Have any of you gone up against "Servitor of the Outer Gods"(SOG)? It came with the Innsmouth expansion.

Here are the stats--

Nightmarish 2

Overwhelming 1

Endless

"If you fail a combat or evade check against SOG you are devoured."

Toughness 3. Horror check is -3 (loss of 4), and Combat -2.

Evade is only +0.

This bad dude had us pretty laid out, since none of us had the firepower to take him down "for sure." Who wanted to gamble? Failing the tough horror check was guaranteed instant devour. We got by him several times with an evade check. No one wanted to face him on mano a mano.

We finally took SOG out with the Greater Banishment (GB) spell. This spell is lore -2 on the check, and sanity loss 2, so it is not something you want to use too freely. The one of us who used GB had the Golden Trumpet, thus lowering the sanity loss by 1. One real plus with Greater Banishment is that you do not have to be in the same square with the SOG to banish it. The dimensional symbol of SOG is a square. I do not think GB works with crescent moons.

Are there any other candidates for "toughest monster"? We used to think "God of the Bloody Tongue" (mask) was pretty bad, with a toughness of 4.

Let me know what other super-baddies are your particular nemesis.

Glasgow Scotland said:

You mean besides the Dunwich Horror?

Since I don't feel I have to fight monsters, the Servitor is barely a bother, even less so the GotBT (Evade +1). The Servitor is not on the board most of the time and I'll certainly evade IT rather than waste resources fighting it.

In a normal game, I really hate to see the Colour of the Space and the Star Vampire. They both come and get you in their own way, so you sort of have to deal with them. If trapped by a Star Vampire, you can't leave because IT will come in after you in an unstable location. Good thing that a Flyer can't be a stalker too except maybe Tulzcha's Byakhee sort of do that.

It terms of flyers, I dislike the Wraith more. He's not as tough to fight but he just won't leave normally because of his moon symbol.

mageith said:

Except, when (and this seems to be quite often the case) GotBT pops up in an OW encounter where it surprises you !

I always get an icky feeling when Gug or Dhole are drawn, too many bad experiences with both.

I talked with flamethrower about this once. Generally speaking, non-spawn wise, the Dhole is the toughest monster out there.... to fight. But I came up with some criteria that made this question a little more interesting. I decided to factor in not only how hard it was to fight, but also it's evade check, special movement abilities, and the likelihood of it being drawn.

Considering the above, I've reevaluated. The Shoggoth probably deserves a place in the top 5, It's a reasonably common, fast, tough monster. Due mention goes to the Colors out of Space, Cthonians, and Hounds of Tindalos, which *always* seem to ruin my day. The Star Vampire is another one of the worst, a terribly difficult battle, stalker, and -3 to evade... ouch.

I would like to add the Crawling Ones to the list. Very bad Horror Check, very unpredictable Combat Check. Yes, it only requires one success to defeat...but what if you don't get one? What if X=6 and you can't get one? What if you have few Clues and the Doom Track is two away from the end?

At least when you look at the Dhole, your mind just says, "Forget it." Your mind looks at a Crawling One the way it looks at a clean, empty Craps table...

jgt7771 said:

If you get a 6 for the Crawling One's modifier (as I tend to do half the time), and you can afford to fail the combat check, just try another one. You get to roll for a modifier before each combat check, after all

I would consider Crawling One more of a notable annoyance, like the Rat-Thing, but definitely not in the same tier as the ones awp listed.

The Servitor is, I reckon, the nastiest non-spawn monster to HAVE to fight. But must of the time, you don't have to. But, as has been pointed out, the Colour Out Of Space and the Cthonians are pretty nearly monsters you HAVE to fight and for that reason I'd say they were worse. Particularly the Colour with it's double immunity.

So what makes a monster tough overall, I reckon?

• High toughness (obviously)
• Difficult evade check
• Difficult horror check
• High Horror damage
• Difficult Combat check (including resistances and immunities)
• High Combat damage
• A chance to devour you
• Some obstructive ability (Rat-Thing steals an item)
• A symbol of crescent (cannot be removed by closing gates)
• An obstructive movement pattern
• A universally detrimental effect (such as Chthonian)

A high chance of being drawn is not really a fair condition, because I think the assessment applies to how much of a pain it is once it's on the board, and/or met during an encounter. After all, if a monster cup consisted of 99 Skeletons and 1 Star Spawn, there wouldn't be much of a debate as to which monster was the toughest.

A monster that sufficiently meet the largest number of these conditions is probably the worst. I don't know how many monsters meet more conditions than the Star Vampire, but that one's got my tentative vote.

Dhole vs. Star Vampire

High toughness - Dhole ties Star Vampire (3)
Difficult evade check - Star Vampire (-3) beats Dhole (-1)
Difficult horror check - Star Vampire (-3) beats Dhole (-1)
High Horror damage - Dhole (4 + Nightmarish) beats Star Vampire (3)
Difficult Combat check (including res/imm) - Dhole beats Star Vampire (because of Magical Resistance)
High Combat damage - Dhole (4 + Overwhelming) beats Star Vampire (3)
A chance to devour you - N/A
Some obstructive ability (Rat-Thing steals an item) - N/A
A symbol of crescent (cannot be removed by closing gates) - N/A
An obstructive movement pattern - Star Vampire beats Dhole (because of Stalker)
A universally detrimental effect (such as Chthonian) - N/A

Technically, the Dhole ties with the Star Vampire (4 out of 7 of your criteria). But that doesn't necessarily quantify something like Stalking. As always, it's going to depend a lot on the actual circumstances, including AO, Environment, and Investigator involved.

The star vampire has never been anything other than a major problem for me. As the above shows it front loads all its threat, unlike the dhole. You can deal with a dhole more often because of this. Every time Ive drawn the dhole in an encounter, ive managed to evade it. Every time Ive drawn a star vampire, ive ended up maddened, injured, ko'd or gibbering in the asylum. So after a long time on top of my list of monsters to dread, dhole is now second.

The gug also batters me, but thats fate - with alarming frequency, the dice vomit 1s.

I always hated the Colour out of Space , for some stupid reason I roll horribly everytime I have to fight it

Difficulty to fight + difficulty to evade + how often it moves onto you

Colour out of Space, Cthonian(?), Star Vampire, Ghug (-2 evade), Vampire, Hounds of Tindalos, Hunter of the Dark

Cthonians with Shudde as ancient one. Ouch.

dj2.0 said:

Agreed Star Vamp is a ***** and a half. Toughest monster? No. But lemme tell you, last night he hit the board first Mythos and never left.

Oops, not the Hunter in the Dark spawn monsters. I mean that flying snake thing (hunting horror?) that moves to investigators in unstable locations.

THAT, star vampire, hounds of tindalos, cthonians, colour out of space, and Gugs are the most dangerous.

Hardest non-spawn/mask monster to defeat in combat? Probably the servitor, mummy, and Dhole.

Shan is a baddie meanie too, I'd say. A tiny one, yes, a but a baddie still. (the color out of space too... it makes you turn all grey and shiny !!!)

maybe the Lloigor deserves an honorable mention at least. They're very difficult to take out, with weapon immunity and a nasty horror check to make spellcasters geared up with shrivelling think twice. When they spawn on a gate they're not too terribly bad. But every once in a while they spawn in the street, and then they're an absolute menace.

awp832 said:

Lloigor is the only monster chit I can think of that has the ability to devour an investigator from just being near one!

awp832 said:

Pfft, just Shotgun it !

(if you haven't house-ruled Shotty that is)

Dam said:

Pfft, just Shotgun it !

Okay, that did it.

I was never a big fan of the Shotgun (or Azure Flame) using the 6-as-two bonus while the +4 = 0, but it never really came up in my games one way or the other, so I never really bothered with fixing it. But realizing that the same silly logic that lets you use a Shotgun against a Ghost can allow you to use a Shotgun against a Lloigor is just too much. If the monster negates part of the card, it negates all of the card.

Which got me thinking about the dual natures of both the Cross and the Whip. The Cross can still grant its bonus against Horror Checks without using it in Combat (it's a comfort just knowing it's in your pocket), and the Whip can be used in all sorts of ways that are completely indirect to actual combat (using it to swing away from the non-corporeal thing, or knock something over as a distraction, in order to give your Combat Check one last ditch effort). But exactly what is the "alternate use" of a Shotgun that allows successes to count double against a monster that can ignore everything that a Shotgun is?

First person to say "loud noise" gets a fat lip.

jgt7771 said:

Okay, that did it.

I was never a big fan of the Shotgun (or Azure Flame) using the 6-as-two bonus while the +4 = 0, but it never really came up in my games one way or the other, so I never really bothered with fixing it. But realizing that the same silly logic that lets you use a Shotgun against a Ghost can allow you to use a Shotgun against a Lloigor is just too much. If the monster negates part of the card, it negates all of the card.

Which got me thinking about the dual natures of both the Cross and the Whip. The Cross can still grant its bonus against Horror Checks without using it in Combat (it's a comfort just knowing it's in your pocket), and the Whip can be used in all sorts of ways that are completely indirect to actual combat (using it to swing away from the non-corporeal thing, or knock something over as a distraction, in order to give your Combat Check one last ditch effort). But exactly what is the "alternate use" of a Shotgun that allows successes to count double against a monster that can ignore everything that a Shotgun is?

First person to say "loud noise" gets a fat lip.

Pre-Lloigor days, the most often victimized monster to fall to the Shotty that I kept hearing people mention was Colour Out of Space.

Yeah, noise-defense was usually my sarcastic reply to why Shotgun will work, when Dynamite doesn't:

"2 loud bangs (in quick succession) > 1 bang. Tommy Gun? Series of small bangs doesn't do anything."

jgt7771 said:

Dam said:

Pfft, just Shotgun it !

Okay, that did it.

First person to say "loud noise" gets a fat lip.

But monsters have weak hearts ;'D

Eh, Shan can be evaded, and you usually have an upkeep to react to it landing on you.

I've like to throw the vampire into the list. He's no star vampire, but he's still a -3 evade that anyone without a powerful magic weapon/spell will fail against.

awp832 said:

Ill second that. All 3 turned up at once in the streets in my last game, 2 of them in French Hill, one in the woods. That basically covered the entire south of town. I had no spells. Luckily, I had Norman with me.

Shotguns? Gimmeabreak. Thats cheesier than toejam.

dj2.0 said:

A while back, people scoffed at the idea of Shotgun doing nothing vs Physical Immunity. Now Lloigor is mentioned and people start finally converting .

Ive NEVER used this cheese, so no conversion here, but yeah, people are hearing the truth