What does the new FAQ say about the situation where an encounter moves an investigator to a location with monsters? Does he have to fight or evade them immediately, even though it is not the movement phase? Can he pick up the Clues there immediately? What if there's an open gate at the location, can he still move there?

I assume the answer to all these is "yes", but I recall there was some confusion about this in the previous FAQs.

-Villain

There was some confusion because at one point, Kevin Wilson said, "monsters and clues are only handled on the movement phase" or something like that, but the FAQ in the later-released expansions had the opposite, original ruling.

This is what the new FAQ says so far:

Q: If a location card tells an investigator that he
may move to another location and have an encounter
there, what happens if the location has a monster
and/or gate on it?
A: First, the investigator must successfully evade or
fight any monsters at the location. If successful, the
investigator has a normal Arkham Encounters Phase at
the new location, following either the “Gate” or “No
Gate” instructions on pages 8-9 of the rulebook.

Q: Do you immediatly gain any clues at locations
you move to in Upkeep (from being LiTaS) or
Arkham Encounters (through being redirected by an
encounter?)
A: Yes, yes.

It seems that they're going with the original ruling after all, which I prefer. Why wouldn't you have to deal with monsters on a location?

Is there still no word on when the new FAQ will be released?

I have not gotten any follow up emails. I would assume that it's still many months off. Better late than never, certainly!

We could really use a new FAQ

FAQ's are good but how about a new rulebook including all revisions, all clarifications and all extra rules introduced by the expansions? Could save reading through a mountain of Q and A's to find that nugget of information you're unsure of...

AsylumSeeker said:

Tibs said:

Sorry, I was off this site for awhile. The formatting makes my head hurt.

Anyway, I received the FAQ for proofing as well. I reformatted it for the guys at FFG because it was one big cluster with a few contradictions. I resubmitted after working on it for about a week or two but haven't heard anything back. I have shot off emails but haven't gotten a response.

Man, I left that message in October.

I assume that means you reformatted the first draft they sent? I shot off emails before the first draft arrived, with no response until they actually sent it.

I'm not worried about it anymore. They're definitely working on it, which is good. And I sure know what it's like to juggle multiple projects.

Tibs said:

Yeah, the first draft back in October. I was geting some responses and they told me to proceed on the reformatting so the work wouldn't be in vain. But then about Thanksgiving, I haven't heard anything since.

Hi! Any news on the progress? It is now the Long Long Long Awaited FAQ

zeb said:

I was told last week that I might see a revised copy this week. The person working on this got "promoted" to another department and has been busy with other projects.

I haven't seen anything so will a line to him on Monday.

ColtsFan76 said:

That is if you are able to, after your precioussss Colts lose in the Super Bowl . You'll spend Monday just recuperating from the loss .

I don't know if there is still time but I have a question. According to twording on the cards the Axe and the Gladius of Carcosa get a +1 to the combat bonus if the second hand is empty, at the same time the Martial arts card said that each empty hand gave you a +2 combat bonus.

So one of my players goes with the assumpltion that if you have both the axe and martial arts you get a +3 from the empty hand.

I'm against this interpretation , since my assumption was that the +1 from the equipment implied using the weapon with both hands.

I want to know which interpretation is right.

Hi I'm new here but I had a question about Patrice as well. Is there a difference between spending (as per her ability normally), discarding (sorry I don't have a specific card in mind here but I know there was at least one encounter card that mentions discarding clue tokens), or losing (as from Nyarly's attack) clue tokens? Specifically, can other player's use her clue tokens when forced to discard or lose clue tokens? Basically our guiding star is when we aren't sure we play whichever way makes the game harder. Which led to four or five rumors being in play before I saw the one rumor (at a time) limit.

Second question: In the KW answers, he mentioned Sister Mary getting a possible "buff"- letting her spend clue tokens on her blessing rolls... has this been officiated yet?

I'm sure we'll have more questions later but I wanted to get these in while I still remembered them.

Thanks for asking and even more thanks for answering!

Werepanda said:

"Only" for spending. I say "only", because that's still covers the best reasons, sealing gates via Clues and skill checks.

Werepanda said:

Never thought Mary needed a boost, but that's mostly just me. With IH, her Personal Story gives her enough boost that she doesn't need any more boosting.

Mary got the Innsmouth personal story boost.

I think the martial arts extra hand question has already been asked.

Discard and spend are not synonymous. It would have to be specifically ruled that Patrice could allow other characters to discard her tokens, and I doubt that's going to happen, since she's already overpowered.

Ok thank you for the answers thus far. My next question is regarding Lily Chen (I'm sorry, I'm sure you get tons of questions about her) and the Mythos Card "Strange Plague". I understand that as written her ability does not let her gain Stamina while the mythos card is in effect. One of our players argued that because she came in a later edition, it could have been over looked and there was no errata that we could find on the subject. On one hand, many investigators abilities tend to trump card effects (like Akechi Onyele), and on the other hand it doesn't explicitly say that you can use Lily Chen's ability so we didn't.

One last question regarding Sister Mary. Would you say that you need to play with her personal story to balance her? We don't always use the personal stories (especially if there are newbies in the game), and we can't use the personal stories in League play unless they tell us that we can.

Thank you

Werepanda said:

I'll take Mary over Vincent, Dexter, Amanda, Jim and George, even without her PS (since I do single random investigators). Hell, once forgot to give Mary her Blessing during setup and she still rocked .

No, I'd say that Strange Plague and whatever the sanity-limit card is still affect Lily. I guess that would be one of her minor drawbacks.

Is Joe supposed to fail his personal story when he shops at the Curiosity Shop?

Unlikely. I think it would be better to ask if "discard" means, "discard from his possession" or "leaves his possession." In other words, does he fail when he trades away a Unique Item?

Another question came up tonight that I am pretty sure that our regular players got right but the new player argued against. Since it was a sort of introductory game we let it slide in the interest of playing rather than arguing. That said I thought I'd ask anyway. If the answer is already buried in here somewhere just say so and I'll continue looking.

Martial Arts + Axe (Or any other optional "two-hander") does not give the bonus +1 for having an open hand, correct? So +2 for one open hand and +2 for the other open hand OR the axe (as opposed to the +3 that one would normally receive for having the other hand be empty). I mean a martial artist wielding an axe is dangerous but I don't think the game designers intended on reflecting that...

Also did we ever receive concrete answers on the following:

Grapple/Shotgun

Whether game as a whole is limited by the number of clue tokens that came in the packaging? I remember reading that for rumors (and I assume tasks/missions) that you are allowed to use other tokens instead of clue tokens but... actually I have a better question that sort of follows this idea:

What happens when you gain the ally Professor Rice and you are using all of the boards and you only have eight clue tokens left in the unused pool? The others are on the board, held by investigators or otherwise already involved.

Again I apologize for the repeat questions and thank everyone who is working toward a more complete FAQ, you guys are my heroes

In my opinion, it is the intent of the card that it gives you +3 when you devote both hands to it. The wording wasn't careful because in the base game it didn't matter. So it would follow that if you're gripping the axe with both hands, you're not getting the Martial Arts bonus with either hand. It also follows that if you have a broken hand, you cannot grip it to get the +3. If you allow the +3 with Martial Arts, then what's so special about the Axe that you can use your Martial Arts with it and not with any other weapon? It just doesn't make sense.

However, the upcoming updated FAQ simply says this about it:

"+3"

I don't know if that means "the axe continues to offer +3 when you have an open hand," or that, "you get +3 overall with one-handed MA and the Axe." But, it does say that Marie Lambeau's Third Eye is completely irrelevant when it comes to checking all these cards (as it should).

The FAQ is much more clear about Grapple/Shotgun:

Q: If I have the Grapple Skill and am using the
shotgun, does a dice roll of 5 count as 2 successes?
A: No, Only natural 6s.

Following from this ruling, we can safely say that Grapple will still allow the Wrestle skill's ability to be used, which I was doing anyway :-P

As far as I know, there still is no answer to the limit to tokens. In the leagues, you were limited to the number of clues you had. I play that way still, but you're unlimited in all other tokens. That is, if a rumor or personal story calls for clues to track its progress and I'm out of clues, I use a different token; I don't simply say that that particular effect cannot progress. That has the potential to be quite unfair, because under the right circumstances the investigators can hold a really nasty rumor effect at bay indefinitely.

Reaaally? The grapple ruling is interesting (I didn't remember it)... And silly I think (since they're distorting card text to fix a problem that isn't much of a problem). If they were really worried about shotgun abuses, they'd put a clue cap on shotgun. Of course, this ruling is going to also lead to confusion with Bartelby (I don't remember if it was specifically asked in the proto-FAQ, but I doubt it).