Member House Rules

[MunchkinMan]

Um. . . I guess I don't see how they're terribly unbalanced to begin with, but considering that Epic plays is an optional set of rules, I don't how much effort goes into making them super balanced. I can say that I feel the stuff I've worked on, or helped develop, or looked over and not seen fit to comment on has been sufficiently balanced for an optional set of rules.

Is it possible that when combining sets, some balance can be lost in an Epic game? Yes, but that can be said for playing to Level 10. Sometimes blending makes things kinda wonky. There's only so much playtesting that can be done, which means that not every possible combination can be tested, which means that sometimes, chaos and hilarity will ensue during a blended. You can always point out to us what you think is terribly unbalanced, but please don't expect us to change everything just because of a rare possibility. Don't get me wrong: We always try to fix what we can, of course, but there are some things that just aren't broken enough to fix today.

[Clementx]

Originally Posted by matt516

Does anyone else have any good ideas for balancing an epic game?

My group's are a few pages back in this thread. We find them to be more consistent and less insane than the epic powers as is. It is not fun watching an epic cleric discard all his possessions to Miracle his way through 20-30 treasure cards looking for a Pollymorph Potion or some such to avoid death or prevent you from winning.

[blipadouzi]

We find the Epic rules quit well balanced even in a blended game... however we found it difficult to keep track of all the Epic Powers. So what we did was create reference cards printed on card stock. No images or anything, just the Epic Race/Class text. That way the player can have it in front of them as a quick reference.

[matt516]

Originally Posted by Clementx

We have pretty much codified our modified rule set for our group. The biggest change is redoing epic abilities, which we felt were too powerful and too random in scope or theme.

Splat Changes
A Dwarf can carry an additional card in his hand whenever a card would let him carry an extra Big item.
A Cleric can only Resurrect one card per drawing opportunity.
A Thief who fails a Theft attempt at lvl1 is killed instead.
A Wizard must discard at least three cards from their hand to Charm a monster.

Epic Feats
Human - Favored Class - Whenever a class card is discarded, you can discard a card from your hand to claim and immediately become it. You can claim Super Munchkin if you immediately play enough class cards for it. If multiple humans attempt to snag the same class, each rolls the die. The highest gets the card and the rest keep their discards.
Dwarf - Endurance - You can hold another extra card in your hand.
Elf - Keen Senses - When you help another player win a combat, draw a face-down Treasure card for yourself.
Gnome - Phantasm - You can Wander an Illusion into a fight by discarding a card from your hand.
Halfling - Stealthy - Your penalty to running away becomes a +1 bonus.
Orc - Cleave - When you kill a monster by 5 or more by yourself, you get an extra Treasure card.
Bard - Dominate - You can attempt to Enthrall by discarding two cards.
Cleric - Animate Dead - You can choose to treat any monster you Resurrect as Undead.
Thief - Feint - You gain a +1 bonus to your Backstab penalty and Theft rolls.
Warrior - Power Attack - Your Berserk gives a +2 bonus per discard.
Wizard - Quicken - You can Charm by discarding just three cards from your hand.

Those are pretty nice rules, although some of the changes don't seem quite necessary to me. Ah well, to each his own. We'll see how the epic game goes tonight, that is if we have enough time to play an epic game.

[Mylon]

After having played a bit of Munchkin Quest there's some changes that I really like about it. Namely, monsters get their own deck and wandering monster automatically draws a card from that deck (no more, I have this wandering monster but can't use it, or I have this really nice monster but can't use it). I also like that all monsters always get to leave their mark. They all do -1 health + bad stuff or -2 health if bad stuff does not apply.

Trying to apply these rules to the card game would be difficult. If monsters are put in their own deck, then curses would work much differently and drawing monsters face down would be rare.

[Blu]

I thought about searching the discards or draw deck for the wandering monster. Could be the first you come to, or the highest in the discards, etc.

I'd definately like to get the hearts into the card game too, just as an expirement.

[Tedium]

Just a couple:

Starting: 2 doors, 4 treasures. Lets the levels go up faster at the start, but without giving people too much ammunition against low level characters.

Dungeons: 1 out at the start. When the first player reaches 5/10/15/20, they may remove a dungeon and draw a randomly chosen new one (after the removed dungeon has been shuffled back in), when the last player reaches 5/10/15/20, the number of dungeons in play is increased by 1. This lets the dungeons be used with any deck, and means there is some variety despite there only being 12 portal cards (we use M1-6 whenever the munchkin deck is in play).

Cheat: can be used on item enhancers (e.g. +2 to headgear) to enhance anything else. (in general, any "equippable", defined as an item with +X (or no*) bonus at the top)

*rat on a stick

Winner clears up. Makes for some interesting games when using all the decks, as everyone is trying to be the highest of the losers to avoid the chore.

[Thrasher1016]

Yup, have one... if this is similar/a duplicate of someone else's, sorry!

"FTW Clause" = When at game point (4 for short games, 9 for regular games, 19 for epics), to win, the monster in play must be greater in level than the attacking Munchkin.
IE: Potted plants get you nowhere, while a Kali will get that job done!

I'm going to read for more good ideas...

[Thrasher1016]

Originally Posted by Cheddar Limbo

Kneepads are the only card we don't play with right now (Munchkin +2 & 3).

I'm getting this one a lot, reading through...

If I remember correctly, one of the expansions has a card that makes that basically worthless, so it you have M+2>7, isn't it basically a moot point? LOL

[Jdude22]

Since getting my first expansion for Munchkin I have created a house rule. We use the bank cards in the deck. I wasn't sure if I wanted to create cards by using the blanks so I just put them in so everyone can create their own card on the fly.
Here are the rules:
1. When a blank card is drawn face up the person who drew the card must make up the card on the spot. Two players other than the player who drew the card must vote for the card to be playable.
2. If the card is drawn face down the person who drew it can keep it and use it at any time. Again the card has to be voted playable by 2 other players.
3 Exceptions. In a 3 player game only 1 person needs to vote the card playable. In a 2 player game we just use the cards as a free passs to draw another card from either pile.
A blank may be played as any card in the deck and does not need to be voted for. Example - if you want a cheat card and draw a blank card you can use it as a cheat and no one can stop you.
We usually play that if you draw a blank door card you must make something up that would work for a door card like a curse or monster. If you draw a treasure card you must make an item.
If you don't specify a value for items the value becomes zero.

I have found that playing this way makes the game more interesting because there are always a few cards that are unpredictable. It is also kind of funny watching people trying to come up with the most powerful card they can and still get it voted playable.