So I was reading the new preview: Let's Shake on It, when something caught my eye:

In addition, Dark Pacts also act as great boons for spell-casters. Any time an investigator attempts to cast a spell, they may reduce the sanity cost of the spell to 0 and automatically succeed by taking a Dark Pact card.

Really? Reduce the sanity cost to 0 and automatically succeed? I guess all the bitching and griping about Call Ancient One with the Crystal of the Elder Things didn't sink in. I'm enforcing the rule that you can't cast a spell with a higher cost than the sanity you possess, regardless of your ability to negate it all (as if I didn't before). This is getting ridiculous.

I like your rule. Easy to explain: in order to cast a spell, the investigator "must have sanity [or in case of Agnes, sanity plus stamina] equal or greater than the sanity cost of the spell" (if the cost is variable, then you must declare what X is before casting). If the investigator don't meet this requirement, they can't cast the spell, period. Doesn't matter if you have a crystal of the elder things, power tokens, or whatever else they dream up in the future.

Second comment: I don't see anywhere in the "Soul Pact" card where it says you pass automatically for a spell check - maybe that's just an error on the part of the person who wrote the article.

Yeah, the limit to sanity cost not only fixes Call Ancient One, but Shroud of Shadow / Crowbar / Crystal (you could just take the whole **** Common Item deck!).

The auto-success is in the description below the card images.

Tibs said:

My friend, I fear you may be jumping the gun on this one. Did you miss what was written directly after the section you quoted? "However, in doing so, they face immediate repercussions. After they claim their Dark Pact, they immediately draw and resolve a Reckoning card. These cards represent the debt owed to the Lurker for borrowed power."

I think we should wait and see just how bad the Reckoning cards are, before we dismiss this ability of hte Pacts as "ridiculous".

Adam

No, I definitely saw that part. But an awoken and neutered Ancient One is still an awoken and neutered Ancient One. The problem still lies in "auto casting" and unbound variable sanity cost.

How bad could the Reckoning cards be? The investigator might be devoured? The AO requires extra successes to remove doom tokens or gains doom tokens? The terror level increases? None of these will matter all that much if the casting of Call Ancient One reduces the AO to two doom tokens.

Tibs said:

I don't think Shroud/Crowbar/Crystal can legitimately be described as a problem. It's a three-card combo, involving one spell, one unique item and one common item. Your chance of actually assembling it in a game is very slim, and even if you do, drawing the whole Common Item deck is scarcely an automatic win or anything close to it.

Call Ancient One is a bigger problem. It's bigger still when it goes from a 2 card combo (you need Crystal as well, really) to a 1-card one (you just take a Dark Pact).

For what it's worth though, the designers should at some point have decided upon one of two paths:

• Spells, if they have variable Sanity costs at all, always have some upper limit on the Sanity you can spend on them. Spells like Shroud of Shadow and Call Ancient One shouldn't exist.
• Nothing can ever let you negate the entire Sanity cost of a spell. Items like Crystal of Elder Things and the Dark Pact ability shouldn't exist.

Either way would have worked fine.

I'm not personally very keen on the "can't cast a spell with Sanity cost greater than your current Sanity", though I'm not entirely sure why, as most of the time this doesn't impact at all on your ability to cast "normal" spells (without variable Sanity cost) at all, since very few spells have Sanity costs above 1, and none have costs above 2.

Other workarounds are:

• Houserule that anything that would otherwise negate the Sanity cost of a spell only actually reduces it by 2.
• Remove Call Ancient One from the deck- it's in many ways a rather silly and problematic spell in the first place.

Is it the sanity discarded to attempt Call Ancient One that determines what 'X' is for the rest of the spell? Because if so, then it sounds like the Dark Pact card automatically sets this spells 'X' to zero, which means no doom tokens can be removed from the Ancient one. That's the way I read the spell. Changing 'X' is changing 'X', whether it is decided upon by the caster, or forced that way by the Dark Pact card. You're not ignoring the sanity cost, you're changing it to 0, as in X = 0. Even if you declare it to be 7 and have the 7 sanity to back it up (per your rule Tibs), if you use the Dark Pact to make it 0, then X is now zero. X can't be two different values at once. And since the rest of that card has to follow what X is, it doesn't really effect this spell at all.

Update: I just looked at the Crystal of the Elder Things card, and I think it helps further back up my argument here. Whereas the Crystal allows you to avoid paying the sanity cost, this Dark Pact effect actually changes the cost to zero, which as I said, then sets the rest of X to zero for Call Ancient One.

Yeah; a lot's going to depend on whether the wording is exactly as in the description or more along the lines of the Crystal, but, as stated, I interpreted it the way DoomTurtle did.

Meanwhile I am a little disappointed in the pacts themselves; so far they seem more complex and less flavorful than I was hoping, but we'll see how the whole Reckoning thing works out.

You could just remove Call Ancient One from the spell deck.

SimonCopp said:

Removing cards should not be "required" to keep the game in check. My stance on removing anything is: never have, never will.

If something seriously hampers or ruins the enjoyment of the game it should go. I removed three of the mission cards because they were too hard to pull off and/or auto won. Whilst you may say that fate is capricious and it reflects the nature of the mythos; when i get the chance to play it's often with at least one first time player and them having an almost absolute 'do nothing' item is not going to encourage to replay or even buy the game. The high amount of items in the game (i have AH, DH and tKiY currently) means you don't miss them and provides a good degree of variance in power and usefulness without going too far to one end, in this case the weak end. On the other end of the scale i'm currently contemplating taking out Press Pass as it's probably too strong.

I'd prefer to come up with an elegant rule solution that doesn't require changing the wording on any cards, rather than to remove components. Since Shroud of Shadow suffers the same issues as Call Ancient One (and is an otherwise good spell), simply removing CAO wouldn't do the trick anyway.

Forgive me because i haven't played with that spell, does it just suffer because of item combos. Do you also read Mark Rosewater by any chance?

Tibs said:

Yeaaaaah...

Tibs said:

I don't really agree. Nothing you can do with Shroud of Shadow can really be described as broken. +infinity to a Sneak check is rarely very good at all, and even with a crowbar doesn't break the game.

And I don't think it's an otherwise good spell anyway. It's a much worse version of Mists of Rlyeh, which, while decent, isn't among the top few spells in the first place.

Make all costs and effects equal to one when using the Dark Pact. Wanna Call the Ancient. sure but if you Dark Pact it, you're only going to remove one Doom token. Wanna use that spell that counts the number of success you rolled as a Combat bonus. Sure, but if you used a Dark Pact - it counts as one success only.

YellowPebble said:

Being able to draw the entire common item deck isn't broken? Do you realize what kind of stat bonuses that gives an investigator if you put everything on him? Two bullwhips, brass knuckles, two crosses, two motorcycles, two lanterns, multiple other stat boosters, and let's not forget the clue equivalent items (easily the equivalent of ten clues, probably more— a bit more if you have the two press passes in your deck). Let's completely ignore the arsenal of weapons you'll get in addition to that. Just because a horrible exploit can only be pulled off rarely, doesn't mean it shouldn't be plugged.

Shroud of Shadow wouldn't be affected by any of this either. If you get +2 to sneak per sanity spent, and this dark pact reduces that sanity to 0, then 0 spent equals no bonus.

The description on the preview says spell casters MAY reduce the sanity to 0 and automatically pass the check for a Dark Pact card. Again, this isn't the same as ignoring the sanity cost. You are actually changing the cost to 0, which in the case of Call Ancient One, and Shroud of Shadow (and perhaps others), you will get the same bonus as you would if you chose to cast it with 0 sanity cost normally. Which in most cases is no bonus, since that bonus is directly tied to the sanity cost. These spells are some of the times you MAY decide not to use the dark pact power.

Tibs said:

The way the Crystal is worded, it sounds like this rule is the correct way to play it. It says "Place 1 Sanity token from the bank on Crystal of the Elder Things to avoid paying the entire Sanity cost of a spell you are casting. If there are 3 Sanity tokens on it, discard Crystal of the Elder Things."

The key word there is "casting". Casting, being present tense, means you must start the casting by announcing what you are going to cast. Clearly, you can't start to cast a spell that costs more sanity than you are able to pay, nor use more sanity than you have available to add infinite bonuses to a variable cost spell. Once the casting has started, you then avoid paying its cost.

If the wording had been "of a spell you are about to cast", then yes, I would agree it makes Call Ancient One (and others) game breaking. But I believe the wording on the Crystal (and the Dark Pacts as mentioned in my previous post) prevents these game breaking situations.

Does any of what I'm saying make sense? Or am I way out of line here? Does anyone have an argument to counteract my two points? I just want to know because one person's interpretation of the written word may different than other peoples, so I would like to have it explained to me how your interpretation varies, if it does.

Yes, DoomTurtle, I like how you've summarized it. The spell has to be declared to be cast first (which includes setting variable costs, and not allowing a casting that's "too expensive"), and then when it comes time to pay up, you can possibly soften the blow.

OUTSTANDING, Doom Turtle. It felt like the entire auditorium just turned around at once to stare at the new kid who just suggested the cure for the Common Cold...and IT MADE SENSE.

It won't make me put Call Ancient One back in my games (because it's just SILLY), but still...excellent reasoning.

DoomTurtle said:

Part of the problem is that this is far from clear. Nothing in the rules indicates this. One entirely valid interpretation of the rules is that is it legal to cast a spell costing 2 sanity when you have only 1 left (you will clearly go insane, but may still be able to get benefit from the spell). This I think is what Tibs is pushing for: an actual ruling that you cannot do this.

On drawing the entire common item deck, I certainly admit that it is powerful. Very powerful. But it isn't an almost-auto win like wakening up the ancient one and removing almost all of its doom tokens. A vast arsenal of weapons doesn't help you that much, as you're limited in the number of hands you can devote to them and they don't help against physical immunes anyway. Yes, you can trade them to the other players, but that may take a few turns. Even if all the investigators can auto-defeat any monster they encounter (which is the absolute best you could hope for, and the ultimate effect won't be quite that good), though, that would scarcely ensure a win.

There aren't a lot of clue-generating items in the common item deck, and most of them require you to spend resources to use them. In my deck (which is admittedly only Base Game+Dunwich, all you get is 2 research materials plus 2 old journals, for 8 clues in total. Very good, but not ridiculous.

I'm willing to accept a very rare event that gives the investigators a substantial boost without ensuring a win. But I can see opinions might differ, and I certainly admit it's a bit un-thematic.

Whether or not drawing the whole Common Item deck is a game-winner, it is asinine. And, if you're allowed to cast a spell you can't ordinarily pay for, you can do it!

Can I seal a five-clue Gate with four Clues? Can I buy a .45 with 3 dollars? So how can I pay a Sanity Cost that requires more Sanity than I have? Don't I have to pay the Sanity Cost before I get to roll my Spell Check? I'm pretty sure that's in the manual somewhere. (Page 15-16?) And for Call Ancient One, wouldn't I have to know what X is before I pay X? Even if I'm using the Elder Thing Crystal, it says, "to avoid paying the entire Sanity cost of a spell you are casting." Don't I have to know what the entire Sanity cost is? (Thanks again, DoomTurtle, you hard-shelled smartie.) So how this goes down is: "I want to cast Call Ancient One. I'm going to use 12 Sanity to pay for X to equal 12, but because I have an Elder Thing Crystal, I can ignore that. Rolling my Spell Check..."

I honestly don't get where the "free extra Sanity" mentality is coming from. If someone could explain clearly how that works, I'm all ears.