I have stared at this character card trying to suss out what the deal is with her . Her stats are OK but her power is so awful as to be almost completely useless. About as valuable as special personal defence that only work against leprechauns, Elvis and Sasquatches. I'm never forced to drop clues so having the option to not do what I'm never asked to do seems like a major waste of card space . If this power was on an item card no one would fight to grab that card off the table. There are a few other stinkers out there but I think in MOM 2ed she takes the cake. It's so bad I'm having trouble painting her figure. It feels pointless .

Maybe I should throw a "Replacements" game, make a pile of stinkers and force players to choose from those that remain. She makes it hard to let people pick random characters. I'd feel awful if someone was forced to go with her.

They could of at least made her power work on her and anyone else in range. That would make it a sphere of protection versus ultra rare unlikely event. Who would you all put in your "Replacements" team?

Akachi is my girlfriend's favorite character... but we usually play characters we like without too much planning (and we get crushed by mythos 9 times out of 10.. but it's fun!)

She does seem kind of meh, but to be honest, may of the investigators only trigger their ability a few times. Even Jenny, who appears to have the BEST ability at first glance, can only use it when she has no clues. Sometimes you just roll poorly and you don't have the opportunity to use clues. This is a problem with all characters who have clue skills. Or even 'focus' related abilities. Sure they'll help out once or twice while Akachi doesn't trigger at all some games, but it's not crippling.

Just my opinion. I would almost take almost any other investigator over her for the ability, but it's sort of irrelevant. When you fail a roll, you fail a roll.

That Secretary rocks and Michael McGlenn get his power when other people kill stuff too (WOWEE). Akachi should be able to activate this power to protect ppl in range. Thats a power.

She's a neato character with a good backstory but her power just loses me

My rule is, we all pick a character at random every time. Indeed you might end up with weaker characters but that enforces strong teamplay even further in my opinion.

WOOOT just played a game where someone was forced to drop two clues. Its only happened once before. Akachi totally would have been able to dodge that if some how she was chosen by the app. We are talking about house ruling her power so it can be used on others at range. We are also tossing around the idea that ashcan's Duke power should go through doors for them purpose of range otherwise it almost never comes in handy when not playing the assault on Sentinel Hill.

WE sometimes do the random too but we draw two each and then either pick from the two or from whoever the other players throw away. It seems like you need one type of healer each time.

Her Agility is ridiculous. She's a young woman, even Agatha Crane and Gloria Glodberg has better Agility. LOL

I tried her character twice, and she was far the most useless in the team.

Sorta stinks. She's one of two black characters in the game and she stinks. Chuckle especially when compared to my fave, Rita Young!!!! Chuckle. It eats at me every time I don't take her but I gotta learn to branch out. I wonder if Jim Culver is ever gonna join the team. Thankfully Akachi looks awesome in Arkham Horror LCG.

Akachi has good stats distribution even if her ability is useless. She should be used as the spellcaster in the party. According to a somewhat subjective spreadsheet i made, Bob Jenkins is the worst for me, while sister Mary ended up as average rather than low as she initially appears since her ability is also bad, but her stats distribution makes her also a decent spellcaster.

My gripe is basically that influence is useless, and characters with 2 influence are very good, like Rita, and characters with 5 are bad, like Bob. Any other stat distribution will be good for fighting or spellcasting or not becoming insane fast. You can afford to have most people in your party with low influence, but you can't afford them becoming insane too fast or not contributing to fights or spell support. I feel like we need a puzzle or something benefiting from influence, because, as it stands, it is very bad, and characters with high influence have wasted stats.

Play Akachi in one of the two scenarios from the expansion she came in. A lot of events can pop up in those that drain clues. I played her in the first scenario after opening the expansion and her ability saved her from losing clues at least 4 times.

In short: welcome to a reactive ability. Sometimes it will be great, other times not so much.

That said, if you want to buff her ability, go for it. It's a cooperative game, play how you like if it's what makes things fun!

IMO, Akachi is the second weakest ability in the game. From "eh" to "worst," they are (IMO) . . .

#3: Wendy Adams -- "You cannot become Stunned or Restrained."

Um . . . wow? Seriously, how often does this come up? It's the rare result of certain specific attacks and horror checks. I guess it's just good enough to be worth having, but very weak.

Possible ways to fix it: Maybe add Dazed to the list?

#2: Akachi Onyele -- "Effects cannot cause you to discard Clues unless you choose to."

Even rarer than being Stunned and Restrained. She's not a badly balanced character otherwise, but that's weaksauce.

Possible ways to fix it: I like the idea above of letting this ability also apply to any ally in range. That would make it feel worthwhile.

#1: Amanda Sharpe -- "You may perform two additional puzzle steps when attempting a puzzle."

Okay, I realize that this seems decent on the surface, but unless you're playing with two or maybe three 'gators, it's really unlikely that Amanda will be the one to stumble across a given puzzle. Every single time we play with her, it's always someone else who ends up having to swap tiles around. We've never had her bonus come up once.

Possible ways to fix it: She's actually the only 'gator that we have house ruled, and we did so to just give her another minor niche. "Also, once per turn, you can read a journal as a free action." That way, we can at least hand the Old Journal to her in scenarios that have you read it, and she feels useful. Also, it's very in keeping with the whole "student" thing.

16 hours ago, pklevine said:

Okay, I realize that this seems decent on the surface, but unless you're playing with two or maybe three 'gators, it's really unlikely that Amanda will be the one to stumble across a given puzzle. Every single time we play with her, it's always someone else who ends up having to swap tiles around. We've never had her bonus come up once.

Some scenarios require the group to be compact; some other scenarios have a few, very tough puzzles to solve that could drain a lot of time; some other scenarios may have puzzles in fixed positions. In these cases, Amanda can make the difference, or at least save you a bandwagon of clues.

On 8/6/2017 at 4:00 PM, Bibbles said:

Sorta stinks. She's one of two black characters in the game and she stinks. Chuckle especially when compared to my fave, Rita Young!!!! Chuckle. It eats at me every time I don't take her but I gotta learn to branch out. I wonder if Jim Culver is ever gonna join the team. Thankfully Akachi looks awesome in Arkham Horror LCG.

Well, as you point out... it's maybe some small consolation that the other woman of color in the game is almost unarguably one of the best characters in the game. Maybe Jim will end up being awesome, too?

On 9/18/2017 at 8:34 PM, pklevine said:

IMO, Akachi is the second weakest ability in the game. From "eh" to "worst," they are (IMO) . . .

#3: Wendy Adams -- "You cannot become Stunned or Restrained."

Um . . . wow? Seriously, how often does this come up? It's the rare result of certain specific attacks and horror checks. I guess it's just good enough to be worth having, but very weak.

Possible ways to fix it: Maybe add Dazed to the list?

The thing to note about Wendy is that she is a GREAT character to take when you know you will be up against eldritch enemies. Many enemies don't cause these statuses, but it seems that eldritch ones do so regularly. Honestly, she is the only reason our group survived a shoggoth one game. These conditions are extremely bad in most cases, and ignoring them is awesome when you need to.

I am working on some reprints for the above characters. Essentially we added "or another investigator within range" to these meh powers. Doesn't make them amazing but brings them into the errrr? meh....from straight old meh....

Adding dazed is a great idea.

So despite not liking her ability, I chose Akachi last night for vengeful impulses and when it came down to it, she was a rock star, Her stats are fairly solid and she ended up winning the game for us with her spells in combat. Only one player used their ability, so that wasn't really an issue. Sometimes you have to look past those abilities, focus on the stats, that are far more important and just keep moving forward. I did and ended up being the MVP for what "seemed" to be a weak character.

My fiance chose Akachi last time we played and she ended up doing more than her fair share of damage while spell casting. Granted we DID eventually get murdered by a star spawn, so there's that.