I have just finished two games of AH with "The Lurker" as a herald and he has basically done nothing to harm us. All he does is to give away free "clue tokens" and stamina/sanity when we were in need. Basically you can seal the last gates just by entering blood/sanity pacts with him and then trade your sanity/stamina for five power tokens to seal the gates. And power tokens are so easily spent that you hardly ever have any on your hands.
Maybe it's just me but he almost feels closer to a guardian than a herald and makes the game too easy. I have had no sensation of the "impending doom" that the other heralds provide, and thats what makes the game fun!

Or have I misinterpreted the rules in some way?

You are drawing from the Lurker's deck everytime a pact is taken arn't you? That's where it gets nasty.

The_Big_Show said:

A reckoning is drawn when you take a Dark Pact only when you take that Dark Pact to immediately pass a spell check. The rest of the time, you draw a Dark Pact every time a gate opens.

How many expansions are you playing? The Lurker with the Base Game only is devastatingly easy. The more unstable locations you have in play (up to 20 with Dunwich and Innsmouth), the better your chances of opening another Gate and getting caught with your Power Pants down with a bad Reckoning card.

I'm playing with all the expansions. But since you only draw one reckoning card each time a gate opens it shouldn't really matter how many boards you play with. Right? You still have the limit of how many open gates there can be before the Old One appears, and that number increases for each board you play with.
And since power tokens are as easy to get rid of as clue tokens I really don't get why you should be so afraid of them. You (usually) decide for yourself when to get and then spend them all the same turn. They are just free clue tokens, an easy way to seal gates.

Last night we played a game with Tshathoggua as old one and these three heralds:

King in yellow
Black goat of the woods
Lurker at the threshold

Plus all expansions. We got one gate burst and two rumors during play.

And it was still easy. Took just about three hours to finish the game with three players.

Something is wrong...

Can I ask another question? Are you just not getting damaged in any other way than "leeching" yourself for Power? I can understand the method of using 5 Power to seal a gate; do you just go to the Asylum or Hospital then, and not get "hit" by anything else? (Don't think it gets past me that you can use a Pact during Upkeep to gain Power to pay your medical bills.)

Basically clue tokens are only an issue at the end of the game when you have collected most of them and most of the others get sucked into gates. So basically what you can do at the end of the game is to spend some sanity and stamina just before exiting a gate, seal the gate and end the game with just one sanity and one stamina.
And of course i get hit by all kinds of monsters, but when sanity and stamina are running low all you have to do is to enter a pact and voila, you are fully restored. You don't even have to go to the hospital/sanatorium.

As i said, i have only played two games with the lurker. But those games has been the easiest ones yet!

The ease with which power can be gotten rid of was mentioned in another thread. A good house rule that I'm considering to raise the menace a bit would be "you cannot spend a power token on the same turn you obtained it". As I mentioned in that thread, it's like taking out a loan: you can't spend the money until the check clears the bank. While a one turn wait is easy to plan for so it doesn't stop the use of power as clues, it does force you to hold on to them for at least one mythos phase (which is when having them can really hurt you).

jgt7771 said:

::Facepalm:: ... Alright... Clearly this "herald" requires a no immediate spending rule or I'm shelving it with the guardians.

If you're playing with all the expansions and three heralds in play and you find it easy you're obviously doing some rule wrong. Even assuming the Lurker is a big Santa, that's just not something that can happen.

I agree that so far Lurker seems more like a guardian with some possible danger than a herald with some benefit. But inasmuch as it's a balance of good/bad and requires some decisions to manage it well, then I appreciate it. But yes, it is waaay too much of a help with the base game only, and seems to require at least one big box expansion and possibly another herald to really provide any danger.

I'm actually surprised that the bound ally is the only one that has a detriment in the last battle. I would have thought that the others would do something similar.

Richard U. Pickman said:

But you can do that exactly ONE time for stamina and sanity each. There is no way to get rid of pacts, and you cannot have doubles. I don't know about you, but my characters tend to hace close encounters with shoggoths and other nasties often enough for them to run out of one or the other several times over during the game.

Not much experience with Lurker (3 games, only base) but it strikes me Lurker straddles the divide between Guardian and Herald, with stress on the former. Ive an idea for using it both ways by adding:

"If using as a herald, draw an additional Reckoning card in the Mythos phase for each Pact in play. Do not reshuffle the Reckoning deck. If there are no Reckoning cards left, the AO immediately awakens".