Tricked-Out Hero

Tricked-Out Hero Rulebook

Table of Contents

54 card Playing Deck
108 Monster cards broken into 3 Decks: Levels 1, 2, and 3
4 Trump determination cards
178 Counters
3 Eight sided dice
6 Character Sheets

Setup

All players must choose which character they want to play. They have the choice of Monk, Thief, Mage, Ranger, Fighter, and Priest. How you choose who gets which character is up to you. All players should collect tokens equal to their starting stats.

Character sheet key:

1 Character Class
2 Starting Melee rating (0,1,2,3)
3 Starting Magic rating (0,1,2,3)
4 Starting Health Points
5 Maximum Health Points
6 Declaration Phase Power
7 Combat Powers
8 Bounties (Defeated Monsters)
9 Character Illustration and flavor text

Next, separate the monster decks into the three different levels and shuffle each deck. Shuffle the four trump cards and set face down beside the Monster Cards. Take the suited deck and remove the jokers (you will not need these unless a character sheet tells you to use them, or if you are playing one of the variant rules that use them).

Terminology

Trick - All the cards played in a single round of card play, one from each player.
Hand - All of the cards dealt to a player at one time. It can also refer to all of the tricks played as in "with 4 players there will be a total of 13 tricks in a hand."
Level - A level is complete when every player has dealt one hand.
Game - Refers to the entire game of play (3 Levels).
Lead out or Leads - the first player to play a card during a round of card play
Trump - A suit in card games that outranks all other suits for the duration of a hand.
Sluff - When one does not follow suit but does not trump.
Nil - Taking no tricks in one hand of play.
Declaration Power - The power on a character sheet that allows a player to change the trick taking part of the game. It is the first power listed on the character sheet.
Combat Power - Powers that help with fighting monsters.
Hierarchy of Cards - Unless the Monk's "Littlest Pebble" Declaration Power is in effect the Ace is always the highest card in a suit. From highest to lowest A,K,Q,J,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2.
Powers - There are two types of powers. Declaration Powers and Combat Powers. All these power are usable a set number of times. Either: Once per level, Twice per game or twice per game only once per level.

Gameplay

Order of Play

Deal
Reveal the Trump Suit
Declaration Phase
Play the Hand
Combat

Deal

Once each player has a character and starting tokens you must decide who is the starting dealer. We suggest cutting the deck and high card deals, or high die roll. The dealer gives each player a monster card from the monster deck of the appropriate level (at the start of the game that would be level one), starting with the player to his left. The starting dealer shuffles and deals from the 52 card suited deck, as below:

3 player game: 13 cards to each player with an extra hand dealt out and kept face down to one side
4 player game: 13 cards to each player
5 player game: 10 cards to each player with the two remaining cards kept face down to one side

Players may look at their hand and at their monster, but should not reveal them to other players.

Reveal the Trump Suit

Flip over the top card of the Trump Deck. This will be the Trump Suit for the hand. A new Trump Suit will be revealed at the beginning of each hand. When all the Trump Suits have been revealed, reshuffle the Trump Deck.

Declaration Phase

The player to the left of the dealer gets the first choice for Declaration Powers. They may choose to use their character's declaration power or pass. If they choose to use their power it takes effect and the Declaration Phase is over. No other player may use their power once someone before them uses theirs. If they pass, they do not get another chance during this hand to use their declaration power, and the player to their left then gets the choice of using their declaration power or not. This continues until a player uses their power or everyone has passed. If everyone has passed then the standard rules apply.

Standard Card Play

The player to the left of the dealer leads, playing the first card for the first trick. Everyone plays one card of the appropriate suit always in a clockwise order, never playing before the person in front of you. You must play the suit led if you have any cards in that suit. If you do not have the appropriate suit you can either sluff or play trump. The highest card of the suit led wins the trick unless a trump is played in which case the highest trump then wins the trick. The player who wins the trick takes the card they won the trick with and sets it in front of them while all other cards are discarded. The player who wins the trick then leads out the next trick with whatever suit he desires. Play continues until every card in the hand has been played.

Each player then collects a token of the appropriate type for each card they have down in front of them (one health token for each heart, one magic token for each diamond, one melee token for each club, and one monster token for each spade). This ends the card playing part of the round.

If you claimed no tricks this is called a Nil Hand: instead of receiving no tokens you gain 3 tokens of your choice split however you want between types.

Combat

Monster card key:

1 Monster Title / Name
2 Difficulty Level (1,2,3)
3 Target Number: Traps / Challenges
4 Melee Target Number
5 Magic Target Number
6 Bounty Points
7 Special abilities and rules
8 Unique class identifier
9 Damage Dealt

Every player has a monster card face down. All players reveal their monster (although if the Rogue is in play you must wait to see if he will switch monsters before you reveal) at the same time. In order to fight a monster you must choose to fight it in melee or magic. Once you decide you may then spend tokens of the appropriate kind to lower the target number needed to defeat the monster. Any monster tokens you took will add to the target number needed to defeat the monster. Once all tokens are added or subtracted you roll an eight sided die and must equal or exceed the target number to slay the monster. For each monster you defeat, you will receive Bounty Points in Gold.

Example: I have drawn the Goblin. It is a 4 melee and 4 magic creature. I choose to fight it in melee. I spend two melee tokens against the goblin bringing my target number to a 2 or greater on an eight-sided die. However I also took one monster trick during the card playing part of the game and therefore have a monster token adding one to my monster which now makes my target number 3 or better. I roll a 4 and have defeated my monster. I put the monster in my Bounty Pile and now have 3 Gold. If I had rolled a 2 or less I would take 1 point of damage to my health points and discard the Goblin.

Exceptions:

A monster with an asterisk instead of a number may not be fought in the combat style denoted.
Some monsters have a combined melee and magic and may be fought with either or both.
Chests are not affected by monster tokens and cannot be lowered by melee or magic tokens. Combat bonuses do not apply to chests unless they specifically mention chests!

Combat Powers

These power are used during the combat round of the game. Some of these powers must be used at the time they state they should be used; ex. The Rogue may use backstab after he rolls his dice to double his roll. Other powers do not state when they are used and should be used before the player spends any tokens or rolls his die. Both the Combat Powers and Declarations Powers should be marked of with the number tokens. If a power is once per level use the 1 for use in first level, the 2 in the second level and the 3 in the third level. If a power is twice per game or twice per game once per level use the number of the level you used the power in to mark one use. For twice per game powers it is possible you could have the same number on the power twice.

Leveling up

After every player has dealt one hand and the last hand's combat round is completed, the party moves from level one to level two. The monsters get harder and everyone gains bonus tokens for making it to the next level. These tokens are determined by the number of players.

3 and 4 players receive 1 token of their choice between levels 1 and 2
5 players get 2 tokens between levels 1 and 2
3 and 4 players receive 2 tokens of their choice between levels 2 and 3
5 players get 3 tokens between levels 2 and 3

Death

If you ever lose all your health you discard all your tokens, take your starting tokens plus any level bumps you have received up to this point, and are resurrected. You also get a Death Token that gives all your rolls a minus one. You can get rid of a death token by going Nil or leveling up to the next level and sacrificing one of your newly gained tokens to discard the Death Token.

Winning the Game

The game ends after the final monster of the third level has been fought. The player with the most Gold at the end of the game, wins. If two or more players are tied for Gold at the end of the game, the player who has the most monsters in their Bounty Pile is the winner. If two or more players are still tied after monster kills, the match is considered a draw and you should play again to see who the mightiest adventurer really is!

Miscellaneous Rules

When you are at Maximum Health, every 2 Health tricks you take can be exchanged for either 1 Magic or 1 Melee token.

Specific Card Explanations

Dryad: The Dryad's special ability is against male players regardless of the gender of the character they are using.
Ettin: Any Tokens used to fight the Ettin count towards both rolls.

Advise

The Monster difficulty increases dramatically from level 1 to level 3, as do the Gold rewards. It is often critical to conserve Melee and Magic Tokens won early in the game to fight monsters later in the game.

Rule Variations

Monster Draft

In this variation instead of dealing monsters out to the players all monsters are turned face up in the middle of the table. The hand is played as normal, but once the hand is over the player who is in last place point wise (roll off ties) chooses which monster he wants to fight first. The next lowest player then choose his monster and so on until all players have a monster.

In this variation there is one other change that needs to be made. The Rogue's Quick Footwork power allows him to choose his monster before anyone else instead of switching with another player.

Transcription Notes

The source covers the 3-, 4- and 5-player game only. There are no 2-player or 6-player rules in this document, and none are supplied here.
The source's character sheets (the six Character Sheets listed under Contents, which hold each character's powers, starting stats and Special Ability text) are not part of the rules PDF. Only the sheet key and the sample sheet illustration appear above; individual character power text is not transcribed.
The source text refers to "the Rogue", who is not among the six characters named in Setup (Monk, Thief, Mage, Ranger, Fighter, Priest). The text is transcribed as printed; the source does not say how the Rogue maps onto the listed characters.
The source is an older rules version: it lists six characters, while the current publisher listing describes eleven heroes.
The "Character sheet key" and "Monster card key" lists are the callout legends printed beside the sample sheet and monster card illustrations in the PDF, transcribed as text.
Soft hyphens in the PDF were rendered as ordinary hyphens; otherwise the wording and typos of the source are kept as printed (e.g. "Sluff", "Declarations Powers", "power are used").