I'm still not entirely clear how you want your gate burst mechanic to work. Or the aquatic movement/generation of R'lyeh gates. Do they make their adjacent locations permanently aquatic?

Are gates to Another Time and Another Dimension treated as copies of the R'lyeh gates (I hope so, for those of us playing with Lurker, it will cause more fear of random devourings)?

You'll need to be clearer about how you want the monster limit to function (because you're violating a core game rule, in quite a cool way I think, you'll need an alternative rules framework eplicating how you deal with monsters over the monster limit on the board once they move off the R'lyeh gate). If I understand what you want correctly, you want R'lyeh gates to continue generating monsters.

Oo, a potential effect, have it so that if no monsters are placed in Arkham during the mythos phase, all R'lyeh gates produce one monster.

I would cut the large text chunk "When Cthulhu awakens... defeat him." A few extra hits won't make that big a difference. You can just raise his combat modifier to -8 instead.

I probably also wouldn't bother with the text specifying that this can be used with other Cthulhu heralds (after all, it's not like there are official Cthulhu heralds anyway i.e. it's not a formal term). If you want to keep the suggestion though, you could just say that this herald can be used with one or more other heralds with cumulative effects. Players can just take it from there on their own initiative (i.e. they'd probably couple it with Cthulhu themed or aquatic themed stuff anyway).

Avi_dreader said:

Do not worry. There is no rush at all. Feel free to add any flavor text you desire. In the worst case, I'm going to press the DEL key ::joking joking::
Thanks for help! And yeah, the day we playtested it... it was *tough* to beat

@Avi: I knew the wording wasn't that accurate, but it was really difficult for me finding a proper way to express things in Arkham legalese. I try to answer to your points in the best way possible

- let's say an aquatic gate moves.
a) there is an investigator in another aquatic location AND there is no open gate or elder sign there. The gate moves to this new location, and the investigator is sucked through the gate (and thus delayed)
b) the gate does not move (either because there are no investigator in any aquatic location or the aquatic locations with investigators are sealed or with open gates). The gate stays still, but 1) the street adjacent the actual gate location becomes aquatic (and remains aquatic for the whole game) and 2) a new gate bursts at the Unvisited Isle. Thus, if there is already an open gate, a monster surge will happen (all monsters surging at the Unvisited Isle); if there is no open gate there, a new gate opens and a monster (or two, depending on the numebr of investigator in play) is spawned

- I do not understand exactly what you meant with "exact copies" of R'lyeh. My idea was this: whenever you enter a gate to Another time / Another dimension, you move to R'lyeh first area. Resolve all OW encounters as if you were in R'lyeh and then exit back to the Gate you entered. As you attempt to close / seal the gate, again, you'll have to pass a check against the R'lyeh modifier (-3 or -4 in a Cthulhu game). So probably they are exact copies, but not so sure about, better explaining the idea behind

- the monster limit thing. you count against the monster limit only non-aquatic monsters in non-aquatic location. For those monsters / areas, the normal monster limit rules do apply. Whenever during the monster movement, a non-aquatic monster enters a non-aquatic street / location, you have to check whether they can stay on the board or not; in case they cannot, simply move to the Outskirts. I know you can have let's say 7 monsters in non aquatic zones and then two non aquatic monsters moving, one into a non-aquatic area from an aquatic one, and one moving the other way; in this case, the first player decides which monster moves first

- the Cthulhu modifiers and so on. Yeah, I wasn't so happy with that point. I'll take you advice about the multiple heralds; as far the increased modifier and the extra hits are concerned, I'd try to reinforce Father Dagon special ability. I'd keep a (-7) instead of a (-8), simply because Father Dagon gives Cthulhu a (-1) modifier, and so does Mother Hydra

Ok, hope this explains the things a little better
And thank you for the feedback, Avi!

Veet said:

Uhm... I'm not so sure I got the point. You mean that, if I say "Cultists are treated as Protoshoggots", then Child of the Goat and Dark Druid do not have their stats modified? I thought the transitive relation (if A=B and B=C then A=C) has to be applied in such cases, so if a Child of the Goat is treated as a Cultist and a Cultist is treated as a Protoshoggot, then even the Child of the Goat is treated as a Protoshoggot. Am I wrong?

Julia said:

You are correct but that isn't what I was getting at.

If you look at the Dark Druid you will see that his stats are considerably different from a Cultists. These different stats do not change to match a Cultists stats even though he is treated as a Cultist. This creates a precedent that when a monster is treated as another monster it is in name only, they do not change into a copy of that monster they are only affected by conditions that affect that monster by name. So in effect the only thing that would happen to the cultists here is they would turn aquatic since that is the only power that states a proto-shoggoth by name. If you wanted to toughen them up would have to add a clause like:

"cultists are treated as proto-shoggoths and have a horror and combat rating of +0 deal 2 sanity and stamina damage have 3 toughness and are physical resistant"

Of course this is a mouthful.

Veet said:

That's why I usually say "exact copy" to give people the idea that all aspects of the other thing are copied (so it basically functions as a proxy). This should also explain why I said exact copy with R'lyeh. So its gate symbol, modifers, etc. are all considered copies. Less potential questions arise.

Avi, Veet,

thank you for the clarification. Now it's everything clear, thx. So, as far as the gates are concerned, they are not "exact copies" simply because they keep their original dimensional symbol (in this way, it's more likely that you have at least one gate moving every round, if you allow more than one gate to R'lyeh to be open), but Cultists are exact copies of Proto-shoggots.

Julia said:

Okay, so you'd want to say they're exact copies except they retain their original dimensional symbol.

Avi_dreader said:

Yep, that's it!

Julia said:

As I was translating this herald, I felt that the second paragraph is odd. Do you want all cultists to be exact copies of leng spiders (symbols, ambush, overwhelming 1, etc) ?? If so you may want to give the characteristics of the spider (or have one spider on the side of the board all the time). You know that spiders with this AO are very very nasty monsters... is that intended ? Do you want the regular spiders to fly as well ?

and the first gate is before the first mythos card (two gates before the game starts) ??? knowing that the gate limit is reduced by 1, it makes it really tough (especially if you play 5 with only 1 expansion board). Is that intended to be so difficult ?? (you know that Atlach Nacha is already very very tough, don't you ? ;o)

best

amikezor said:

Hi Amikezor,

after what Veet and Avi said about the "exact copy" thing, I was afraid this should be clarified even for this Herald. Yeah, Cultist are exact copies of Leng Spiders, except for the dimensional symbol (they keep the crescent moon). So, in a game with Atlach, they are Overwhelming 2 (just to make everything easier). I'd probably add the spider stats, it's clearer. In case, feel free to modify the text in "Cultists are Leng Spider, and thus have..

1. "

Regular spiders fortunately do not fly.

And yes, two gates open at Mythos zero (similar to Dagon start of the game ability). I know it can be nasty with a party of 5, but it should still be beatable. The greatest difficulty of this herald is that basically you cannot win by closing (and yep, I know Atlach very well.. and he probably knows me, after losing 4 games in a row ::laughing:

OK updated....may take a bit for photobucket to update.

Okay, here is the herald I created from the discussion in the Lurker House rules thread. It's built on top of the original, with most of the new rules in the last three sections (the other change is in the "The One Beyond" more reckonings will be drawn).

ricedwlit said:

Holy Moly ;'D clearly this is your first herald... This is *very* long (and people may not want to print it since there's no way to get it anywhere near a standard size). Using the original text is part of the reason why. Veet got around this very cleverly by making a second supplementary herald. I'd suggest you do the same (if you don't mind). I'd help you prune down the remaining text also, if you want. At this point I have a few years of pruning practice :')

On the other hand, it's possible that there's just too much to cut it down properly (I've had that problem once or twice). Still... You never know till you try.

Yeah, there is a lot of text. After getting it all finished I noticed Veet's idea when I posted. I'll see about working things down - as noted most of the new stuff is in just the three sections. It won't be that hard to make it a supplementary herald I may even call it "The Fine Print".

I do have a question regarding the size - this came straight from a Strange Eons export as JPG for printing at 300 DPI should I have chosen another export size?

another way to go is to use the "large size" of SE meant for scenarios, but that you can really use for herald.

Though, first things first, try pruning half of the text. :-)

ricedwlit said:

Ha! Nice ;'D

Okay, here is the "supplement" herald for the Lurker.

I like the picture :') I'll help cut it (textwise) along with the other recent heralds the next few weeks (I'll try to do it before I go to Washington next Thursday though).

The picture is very nice !!

OK, my turn. Although I love some of your ideas guys, I found that your heralds are way too crowded for my taste. Here is a version that uses some of the ideas, Avi's suggestion and some personal things. I hope you would feel no offence for the hack (and that I have your permission to use your ideas) and that is cool with you if I play with some your rules only (and not all).

I think really the simpler, the better.

Changed his name (sorry for the ugly picture above)

Ouch, that's cruel ;') I like it.

you think so ?

I did not mean it to be very cruel, just to balance out the lurker while increasing the importance of the pacts (no seal without a pact).

All in all, I hacked many ideas of Veet and Ricedwlit but made special effort to make it as simple as I could.

amikezor said:

Well... Maybe not. I think the really brutal part about it is how it forces investigators to take pacts to seal.

If I were to change the card in one way, I would say that at the beginning of the mythos phase, before drawing a mythos card, roll a die, on a 1 all investigators with a pact gain one power.