his will be an ongoing effort to design a short set of rules to increase the difficulty of the ADP and solve certain balance issues.
1. Odds of getting an encounter.
I think its better to increase the odds of encountering enemies when you havent found enemies recently. This is not only more fun, its also thematic. RAW fixes this issue (by rolling the scenario die twice) but not enough (imho).
Solution 1.
Introduce a dedicted Threat die (d6). At the start of the quest set the Threat die to 2. Whenever you need to roll the scenario die to check for an encounter you roll a regular d6. If you roll above the value shown on the Threat die you DONT get an encounter and raise the Threat die by 1. If you roll equal or below you get an encounter and immediately reset the Threat die to 2.
Solution 2.
Introduce a dedicated Threat die (d6) set to 1. Each time you need to roll the scenario die you roll the die a number of times (equal to the value of the Threat die) If you roll an encounter (on any of the rolls) you will face an encounter. If you did not roll an encounter you increase the Thread die by 1. Reset the Threat die to 1 after every encounter.
Dangerous variant: When the ADP rolls on the spawn table add +x to his roll (where x is the current Threat level)
2. Encounter cards in the ADP deck
If you play with 3 or less heroes there are often not enough encounter cards in this deck which results in too many empty rooms.
Solution:
- When determining the number of encounter cards divide your total VP by 8 (instead of 10).
3. Reserve Points for the ADP
If the quests are becoming too easy one of the solutions is to increase the RP for the ADP at the start of the quest.
For the Campaign:
Introduce a value called ERPP (Extra Reserve Points Percentage), ranging from 0 to 100. Initially set this value to 0. Each time you start a quest you increase the RP for the ADP by the percentage indicated by the ERPP. So if the ERPP is at 50. You increase the RP by 50%.
After each quest, you can use this table below to increase or decrease the ERPP.
Prev quest experience: increase/decrease ERPP
Way too easy: +30
Too easy: +20
Just right: +0
Too hard: -15
Way too hard: -25
For a Random Dungeon:
Difficulty: Amount of RP for ADP
Easy: RAW
Medium: +20% RP
Hard: +30% RP, +1 on spawning roll
Nightmare: +40% RP, +2 on spawning roll