by Ogdred
I did some quick looking at monster cards and stuff and here are my thoughts:First of all, I really don't want to change anything about the game or reinforcements. As it stands, the game is (supposedly) balanced, so I think we can add Threat without making any major alterations. Random threat via dice in a quest would be cool, but the existing quests are balanced for a set amount of reinforcements.
Before I go farther, I want to lay out the assumptions I made when looking at this idea:
1) I assume the quests are balanced for the reinforcements they currently allow. In other words, if a quest lets 1 monster per turn, it can handle the biggest, strongest monster available without breaking. This may not be true for every quest but then that's a failure of that specific quest, not the system as a whole.
2) I assume monster groups are balanced versus each other. If I can choose 2 Ettin, 3 Bane Spiders, 4 Razorwing, or 5 Goblin Archers for a quest, then I assume they are all about equal and have the same "value". Unholy ritual will be more useful with the Archers, but Rise Again is more useful with the Ettins. I'm trusting that FFG took all that into account when balancing.
3) This is a pretty big assumption and I don't expect everyone will agree, but hear me out. I'm assuming no difference in value between a master monster and a regular one. Yes, the cards say differently, however the game mechanics don't necessarily. As it stands there's no distinction between reinforcing a regular monster and reinforcing a master monster. If the heroes kill a the master Ettin, he comes back next turn as a master, if they kill the regular instead then a regular comes back. Other than kobolds, it looks like there is never more than one master in the group anyway, so ignoring any differences and relying on group limits helps keep the math fairly streamlined.
*) Side note, I don't have Lair of the Wyrm, so I couldn't include those monsters into the calculations.
Now for the math:
I based everything off of the group limits for 4 heroes because I figured that number probably gets the most use. (1 player playing 4, 2 playing 2 each, or 4 playing 1 each). When you break the monsters down by group limit there are only 4 different limits (excluding kobolds). Those limits are 2, 3, 4, and 5 monsters. If you make the 2 monster group equal 10 total threat, then you come out with the following values:
For 2 monster limit - 5 Threat per monster
For 3 monster limit - 3 Threat per monster (actually 3.33, but I rounded down. Hopefully not unbalancing)
For 4 monster limit - 2.5 Threat per monster
For 5 monster limit - 2 Threat per monster
Kobolds - 1 Threat per monster. This is a bit subjective. Kobolds have 6 regular and 3 masters per group limit, but the masters split into 2 regulars effectively making them worth 3 kobolds (Kill the master, then kill the 2 regulars) A logical group will ignore the masters and focus on regulars first though, and I wanted to minimize fractions, so I went with 1 threat each, again regardless of regular vs. master
For quests I count "1 monster per 1 open group" as 5 threat. If the quest specifies the exact reinforcements ("1 zombie/flesh moulder/etc..") than no changes are made. There are a few quest that say "1 monster from each group", in which case I think it should be 5 threat per group with no distinctions. If 3 open groups, than 15 threat to be spent on all of them, respecting group limits. The one possible imbalance I can see here is that it would allow you to bring back both dragons (for example) but then again, that means one or both of the other groups will be lacking, so it may not be that unbalanced.
As a quick example, with 5 threat for a quest you could reinforce:
1 Ettin
1 Bane Spider and 1 Goblin Archer
2 Razorwings
2 Goblin archers (with 1 kobold, or the extra 1 threat disappears)
5 Kobolds
It's not a particularly huge change when you look at it that way. For a large majority of monster types, you would only get at most 1 additional model out on the board. Kobolds are (for now, as far as I know) the only exception to that, and their value is the one that would require the most tweaking.
As a final reference, here are the monsters grouped by 4 hero monster limit:
2 Monster Limit, 5 Threat per model:
Ettin, Elemental, Merriod, Shadow Dragon, Crypt Dragon, Golem, Ogre, Giant, Manticore, Demon Lord, Deep Elf, Troll, Ice Wyrm
3 Monster Limit, 3 Threat per model:
Bane Spider, Naga, Blood Ape, Chaos Beast, Medusa, Wendigo
4 Monster Limit, 2.5 Threat per model:
Razorwing, Ferrox, Barghest, Flesh Moulder, Beastman, Sorcerer, Hellhound, Dark Priest, Lava Beetle
5 Monster Limit, 2 Threat per model:
Goblin Archer, Cave Spider, Zombie, Skeleton Archer, Shade
9 Monster Limit, 1 Threat per model:
Kobolds
For any rebuttals or responses please remember one thing. I assumed FFG balanced the groups! If XXXX Monster is way overpowered I didn't know or care, I just tried to quantify whatever "value" system FFG used when determining that 5 Cave Spiders were equal to 2 Shadow Dragons.
*edit for clarity*