I posted a few things in the custom investigators section, but I forgot I have a few Ancient One concepts that people might enjoy.

Starting with Crom Cruach.

Inspired by the creature from the animated movie "The Secret of Kells" (and also of the Pagan deity of the same name from Celtic Mythology), Crom Cruach creates a board state that functions oddly, yet in a fun way. The most lethal thing that can happen against this Ancient One is a gate opening on the Woods, but sealing that location becomes especially prominent here as well. Hope you and your buddies enjoy.

Next, I have Bloody Marie, from a recent pioneer project in video games: "Skullgirls"

Originally, I had tried to create a very complex "wish-granting" function to this Ancient One, but ultimately it came off a little too similarly to The Lurker at the Threshold in terms of mechanics. Plus, I wanted there to be at least 1 other Ancient One that interacts with Mask monsters in our box of Arkham stuff. Though I didn't include much of a wish-granting mechanic within the normal boundaries of the Ancient One, all of the sinister plots revolve around an old version of the "wishes" system.

Finally, from the popular playing card game "Magic: the Gathering", here's Lorthos the Tidemaker:

Straight from the depths, Lorthos covers Arkham in a massive flood! This is an Ancient One designed to make a non-relevant monster type (Aquatic) suddenly VERY RELEVANT. Understandably, making every part of Arkham aquatic is a bit game-breaking at times, but the number of interactions is fairly limited since there aren't even a surplus of aquatic monsters in the monster cup most times (I personally play with everything in the monster cup, but I don't know what other people play with).

Down below is a download link with the Strange Eons files for all 3 previewed Ancient Ones and a full set of Sinister Plot cards to compliment them.

http://www.mediafire.com/?n381emr1w1afy9y

Click image to download it at print quality.

The design is good, but it seems like the Ancient One's effects are all kind of seperate from one another, and there's not a lot of synergy between them.

It definitely still works, but it seems like there should be a money-based interaction with the cultists.

The only major problem I see is the combat modifier. Ancient One combat modifiers don't generally exceed (-6) because any higher and the investigators won't really have a reasonable method for fighting against it, especially since the Ancient One's attack only allows for at most about 3-4 rounds of combat. This Ancient One, in my opinion, is almost literally unfightable. The attack penalty is already pretty severe, but given the nature of this Ancient One it seems like his natural modifier should only be a (-3) or maybe (-4), probably with Physical Resistance or Immunity (Complete dominance over the material world, as an avatar of Avarice)

His modifier and attack are both easier than Alatch Natcha. AN has -5 but magical+physical resistance, which will overall give you less dice than plain -7. Also AN's attack is also much more severe. And if that isn't enough, AN's slumber ability is also mile more difficult than mine. So as you see, Yegga-Ha is easier than AN in every single way. Not to say he's an easy AO, but everything is relative.

As for synergy, you're right. Wait for my next post.

Download link: http://rapidshare.com/files/1937401554/Yegga-Ha-.rar

Tried to download this but got a "Download permission denied by uploader" message.

Hi Everyone,

It's a relatively interesting idea, but you can manipulate X in the final battle fairly easily, especially as some of the weaker monsters gain endless and will keep popping out of the cup indefinitely. What about drawing X monsters, where X = 6 - seals in play, then totalling the toughness, as well as giving the Ancient One the abilities of the monsters drawn (e.g. If you drew a Ghost, it'd get Physical Immunity)

Here's a few things regarding Shaurash-Ho:

"All monsters move to the nearest investigator in a street area or unstable location." - That's a very aggressive clause, but it might be okay since the Ancient One doesn't actually do too much else (namely, this ability is strong enough to compensate for a lack of other abilities) . That being said, you need some clarification text for it.

First, when do these monsters move towards players? Is it "for any time they would move normally, they instead move in this special manner", or is it "every turn, each monster moves in this special manner"?

Second, to what degree are the monsters moving? Right now, I'm assuming they just drop onto players from their original location similar to how a flying monster would from the sky, which makes the ability just flat out brutal. However, there's the possibility that the monsters move normally, but instead of white or black they simply move towards the nearest investigator.

These things might be obvious to you since you created them, but for me who is reading it I can't actually tell when these interactions happen, and how they do.

"At the start of game, all investigators are cursed" - Hell no. This is ridiculously debiliitating, and in combination with the previously mentioned clause I don't see how investigators are even supposed to survive. Just for semantics, I'll create a scenario for you, and if you don't want to read it, skip to the bottom where I offer a solution.

Let's assume there's a 5 player Arkham game, and just for fun let's assume your starting party includes Rex Murphy and Sister Mary. By the start of the game, Sister Mary is unblessed and every other investigator is cursed (except Rex Murphy, since he already starts cursed). Since one of Sister Mary's only true strengths is that she starts blessed, she's now fairly crippled to being very below average, but that doesn't even compare to the other 3 investigators you've effectively made completely nonfunctional, and Rex Murphy is Rex Murphy so whatever. What's it going to take to come back from this situation? Assuming no one rolls their curse off, it will take 20 toughness in monster trophies and 4 encounters to shave off all the curses, and you would add 5 more and an additional encounter if you aren't playing with Sister Mary. This is also a condition you need to fulfill while being completely hounded down from all directions by monsters that you can't effectively get away from, and you certainly can't fight. TLDR: It's too hard, and not really any fun unless it is literally the Ancient One's ONLY ability.

What I would recommend is to forcefully curse only the first player at the start of game, or to have every player roll for the start of game curse. At least give the investigators a chance to fight back.

"-X, where X is half the toughness of all monsters on the table. 13 track, no resistances or immunities." - This isn't bad, but it's a little easy in my opinion. I'd recommend knocking it down to a 12 track and changing the -X to be "draw 3 monsters, and his combat modifier becomes half of their combined toughness" . Unfortunately, I don't have any suggestions on his attack since I don't know anything about the creature.

Hi Shining Aquas,

Thank you very much for you comments and suggestions, hope you'll find this second version more balanced and playable!

So, Chthonians don't do earthquakes any longer, Hounds of Tindalos don't teleport on investigators in locations, Flyers don't fly anymore, Stalkers move like normal monsters, Fast monsters are slow and so on? And the Shadowy Figure don't eat clues any longer. Or did you intend to transform all black bordered monsters into Stalkers?

Plus: you said monsters have to move following the arrows. So, what happens if we have monsters on expansion boards with no investigators in? Do they move? Or not? Since they can't catch the train (according to your wording, they move one space / movement, so at a certain point they won't be allowed to enter the Bishop's brook bridge, for instance, because of the arrow leading in the opposite direction; plus the bus depot in Innsmouth and the Kingsport Station don't have any arrows leading to the main board), what happens then? What happens if the special movement of the Dark Druid is triggered?

Plus, the attack during Final Battle is based on terror level advancing (a la Glaaki). So, it'd make clever the design of the AO if his powers helped the terror level to boost a little. Like: "every time a Cultist is defeated, raise the terror level by one" (and with Endless cultists, you risk to cry blood before the game ends)

Finally, wording: "Warlocks [and so on] gain Endless". Full stop. No need for further clarifications.

(sorry, I see now it's a repost. I should have posted before :-/ )

Hi Julia,

Thanks for your time and observations, here goes a third version:

Much better :-) Very last question: are you sure about the +1 doom for insane / devoured / retired investigators? Could be really heavy to deal with (if you're unlucky, this could mean +4 doomers in a single game, which means you're playing against an 8-doomer doom track, that can imply an 8-turn game, which is impossible to win by sealing unless you're very lucky with your starting items - read: Elder Signs flooding Arkham). Not saying you have to change this, just saying it requires a lot of playtesting to be sure it's feasible before final combat

Ok, that was my very last comment, I promise :-)

Thanks to you for fixing and posting countless times the AO!

Looks good. There are three minor grammatical changes I would make, but if you've already printed it out it's ignorable.

I would change the wording on worshippers from "gain Endless" to "are Endless", change the main ability to say "raise the Terror Track/Level by 1", and remove the last comma on the main ability (not needed).

So, like I said, completely ignorable

This thread is fantastic. It's great to se so many people's take on what would provide a unique challenge to Arkham Horror players! As for my own humble addition to this wonderful gallery…

I've been mulling over creating Ancient Ones from video game bosses I love, preferably ones with a strong element of creepyness and horror of course. That being said, I've decided to turn some of the bosses from the great game Persona 4 into bonafide horrors. I'm starting off with something perhaps a touch too modern for most Lovecraftian tastes- Shadow Naoto, a robotic boss possessing great intellect. I was trying to play on the dangers of Investigators knowing too much and yet too little, as well as stacking the deck against them in the final battle- brutally, but hopefully not impossibly so. Have a gander and tell me what you think!

I feel that while the design of Shadow Naoto is one intended to limit the investigators somewhat, it most often won't actually limit that much. In fact, the Ancient One actually "benefits" Investigators more with the gift of control over the mythos. Let's look it over.

The first part is effectively Yibb-Tstll's ability (Investigators cannot have more than 5 clue tokens ever, discarding extras) but done a little differently (You can definitely have more than 5 clue tokens, but if anyone does it adds a doom token during mythos), but much like Yibb-Tstll's abliity most investigators will simply treat it as "I can't have more than 5 clues" and play around it accordingly. Chances are, most players are already trying to jump into gates at 5 clue tokens anyway so this probably won't punish anyone too severely, with the only exceptions being Rex Murphy and Patrice Hathaway. I'm just worried that this ability isn't going to be very relevant in most games and is very easy to play around. Alternatively, people can use it to force the Ancient One to wake up on their terms instead of the game's, more on that later.

The second part turns cultists into stalkers that still don't have a horror check, but do have a -3 evade and combat modifier. That by itself is pretty reasonable, but then you also added "defeating one grants a clue token". I effectively read this statement as "Sometimes you can pick up a clue token by ending your movement in the streets, and occasionally you get an extra clue when you try to enter/exit a gate". Yeah, -3 is a tough combat check, but most people have a Fight of 4 or higher and somebody usually has a weapon, so the people capable of fighting cultists will do that instead of picking up clues in locations, while the non-fighters focus on grabbing clues in locations. Clue Tokens are a valuable resource, and part of the difficulty of Arkham is working with the very few clues you are given. Giving investigators more clues isn't the sort of thing an Ancient One should be doing in my opinion, unless the theme of the Ancient One is to mislead the investigators with "false information". I have a friend that executed the same idea fairly well with an Ancient One based on the Homestuck villian "Doc Scratch", in which defeating a cultist rewarded a clue token but also required the investigator to pass a Lore check or add a doom token in the process. It'd be easier to reference it if I had the files for Doc Scratch, but I do not unfortunately.

Finally, there's fighting the Ancient One. As far as I can tell, it's pretty much unfightable the normal way. However, you can choose to cheese the Ancient One out with the following three-man team: Patrice Hathaway, Mandy Thompson, Joe Diamond. You basically just try to grab as many clues on Joe and Patrice as you can up to 5, and use Mandy to farm the General Store for a Shotgun and however many Bullwhips and Brass Knuckles you can. After you have a shotgun, start grabbing more clues with Joe and Patrice and just try to wake up the Ancient One ASAP. Make sure to bless Joe Diamond before it wakes up. Once it awakens, Joe Diamond spends all but 1 clue token and all but 1 of Patrice's clues (or all of her's if you want), and rolls like a beast. After his insane roll, use Mandy's Research ability to reroll all the failures, and any bullwhips you picked up to reroll failures after that. If you are reasonably lucky, you'll kill the Ancient One in a giant blast of glory.

I understand that you can implement the above gambit against almost any Ancient One, but it is much easier to execute against Shadow Naoto than other AO's because 1) She allows you way to "control" the doom track to force an awakening before too much of the mythos screws with you, and 2) she allows you the means to generate extra clues off of cultists. So far, she's the only Ancient One I've seen where you can literally predict and force an awakening against her at your own discretion.

I know this post sounds overly harsh, but I honestly feel these abilities need to go back to the drawing board before being played with.

I really don't mind constructive critisism at all. It's what going to help me improve. What I feel really stupid about is failing to notice how the Investigators could abuse her awakening right away. That, of course, sends any difficulty the Ancient One presents down the drain to a team of Investigators with a modicum of strategy. She was intended for short games, but that can perhaps be done in other ways- the easiest one being shortening the doom track. I have another homebrewed abililty from way back that may be more appropriate while still fitting the theme of dangerous knowledge.

As for the Cultists, I find it hard to give them unique qualities. What I came up with for Shadow Naoto was essentially due to lack of creativity. I feel that the movement trait fits in that they systematically hunt you down, but I agree that the concequences of this actually benefitting players is disastrous. If anything, they should be limiting the players abilities to "puzzle together the truth". I don't want to give them Horror checks, so I'll have to add to the damage. Trite as it might be, I'll take Clue Tokes from them if they lose instead.

In the battle, I tried to play on that she knows everyone's weaknesses. Her start of battle plays on the Mute Ray, a special attack that takes away the protagonists magical abilities. I was thinking of restricting it to spells, but I wanted to "play tough". Perhaps it would have made more sense to just take away spells and add magical resistance to her, as well as a lower combat rating.

Her attack is horribly formulated in hindsight. I wrote "lowest rated skill" with "lowest rated skill under skill sliders", but I see now that it would be easy to read it as "lowest rated skill in generel", which would be 1 or even 0. By changing this I hope to add some more strategy to the battle.

With all your tips in mind, here is a new version, revised all along, most importantly with no "free" clue tokens. I hope you'll find here more playable, and thanks a bunch for the very thoruogh review you gave!

Hi Everyone,

After testing and kind suggestions I'm posting a new version of Shaurash-Ho, I hope you'll find it interesting enough for your gaming sessions.

Main ability:

1/6 chance of going insane on any failed horror check? Amusing, and kind of neat. Everybody loses a sanity and the terror level goes up on going insane/devoured/retired? Probably not as bad as it looks.

Worshippers:

I'm not really feeling the connection here. "Shaurash-Ho disseminates terror through his cursed bloodline". Oh god, these monsters are probably going to be terrifying! "(Monsters) are endless". Um…what?

Given your opening line and description of the worshippers, I was expecting them to simply make horror checks harder. Not only would that match the flavor text, it would also synergize well with the Ancient One's main ability.

FIGHT!:

Um…it's fine I guess. Kinda boring though. Taking all the monsters on the board and fusing their combined resistances and immunities is a nice touch, but I was kinda expecting a bit more out of the actual attack.

I don't usually leave stuff up in these thread for critique anymore, but no one seems to respond to anything in my thread . So, here's a little something I've been working on that's not completely final:

HI Shining Aquas, thanks again for your comments and suggestions, here goes another version of Shaurash-Ho…

What an astounding amount of amazing work in you thread!

Atomicq said:

Oh, thanks. If you happen to see anything in there that you want to comment on (like balance input or suggestions), just post them in there. I'll definitely see it.

To be completely honest, I think I preferred the previous version of Shaurash-Ho to this one, even though this version was making changes in a positive direction.

The changes made to The Evil Eye are a tad insane. Whenever an investigator is driven insane, devoured or retired, each other investigator loses 2 sanity, where before everyone lost 1 sanity and terror level increased by 1. I can't decide which is more flavorful for the execution of your idea since they are both good, but here's a startling thought: Shaurash-Ho is absolutely ridiculous on a chain reaction.

Let's say someone fails a horror check and rolls a 1, or just goes insane the good ol' fashioned way. Everyone else loses 2 sanity. In a 4-player game, that means one person going insane causes the team of investigators to lose an additional 6 sanity. However, what happens if that loss causes another player to be driven insane? That means the two survivors have now lost 4 sanity each, and the person that just went insane lost another 2 (I sure hope he got a madness, or he just went insane again). Among the two survivors, it's probably likely that one of them went insane since they just unexpectedly lost 4 sanity, in a game where the normal max is usually 5-6, which means the final survivor has now lost 6 sanity and is almost definitely insane. Due to the chain reaction of insanity, the original player to go insane and start this whole mess has now lost another 6 sanity, so he's gone insane again, causing this entire loop to repeat itself. Keep in mind, this was with 4 players, but the game goes up to 8.

At least, when it was a loss of 1 sanity and raising the terror level by 1, it could create chain reactions but they weren't nearly as likely to go infinite like that. So, I would propose one of two solutions:

1) Revert it back to the original text, play with it for a few games and see what happens. If a chain reaction ever occurs, study the reaction of the audience involved.

2) Keep the new version, but change it to say "all other investigators lose 2 sanity. This effect cannot cause them to fall below 1 sanity."

Then there's the new worshippers. Flavorfully, I think this is a bit better but it's not quite what I has hoping for. I still think the best thing to do with worshippers on this Ancient One is do something involving horror checks, like Cultists and Maniacs have a horror rating of -2 and a sanity damage of 1. The current version is actually super strong, possibly too strong. Curses are an extreme bane in this game, and getting cursed lasts you for a long time, possibly forever if you can never afford time or resources to manually remove it. I'm both glad and upset that you've attached the curse to some of the weakest monsters. Now what are people supposed to do about cultists? You can't sneak past it, so you kill it, then you are horribly detrimented for multiple turns. You could always opt to ignore it, but sometimes they just get in your way (like sitting on a gate).

Anyways, I think you're on the right track, but this set of changes wasn't quite what was needed.

Hi Shining Aquas,

Well, definately Shaurash-Ho is very Co-Op! :-)

The previous idea about Cursing the investigators tried to put a choice on the board… The group can play trying to evade the worshippers (so no curse), but since the High Priest, Warlocks and Witches have Magical Inmmunity/Resistance, if the players goes to a final battle they will find a Great Old One with Magical Inmmunity/Resistance too…

This new version makes the worshippers just more dangerous and Endless, so no curse but also no trophies…

So here goes Shaurash-Ho VIII, quite a long dinasty!