IMO the raising terror after failing horror checks is kinda overkill but I figured you dig difficult AOs

kroen said:

I don't think it's overkill. It forces players to max their will and keep a few extra clues on hand or else play with a high risk of disaster. They can also crank up sneak while in other worlds. It doesn't matter if an Ancient One or Herald forces players to modify their playing style as long as it can be gotten around somehow. It might also encourage players to avoid fighting monsters (the only problem with that being is if they let too many monster build up in the street, well, the terror rises). I think it will be a difficult fight and will require some thinking to beat (and a little luck too— but what AO doesn't require that?) but it's very doable.

Hey, it's not like you said terror rises whenever investigators take sanity damage ::laughter::

edit: ignore the "to this sheet" on his attack. I was going to do something with it but changed my mind.

You should give him at least one resistance or immunity, otherwise it'd be pretty easy to take him out in final combat, provided players played their long game properly. Or up his combat modifier to -6 or -7.

"Propery" is the key word here. You must have 6 seals or else the battle ends before it even started. Also 15 dooms are nothing to seeze at. Finally, not all ancient ones have to be tier-1 powerful

kroen said:

That's true. I still think it would be fairly easy (not Ithaqua/Yig/Nyarlathotep easy, but easy). I wouldn't want to play it though (unless maybe I coupled it with something nasty like The Arbiter)— I'd think it'd be a long but not too difficult game. But now that I think of it with heralds, it could be potentially fun.

Please upload higher quality images, the images you are uploading are fuzzy and not printing quality.

but uploading lower quality images is faster... also its not like you want to print every single thing I make... or do you?

Why assume that, though? I'd rather have a high quality image, too.

If I'm going to print something out, I don't want fuzz on it. Color printing at Kinkos costs a bit of money, and I won't spend it printing things that don't look like they have full quality. I put many Heralds and Ancient Ones in my printing queue. Your photo should always be clear at the normal size of whatever it is if people want to print it out.

Look, I'll make you a deal: From now on I will save every AO I make as eon file. I will upload at low quality, and if you like one of them to print I will reupload at high quality. There's no point of uploading 10 AOs in high quality if you're only going to print 1 of them anyway.

p.s. there's a new investigator I made in the investigators thread

kroen said:

I saw the investigator in the thread, but I normally reserve comments for the Heralds and Ancient Ones thread. Arkham Horror isn't my life, and commenting takes time, so I try to save criticism for the things I like and am most likely to use.

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There's a number of issues with this AO. The cultists are easy meat. You've actually giving players a boon by leaving four toughness easy monsters on gates.

For the monster surge issue, you'll have the problem of undefended gates (you might be able to get around that by adding one monster on each gate without a monster also— making a modified gate surge rather than a surge). Also, you used the word "spawn" in spawn to monsters. That will lead to ambiguities since "spawn" is a special term in Arkham rules. You could say "put 2 monsters on" instead.

His attack is interesting. I like that. I also like the idea of gate swapping.

Hrm... How about instead of the cultist ability you have him make all black bordered monsters Stationary Spawn monsters, possibly with a toughness increase?

Also, unless you like having a pinkish Ancient One, send me a link to the source image, I'll modify the colors and contrast and post an altered link on imageshack.

Hold on, sir, 4 toughness, even with +1 modifier, is not "easy meat". You need around 12 dice to gurantee 4 successes, and even then it's not realy guranteed. 12 dice for a combat check are NOT that easy to come by. I'll discuss your next issues after we'll settle this.

kroen said:

No horror check, +1 die, only deals one damage per failure, no resistances or immunities. It doesn't matter if you risk taking a hit or two. Plus they're stationary, so they wouldn't even clog the streets. You can just wait until you have a decently equipped investigator then take it as a trophy. If I can kill shoggoths without much difficulty, I can definitely take out 4 toughness cultists. I mean, seriously, people beat down the Dunwich Horror, and that has five toughness (plus much more difficult combat modifiers, resistances, and penalties). Why would you think making these unmoving four toughness things would be difficult? I'd just send an investigator with good fighting stats and a minimum of a +6 weapon (although preferably +8) at the gate it's on. Assuming the investigator has 4 fight, and a +6 weapons bonus, +1 from the cultist, that's 11 dice... Assuming the investigator has 1 fight, that's still 8 dice. You have a more than fifty percent chance of taking the Cultist on each roll with that, plus you'd only take one damage per failure. And in exchange you get four toughness of monster. It's easy meat.

I think you're wrong, but I'm willing to reduce their combat rating to +0. Deal?

I just gave a full explanation of the numbers involved there [i think I edited my answer after you responded, I'm not sure]. If you raised their combat damage, that would be far more significant. It's far too easy to wait out a monster that only does one damage per hit. Any decent fighter can go five to six rounds against it while at full health (and of course, it won't take nearly that many rounds for a decent fighter to take it down).

Mmm, you also didn't fix the handcuffs problem.

::Shrug:: my Wendigo herald makes cultists into six toughness monsters that do two damage per hit and cripple movement. You can still take them down though.

I'm off to work.

That's because you're like things too difficult.

And what "handcuff problem"? Even if I made them infinite toughness and -infinite rating handcuffs would still kill them. So what?

Anyway, how about: 3 extra toughness and 2 extra combat damage.

No no, you know what, the hell with it. Yig makes cultists +0 and 4 damage. Easier than mine (you only need 1 success). Hastur makes them fliers that hang out in the sky and don't hurt anyone. Cthulhu, while giving them a decent horror, still fails to make them hard. Y'glonac raises the terror when you kill them. Big deal. Ithaqua gives 2 extra toughness. I can go on all day. What's my point? My point is that they don't have to be Gug-tough in order for the AO to be difficult. You like extremely tough AOs? well good for you. Make them yourself. Sorry if I sound rude/harsh, but seriously, you're overreacting. The fact you have to send a specialized fighter to deal with my 4-toughness cultists means they're NOT easy meat. Even if they only do 1 damage. If you have 8 dice you would most likely die. Slowly, but still. If you have more and you CAN easily kill them, then so what? Not all monsters have to be Mummy-difficult. If you want to play with 6-toughness cultists then that's your deal. I assure you most players would not. Also you're forgetting that for every successful kill of the the Dunwich horror there are more times it kills the one who attemps to kill it. Unless, ofcours, you come bearing lots of clues. I don't know why I even replied to that part of your post. It proved nothing.

I'm off to having no life.

kroen said:

No you wouldn't. I already showed you the basic math for that. You would have a less than 50% chance of taking 1 hit. And a less than 25% chance of taking two hits.

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As for the other issues ::shrug:: if you feel like the game doesn't have enough easy Ancient Ones, feel free to make some more. But I can't remember the last time I lost a game to Yig. Most of the original game's Ancient Ones are very easy now. If you want to design easy Ancient Ones, you're right, that's your prerogative. But speaking for myself, I won't play with easy Ancient Ones.

I think I made it very clear in my previous post that you *do not* have to send an investigator with high fight skill to kill one of the cultists (although if you have one, it becomes extremely easy).

The point is an issue of game balance. If you're going to make a four toughness monster, it should be *at least* Gug tough, because otherwise you're just giving investigators easy trophies. Unless your intention is giving an Ancient One guardian like features, your design of your cultists actually benefit players who understand the game. I would be *glad* to draw a cultist if I played against this ancient one.

It is unreasonable to think that a team of investigators won't have at least one investigator with at least +6 worth of combat boosting items.

As for individual worshipper abilities, Hastur's was badly designed, but at least it works well with Tzulsha, losing two sanity damage to Cthulhu cultists is a pain (and of course, if you kill them, their corpses are worthless), Yig's are a problem because they add doom, and Y'golonac's terror. Ithaqua's have the same design flaw. There are many reasons why Ithaqua is such a pushover, and that's one of them.

I'm sorry, but even if my cultists are easy (which I still disagree upon) then that doesn't mean anything. A tough AO with easy worshippers is still a tough AO. With all expansions and count-as-cultits cultists there are 13 cultists in the cup, from what, 100+ monsters? It barely changes the difficulty even if they were gug-tough. Also take Rhan for example. He has an easy worshipper (not a mistype). Sure, Gnoph-Keh is semi-challenging, but there's only one of it in the cup. Does that make Rhan easy? Ofcours not.

I will repeat the point of this post: Easy worshippers don't make for an easy Ancient One. What makes an ancient one easy is its power and attack. In both, mine is pretty tough. So even if my cultists are like christmass to you, it doesn't change the rest of the AO.

Ehhhh, I don't think your AO is nearly as hard as Rhan Tegoth, also, I always thought it giving Gnoph Keh altered abilities was silly (i.e. a lazy design decision). Unless FFG's planning on releasing more Gnoph Kehs in the future.

It's not a question of the cultists being easy, it's a question of them being easily obtained high value trophies. For a four toughness monster, they're way too easy to kill. If you wanted to change their combat modifiers, or give them overwhelming two or something, that'd be fine. The problem is that they're going to be on gates, probably with something else, and each time an investigator goes through a gate with one of them, they'll have 9-10+ toughness of trophies and can immediately get allies, or double clues, or whatever. Two or three cultists appearing will make for easy prey. It's not quite as bad as making all culitsts function like migo, but it's pretty bad.

I like the attack, kudos on a creative execution there. The power is kind of meh, it can result in throwing the occasional investigator to LiTaS but probably not often other than that it is a watered down monster surge. I would suggest letting the monsters surge as normal then replace the gate and raise the terror. The worshipers are way too easy, they don't move so they aren't going to slow the investigators down one bit in the streets and like avi said they are basicaly low-mid level 4 toughness monster trophies. If you want to make them annoying without pumping them too much make them endless then the problem of claiming huge monster trophies is gone.

Veet said:

Oh, that's an easy fix. I didn't think of that.

I actually see a different area of the AO that should be address it's attack. I like the attack style discarding the Elder Signs but since sealing gates is already part of the normal win condition, investigators will already be trying to do just that. So working towards your win actually works towards warding off the AO.

I would consider adding a Doom Token to the AO's Doom Track whenever a Monster Surge would take place. It could make the game faster, and really turn the game into a race against time. Keep everything else, too I love switching the gates, that is nasty or perhaps providing a choice between a normal monster surge and a Doom Token or the modified monster surge/gate shift and raise the terror level. Not sure how excited I am about that, but other than investigators being LiT&S from a gate shift I think the game gives the players too much time to try and seal the gates on the board.

Also, I agree with Veet about endless cultists. It turns the cultists from a possible boon into a bust.

JerusalemJones said:

It prevents people seeing they're about to lose to start hoarding on clues without sealing gates and gear up for the final battle.

If you people want a doomer for every surge than play with BGotW.

In other news...

do you find this quality satisfactory? well don't get used to it, unless you reply on my investigatrors.

Haha, you made the AO tougher! I think the Reality Shift ability is much cleaner now, and works better (still lots of monsters, pity the poor investigators). Losing skills is brutal, but as it has no resistances or immunities does make a good fit. I'd like to fight this one. Well, no, not in real life, but it would make for an interesteing game.