Can I has MortiS Quest? (and other HeroQuest Questions)

[MortiS-the-Lost]

I quite often get eMails with questions like the following one and I don't have time give individual responses, so I think it's about time I addressed the common questions about the game called 'MortiS Quest'

Is it possible to get a copy of your Mortis rules? From what I've been reading in the forums, you address many of the issues I had with the overly-simplified rules

Firstly (and with no offence meant to anyone who has emailed) you don't need to eMail me questions to get answers, in fact posting your questions to me on the forum is a lot better way of getting answers not only from me, but from other HeroQuest players and even members of my own personal gaming group who actually play MortiS Quest with me (and may have insights into it I do not as the GM).

So, is there or will there be a copy of the MortiS Quest rules made available to the public?

The sort term answer is (and I feel mean saying it): NO, sorry. But the good news is the long term answer is YES, kinda.

That of course needs some explanation … I'll start by explaining what MortiS Quest is and what I'm planning to do with it. MortiS Quest (as you might have guessed ) started life as a bunch of house rules for HeroQuest most of which were designed to add more advanced RPG elements to game and also to cover miniatures interacting with elements of 3D my dungeon. After a year or so these rules got a little out of hand and we realised we'd expanded the game far beyond a simple set of house rules to the point where we were looking at something on the verge of becoming whole new system.  Now a lot of these rules (at least the simpler ones) I have already posted on the forum, admittedly in quite a scattered manner and mostly in response to people asking for advice on their own house rules.
At this stage the basic elements of what made MortiS Quest different from regular HeroQuest (aside from the 3D dungeon rules) were the following, given here in the order we added the working versions to the game. (Note that I've only listed my own house rules here and not ones I've borrowed from other people's house rules)

1 Both Heroes and Monsters defend on the 'White Shield' and the 'Black Shield' becomes the 'Special' symbol which links to certain special abilities of Heroes and Monsters.

2 The rules for various monsters from the HeroQuest expansions and Fan made sources were tweaked, allowing Trolls to Regenerate, Dragons to Breath Fire, Bats to Fly, Spiders to Poison, humanoid monster to be armed with different weapons and so on.

3 The concept of a Hero being unconscious when at 0 Body Points and dead once into the negative was introduced. To recover from being unconscious a Hero needed to roll 1 White Combat Dice at the start of their turn - if they managed to roll a Special they came round and regained 1 Body Point

4 Fates Points were introduced and my players started calling the game MortiS Quest

5 Thief and Cleric classes where added at a basic level using existing HeroQuest rules and a more flexible system for choosing and using the HeroQuest Spell Cards was introduced. Basic versions of other Classes including Halflings and Rangers.

6  Unconsciousness rule were revised - If a Hero's body points went below 0 and they still had Fate Points they were considered unconscious rather than dead.

7 EXP was introduced with Heroes gaining 1 EXP for each body point they managed to 'knock off' monsters in combat. This was linked back to the Fate Points rules with every tally of 5 EXP gained earning a Hero an extra Fate Point.

8 More complicated rules for Spotting and Disarming Traps were added - borrowed directly from The D&D Adventure Board game.

9 Different movement Dice were introduced for different races - Human 2D6, Elf 3D4, Dwarf 1D12, Halfling D8+D4

10  The HeroQuest spell card system was scrapped in favour of one based on the magic rules from Warhammer 6th edition and a system of rolling under Mind on 2D6 to successfully cast with doubles being a 'Miscast' - Mistcast spells could not be cast again for the rest of the adventure

11 A 2 Fate Point penalty was given for going unconscious making death more of a risk again for Heroes with lots of Fate.

12 A rather shaky advancement system was added allowing Heroes to exchange certain amounts of Fate Points for Stat increases, new spells and special abilities  

13 A new Multi-deck system replaced the basic Treasure Deck based somewhat on the workings of Dungeon Quest

14 Agility Rules were introduced allowing Heroes to jump over traps and pits using a roll of their Movement Dice

Note that you can find more details of all these rules (and others I might have forgotten to mention) all over the HeroQuest section of the Forum - I acknowledge something should be done to index all these rules to make them easier to find.

In 2010 Me and my Players realised how complicated it had all become and decided something needed to be done. Rules were inconsistent between different Hero Classes and the system relied too heavily on Special Dice. So I stripped the entire game back down to it's bare bones and built up a whole new system that borrowed rules from HeroQuest, Dragon Strike, several versions of D&D, Warhammer, Dungeon Quest and many other games, to make what I consider to be my ideal fast playing dungeon crawler RPG. This became known as MortiS Quest 2nd edition, it's still being tweaked and added to even today, but we are working on getting it into a publishable format that will be usable by other gaming groups which will consist of 3 books: The Hero's Handbook, The Game Master's Guide and The Battle Bestiary - this will all be eventually published under the name ENDUNGEONED and made available as a pay-to-download PDF (I think I deserve a little money for all this work after all). Rules for 3D dungeons will not be included in  ENDUNGEONED as not everyone has a 3D dungeon and not all of them work in the same way (and besides it would make the books twice as long).

It was Fabio Martino who last eMailed with questions about MortiS Quest and finally made me decide to get on with making this post. He also included a few more general HeroQuest questions which are not answered in the above text (or anywhere else on the forum) so I'll try and answer them here:

The use of magic and how the wizard does seem underpowered/does have much to do. Do you in anywaychange how the wizard is used to give him more variety?

One method I've found most effective in basic HeroQuest for re-balancing the Wizard a little is the following:
First of all, get hold of as many fan-made spell cards as you can and/or make up a few extras of your own (if you have multiple copies of HQ throw all your extra spell cards into the mix too). Allow the Wizard to pick any 6 spell cards they like, even multiples of the same spell (have the Elf pick 3). Use HeroQuest's basic 'Cast and Discard' system as normal but with the following change: Instead of casting a Spell a spell caster may choose to attempt to re-gain a 'spent' card by rolling 2D6 and attempting to get under their Mind Points, if they succeed they regain the 'spent' spell card.  
The rules for the Wand of Recall of course need to be tweaked a little if you use this method - I suggest making it allow the Hero to roll 4D6 and pick the 2 lowest scores when trying to 're-gain' a spell - or alternatively giving it a set number of 'charges' (I suggest 4) it can use each game.

I also think I will start using the Fate Points after the first core game. Any advice?

I've found that Fate works best in conjunction with a basic experience system like the one mentioned above (each 5 Body Points worth of Damage a Hero causes to monsters earns them 1 Fate Point). You can either start your Heroes off with no Fate to begin with and make them earn it or have them roll 2D6 to see how much they start with

If I just have me and three friends, would you have the players use only 3 character? Or do you have a way to still use all 4 characters? And if so, how? Make 1 player use 2? The dwarf id sort of geneic, so who ever plays the elf(?) also plays the dwarf?

HeroQuest (and pretty much all RPGs) work best with one character each. Out of the original HeroQuest line-up you can normally afford to drop the Elf without effecting the game too much (but you should always let the player decide which Heroes they want to play). Most GMs will 'scale' an adventure if they have less or more players than the adventure was written for - this is easy enough to do, just take away a monster or 2 from any larger encounter if you have fewer players or add a few extra monsters if you have more players

[Midknight]

Ok, ok. You're right, Mortis. Point taken regarding posting questions on the board, as opposed to sending emails, even though I thought  that it would have been specific for myself.

 Pretty much all of the rules make alot of sense in order to turn HQ into a more in-depth and all-encompasing RPG-style game, and truth be told, I would LOVE an opportunity to play this game with your guys and it sounds like the type of game that I'd really enjoy.

 But the main reason I searched out this game (which I originally owned back in the 90's) is BECAUSE of its simplicity since I'm going to be introducing it to 3 other game-newbies who prefer party games such as Say Anything, or Scattagories. My ultimate goal is to eventually get them to play more and more complex miniature games. (So I guess I'm using  HeroQuest as a gateway-game. Heh heh heh!)
 So the 1st dungeon we play, I plan on not using any homebrew rules, and slowly introduce them in the preceeding dungeons, such as the fate points, wizard rules, and possibly the weapon durability (suggestion by Kessandra & Chaos_warrior). But I may go ahead and use the Mortis-ized Search Rules right from the start as I've never really liked the "Player states that they're searching for *** and automatically find them all" game mechanic.

Follow up Question

 I do have another request for advice (for whomever would be willing to answer). The game initially starts with the 4 base characters. I've seen a couple of homebrew created character floating around (ie. http://www.boardgame.de/reviews/heroques.htm) which I may want to introduce, but how would you recommend we start using them? One day before the 4th gaming session just plop them on the table and say "Ok, you can now use one of these characters, but if you do, your old barbarian, Cohnin, that you've been role-playing and love, and all his hard-earned equipment and gold, are now dead to us. Bah ha ha ha!"
 Obviously that would be a cruel Zargon if I were to do that, but how WOULD you introduce any new characters, and what would you do with the old?

Thanks,
And a special thanks to Mortis for willing to introduce/share logically-butchered rules to us.
Mid

[messyart]

Mort's got a map.

We "leave" our old characters behind at a location when we start a new character.
We can dip in and out of characters more or less as we wish, though travel costs make it... Well, hard.


Keep their older character sheet in a safe place (campaign folder etc) and just use the new one!

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Midknight wrote

 I do have another request for advice (for whomever would be willing to answer). The game initially starts with the 4 base characters. I've seen a couple of homebrew created character floating around (ie. http://www.boardgame.de/reviews/heroques.htm) which I may want to introduce, but how would you recommend we start using them? One day before the 4th gaming session just plop them on the table and say "Ok, you can now use one of these characters, but if you do, your old barbarian, Cohnin, that you've been role-playing and love, and all his hard-earned equipment and gold, are now dead to us. Bah ha ha ha!"
 Obviously that would be a cruel Zargon if I were to do that, but how WOULD you introduce any new characters, and what would you do with the old?

Well one of my regular players Messy has already told you what I do, but a campaign map and travel expenses might be a bit much to throw at new players. I'd recommend giving your players a free choice starting a new character at the beginning of each adventure and allowing them to 'keep' the character sheets of the ones they like playing.
Players should bear in mind any Gold, Fate, Equipment and so on gained will stay with a character and cannot be transferred to a player's new character, thus a player starting a new character will be starting from scratch with that character.
Players should be free to switch between any character sheets they have created and kept, unless you are in the middle of a 2 part adventure (or of course if the character they want to switch to is has been killed in a previous adventure!).
You'll find once a player has found a character they like playing they will stick with it for a long time - even more so if you encourage them to bring along their own miniatures 

[The Skald]

MortiS-the-Lost wrote

Note that you can find more details of all these rules (and others I might have forgotten to mention) all over the HeroQuest section of the Forum - I acknowledge something should be done to index all these rules to make them easier to find.

Knowing how busy our illustrious leader is, I've worked through the entire HQ section and assembled every scrap of info that's been posted
So now for anyone finding or following this thread,you don't have to go searching ........................




NB:~ The current combined Fate and EXP system I use in my games gains players 1 EXP for each Body Point of damage inflicted, for each 5 EXP gained the character gains 1 Fate Point.

Old Fate Point System

Player's Section

Determine Fate: 

When starting a new Hero determine your Hero's fate points by rolling 2D6.
Write down the result on your character sheet and mark it as Fate

What do Fate Points do?

Basically Fate Points allow you to re-roll dice in the game, be they Combat Dice, Movement
or any other dice you happen to be using in your games. They also have another use, which will be detailed later.

Using Fate Points in game: 

You can re-roll as many dice as you like in a turn, but for each individual dice re-rolled you must deduct 1 fate point

Once a dice has been re-rolled you must except the new result even if it is worse than the original.
Further fate points cannot be spent to re-roll a dice that has already been re-rolled.

Fate points can only be used to re-roll your dice.
They cannot be used to re-roll dice rolled by other Players or the Game Master.

If for some reason you are using a D100 and want to use your Fate Points to re-roll it you must re-roll both the Tens and Units dice together.
For the purposes of spending fate points the entire D100 counts as one dice and costs 1 Fate Point to re-roll.



Earning fate points: 

To use these rules you will need to keep track of the number of body points you have taken off enemies.
For every 5 Body Points of damage your character dose to an enemy in game you may re-gain 1 Fate Point.

Damage inflicted on enemies by Henchmen, Pets, Summoned Creatures
or any other model under your control other than your character dose not count toward earning Fate Points.

Damage inflicted on enemies by Traps or other such devices initially triggered by your character
dose not count toward earning Fate Points.

The Game Master may also reward Fate points to Characters for solving puzzles, completing a task or good roleplaying.

Game Masters Section

Using fate points to Advance:

In between adventures characters may also spend Fate Points to increase their Stats this is called an 'Advancing'

Movement: a character's movement may not be increased by spending Fate Points

Attack: the number of dice rolled for one weapon may be increased by +1 at a cost of 12 Fate Points
(This represents the character becoming stronger or learning to be a better aim in the case of ranged weapons)

Defend: the number of dice rolled when defending may not be increased by spending Fate Points

Body: a character's maximum Body Points may be permanently increased by +1 at a cost of 10 Fate Points

Mind: a character's Mind Points may be increased by +1 at a cost of 12 Fate Points

A character may only make 1 advance (increase 1 stat by 1 point) between each adventure



Awarding Extra Fate Points:

here's a few suggestions of situations in which you may want to award your players with extra Fate Points

On completing a dungeon: 1 to 6 points for each player depending on over all difficulty
(if you are unsure you can always just roll D6)

Solving a puzzle: 1 point to player who came up with the solution

Taking on a 'boss' monster or large group encounter single handed: double fate points (if the character survives)

Rescuing another character from certain death: 1 point



Other uses of Fate Points:

as a GM you could also use fate points to make an enemy leader tougher
or give your self a 'pool' of 2D6 fate points to spend through out a dungeon

it might be interesting to give an enemy magic user a 'curse' type spell they can cast on a character
that drains the Hero's fate points or maybe create a 'cursed room' where fate points cannot be used

On the other hand the Heroes could receive a blessing from a powerful NPC Cleric or an ancient shrine
that gives them extra fate points.
Or maybe the Heroes could gain fate points for donating some of their hard earned gold to a temple.

                                                                 ~ ~ ~

 At this stage the basic elements of what made MortiS Quest different from regular HeroQuest (aside from the 3D dungeon rules) were the following, given here in the order we added the working versions to the game. (Note that I've only listed my own house rules here and not ones I've borrowed from other people's house rules)

1 Both Heroes and Monsters defend on the 'White Shield' and the 'Black Shield' becomes the 'Special' symbol which links to certain special abilities of Heroes and Monsters.

2 The rules for various monsters from the HeroQuest expansions and Fan made sources were tweaked, allowing Trolls to Regenerate, Dragons to Breath Fire, Bats to Fly, Spiders to Poison, humanoid monster to be armed with different weapons and so on.

3 The concept of a Hero being unconscious when at 0 Body Points and dead once into the negative was introduced. To recover from being unconscious a Hero needed to roll 1 White Combat Dice at the start of their turn - if they managed to roll a Special they came round and regained 1 Body Point

4 Fates Points were introduced and my players started calling the game MortiS Quest

5 Thief and Cleric classes where added at a basic level using existing HeroQuest rules and a more flexible system for choosing and using the HeroQuest Spell Cards was introduced. Basic versions of other Classes including Halflings and Rangers.

6  Unconsciousness rule were revised - If a Hero's body points went below 0 and they still had Fate Points they were considered unconscious rather than dead.

7 EXP was introduced with Heroes gaining 1 EXP for each body point they managed to 'knock off' monsters in combat. This was linked back to the Fate Points rules with every tally of 5 EXP gained earning a Hero an extra Fate Point.

8 More complicated rules for Spotting and Disarming Traps were added - borrowed directly from The D&D Adventure Board game.

9 Different movement Dice were introduced for different races - Human 2D6, Elf 3D4, Dwarf 1D12, Halfling D8+D4

10  The HeroQuest spell card system was scrapped in favour of one based on the magic rules from Warhammer 6th edition and a system of rolling under Mind on 2D6 to successfully cast with doubles being a 'Miscast' - Mistcast spells could not be cast again for the rest of the adventure

11 A 2 Fate Point penalty was given for going unconscious making death more of a risk again for Heroes with lots of Fate.
12 A rather shaky advancement system was added allowing Heroes to exchange certain amounts of Fate Points for Stat increases, new spells and special abilities

13 A new Multi-deck system replaced the basic Treasure Deck based somewhat on the workings of Dungeon Quest

14 Agility Rules were introduced allowing Heroes to jump over traps and pits using a roll of their Movement Dice

                                                                 ~ ~ ~


The use of magic and how the wizard does seem underpowered/does have much to do. Do you in anywaychange how the wizard is used to give him more variety?

One method I've found most effective in basic HeroQuest for re-balancing the Wizard a little is the following:
First of all, get hold of as many fan-made spell cards as you can and/or make up a few extras of your own (if you have multiple copies of HQ throw all your extra spell cards into the mix too). Allow the Wizard to pick any 6 spell cards they like, even multiples of the same spell (have the Elf pick 3). Use HeroQuest's basic 'Cast and Discard' system as normal but with the following change: Instead of casting a Spell a spell caster may choose to attempt to re-gain a 'spent' card by rolling 2D6 and attempting to get under their Mind Points, if they succeed they regain the 'spent' spell card.  
The rules for the Wand of Recall of course need to be tweaked a little if you use this method - I suggest making it allow the Hero to roll 4D6 and pick the 2 lowest scores when trying to 're-gain' a spell - or alternatively giving it a set number of 'charges' (I suggest 4) it can use each game.

I also think I will start using the Fate Points after the first core game. Any advice?

I've found that Fate works best in conjunction with a basic experience system like the one mentioned above (each 5 Body Points worth of Damage a Hero causes to monsters earns them 1 Fate Point). You can either start your Heroes off with no Fate to begin with and make them earn it or have them roll 2D6 to see how much they start with

                                                  ~ ~ ~

Kessandria:~
One of our houserules is that weapons can break during the fight.
We have given every type of weapon a number on a D10 that's rolled with every attack and defence roll.
0-1 damages your weapon during an attack
2    damages armour (body)
3    damages helmets
4    damages shields

The points we use varies a bit. The cost and size of the weapons are our main indicators, also the strength of a weapon is important. For instance: a heavy battle axe with attack strength 4 looks silly with only a dur of 4, so it can go up to 10 or higher. Standard (basic) weapons though mostly vary between 3 or 4 to 6/7.

about + / - 5 a 6 for an average weapon,
+ / - 1 for poor weapon (eg bone),
and good weapons + / - 10
and the assault weapon can only be damaged by an attack /
 defense armor (helmet, breastplate, shield) only in the defense roll


Weapons can be restored in between quests at a weapon smith (we actually have 'villages' were the heroes can go 'shopping') or with special potions, but when they reach dur 0, they are lost forever!

Mortis:~ I have done the same for my campaign, with settlements marked out on a hex-grid map - the locations of dungeons are also marked out as the Heroes take on new quests and they must pay 'Travel Expenses' (10gc +1D10gc per hex traveled) to get from the last settlement they were at to the next dungeon


                                                    ~ ~ ~

the MortiS Quest solution to HeroQuest's wizard problems is as follows:

The wizard gets to pick 6 spells from any of the Hero Lores (later we wrote our own spell's based on the 8 lores in Warhammer). Spells can be cast as many times as the wizard like (the wizard get to keep the spell cards), however ... to cast a spell the wizard must roll under their Mind Points on 2D6, if they roll over the spell is not cast and nothing happens. Should the wizard roll a double the spell must be discarded and may not be cast again for the rest of the game.

Please remember these rule are used in conjunction with my group's Fate rules which means spell casters will normally spend a Fate Point to re-roll a failed or miscast spell and the balance of the game reflects this

                                                        ~ ~ ~

the US version however includes the correct number of body points for each creature and I recommend finding a download of the US monster chart if you don't have one already
                                                       ~ ~ ~






"Searching in HeroQuest … "

The reason searching for Treasure is a separate action from Searching for Traps and/or Secret Doors is due to the nature of what the character would be doing. To quote a few lines from the so-called 'Revised Edition'  PDF (a recommend read for anyone playing HeroQuest).“Searching for Treasure means you are looking around, opening things, searching for interesting objects and gold coins, regardless of what square you are in the room.”
Where as searching for Traps would be a much more careful and subtle process, looking out for concealed trip-wires, pressure plates and so on. Similarly searching for Secret Doors would involve looking for unusual seams or hollow-sounding spots in the stonework of the dungeon walls.
To summarize; Searching for Treasure involves moving around a room and potentially setting off traps in the process (hence the Trap cards in the Treasure Deck), but looking for Traps could be done by standing on the spot and looking carefully around for signs of triggers.

In my house-rules-cum-whole-new-home-brew-game “MortiS Quest” we use the terms 'Looting' a room for Treasure, 'Spotting' Traps and 'Searching' a room Secret Doors to distinguish between the 3.
Searching for traps:   My own rules make use of a more complex system inspired by TSR's Dragon Strike and expanded on to account for all different situations. It's a lot to write about here but each Character has a Perception Dice assigned to them – the better the character is at spotting things the higher the value of the dice. For instance a D6 for a character that is not very good at spotting things or a D12 for a character with excellent vision and D8 or D10 for those in-between. Various Trap types, Secret Doors and other 'hidden' things are assigned a 'Spot Value' on the GM's map and if a player rolls over a Trap or Secret Door's 'Spot Value' then the character has spotted it.

In my games I allow Heroes to search a room for Traps from the doorway, this means they have a chance of detect a Trap that is right in front of a door which would otherwise be unavoidable, because you'd have to enter the room to search for Traps and thus get caught by the Trap in front of the doorway. The room they wish to search for traps must of course be free from monsters as usual.

To search for Secret Doors or Treasure however the Hero must be in the Room

                                                                   ~ ~ ~

in the original game you weren't supposed to keep Potions between Quests, this is because they needed to be returned to the Treasure Deck before you can start another game - however the expansions for the American version of the game allowed Heroes to buy Potions from an Alchemist's Shop between games when they bought new Weapons and Armour.

Most groups use the house rule that you can keep Potions between games, but you must write down what Potions you have on your Character Sheet rather than keeping the Treasure Cards

If you use this house rule (which I recommend you do) it's handy to make a reference sheet of the rules for the different types of potions so players can look them up in-game if they don't have the card without you having to look though the Treasure Deck for the right card - the simplest way to do this would be to take all the Potion Cards out of your Treasure Deck and put them together on a photocopier or scanner and make a copy onto one page
                                                                   ~ ~ ~
The one of initial house rules that brought about the now (in)famous MortiS Quest system my group plays, works on the same principle. We use the HeroQuest Combat Dice all models (Hero or Enemy) all defend on the White Shields (and of course attack on Skulls) the Black Shield we call the Special and it ties into a model's special rules and abilities. Elves for instance have the 'Sure Shot' rule which allows them to re-roll Specials when shooting with a bow, Black Power guns misfire when they roll a Special, the 'Damage Resistance' rule means Skeletons and other undead count Specials as Shields when Defending and so on.

                                                             ~ ~ ~
MQ2 “Teasers”

1. Attack modifiers
Each Class has a set of Attack Modifiers which modify the number of White Combat Dice your character rolls when attacking, there are 2 kinds: Close Combat and Ranged. The Close Combat Attack Modifier effect Close Combat Weapons like Swords, Axes and Spears. The Ranged Attack Modifier effects Ranged Weapons like Bows, Crossbows and Pistols. This means different classes are better or worse with different kinds of attacks. When filling in your Character Sheet remember to add (or subtract) the correct number of WCD to (or from) your weapon's attack
2. ++Elf Warrior++

Move 3D4
Attack Modifiers
Close Combat: 0
Ranged: +1 (Bow Only)
Defend 2 WCD
Body 6
Will 5

Test of ...

Strength D8
Perception D10
Dexterity D10

+Special Rules+

Double Armour Encumbrance: Elves take double the normal Movement Penalties from Armour Encumbrance

Sure Aim:
When shooting with a Bow, an Elf automatically re-rolls any dice that roll a [Special] this dose-not effect the Elf's Fate Points and the new result may be re-rolled using Fate in the normal way.

Elven Eyes: Elves may re-roll 1 failed perception test for free per turn
                                                     ~ ~ ~

Giant Spider:

Move: 10"
Attack: 1 WCD*
Defend: 3 WCD
Body: 1
Mind: 0
* Giant Spiders can be Poisonous or  Paralyzing:
+if a Poisonous Giant Spider rolls a 'Special' while attacking and the target fails to Defend the target takes 1 WCD of Un-defendable  Damage at the beginning of it's turn until they use an Antidote Potion
+ if a  Paralyzing Giant Spider rolls a 'Special' while attacking the target is Paralyzed for 1 round and cannot Move, Attack or perform any actions what so ever

a few notes on the rules above:
-- the " following the movement is because we measure movement on a inch square grid
-- WCD = White Combat Dice, the normal combat dice you get in Heroquest (we have other colours with different numbers of shields and skulls)
-- You will most likely know the 'Special' symbol as the 'Black Shield' or 'Monster Shield' in my group's houserules all creatures defend on a 'White Shield' and the 'Special' symbol is used to represent special abilities some creatures have as part of their Attack or Defend rolls

                                                                      ~ ~ ~



my group has a Cleric class that is very similar and has a power called 'Healing Hand' (among others) that works along the same lines as your 'Lay On Hands' rule, however for the Healing Hand power the Cleric rolls an old 40k Sustained Fire Dice (marked with 1 / 1 / 2 / 2 / 3 /'Lighting Bolt') to see how many Body Points are restored, if the Lighting Bolt Symbol is rolled the gods ignore the Cleric's prayers and no Body Points are restored that turn.
                                                                ~ ~ ~

Gelantious Cube

Move: 6"
Attack 0 WCD*
Defend 5 WCD**
Body 5
Mind 0***

Special Rules
* Engulf: the Gelantious Cube does not attack in the normal way, instead it moves over it's victim and Engulfs them.
to show a miniature has been been Engulfed lay the model face-down on top of the cube. An Engulfed model takes
2 WCD of un-defendable damage each turn until it dies or the Gelantious Cube is slain.
** Damage resistant: the Gelantious Cube is very difficult to harm and defends on 'Shields' or 'Specials'. Fire Damage however negates this and the Gelantious Cube can only defend on 'Specials'  
*** Mindless: the Gelantious Cube cannot be effected by any Mind based attacks or spells

                                                                    ~ ~ ~






Shadow

Causes Paralysis: if a Shadow makes a successful attack (causes at least 1 body point of damage) the victim must roll 1D6 on a roll of 1-3 the victim is paralysed and cannot do anything at all for 1 turn
Can only be harmed by Magic: Shadows are Immune to mundane weapons and can only be harmed by damage caused by Spells or from Magical Weapons such as The Spirit Blade or Orc's Bane

Ogre Chieftain

I suggest 5-10 body points (D4 +6 if you like to randomise)

As for Ghouls, do you want D&D or WFRP style Ghouls?
basic ghoul stats would be something like ...

Move: 6
Attack: 2
Defend: 2
Body: 1
Mind: 1

In D&D Ghouls cause paralysis which can be handled like so:
Paralysis: if a Ghoul makes a successful attack (causes at least 1 body point of damage) the victim must roll 1D6 on a roll of 1-3 the victim is paralysed and cannot do anything at all for 1 turn

In WFRP a Ghoul's attack has a chance of infecting it's victim with Grave Rot, which is quite complicated but can be handled by adapting my Poison rules a little  
Grave Rot: if a Ghoul makes a successful attack (causes at least 1 body point of damage) the victim must roll 1D6 on the roll of a 1 the victim has contracted Grave Rot from the attack, at the beginning of their turn the victim must roll 2 Combat Dice and take 1 point of un-defensible damage for each Skull rolled, this will continue each turn until the victim uses a Potion of Restoration or dies

note also that in D&D Ghouls count as Undead where as in Warhammer they are counted as living creatures, it's important to decide which your ghouls are going to be for the purposes of effects of Magic Weapons and Certain spells which undead creatures might be immune to or be especially effected by

I've got nothing on Giant Leeches or Fire Beetles for you at the moment

I've converted the Giant from DragonStrike to the basic HeroQuest rules although the stats may be a little weak for the OtherWorld Hill Giant miniature

++Giant++

Move: 10
Attack: 5 or Ranged 4*
Defend: 5
Body: 6
Mind: 2
*the Ranged attack represents the Giant Throwing a huge rock and has a maximum range of 6 squares

Troll

In HeroQuest if a Monster reaches 0 Body Points it is dead and removed from the board
- Therefore a Troll on 0 Body points is dead and cannot Regenerate (although with a Defend of 4 and the Regenerate rule your players will find it hard to get it down to 0!

                                                  ~ ~ ~

Poison rules are easy to add - here's how it works in the new revised MortiS Quest rules (these rules should be easy enough to apply to normal HeroQuest with no hassle at all)

Poisoned Attack: if a [Insert Creature Name Here] makes a successful attack (causes at least 1 body point of damage) the victim must from then on roll a single WCD at the beginning of their turn - if a Skull is rolled the victim immediately looses 1 Body Point, if a Shield is rolled the victim suffers no damage from the poison that turn, if a Special is rolled the poison has run it's course and the victim is no longer poisoned and dose not need to roll anymore. This continues until the victim dies, the poison wares off or victim uses a Potion of Restoration or Poison Antidote.

also, if you like, poisons of particular creatures can have secondary effects like Paralysis or (as you suggested above) Reduced Movement

                                                           ~ ~ ~

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Wow I didn't realize how much I'd written until now

Thanks for gathering all this together here Skald, I can see it must have taken quite a bit of work