Hello,

I can see that the Dunwich Horror can be very, very nasty and He can pretty much take a player out pretty easily. My concern however is in regards to one of his Combat Checks for a specific card. If you fail a combat check you lose all of your items on one of the random cards you draw before you face him. So what does this mean? A) are you able to sneak from him at all? B) if you lose all your items and you keep failing and you have no items how does combat end if he really does not damage you? What happens when facing this scenario? Thanks for your time.

Addition: I am guessing that you only have 1 round of combat with the Dunwich Horror? Not sure. Thanks again for your time.

adeangel said:

You would disengage from combat unless you had five dice still (in which case you would win after round after round of futile rolling, or auto-passing).

Thanks Avi. I guess disengaging is different from Sneaking? So when you disengage do you choose at that time after all your items are taken to disengage or would you attempt to roll a sneak check? Furthermore if you fail a sneak check before or during the encounter with the Dunwich Horror does he apply his combat damage to you much like a regular monster does when you fail a sneak check?

Lastly. Say the person does have 5 dice whereas he atleast has a chance of succeeding (basing it on the Dunwich Horror that causes you to lose all your items), but doing the "auto" bit you mentioned does this mean you will eventually auto succeed whereas you dont have to roll to defeat him or that you automatically disengage combat after the first failed attempt? Thanks again.

Avi_dreader said:

Didn't it get ruled that in situations where it would be impossible for the investigator to defeat the monster and monster defeat the investigator then the investigator goes insane? I think something similar was discussed about McGlenn vs 1 stamina damage monsters.

Veet said:

That's correct Veet, but I don't get the point. In this case, if investigator has at least 5 dice to roll, being the DH toughness 5, it's possible for the investigator to kill the monster

However if he has fewer and draws the discard item version of the dunwitch horror then it becomes imposible for them to defeat each other.

Veet said:

Very true. Then, investigator insane and DH alive!

Julia said:

I don't think that's the case, because the Investigator could always simply Evade the Horror; it has a +2 Awareness modifier.

Would it be safe to say then that I can use a house rule for this then?

Solan said:

Exactly, you would need to have -2 sneak to not be able to automatically disengage (i.e. roll infinite hypothetical evade checks) which is extremely unlikely (or impossible— I'm not sure, I think it's impossible acually).

Julia said:

Nope. Because the +2 evade modifier would probably give him infinite rounds to attempt to flee.

Avi_dreader said:

Sneak at 0, Mythos giving -1 to Sneak/Evade checks in play, Yibb-Tstll as GOO? Rolling 1 die, needing 2 success.

Dam said:

There you go, thanks Dam ;'D

So for Adeangel's sake, who you veterans seem to be confusing with your veteran talk , Kevin Wilson's (which can be found somewhere on these boards) has made the rule for how to deal with it, so you do not need a house rule.

If it is impossible to make the number of successes needed for combat, or if it is impossible to make the number of successes to flee (usually one, can sometimes be more, or the monster has the ambush ability), and the monster damage does not make you unconscious, insane, or devour you which causes an infinite combat loop, then you go insane and end up in the asylum (or Lost in Time and Space if in an Other World).

So having no items against the Dunwich Horror, and less then 5 dice to roll to kill it, your only chance is to flee. If you can not get the success needed to flee thanks to mythos or Ancient One modifiers, then its off to the asylum with you.

Thank you DoomTurtle and everyone else for that matter, I appreciate you hanging in there for me

Oh yeah. You will have issues evading the Dunwich Horror if enough of the following are in play:

• The investigator's Sneak slider is very low (0 or even 1)
• The investigator has Hearing Loss (-1 Sneak)
• An environment is in play such that all Sneak checks are -1
• The AO is Yibb-Tstll, so that a second success is required to pass an evade check

I'm sure there are other problems I haven't accounted for.

It begs the question why the Dunwich Horror doesn't have an autopass for evade checks. He lives on Sentinel Hill, which there's no need to visit unless you're hunting the Horror. So in normal circumstances, it's not like you're going to meet him unless you want to fight him. The Horror himself doesn't care about killing investigators. He just wants to wake up his dad as quickly as possible.

avec said:

Well... All his other attribute cards will eventually devour you or knock you out.

And he can move off sentinel hill under a few rare circumstances.

Avi_dreader said:

True. And one could flee from him just to spam his DH cards. But how often is that really an effective strategy? It would take you 2-3 turns to get the DH card that you wanted and in the meantime you'd be getting the crap kicked out of you. He's already pretty easy to evade. FFG could have just given him a "-" for his evade and avoided the whole infinite loop question.