And people thought MANDY was unbalanced! She's a piker next to the great Clue Mother. We've had six games with Patrice now and each time we've achieved a six seal victory, even against Rhan-Tegoth. Having observed Patrice over these six games my opinion is that her power is simply too great, too much. Mandy, Wendy and Jaxqueline all provide great advantages, it is true, but Patrice is a level beyond, a difference in degree so great that it becomes a difference in kind. If she is used correctly, the other Investigators almost don't have to worry about ever gathering Clues; they can simply jump in the nearest gate, confident that they'll have the Clues to seal when they emerge. Patrice's presence removes much of the challenge from the game and in doing so makes it considerably less fun. I'm arguing with my group that we should remove Patrice permamently and I am curious to hear what others in the Arkham community think about this issue. What are your thoughts and experiences concering Patrice? Do you also find her simply too unbalancing or not, and if not, why not?

You might try playing her without Injury/Madness cards - then she'd have to either spend more time/money recovering or else risk losing a lot of clues for the team.

Patrice is certainly an all-star, though. I've only played with her once so far, but she really warped the game.

Patrice certainly eases a lot of pain, and I will agree she can make for an easy game. I could be quickly convinced that she is broken if I saw firsthand someone play her in such a way, but I haven't played her that way yet. I don't have her scratching up every Clue on the board at the expense of every other player; I try to play every Investigator as self-sufficient, and my cult tends to do the same. But when poor Jim loses his Fifth Clue to save his nigh-devoured neck in R'lyeh, I'm sure happy to have Patrice around with a replacement token for that Seal when he gets out.

But this is the same thing as Mandy, Joe, or Daisy. The capacity is there for tremendous windfalls of luck, and if you pounce on them, the game will screech and crumple against your might. I simply choose to dip, not dive, into that pool, and Patrice plays just as solid as any of the other A-List supporting Investigators, like Leo or Jacqueline.

"She's all broken when I play her like that!" "So don't play her like that."

Just the opinion of one man with a low-to-middling win ratio.

Solan said:

I wish I knew what FFG was thinking when they created Patrice. I've used her three times and the last two with her power reduced.

1) She could only share her closes with investigators in the same town. That was fun as she had to scurry between Innsmouth and Arkham and Emily still was able to seal gates with her (3 player game)

2) We reduced her futher to only being able to share 1 clue per turn with investigators in the same town and made sure they she had to draw and keep the Unique items. It wasn't enough. She still dominated.

Her clue generation alone makes her outlandish.

Our local group agrees that as written Patrice is too powerful and leeches a lot fo challenge and fun from the game. At the moment we are mostly avoiding playing her, but we have discussed some options to reduce her power a bit. Our main thoughts are that for her personal story she must draw and keep 2 unique items either from an encounter or by buying stuff at the curoasity shoppe. The other main thought is that she may only pay one clue token per investigator per turn. I am a little nervous that this may make her a little underpowered, but I can't think of any other ways to dial her back a bit and still keep it "fair" and fun for everyone.

I wouldn't mind playing her as written if I was playing with some relativly new players though. Her clues would help offset the bad choices from other players, and she is easy enoguh to play that I would have time to help the others make good decisions.

Only had her once so far, against Zhar, and didn't manage to seal him. Stars Are Right definately contributed to that game going to final combat though. Needed 1 more turn to slap down that 6th seal. She helped a lot, but wasn't game-breaking. Probably against already weaker GOOs (read: those with longer doom tracks), she'll be a huge help.

On a serious OT: Looking at the stats sheets, I see people sealing GOOs using just AH + IH with doom track as low as 5 (several others in the 7-8 range) . Some are with Patrice, but some aren't. There have even been gate bursts removing a seal in some of those games. Can't help wondering if AH + IH just equals more surges and/or bounces than AH + DH + IH (+ DP+ BG+ KiY) games. 6 seals with doom track at 5 requires very good luck with the Mythos or more than 1 Elder Sign IMO. I've had a couple of longer games (17 and 21 Mythos cards), but majority 14 Mythos or less, meaning just 13 turns. Maybe I'm just shuffling too well, getting gate openings in even the least-popular locations (no gate at Y'ha yet though).

Argonel said:

Tonight I played her only being able to share her clues in the same town and she could achieve her personal story (but didn't). She didn't generate any clues at all. Played with a Brainy Bunch: Sister, Dexter (story achieved) and Carolyn (story achieved). It was the easiest game of Innsmouth I ever played. Patrice didn't seal any gates but helped Sister seal one and Dexter seal one. Sister will be first citizen. Innsmouth was quieter than ever. It was the first time the Deep One track didn't even threaten.

I think being able to share her clues, without even generating any (except through her story), is as powerful or even more powerful than Joe Diamond's skill, who's not a bad investigator.

too broken? there are like 20 thousand characters! why not have some be powerful for the gamer that likes playing that kind of character! if you like weak characters there is always Dexter! still waiting on FF to make a horror author character. (looking at you Kevin! errrrrr!!)

I agree with much of the sentiment. I have played Patrice in a solo game using 4 investigators. I was able to win by seals.

However, in two other games with 4 and 6 players, Patrice was used both times. Although both of those games went to the Final Battle, we were well on our way to winning by gate sealing. It was the Deep One Uprising track that got us.

The one thing I noticed was that the person running Patrice didn't appear to be having very much fun. In both cases it seemed like the players were simply handing out clue tokens, and not doing much of anything else.

Now that my group has tried out most of the IH investigators, we will go back to shuffling all of expansion investigators together and randomly drawing.

I've only drawn Patrice once since I got IH, and she wasn't that much of a spoiler. Perhaps I played her poorly, or perhaps I just had bad luck. Kept drawing things that took all the clues off the board, and others that kept more from appearing. Isuspect is was more bad luck than anything else, but it still hurt.

Yeah, she's **** broken- even more than Daisy Walker the Librarian.

We ruled noth of them so that their player MUST choose only ONE of their special abilities: that seems to fix them well.

Think about it

Gott said:

Better but not enough. As a gamer, For Patrice I'd choose generating the 20 or so clues. I tried that rule only and generated more clues that I could use in the game (since I couldn't share) and still sealed 3 gates.

For Daisy, the free sanity for every spell and chosing her spell is more than powerful enough. In addition, the two powers not used are the most creative powers. It's very characterful if daisy reads tomes with a bonus. She's the librarian, after all.

And for Patrice any character can gather clues but she's the only one that can share them.

Perhaps allowing only use one power per turn or choosing randomly, which one, perhaps each turn.

Perhaps allowing sharing clues only once per turn (and at that, must specify how many and before any rolls). Then you need to ask each time: is this event worth using my ability for the turn?

ricedwlit said:

How about Patrice may share clues at upkeep (only) using a point of focus for each clue shared?

- Mariana the ex-nun cultist

Mariana the Ex-Nun Cultist said:

A nice idea, but I guess I'd prefer if she could trade clues to other investigators in the same area, just like items.

Or maybe other investigators may spend her clue tokens for skill checks only, not for sealing gates.

avec said:

This is nice! As it is, I never send her into gates, and never worry too much when an investigator in a gate loses his 5th clue. Good idea!

Our game with Patrice was incredibly easy, but Patrice really didn't seem to affect things that much. We started with an Elder Sign and the the big underground tentacle just never really interfered much. I think the Deep One Rising track got up to 2 and we held the Doom track to 5 when we put the last seal on the board. Rex completing his story was at least as big a deal as the fact that Patrice was there.

-Frank

You guys really fulfill Rex's story? In a four player game, it will take 8 rounds to gain the 10 clues back. I'd rather use that time to seal two gates with those 10 clues.

Morgaln said:

Hmm. IIRC, his Pass is first player get 1 Clue each Upkeep. Add to that his ability to gain X+1 Clues each time he get a Clue, in three rounds you'll net a total of 9 Clues, 1+1 for 6 Clues for Rex (he should be able to grab 1 Clue off the board each turn IMO), 3 for first players, though spread around, unless vs Quachil Uttaus. That's not even counting possible encounters that give Rex Clues. Or am I looking at this from some wrong angle?

HëllRÆZØR said:

That does appear somewhat simpler

- Mariana the ex-nun cultist

Her power does look great -- all I'll say is that we've not yet won a game that she's been in!

In a two investigator game, it's not that unbalancing, as you can't afford to have her act as a clue bank: most of her clues will go on sealing her own gates. You also might not have the spare cash for an easy early pass to her personal story. With more investigators, obviously she's much stronger.

I've used Patrice in one game so far. Here's what was happening:

AO was Cthugha. Arkham and Innsmouth boards. Four players. For most of the game we didn't have Patrice. We were trying to seal because we didn't like the look of the Cthugha final battle, but we weren't getting far. The doom track was at 11, the DOR track was at 4, and innsmouth had about twenty monsters in it, including three Lloigors. We were totally screwed. My character got devoured by an unfortunate OW encounter, so just to try out Patrice (since I'd heard she might be a bit too good) I took her as my replacement investigator. Three turns later we won by placing the sixth seal, and it was basically entirely down to Patrice's ability.

So my opinion is: she's waaaaaay overpowered. In that game, she didn't even get her second ability 'care package', since she turned up after the doom track hit 9. The idea that her personal story gets here more clue tokens just adds insult to injury!

But as for her being 'too broken to use'...

I can't see that there's any real harm in there being one character who helps the group that much. On the other hand, the nature of her ability is a bit 'cheaty', because it means you can ignore most of the game's dynamics about conserving and distributing resources. It's also 'action at a distance', and there aren't many abilities in AH which do that; it allows you to be fantastically cynical about the layout of the board. It takes a lot of the risk and suspense out of going to the OWs, because you can (effectively) gain more clue tokens while you're out there.

If the players are quite individualist and don't tend to try for 'optimum use of resources', then Patrice is probably ok. She'll get into the same scrapes as everyone else, and use up the clues that way, so her special ability will be a bit less useful. But if all she does it wander around picking up clues and avoiding trouble, I don't think any official AO that currently exists is going to present a serious problem. Except maybe trying to seal against Atlach-Nacha. I'll try that next game.

It's quite an interesting reversal, in fact: we used to start the game by picking out a tough AO and then working out a way to beat it. Now, we can start with one person picking Patrice, and then work out what AO and what huge pile of heralds we're going to need to fight against in order for the game to actually be a challenge....

thecorinthian said:

Sounds like you had 5 seals in play before Patrice even showed up. Would picking say Wendy not have given the same result? Norman (3 Clues + FG) should be able to seal in 3 turns as well.

I think someone mentioned this earlier as well -- Patrice might not be a lot of fun to play in the full clue gathering mode. I know a lot of people here play solo and pick investigators, in which case she will probably seem a lot more unbalanced than in a game where each player has one investigator, and maybe doesn't want to just be grabbing clues. Thus far we haven't had much of a problem with it -- but then, we try to strike a balance between optimal arrangement of combined resources and everyone having a good time. Even then, Patrice is a bit powerful, but as I mentioned in another thread recently, I don't mind too much since we choose investigators randomly.