Home › Forums › BOARDGAMES › KINGDOM DEATH: MONSTER › 5-6 Player Variant Rules
Let’s face it, the 5 and 6 player rules in the official rule book are complete garbage. They fail on every front because the game is finely tuned for 4 survivors on a hunt, no more, no less. When you try using the official rules, which just make the monster have more speed and damage, you find that the early game spikes very high in difficulty while the late game becomes too easy.
People often ask about what variant rules to use; I’ve played in 6 campaigns with 5+ players and here are the rules we finally settled on. They’re not perfect, but they do result in a balanced game which is fun.
1. During Showdowns the player with the AI Monster Card does not get an activation.
They can move, dash and surge as normal. In a 6 Player game, one other player at a fixed position (usually 2 or 3 seats behind ) also does not get their activation.
Stopping a survivor from attacking the monster directly means that there are only 4 non surged attacks each round. Movement is allowed in order to let a survivor have some options and something to do on their turn (it’s also fun with the tag team move Synchronised Strike from 1.5).
2. The Monster gets +25% Health per player above 4 in the form of Life.
These Life Points must be removed before the AI deck is as per the Life rules.
This is pretty much straightforward, more survivors in a party means more armor/injury points that the survivors have. The monster’s health is adjusted accordingly to keep pace. This also means that more resources can be generated via critical hits, but the monster is harder to control early on because the Life tokens provide a buffer against AI ‘pruning’ (using Rawhide Headbands to create a monster that acts in a beneficial manner).
3. All Monster Rewards are increased by 25% (rounded down) per additional survivor.
So this means if you’d normally get 4 basics, you get 5 for 5 players and 6 for 6 players. However you still only get one of the special reward resources for killing a higher level monster. No extra Juggernaut Blades/Sleeping Virus Flowers/Stomach Linings, you have to work for those.
Higher amounts of resources for building helps keep the fun alive for all players. I also recommend playing the ‘each player gets their own share of the resources to do with as they wish’ variant rather than pooled resources. It’s a lot of fun that way to see trading for key resources and so forth.
4. Endeavors gained upon return are 4 minus the number of survivors who died.
You have extra resources, you do not need more endeavors as the settlement growth will only be accelerated if you have 5 or 6 Endeavours per successful hunt.
This keeps the number of endeavours gained by the settlement in line with a 4 survivor game and keeps the value that Graves provides meaningful.
5. Innovating requires one extra unique resource (hide/organ/bone) per extra player in the game.
This keeps it roughly in line with the extra resource gain. With 5 players you need 1 hide, 1 organ and 1 bone + one extra of these and with 6 players you’ll need either a hide + organ, bone + organ or hide + bone extra
Common Sense Guideline: Push Yourself and hunt harder and higher level monsters.
Honestly the game is easier with these changes because 5+ players is not what the monster AI was designed for coping with. You’re more likely to get some of the obscene high luck or high evasion characters and the L1 monsters are just not going to cut it. So push yourselves and go after L2+ monsters when you are comfortable.
In particular I recommend the L2+ expansion monsters, specifically the Gorm, Dragon King, Dung Beetle Knight, Lion God and Sunstalker. The L3 Flower Knight is also a lot of fun.
So there you are. 5 Rules Changes and one common sense guideline that make for a fun, challenging experience that keeps the balance of the game mostly intact.
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Home › Forums › BOARDGAMES › KINGDOM DEATH: MONSTER › 5-6 Player Variant Rules
Let’s face it, the 5 and 6 player rules in the official rule book are complete garbage. They fail on every front because the game is finely tuned for 4 survivors on a hunt, no more, no less. When you try using the official rules, which just make the monster have more speed and damage, you find that the early game spikes very high in difficulty while the late game becomes too easy.
People often ask about what variant rules to use; I’ve played in 6 campaigns with 5+ players and here are the rules we finally settled on. They’re not perfect, but they do result in a balanced game which is fun.
1. During Showdowns the player with the AI Monster Card does not get an activation.
They can move, dash and surge as normal. In a 6 Player game, one other player at a fixed position (usually 2 or 3 seats behind ) also does not get their activation.
Stopping a survivor from attacking the monster directly means that there are only 4 non surged attacks each round. Movement is allowed in order to let a survivor have some options and something to do on their turn (it’s also fun with the tag team move Synchronised Strike from 1.5).
2. The Monster gets +25% Health per player above 4 in the form of Life.
These Life Points must be removed before the AI deck is as per the Life rules.
This is pretty much straightforward, more survivors in a party means more armor/injury points that the survivors have. The monster’s health is adjusted accordingly to keep pace. This also means that more resources can be generated via critical hits, but the monster is harder to control early on because the Life tokens provide a buffer against AI ‘pruning’ (using Rawhide Headbands to create a monster that acts in a beneficial manner).
3. All Monster Rewards are increased by 25% (rounded down) per additional survivor.
So this means if you’d normally get 4 basics, you get 5 for 5 players and 6 for 6 players. However you still only get one of the special reward resources for killing a higher level monster. No extra Juggernaut Blades/Sleeping Virus Flowers/Stomach Linings, you have to work for those.
Higher amounts of resources for building helps keep the fun alive for all players. I also recommend playing the ‘each player gets their own share of the resources to do with as they wish’ variant rather than pooled resources. It’s a lot of fun that way to see trading for key resources and so forth.
4. Endeavors gained upon return are 4 minus the number of survivors who died.
You have extra resources, you do not need more endeavors as the settlement growth will only be accelerated if you have 5 or 6 Endeavours per successful hunt.
This keeps the number of endeavours gained by the settlement in line with a 4 survivor game and keeps the value that Graves provides meaningful.
5. Innovating requires one extra unique resource (hide/organ/bone) per extra player in the game.
This keeps it roughly in line with the extra resource gain. With 5 players you need 1 hide, 1 organ and 1 bone + one extra of these and with 6 players you’ll need either a hide + organ, bone + organ or hide + bone extra
Common Sense Guideline: Push Yourself and hunt harder and higher level monsters.
Honestly the game is easier with these changes because 5+ players is not what the monster AI was designed for coping with. You’re more likely to get some of the obscene high luck or high evasion characters and the L1 monsters are just not going to cut it. So push yourselves and go after L2+ monsters when you are comfortable.
In particular I recommend the L2+ expansion monsters, specifically the Gorm, Dragon King, Dung Beetle Knight, Lion God and Sunstalker. The L3 Flower Knight is also a lot of fun.
So there you are. 5 Rules Changes and one common sense guideline that make for a fun, challenging experience that keeps the balance of the game mostly intact.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.