I just finished my second game with the Lurker as Herald and afterwards I started wondering if I was interpreting one part of the Soul/Blood Pacts correctly. To make it clearer I'll focus on the Soul Pact, although the same issues can be raised with the Blood Pact.

Let me start by quoting from the the Soul Pact (italics added by me):

Soul Pact

When you gain a Soul Pact, restore you Sanity to full.

Any Phase: While this card is refreshed, any time you would gin any amount of Sanity, you may instead gain that amount of power.

You may spend a Power token as either a Clue token or as 1 Stamina when you suffer a Stamina loss.

Upkeep: Exhaust Soul Pact and lose X sanity to gain X Power.

My issue is this: does the part in italics belong with the "Any Phase" clause? In other words, can you spend power as a clue or to block a stamina loss if the Soul pact is exhausted?

I've been playing that spending Power can happen regardless of whether the Soul Pact is exhausted or not. Of course, this means that an investigator who is in need can take a Soul Pact during the start of upkeep, drain some Sanity (still during upkeep) to immediately get some power, and then spend that power (likely as clues) later during the turn and voila: when/if a reckoning card is drawn during the Mythos Phase that requires someone have power in order to be triggered, well, this investigator has not power.

So my question to all of you is: how are you treating the spending of power … does the pact you are using to spend the power need to be refreshed in order to spend power?

Follow up question: how should we be treating the spending of power?

My take on the matter: I think gaining a pact, then exhausting to get power, and then spending the power (all in one turn) is broken. There should be a waiting period for the power using the clause on the pact you gained it from. It seems more thematic - like taking out a loan and waiting for the check to clear before you can spend it. I also suspect that needing to gather power and then wait to be able to use it will also lead to more dramatic effects when reckonings come due. For example, when "Humanity Lost" is drawn, there will be a greater chance that someone has power and hence gets devoured, as opposed to when I played and it was "ho hum, no one has power, so nothing happens".

Last thought: if you have more than one pact (and let's face it, if one is good, then two is better!), then I'm not against exhausting one of them to get power and then spending the power according to the other non exhausted pacts rules

ricedwlit said:

It's because of that that I don't think the Spending-as-Clues clause ever exhausts. It just seems silly that a Bound Ally Pact could "override" a Blood or Soul Pact. I think if that clause were supposed to exhaust it would not have started a new paragraph; it would have been directly attached to the Exhausting paragraph.

Very well put. As a matter of fact, I was just about to post something similar when I saw your thread.

For our part, we have been playing it that you may spend power whether or not the pact is exhausted. This seems to make good sense from reading the text, though it is somewhat ambiguous as you suggest. jgt nailed it though, even if you play the other way, you can simply take a blood/soul pact and an bound ally to avoid that connundrum, so no real difference there (Your blood pact will be exhausted, but your ally wont be, so you can still spend power as clues). Although, it is somewhat trickier to do this while "tanking" san/stam loss w/ power.

I've also noticed that it is so easy to spend your power, most of the effects of the Reckoning cards are marginal at best. It's simply to the players advantage to spend all their power before going into the Mythos, and its not terribly difficult to do it either. We had a Hastur game where I had a character (I think it was Micheal McGlenn) run into a gate with 6 clues, planning on losing a few stamina (he was at full) and sealing when he came out. He got the encounter where he has to discard a Tome (which he didn't have) or loose all his clue tokens and be delayed. Next encounter he got a couple clues, so despite being reduced to 0 clues, he was *still* able to come out and make a seal on the gate, against Hastur! Next turn he just bought back stamina, and he was practically ready to dive again.

Playing with Lurker dynamically changes the game. The whole collecting clue tokens thing seems kind of a silly pastime. I mean, collect a few, but otherwise, why risk opening gates and such when you can just burn your power for clues? Lurker is *so* good, he's practically a guardian. Now don't get me wrong, he's tons of *fun* and I like the expansion... but maybe it could have used a little tweaking.

If you wanted to house-rule it to make it a little less rediculous, you could just say....

Power can be spent as clues, but it can't be used to seal gates.

-or-

Power can not be spent on the same turn during which it is gained.

IMO, either or both of these would work well towards balancing the Lurker Herald. Another thing that might be interesting and cool (though, FF would have to produce it) would be an environment card or Rumor which, when active, made it so the Investigators were unable to spend Power.

jgt7771: Good observation regarding Bound Ally Pact overriding the other pacts.

awp832: I don't mind using power as clues to close gates, so if I house rule it (which I'm still thinking about) I'll go with the "can't spend power token on the turn you gained it". This works across all the pacts and fits in with the "obtain a loan and wait for the check to clear to spend the money" paradigm.

I really like the Lurker House rules. They make it much less guardianesque. I might end up occasionally implementing them when using the herald. Probably the you can't use power the turn you get it rule since it's harder, but it make the reckoning deck a *real* threat as opposed to a yawn.