Too bad that you don't live in an area with more gamers, or near a game store that has in store play. there are lots of good games out there you are missing out on.

and, just for fun, as I didn't give it much thought:

Ha, you beat me to it... Well, here's my take on it, anyway.

After a work of over an hour, I present to you two well-thought of (hopefully) Ancient Ones!!!

Yes, the cultists are easy, but they are really really annoying. They are very hard to evade and they will follow the investigators into (unstable) locations and make them lose a turn killing them. Stalker+fast is a very annoying combo, I assure you that.

Onto the next one:

Notice this doesn't need the errata of Rhan: It's discard sanity, not lose sanity, and as such can't be prevented by abilities/effects.

Baoht has a major design flaw. You're giving a madness and injury to all players, that means they can all dump their items on one player and everyone can retire the next turn, bringing in a fully healed team with new items and cash. Other than that, I like it. You can fix the problem by not allowing investigators to retire (instead of the discarding urban ability, or perhaps in addition to, if there's room).

For the second one, I will say that you're using card art that's already been used, on Shathak, I believe, so ideally you could find something new. However, I'm not really crazy about his final battle attack (I think it's too easy, final battle would last *way* too long). If it drained doom tokens per sanity instead of successes, it would be more significant an attack. I'm not too crazy about the worshipper ability either (mostly because I dislike devouring mechanics-- they're too easily exploited, unless you add an additional penalty for being devoured, in other words, I'd like it if it had an extra barb, as it's currently designed, it's ripe for exploitation, as Shans always are).

The attack of Bugg-Shash is exactly the same of Rhan, only sanity instead of stamina.

Being unable to retire is a good idea, but I don't like it when the text gets too small. Anyway, the thing you're suggesting is the same as money laundring (taking bank loans, toss all the money and items to someone and fail at the loan with no penalty). People who who wish to use such exploit it's their buisiness, but most people won't go through trouble of coordinating meeting spots, throwing items, retiring, starting a new investigator... most people play for fun (crazy I know) and it's much more fun to build up your characted, trying to complete its story, etc. Exploiters will always finds things to exploit.

::Shrug:: I would do it. I don't think it's difficult at all. It's a game feature, if you design a card that allows an exploit to be used, then people have the right to exploit the loophole until you close it. Given that it's not hard to do, you probably should. I could reword the central column of text so it wouldn't shrink the text size.

Rhan Tegoth is a bit harder for a few reasons— faster doom track (because of cultists accelerating it). A real doom track of probably 13-15. Comparing something with a (realistically speaking) nine doom track to something with a 12 doom track is a little inaccurate (there's much less time to gear up against Rhan). Also, Rhan has physical immunity which is worse than magical immunity (since there are much more weapons in the common item deck, and they tend to be cheaper).

That is why I have him -5 while Rhan has -4. Also Sanity is more important than Stamina- investigators will have to retihnk casting spells in the final battle against Bugg-Shash. It's not as easy as you make it to be.

kroen said:

Ummmmm, you made him magic immune genius.

kroen said:

Uh, pre-final battle it's more important.

And what Veet said.

And a -1 Modifier isn't enough to make up for the difference.

Ancient Ones without any physical resistance are very easy to beat to death, since it is very easy to get weapons in the common item deck. Not only are they cheaper than their unique equivalents, it's much easier to browse the common item deck for them (since it's full of low cost, or zero cost, items).

Even so. Not all Ancient Ones have to be on the same power level. Infact, none of them are. Some harder, some weaker. It's cheap design to keep designing Ancient Ones with phyiscal resistance/immunity. Sanity is bonded to magic, this is why I designed him the way I did.

But its at least helpful to make sure the bits and pieces work well together.

If you want to design Ancient Ones that are easy to beat in final combat, that's your business, just don't expect other people to want to play them.

The way you guys try to help is wrong, especially when a person never asked for it.

Avi have you seen Iron Man yet? I ask because you fit the personality of Tony Stark so well. You are very helpful...but...you have a few social errors.

As for easy or hard....you are dead wrong about people not wanting to play or test easy content. When I search the fan creations forum I (me personally) am not looking for challenging. I am looking for interesting design and heart (as in are they doing it for fame or for the love of the product). I know that it is hard to believe that there are people that disagree with your logic...but I MAY *gasp* want to play easy fan submissions based on the skill and interests of my players.

I take what I like based on the concept, interest, lore, and even art. If I like the concept, but not the art, then I take it and change art to my liking. I am sure others do the same. I mean surely I can't possibly be the only one, out of thousands, that visit this thread and don't need god mode for every game of Arkham.

Why am I defending this random person? Because he was valid as to why he made the choices he did for his creation. This thread is not titled "Avi and Veet's Custom Great Old Ones" so quit acting like it is.

He posted two ideas he thought were well thought out and you trashed them. He didn't even ask for comments. He said, in a nutshell, "These are some things I hope are as interesting to you as they are to me. Enjoy!"

Oh and Avi, just a suggestion, but you should change your sig to something more helpful than bashing FFG for not letting you get your way. Try, perhaps, the link to your photo album. That way you don't have to keep linking it. The way you flaunt that url around reminds me of how Tony brags about his Iron Man suit.

I am not suggesting you change your attitude. That attitude is what drives your character to be so iconic along with the works you have built in the forums. All I am asking is that you respect others submissions.

A beginner to making new content will most likely try to keep it simple and easy so that they can playtest with it. They will spend a lot of time preparing to reveal it to the public and they will not be ready for harsh critiques. After understanding the loopholes to the game system and getting more expansions, then they will try to elevate their works and be willing to talk strategy and such. You may have made a presence over the years in these forums, but to a person new to Arkham, you are just a guy.

Let people discover their own flaws to their creations. Over time they will seek help and criticism.

Just a thought is all...

Heh..and I am supposed to be this callous and selfish jerk...thanks for hurting my rep a little.

Don't bother responding to this. I don't want to get a flame war going. Either ignore it or send me a personal PM, but don't take the thread off topic anymore than I just did. I would rather you ignore my advice and continue to create and critique others submissions (those that ask for them), rather than choose to argue and flood this thread with off topic posts.

I'll try to explain what's going on privately, and hopefully you'll find my explanation adequate. And yes, I've seen Iron Man :')

A miss understanding on my part...sorry. I do have a question for the fans that have created custom works. Do you enjoy creating heralds or ancient ones more? It appears heralds get more treatment, is that just because they are easier to create?

You can do more with heralds as they don't have as much specific information that is required (ie doom track attack etc..) they also have more room for text.

Also, an ancient one can only be played with heralds (and since there are more ancient ones than heralds— unless you count custom creations), heralds allow for more customizability of the basic game components at the very least.

I like heralds/guardian/scenarios because you can use them to tweak the game mechanics and theme. I do not feel the necessity for new Ancient Ones... I haven't had the time to enjoy all the official ones all several times. Same for investigators, I do not feel any need for new ones (a lot of work that usually does not alter the game significantly).

I figured that was the reason. For the WoW adventure game I ended up doing the same thing. Instead of replacing the Overlords, I just made variant scenarios.

For a fast game: (I know Avi won't play with it and that's exactly why I'm allowing myself to post it)

Rhogog: Hmm, this guy's interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole 'short game' idea. On one hand, it's good for when you don't necessarily have the time to play when you'd like to, or maybe if you want to squeeze out one more short game after you've already played one. Otherwise though, with how long Arkham takes to set up and put away, I probably wouldn't want to use this guy otherwise. I just might give him a spin though sometime soon.

Nice pic btw

Mighty Maltim said:

You essentially have four turns (unless you get a statistically improbable monster surge). It takes three turns to get into a gate and seal it. It is physical and magical immune with a -4 modifier so your odds of beating it in final combat are very unlikely. Your odds of winning by sealing are almost nil unless you start with investigators like Wendy, Mandy, or Zoey (i.e. elder signs or four clue tokens).

It's badly designed. But if you don't mind setting up for a nearly guaranteed loss ;'D

Just from looking at it, I can tell you (without you having to waste your time playtesting it) it won't work.

I agree with Avid Reader. The game will move too fast. You spent all that money on all those cards...why? If you already know it is impossible to prevent from waking up the GOO then at least make some really awesome signature attacks to include for the epic battle variant.

This brings me to a point I would like to make to you Kroen. You seem to love games where you face the Ancient One, possibly because you feel that a group of humans shouldn't be able to prevent a predicted apocalypse. I SAID SEEM. I am not trying to put words in your mouth please no hate. I respect you for putting your neck out constantly like this.

I do have an idea for you Kroen. I am not going to get into this rivalry, but you seem to know your stuff, so I think you should focus on making epic battle deck signature attacks for Ancient Ones. This seems to be a lacking part in the fan creations. I would love to see some of the less interesting signature attacks changed to impact the end game encounter more.

As I read through these forums, I notice almost everyone says to buy Kingsport for the epic battle cards alone. Maybe as a community we can start posting ideas for some cooler signature attacks.

I believe in the philosophy of always having room for improvement. Since this is the GOO customs, we should try to redo the games original ancient ones mechanics for the GOOs that seem less impressive enough to garnish a thread for Custom GOOs that seem to be created for the purpose of replacing the base games.

Just a thought.

Maybe you guys could take a break on creating new GOOs to improve on the ones we have supplied to us.

Personally, I wouldn't want to print out custom epic battle cards... But I do think it's a cool idea... Come to think of it, that would make a cool expansion just by itself (an expanded Epic Battle deck for more variety— I'm not crazy about seeing the same cards over and over).

Mathematically speaking the only way to win with a seal would be to get an encounter that opened a gate on an investigator in the first or second arkham encounter phase. Not to mention that said investigator as well as two others would have to start with sealing abilities. In a normal count down there simply wouldn't be enough time to seal the third gate, of course the posibility of a well timed monster surge could help there but at that point you're dealing with percentages in the area of less than 10% (I realy don't have the desire to do the full math at the moment) IF it was a high frequency gate that opened. Now I don't have a problem with a tough GOO but the problem here is that going against this GOO would be like playing Candy Land, that is once the cards are shuffled victory or defeat is already decided and you're just along for the ride. Pretty much everything here is depending on a monster surge occuring.

It should really be possible to defeat an ancient one without needing a random card draw to interfere, up his doom track to around 7 and the investigators stand a chance, that's the minimum I figured when making Mordigian (my attempt at a low doom count GOO) even then I gave him a mechanic that can slow the doom track and all the play tests I've done with him have been brutally fast despite this. Requiring only 3 seals is a good idea in the stead of a doom slowing mechanic.

The math on the final battle prety much speaks for itself too, Joe Diamond is basicly the only choice to fight him and even that will get progressively harder the more investigators are involved. Also not impossible though.