Do Nightmarish and Overwhelming ratings stack?

By Villain2, in Arkham Horror Second Edition

Posted at

thorgrim said:

Yes, but that is dollars. You can gain any number of dollars by getting them out of a bank or robbing someone or asking your parents for some cash, but we are talking about a skill, an ability. If you teach a child to count to ten, then teach it to count to ten again, does that mean it can count to twenty? No, it can still only count to ten.

No where in the rules does it say a Monster can not gain the same skill twice but most of the times is does not matter...Physical Imunity, etc unless one uses that spell (Red Sighn?) that removes a skill! Sense they could have it twice you would just remove one but really this issue should never come a monster with NM gaing NM again, etc.

Posted at

It doesn't say that. It is my interpretation of the rules as they stand that effects stacking works as I have previously stated. Where in the rules does it state that they DO gain the ability twice?

Posted at

MrsGamura said:

if you have a encounter that read gain a dollar(1) and you already have a dollar(1) you would not gain it because it says "gain" not "increase" and you cannot gain something you already have...of course this absurd but so is saying if a Monster has Nightmarish(1) and they gain Nightmaris(1) they don't gain it and it's not increased because they already have it.

How would you treat a card that said: 'The investigator gains Focus 3' ?

Would you add it to the investigator's existing Focus?

Or would it replace the existing Focus?

What would happen to Wilson Richards if he would draw the card?

Posted at

jhaelen said:

MrsGamura said:

if you have a encounter that read gain a dollar(1) and you already have a dollar(1) you would not gain it because it says "gain" not "increase" and you cannot gain something you already have...of course this absurd but so is saying if a Monster has Nightmarish(1) and they gain Nightmaris(1) they don't gain it and it's not increased because they already have it.

Well, I think your interpretation is wrong.

How would you treat a card that said: 'The investigator gains Focus 3' ?

Would you add it to the investigator's existing Focus?

Or would it replace the existing Focus?

What would happen to Wilson Richards if he would draw the card?

I would add it to their Focus and in Wilson's case his focus would be 7 (4+3).

FAQ in KH rule book clears up Wilson's infinite focus.

Posted at

MrsGamura said:

If they wanted it to be based solely on good grammar they would not have used numbers but gave it its own name for each numerical value...

The only real principle of grammar that is relevant here is, that as you should typically not use the word increase with regard to an attribute that you do not have, it may well be that the author of the card took that into account when he wrote the card.

That doesn't mean the card works in one way or another, it means you would have to ask the writer for his intent in thouse circumstances as the card is not clear.

Posted at

jadrax said:

While I see where you are coming from, I think the reason grammatically that it would have to say 'Gain' rather than 'increase' is that you can only increase something you already have. Thus if they had said 'increase" their Overwhelming by 1' it would have no effect unless the monster already had Overwhelming

Thelric said:

Why not? Monsters that don't have a listed Overwhelming score are Overwhelming 0.

basically, because good grammar is not based on mathmatical principles. (Well certainly not that one anyway.)

As I said in a subsequent post, I wasn't talking about the use of "gain," but only about your hypothetical example of increasing Overwhelming by 1. Whether or not such a statement is valid actually has very much indeed to do with measurement theory (also known as mathematical principles gui%C3%B1o.gif ). But as I pointed out above, the way I interpret the OP's question is the same as ColtsFan (and you, so far as I can tell). And if you accept that interpretation, then statements like "increase Overwhelming by 1" are no longer meaningful. It's just that you can't decide how to interpret the OP's question by arguing about what "increase" means, because whether "increase" means anything at all depends on how you interpret the OP's question (this is the measurement theory part*): it ends up making a circular argument.

Basically, I agreed with what you were saying, just not the way you were saying it.

Cheers,
Chris

* I can explain it if you are interested, but I don't think there's any value to the forum in droning on about it in the thread. Plus I'm lazy.