Lust could involve male and female investigators, perhaps blood lust too having to kill monsters or something.

btw I like the 7 I'm working on investigators that each have a negative ability dealing with the sins!

The hardest part of Lust was finding a picture that was "Safe for Work," that still conveyed the meaning.

Sorry, Kroen, but are you saying that the Fh'tagn herald is harder than the Black Goat? It's...really not. In some ways, Fh'tagn actually makes the game easier. Adding the red encounter symbol just means that you'll nearly always get 'Other' encounters when in the OW, and the Other encounters on red OW cards aren't any harder than the ones on blue or green. 'Other' encounters aren't always easier, but knowing that you're going to get them makes it far easier to predict what you'll need in the OW.

Cultists having their toughness increased by 1 is not a very severe problem; they're still usually some the game's easiest monsters. I also rate the Horror check increase as not being a particularly harsh way of making the game more difficult. I'm not saying it's irrelevent, just that there are some playing styles (like, mine) which it wouldn't affect that much. It has given me an idea though. Stay tuned.

Overall it's a nice 'mixed bag' Herald, but little can compare to the monstrousness of the Black Goat, with its "extra doom tokens!" and its "free Dark Young every turn or your money back!"

As for Lust and the other Sins - it's all good work, dkw, but I still reckon it'd be worth picking the two or three abilities on each card that have the biggest, broadest effect, and cutting the others. In the case of Lust, phrase Personal Magnetism something like this:

Movement phase: If an investigator ends his or her movement in a location where another investigator has already ended his or her movement, both investigators are delayed .

(No reason investigators of the same sex can't lust after each other, after all. And it'll save some argument if someone's custom investigator is a Yithian or a hermaphrodite or something...)

And remove 'Heartbreak' and 'Overwhelming Presence' altogether. The former is the sort of thing that doesn't make much difference most of the time anyway, and the latter is a bit superfluous in light of 'Never Want To Leave Tonight'. Plus, you need some slightly more eldritch names for these abilities. It's Arkham, Massachusetts, not a 1980s music video...

Way to ignore my herald's start of the game and final battle abilities... also, the +1 toughness becomes very relevant if Ithaqua is the ancient one, rendering culsits with 4 toughness. Also, against Cthulhu, you can't possibly say BGotW is harder when mine essentialy eats 3 points from the total sanity and stamina combined with cthulhu's power, not to mention its attack is made harder on several levels: first, the investigators have 1 less turn before they're devoured, and they need 1 additional success to remove each doom token. Lastly, increasing the difficulty of horror checks by 1 means that investigators like micheal of mark would go insane real fast, and almost no investigator would manage to pass horror checks, as you need around 5 will to have a good chance at that. I think you're seriously underestimating it.

(sigh)

I didn't ignore the start of game ability or final battle ability. I took account of them when I formed my opinion. I just don't think they're as dangerous as you do. If you're up against Cthulhu, then obviously it's a problem, and the same goes for the cultists if Ithaqua is the AO. But I'm trying to take a more holistic approach. I'm not evaluating the Herald based on how good/bad it is if certain other cards are in play ; I'm trying to guess how the abilities will measure up across a broad spectrum of games. Obviously this herald is trickier against Cthulhu and Ithaqua, but two specific AOs don't figure that hugely in my assessment. The question I ask myself is: "All other things being equal, how much more difficult will this make the game?" I could go through all the AOs and give you sixteen different opinions, but that would clearly be mad.

So, just for the record: I did understand all of the abilities on the herald:

Red encounter symbols for OWs makes things easier, not harder .

-1 Maximum Sanity or Stamina is not that big a dea l.

+1 Toughness for Cultists is not that big a deal.

+1 difficulty on Horror checks is, I'll grant you, a pain in the arse.

+1 success required against Cthulhu's Doom tokens is nearly always irrelevent.

Black Goat adds extra Doom tokens, reducing the amount of time before ANY ancient one awakens by (usually) three or four turns. Black Goat spawns an additional monster every turn , and at least one third of them will be Dark Young. And then there are Corruption cards, which admittedly can be a help or a hindrance. But my opinion is therefore not changed! This herald is nowhere near as dangerous as the Black Goat of the Woods. Against Cthulhu it is, but not otherwise. Obviously we may have radically different playing styles which affect assessments of difficulty. But that's the feedback you get from me. Ignore me if you like, but don't assume I haven't read the card just because there was that one time when I hadn't.

(By the way, the words 'Cthulhu fhtagn' translate as either 'Cthulhu sleeps', 'Cthulhu waits' or 'Cthulhu dreams'. There's no creature called a Fhtagn. But that couldn't matter less.)

Could you elaborate on to how exactly do red encounters in other worlds make the game easier? Also, why is the extra success in the final battle irrelevant? 13 additional successes is not something to laugh at.

kroen said:

13 additional successes against Cthulhu is pretty irrelevent if you're playing against Shub-Niggurath! Or against anyone else! I'm talking about the herald in general terms. There's no question that this ability is bad against Cthulhu , but saying that this makes this the most difficult herald is like saying that the Powder of Ibn-Ghazi is worthless because Yog-Sothoth's cultists are immune to it. It's only worthless in that specific situation. I don't know if I can explain this any more clearly! I tried to assess the herald's power on the assumption that I don't know what combination of cards will be used with it.

Anyway, today's main feature: the Other World symbols. I realize I probably didn't explain this very well. Here it is in excruciating detail!

There are 48 Other World encounter cards (not counting the reshuffler one, or the expansions which preserve the same ratios anyway). There are (for practical purposes) eight Other Worlds, since Another Dimension has no specific encounters of its own and so has no effect on the proportions of the encounters. With me so far?

Each normal Other World (apart from Dreamlands) has 6 'named' encounters on its first colour and 6 on its second colour. For a normal OWs, you're effectively drawing from a pool of 24 cards - half the colours, so half the deck. Of those 24 cards, 12 will give you a named encounter, so you've got a 50/50 chance there. In the case of the Dreamlands, you're drawing from a pool of 48, the whole deck, but there are six Dreamlands encounters one each of four colours, not just two colours, so the odds of getting a named encounter are exactly the same, 50/50.

What happens if we add a third colour, kids? In the cases of five of the Other Worlds, nothing happens, because those worlds already have the red symbol. But travellers in the other three worlds - Yuggoth, City of the Great Race and Celeano - are now drawing their encounters from a pool of 36 cards rather than 24 cards in each case. Since there are no red encounters that are specific to those three Other Worlds, the only red encounters you will ever get in these places are the ones listed under 'Other'. The chance of getting a named encounter has dropped from 50% to 33%.

Quite apart from the fact that you're reducing the frequency of the juiciest bits of theme, the reason this dilution is a problem is that 'Other' encounters tend to be less dangerous than world-specific encounters . And I should also point out that the spread of difficulty on 'Other' encounters is more-or-less the same between the different colours of card (although that's a slightly trickier thing to estimate, but I did just read all the cards a minute ago).

This all seems pretty intuitive to me - but if my logic was flawed, it wouldn't be the first time. Can you explain why you thought the red encounters make things harder? Or how they change anything? What was this ability meant to achieve?

I was under the impression that red=bad. If what you're saying is true, than Jim Culver's ability is meaningless, as in non-green worlds if he draws a green he will get an "other", and according to you all the "other" encounters are about the same difficulty regardless of color.

Jim Culver's ability isn't pointless - it's designed to be helpful! This does illustrate my point I think. The only difference between his ability and your herald's ability is that he uses green and your herald uses red. I don't think there's much difference in difficulty between red 'other' encounters and the 'other' encounters of other colours. It's still the usual mixed bag of minor san/stam losses and gains, plus a few items, and a few 'no encounter' results.

Anyway, this has all been profoundly unhelpful on my part so far, so how about this: since it's a Cthulhu-themed herald, just make it force people to have encounters in Rlyeh regardless of where they are .

" Other World encounters: If an investigator would have an encounter from a card with a R'lyeh encounter on it, he or she has the R'lyeh encounter instead."

This works out like this (I think):

Another Dimension: 75% chance of 'Other', 25% chance of 'Rlyeh'.

Abyss/Great Race/Yuggoth/Dreamlands/Leng: 50% chance of 'Other', 42% chance of proper named encounter, 8% chance of 'Rlyeh'.

Celeano: 50% chance of 'Other', 50% chance of 'Celeano'.

Rlyeh: 50% chance of 'Other', 50% chance of 'Rlyeh'.

...which is quite enough to make a difference. And that's just if you draw the cards as normal and make people resolve the Rlyeh encounter if there is one. If you add a red symbol to all OWs and force investigators to have the Rlyeh encounters on any card they draw, it starts to look a lot worse.

Abyss/Great Race/Yuggoth/Dreamlands/Leng: 50% other, 28% proper named encounter, 22% Rlyeh

Another Dimension: 75% chance of 'Other', 25% chance of 'Rlyeh'.

Celeano: blue/green/red: 50% other, 33% Celeano, 17% Rlyeh.

Anyway, now I've worked out the effect this would have, if you don't want to use this version of the idea, I will!

I like your idea of R'lyeh encounters.

Anyway, if this one isn't stronget than the black goat, then...

note: the "nowhere to hide" ability should replace the "all seeing" ability of yibb-tstll if he's the ancient one (but only the part on evade checks)

Hehehe...ok well this is pretty nasty, but it still doesn't beat the Goat, in my view.

Basically this Herald ensures that there will be a lot of monsters getting in the way late in the game (because the monster limit will almost certainly be removed). The Terror level itself could be a bit of a pain, but I still don't see it affecting the game that much. The spare clues turning into Doom tokens is obviously nasty, but if the investigators are clever, they can prevent it having any effect. Same goes for the blessings - investigators just won't buy them. I know that conventional wisdom says that you should go and get blessed just before the AO wakes up, but I rarely bother to do it.

If anything, the loss of Focus is probably the worst part. Hmmm, ok, I guess this is about on a par with the Black Goat. I'd probably still rather face your thing, because the Black Goat is less predictable and there are fewer ways to 'handle' it.

By the way, there's a 'heading' tag which you can use in Strange Eons - it makes the ability names into the proper typewritery font. Just surround the name of the ability like this: < h 1 > (name of ability) < / h 1 > but obviously remove the spaces in the tags.

Here's another triad of abhorrent abilities.

There is hard, and there is ridiculous. Yours is just that. You think I can't make a herald with an ability "Mythos: Add a doom token to the ancient one's doom track"? Heralds should have a sane amount of power, and yours is insane.

kroen said:

I'm pretty sure you can, but I didn't make this herald just to demonstrate was a difficult herald would be like. I made this herald because...I had an idea for a herald.

I'll grant you that 'Waves of Insanity' might be a bit vindictive, since all it really does is arbitrarily devour an investigator every so often. The other two abilities are monstrously difficult, but they are the sort of thing that you can formulate a strategy to deal with.

Anyway it was a spur of the moment thing, I may revise it later.

kroen said:

Anyway, I think games using the herald are perfectly doable:

Having to retire an investigator every couple of turns may be annoying (which is why I'm not sure I'd leave the ability as it is) but it doesn't makes things really difficult, since you can retire them at a convenient time. Perhaps having to roll a success to avoid getting a madness card would be better, so you don't have to do it so often.

Recurring nightmares is only a problem if you fail the Horror save in the first place. Its main effect will be that monsters with a difficult horror check will rarely be fought, since you'll want to make extra sure you don't fail it.

Increasing the difficulty to close gates has never been much of a problem in any of my games. Typically you can just try again the next turn. Even if there's currently a monster at the location you can often just evade them to try again. Still, I'd prefer if the gate check difficulty was just increased instead of set to a specific modifier.

Overall, I like the basic idea for the herald.

*edit: edler=elder sign

Put names on the different abilities, so that it's not just a list under the same heading. It'll make the cards easier to read.

Glad to see that you took onboard the stuff about Other Worlds that I spent half the night writing, but you've added yellow symbols now too...you've seriously homogenized all the Other Worlds. About half of all Other World encounters that happen in the game will be Rlyeh-specific. Was that the intention? I don't think it's a problem, but it is pretty extreme...

ALso, surely any heralds called 'Dagon' and 'Hydra' will become redundant as soon as Innsmouth comes out. Plenty of other aquatic Mythos deities to choose from, aren't there?

Other than that, not a bad pair of bastards.

Thanks. And I should add to the epic battle thingy "sinister plot or the end of everything"

thecorinthian said:

Nice picture... so let me get this strait... if you get no die for a horror check your insane and if you get a few your most likely insane? lol evil and if they draw a madness card to keep their goodies they could end up drawing the same one during there upkeep and DIE!!! ha ha

thecorinthian said:

I still think the difficulty to close gates shouldn't be set to a fixed value. I'd increase the difficulty by one or two.

The one effect I really don't like is Dagon's adding a doom marker when sealing a gate. This should make it pretty much impossible with most Ancient Ones to win by sealing gates. I can't think of a really good substitution with a similar effect, though. Maybe add a doom token and extend the doom track by one? This will make sealing victories possible again and should increase the difficulty of the final combat quite a bit if the Ancient One awakens. One the other hand it wouldn't do anything if you went for a closing victory anwyway, hmm.

How about increasing the difficulty to close gates by the number of sealed gates? This would work in well in combination with my previous suggestion to use an increased difficulty or might replace it completely.

thecorinthian said:

You know that once the terror level is at ten, double the monster limit awakes the AO, right? Also... The common item store would be closed by turn three, and the unique item store, probably by turn 7 or 8.

At least against the Black Goat you can get corruptions easily (and hopefully get the clue gaining corruption).

thecorinthian said:

Waves of insanity is ridiculously overpowered (which isn't to say I don't like the idea of inflicting madnesses on investigators). Still, it should be attached to some sort of check (either lore or will— probably will, as that is more associated with preventing sanity loss). Also, it will lead to game abuse as it is currently designed since investigators will just retire once they're mentally crippled (and then the new investigator will come in with new items and cash). Consider adding in a rule that prevents investigators from retiring. Currently this is very easy to abuse by exploiting retirement mechanics (recurring nightmares makes it even easier).

Hrm... Will -2 check?

Heh heh heh... And if you want to make Celestial Alignment even nastier, make it so that all gate markers have their closing check modifiers decreased by two :'D

kroen said:

I like Hydra. I would like Dagon if you took away his add a doom token whenever you seal a gate with clues ability. With that ability, you basically wreck investigators ability to win by sealing or closing and force an attempt at a combat victory, boring. Remove that ability and he'd be fine though, and the two together would be terrifying, and challenging, but not impossible. And hence the fun :'D

Avi_dreader said:

Yeah, I reckon you're right about that.

I'm not sure about making it conditional on a Will -2 check, though. I don't like to add extra dice rolls and skill checks during the upkeep or Mythos phase unless it's absolutely necessary.

I could just attach the Madness cards to a less frequent event: " Any phase: Whenever the Terror level rises, the first player draws a Madness card."

Alternatively, it could be a cost on something which is basically voluntary: " Any phase: Whenever an investigator seals a gate, that investigator gains a Madness card."

I could even nerf the ability my making people discard a Madness card if they have one, then draw a new one - so it's not a question of being devoured, because you can 'edit' your madnesses, but it is a question of not being sure of exactly what madness you're going to get. If someone had acquired a lot of additional madness cards from something, Horror In Clay becomes a problem, but by itself it would never drive anyone mad.

thecorinthian said:

Never nerf :') make brutal. Just not impossible. It is impossible to crush hope if no hope exists ;'D