It actually wouldn't help against Ghosts, since you only need one success against them anyway.

The only time our group (two people bare min for a group lol) does the cheese kill is vs. AO we have never beaten in the Final Combat...we then further cheese by Kate, Arcane.

Mariana the Ex-Nun Cultist said:

Aah, it never crossed my mind neither, since I've always treated fight skill and bonuses as completely separate things, as resistance and immunity only affect the bonuses..thus to get the sixes to count as doubles, they would have to be thrown from the shotgun's four bonus dice (and not from skill) and since physical immunity does not allow this, it could not be possible.

And, thematically speaking, if you couldn't use the shotgun in the first place, how could you inflict doubles with it, with somekind of magic silver-bullets, or throwing it, maybe?

But this is just my take on the matter, this is after all Arkham Horror, where nothing's certain....

It appears I am going to be a lone dissenting voice here. I'm afraid to say I don't like this idea. The Final Fight can be hard enough as it is, I don't think it needs to be any harder. Yes, Joe Diamond with the Shotgun can make it a bit easy but so what? Jim Culver with the Brass Knuckles needs all the help he can get!

If you don't like Joe Diamond with the Shotgun and +1 Fight skill and 13 Clues ... well then don't use it. What's the problem? For some players, they need it. If this was a versus game then I could understand the complaints about one side having an unfair advantage. But this is a co-op game, all players are on the same team. So if something is too powerful for you, take it out. Remove the shotgun from the deck if it's that much of an issue for you. As far as I can tell, this rule is being considered purely because of the shotgun. So just nerf the shotgun, not everything else too.

I don't see why if another group of players thinks they need to stack a load of clues on someone with the shotgun that this should affect you and your group of players at all. This game isn't Chess, or a CCG, or football. There's no world ranking system, no prizes for being the best. If you have a problem with one card then take it out. And let everyone else - myself included - continue playing the game the same way we always have.

Stenun, I think a lot of people think that the final battle should be unwinnable 9/10 times (maybe even more). It grates on some people that a few investigators armed with small arms and spells can take down an ancient evil, which is fair enough. I'd tend to agree with you -- although I do think final battles can be a bit too easy if you do gear up beforehand. Epic battle goes some way to remedy this, but some AOs are still a joke (mostly those from the base game). I think the prevailing opinion is that players should want to avoid the final battle as much as possible, and this is another way of ensuring that this is the case. Another way to look at it is that it rewards players who were actually attempting a seal win, if something goes wrong and the AO wakes up. Then again, if they were trying to seal they probably won't go into the battle with many clues anyway. Personally, I don't think my group will be using these rules, since we find that we end up in battle a fair amount of the time anyway (having 3 investigators makes the game a bit tougher than 4, which seems to be the norm) and losing is a fairly common outcome.

Frank said:

I disagree here. Yig is the easiest to kill in final combat; giving him a slight boost above the others (due to his ease in awakening) where you can't use clues at all would be kind of good for him.

mattherobot said:

...or four guys armed with proton packs crossing the streams...

Actually, I just read The Horror in the Museum, and SPOILER ALERT

Unless I'm mistaken, one dude takes down Rhan-Tegoth with a couple of pistol shots, then waxed the body and put it on display. The events are only vaguely mentioned, but I could be mistaken.

So some of these big old ancient ones could be taken down like the punks they are.

All in all I like your suggestion, Kevin. However, this will probably make games with 1 or 2 investigators incredibly hard, though I'm not very experienced here (I'm curious about Victimizer's opinion ). I'd prefer it as a "recommended variant".

Tibs' house rule doesn't sound bad either. Maybe I'll adopt them both - usually we have 4 or 5 seals anyway when the AO awakens, so only in rare occasions we'll see one of those red cards.

Graksnor said:

Actually, Rhan-Tegoth isn't waxed up at all. They found him unmoving on his throne and put him on display. The story about the artists making the statue is fake - we aren't told what the shots might have been for. They could have been to kill witnesses/prepare sacrifices or to shoot at the ancient one himself. If the latter case is true, then you are partially correct - Rhan-Tegoth grows as he feeds and can do barely anything at all when he has not eaten. However, no other tales that I've read (admittedly only 2) featuring Rhan-Tegoth have ever portrayed him as stopping to mere bullets.

Anyhow, I like this idea. I do play alot of 2 Investigator names, and to tell the truth, it are only certain ancient ones where the clue-stocking method really works. Against these you usually end up gearing up and blasting them. Against others such as Tsathoggua or Chaugnar Faugn, you try to go for seals. It would be better if the best option in any case would be to seal, with final combat being a final resort, instead of a valid game plan from the get-go - most of the game is made so that one runs around exploring arkham and getting 6 seals, so encouraging players to do so is pretty good I think. Also, Tibs method also sounds fairly good - it should be considered as a rule that would apply when the epic battle variant is used with this rule.

(additional comments tangentially related)

...personally I'd be harsher when it comes to ancient one combat anyway.

Perhaps, given that there are a few dissenting voices, and that there are people that have trouble with the game, this rule should be an optional variant. Combine it with a few other 'Great Ancient Ones' rules like adding a horror check, getting madness cards, etc. and there you go. I mention horror checks/madness simply because oddly, although some ancient ones can drive you mad by dreaming in their sleep on a planet in another solar system, this doesn't really amount to anything in-game.

As an example, in the RPG, Cthulhu makes you lose between 1 and 100 points of sanity. Average characters have between 40-60 sanity points. Even if you pass your check, you still lose between 1 and 10 points. However, in the game, if you lose 5 or more at once, you go a little nutty for a while.

While the RPG is, of course, just another interpretation of the works, it is more accurate than the currently fearless investigators in Arkham Horror.

*edit*

changed Atlach-Nacha to Tsathoggua.

Shotgun Beers... not clues!

-glam

@Victimizer:

Thanks for the clarification. I was kinda confused by the last few events of the story.