Situation:

• 1 stamina
• 1 common item: food
• 1 unique item: Blue Watcher of the Pyramid

I just exited a portal and I'm about to close it. Could I be able to use Blue Watcher of the Pyramid with 1 stamina and 1 food to close the gate? Granted, I would knock myself unconscious, but the card does say:

"Lose 2 stamina and discard Blue Watcher of the Pyramid to automatically succeed a Combat check or a Fight check or Lore check made to close a gate."

Plus, in real life, who wouldn't sacrifice their lives to save the world, am i right?

I'm not even sure if you'd need to use the food (i.e. I don't think you'd have to).

Has the issue of sacrificing sanity and stamina you don't have ever been totally addressed or was that recently brought up by some of the lurker previews?

@Avi_dreader
so you're saying that it's possible to kill myself in order to win the game? I hope thats the case, but then the card specifically says that I need to lose 2 stamina to use the card.

@Veet
I'm not sure what you mean by lurker previews. But this is a situation that happened earlier today in a game. I needed to close one more gate to win, otherwise the ancient one would awaken with the next gate opening.

But with the Blue Watcher of the Pyramid, I'd need to sacrifice 2 stamina. With the food, I'd reduce the cost to 1 and then knock myself unconscious. What I'm wondering is if this is possible because there's not really any real bad repercussions if I got knocked unconscious besides heading into the hospital.

itsjonvu said:

Pyramid is not a cost, it's a loss. If it were cost, then Food wouldn't help you since it works only on losses (same as Michael McGlen). You can use an Elder Sign when at 1 Sta or San and the gate is sealed even though you're bounced out (or devoured if both Sta and San were at 1).

The item causes you to lose 2 stamina when you use it, so you don't even have to have 2 stamina: you'll just go unconscious.

And hey, if it's winning you the game, why not do it?

Tibs said:

And unless your sanity is at zero (then you should be in either arkham asylum or lost in time and space) your character would only be knocked unconscious and not devorered (or killed) [spelling is my weakness and I am too lazy at this hour to look up the correct spelling].

If you score your games (I dont, I play for the love of the game and H.P. Lovecraft) there might be an issue.

itsjonvu said:

The question of whether or not one could cast a spell they didn't have enough sanity for was raised not too long ago by a preview for the upcoming Lurker at the Threshold expansion. It sparked something of a debate, which I'm not about to bring up again here. Veet mentioned it due to the similarity between spending Sanity you don't have and losing Stamina you don't have. As other posters have said, though, I think you're okay in this case since this is a stamina loss, not a stamina cost. Losses happen as a result of activating something, costs are required in order to activate something, so it's a subtle but important difference.

Yes, loss and cost are different, as indicated by the rulings on Harvey Walters. That makes this scenario completely doable.

Wait, what makes this a loss...is it just the use of the word "lose?" I guess I've been assuming that anything of the form "Do X to make Y happen" counts as a cost

(otherwise there wouldn't, to my knowledge, be any point in the FAQ clarifying Michael McGlen's "stamina cost" situation)

subochre said:

Any item that says to "lose" X sanity or stamina is a loss, the same type of loss as a monster dealing stamina damage for a failed combat check or sanity damage for a failed horror check. These item stamina losses Michael McGlen can reduce by 1, as well can Harvey Walters reduce these item sanity damages by 1. And just like you lose whatever stamina you have even if a monster deals more, these items still work if you have to lose more than you have available.

Spells have a sanity cost, and some items will say to "spend" X amount of stamina, or sanity, or movement points. These are costs. These are what must be paid to get the item or spell to work. If you only have 1 stamina, and it says to spend 3, then the item wouldn't work.

Ah, ok, thanks; the spend/lose distinction makes sense to me now, but now I'm confused about something else. Food (or McGlen) could reduce the stamina loss from Blue Watcher, but doubtless Finn Edwards couldn't prevent the discard of the Watcher itself. Does this mean that only the discard component of the Watcher's activation is a cost, and that the rest is just a loss associated with the effect?

Don't think of Watcher as reading, "lose X to make Y happen," think of it as "lose X and make Y happen." Losing X is part of the effect, not the cost.

And yes, for any item that requires itself to be discarded to take effect, being discarded is part of the cost of the effect and Finn couldn't prevent it. If he wants to keep the Blue Watcher of the Pyramid, for example, that means that he's not using it.

Are we talking about a closing victory or a sealing victory? If it's a sealing victory, wouldn't you fall unconscious after you closed the gate but before you spent the clue tokens to seal it?

avec said:

I'm not sure how the rules read for that distinction, but I've always thought of sealing as an addition to closing, rather than a separate phase in the process. ie: If you choose to Seal, it happens at the same time as the Close. But the Seal is optional, it doesn't have to happen if you don't want to.

Steve-O said:

we already had over 6 gates sealed, this was the last gate open so all i needed was to close it.

itsjonvu said:

Not so sure I got the point - in case, sorry - but... you said you had already sealed 6 locations? The requirement for a sealing victory is to have 6 seals on the board, regardless of the number of gates still open... so why bother with closing another gate? You had already won the game