thecorinthian said:

Well, I like their use of the word "drained." It conjures up images of the AO's attack, and is pretty clear from a mechanics standpoint (no loss—no heal). The problem lies only with McGlen.

Man you lot really get your knickers in a twist don't you. Nobody is forcing you to use Leo or McGlen with this AO. Winning with one of these investigators on a permanent 1 stamina with everyone else devoured would be a hollow victory anyway, one that ranks as near as dammit to a loss. Also wait for EB cards before passing final judgement.

sulphurea said:

Except people (like me for example), take random investigators then draw random GOO. Combinations are bound to happen.

For the green flame, a simple house would apply it's effects to anything that worships the particular GOO or AO. So in this particular case, it is Gnoph-Keh that would wander the map, destroying seals as they move about. And seing as they are boosted up, they dont even have to be Elusive but can just rampage.

As for the McGlen problem, I am surprised it would slip past the radar. Then again, like someone already mentioned, a lot of things seem to have aquired some sort of stealth technology. The Milk In the Other worlds topic and TheCorinthian's Infinity+1 Gun exploit come to mind. Maybe thats why Innsmouth doesnt contain new items. But yeah, the rulebooks have little passages about each Goo or AO, without a doubt McGlen will be mentioned in there.

sulphurea said:

My knickers are fine! I'm just wryly amused by the fact that there's a playtesting oversight in the preview. It's particularly daft since the preview itself actually mentions Michael McGlen by name, but still the loophole wasn't spotted. On the other hand, maybe it was spotted and they just don't care as much as we do.

I reckon there's a good chance it'll be cleared up in the final release, and even if it isn't, it's not that big a deal. Isn't there already an AO that the Martial Artist can't lose against? Or did I imagine that?

I apologise. My headache is making me cranky. Why not use a house rule that McGlen or Leo can't use their ability when stamina has reached 1. This still makes them useful, but keeps things interesting.

sulphurea said:

No need to apologize, I was just looking for an excuse to repeat the word 'knickers'.

Well, sometimes things do slip through, even when they seem obvious afterwards. In this case, I forgot to include the clause that "Stamina loss inflicted by Rhan-Tegoth's attack cannot be prevented or reduced by any means." I will add that to the next version of the FAQ (which is coming up reasonably soon).

Fortunately, the other 7 AOs have some sort of devoured clause on them, so this isn't going to be a widespread issue.

Anyhow, my bad. It's always embarassing when stuff like this pops up during the previews.

KevinW said:

You heard it here, folks!

Take those Foods and Enchanted Jewelries and chuck them to the curb. And McGlen—better at least get a blessing before the creature awakens :-o

Thanks for putting my mind at ease. And thanks particularly at suggesting that there isn't a mirror-image AO that sucks sanity :-D

Any recommendations about Tulzscha, if you've got one?

Tibs said:

Keep the gates under tight control. I personally prefer to close a gate against him even if I can't seal it, because he has a strong tendency to gain doom tokens regardless, so I feel that I'm better off minimizing the chances of a Cultist (or Cultists) appearing through monster surges. If R-T wakes up, hit him as hard as you can right away (burn clues, one-shot items, etc, right away). The longer the fight goes, the harder it gets, as you might imagine. Blessings are really nice in the final battle, and try to be healed up to full Stamina, because the more dice you're rolling, the more likely you'll survive for awhile. If someone is cursed and R-T is about to wake up, they may want to find a way to get devoured, lest they become a handy blood bank. Lastly, large one-shot items are really nice against R-T, and Enchant Weapon can actually be really handy.

Sigh, and as for Tulzcha, (since I misread that as asking for advice on dealing with Rhan-Tegoth - it's been a long week), I wouldn't use him and Rhan-Tegoth together. Or, if you have your heart set on it, select another common monster (such as Deep Ones or Elder Things) to be Rhan-Tegoth's "Cultists" instead. (I wouldn't use Gnoph-Keh for that. They're too rare to get the desired effect.)

KevinW said:

Good idea. Or we could still allow the cultists to stay out, but simultaneously place some other counter on Rhan-Tegoth to act as a stand-in for the Cultist tokens (Eihort's brood or the Yellow sign tokens wouldn't be in use). Wouldn't want to use a less common monster and weaken R-T on account of a silly green spark.

Thanks for the quick response(s)!

I am not looking forward to facing this AO. And yet, I somehow crave the pain.

Hi Kevin, guys. Sorry, but I have to say that I feel a little disappointed about using the clause proposed to fix the Rhan-Tegoth + McGlen issue, because there is nothing wrong with Enchanted Jewlery, or even Michael's ability (or Leo's). It is just that on some specific situations the game gets broken. Why not just address those specific situations, instead of making all stamina loss prevention ways useless (and thus, reducing investigator's strategy possibilities)? Wouldn't be better reword RT's attack to something like "If all investigators have 1 stamina, the first one is devoured. Otherwise, ... (the attack as it is now)"? Kevin, I would like to know what do you think about it.

or Each investigator rolls die equal to the current Stamina +1. This way McGlen could still be devoured at 1 Stamina but then again it will make the AO even more evil but thats a good thing >

There are already several instances of items that are discarded should the Ancient One awaken. With the Kevin Wilson clause, which by virtue of it being Kevin Wilson makes it canon, for this specific GOO the list is simply longer. And while I agree that there is nothing wrong with enchanted jewelry, food, etc. I also don't see a problem with the GOO and its addendum. Strategy is limitted. That is part of the appeal and difficulty. And yes it does completely remove Leo and McGlenn's abilities, there are plenty of other investigators that lose their special abilities once Final Combat starts. I'm sure Rex, Jenny, Amanda, really don't mind.

Let us look at some of the easiest GOOs to utterly obliterate in Final Combat.

Nyarly - easiest way to beat this guy is probably to ignore the gates and just prep for final combat from the beginning. Never spend clue tokens on anything.

Abhoth - similar, except buy items too.

Without the Kevin Wilson clause, the ideal strategy (given short doom track and likelihood of final combat) is to gear for combat from the beginning. Sit in the shops and buy every manner of stamina damage prevention you find. I kind of like that not being a viable strategy.

In any case, this is plenty similar to Handyman v Yibb. This IS the specific situation that is broken...and the fix is, I feel, devilishly gruesome.

I think Kevin's solution is perfect -- simple, elegant, gets the job done. AOs are supposed to be tough. **** tough. Isn't that what folks keep bitching about, especially the ones from the base game? I feared this one before this loophole was found, and now I fear it even more. We don't want to fight the AO if we can help it, and now we definitely don't want to fight him. Making Enchanted Jewelry and other items worthless against his attack is like...I don't know, how about making Dynamite and the Tommy Gun useless against Shub. Let's face it -- I prefer Arkham when the game is kicking our butts. It makes the victory that much more enjoyable (kinda like the current league, where some of the scenarios are beating us left and right, but we love to play and love the fact that we're not winning every time we play).

Hey all, not saying the concern isn't valid, but something no one previously mentioned:

Rhan is -4 and Physical Immune, so this means even using full fight, McGlen will need a magic weapon

So if McGlen gets down to 1 stamina, he can live infinitely, but once everyone else is devoured, he will eventually lose without a magic weapon. Because 5 fight, minus 4 = 1 die.

So if the game started with 4 people, you still need 4 successes per doom token, and at 1 die, means McGlen can't remove any. Ultimately, the Epic Battle cards kill him then.

It's even worse depending on how the attack works, because I am not sure I am convinced you essentially "add" a doom token for every stamina lost.

Are we sure it's not you need +X successes, where X = how many stamina that investigator lost? So if I lose 3, in a 4 person game, I now need 7 successes to remove a doom token?

Or is it really if I lose 3, Rhan basically gains 3 tokens to his doom track?

they could have worded the attack so much better, and not just cuz of McGlen. But honestly, I don't see McGlen as an auto-win, just a very broken combo

no mirror for sanity?

also, I NEED MORE SPOILERS!!!

I thought McGlen had Fight 3-6, so wouldn't he get 2 dice a turn?

Also, I'm surprised there's any ambiguity about Rhan-Tegoth's attack. The draining part says "in order to defeat him" not "in order to remove a doom token", so surely the implication is that he requires 1 additional success in total , not 1 additional success per token. Even if Rhan-Tegoth drains all the life out of four or five investigators, that's only the equivalent of adding a few Doom tokens - but it won't make much difference anyway, if four or five investigators have been eaten.

JerusalemJones:

good point, although I don't think we all agree about the Final Battle. I, for example, love the Final Battle. The game feels like an anticlimax if the final battle doesn't happen. I don't mind if I lose, of course. We do agree that the game should be difficult - but I prefer it to be difficult in an interactive way. When I'm up against an AO who basically strips away all my Stamina, I'd like to be able to do something about it - which in this case means that if I'm crafty enough to acquire protective/healing items or abilities, they'll be disproportionately useful.

Rhan-Tegoth seems, to me, like an AO whose abilities are supremely arbitrary - not just in the Final Battle, but in the game itself. And the ruling that nothing can prevent the stamina loss just makes the problem worse. The thing about cultists is all very well, but all it's done is remove cultists from the game and use them as a highly unpredictable timing mechanism which speeds up the doom track. I can't think of any way to influence the drawing of cultists, and there's no temporary 'upside' to Rhan-Tegoth eating a cultist, because another monster is drawn instead anyway. The Final Battle penalty for cultists having been drawn is also severe - a whole bunch more hitpoints in the final battle.

The upshot of it all is: this is an AO who awakens very fast, and you can have less affect on his speed than you can on most of them. You can try to leave gates open so that you get more monster surges instead of doom tokens - but monster surges bring an extreme risk of cultists, who just add Doom tokens anyway. Then, when you get to the final battle, you're more-or-less randomly devoured based on your character's stamina. The players can try to arrange who gets devoured first, but it won't make that much difference and certainly there are no items that help with it.

All due respec' to the Kevmeister, but...his solution would still have been a bit clumsy even if it was on the original card. It's simple, and it gets the job done, but it ain't elegant.

Needless to say, I will still buy this expansion even if I have to sell my own blood to do it.

There doesn't need to be a sanity mirror. For example, there isn't an AO that removes sanity if you're in the street during the Mythos phase. Maybe there are a combination of other AOs that do clever things with sanity.

markie7235 said:

I think you got a couple things wrong:

1) scroll up a bit: Kevin said that McGlen's ability won't keep him alive indefinitely.

2) Even with one die, McGlen could still remove doom tokens. Remember that successes carry over between rounds. In a 4p game, If he managed to do 1 success of damage per round over four rounds, he will still remove a doom token. Leftover successes are not dropped as such.

3) You don't add a doom token, you add a required success to win. In a 4p game you need to score 44 successes to kill this monster (plus 8 for each Cultist he "ate"), plus 1 for each stamina absorbed by R-T's attack. In other words, if R-T didn't eat any cultists all game, and only did one stamina damage to an investigator, they would need 45 successes to win.Of course, for each additional stamina damage R-T does, the investigators will need one more success.

thecorinithian,

You're probably right away how the attack works.

As for Michael McGlen, I don't have him in front of me, but let's say he has 6 for his highest fight value. That means he needs a magic weapon or ally, or skills (something non-physical) to increase his attack dice by another 2 a round to even be able to remove one doom token.

Now, I realize that's not really all that hard to pull off, but I have had games where I never ended up picking up a magical weapon on some characters.

Point being is it's not an auto-win. There still requires to be some preparedness. And if I did have everyone else die and Michael won, it's still not much of a win considering everyone else is dead. So if you look at the point system from the rule book, then to score well, you still need to be well prepared for this fight.

I think the scary thing about Rhan is that he has the possibility of waking up quickly and tearing apart a group that is unprepared.

Though I agree, it's unfortunate that 2 investigators exist that basically make his attack pointless. if they are prepared with magic weapons.

What do you mean "pointless"?! Kevin just said that the stamina-drain cannot be reduced by any effect...

Also, I also believe it sucks that he nagates all stamina-reducers. It would make more sense if the ruling would simply be "special abilities of investigators can't reduce the stamina drained". That way, we could still use Enchanted Jewelery and Food.

markie7235 said:

Successes against the AO are cumulative. Is the old "reset to zero successes" misconception again? (Apologies if it's not, but a lot of people make this mistake.) If McGlen gets two successes one round, and two successes the next, he'd remove a Doom token. So as long as someone has one or more dice, they will eventually kill the AO.

Getting magic weapons is easy enough, if you're prepared to spend a turn or two at the Curiosity Shoppe. The optimum strategy against Rhan-Tegoth might be to camp a few people at the Curiosity SHoppe, get a few good magic weapons, and also (if it's even remotely possible) find the Massa di Requiem per Shuggay and awaken Rhan-Tegoth before too many cultists pile up on him. Then again it's not a foolproof strategy...

Also, I also believe it sucks that he nagates all stamina-reducers. It would make more sense if the ruling would simply be "special abilities of investigators can't reduce the stamina drained". That way, we could still use Enchanted Jewelery and Food.

If the ruling said that, it'd be absurdly specific. It'd be almost the equivalent of mentioning McGlen by name in the ability.