Why not? If you gonna win by sealing any way, no reason of paying an extra for those gates, unless you really don't wat the terror level to rise a bit. And even so, six clue tokens to seal a gate isn't so bad, considering Hastur.

I think if I was facing Cthugha I'd play very conservatively, and try to make sure there were hardly any trophies on its sheet during the final battle at all. It's almost always worthwhile spending the extra clue to keep the trophy yourself, since if you didn't, you'll almost certainly end up losing more dice in the final battle than the extra clue will gain you in Arkham.

I'm not sure about the attack - it seems like one of those things that's a bit arbitrary. You can survive slightly longer if you have a lot of trophies, but the effect isn't very pronounced, and you have to have a hell of a lot of trophies before you can seriously expect to last more than a couple of turns.

The worshippers ability is great though.

One other thing: didn't you already make a Cthugha once before, Kroen? Maybe it was someone else.

Yes, I did, but it was pretty bad.

Also, I think you may or may not forgetting that he only attacks the first player, so the investigators should get a little more than just "a couple of turns", especially if the investigators played wisely.

Aha! Sorry, you're quite right. Never mind me, I am obviously losing my mojo.

kroen said:

It's not that. It's the fact that he has an 11 doom track. There's a *very* good chance that he'll wake up, and if he wakes up with trophies on him, you're screwed, imo— so I would start the game assuming that he'll probably wake, and make sure delaying his waking time and stocking up my investigators would be my primary task against him, as much as if I were playing against Yibb Tsill. Of course, if you're playing a five player team ::shrug:: you're probably right, it'd be worth just letting the terror rise a few extra points.

thecorinthian said:

I disagree. The cultists are still too weak. Keep in mind, they only have *one* toughness. A -3 monster with one toughness is still a total pushover. I'd say it should either have an extra toughness, or have its combat modifier increased to -4 or even -5, now *that'd* be a creepy cultist :'D

Calling all cars! Ladies and gentlemen, I could use your sage advice on this one. I think you can tell where I'm trying to go, but I also think she could be made less complicated. I could use any constructive criticism you might care to share.

Here are her abilities:

Worshippers - <i>Art of Seduction</i>: The <fullname> is worshipped by beautiful cyborgs. Cultists gain a horror check of -2. If an investigator fails a horror check against a cultist, they draw one <i>corruption</i> card and combat ends. Each time an investigator defeats a Cultist, increase the doom track by 1.

Electric dreams - While the <fullname> stirs in her slumber, corruption cards are never discarded. If an investigator is <i>Lost in time and space</i>, they are instead turned </i>traitor</i>.

<b><i>Black Magic</i></b>
When an investigator receives a spell, they must also draw a corruption card.

Start of Battle - X is set to 2 plus the number of investigators who have turned <i>traitor</i>.

Attack - <i>Lure of Seduction</i>: All corruption cards trigger immediately. Each investigator must roll a <b>Will (+0[Y])</b> check or become a <i>traitor</i> (Remove traitors from combat with <fullname> and decrease her combat modifier by 2). [Y] is set to one plus the number of corruption cards an investigator has.

I'm looking forward to hearing your suggestions!

Not a bad AO at all, but the phrasing is all over the place. Here's how I reckon it should be:

Biomechanoid Queen, -X, Physical Immunity , Doom track 11

Worshippers: <name> is worshipped by cyborgs. Cultists and Maniacs have a Horror rating of -3. If an investigator fails a Horror check against a Cultist or Maniac, he or she draws a Corruption card and combat ends.

Black Magic: Corruption cards are not discarded when gates close.

Electric Dreams: Whenever an investigator is Lost in Time and Space, he or she gains a Traitor token.

Start of Battle: X is set to 2 plus the number of investigators who have a Traitor token.

Attack: All Corruption cards trigger. Then each investigator must make a Will (+1) check , requiring 1 additional success for each Corruption card that he or she possesses. Investigators who fail are devoured . Whenever an investigator is devoured this way, X increases by 2.

It's a bit complicated but it mostly works. I removed the extra doom token thing because it seemed like such a severe penalty that people would probably avoid fighting cultists, and you want people to fight cultists so that they pick up a few Corruptions. I removed the spells=corruptions thing because it seemed a bit arbitrary - some people start with spells, and everyone else can quite easily avoid getting them, whcih didn't seem like fun. At least with Cultists it's a difficult choice because if you leave cultists on the board they clog up the monster limit.

Great suggestions! Thank you!

Hopefully this one will post right, and if not, http://i622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/Dretrimord.jpg

Soooo. Give feedback?

I was thinking that perhaps another way of doing this would be having one of the effects take place through doom track 1-4 (probably the 3-4 effect, but I might make it a bit nastier since it would be so temporary— perhaps two points of nightmarish), and then Stalkers through doom 4-8, and double movement through doom 9-12. Three groups ;')

Also, I don't want him to be an easy fight in a final battle, but as he is, do you think it's *too* hard? On the other hand, Fighters could stick around pretty long against him (and there wouldn't be epic battle cards in play). So? Mmm? Maybe he's too easy ;'D No, seriously, do you think I should have him do two stamina damage? I realize it doesn't quite go with the three/one motif... Buuut... I suppose I'd be willing to sacrifice a bit of theme for challenge. Or do you think it's hard enough? Hrm... Alternatively, I could make it so it's a Fight [2] check that does two damage, unless a success is rolled in which case it only does one damage. Or would *that* be too hard? Hrm... ;'D

Seems like it would probably be ok, although you might want to think about lowering the resistances/immunities. Physical Immunity is a real pain. If this guy is going to have high numbers of 'hit points', it seems like you're nerfing the investigators' weapons a bit much.

The monster movement abilities create a few issues. Giving monsters an additional stalker move (or just making them move twice) will trigger Cthonians and Colours Out Of Space multiple times in the same turn.

Increasing Horror checks and Sanity damage interacts peculiarly with Yithians and Shan, who have special Horror checks. Also one of the Masks I think.

If I were you, I'd stick to the 'monster movement' theme and make the dice roll results look something like this:

1-2: All monsters make an additional flying move and gain Nightmarish 1.

3-4: All monsters make an additional fast move and gain Overwhelming 1.

5-6: All monsters make an additional stalker move and gain both resistances.

Those abilities aren't usually particularly dangerous in themselves, but if you get the wrong combination it can really screw you. For example, everything jumps up to the sky, stays up there for a turn or two (clogging up the monster limit) then all swoops down against the same time.

thecorinthian said:

Oh, the intention behind the movement on stalker was that monsters that move move like stalkers ::sigh:: I see I'm going to have to rephrase that too, but I was planning on doing a second version of this guy anyways ;') so it's just as well you caught this now.

I know Physical Immunity is a pain :'D Thematically I wanted to give this guy a veneer of indestructability (although clearly I want it to be weak against something— magical weapons). The revised version will have all monsters being given physical resistance from nine to midnight on the doom track :') (I was tempted to make it physical immunity, and still kindof am actually, but there's a few monsters that won't interact very well with (particularly The Dunwich Horror in a few situations). I'm thinking about doing it anyways though :') it'd be kindof fun to have a couple potentially mobile monsters that are stronger than Colors From Outer Space on the board ;'D also that will add to the incentive for not shopping at the common item store. I think the one serious concern would be The Dunwich Horror (and possibly whatever comes out in Innsmouth), buuuut, in my opinion, if you let the DH out, you *deserve* to die horribly :')

I wouldn't worry about the increased horror/sanity checks (in the second version that I'll post later, I'm going to do it so the ability changes in phases). It'll probably be gone by turn four (really all that will probably result from it is a little brain damage from one of the investigators going into a gate— I'm definitely going to up it to nightmarish 2). This will make early gate sealing come with a price. And it'll make a nice transition to being stalked by all the monsters on the board :'D to me the best part about that is how fliers will then move into locations from the sky... Hee hee hee...

Also :') he has a 13 doom track. Ideally he can be sealed ;') if not, well, the final battle should be somewhat challenging. I just want to make sure it isn't impossible (for a small team that's well equipped with magic weapons and blessed). I'm pretty sure that it isn't. For a larger team, all I can say is they better get those seals ;'D

Also, Colors and Cthonians don't move, their text says "instead of moving."

Avi_dreader said:

I'm not sure I'm right about my interpretation. Making things move 'like stalkers' presumably means that they'll move on to adjacent investigators, but unless that constitutes an additional 'movement' instead of just modifying the rules for how the monster moves, it wouldn't trigger an additional Cthonian tremor etc.

(As a side note, I think that the game term 'move' doesn't discriminate against monsters that actually stay where they are - so Cthonians that trigger their ability have still 'moved' that turn, even though the monster marker stays in the same place. Whether or not a monster is considered to have moved is purely a question of whether its symbol matches the symbols on the monster movement bars of the Mythos card. My instinct is to be just that mechanistic, because monsters 'moving' can actually represent a variety of different abilities and it's probably a good idea if the term 'movement' is a catch-all term for those abilities, so that they're easier to apply new rules to. But if hexagon monsters move, would anyone honestly say that a Dark Young has 'moved' even though it didn't do anything at all? Perplexing.)

thecorinthian said:

Heh... Don't worry, I decided I'd try and get around some of the problems with green monsters by just making the movement affect fliers, normals, and fast monsters. Here's the new version.

Here's a direct link in case the image doesn't display well.

http://i622.photobucket.com/albums/tt307/avi_dreader/Dretrimord2.jpg

I like all of the instances of three on this guy. It really hammers the message home about the three heads. I also like the scaling monster abilities.

Having him be Physically Immune AND Magically Resistant is kinda harsh especially when you have to remove essentially 39 Doom tokens (by the way extra points for using the word thrice). Possibly have his resistances and immunities scale with the number of doom tokens he currently has left (just add it in to his three headed god ability). It could show each head dying off.

Nice pic by the way. It is perfect for this guy and it fits in nicely with the feel of the game. Someone once said to me that having a good picture really makes an AO because no matter how cool your creation is I don't want to face an AO that looks like Donald Duck.

Dark Jco. said:

Hrm... Alright, how about he becomes Physical Resistant when the first head comes off, and he loses all his resistances when the second head comes off? :'D

It's funny what you said about the pic, because A)I completely agree, and B) the complete picture actually looks silly, but with the trimming it came out pretty well. The middle head looked semi-retarded and the lower head ::rolls eyes:: Fortunately um, yes, trimming ;'D I'm going to wait until tomorrow to make the changes in case anyone else has suggestions. I'd prefer a res/res symmetry first. Do you think that's too difficult? I think I also shouldn't give the Doom token listing separate lines ;'D

----

I changed it so it has "no" immunity/resistances (except in the middle text box) which reads like this:

1-4 Doom: <b>Monsters</b> have their horror ratings increased by -2, do an extra sanity damage, and have Nightmarish 2.

5-8 Doom: Normal, fast, and flying <b>Monsters</b> move like stalkers in addition to their regular movement type (this is not an extra movement). Dretrimord has <b>Physical Resistance</b> and <b>Magical Resistance</b>.

9-12 Doom: <b>Monsters</b> move twice and have <b>Physical Resistance</b>. Dretrimord has <b>Physical Immunity</b> and <b>Magical Resistance</b>.

---

I'll repost it tomorrow if no one has suggestions.

Took me over half an hour to design and make this one:

Shouldn't the Magnetism ability say "to a minimum of 1" ? Otherwise, you're locking several investigators' stats in their starting positions for the whole game. Which is not only lethal, but also - which is much worse - a bit dull. Balancing skill sliders is one of the key tactical decisions investigators have to make.

thecorinthian said:

If I'd make it "to a minimum of 1" than the power would be null against many investigators. I'm aware of the impact it does on 1-focus investigators, but we are talking about Great Old Ones, are we? You can't really expect them to be fair. One could argue that hoarding clues is another key tactical decision investigators can make, but not against Yibb-Tstll. We actually have an Ancient One that cancels the most important tactical decision in the game, which is sealing gates (Altha-Natcha). If you ask me, having all gates opening be gate bursts is much more "unfair" than having 0 focus (and even that is not on all investigators).

kroen said:

It's the fact that it's not on all investigators that makes it dodgy. If it was an equal punishment on all investigators that wouldn't matter so much (although obviously the 'minimum of 1' approach wouldn't entirely fix the problem either).

Great Old Ones have horrendously powerful abilities, sure, but they usually don't interfere with investigators so specifically and directly that some investigators are crippled by it and others aren't. For example, Ybb-Tstill's ability is fairer to all investigators because all investigators have (approximately) the same ability to pick up and use clue tokens. You could argue that Cthulhu's in-game ability is disproportionately punishing to 7/3 and 3/7 investigators, but even that isn't quite as severe as depriving half a dozen investigator characters of all their focus. There is a huge difference between dropping from Focus 2 to Focus 1, and dropping from Focus 1 to Focus 0.

As it is now, if you pick one of the investigators with Focus 1, and then the AO turns out to be Juk-Shabb, you're probably finished, while everyone else will be able to cope. It seems a bit arbitrary, given how disproportionately it screws investigators who would otherwise be perfectly legitimate choices.

First off, you can choose to draw investigators after ancient ones, maybe giving every player 2 investigators and have him choose. Could still get 2 investigators with 1 focus, but there are less chances. Either way that's not the point. The point is that it's possible to set your focus in a way that not moving it until the final battle won't hurt you that much. A good strategist would know exactly what to do.

kroen said:

I would suggest you give the cultists combat ratings of -3 or -4 (keep in mind, there's no horror check like with the colors, *and* they only have one toughness). Otherwise they're still jokes.

Avi_dreader said:

:') I like things tough, but not impossible, so yes, I guess my post was fairly predictable :'D (along with the analogy to the Color).

Some AOs have tought cultists though. LIke Yig :')

They're not tough, they're just dangerous if you kill them. But it's still easy to kill them.