone else unlock a class just before you would that class would be really frustrating. For a more thematic house rule...you visit a seer in order to discover if the last of your adventuring days provides different rewards than those your of your companion's. Maybe make it cost you a little in-game gold to do this too.
I normally love house rules, but gloomhaven is the first game that resonates with my own thoughts on how a game should be run. With less control and increased difficulty. I love it. Im so thankful they made these rules. Your house rules are cool, but this is the one time i hope the game doesnt change
I remember hearing a talk with Isaac Childres where someone asked if he was going to change certain rules for Frosthaven to make it easier, and he immediately said no, so you definitely have nothing to worry about there.
Interesting. I have not played gloomhaven in a while, but I am pretty sure I just got the element item wrong and played it like you suggested. Which I agree would feel better.
My group has few house rules. One of my favorites tho, is about Road and City events and it's Role Play oriented. Since we are 4 it often happens that we can't settle an outcome of an events just by voting, so we role it! For example, a road event may put you in the situation where you can rush to help some people against a group of Vermlings (option A), or sit back and watch the fight(Option B). Our Brute is more likely to rush in and crush some heads (just because!), and so is the Tinkerer who wants to help the people in distress. At the same time, our Craghearth doesn't care about the fate of some pity humans, and our Scoundrel prefer to wait and loot the spoils of the battle. Since option A is the most urgent, the Brute and the Tinkerer rush in without waiting for the other two comrades and fullfil the Event on their own. All the good and bad that comes with it affect only the ones who partecipate. It is fun to play this way and it gives characters more depth.
Oh that's really cool! I usually play two player, so it doesn't come up too much, but I totally see how that would be an issue for four. I imagine you only get to choose one outcome to resolve though, as many of the choices are entirely contradictory. How do you work that out?
Yeah, only one outcome! We go for the most fun usually without thinkin too much about It. It happend several times that what the mindthief decided was the way to go for the whole group, because my friend roled It dumb and reckless, so we just played along to his craziness. It's a good way to laugh and have fun
I like the battle goal house rule. It definitely did not make sense to be tied to a goal that may not exist. Reveal two and complete one seems like an excellent strategy component.
The whole fun of summons is trying too "control" them within the rules of the game. They are OP in many situations and your rule would just break the game completely.
I agree 100%. That is an abusive house rule. If you are going to do something like that to "make thematic sense" but makes the gane way easier you should at least up the difficulty without increasing reward
@@davidpeacock8276 I mean... sure it can be abusive I guess... But it's a co-op game, and unless you're complaining online about the game being too easy due to your house rules, I cannot see a single issue with letting people play with whatever house rules they want.
When I got the two-mini character I at first found it impossible to control but I’m glad I stuck with it. My summon having a mind of its own leads to some funny outcomes. Having full control over would be boring to me and it also makes the summon too overpowered IMO
In addition, Frosthaven has a (starting) character whose theme is she has controllable summons (which don't attack or anything, they are basically just to activate her abilities and soak up damage). This seems significantly less cool if you already have been controlling all of your summons. On the other hand, my group has decided that melee summons pretty much suck when the game controls them, so we almost never use them. So it would be fun to use this house rule in order to actually take some of these into battle with us.
We only house rule that if an item has X charges and you long rest, if the item didn't run out of charges you are allowed to recharge it to full. Otherwise, some lower prosperity items can sometimes outclass higher ones for very silly reasons. A lot of people houserule summon AIs but I really don't like that. Really changes the power of things. We've been streaming our sessions and actually managed to use summons semi-effectively as a soaker, it's been pretty neat. Glad to see another person just as enthused over Gloomhaven as we are. :)
My group made a rule where at the end of each adventure/mission/level we add together all the money gathered by everyone together and then divide it up equally. That way we don’t need to worry about going out of our way to acquire money for each individual character.
For months we accidentally played where we controlled the pets and they did seem a bit overpowered. It wasn't until I unlocked a new class with a pet and one of the cards let me control it that we realized we were playing summons wrong. I agree the monster AI for pets isn't as fun. Is there anything you all do to balance out how much easier the game gets when controlling a pet?
I had the exact same realization with that character, but I never felt like controlling pets was overpowered. The fact that they have a turn of complete inaction when summoned and usually have so few hit points means that they tend not to live too long even when being controlled. You might just be using them better than I do though.
We immediately instated the house rule of looting the entire dungeon at the end of the mission (minus chests) and divvying out the gold equally. Now everyone can focus on cooperation as much possible without worrying about funding their character.
I've heard of quite a few people doing this, and I think it makes a lot of sense. I don't mind the semi-cooperative nature of the game, but I totally get why people would rather just work together 100%
seems way overpowered, especially if you still use the gold multiplier. I like the tactical challenge of cooperating and trying to maximize loot. Also you basically nullify all the loot cards, and classes who are better looters. Also the role playing potential of arguing over loot, which to me is half the fun ;)
I've got 2 big ones: Exhausted State: So normally when a character gets exhausted they are just out for the rest of the scenario. While I understand why that's there, to be a harsh punishment and make players care about how much damage and how many cards they're using, it sucks being knocked out and just sitting there until everybody else is done. So we have an "Exhausted state" as well. In it, if you get exhausted, you take your deck, shuffle it, and place it facedown in front of you. When everyone flips their cards you flip one card and can do either the top or bottom effect as well as the smaller effect of the side you didn't pick (so the 2 attack or 2 move). So you're still acting and playing but a bit weaker. You use that card's initiative for your turn, and then discard that card. There's a few other rules for exhausted players: 1) You can't use a short rest to recover your cards, you have to go through everything, and miss a turn with a long rest to recover them. 2) You can't use any card effects that would demand you lose the card, those are too strong. If a card has 2 lose effects then you have to just use the 2 attack and 2 move actions. 3) If all players get exhausted then the scenario fails. 4) Exhausted players cannot earn experience points from any cards, but can still loot coins and treasure. 5) An exhausted player cannot earn anymore points toward their battle goal. If they succeeded in completing it before they were exhausted they turn their battle goal 90 degrees to the side and will earn the check marks if the scenario succeeds. If they didn't complete it before being exhausted they turn it upside down, indicating they failed it. So if your battle goal asks you to pick up X amount of coins, you would only count the coins you picked up before getting exhausted. You can still pick up more but they won't count for your battle goal. 6) Exhausted players can not use any items 7) exhausted players can not activate traps and can not move past them. Except in the case where all non-exhsusted players have moved past the traps (like if there was a line of traps blocking a door, they would have to wait until everyone else is through). 8) Exhausted players can not open doors. In terms of enemy AI: 1) Enemies ignore and can't damage exhausted players. But can still apply status effects like stun, immobilize, curse, etc. If the players are caught in an aoe. 2) Enemies can freely move through exhausted players and their attacks are never blocked by exhausted players. 3) If an enemy ends its move in the hex of an exhausted player that player gets pushed into the nearest empty hex. This certainly makes the game a bit easier, but it's fun for use since everybody is always playing. If you want to modify it, here's a few ideas To make it harder, either: -when you go into the exhausted state bring your hp counter up to your max. Enemies will still attack and focus on exhausted players now. Also you have to lose a card when you take a long rest and reshuffle, you don't heal from long rests as well. Losing all of your cards or health in this state kicks you out of the scenario for real. Or - all exhausted state rules are as normal, except you only pick one effect from the card that you draw. So the top, bottom, 2 attack, or 2 move. This will slow you down a lot and makes a little more sense for a debilitating exhausted state. To make it easier: On exhaustion set your HP counter to zero. You and your teammates can heal you and if you are healed back up to your max hp you leave the exhausted state, but drop your health to half (rounded down) and shuffle and randomly lose half of your deck (rounded down). Treat these cards as completely out of the scenario and can not be recovered by absolutely any means. My other rule is about looting. After a scenario is complete, and the characters in it could realistically spend a few minutes picking up anything (so if you have to escape or move quickly then you can't do this), you go through and grab any coins or treasure that's left. Any coins grabbed this way are only ever worth 1 gold each, as opposed to the multiplier given by the scenario level. This encourages players to pick up coins during the scenario, but anything still sitting around is worth something. For treasure, if it's an item, you can grab it and decide as a team who gets it, or compete if more than one player really wants it. To determine who gets it, use this hierarchy: 1) Did the players complete their battle goal? If yes who earned the most check marks. If that's a tie: 2) Who earned the most experience points in that scenario? If you're still tied: 3) Who picked up the most coins during the scenario? And if you're still tied after that idk, play rock paper scissors or something.
I only have 1 house rule: Different parties of people can affect each other in gameplay. This makes the 2 parties I run more realistic and fun, as if they're directly affecting each other
And can you describe this a little bit more (without spoilers) how do they affect each other? Do they still hold their items so some items are then sold out in the store for the other party? What exactly do you mean?
@@Greyson_Kousari the items are still a shared in a way, because I doubled the item count, but once it's gone, it's gone. The prosperity however, is stacked. In some missions where once you go down a route, the other becomes locked, it's lock for all the other parties too, but they get to do it as a free quest. Characters unlocked by other parties can be seen roaming around and upon retirement, you can use them. That's all I can remember so far, I'll let you know when I remember more
Aside from small rule bending at times the only house rule we have is you can mitigate damage from a monster with only one card from either discard or on hand. We play 2 players so feel it is fair given our area attacks are way less substantial due to way less enemies. We were also losing alot, first scenario 5 times, but since then its been much more balanced for us, still lose but usually only once or twice while we figure out the best way to tackle the scenario. Like the summon idea tho so might add that one in, depends if its too OP tho, i dont mind losing every so often as it makes you reevaluate how your playing and makes you better.
We changed how rolling modifiers work with advantage and disadvantage. We draw until there are 2 non-rolling modifiers. If you have advantage you add the rolling modifiers to the better non-rolling modifier. If you have disadvantage you ignore all rolling modifiers and use the worse non-rolling modifier.
Disadvantage is fine. For advantage I would prefer drawing two separate piles, as if you would have attacked twice. Advantage lets you choose which pile you take, but not to take the better non-rolling modifier and ALL rolling cards of BOTH piles, as you do.
@@MrKlebeband that's why we made the rule. We wanted our upgrades to be real upgrades. We didn't want to have mixed feekings about getting a perk. It's not as fun.
We got annoyed at rolling modifiers being so bad with advantage - so we decided that if you have advantage and you draw rolling(s) + miss (or curse), the miss counts as a -2.
Our only house rule is the character that opens a chest can sell the item acquired to another person in the party for up to half the cost of the item. It seems to make sense thematically; why wouldn't you first offer an item to another person in your party before selling it to a shop keeper in Gloomhaven.
This house rule sounds really fun and not that broken actually since the gold totals don't change even if the item is sold to the shop. It increases teamwork but still encourages being greedy for chests in a fun way. I think this sounds best in a 4 man party tho. I think if you are with two people it can feel a bit lopsided since usually 1 character is just better at looting than the other but with 3-4 people its less predictable who gets the chests (even though some still have advantage ofc)
We have exactly one house rule for a specific class (Two Minis): It is allowed to sacrifice a card to prevent damage not only for the character, but also his companion. Yes, it makes the game easier, but it only applies to that special mini and not all summons.
@@DownLow0099 yes I'm sure it's an actual rule for that class. On the card that has the bears stats and extra rules it says: "a player can lose cards as normal to negate damage done to the beast tyrant or the bear".
I think the coin/loot system supremely annoying. My house rule for this is walking over the spaces where they were left is enough to collect them. It's not like they are worth a ton of money anyway, and it makes more sense to me from a gaming perspective, specially considering console games where this is the norm.
I don't do this, but I totally understand when people do. It definitely can get a little aggravating when you have to choose between picking up money and killing an enemy.
It makes no sense, that you can loot by only walking over fields, where enemies died. It makes no sense in console games, too. You need some time to search an enemy.
@@RTFM In reality you would heavily think about looting while there are enemies left, because it makes you vulnerable. Without decisions you wouldn't play the game, it would play itself.
Have a nice day! We have only one houserule that applies to the groups with less than 4 players - GUEST characters. Takes a bit to explain so will explain it only if there is any interest in this. Thank you for your attention! :-)
@@RTFM Hi again! 1) Any character is possible to be selected from the pool of characters as long as it is not present in other teams (currently we have TINKERER and CRAGHEART in our pool); 2) Characters start at the level L with respective number of ability cards and have (L-1) unlocked perks, where L is the current level of prosperity (currently we are almost at level 5); 3) Character receives either 15+15L gold and the solo scenario item if it is unlocked or 40+15L gold to be spent on items (spending money on enhancements is forbidden); 4) Road and City events bonuses and/or penalties applies to the characters too (Clarification: They pay all of collective costs (if possible) and do not receive any collective items that are rewards for team). Thank you very much for your attention.
Interesting points. I feel like a lot of these bypass the rules and make it easier. I say if it makes it more fun, go for it. Personally, I’d deeply miss the challenge. The only house rule I play by is that sometimes, in the excitement, you play two cards that you truly didn’t intend to play. Like you forget that you can only do one top action and one bottom action. Or your big plan only works if you save a card for the next turn, but you accidentally just grabbed and used that one for a basic “move 2” action. I say, if it’s reasonable enough to believe that you made a simple mistake, and it doesn’t make the game go backwards or isn’t influenced by monster turn order, a deselection can’t be made. I feel like this is necessary because the game is so complex already and mistakes will happen, but the base difficulty curve is rough and you really need to be on your game. In other words, I tend to play a bit more forgiving of human attention errors.
I agree with most of these. But, the one rule I can’t BELIEVE made it passed play-testing was the fact that retaliate cannot cause an enemy to die. We decided that retaliation damage can kill. Why wouldn’t it? Makes no sense.
I think that's actually how it is in the rules. It states that if the retaliating enemy dies, it wouldn't retaliate. But the retaliate damage can kill. At least, that's the way I play too.
@@Frankzoar You're playing it correctly, RTFM is right. Order of operations is: Take base damage, then add any existing modifiers, then add modifier cards (in order of your choice), then subtract shield. Adjust monster HP accordingly - if it dies, remove it. Now add debuffs, move the monster if it was pushed/pulled and deal with retaliate. This also means that a damage+curse attack won't add a curse if it kills the monster.
I like the battle goal rule! I kind of think it should be baseline, but at the same time I understand that the designers probably balanced the encounters having in mind that player characters have very rigid goals.
My group has been playing for a little while and the only house rule we have implemented is that if you get a battle goal that is literally impossible, for whatever reason (like loot no treasure overlay tiles, but due to the scenario conditions every character has to loot 1 treasure tile), then you are allowed to mulligan that goal (discard it and draw another). That said we have only had one such situation arise. We have played some things incorrectly in the early scenarios, but, since if I love a game I'll learn all I can about it and I love Gloomhaven, I have been correcting these errors during my groups play times. These errors have not been anything game breaking, thankfully. :D
@@socrdude209 The battle goal is "Loot no money tokens or treasure overlay tiles during this scenario.", which I would normally do quite happily. However there is one scenario where EACH character in that scenario has to LOOT A CHEST (aka a treasure overlay tile), which makes this battle goal impossible to complete.
@@septimustavi9352 lol yeah that would be the one time then you don't want that card.. ands i see i didn't read your op fully, i got excited because I just love getting that perk card myself
@@socrdude209 Yeah double ticks are amazing. Been playing a solo campaign with three characters and have gotten Agressor (have enemies on the map at the start of each round) 4 times out of the 6 scenarios I have played...been a weird string of randomness.
My house rule is that when you loose a scenario you don’t get any xp and you don’t go back to GH. So you don’t pick up new city or road events when you try again. You kinda just start the scenario again - on the plus side you keep your blessings - if you donated to the sanctuary. I don’t feel that I earned Xp when I loose a game
My 2 cents: 1. Breaking summons breaks summons. Yes it's annoying that they follow focus rules but that means you should be planning more carefully. It also makes several of the cards in the concentric circles class about half as useful. I could see house ruling that the summons don't stop moving when no enemies are present but even that is game-breaking. You can always drop the summons to your lost pile and recover the cards via other mechanics and resummon them closer to the action later. 2. You can share info on personal quests. Only battle goals are supposed to be kept secret. The rules should explicitly state it's up to you how much you want to share about your personal quest. I play this exclusively with my girlfriend, we've retired 4 characters each now and have always retired at the same time. You don't actually retire until you return to town so if you stay out on the road you can move to the next scenario if it's just one more to finish. 3. That's really really game-breaking. Just have your partner play the potion/wand on their turn. It will be available later that round. If you're in such a bad way that you have to break the game that badly then you should re-examine how you approached the scenario. Otherwise, this removes half the planning/setup/tension for several classes that make them sing. 4. I agree. You technically can do this by retiring your current character and then making the same character again and that's just a huge PITA. 5. Not very game-changing. Especially as you retire more characters you will find battle goals matter far less since you're able to hit almost every perk you want from the beginning of making a new character if you're at say Level 6 prosperity and on your 5th character. In the end, people should play the game to provide as much fun as possible. If you tweak it here and there and enjoy it more then you're doing it right.
Critique about the summon rule and Spoiler about two mini class: The two mini class's special ability is that you have a strong bear summon that does it's own thing while you play your character. However, your cards give you the special "command" ability which allows you to control its actions. By instituting this house rule, though you improve the summoner class, you accidently Nerf what is already an average class to begin with.
I felt that without this house rule, the beast master would have been significantly less fun, but to each their own. I don't quite follow your second point though. If you're saying the Beast Master is being improved, which class are you suggesting is getting nerfed?
@@RTFM Yeah, I guess I worded that a bit odd. I agree with what you're saying, this rule buffs all other classes at the expense of making the beast tyrant far less special.
Less special in comparison, perhaps. I get that. But being able to control the bear at all times is still a very useful ability to have. My bear boy didn't feel any worse for it. But as always, that's just what worked for me.
I agree. I think controlling the summons goes against what it should be. It’s a being with a mind of its own. The bear is a ridiculous companion. My favorite battle goal is the one to not fall below half health..... the character himself doesn’t even get into the fight.
We also noticed a problem with the battle goals. Sometimes you pull a goal that is completely impossible for that scenario, or your character. So our solution to that was, if you think you cannot complete your 2 drawn battle goals, we allow a 3rd draw. Then you MUST use that 3rd card. We don't utilize it often, but it's fun to go to the deck for your 3rd and pray for something playable.
Meh, battle goals are awesome and necessary but I don’t think any of them are impossible. It’s just how far do you want to go to complete it? Is the scenario and teammates overall survival more important or do you want to make sure to grab that one extra coin to have your 5 or break off the fight to grab that chest even though it may get a teammate exhausted? I’ve had one where I couldn’t earn more than X amount of XP for the round. One of the toughest to get since I couldn’t use my best abilities. But I find that out of two there’s at least one you can do or one that’s easier to get than the other.
@@malixcorvin777 It's very rare, but it is possible to get two goals that are literally impossible to achieve. For example the loot X tiles in a game (if that scenario doesn't have enough loot or monsters) and (if you don't have enough items) use your items X times in a game. Like I said, very rare, but it can happen.
@@malixcorvin777 There is a battle goal that says "Don't loot any chest overlay tiles during the scenario" and there is at least one scenario where every character HAS to loot at least one chest...this battle goal would therefore be impossible though it is a very rare occurrence.
I house ruled that as long as you have cards in your hand, you still loot after the campaign ends. It fixes a very unthematic rule and prevents having to kite the last enemy for no in game reason.
Ooh, that's not bad. I definitely agree that leaving the room as soon as you're done even when there's gold on the ground feels a little weird. I wonder if that would lead to players being a lot richer than the game intended though.
What about the scenarios where all monsters immediately disappear after you complete the goal? Way too easy/cheap to get coins and chests that way. Or what about scenarios where you’re try to reach a door to escape? Doesn’t make thematic sense to be able to go back and grab coins and possibly exhaust but still win.
@@taylorvance in those instances, that makes sense. But in all other instances, it doesn't. "oops, killed the last slime. I can't walk one tile over and pick up the loot. Gotta leave right now.
That’s why you position yourself in a good spot. You have until the end of the current round before the game ends. So, 3 players and player 1 kills the last monster.... 2 and 3 finish their turn and grab that extra coin or two. It makes the game a little more challenging. Having all the time in the world afterward really wrecks the game.
I like the battle goal one! In my very first game I had the "get less than 7 xp" and the "get more than 12 xp" ... I chose the wrong one which left a sour taste. I'll suggest that to my party. One that we use is: Gold gets evenly distributed after a game. As it's parents playing with children in our case this simply avoids argument and selfish playing (I could save your character or loot. I chose looting ... oh now winning the game has become impossible as our glass cannon is now exhausted). We do the same with items from chests: after the game we decide on a need/want basis who the item is best for.
For me, the end of the scenario "everybody disappears and cannot gather loot" thing doesnt make sense. In my games, characters get just one more round after the scenario goal to gather treasure. The boss hits the ground, and everybody just suddenly vaporizes? You're not going to walk over and open that treasure chest? C'mon. One extra round to gather that lewt. Go get it!
We went even farther than that. If you've cleared the dungeon, and no one is around but you...you would pick everything up. So, we just pick up every single thing in the entire dungeon and split it. Yes, it basically removes the entire "loot" functionality from the game, but the rule makes no sense.
Do you want to walk around looting a cave when a dragon could waltz in at any moment? Or do you want to accidentally trigger a particularly lethal trap? Part of the reason you wouldn't hang around is because you don't know what, if anything, is still in the area, especially since the thing you just finished exploring is only a small part of a greater world.
You care about what makes sense? It doesn't make sense, that you can do other actions, but not the actions you already performed, which you can repeat after a rest. Therefore it makes sense to allow using actions in your discard pile by discarding other from your hand. Without allowing that you can't say other things don't make sense.
Changing the rules to make things easier need a correction for the balance. You can loot everything after the scenario, but money tokens (including the ones you looted before the scenario ended) gives you half the money.
About summons. We play this way - each turn "Lord of the summon" rolls a D6. If it is 4+, summon will be controlled by the player. Otherwise standart "monster" behavior applied. So 50/50. And I think, that for "summoner" character roll can be 2+. But our party is not unlocked this char yet, so this is the pure idea. Anyway - wery great video and endless source of ideas from other comments!
The no #1 reason for house ruling is increasing the fun of playing a game, right? Because I have so many campaign-games which I want to play for the story experience, I house rule almost every one of them to maximize my exposure to everything in the game. With choose-your-own-adventures, I check all options after picking one or go back one step when I 'die'. With campaign-driven games the variety of each scenario is what counts and so I don't mind min-maxing my characters in order to get through a scenario, so I never have to play the same one twice. Once again, if you don't play to master a game, and care more about fresh new adventures than about playing a punishing game until you strategize a way out then these are my Gloomhaven House Rules: 1) Forget the loot rules. Pick up everything by walking over them and share the loot at the end to maximize your purchase power. 2) Card limit, schmard schimit. I know, I know, this is a big one and 'breaks the game' but as a completionist you want to experience every tactical card (combo) and putting every card in your action deck when you level up is just too much fun. Also, it helps with faster leveling (see #5) cuz you've got more cards to play/discard for XP. 3) Losing is retiring. If your character 'dies' during a game, retire him/her and pick a new one character. There are too many characters compared to the number of scenarios and you want to experience them all, right? 4) Use the scenario chart (see Boardgamegeek.com > Gloomhaven > Files) to plan out which scenarios to do before you do them. Some lock others and you want to play as many as possible. 5) Play fast. In the end, all of these tips are aimed at gamers who have enough campaign games to last years without buying new ones (and who is going to stick to that?) so if, like me, you just want to experience Gloomhaven's (almost) 100 scenarios for the storylines and the leveling up, don't be shy to gain XP and gold fast. Use the 'Easy' level to limit monster strength (they're just fodder, right?) and discard cards for the XP whenever you can. Sure, by level 3 already you'll feel like a superhero (so feel free to move from Easy to Normal or Hard) but remember: grow your characters in as few scenarios as possible to get to the new ones.
Every time you level up u can choose one card with number equal or lower of your level. So for example u make it to level 2 And now can add to your pool of cards which contains all level 1 cards And all level X cards, one level 2 card from your character deck. But you still locked in hand of your character. So when you get level 3 you can now take one level 3 card or another level 2 card which u didnt pick yet. And so on.
@@rutgervd I thought when you level up to for example level 2, you get to pick one of the cards that say level 2, add them to your pool and pick from that. So you won't be able to switch between your level 2 abilities until you pick up the second level 2 ability when you level up to 3 or higher.
@@junglistfpv8553 You are correct...when you accumulate enough xp to reach a new lvl (let's say lvl 3) and return to gloomhaven, your character will lvl up. At this point in time you may be a lvl 3 ability card OR pick the lvl 2 card you didn't choose and add that ONE card to your pool. For each scenario you choose cards, up to your hand limit, from your pool of cards.
We were frustrated by the fact that the only way to get a chest that remained unopened at the end of a scenario was to go back and replay that scenario, especially since we decided to play with permadeath as standard (i.e. no running headlong through the dungeon a second time like mad t**ts and making a beeline for the chest). But it also felt like simply giving ourselves the treasure at the end of the scenario would lead to us accumulating too much treasure too quickly. We *like* that you have to occasionally take a risk in not ending the scenario in order to grab the chest - but not to the extent that that treasure becomes lost for ever. So we've come up with a house rule where we make a note of every unopened chest, and then when we run a bonus scenario, we replace one of the non-unique chests in that with a unique chest from a previous mission. That way, there's still an incentive to try and grab the treasure at the first opportunity, but we also get to experience more of the content of the game, without backtracking. Our other house rule that we more or less fell into was being very specific with our initiative order. We feel like the mechanics of the game rely too much on precision to arbitrarily introduce randomness to the player turn order, especially when playing with permadeath. And it's easier to just allow stating specific figures when choosing cards than to come up with increasingly obtuse ways of getting around it (e.g. "I'm going on the fast side" had become "I'm going on the fast side of fast" had become "I'm going in the top third of fast"). It just seems unnecessary when there's already so many ways for the game to screw you over already.
Yeah we had to scan the rule book to make sure that was right. Seemed weird that you can't do any looting after the last enemy died. I'm considering also splitting up all the unclaimed loot evenly amongst party members to help with progression and make my group more eager to play the game again. At the rate we're playing it we'll be done in 12 years.
The whole not looting what's left over does seem strange thematically, but mechanically I think it's necessary. Otherwise there would be no reason to ever loot anything. Just try to win and you'll probably get it all anyway. I do feel like the forced obfuscation of initiative is an important part of the game. For me it helps emulate the frantic nature of combat. But then again, if your group likes playing that way, more power to you.
The whole point of the non specific banter is to emulate the hectic real time combat. In the middle of a street fight I wouldn’t turn to you and say “Hey, I’m going duck and then punch this guy before you.” Whereas you replay with “after that I will push him into That wall and then punch him too.” It just naturally happens or it doesn’t. The looting everything left is OP. Some characters can’t get a lot of loot and their fine that way. The beast tyrant for instance, without his Bear’s loot card he doesn’t get much. Usually only scraps that my team leaves in the first room because he doesn’t move much. But, he doesn’t need a lot of loot because he doesn’t really get in the mix of it all. You could always just add 2-3 gold for the quest reward at the end instead.
When you play with a certain party, you will also learn what numbers their cards have. This is a great organic learning process and will lead to better teamwork after a few scenarios. I like this process. Of course your party can learn to circumvent the rule of coming up with 'slow-fastish' kind of expressions. Perhaps you should limit your party to using the words 'fast, normal and slow' when talking about initiative. If you have perfect information, the game rules does state that you should then add +1 to scenario level to keep it challenging (solo play rules)
See my post above, I've house-ruled this to give character one extra round to gather treasure. It doesnt break the game with an unlimited spree, but on the other hand, it gives them one round to walk over and grab something or open a chest
1. At first we totally forgot the rule about summons behavior, but even after we read it we thought pretty much the same as you 2. We are pretty open about our personal quests, I don't think not knowing what the others are trying to do add very much to the game 3. I've yet to encounter this kind of items 4. We are low lever now, so we've not run into this problem 5. We might try this next time Nice video!
Borislav Mihailov personal quests being secret doesn’t add too much. It just gives your character “personality”. Like in Dead of Winter, your secret objectives make you act and play a certain way and people sometimes wonder why you’re doing that particular thing. I find most of the personal goals to be like that.
It's fun to figure out what the other characters are trying to do organically. It also gives the characters.. character. You can then adjust accordingly, like if you see another character really hunting the elites, you'll know it might not be a good idea to pick that 'kill an elite' battle goal.
2. Personal quests being secret is actually a common error that people make. Only battle goals are meant to be secret. All the same, many groups actually enjoy keeping personal goals secret as well. (I find that it just gets a little clunky trying to do that, and once a player lets it sleep even accidentally, you can't put the cat back in the bag after a scenario the way you can with battle goals.)
I guess it's not stated in the rules, but the reveal of what you've been working towards is fun enough that we keep it secret anyway. And yeah, potions are supposed to work like any other element creation, but nahhhh.
Im setting a game together of all new timers im most experienced and i only ever played one game like this once. What are some ways to play or house rules that might make things a little easier but not game breaking easy. We are not playing for some crazy hard challenge. I assume we should play on each mape on somewhat easier setting but with lower experience from that will it make late game impossible?
An interesting thing about Gloomhaven is that it scales to your level. Later scenarios are more complex than the first few, but the difficulty is (usually) pretty stable. Also, because you won't end the game with the same characters you started with, you really don't need to worry about late game difficulty at the beginning. I say play it one level easier to start with. The game describes how to do this, so it's not even a house rule.
@@RTFM ok thanks i was mostly worried because playing on esier gives you less gold wich would mean less enhancements thus even with the scale and retirement it could make a character feel alot weaker. Thanks for the info. Have a great day
We recently unlocked the summon based class you mentioned. I think we house ruled that summons as well as things like augments with the Mind Thief & other classes with similar skills can be picked back up to be placed into the discard pile. If a summon dies though, it's of course lost. This helps with slow summons that may not be able to engage the remaining targets for another 3+ turns, but the player controlling them only has 1-2 more turns left.
Advantage house rule: you can pick which battle card you want. Also, if a rolling modifier and a no damage/curse comes up you just get the rolling modifier and don't miss
Sometimes, but not usually. Because you have to pair them with an item that gets lost after use, it's more of a one-time per scenario thing. For my group it brings them up to be on par with other abilities. But I do play two player, so I can see how if you have four players they would be easier to trigger without this house rule.
We have two house rules. 1. We allow only one stamina potion per character. They are overpowered and the game is easy as it is. That makes us take other interesting small items. 2. When retiring you are allowed to start at lower level then prosperity level. That way you get to experience the full specter of the character.
@@wobblysauce Number 1 is already part of the official rules. A character cannot own more than one copy of any item card. (Pg.8, bolded line of the first paragraph.) Unless you meant only one Stamina-type effect of any kind across all of a character's small item cards, which I could see.
The more you play, the better you'll become... I teach you patience friends ! so try not to break the game too fast... some little house rules after that is said : - You don't have to choose a card when leveling up. You can choose when creating your deck. You can't have more than one card of each level, except if you prefer a lower one to replace an upper one. yes, make the game a little easier, but also more strategic and give you a better experience of your character. - Let your invoc to focus on a door when there is no monster left to reach. Not a great game breaker. - if you don't have a lot of time to play to gloomhaven and don't want to make scenario a second time just to loot, then... autoloot the last room you're in... and for the bold who go to the treasure chests, let them pick 1 gold token per scenario Level for rewarding. if the chest is a trap... let the fate decides who opens it. If it's an object or gold... share them with character in the room (the others don't have to know...).
There is a common theme among all of the house rules in the video and all of the house rules I’ve read in the comments. They all make the game easier. I get the respec-with-a-cost rule, and the motivation behind it, but most of these house rules don’t counteract the advantages they bring. They just make the game easier. Of course the game has a built-in way to manage one official easier variant. Downgrade your rewards by one difficulty tier.
I don't disagree (though I would argue the "One last job" rule is more about fun and storytelling than changing the difficulty). I guess my point of view is that, as long as everyone at the table has more fun using a house rule, why not do it? It's still a challenge for us, and losing more often won't make the game more enjoyable, so what's the harm?
@@RTFM Thanks for the thoughts here. Yes, 'One last job' falls in with the respec rule, have to agree. Fun is priority number one, but it's also why I would not use most of these house rules. There are extreme ends of the spectrum, and some players will want a Dark Souls-esque challenge while others want more of a Lego Star Wars. Most will be somewhere in between. These house rules mostly make the game easier. If that's more fun, then there's no reason not to use them. I personally enjoy a teeth-grinding challenge, so most of these rules would drive me nuts. (ESPECIALLY the frankly game-breaking instant elements rule.) I also don't like the feeling that I've been bowling with the bumpers on. Other players either won't care or won't see it that way. It's just not an insignificant thing to make some of these changes, and the pattern towards making the game easier is worth noting.
I found without controlling summons every game has them just sitting around doing nothing once a room is clear. Until a door is opened but then they are just too far away to be effective for the rest of the game. Summons AI just feel like they weren't thought out as well.
Our experience has been that Summons can be incredibly effective, but require planning and forethought to get them to work properly. These days (after 47 sessions), we pretty much never have summons die the turn they are created, and often have summons kill a monster or two entirely on their own.
I really enjoyed playing the summoner without using any house rules. Allowing yourself to control them kind of invalidates some of her most powerful cards - the "tell your summon what to do" cards. To get a deck that is powerful, she really needs that planning as well as a few key card enhancements.
Your problem is that you’re probably summoning them in the beginning and wasting them. If you saved it for a big fight or for the boss fight, you’d see they are much more effective. This whole game is about planning a turn or two ahead.
Summons are really strong. You are getting attacks without using any cards! And in the end, they will also 'heal' your party by soaking an attack or trap. More than one sometimes. This needs to be somehow balanced, and the way it's done is with the poor AI behavior. The party needs to protect them and use them, not just the summoner. If you are getting 3 attacks off during the summon's lifetime, it's on par with the strongest unbuffed attack cards. If you get more, they are more powerful. If you allow full control of summons, they become the most broken insanity any of the characters can have.
I don't get rule 3? Aren't elements available automatically right away anyway if you've produced it? So one card creates it and immediately you can consume that element?
The element tokens on the board are moved at the end of the turn in which they are created. As such, you can't make elements and use them on the same turn (unless you use my house rule), but another player could make an element on their turn and you could use it on yours.
I believe the whole point of the elements is that you try to set them up for your team. If you can set it up for yourself, that's just playing solo and no fun. Anything that adds to a group synergy is a great addition.
@@TimoRutanen That's definitely what they're going for. Or at least it seems that way. I've just found that synergy can be a little too tough to acquire sometimes.
@@RTFM If you allow self-activation, it takes a lot away from the game and turns elements into automatic buffs. It's bad for the game, though I understand the desire to make it easier to play. The harder it is to pull off some awesome combo the better you feel when you do. Multiple characters also have feats that greatly help with the elements. They might even pick those feats with the right party.
@@TimoRutanen I almost always play two player, which makes synergy quite a bit harder to pull off than with three or four, especially with characters who don't produce any elements. Anyway, I only house rule element creating items, everything else I keep the same.
On one hand, you paid money for the game, so play it how you like. On the other hand, I'm going to gatekeep a bit and say I think Candy Land might be more your style. These Gloomhaven house rules are like playing Chutes and Ladders with being able to climb up chutes.
Proud weakling, right here. The way I figure it, as long as everyone at the table agrees the game is more fun with a house rule, easier or harder, there's no reason not to add it.
Our houserules are 1. moving over loot is enough to pick it up. 2. You can autoloot the room you are in when the scenario ends. 3. All players share gold (so no one spends the whole game just going around picking up loot). 4. Short or long rests replenish items. 5. That control your own summons rule. So far I've only played Gloomhaven with my girlfriend and we found that, especially looting, slowed down the pace of the game and made it less fun for certain classes without a lot of movement or loot abilities.
I would agree that some classes are much better at looting than others. It sounds like your characters might end up being much more wealthy than the game is balanced towards though. How easy/difficult do you find the game after implementing these rules?
@@RTFM Seems about the right level of challenge. We take some scenarios easily, but others we've finished with one of us exhausted and the other down to just 3 cards. Especially since you're limited to the amount of gear you can bring, and the types of gear you can buy based on prosperity, it seems reasonable. For what its worth we started as a brute and spellweaver, neither of which are particularly good at looting. We played the first scenario with and without the looting house rule and without it it just felt like a boring chore to clean up all the gold.
I don't think it makes sense thematically, but having to stop and pick up the gold before the end of the scenario definitely makes you think differently about how much time you can afford to spend on gaining wealth vs beating the scenario. I kinda like it but if that's not your bag, that's fine too.
Positioning in this game is always key. If you can set up and kite monsters into the proper position you can play a loot 1 or loot 2 card and the loot comes to you instead of you chasing it.
@@malixcorvin777 We do a thing where if the mission ends you auto loot any tiles that are immediately adjacent to you, but not the whole room. If you want everything you still need to go out of your way, and it makes it important to plan for the end while taking away the frustration of being "this" close.
I love those house rules! I can’t tell you how many times I didn’t make up a house rule because I wanted to be a stickler to the rules. After losing or causing myself too much grief I realized I was actually causing myself to not want to get the game to the table as much because of how hard it was. Now I’m more lenient on house rules and it makes it WAY more enjoyable for me and my group which is what games are made to do.
I have a few house rules that I use. 1) When everyone is picking cards, we avoid talking. Without this rule our group spends way too long on everyone trying to pick the perfect combos and predict exactly there everyone will go. But if we can't talk then we have to pick cards that are flexible and it keeps the game moving. 2) You can switch classes freely until you hit level 2 and still keep your xp, gold, and get that classes starting gear. It's not fun to be stuck in a class that you don't enjoy. 3) Similar to #2, when you hit level 2 you don't have to pick an ability, you can take either one into combat (but not both) but when you hit level 3 then you have to lock in your level 2 card. This allows you to try them out before making a decision.
Oooh, I really like the one about trying out your level two abilities until level three. Do you have this testing period for every level or just level two? And I don't know if I'd like playing without any strategy discussion whatsoever, but it definitely sounds like an interesting experiment.
I think I'm going to allow it for all levels.
Agree on all the rules! it seems weird but when my group first started playing we spend way less time doing our action becuase everyone was just playing for himself. Now we waste way too much time to synergize. It is even stated in the rule books that talking too much isn't good for the gameplay. Not really an house rule, but it is certenly a good habit! :)
I love the 3rd idea!
I like the No Talking rule, particularly for the plotters in our group, including me, though chatting definitely helps the younger players. I might try using a 1 minute sand timer or something similar.
I thought you could choose out of all available cards for every scenario you go into as long as it does not exceed your limit. I.e. put all level two cards into your hand and fill the remainder with level 1 cards. I haven't played yet but that's how I interpreted the rule book.
We use the old “let’s just say we won” rule
A classic!
We also use "Well let's say it's not a miss aaaaannd the beast is dead"
@@AudriusZilinskas particularly when you pull off a cool combo but draw a miss!
We did this on a hard level in Jaws. I feel some levels are unbalanced for 2 players because there are just too many hexes to cover and obstacles to destroy before exhausting all the cards and having a few less monsters doesn't compensate for that. We played the scenario a second time and my partner became exhausted before me. I was able to complete the main objective but not finish the remaining monsters. I said lets just say we won because I don't want to play it again. 😏
@@agamble1126 I agree, sometimes when you have spent up to two hours only to lose and exhaust by one round before winning is quite frustrating, so I let myself play another round or two until I win.
House Rules (after playing 28 scenarios): #1 You control AI #2 Elite drops two loot (better equipment) #3 If a monster picks up loot and you kill that monster, it drops ALL loot. #4 Enhancements get reputation discount (up to 5 gold) same as shop.
House Rule 6: Let the wookie win.
Sensible things, and I like your explanations. I play solo; the "control your summon" makes really good sense for me particularly. Another great video. Thank you!
I have one more. Until AFTER first scenario you can return all items to the shop for full value. This allows new players (or a new group) to play around with various items. First scenario is not easy as it is - and being locked into a bad choice of item without any idea how to play the character is not helping.
I always found the los concept befuddling and ridiculous in most cases, how an enemy could snipe you around a corner. So me and my group decided to adopt the center of hex to center of hex rule. If the line touches a wall its a no go. Along with this, we added that if a aoe hex is out of los so long as the initial range hex target is within los, all hexes of that aoe are permissible. After all, if i throw a bomb into the next room, just cause i don't see the explosion doesn't mean the enemies aren't going to paint the walls with their entrails lol. Sometimes alittle rationality helps with your immersion.
We are doing the controlled summon thing in here but with one extra level to the dificulty if there is a summon-heavy character in the party.
Oh that sounds like a good way to balance it out. Clever!
We allow re-spec if you pick the wrong card for a new level and find out it doesn't work out when you test it in action. We don't allow re-spec other than that though.
Our house rule revolves around retirements; after someone has chosen a new personal quest after character retirement, any other cards that would unlock that class are removed from the game. Also, if you're dealt an 'Envelope X' card, you're free to discard it and redraw a new personal quest. Nothing worse than getting two personal quests for characters that are already unlocked.
I play this game with my dad and my brother in law and we ask my mother or my sister to check our personal quests after such to avoid people working towards the same character without having to spoil which one you are going to unlock.
This plus being allowed to redraw if you get 2 characters that you already have unlocked makes the personal quests feel a lot more rewarding. We don't remove them from the game for if someone really likes the quest itself.
We did this because me and my dad both had the 'circles' character and he unlocked it when I was around 70-80% done with my quest. There was no worse feeling than having your personal quest become redundant when you have already spent so much time and effort on it
Umm...you still get rewards for completing a personal quest where the listed reward has already been unlocked (like with bakugo's circles example). Admittedly a new random item design and a new random side scenario may not be as appealing, but you still get something for doing it.
@@septimustavi9352 thats true, didnt think of that
@@RicardoKugo There is a LOT of stuff that can be easily overlooked or forgotten about for this game (not surprising when the rule book is 51 pages long). I do agree that having someone else unlock a class just before you would that class would be really frustrating. For a more thematic house rule...you visit a seer in order to discover if the last of your adventuring days provides different rewards than those your of your companion's. Maybe make it cost you a little in-game gold to do this too.
I normally love house rules, but gloomhaven is the first game that resonates with my own thoughts on how a game should be run. With less control and increased difficulty. I love it. Im so thankful they made these rules. Your house rules are cool, but this is the one time i hope the game doesnt change
I remember hearing a talk with Isaac Childres where someone asked if he was going to change certain rules for Frosthaven to make it easier, and he immediately said no, so you definitely have nothing to worry about there.
Interesting. I have not played gloomhaven in a while, but I am pretty sure I just got the element item wrong and played it like you suggested. Which I agree would feel better.
My group has few house rules. One of my favorites tho, is about Road and City events and it's Role Play oriented. Since we are 4 it often happens that we can't settle an outcome of an events just by voting, so we role it!
For example, a road event may put you in the situation where you can rush to help some people against a group of Vermlings (option A), or sit back and watch the fight(Option B). Our Brute is more likely to rush in and crush some heads (just because!), and so is the Tinkerer who wants to help the people in distress. At the same time, our Craghearth doesn't care about the fate of some pity humans, and our Scoundrel prefer to wait and loot the spoils of the battle.
Since option A is the most urgent, the Brute and the Tinkerer rush in without waiting for the other two comrades and fullfil the Event on their own. All the good and bad that comes with it affect only the ones who partecipate.
It is fun to play this way and it gives characters more depth.
Oh that's really cool! I usually play two player, so it doesn't come up too much, but I totally see how that would be an issue for four. I imagine you only get to choose one outcome to resolve though, as many of the choices are entirely contradictory. How do you work that out?
Yeah, only one outcome! We go for the most fun usually without thinkin too much about It.
It happend several times that what the mindthief decided was the way to go for the whole group, because my friend roled It dumb and reckless, so we just played along to his craziness.
It's a good way to laugh and have fun
@@matteoiacobelli2958 Makes sense. And that definitely fits since the Mindthief can just manipulate people into doing their bidding anyway.
That is an incredible way to play! Thanks!
I like the battle goal house rule. It definitely did not make sense to be tied to a goal that may not exist. Reveal two and complete one seems like an excellent strategy component.
The whole fun of summons is trying too "control" them within the rules of the game. They are OP in many situations and your rule would just break the game completely.
I agree 100%. That is an abusive house rule. If you are going to do something like that to "make thematic sense" but makes the gane way easier you should at least up the difficulty without increasing reward
@@davidpeacock8276 I mean... sure it can be abusive I guess... But it's a co-op game, and unless you're complaining online about the game being too easy due to your house rules, I cannot see a single issue with letting people play with whatever house rules they want.
When I got the two-mini character I at first found it impossible to control but I’m glad I stuck with it. My summon having a mind of its own leads to some funny outcomes. Having full control over would be boring to me and it also makes the summon too overpowered IMO
In addition, Frosthaven has a (starting) character whose theme is she has controllable summons (which don't attack or anything, they are basically just to activate her abilities and soak up damage). This seems significantly less cool if you already have been controlling all of your summons.
On the other hand, my group has decided that melee summons pretty much suck when the game controls them, so we almost never use them. So it would be fun to use this house rule in order to actually take some of these into battle with us.
We only house rule that if an item has X charges and you long rest, if the item didn't run out of charges you are allowed to recharge it to full. Otherwise, some lower prosperity items can sometimes outclass higher ones for very silly reasons.
A lot of people houserule summon AIs but I really don't like that. Really changes the power of things. We've been streaming our sessions and actually managed to use summons semi-effectively as a soaker, it's been pretty neat. Glad to see another person just as enthused over Gloomhaven as we are. :)
My group made a rule where at the end of each adventure/mission/level we add together all the money gathered by everyone together and then divide it up equally. That way we don’t need to worry about going out of our way to acquire money for each individual character.
I dig the Battle Goals idea, may have to give this a spin! We control our summons as well, they feel very weak otherwise.
Right? So underwhelming to pop up a summon just to have it do something dumb and die immediately.
For months we accidentally played where we controlled the pets and they did seem a bit overpowered. It wasn't until I unlocked a new class with a pet and one of the cards let me control it that we realized we were playing summons wrong. I agree the monster AI for pets isn't as fun. Is there anything you all do to balance out how much easier the game gets when controlling a pet?
I had the exact same realization with that character, but I never felt like controlling pets was overpowered. The fact that they have a turn of complete inaction when summoned and usually have so few hit points means that they tend not to live too long even when being controlled. You might just be using them better than I do though.
This seems fair, sometimes easier is just more fun.
We immediately instated the house rule of looting the entire dungeon at the end of the mission (minus chests) and divvying out the gold equally. Now everyone can focus on cooperation as much possible without worrying about funding their character.
I've heard of quite a few people doing this, and I think it makes a lot of sense. I don't mind the semi-cooperative nature of the game, but I totally get why people would rather just work together 100%
seems way overpowered, especially if you still use the gold multiplier. I like the tactical challenge of cooperating and trying to maximize loot. Also you basically nullify all the loot cards, and classes who are better looters. Also the role playing potential of arguing over loot, which to me is half the fun ;)
I've got 2 big ones:
Exhausted State: So normally when a character gets exhausted they are just out for the rest of the scenario. While I understand why that's there, to be a harsh punishment and make players care about how much damage and how many cards they're using, it sucks being knocked out and just sitting there until everybody else is done. So we have an "Exhausted state" as well. In it, if you get exhausted, you take your deck, shuffle it, and place it facedown in front of you. When everyone flips their cards you flip one card and can do either the top or bottom effect as well as the smaller effect of the side you didn't pick (so the 2 attack or 2 move). So you're still acting and playing but a bit weaker. You use that card's initiative for your turn, and then discard that card.
There's a few other rules for exhausted players:
1) You can't use a short rest to recover your cards, you have to go through everything, and miss a turn with a long rest to recover them.
2) You can't use any card effects that would demand you lose the card, those are too strong. If a card has 2 lose effects then you have to just use the 2 attack and 2 move actions.
3) If all players get exhausted then the scenario fails.
4) Exhausted players cannot earn experience points from any cards, but can still loot coins and treasure.
5) An exhausted player cannot earn anymore points toward their battle goal. If they succeeded in completing it before they were exhausted they turn their battle goal 90 degrees to the side and will earn the check marks if the scenario succeeds. If they didn't complete it before being exhausted they turn it upside down, indicating they failed it. So if your battle goal asks you to pick up X amount of coins, you would only count the coins you picked up before getting exhausted. You can still pick up more but they won't count for your battle goal.
6) Exhausted players can not use any items
7) exhausted players can not activate traps and can not move past them. Except in the case where all non-exhsusted players have moved past the traps (like if there was a line of traps blocking a door, they would have to wait until everyone else is through).
8) Exhausted players can not open doors.
In terms of enemy AI:
1) Enemies ignore and can't damage exhausted players. But can still apply status effects like stun, immobilize, curse, etc. If the players are caught in an aoe.
2) Enemies can freely move through exhausted players and their attacks are never blocked by exhausted players.
3) If an enemy ends its move in the hex of an exhausted player that player gets pushed into the nearest empty hex.
This certainly makes the game a bit easier, but it's fun for use since everybody is always playing.
If you want to modify it, here's a few ideas
To make it harder, either:
-when you go into the exhausted state bring your hp counter up to your max. Enemies will still attack and focus on exhausted players now. Also you have to lose a card when you take a long rest and reshuffle, you don't heal from long rests as well. Losing all of your cards or health in this state kicks you out of the scenario for real.
Or - all exhausted state rules are as normal, except you only pick one effect from the card that you draw. So the top, bottom, 2 attack, or 2 move. This will slow you down a lot and makes a little more sense for a debilitating exhausted state.
To make it easier:
On exhaustion set your HP counter to zero. You and your teammates can heal you and if you are healed back up to your max hp you leave the exhausted state, but drop your health to half (rounded down) and shuffle and randomly lose half of your deck (rounded down). Treat these cards as completely out of the scenario and can not be recovered by absolutely any means.
My other rule is about looting. After a scenario is complete, and the characters in it could realistically spend a few minutes picking up anything (so if you have to escape or move quickly then you can't do this), you go through and grab any coins or treasure that's left. Any coins grabbed this way are only ever worth 1 gold each, as opposed to the multiplier given by the scenario level. This encourages players to pick up coins during the scenario, but anything still sitting around is worth something.
For treasure, if it's an item, you can grab it and decide as a team who gets it, or compete if more than one player really wants it. To determine who gets it, use this hierarchy:
1) Did the players complete their battle goal? If yes who earned the most check marks.
If that's a tie:
2) Who earned the most experience points in that scenario?
If you're still tied:
3) Who picked up the most coins during the scenario?
And if you're still tied after that idk, play rock paper scissors or something.
I only have 1 house rule:
Different parties of people can affect each other in gameplay. This makes the 2 parties I run more realistic and fun, as if they're directly affecting each other
Nice! It's like it's all in one shared world.
And can you describe this a little bit more (without spoilers) how do they affect each other? Do they still hold their items so some items are then sold out in the store for the other party? What exactly do you mean?
@@Greyson_Kousari the items are still a shared in a way, because I doubled the item count, but once it's gone, it's gone. The prosperity however, is stacked. In some missions where once you go down a route, the other becomes locked, it's lock for all the other parties too, but they get to do it as a free quest.
Characters unlocked by other parties can be seen roaming around and upon retirement, you can use them.
That's all I can remember so far, I'll let you know when I remember more
Aside from small rule bending at times the only house rule we have is you can mitigate damage from a monster with only one card from either discard or on hand. We play 2 players so feel it is fair given our area attacks are way less substantial due to way less enemies. We were also losing alot, first scenario 5 times, but since then its been much more balanced for us, still lose but usually only once or twice while we figure out the best way to tackle the scenario.
Like the summon idea tho so might add that one in, depends if its too OP tho, i dont mind losing every so often as it makes you reevaluate how your playing and makes you better.
We changed how rolling modifiers work with advantage and disadvantage. We draw until there are 2 non-rolling modifiers. If you have advantage you add the rolling modifiers to the better non-rolling modifier. If you have disadvantage you ignore all rolling modifiers and use the worse non-rolling modifier.
Disadvantage is fine.
For advantage I would prefer drawing two separate piles, as if you would have attacked twice. Advantage lets you choose which pile you take, but not to take the better non-rolling modifier and ALL rolling cards of BOTH piles, as you do.
Your rule prevents you from not buying additional rolling cards because they increase your chance of a failed attack while having advantage.
@@MrKlebeband that's why we made the rule. We wanted our upgrades to be real upgrades. We didn't want to have mixed feekings about getting a perk. It's not as fun.
We got annoyed at rolling modifiers being so bad with advantage - so we decided that if you have advantage and you draw rolling(s) + miss (or curse), the miss counts as a -2.
Our only house rule is the character that opens a chest can sell the item acquired to another person in the party for up to half the cost of the item. It seems to make sense thematically; why wouldn't you first offer an item to another person in your party before selling it to a shop keeper in Gloomhaven.
This house rule sounds really fun and not that broken actually since the gold totals don't change even if the item is sold to the shop. It increases teamwork but still encourages being greedy for chests in a fun way. I think this sounds best in a 4 man party tho. I think if you are with two people it can feel a bit lopsided since usually 1 character is just better at looting than the other but with 3-4 people its less predictable who gets the chests (even though some still have advantage ofc)
We have exactly one house rule for a specific class (Two Minis): It is allowed to sacrifice a card to prevent damage not only for the character, but also his companion. Yes, it makes the game easier, but it only applies to that special mini and not all summons.
I think I did the same thing for them. It just kinda feels right.
I thought that was an actual rule for that class. No? I swear I read that some where... Dammit now I gotta go on a search quest...
@@DownLow0099 yes I'm sure it's an actual rule for that class. On the card that has the bears stats and extra rules it says: "a player can lose cards as normal to negate damage done to the beast tyrant or the bear".
I think the coin/loot system supremely annoying. My house rule for this is walking over the spaces where they were left is enough to collect them. It's not like they are worth a ton of money anyway, and it makes more sense to me from a gaming perspective, specially considering console games where this is the norm.
I don't do this, but I totally understand when people do. It definitely can get a little aggravating when you have to choose between picking up money and killing an enemy.
It makes no sense, that you can loot by only walking over fields, where enemies died. It makes no sense in console games, too. You need some time to search an enemy.
@@RTFM In reality you would heavily think about looting while there are enemies left, because it makes you vulnerable.
Without decisions you wouldn't play the game, it would play itself.
my favorite house rule is when you draw a miss (not a curse, but your 1 miss card) twice in a row you go "fuck that" and draw again
We play here without the bonus xp at end of scenarios but we loot all empty dungeon when the last monster dies.
I've heard a lot of people do the end of mission loot, but this is an interesting way to balance that out. Cool!
I feel like you should have to continue playing cards and taking short rests until exhausted. Any loot you can reach before then is yours!
Have a nice day!
We have only one houserule that applies to the groups with less than 4 players - GUEST characters. Takes a bit to explain so will explain it only if there is any interest in this.
Thank you for your attention! :-)
Hey, we've all got plenty of time these days. Lay it on us.
@@RTFM Hi again!
1) Any character is possible to be selected from the pool of characters as long as it is not present in other teams (currently we have TINKERER and CRAGHEART in our pool);
2) Characters start at the level L with respective number of ability cards and have (L-1) unlocked perks, where L is the current level of prosperity (currently we are almost at level 5);
3) Character receives either 15+15L gold and the solo scenario item if it is unlocked or 40+15L gold to be spent on items (spending money on enhancements is forbidden);
4) Road and City events bonuses and/or penalties applies to the characters too (Clarification: They pay all of collective costs (if possible) and do not receive any collective items that are rewards for team).
Thank you very much for your attention.
Interesting points. I feel like a lot of these bypass the rules and make it easier. I say if it makes it more fun, go for it. Personally, I’d deeply miss the challenge.
The only house rule I play by is that sometimes, in the excitement, you play two cards that you truly didn’t intend to play. Like you forget that you can only do one top action and one bottom action. Or your big plan only works if you save a card for the next turn, but you accidentally just grabbed and used that one for a basic “move 2” action. I say, if it’s reasonable enough to believe that you made a simple mistake, and it doesn’t make the game go backwards or isn’t influenced by monster turn order, a deselection can’t be made. I feel like this is necessary because the game is so complex already and mistakes will happen, but the base difficulty curve is rough and you really need to be on your game.
In other words, I tend to play a bit more forgiving of human attention errors.
I agree with most of these. But, the one rule I can’t BELIEVE made it passed play-testing was the fact that retaliate cannot cause an enemy to die. We decided that retaliation damage can kill. Why wouldn’t it? Makes no sense.
I think that's actually how it is in the rules. It states that if the retaliating enemy dies, it wouldn't retaliate. But the retaliate damage can kill. At least, that's the way I play too.
RTFM hmm, we must’ve read it wrong. Regardless, retaliate damage kills in our sessions.
@@Frankzoar You're playing it correctly, RTFM is right. Order of operations is: Take base damage, then add any existing modifiers, then add modifier cards (in order of your choice), then subtract shield. Adjust monster HP accordingly - if it dies, remove it. Now add debuffs, move the monster if it was pushed/pulled and deal with retaliate. This also means that a damage+curse attack won't add a curse if it kills the monster.
Yea..... retaliate definitely kills lol.
there are cards that let you controll summons. that first house rule makes those cards useless...
I like the battle goal rule! I kind of think it should be baseline, but at the same time I understand that the designers probably balanced the encounters having in mind that player characters have very rigid goals.
Yeah, you always have to keep in mind the designer's intent, but provided you have fun with it, there's no reason not to play how you want.
My group has been playing for a little while and the only house rule we have implemented is that if you get a battle goal that is literally impossible, for whatever reason (like loot no treasure overlay tiles, but due to the scenario conditions every character has to loot 1 treasure tile), then you are allowed to mulligan that goal (discard it and draw another). That said we have only had one such situation arise.
We have played some things incorrectly in the early scenarios, but, since if I love a game I'll learn all I can about it and I love Gloomhaven, I have been correcting these errors during my groups play times. These errors have not been anything game breaking, thankfully. :D
Septimus Tavi isn’t loot no treasure worth 2 perks? I’d take the perks over a handful of gold
@@socrdude209 The battle goal is "Loot no money tokens or treasure overlay tiles during this scenario.", which I would normally do quite happily. However there is one scenario where EACH character in that scenario has to LOOT A CHEST (aka a treasure overlay tile), which makes this battle goal impossible to complete.
@@septimustavi9352 lol yeah that would be the one time then you don't want that card.. ands i see i didn't read your op fully, i got excited because I just love getting that perk card myself
@@socrdude209 Yeah double ticks are amazing. Been playing a solo campaign with three characters and have gotten Agressor (have enemies on the map at the start of each round) 4 times out of the 6 scenarios I have played...been a weird string of randomness.
My house rule is that when you loose a scenario you don’t get any xp and you don’t go back to GH. So you don’t pick up new city or road events when you try again. You kinda just start the scenario again - on the plus side you keep your blessings - if you donated to the sanctuary. I don’t feel that I earned Xp when I loose a game
Ooh, sounds like that makes the game quite a bit harder. Do you still keep the gold you picked up?
My 2 cents:
1. Breaking summons breaks summons. Yes it's annoying that they follow focus rules but that means you should be planning more carefully. It also makes several of the cards in the concentric circles class about half as useful. I could see house ruling that the summons don't stop moving when no enemies are present but even that is game-breaking. You can always drop the summons to your lost pile and recover the cards via other mechanics and resummon them closer to the action later.
2. You can share info on personal quests. Only battle goals are supposed to be kept secret. The rules should explicitly state it's up to you how much you want to share about your personal quest. I play this exclusively with my girlfriend, we've retired 4 characters each now and have always retired at the same time. You don't actually retire until you return to town so if you stay out on the road you can move to the next scenario if it's just one more to finish.
3. That's really really game-breaking. Just have your partner play the potion/wand on their turn. It will be available later that round. If you're in such a bad way that you have to break the game that badly then you should re-examine how you approached the scenario. Otherwise, this removes half the planning/setup/tension for several classes that make them sing.
4. I agree. You technically can do this by retiring your current character and then making the same character again and that's just a huge PITA.
5. Not very game-changing. Especially as you retire more characters you will find battle goals matter far less since you're able to hit almost every perk you want from the beginning of making a new character if you're at say Level 6 prosperity and on your 5th character.
In the end, people should play the game to provide as much fun as possible. If you tweak it here and there and enjoy it more then you're doing it right.
Absolutely. I'm glad I'm not alone here.
Critique about the summon rule and Spoiler about two mini class:
The two mini class's special ability is that you have a strong bear summon that does it's own thing while you play your character. However, your cards give you the special "command" ability which allows you to control its actions. By instituting this house rule, though you improve the summoner class, you accidently Nerf what is already an average class to begin with.
I felt that without this house rule, the beast master would have been significantly less fun, but to each their own. I don't quite follow your second point though. If you're saying the Beast Master is being improved, which class are you suggesting is getting nerfed?
@@RTFM Yeah, I guess I worded that a bit odd. I agree with what you're saying, this rule buffs all other classes at the expense of making the beast tyrant far less special.
Less special in comparison, perhaps. I get that. But being able to control the bear at all times is still a very useful ability to have. My bear boy didn't feel any worse for it. But as always, that's just what worked for me.
I didn't play with having control over the pet and I thought the class was over powered
I agree. I think controlling the summons goes against what it should be. It’s a being with a mind of its own. The bear is a ridiculous companion. My favorite battle goal is the one to not fall below half health..... the character himself doesn’t even get into the fight.
We also noticed a problem with the battle goals. Sometimes you pull a goal that is completely impossible for that scenario, or your character. So our solution to that was, if you think you cannot complete your 2 drawn battle goals, we allow a 3rd draw. Then you MUST use that 3rd card. We don't utilize it often, but it's fun to go to the deck for your 3rd and pray for something playable.
Ooh, I like that. It's got a very "heart of the cards" feel to it.
Meh, battle goals are awesome and necessary but I don’t think any of them are impossible. It’s just how far do you want to go to complete it? Is the scenario and teammates overall survival more important or do you want to make sure to grab that one extra coin to have your 5 or break off the fight to grab that chest even though it may get a teammate exhausted? I’ve had one where I couldn’t earn more than X amount of XP for the round. One of the toughest to get since I couldn’t use my best abilities. But I find that out of two there’s at least one you can do or one that’s easier to get than the other.
@@malixcorvin777 It's very rare, but it is possible to get two goals that are literally impossible to achieve. For example the loot X tiles in a game (if that scenario doesn't have enough loot or monsters) and (if you don't have enough items) use your items X times in a game. Like I said, very rare, but it can happen.
@@malixcorvin777 There is a battle goal that says "Don't loot any chest overlay tiles during the scenario" and there is at least one scenario where every character HAS to loot at least one chest...this battle goal would therefore be impossible though it is a very rare occurrence.
I house ruled that as long as you have cards in your hand, you still loot after the campaign ends. It fixes a very unthematic rule and prevents having to kite the last enemy for no in game reason.
Ooh, that's not bad. I definitely agree that leaving the room as soon as you're done even when there's gold on the ground feels a little weird. I wonder if that would lead to players being a lot richer than the game intended though.
What about the scenarios where all monsters immediately disappear after you complete the goal? Way too easy/cheap to get coins and chests that way. Or what about scenarios where you’re try to reach a door to escape? Doesn’t make thematic sense to be able to go back and grab coins and possibly exhaust but still win.
@@taylorvance in those instances, that makes sense. But in all other instances, it doesn't. "oops, killed the last slime. I can't walk one tile over and pick up the loot. Gotta leave right now.
Had the same thought since the first time I read the rules. It's a mistake in the rules, from my point of view
That’s why you position yourself in a good spot. You have until the end of the current round before the game ends. So, 3 players and player 1 kills the last monster.... 2 and 3 finish their turn and grab that extra coin or two. It makes the game a little more challenging. Having all the time in the world afterward really wrecks the game.
For your next video, can you do top 5 Gloomhaven horse rules?
I like the battle goal one! In my very first game I had the "get less than 7 xp" and the "get more than 12 xp" ... I chose the wrong one which left a sour taste. I'll suggest that to my party.
One that we use is: Gold gets evenly distributed after a game. As it's parents playing with children in our case this simply avoids argument and selfish playing (I could save your character or loot. I chose looting ... oh now winning the game has become impossible as our glass cannon is now exhausted). We do the same with items from chests: after the game we decide on a need/want basis who the item is best for.
That definitely sounds like a good rule to have while playing with children.
For me, the end of the scenario "everybody disappears and cannot gather loot" thing doesnt make sense. In my games, characters get just one more round after the scenario goal to gather treasure. The boss hits the ground, and everybody just suddenly vaporizes? You're not going to walk over and open that treasure chest? C'mon. One extra round to gather that lewt. Go get it!
We went even farther than that. If you've cleared the dungeon, and no one is around but you...you would pick everything up. So, we just pick up every single thing in the entire dungeon and split it. Yes, it basically removes the entire "loot" functionality from the game, but the rule makes no sense.
@@guruthosamarthruin4459 i have this rule too. It's just more fun when you are actually playing and not just going around trying to loot.
Do you want to walk around looting a cave when a dragon could waltz in at any moment? Or do you want to accidentally trigger a particularly lethal trap? Part of the reason you wouldn't hang around is because you don't know what, if anything, is still in the area, especially since the thing you just finished exploring is only a small part of a greater world.
You care about what makes sense? It doesn't make sense, that you can do other actions, but not the actions you already performed, which you can repeat after a rest. Therefore it makes sense to allow using actions in your discard pile by discarding other from your hand. Without allowing that you can't say other things don't make sense.
Changing the rules to make things easier need a correction for the balance. You can loot everything after the scenario, but money tokens (including the ones you looted before the scenario ended) gives you half the money.
About summons.
We play this way - each turn "Lord of the summon" rolls a D6. If it is 4+, summon will be controlled by the player. Otherwise standart "monster" behavior applied. So 50/50.
And I think, that for "summoner" character roll can be 2+. But our party is not unlocked this char yet, so this is the pure idea.
Anyway - wery great video and endless source of ideas from other comments!
spurlurs
The no #1 reason for house ruling is increasing the fun of playing a game, right? Because I have so many campaign-games which I want to play for the story experience, I house rule almost every one of them to maximize my exposure to everything in the game. With choose-your-own-adventures, I check all options after picking one or go back one step when I 'die'. With campaign-driven games the variety of each scenario is what counts and so I don't mind min-maxing my characters in order to get through a scenario, so I never have to play the same one twice. Once again, if you don't play to master a game, and care more about fresh new adventures than about playing a punishing game until you strategize a way out then these are my Gloomhaven House Rules:
1) Forget the loot rules. Pick up everything by walking over them and share the loot at the end to maximize your purchase power.
2) Card limit, schmard schimit. I know, I know, this is a big one and 'breaks the game' but as a completionist you want to experience every tactical card (combo) and putting every card in your action deck when you level up is just too much fun. Also, it helps with faster leveling (see #5) cuz you've got more cards to play/discard for XP.
3) Losing is retiring. If your character 'dies' during a game, retire him/her and pick a new one character. There are too many characters compared to the number of scenarios and you want to experience them all, right?
4) Use the scenario chart (see Boardgamegeek.com > Gloomhaven > Files) to plan out which scenarios to do before you do them. Some lock others and you want to play as many as possible.
5) Play fast. In the end, all of these tips are aimed at gamers who have enough campaign games to last years without buying new ones (and who is going to stick to that?) so if, like me, you just want to experience Gloomhaven's (almost) 100 scenarios for the storylines and the leveling up, don't be shy to gain XP and gold fast. Use the 'Easy' level to limit monster strength (they're just fodder, right?) and discard cards for the XP whenever you can. Sure, by level 3 already you'll feel like a superhero (so feel free to move from Easy to Normal or Hard) but remember: grow your characters in as few scenarios as possible to get to the new ones.
IDK what you mean by powers in #4, do you mean the ability enhancement stuff?
Every time you level up u can choose one card with number equal or lower of your level. So for example u make it to level 2 And now can add to your pool of cards which contains all level 1 cards And all level X cards, one level 2 card from your character deck. But you still locked in hand of your character. So when you get level 3 you can now take one level 3 card or another level 2 card which u didnt pick yet. And so on.
@@zapplesnow These are not locked, you are free to change your selection of cards before every scenario
@@rutgervd I thought when you level up to for example level 2, you get to pick one of the cards that say level 2, add them to your pool and pick from that. So you won't be able to switch between your level 2 abilities until you pick up the second level 2 ability when you level up to 3 or higher.
@@junglistfpv8553 You are correct...when you accumulate enough xp to reach a new lvl (let's say lvl 3) and return to gloomhaven, your character will lvl up. At this point in time you may be a lvl 3 ability card OR pick the lvl 2 card you didn't choose and add that ONE card to your pool. For each scenario you choose cards, up to your hand limit, from your pool of cards.
We were frustrated by the fact that the only way to get a chest that remained unopened at the end of a scenario was to go back and replay that scenario, especially since we decided to play with permadeath as standard (i.e. no running headlong through the dungeon a second time like mad t**ts and making a beeline for the chest). But it also felt like simply giving ourselves the treasure at the end of the scenario would lead to us accumulating too much treasure too quickly. We *like* that you have to occasionally take a risk in not ending the scenario in order to grab the chest - but not to the extent that that treasure becomes lost for ever. So we've come up with a house rule where we make a note of every unopened chest, and then when we run a bonus scenario, we replace one of the non-unique chests in that with a unique chest from a previous mission. That way, there's still an incentive to try and grab the treasure at the first opportunity, but we also get to experience more of the content of the game, without backtracking.
Our other house rule that we more or less fell into was being very specific with our initiative order. We feel like the mechanics of the game rely too much on precision to arbitrarily introduce randomness to the player turn order, especially when playing with permadeath. And it's easier to just allow stating specific figures when choosing cards than to come up with increasingly obtuse ways of getting around it (e.g. "I'm going on the fast side" had become "I'm going on the fast side of fast" had become "I'm going in the top third of fast"). It just seems unnecessary when there's already so many ways for the game to screw you over already.
Yeah we had to scan the rule book to make sure that was right. Seemed weird that you can't do any looting after the last enemy died. I'm considering also splitting up all the unclaimed loot evenly amongst party members to help with progression and make my group more eager to play the game again. At the rate we're playing it we'll be done in 12 years.
The whole not looting what's left over does seem strange thematically, but mechanically I think it's necessary. Otherwise there would be no reason to ever loot anything. Just try to win and you'll probably get it all anyway. I do feel like the forced obfuscation of initiative is an important part of the game. For me it helps emulate the frantic nature of combat. But then again, if your group likes playing that way, more power to you.
The whole point of the non specific banter is to emulate the hectic real time combat. In the middle of a street fight I wouldn’t turn to you and say “Hey, I’m going duck and then punch this guy before you.” Whereas you replay with “after that I will push him into That wall and then punch him too.” It just naturally happens or it doesn’t.
The looting everything left is OP. Some characters can’t get a lot of loot and their fine that way. The beast tyrant for instance, without his Bear’s loot card he doesn’t get much. Usually only scraps that my team leaves in the first room because he doesn’t move much. But, he doesn’t need a lot of loot because he doesn’t really get in the mix of it all. You could always just add 2-3 gold for the quest reward at the end instead.
When you play with a certain party, you will also learn what numbers their cards have. This is a great organic learning process and will lead to better teamwork after a few scenarios. I like this process.
Of course your party can learn to circumvent the rule of coming up with 'slow-fastish' kind of expressions. Perhaps you should limit your party to using the words 'fast, normal and slow' when talking about initiative.
If you have perfect information, the game rules does state that you should then add +1 to scenario level to keep it challenging (solo play rules)
See my post above, I've house-ruled this to give character one extra round to gather treasure. It doesnt break the game with an unlimited spree, but on the other hand, it gives them one round to walk over and grab something or open a chest
Good thoughts
1. At first we totally forgot the rule about summons behavior, but even after we read it we thought pretty much the same as you
2. We are pretty open about our personal quests, I don't think not knowing what the others are trying to do add very much to the game
3. I've yet to encounter this kind of items
4. We are low lever now, so we've not run into this problem
5. We might try this next time
Nice video!
Borislav Mihailov personal quests being secret doesn’t add too much. It just gives your character “personality”. Like in Dead of Winter, your secret objectives make you act and play a certain way and people sometimes wonder why you’re doing that particular thing. I find most of the personal goals to be like that.
It's fun to figure out what the other characters are trying to do organically. It also gives the characters.. character. You can then adjust accordingly, like if you see another character really hunting the elites, you'll know it might not be a good idea to pick that 'kill an elite' battle goal.
2. Personal quests being secret is actually a common error that people make. Only battle goals are meant to be secret. All the same, many groups actually enjoy keeping personal goals secret as well. (I find that it just gets a little clunky trying to do that, and once a player lets it sleep even accidentally, you can't put the cat back in the bag after a scenario the way you can with battle goals.)
Personal quest is not hidden, and tbh my group thought that’s how potions where supposed to work, go figure
I guess it's not stated in the rules, but the reveal of what you've been working towards is fun enough that we keep it secret anyway. And yeah, potions are supposed to work like any other element creation, but nahhhh.
Im setting a game together of all new timers im most experienced and i only ever played one game like this once. What are some ways to play or house rules that might make things a little easier but not game breaking easy. We are not playing for some crazy hard challenge. I assume we should play on each mape on somewhat easier setting but with lower experience from that will it make late game impossible?
An interesting thing about Gloomhaven is that it scales to your level. Later scenarios are more complex than the first few, but the difficulty is (usually) pretty stable. Also, because you won't end the game with the same characters you started with, you really don't need to worry about late game difficulty at the beginning. I say play it one level easier to start with. The game describes how to do this, so it's not even a house rule.
@@RTFM ok thanks i was mostly worried because playing on esier gives you less gold wich would mean less enhancements thus even with the scale and retirement it could make a character feel alot weaker.
Thanks for the info. Have a great day
We recently unlocked the summon based class you mentioned. I think we house ruled that summons as well as things like augments with the Mind Thief & other classes with similar skills can be picked back up to be placed into the discard pile. If a summon dies though, it's of course lost. This helps with slow summons that may not be able to engage the remaining targets for another 3+ turns, but the player controlling them only has 1-2 more turns left.
That is already alowed by the game.
Advantage house rule: you can pick which battle card you want. Also, if a rolling modifier and a no damage/curse comes up you just get the rolling modifier and don't miss
If you care As in what I would like to see first my vote is player aids. My group just started so would like to see what could help us out:
Good to know! I am leaning a little more towards that one.
Have a group fund
Great video, thanks for the suggestions. I'm just getting started with gloomhaven.
Glad I could help!
3. Do you find that actions using elements are now much more powerful than other actions?
Sometimes, but not usually. Because you have to pair them with an item that gets lost after use, it's more of a one-time per scenario thing. For my group it brings them up to be on par with other abilities. But I do play two player, so I can see how if you have four players they would be easier to trigger without this house rule.
division 2
We have two house rules.
1. We allow only one stamina potion per character. They are overpowered and the game is easy as it is. That makes us take other interesting small items.
2. When retiring you are allowed to start at lower level then prosperity level. That way you get to experience the full specter of the character.
Number 2 not a house rule though? My book says u are allowed if you want
Yep, up to and 5g per lvl.
@@wobblysauce Number 1 is already part of the official rules. A character cannot own more than one copy of any item card. (Pg.8, bolded line of the first paragraph.) Unless you meant only one Stamina-type effect of any kind across all of a character's small item cards, which I could see.
@@katstoybox Pretty sure you can take one minor and one major stamina pot as per official rule.
The more you play, the better you'll become... I teach you patience friends !
so try not to break the game too fast...
some little house rules after that is said :
- You don't have to choose a card when leveling up. You can choose when creating your deck. You can't have more than one card of each level, except if you prefer a lower one to replace an upper one.
yes, make the game a little easier, but also more strategic and give you a better experience of your character.
- Let your invoc to focus on a door when there is no monster left to reach. Not a great game breaker.
- if you don't have a lot of time to play to gloomhaven and don't want to make scenario a second time just to loot, then... autoloot the last room you're in...
and for the bold who go to the treasure chests, let them pick 1 gold token per scenario Level for rewarding.
if the chest is a trap... let the fate decides who opens it. If it's an object or gold... share them with character in the room (the others don't have to know...).
Seems very easy mode - All your house rules makes the game easier, but whatever makes it fun for you, that's the most important thing.
There is a common theme among all of the house rules in the video and all of the house rules I’ve read in the comments.
They all make the game easier.
I get the respec-with-a-cost rule, and the motivation behind it, but most of these house rules don’t counteract the advantages they bring. They just make the game easier.
Of course the game has a built-in way to manage one official easier variant. Downgrade your rewards by one difficulty tier.
I don't disagree (though I would argue the "One last job" rule is more about fun and storytelling than changing the difficulty). I guess my point of view is that, as long as everyone at the table has more fun using a house rule, why not do it? It's still a challenge for us, and losing more often won't make the game more enjoyable, so what's the harm?
@@RTFM Thanks for the thoughts here. Yes, 'One last job' falls in with the respec rule, have to agree.
Fun is priority number one, but it's also why I would not use most of these house rules. There are extreme ends of the spectrum, and some players will want a Dark Souls-esque challenge while others want more of a Lego Star Wars. Most will be somewhere in between.
These house rules mostly make the game easier. If that's more fun, then there's no reason not to use them. I personally enjoy a teeth-grinding challenge, so most of these rules would drive me nuts. (ESPECIALLY the frankly game-breaking instant elements rule.) I also don't like the feeling that I've been bowling with the bumpers on. Other players either won't care or won't see it that way.
It's just not an insignificant thing to make some of these changes, and the pattern towards making the game easier is worth noting.
@@carternelms5324 I don't agree with everything you've said, but you definitely make some fair points. To each their own, I suppose.
Or, just play your game the way you want.why do people always act like someone is ruining a game if they make it easier?
I found without controlling summons every game has them just sitting around doing nothing once a room is clear. Until a door is opened but then they are just too far away to be effective for the rest of the game. Summons AI just feel like they weren't thought out as well.
Agreed! I think they were trying to balance simplicity with balanced power, but I feel like controlling them doesn't make them too strong
Our experience has been that Summons can be incredibly effective, but require planning and forethought to get them to work properly. These days (after 47 sessions), we pretty much never have summons die the turn they are created, and often have summons kill a monster or two entirely on their own.
I really enjoyed playing the summoner without using any house rules. Allowing yourself to control them kind of invalidates some of her most powerful cards - the "tell your summon what to do" cards. To get a deck that is powerful, she really needs that planning as well as a few key card enhancements.
Your problem is that you’re probably summoning them in the beginning and wasting them. If you saved it for a big fight or for the boss fight, you’d see they are much more effective. This whole game is about planning a turn or two ahead.
Summons are really strong. You are getting attacks without using any cards! And in the end, they will also 'heal' your party by soaking an attack or trap. More than one sometimes. This needs to be somehow balanced, and the way it's done is with the poor AI behavior. The party needs to protect them and use them, not just the summoner.
If you are getting 3 attacks off during the summon's lifetime, it's on par with the strongest unbuffed attack cards. If you get more, they are more powerful.
If you allow full control of summons, they become the most broken insanity any of the characters can have.
I don't get rule 3? Aren't elements available automatically right away anyway if you've produced it? So one card creates it and immediately you can consume that element?
The element tokens on the board are moved at the end of the turn in which they are created. As such, you can't make elements and use them on the same turn (unless you use my house rule), but another player could make an element on their turn and you could use it on yours.
I believe the whole point of the elements is that you try to set them up for your team. If you can set it up for yourself, that's just playing solo and no fun. Anything that adds to a group synergy is a great addition.
@@TimoRutanen That's definitely what they're going for. Or at least it seems that way. I've just found that synergy can be a little too tough to acquire sometimes.
@@RTFM If you allow self-activation, it takes a lot away from the game and turns elements into automatic buffs. It's bad for the game, though I understand the desire to make it easier to play. The harder it is to pull off some awesome combo the better you feel when you do. Multiple characters also have feats that greatly help with the elements. They might even pick those feats with the right party.
@@TimoRutanen I almost always play two player, which makes synergy quite a bit harder to pull off than with three or four, especially with characters who don't produce any elements. Anyway, I only house rule element creating items, everything else I keep the same.
I wonder what Isaac would think about this.....
Dude, be cool. No one likes a narc.
On one hand, you paid money for the game, so play it how you like.
On the other hand, I'm going to gatekeep a bit and say I think Candy Land might be more your style. These Gloomhaven house rules are like playing Chutes and Ladders with being able to climb up chutes.
All of these house-rules are calculated to make the game easier. Only weaklings need the game to be easier!
Proud weakling, right here. The way I figure it, as long as everyone at the table agrees the game is more fun with a house rule, easier or harder, there's no reason not to add it.
RTFM well said sir
Our houserules are 1. moving over loot is enough to pick it up. 2. You can autoloot the room you are in when the scenario ends. 3. All players share gold (so no one spends the whole game just going around picking up loot). 4. Short or long rests replenish items. 5. That control your own summons rule. So far I've only played Gloomhaven with my girlfriend and we found that, especially looting, slowed down the pace of the game and made it less fun for certain classes without a lot of movement or loot abilities.
I would agree that some classes are much better at looting than others. It sounds like your characters might end up being much more wealthy than the game is balanced towards though. How easy/difficult do you find the game after implementing these rules?
@@RTFM Seems about the right level of challenge. We take some scenarios easily, but others we've finished with one of us exhausted and the other down to just 3 cards. Especially since you're limited to the amount of gear you can bring, and the types of gear you can buy based on prosperity, it seems reasonable. For what its worth we started as a brute and spellweaver, neither of which are particularly good at looting. We played the first scenario with and without the looting house rule and without it it just felt like a boring chore to clean up all the gold.
I don't think it makes sense thematically, but having to stop and pick up the gold before the end of the scenario definitely makes you think differently about how much time you can afford to spend on gaining wealth vs beating the scenario. I kinda like it but if that's not your bag, that's fine too.
Positioning in this game is always key. If you can set up and kite monsters into the proper position you can play a loot 1 or loot 2 card and the loot comes to you instead of you chasing it.
@@malixcorvin777 We do a thing where if the mission ends you auto loot any tiles that are immediately adjacent to you, but not the whole room.
If you want everything you still need to go out of your way, and it makes it important to plan for the end while taking away the frustration of being "this" close.
Sounds like you just enjoy cheating, lol...
Dam right
House rules?
That's a funny way to spell "cheating."
wow! you completely change the game with those house rules. sorry, but that is weak.