I've recently bought Arkham Horror because it looked like a game with a setting I would like. So far I've enjoyed it a lot.

We agreed that I would learn the rules and then teach others so that they would be spared from reading the rulebook. However, there are a lot of rules and I have very little experience in boardgaming, hence I have some questions:

1. If the character's fight skill is +2, and the monster is rated -1 and its toughness is 2, do I roll one die twice, or lose automatically? So far I've just told everyone that you lose.

2. If a mythos card says something is going to affect, say Eastown Streets, does this refer to the whole neighborhood (locations + street area) or just the street area?

Example: "When this card enters play, place 6 Clue tokens on it. Any player may spend Clue tokens during the Arkham Encounter Phase while in the Easttown streets to discard Clue tokens from this card on a 1-for-1 basis. "

Welcome to Arkham.

For your first case, you fail instantly. It is impossible to roll 2 successes with just 1 dice.

On your second case, when it says Easttown STREETS, it's just the street area.

Thank You for the swift answer!

Hal-00 said:

Weapons are there to boost your combat checks and each Clue you use nets you 1 die (sometimes more).

Hal-00 said:

Are we talking about the -1 on the face of the monster chit? I thought that only applied to Evade checks to avoid or escape the monster. In which case you'd still be rolling 2 dice looking for 2 successes. Maybe I've been playing it wrong, or maybe you're referring to some other penalty I'm forgetting about. The only place I can think to find -1 right now is the evade modifier.

Uhm ... I guess he's talking about the monsters combat modifier, which is to be found on the back of the monster token, NOT the evade modifier (which is the one written on the front side). All information related to fighting the nasties are always on the back of the token, only thing up front is the evade modifier.

Dam said:

I just realized I missed the bit in the manual where it explains that you can buy dice with Clue tokens even when the skill modifier is in the negative. I was under the impression that would mean instant failure. I thought you could buy dice only when you have rolled already and want to re-roll. I have to do some explaining to my co-players how I got this wrong...

Steve-O - Yes, I was referring to the combat rating at the flipside of the monster token (red number at the lower right corner).

Hal-00 said:

You are right, you don't buy extra die. You pay clue tokens to re-roll die. So if you are to roll 2 dice for combat the clue token doesnt just allow you to roll 3 dice. You roll the 2 dice and get 1 hit but needed 2 hits; you pay the clue token and roll the miss again hoping to get another hit.

teh-V1s1on said:

Wrong - clues are used to add extra dice, not re-roll a die. in fact you can use clues when you were unable to roll any dice. For example, say your fight skill is 1, you have no weapons or spells to use, and the combat modified on the monster is -3. Adding things up you see you have 1-3 = -2 dice to roll. Normally you have no chance of success at killing the monster. This is where clues come in. Any clue you spend give you one die roll (you don't need to first overcome the -2). And every clue after that gives you one more. Keep spending until you roll enough successes or run out of clues... it's that simple.

ricedwlit said:

And to add something, if you then have a something that allows a reroll of a skill check, if you use it after spending all the Clues, you get to roll all the dice you rolled. So if you started with 3 dice, no success, spent 5 Clues, still no success, reroll, you get to reroll 8 dice.