Almost correct. You will have 7 rounds against Cthulhu. His slumbering effect still applies so you will have a combined max SAN and max STA of 8. After 7 rounds, one of them will drop to 0 and you'll be devoured. But how much Sanity and Stamina you have left really doesn't matter (unless you use the Epic Battle cards from Kingsport).

Ah, great, that's what we thought. Thanks!

Another nasty for your perusal:

Because she will probably wake up really fast, I gave her a shorter doom track (so she'll be easier to defeat in the final battle). Also, I only gave her physical resistance, and a -3 modifier. I think this makes her challenging, but not impossible; especially since she uses the riot monsters, which is a drag. I'm looking forward to feedback on her!

Here are her sinister plots:

thecorinthian said:

Thanks for the input. I'll probably reword the first part of the ability to make it clearer.

I thought about making a Spawn monster, but it was to close to what Nyogtha does in my eyes. Nyogtha happens to be the AO I compared the ability to, because should you happen across the Tendril without a Magical Weapon and low Sneak, you're pretty much screwed. Yggdrasil shouldn't be much worse than that and meeting him is easier to avoid.

I don't think the battles would become too repetetive, because you're not LiTaS very often, and Yggdrasil will make you think twice about risking going unconcious/insane which was one intent I had. I thought about allowing one Doom token to be removed if you defeat Yggdrasil, giving players an incentive to go LiTaS and try it but it didn't fit onto the card. It might also make it too easy to seal Yggdrasil away.

Also, I don't see many rules ambiguities in the mini-AO battle, less even than in those from CotDP since Yggdrasil doesn't have a Start of Battle ability. I would allow the playgroup to choose if Epic Battle cards should be used, but personally I think those should be reserved for the Final Battle.

You're quite sure you've never heard of this creature called "Cthulhu" before. There are however many other specimens of the ZOOLOGICALLY DUBIOUS you're familiar with.

Such as...

This is my first Ancient One posted here. I always appreciate feedback of any kind.

This is Yidhra. I tried to make her reflect the mythos in which she appears. She adapted to change to obtain eternal life. That's why her modifier and her Resistance/Immunity both are dependent on the Investigator's actions.Her slumbering effect is two different things.

First, the swapping of Stamina and Sanity varies for investigators. Someone like Dexter or Mandy isn't going to be affected as much as someone like Harvey or Sister Mary. That's why the gate sealing increase is there as well. Early on, it's not as bad as Hastur's, but as you seal more, it becomes worse. Sealing victories could even be harder with gate bursts.

Her attack of discarding a skill is more a way of showing that she's adapting to the investigator's attacks, not so much as them weakening. i figured discarding a skill is the best way to play this. Skills aren't usually sought after during the game over something like clue tokens or weapons, but if you want to go head to head with her, you're going to have to compromise.

Her plots are less about hurting the investigators, and more about healing Yidhra. If someone ha managed to escape death the way Yidhra has, she needs to be able to heal in some way, and I didn't want to go the Cthulthu route of healing after each attack. So some battles she may never heal, some battles she may heal a lot. Just depends.

Anyway, if anyone wants to play her and give me any thoughts or suggestions, i'm open for it.

Is Yidhra supposed to lose the respective Immunities, switching back and forth between them? Or is it once they're there, they're there for good? If the latter, then the battle is essentially impossible.

On the swapping max San/Sta thing, I think you'll find that it's a benefit to many investigators. Harvey and Michael are now primed to go on monster-slaying rampages, 5/5 people aren't affected at all, and most investigators with 7/3 Stamina/Sanity will now happily set their Fight to max, letting them throw away their once-precious Sanity. The only people who really lose out are 7/3 or 6/4 Sanity/Stamina spellcasters.

mattherobot said:

I'm aware that some investigators will actually benefit from this, while others are hurt, and then some won't change at all. Do you think the benefited ones will be too benefited?

As far as the Immunities, it was "Gains" not "changes to", so she wouldn't lose them. I don't think that makes the fight impossible. And actually more possible than the current official GOO Quachil Uttaus. He has both immunities from the start. On top of that, he automatically devours the 1st player each round. While his modifier is only -3, Yidhra's is only -4 for the first investigator's first attack. After that, it changes per investigator. It could be +0 for some, meaning that unless they have something that subtracts from their Fight or Combat, they're always going to roll at least 1 die without spending clue tokens unless they for some reason don't set their fight all the way up (to my knowledge, no investigator has lower than 3 as their highest Fight Stat). Sure, some investigators may have to spend clue tokens to roll if the one before him did really well, but that's not always going to be the case. While it could make for a long final battle, I think its' more possible than Quachil Uttaus.

One thing I had considered however, was to have her start with no Immunities or Resistances. Then this changes (as listed) to resistance first (depending on magical or physical used), then immunity. But it was too much wording on the sheet. I do like that better though.

Hi, I'm Cynical. Some of you may remember me from the old boards. Anyways, I've got a couple of new GOOs (one of which has been played), and comments on some that have been posted, so here we go:

Bug-Shash- too easy. +1 toughnes to cultists is more of a help than a hinderance (I like allies!), terror level is meaningless unless playing with KiY, and while the tomes ability is annoying, it's not enough to keep him above water.

Gynoid- Wow... this will certainly be a challenge. My group usually doesn't fight the Ancient One, instead just declaring it a loss if he wakes up, and winning on seals seems very difficult here. I personally would use a 12 doom track, or maybe even a 13, instead of trying to make the fight easy.

Yidrha- I like the worshipper ability. Normally, +toughness to cultists makes the game easier, not harder, but endless makes it work. Sadly, Adapting to Chage is a really bad slumber power. The number of clue tokens that would take means that it's going to drag the game out forever, and it makes it quite unlikely that anyone will ever win by sealing.

Anyways, my two new ones. The first one was played last night, and seems pretty good; we lost, but he definitely seems beatable. The proliferation of rumors will cause the game to always be frantic, and the San/Stam loss stings. I have no idea if the final battle mechanics are any good or not, since my group doesn't do those generally. Note that we've house-ruled this guy so that he can't be used with Ghroth (starting with two extra Veritas Mentitur cards would basically mean "lose the game"), and we've also house ruled that we don't use "The Tattered King" mythos card with him (two doom tokens + rumor combos with him too well, it would basically mean "lose the game"). The cards that don't apply to Blood Libels or Skies of Insanity also don't apply to the worshipper ability; the worshipper ability was the last thing added, and I forgot to modify the cards to reflect this.

(Fair warning: my AO's are frequently not Mythos inspired, but rather are inspired by gameplay elements I would like to see that I then tack an often anachronistic theme on to).

My second new one, still untested. Hope you like curses!

Edit- Argh, the new forum software sucks when it comes to formatting posts. Sorry about that, if you want to see the battle rules, you'll have to copy-paste the image address to read them.

Hey all, My friends put me in charge of next weeks Arkham game, so I cooked up a great old one. A few comments would be grand, also, Were can I find the Epic battle cards to customize? Strange Eons doesn't have them as far as I can tell.

@Player 3, regarding Vyrge-Blych:

Worshippers: Try wording it like this: "Cultists have a Combat modifer of -X, where X is the current Fight skill of the investigator making the Combat check."

Eternal: This ability is very confusing. Try splitting it into two and phrasing it like this:

"While Vyrge-Blych stirs in his slumber, whenever a 'The Next Act Begins' card is drawn, add a Yellow Sign token to the Doom track and treat it as a Doom token. If there are ever three Yellow Sign tokens on the Doom track, Vyrge-Blych awakens."

and

"Vyrge-Blych does not awaken when the Doom track is full. Instead, play continues, and any further Doom tokens that would be added to the Doom track are placed on Vyrge-Blych's sheet."

It stills seems pretty random when he'll wake up - because once the Doom track is full, the players are just sitting around waiting for the Next Act cards to appear, and they have no way of influencing the frequency of that.

And you should definitely remove the 'Stars are Right' thing. It could be drawn on turn 1, and the game would instantly be over. Which is pointless, especially for a board game which takes so long to set up.

Attack: How does this work? Does it apply to current Fight, or to all four numbers on the Fight track? Does it effectively reduce the numbers on the Fight skill track by 1, so that if you used to have Fight 1-4 and Will 4-1, you now have Fight 0-3 and Will 4-1? If you had Fight 0-3, and you used your Focus to set your Fight to 0, would you be devoured? If you are just reducing the Fight skill track itself, some people will never hit zero because they have an Ally who gives +1 Fight. Would Vyrge reduce that too? Or would it just lower your Fight track into negative numbers until your bonuses were no help? (There's no precedent for skills going into negative numbers. And even if you did do it that way, people could find a way to discard a +2 Ally and drop from 1 to -1 without ever hitting zero - and then they never would hit zero again.) Anyway, you get the idea... how this attack works is a bit ambiguous.

thecorinthian said:

I like they way you think, thanks for the pointers.

Regarding the stars are right...Hm, I suppose you are right.

Regarding his awakening. They wouldn't be sitting around as much for the game would still be trying to kill everyone, much like Arkham likes to do so very much. And if they let him wake up due to gates, they have to deal with the nasty extra modifies. I do see where your going, and that is one thing that seems to nag on everybody. But It's the concept I started with, and will be shooting for till I get it good enough. I was perhaps thinking about having the Mythos deck cut in half, but keeping all of the "next act" cards in.

Regarding the attack. I'll have to word it better. Essentially your max fight score is reduced by 1 every time he attacks, when this score hit's zero, you are devoured. Any bonuses help you till there stripped and mean nothing.

This is my first attempt at creating a Great Old One/Ancient One. It is based on the Ungoliant from the Tolkien universe, which in early writings was named Múru instead (a name I perfer, mostly because Ungoliant is a bit long for this purpose). Incidentally, I couldn't use the exact spelling "Múru" because Strange Eons has a problem exporting files with items that have names that contain custom characters. So I had to go with the slightly different "M'uru". I'm sure WoW players will be more familiar with that version, but bringing a WoW boss to Arkham is not my intent.

The Ungoliant was a creature which hated life and the light, feeding on that light and vomiting darkness. I wanted the concept of darkness to play a key role in the abilities and events I placed on this card. Some of the powers above better achieve that than others, I think. But all in all, I'm satisfied that it's a good first effort at least.

I tried to think up events and actions that have not already been used in official Ancient Ones, which I found to be no easy task. In many cases, the things that I came up with are somewhat adapted from elsewhere in the Arkham universe. The "everything moves when cultists move on black" is borrowed from the dark druids, but I added the part about the cultists being elusive so that the investigators would be motivated to catch them and kill them ASAP. And I also threw in Atlach-Nacha's change to the Leng Spiders since it would seem wrong for them not to become more powerful while M'uru is stirring.

I thought about "Darkness Incarnate" making the first player investigator lose his turn entirely, but then I'd have to do something about what happened if a monster moved onto him, and also not having anything to do for a whole round would be really boring. At least if you're delayed something still happens. Also an investigator losing a whole turn every round seemed too damaging to the progress of the group. Delaying seemed better because its effect would be variable depending on what the investigator was up to. Because of the slowing effect of this power, I increased the doom track to 13 from the "default" of 12.

With the "Start of Battle" and "Attack" abilities, I wanted to convey the sheer horror of seeing something so terrible emerge from the darkness. It seems like in Lord of the Rings, that a sort of repeated and ever increasing "Will check" was what Sam and Frodo were facing as they tried to overcome Shelob, an offspring of the Ungoliant. So that's why I went with Horror to lead off, and then Will checks. But since Will checks on an Ancient One's been done before, I made it so you need two successes instead of one. So hopefully enough of a new twist in there to make it fresh.

One thing that is completely my own creation, as far as I'm aware, is M'uru's defense "Powers". You roll a die and that determines both his combat multiplier and his immunity/resistances. They work together on a sliding scale so no matter what the result, the round should be challenging. I was thinking of going X = (die result + 2) but felt that would make him too difficult.

So what do you guys think? Is it balanced? More importantly, is it fun?

One problem with this, it cripples teams of three and under horribly with the delay first player ability. You might want to make some sort of check to delay the first player, or possibly all the players.

I like the cultist idea, and the tough Leng Spiders. Would be happy if they were even tougher though, or if they autospawned somehow perhaps on a failed prevent delay check.

I´m still out of country so don´t expect another reply any time soon *grin* but soon I shall return. Soon... When the stars are right!

Oh true, I hadn't thought of how it would be SO harsh on smaller groups. I always play in groups of 4 or more, so I suppose that's why it seemed ok to me.

I think to balance it for groups of various sizes, a check for each player each round would be good. I'll change it to the following:

"While M'uru stirs in his slumber, each investigator rolls one die at the end of every Upkeep Phase . On a roll of 1, that investigator becomes lost in the darkness and is delayed."

I think I'll also change the Leng Spiders so that their Horror Damage is 4 Sanity instead of 2. So you really don't want to draw a Cultist or especially a Leng Spider!

Thanks for your feedback! I really appreciate it.

I like it! I've got a few thoughts, but tbh this is pretty good already.

Worshippers - don't cultists normally have an Awareness of -3? I can understand why you want to make it a bit easier to find them since they're elusive, but I'd just whack it straight to +0. It would still be a pain that way, and it's one less number for the players to remember (because +0 is basically the same as saying 'no modifier'). Then again, I am prejudiced against Worshipper abilities.

Darkness Incarnate i s really sadistic, but that's ok. Avi is right; it gets more difficult the fewer players you have. That's not necessarily a reason to change it. (I wouldn't try to fix it by adding a skill check, incidentally; skill checks are not a great way of making something happen "sometimes", and if there's an extra skill check every turn and no-one is realistically going to fail it, it's just a pain.) EDITED TO ADD: Not sure I like the idea of lots of extra dice being rolled in the upkeep either, especially since it's unlikely that much will happen.

Start of Battle - I'd just make it a Horror or (-3) check instead (which is roughly the equivalent). It's simpler, and clue tokens are more likely to be useful against it. Really, I think the idea of this Horror check is more interesting if it's meant to be a drain on clue resources rather than something which will actually devour people. The start of battle ability should be for 'softening up' the investigators; if three of them are devoured, it leaves them playing through a final battle which has little tension because the investigators have little chance of winning it.

Attack - can't go wrong with the classics. Props for kickin' it old-school.

Powers - This part, I don't like. I mean, I like that it's probably gonna be an unpredictable battle right up until the end. But this may not be the best way to do it. Making a battle unpredictable is a surefire way of putting pressure on the investigators during the game, because they have to prepare for an AO who might have phy resistance OR mag resistance OR just a great big modifier etc etc. However in practice, this quite often just encourages conservative play, when really it's more fun to reward risk-taking. I would at least include a 'positive' result on the table, in which the investigators are actually helped somehow. A small random element like that is a great way of retaining game momentum, since even if the players appear to be totally screwed, they'll be willing to carry on because there's a chance they might catch a break. However that's just my experience and obviously different players will react differently. The much bigger reason I don't like this ability is that you have to roll a die and consult a little tiny table of results, which is a bit fiddly.

If you do want to keep the table, at least swap the immunities with each other, and the resistances with each other. Physical resist/immune should be paired with the more painful combat modifiers, because physical weapons are waaaay more common and easier to get than magical weapons, which makes it nastier to reduce their effectiveness than to reduce the effectiveness of mag weapons.

Nice work though! Rare to see an AO turn up on the boards which is as 'polished' as this the first time it's posted.

Thanks for your feedback guys! You had a lot of very helpful things that went into improving my Ancient One! I thought you might like to see M'uru in her revised form. So, unless you see anything still glaringly wrong with her, I'll get her printed on up and bring her to my Arkham club this weekend! The changes were as follows:

1. Image : Resized the picture to allow more of the Ungoliant's (aka M'uru's) body to show up in that short little window at the top of the Ancient One card. This necessitated the use of black bands on the sides since the original image was very narrow. I applied a gradient to the black bands so they didn't look quite so plain.

2. Worshippers : Gave the cultists an Awareness of -1. I thought 0 would make them easier to find than I wanted. I want it to be annoying. Also I want people to be TERRIFIED of the Leng Spiders if one happens to be drawn (this is not likely), so they now have the following stats (bold is change from normal). Ambush, Fast , Overwhelming 1, Toughness 4 , combat rating -1, combat damage 4 stamina, horror rating -2, horror damage 4 Sanity .

3. Darkness Incarnate : Changed it so the chance of the first player being delayed is dependant on the number of players. In a 3 player game, you must roll a 5 or a 6 to avoid being delayed . In a 4 player game, a 6 is needed. In a 5 player game, the first player WILL be delayed . It's still not completely fair handed, but it's more flexible to various numbers of players than it was before. Also I plan to allow it to take into account the reduction in the "counted" number of investigators when you're using more than one board expansion. With Dunwich and Kingsport, a four player game becomes three player, and suddenly they only need a success on a 5 or a 6 instead of just needing a 6. If you added Innsmouth too, those four original players only count as being "two players", so you'd now be succeeding on a 4, 5 or 6.

4. Start of Battle : Changed the Horror check to just a standard -3, as thecorinthian suggested. That was a good tip.

5. Powers : Eliminated the variable nature of the combat modifier. I still wanted her Immunities/Resistances to shift around, but by setting the combat modifier at a constant -5, it added a lot of drama to that single M'uru defense roll. Now, it's going to be REALLY hard to do any damage on a 1 round, but on a 5 or especially a 6 (the helpful round that thecorinthian suggested), you would figure to be hitting her pretty hard. That would be the time to possibly go all out with the clue tokens.

First of al, I disagree with Corinthian regarding cultist awareness. I think +0 or even +1 elusive cultists are waaay too easy to assassinate. I think your orignal idea was nice (although it would be more to my personal preferences to leave them with their original -3 awareness, that'd be a significant challenge).

I think your fix for the player number works well enough. I had an idea that you might find interesting and want to try incorporating somehow, or not. You could make it so the presence of a Leng Spider on the board adds to the delay rolls, perhaps 2 to the result. Webbing. You could also just give them nightmarish 2, or one, if you're feeling nice, instead of playing with their horror rating or horror damage.

What I would really love to see is some method on the card for generating the spiders. Perhaps use the cultists as hosts (and have some sort of roll on defeating them that if failed generates a spider), or perhaps you could do something else.

Okay, today's my last time with any free internet for the next few weeks (probably) so I'm probably not going to say anything else for a bit. G'luck. I hope to see something dreadful. Atlach is a horrible spider, but I hate playing against it. I want a horrible spider that I will love to hate playing against.

Well, Avi_dreader, if I make some way to generate the spiders, then I run into two difficulties. First, there's already a lot of text on the card as it is. Also, the cultists already have a pretty strong worshipper ability, and to make spiders spawn somehow would seem to be too much. Basically the only way I see to do it would be to drop the cultists' ability, and say, "if you draw a cultist, draw a Leng Spider instead". But I don't want to do that, so....

Here's what I did instead . I incorporated the Leng Spiders into one of the Sinister Plots! I got around to creating the plots last night. They feature quotes from the Silmarillion about "The Ungoliant" (aka M'uru), and also a couple of quotes that actually refer to "Shelob" from The Two Towers (Shelob is one of the Ungoliant's offspring).

The 4 Stamina one I think is cool in a really harsh way, since Stamina doesn't normally enter into this fight. You better be up and max and be a 5/5 or better, or it's an instant good night for you. The Leng Spider one is actually borrowed from Shub almost verbatim, and the "lose one hand" plot is a little nod in the direction of Zhar

So,do these Sinister Plots look balanced and fun?

Not a bad selection, although Poison of Death isn't that interesting and it seems like a shame that there isn't some way to avoid the damage.

I'm glad to see you had the sense to take the text for Lesser Broods from the Shub-Niggurath plot card. But I'm not sure if the words "that he cannot evade" are needed for Leng Spiders, since don't they have Ambush anyway?

In hindsight, Avi was probably right about the cultist awareness btw.

Yup, I did know about the Ambush on the Leng Spider, but I left "that he cannot evade" in there because I wanted to make it really clear that the Leng Spider had moved to the investigator, and that they hadn't just approached each other or something. Someone trying to weasel their way out of fighting it might try to argue that it was a special situation in which ambush didn't apply. Also I discovered that removing the words "that he cannot evade" didn't save a line of text, so it figured it didn't hurt to leave it in there.

I guess you're right about Poison of Death, but at the moment I simply can't think of anything better. The quote I used was from the Ungoliant's big attack on the Two Trees in the Silmarillion. It seems to be unavoidable, it seems to be a sort of a stamina drain on the trees. and it ends up killing them both. So that's what led me to construct the card as-is (although I seem to have forgotten to put quotes on that one). If there's a better game mechanic way to express what happens in the books, I can't think of it right now.

Thanks for all your feedback! I feel like M'uru wouldn't be half as good without your help. And now that I've printed her out double-sided on nice paper, unless my game group has some objection to her, I think she's reached her final form.

I actually ended up making a few nerfs to M'uru. My group felt she was too tough in the form as posted above. Start of Battle horror check now at -1, first attack is Will +1 [1] instead of Will +2 [2], and removed the language "plus 1" from Darkness Incarnate. After using her in a game (with the nerfs I just mentioned) and getting a seal victory, we decided to fight her anyway. We "lost" the battle and we further agreed that her combat modifier should go from -5 to -4. After testing, we didn't feel it was significantly realistic to be able to defeat her on a -5. They all agreed that she is a fun ancient one, especially because of the extra monster movement, and the variable immunities/resistances.

Ok, I had another idea for a more Biblical foe.

This one would work best with the Innsmouth and/or Kingsport monsters in play, because it involves the aquatic monster movement mechanic to such a great degree. I made cultists aquatic as well, and sort of tough. I didn't want to make them too bad though, because I wanted to give even weak investigators a chance at survival.

I set up the final battle so that it would be a long test of endurance. You have to do a LOT of damage, which will probably take many rounds to achieve. But since his attack isn't too bad, I'm assuming that "many rounds" could be doable.

I'm actually wondering if I ought to increase his attack damage to 3 Stamina, since if Daisy Walker (my friend's investigator of choice) happens to have Heal, couldn't she end up extending the battle significantly (assuming the current level of 2 Stamina damage), just with smart casting of that spell? I want to go Stamina damage rather than Sanity for reasons of storytelling, it doesn't make sense to me for Leviathan to be damaging the investigators' sanity.

What do you guys think of him? Any rules problems or glaring mistakes in wording? How do you perceive his difficulty? Is he distinctive and interesting enough?

I think he seems alright in his current form. I wouldn't bump up his damage, as there are some investigators with only 3 stamina and that would take them out in one shot. Also, I might change typhoon to do 3, rather than 4 stamina damage. The effective 18 doom track is pretty intense; my friend and I fought Rhan-Tegoth and he got up to about 18 doom tokens, I think, and then sucked out all our blood, so I know how hard it can be to take down an AO with that many doom tokens. I think he bears play testing. Good luck!

Seeing as Aquatic rarely affects the game outside of the Mythos Phase it might be better to change the middle text to All Streets and Unstable location count as Aquatic locations . Sure it means the Sailor gets a boost, but ti cuts out the need for the second paragraph.