Yes, even Tommy's personal story (at least he can still strip off a doom token). The motivation for this was primarily due to Nyarlathotep being constantly screwed by new clue-supplying effects, such as Roland Banks or Rex and his personal story.

The Pact cards should have said "spend X sanity" rather than "lose." :-/

I still play that heralds and guardians are discarded at the start of battle. King in Yellow's rules so far are the only ones to say to do this (where the herald sheet does not), but it says it in a way that can be interpreted as "since the terror level won't increase during final battle, you can just get rid of the herald sheet." But Glaaki had already existed at that point, so there was a way for the terror level to increase. My only assumption was that discarding the herald was a universal rule and that subsequent rulebooks were just in error as they forgot to mention that heralds were discarded at start of battle.

This whole thing's turning out to be a mess, isn't it?

The expansion contain quite a lot of times which are only of use with the Lurker. The gates have different backs to the regular Gates which is a little annoying if you want to play with face down Gates or draw the next gate from the top of the pile. (We keep our Gates in a bag and play face up gates, but you're mileage may vary)

Tibs said:

As you can see from Tibs avatar, clearly he is an agent of Nyarlathotep :')

Tibs said:

No ;'D everything is going according to plan.

MUHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!

...

What?

Jake yet again said:

Hah... I'm annoyed because I'm going to have to put out a new version of Kerathimel... Oh well. I saw that coming a while ago.

As for the different gate backs, I'm pretty sure the (express) intent was that you'd replace your original gates, not merge them into a giant pile.

Tibs said:

"Turning out to be"? No. It was a hot mess from the very beginning. That's part of what makes it great, unfortunately.

cim said:

Why not just say that no losses from Dark Pacts can be prevented for any reason? FFG pulled that "by-the-way" on Rhan-Tegoth (stabbing me in the head, "by the way").

And Tibs...you gotta stop blanketing that Clue thing all over 48 Investigators and 24 Ancient Ones just because of a Roland/Rex-Nyarlathotep pairing. If you have to add Power as well...you're making it a double-down QUILT. You have to go back to the bottleneck (Nyarlathotep) and fix that. "If an Investigator loses X Clues in X rounds to Nyarlathotep's attack, they are devoured." Or something.

Poor Nyarlathotep... All the investigators pick on him.

jgt7771 said:

But then I am changing Nyarlathotep's attack, which means I'm changing the AO. That does not feel right. What FFG needs to do is to make sure that expansion components don't create issues with the base game components—I'm not even talking about other expansions! Rhan had that issue with Michael, Roland had that issue with Nyarlathotep, Lily had that issue with Yig (provided you did not use Epic Battle, but even then it would be a yawn of a fight). While Rex's story requires Rex himself, the story is written to steam clues onto investigators, which is a problem with Nyarlathotep. This is why I want to ban all gaining of clue tokens during final combat. Besides, in the heat of battle, it has to be really hard to learn something new and insightful about the AO.

Now, the issue I have is with Power Tokens as they apply to sanity and stamina loss. Clearly, I don't mean to say that an investigator can lose a Power token instead of a Clue token against Nyar, but without diving deep into the implications, I worry about how it affects Hastur, Yig, and Ithaqua.

Tibs said:

Um...I have a question. If Rhan-Tegoth gets the happy "you can't prevent my losses, ha ha" clause, simply because he MIGHT face 1-in-48 Michael, why can't we just give Hastur, Yig, and Ithaqua the same unwritten clause?

Because that's not how they were created? Neither was Rhan, but Kevin "missed" that thing about Michael.

Because they're lesser Ancient Ones? I will never believe that Hastur is "below" Rhan.

Because unlike Rhan, Hastur, Yig, and Ithaqua were already square with Michael, Harvey, et al? And now they're not. Add clause, problem solved.

Hastur, Yig, and Ithaqua didn't need it. Rhan-Tegoth did. The issue lies in Lurker components, not retroactively in base-game AOs and investigators.

Tibs said:

And...NOW...they do.

Okay...backtrack...is there anything that says Dark Pacts can be used in Final Battle? Since they're evil anyway, and used by the Herald to bring about the Ancient One, wouldn't the "gifts" be taken away once the dupes fulfill the Herald's ultimate goal? Bound Ally cards are even used to HELP the Ancient One. So get rid of all of them. "When the Ancient One awakens, discard all Soul and Blood Pacts." (Like the Healing Stone?)

Does that solve the problem?

well for certain the herald cards aren't discarded when the ancient ones awaken. the clues my dear watson ...err walters are there in the cards.

clue 1 : a few of the herald cards state that when the ancient one wakes up then he becomes more powerful, (check out mother hydra, father dagon, the dunwich horror and the dark pharaoh)

clue 2: while it's in the king in yellow 'herald variant rules' to discard that herald you have to bear in mind that this was the first and only herald at that time and obviously had no effect on the game once the AO woke up. in addition that particular clause is not included in any of the other rules supplements. this cannot be an oversight on the designers part as they always assume that you haven't bought any other expansion and they haven't printed the hearald rules from the KIY rule sheet verbatum.

clue 3 there are some game effects on the herald that look at the board during the AO battle (ie the dark pharaoh, the dunwhich horror for example) so the AO battle is not carried out in seclusion from the rest of the game (even though it may seem like it 9 times out of 10) so the state of play for the whole game is live and relevant or 'saved' (like a computer game checkpoint) during the AO battle and this includes the hearalds.

clue 4: the lurker in the threshold is the only herald that has rule or game effect that could possibly be used by the investigators during the final battle: Rites of Magic and Ever present temptaion. given that all heralds remain in play (see clues 1-3 above) we have to rely on the wording of these game effects: ie...

rites of Magic- " whenever and investigator casts a spell..."

Ever- present temptation- "at the start of any turn..." "ever present"

These effects are self limiting as you can only have 3 dark pacts per player, you'll be drawing a reckoning card too if you use the ever present text. the bound ally would go straight onto the ancient one so that would really hurt the player taking the dark pact.

so that just leaves power loops. considering that investigators are supposed to be drawn at random, before randomly drawing the ancient one and/or herald, the 'broken' power combinations become fairly remote but if they do happen and the investigators manage to survive the game then their gonna win and i say thats fine, the game can be very tough and hard and so sometimes the good guys get a lucky break, but given the number of player/investigator/ancient one combinations possible when drawn randomly its pretty darn remote.

personnally i think the 'loose x stamina to gain x power' is clearly a trade-off or a cost, you trade one for the other, you pay one for the other, pay one to increase the other, and therefore cannot be abused by the gangster et al.

Finally you could always wait for the FAQ to come out. then again play talisman instead we have no problems with rule ambiguities there

Tibs said:

I was thinking about this and thinking that you wouldn't lose the pact just because you discard your ally either to use its power (i.e. discard Duke to restore sanity) or to fulfill something like a rumor. You still got to use the services of the ally, why would the pact suddenly be broken just because the ally is no longer with you? You got your use out of it, and it should still attach to the AO if he awakens. The pact isn't completely worthless either, it will still allow you to spend power as money.

If you could discard the pact, then you could get a bound ally, fulfill a rumor, then get another bound ally. Essentially fulfilling it for absolutely no cost with ease, possibly using the opportunity to cast free spells each time you take that pact. At the extreme, it would be way too easy to fulfill Join the Winning Team.

I think they were meaning to limit the number of times you can cast free spells, and by attaching the pact to the ally, it would be simply to let you know which of your allies you discard when the AO awakens.

The Thing In The Attic said:

The Thing In The Attic said:

Not so fast, Holmes! As to Clue 1, the final combat effects of all of the Heralds are resolved when the appropriate AO first awakens (extra Doom tokens and combat modifiers for Nyarlathotep or Yog, extra successes needed on Cthulhu, etc.). After you apply those initial effects, none of the Heralds DO anything for the entire rest of the battle. So it might simply be a case of "applly final battle modifiers before returning the Herald to the box".

Clue 2: As pointed out earlier, Glaaki the Great was already around the King in Yellow Herald came out, and the Herald would certainly have a tremendous effect on final battle against the armored slug . . . if not for the instruction to return it to the box, indicating that FFG did not intend for the Herald's to have CONTINUING effects on the final battle.

Clue 3: See above for Clue 1. All of the Heralds effects happen when the AO first awakens, after which the Herald is basically gone for all practical purposes.

Clue 4: And the fact that this is the only Herald that could be used by the Investigators in the Final Battle makes it a freakish anomaly that should rightfully be brought into line by a ruling that no more Pacts can be taken and no Power used once the AO awakens; otherwise the advantage to the players becomes absolutely ridiculous, in my opinion.

Come on, FFG, how about a ruling? And while we're at it, what happens when moving gates would enter a vortice?!?!?

As long as no new pacts could be taken during the final battle then yes, JGT, I think that would solve the problem. Tibs, don't you think you should include a "Pact or Bound Ally" entry under "Special Acquisitions"?

Solan said:

Not allowing pacts or power to be used at all during the Final Battle also makes sense thematically. Why would the Herald let you use its power to fight the very being he was paving the way to arrive?

DoomTurtle said:

maybe the lurker is more subtle, perhaps a little like darth sidious in star wars, seeing which side wins, and joining the winning team either the investigators or the AO

either way the lurker wins if he has dark pacts with the investigators, it would only be a matter of time before he owns their sou, and in the final battle only the ancient one is defeated not the herald.

thematically of course

jgt7771 said:

Yes... That is rather frustrating. Why don't they have unpreventable damage? Perhaps they should be modified since they're all horribly weak now.

If you could discard the pact, then you could get a bound ally, fulfill a rumor, then get another bound ally. Essentially fulfilling it for absolutely no cost with ease, possibly using the opportunity to cast free spells each time you take that pact. At the extreme, it would be way too easy to fulfill Join the Winning Team.

*********************

No, because it would still require gaining three more allies. Even if you started with an ally you'd need to gain two more allies, not *that* easy to do (but technically possible at this point). I can conceive of someone going berserk and trying to kill everyone else now. Heh heh heh... Not me. No no. I would never do such a thing ;'D

Avi_dreader said:

I meant if you discarded the bound ally pact everytime an ally was discarded. You could get a bound ally each turn, and each turn sacrificing it and discarding the bound ally pact just to get another one next turn for the next location. That's why I think you keep the pact whether the ally is discarded or not.

If you are allowed to discard the Bound Ally Pact, it better go on the Ancient One to wait for it to wake up. Because, if not, that totally feels like cheating the Lurker, and there's NO WAY it would allow a filthy monkey to get the upper hand on one of its deals. Once you've sold your soul, it stays sold whether or not you still have the thing you sold it for.

(I honestly can't believe people are entertaining the notion of discarding a Pact.)

DoomTurtle said:

::Gulp:: oh, hell... I didn't think of that. It's been a while since I've read Join the Winning Team. Hrm... That *is* problematic.

Has anybody tried asking FFG these questions directly yet?

jgt7771 said:

No, they still don't. It's Lurker screwing everything up. I want to leave the base game AOs un-modified, even if they happen to be weaker than others. They feel sacred to me. At least, more sacred than tinkering with heralds and the like. Plus, the newer the herald, the more I'm inclined to tinker.

DoomTurtle, I like your idea of retaining the Bound Ally pact even if the ally leaves your services. You think the mob would just a shady deal they made with you just because you happened to use up the illicit product or service they provided you? I'm going to say that once you get any Dark Pact, you have to keep it unless some game effect allows you to discard it.

Additionally, the rules for the King in Yellow herald say that if the AO awakens, the herald should be removed from play since it doesn't have any futher effect on the game. But since it would definitely have an effect with Glaaki, who already existed when KiY was published, I can only assume that Heralds in general are supposed to be discarded when the AO awakens and that every rulebook since KiY forgot to specify this. Of course, this is just optimistic thinking, and just removing heralds and guardians during final combat will reduce the chances that something wacky like all this might happen.

Finally, since the only risk element of gaining pacts and Power was that a Reckoning card might mess you up, and you don't draw Reckoning cards anymore during final combat, I'm going to make everyone discard all their Power and Pacts when the AO awakens (except for applied Bound Allies, of course). Since I'm discarding the Lurker as well, nobody can use its free spell cast, either.

Boy, I'm sure glad the proto-FAQ hasn't been in motion. Lurker really needs to be analyzed, quite more thoroughly than I had expected...