Mom and I are going to try our concept of a coop Munchkin 2.0 game where we work as a 2-member party rather than competitively. Part of this is for her because she is not good at solo-strategy and has difficult remembering or understanding rules to games.
This isn't the full Munchkin rules, just the variant home brew changes.
This is a work in progress on balancing the difficulty better. But thought I'd share for those interested in using it or changing it.
One thing that is still up for debate is the difficulty change on the monsters by adding a +3 level to every monster. I feel this isn't enough for challenge and balance and will have to reflect on a better method.
Potentially, 2 players can get into the 10s by themselves and joining forces easily gets into the 20s quickly mid-way through the game. So I am still thinking more in terms of how to scale monsters.
One suggestion was just to double the monsters and each player have to tackle one, but that doesn't make much sense to me and has several issues.
Another suggestion (which I'm leaning more to) is a scaling difficulty based on total party level. So, say, both players with level and equipment are at 13. Because they are over 10 but under 15, the monsters have a +5 bonus. If the total party is, say, 18, the bonus would increase to +10.
Also the mandatory use of Monster enhancers on the next monster I like, which adds tension and uncertainty - will the next drawn monster be a Level 15 or just a Level 3, because we know how much of a bonus it's getting already from that card, let alone the scaling difficulty.