Hero Kids – Fantasy Expansion – Hero Advancement Cards by Justin Halliday is a role playing game supplement published by Hero Forge Games for use with Hero Kids. This is an official expansion for allowing characters to advance; previously there were two unofficial systems for doing this, Character Advancement – A Hero Kids Compatible Supplement for Levelling Characters and Campaign System – Hero Kids Compatible.
This is available as a 43 page PDF from DriveThruRPG although it was received for free due to a special discount. The PDF comes in two versions, one with page backgrounds and a printer friendly version without them. One page is the front cover and one the front matter.
The supplement opens by discussing hero advancement and how campaign play has players using the same characters in a series of connected adventures. There are adventures in the same setting for Hero Kids – the entire Rivenshore and Bayhaven series for one – but players have received no benefits from reusing characters.
This advancement system allows about 18 increments for advancement for each character. These are spent on a large array of possible advancement options. Suggestions given for advancement progress are after each adventure or after each session – Reign of the Dragon is referenced as an adventure that will take more than a single session to complete.
There are new cards for advancing, the Hero Chronicle and Advancement Cards. The Chronicle has boxes next to advancement options – which cost different amounts of points – and these are marked off. As advancements are achieved, players also receive Advancement Cards. These allow players to improve an ability, gain a new ability, add a health level, learn a new skill, train a new special action or master a new bonus ability. There are different types of advancement and some limits.
With heroes now being more powerful, there are suggestions for how to increase challenges. Ability tests can be made harder, monster ability pools can be increased, monsters can be given more armour and health, they can use smart tactics or be switched out for tougher variants. Finally, monster numbers can simply be increased – many adventures have levelling instructions based on the number of heroes; heroes can face the next level of monster numbers.
The final page of instructions is on using cards to make new heroes.
Next is one page with two Hero Chronicle cards and 33 pages of advancement cards. Most of the pages have four cards on them; some are blank or there are spaces. It’s stated that there are 120 cards in total.
Hero Kids – Fantasy Expansion – Hero Advancement Cards in Review
The PDF is well bookmarked with the different sections and card types linked. Navigation is very good. The text maintains a two column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of black and white images; these are either reused from other supplements or are images of the various new cards. Presentation is okay.
This is a surprisingly simple and flexible system. Using cards and checkmarks means that it should be easy enough for the majority of children, perhaps bar the very youngest, to pick up. Yet the large number of cards means that there is a vast array of potential abilities and improvements to acquire. Not only does this mean that no two characters need necessarily to improve the same way but there is also the equivalent of, say, feats in Pathfinder without a complex system to wrap around them. Which creates a simple, yet fully-featured, advancement system. All in all, an excellent buy. Hero Kids – Fantasy Expansion – Hero Advancement Cards is definitely recommended and it can be found by clicking here.
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