Hey Guys,

Tried to get past using Cthulhu last night. All we got was madness!!! For starters, just having him in play, everyone loses one sanity and one stamina, correct? Second, when we wakes up, we do not get that back right?

Now, Cthulhu wakes up. If you use the Cumulative successes of everyone in the group to take away one Doom token from Cthulhu, how do you deal with him getting one right back? This mechanic doesn't make sense. After Cthulhu's attack, he puts a doom token right back. But, for battling ancient ones, you use the cumulative amount of successes of all players to fight AO? I don't think I'm running this right? Is each investigator supposed to get one attack each against the AO??? Am I doing it wrong? I thought it was one collective group attack. HELP!

I'm out of Sanity

Each character loses one sanity and one stamina maximum.

And correct, you do not get those maximums back when Cthulhu awakens.

"Cumulative succeses" is a misleading concept. Each doom token is removed when the players collectively deal as many successes as there are investigators (extras are carried over).

For example. It's a 3-investigator battle against Cthulhu, and you've dealt 8 succeses of damage. You would remove two doom tokens, and then you would have 2 succeses towards your next doom token. When Cthulhu attacks, he lowers everyone's maximums and then takes back a doom token. So in all you've gotten ahead by one doom token, plus two successes.

In short, you're not limited to dealing only one success per round.

Another example: you're playing a 4-investigator game against Shub-Niggurath. She awakens, and one of your investigators is instantly devoured because he has no monster trophies. So now you need to do 48 total successes in order to kill Shub, because Shub has 12 doom tokens and there (were) four investigators; you count the one who was devoured. You simply use the doom tokens to track your progress; use spare stamina tokens or slider tokens to track individual successes used to remove doom tokens.

Tibs said:

This.

Seems pretty fair to me as well. You shouldn't really have more than a snowball in hell's chance against Cthulu really. Even dropping a nuke on him would just mean that he would be vapourised; then reform later ('cos he can) and be a radioactive great old one.

Tibs said:

Why not? When he wakes up he's no longer "stirring in his slumber" and his text is quite clear that the maximums are reduced "while he is stirring in his slumber" ... It's not a "start of game" effect or any other one shot, it's a continuous modifer. So when the condition for that modifier is removed, it no longer applies.

By that logic, then in games against Eihort, brood tokens would not be added to the doom track in the final battle.* However, one of Eihort's Sinister Plot cards reads, "The first player is devoured, but his brood tokens are not added to the doom track." This implies that brood tokens are usually added to the doom track in the final battle, which implies that "stirring in its slumber" abilities apply to the final battle.

*Eihort's power is: "While Eihort stirs in his slumber, any investigator who seals a gate gains 1 brood token. Any brood tokens on an investigator who is devoured are immediately added to Eihort's doom track as doom tokens. Eihort can exceed 12 doom tokens on his doom track."

Interpreting the rules is almost like a game in itself.

The part about adding a devoured Investigator's Brood Tokens to the Doom Track is a different paragraph from the "stirs in his slumber" text. Implying it's a different power ...

If not, then Quachil Uttaus's Dust Deck is still active during the Final Battle ... Not to mention Ghatoanothoa (Tommy Muldoon's Personal Story makes it possible to gain Clue Tokens during the Final Battle), Glaaki and Chaugnar Fagn ...

By your logic, the dust deck is active in the final battle anyway, since the instructions to draw from it are also in a different paragraph from the "stirs in his slumber" text. Personally, I think you're reading a lot into the semantic powers of paragraph breaks. Paragraph breaks probably just occur to improve readability.

avec said:

For the record, I have always played that Cthulhu's "stirs in his slumber" reduction does apply during the Final Battle. But it suddenly occured to me this evening, after playing against him and losing, what the exact wording was and that technically - if reading it exactly - his "stirs in his slumber" text SHOULDN'T apply. Then I came on here and saw this thread ...

But it is a valid point ... if "stirs in his slumber" text is active for Cthulhu then why don't we say it's active for everyone? As in have the Dust Deck active during the Final Battle, etc?

Stenun, I just commented on your other post about this very issue before I saw the exhange between you and avec.

Indeed, the first time I played Eihort, I missed the "roll for brood" effect entirely during the game, because of the column it was printed under. I assume that the designers just ran out of room and didn't care to keep everything in the exact same columns as they always have, figuring that the labels above the effects were sufficient.

In the thread I commented about Quachil Uttaus, and how the Dust Deck is not forbidden during the final combat, and my argument behind why it applies by default unless otherwise noted. I will not play with the Dust Deck during final combat, as I don't think that's what was intended, but Ancient One "stirs in slumber" abilities are active all game long, including final combat.