Veet said:

Doesn't seem easy to me, but doesn't seem that hard. He does very little to actually stop you from getting seals. Rather, he just extends the game, which does give you a chance for more bad events to happen, I'll admit. The final battle could be quite nasty since you have a definite number of rounds to work in and he has a very high combat modifier, but his long doom track makes reaching it unlikely unless you are using a Herald that screws things up for you.

When you've reached about 4-5 seals in a regular game, though, in my experience, the doom track just about stops if you've been at all smart about where you're sealing. So in my opinion, if you've been doing well enough against this guy that you'd be likely to survive his final battle, you probably aren't going to see a final battle at all. Maybe it's different if you're using an expansion board with more unstable locations, I guess, but if I were you I'd find some other impact he could make on seals to make the game actively harder rather than just longer. Heck, maybe just outlaw the seal victory with him: you can still seal gates and keep them shut (meaning he's not as crazy and probably annoying as Atlach-Nacha), but you have to go for a gate closing victory, or he'll wake up. Or: you have to have six seals and have all the gates closed and a number of gate trophies equal to the number of investigators. Could be interesting, though I can see circumstances where that makes a game go on forever.

Also notable: in his final battle, you will unquestionably have every investigator who makes it to the final battle until the end of said battle. And really, you should pretty much have everyone. It's not hard to recognize that the final battle is coming and decide not to go into Other Worlds for a couple turns. If you take some time to stock up, he's pretty killable since you absolutely know that you're going to have a certain number of turns going in.

Quick note: I'm working on some revisions to my Barganon ancient one (or rather, to the Herald). Probably going to revise the "The Worlds Tremble" effect in some way, as even in its reduced form it cropped up a little too often for our tastes after playtesting, and it felt a little too painful to have someone get LiTaS from it after all. (Finally got to playtest that this past weekend.) I may just have a person in the otherworld the gate is switching from switch to the same position in the new otherworld, so there's a chance they can get swapped to a bad place, but they aren't LiTaS. Or I may come up with something else. Overall, it was a fun game with some odd randomness, though. We did end up with an investigator switch (mine) from "Even Identity is Uncertain," and that was kind of hilarious. It's very interesting to end up with a new character while you still have all your old items and such, and have to figure out how to properly use the items you've been acquiring for one character now that you have a new one.

Sadly, we didn't get to test the final battle. I'll probably actually just set up a failure situation and deal out some random equipment to test it sometime.

How do you guys test final battles? You don't always end up getting one, so does anyone use some particular setup to test just the battle?

I like him a lot too. looks rather balanced

Sdrolion said:

That's true... I'd say raise the combat modifier to -8, lower the doom track to 14. Or perhaps make it -8 and leave it at 15 but make it so that once his doom track reaches 12 or 13, all gate openings are gate bursts. That'd definitely add a sense of urgency. Sealing against it would be akin to sealing vs. Hastur, so it's definitely not impossible to do even if the luck and horror check bits will make it harder.

If you really want to make him hard in the sealing department you could scrap the Horror/Luck difficulty increase in favor of a Lore/Fight difficulty increase.

Veet said:

Mmmm... Horror is worse since fight would make monsters have one more toughness, but it's harder to boost will for passing horror checks. Ohhhh, sealing. I see.

Actually he is one of the Outer Gods....

I don't think there is anything new here, most of the Nyarly variants I've seen have used one method or another to shove the masks out onto the board, including this exact method.

Veet said:

Agreed. I don't really feel like this adds anything to the already existing Nyarlathotep heralds. It's even using the same pictures. The only new device is endless moon monsters. Also, running out of masks would require major incompetence (considering that there *is* a monster limit). This set up could also be exploited for repeated uses of The Black Man as a clue funnel. And of course, allowing Nyarlathotep to spawn masks easily leads to the other problem of investigators having easy ways to get themselves devoured and respawn with new equipment.

With an effective doom track of 7.5 this guy would be next to impossible to get a sealing victory on. It would be absolutely impossible for a single player to win against him in any way.

Veet said:

::Shrug:: realistically it looks like it's really only useful for short 6+ investigator games. Otherwise it's probably going to final combat.

Settle down Kroen, it was critique not insult. You need to learn the difference still.

History

_Kroen_ said:

Apparently you are having trouble moving beyond your original failures though.

Made further edits to the Barganon / Barganon Rex AOs to coincide with my re-editing of the Power of / Fury of Barganon Heralds.

The only change here is that the Doom Track has been lowered back to 11 because Power of / Fury of Barganon have a lessened impact on the game length (since they no longer cause LiTaS with their gate-switch, and even keep the investigator's OW progress now).

As usual, you can get the Eon or image files from the links in my signature.

Herald revisions will be posted to the Herald thread.

I'm curious as to why there are two of them when there is only a single minor difference. Even the herald is unaffected by the change.

Veet said:

Actually, there are multiple differences between Barganon and B-Rex.

1. Combat modifier -3 for Barganon, -4 for B-Rex.
2. Barganon's toughness modification (Worshippers section) applies to trophies as well. B-Rex's does not, meaning he just makes monsters harder and doesn't give you any benefit from that.
3. In Barganon's attack, a roll of 6 gives you a lucky break where nothing happens. In B-Rex's, a roll of 6 makes him regenerate a doom token.

The Heralds changed in a different way: I had changed their powers away from the Gate Switch ("The Worlds Tremble" section), and now I've changed it back, but modified the rules for it so that the gate switch will never actually cause a LiTaS or extend OW travel.

In answer to your question as to why there are two of them to begin with: Avi wanted them to be harder. I wanted them to be largely just weird. So, Avi requested that I make a hard mode, and I obliged.

• Normal mode: Barganon + Power of Barganon: -3 combat modifier, benefit for trophies, chance to avoid attack in final battle, low chance of spawning mask monsters (Herald), AO can only develop Resistance defenses during final battle (Herald).
• Hard mode: Barganon Rex + Fury of Barganon: -4 combat modifier, no benefit for trophies, chance to regen doom tokens in final battle, increased chance of spawning mask monsters (Herald), AO can randomly have Immunity defenses during final battle (Herald).

Or, feel free to use Barganon + Fury or B-Rex + Power if you want, of course.

Kroen, it looks like a real fast old one you've whipped up there, and a game with it would be fast enough, that I might just test it after all my classes tonight. Although, one less seal required is a real boon, and without some ability to drive doom tokens up quickly, I think he might end up being easier than Yig, although the cultists are rather nasty. Hopefully I get to try it tonight.

Bromero said:

If you gear up for him, he's easier than Yig (if everyone's blessed and has clue tokens, you can pass that initial horror check fairly easily while still on max fight) and you should be able to wipe him out within the first couple turns. If you don't, good luck.

_Kroen_ said:

There's no "entire game" when the doom track is nine. Small teams of 3 or less have almost no chance of a sealing victory against this, so they should go for easy final combat wins instead. With a three investigator team, sans luck, it should approximately 5 turns of nothing but gaining clues to gather the necessary clues for five gates. That means that even if two of the sealings were done early (and you were lucky not to get a gate burst) and whether or not you're lucky enough to get a gate surge. Its design is unbalanced.

But thank you for informing me what players do and do not consider victories. I had no idea. Your creations are especially... "Creative" considering your supposed philosophy of having a leisurely game that does not involve doing nothing but getting clues and preparing to win by sealing. Perhaps you should also consider renaming this AO, "Inevitable Trip to Meat Grinder." Again, I wanted to give you my thanks. You teach me about Arkham like no one else could.

_Kroen_ said:

Maybe you should consider taking a look at Quacchil, Rhan, Zhar, Chaugnar, Cthulhu, Ghatanathoa, Cthugha, Atlach-Nacha, Eihort, etc. before assuming that any of them are easy during Final Combat. Yes, even if you spend the entire game gearing up.

_Kroen_ said:

That's actually statistically impossible since the number of ancient ones is not divisible by 20.

Veet said:

It's statistically possible with Kroen Math (copyright Kroen, though I'm not sure why, who'd want to copy it?)

First of the Chaos Gods: Khorne. Most of the ideas came about while a game was fresh in my mind so I have no clue about balance with the differing expansions, the effect the Marks have (they're all different types of cards) but I wanted to see how they might be represented in Arkham. FFG has the license for Chaos related Warhammer, so I'm assuming it's ok to post. They're fairly rough in design and any C&C appreciated.

Khorne - sacred number is 6. Anti-magic. Mark makes an investigator go berserk. Powerful cultists.

Nurgle: sacred number is 7. Resilient and only marginal combat prowess. Mark is a corruption and Nurglings will be everywhere.

Slaanesh: sacred number is 8. Based on speed, pleasure and excess. Mark is a relationship.

Tzeentch: sacred number is 9. Based on spells and change (random combat modifier for each player, clue token use changes). Only resistant, low combat prowess. Mark is a benefit card (in disguise).