I like the Grim Reaper because he can put some added pressure on characters and potentially speed up the game.

I get the impression though that he's not active enough.

The reaper only activates when a character rolls a "1" on its movement die, so the reaper will activate on average only once in six movement rolls, that's only 16.66% of the time.

If you consider the fact that some characters do not roll the movement die all the time ( because they may Teleport or move under the influence of a Poltergeist etc ) that 16.66% drops even further.

And if you consider that the Reaper doesn't necessarily land on a character each time he's moved ( especially if you play with just 2 or 3 players ) his effect becomes very minimal.

For that reason, I'm inclined to make 1 house rule concerning the reaper :

instead of activating him when a player rolls "1" on the movement die, I suggest activating the reaper every time a characters moves only 1 space .

This way the reaper will activate (among others) :

- when a character rolls "1" on the movement die

- when a character with a Poltergeist moves

- when a character uses a raft

- when Blizzard is in play ( everybody moves only "1" for 2 rounds )

- when a character moves in the inner region

- etc...

I especially like the inner region effect.

As soon as somebody reaches the inner region and moves only 1 space at a time, the reaper becomes much more active, not to mention when two or more characters are in the inner region it sure becomes "hell" in the outer and middle regions for those still out there.

We've just finished a 5 player game where the odds of moving the Reaper is 83% per round of turns. The ole Reaper was quite active enough! The players tried to keep their characters as far away from the Reaper as possible. This led to a trend where all the characters were on one side of the board and the Reaper was on the other.

Even still, he wasn't the dominant force in the game. He just added a good flavour which we found enjoyable. The Reaper promotes balance in the game. No matter how powerful a character gets, he isn't immune to the Reaper. So if one character is light years ahead of everyone else, he isn't assured automatic victory. In our recent game it seemed that the most powerful character (the Knght this time) was visited quite often by him and after several visits, he was actually taken out by him.

I've played now something like 6 games with the Reaper, always 4 players, and I'd say that Reaper has added almost nothing to the game. the occasions that he has landed on a character have been very few and non spectacular. As was mentioned, it is quite common not to throw dice at all for movement (last game I played with Elf, and got the poltergeist...). What the Reaper does, is to make it even more important to keep Your last Faith token available.

But all the new faith, spells and adventure cards that came with the expansion and update have really made the game much more fun and entertaining. So, I don't mind the minuscule role of the Reaper. Plus the minis are good (almost all painted now). Only down side of the expansions and updates is that it takes a while now to shuffle the decks thoroughly...

kalle said:

You don't have Arkham Horror listed in your games, so I'll let that comment slide . Heck Talisman ONLY has 2 deck to shuffle, during normal AH set-up, I shuffle 8-9 decks (and plenty more shuffle in-game) .

Dam said:

Well, what I've checked about Arkham, it looks like I'm going to get it later this year, so I guess it's good to continue deck rehearsals. Talisman's adventure decks themselves must really be split now into 3 decks to be able to shuffle them. The decks get also sorted when playing (followers and object get separated from events, etc), so they have to be shuffled well. Anyway, this is by no means an unpleasant task, so no big deal.

kalle said:

AH has trained my hands so that I can handle the current 194 card Adventure deck in one go. Though I usually split in 2, shuffle each half, then combo the 2 decks and finally more shuffling with the big deck.

Yesterday I played a 6-player game and decided to drop off the Reaper for simplicity's sake (4 players were newbies). Ah! Without that figure moving on the board, I felt that the game was fresh and fast as in the past.

After 7 games with the Reaper, I must say that I don't like this Character at all. Moving it makes game longer than usual and the effects are too good/bad or lame. Nobody ever rolled a 1 on Reaper Table, but I saw too many 5 and 6 being scored, thanks to Fate. Well, Dying right away is too much of a penalty to suffer, considering that the Reaper is dangerous in the middle phase of the game, when Fate becomes scarce and people start tackling the Middle Region looking for a Talisman.

IMO game without Reaper is still better as you don't have the concern to move that figure at least once in a round. In a six player game the Reaper can bring total chaos.

Ok, you "forced" me to air my views on the Reaper.

In short: it is a cool idea, badly implemented.

The first few times we played with it, when it was shiny and new, we were all very pleased with it and thought it was a cool idea. But as we played more games with it, the more it was forgotten, to the point where it was almost irrelevant. And that's the problem: it is yet ANOTHER thing to worry about and rolling a 1 and then moving it another d6 spaces HOPING to land on someone... its a bit of a messy process.

I implemented a different system but I dropped it because it was used in conjunction with something else I no longer require.

However, it does give me an idea...

If I mock up some "Reaper cards" (I'm think 6 cards). When you roll a 1, you draw a Reaper card. These will have effects like:

1) Move the Reaper to your space and encounter it

2) Move the Reaper to another character's space where they must face it

3) You are chilled to the bone as the Reaper passes you (no effect)

4) Move the Reaper to a corner space. Anyone in that space must encounter the Reaper.

Or something like that.

It just means that the Reaper is more relevant and its harder to forget about it.

dth said:

mmm i think you can better put some reaper cards in your deck, so that the reaper will do something nasty hehe

What about bludgeon's custom cards

The_Warlock said:

I think it is way too harsh to just say 'you lose' because you rolled a 1. We play the Reaper sets your lives to 1.

I always thought the Reaper idea was lame, but we have played with it about 6 games. I don't think it really adds much to the game.

It would be good to be used as an alternate ending scenerio instead of rolling for the Crown, you can send the Reaper out to a chosen character.

dth said:

The card idea is good, but I will use it for effects instead of movement. I don't like the option to use Fate and re-roll on the Reaper table. As I said, in most games I saw too many people gaining bonuses from the Reaper, which is not what I mean with it. A wish is a big bonus to be associated to a recursive effect. The only other cards in the deck that grant a wish are Fairy, Phantom and Enchanter, if I remember correctly. Every card has a particular requirement to be met, while Reaper is for everyone.

With cards that replicate Reaper effects a player won't have the option to re-roll and a lower chance to draw the card with a bonus. It's possible to add new effects and take out that nasty sudden death (and the wish too). I like the idea and I'm thinking of some way to implement it.

We played our first game using the Reaper last night with mixed results.

We had great laughs because we rolled tons of ones and he was very active. Problem was he killed 3 of the 4 players at some point during the game. 2 of them were pretty powered up and got to start over. As a result, we played about 3 1/2 hours and were nowhere close to being done when we called it a night. I doubt I can get my group to try the Reaper again without some rules tweaks.

Mindseye said:

Man, I'd love to see Reaper that active. Today he landed on a char I think 5 times (not counting all those 5s the Prophetess rolled when Reaper landed on her, at least 3 times), there were no deaths anywhere. Even if Reaper is very active, you should be able to stay clear of his movement range in a normal game. Unless you roll low and Reaper moves twice between your moves.

The_Warlock said:

I have a card back that might be of use to you?

I had tinkered with the idea of an "Event Die". A special dice that you roll in conjuction with movement. This meant that you could trigger the Reaper and other new mechanics (I had originally included my Wildlands and Cavern stuff on it too), without it being movement dependent (meaning it mess things up if you have a horse etc).

I dropped it because I found better ways to implement the Widllands/Cavern stuff which meant the Reaper element was all lonely However, I still maintain that if you can throw in some way of offering a non-movement linked chance to trigger a Reaper encounter and then draw a random "Reaper" card, this would be a better implementation...

The random activation and then movement and then his encounter... *I* think it doesn't work that well in practise. Other views might vary

Today... the Grim Reaper has kill for the first time my character( troll) !

It was a lot of fun to see that.

But before that, the reaper has encounter the troll already before and i have rolled a 5 and the reaper switch to my opponent. The opponent has rolled also 5 ( big mistake ! And came back to my character, while it ended with dices with the reaper. But who have thought, that the reaper kill the troll somewhat later in the game

Thanks FFG, for adding so much fun to the game

I wonder if it would play better if we use a d4 to move the Reaper instead of the usual d6. That way players would have more room to move as he will have less reach. Also, I do think killing the character outright is too harsh just for rolling a 1. As others say, it's a case of keeping your last fate for this instance alone.

wastedyuthe said:

It's just bad luck if you roll a 1 for the Reaper chart.

If you play the game with 2 people, then the Reaper will not be so active.

But decreasing the numbers for his move from 6 to 4 is a bit too far..

I must say that i like the reaper in the game.

Anyway.. people can always choose for not using him,

I like the idea of who ever reaches the CoC will be able to control the Reaper, moving him to each of his opponents one by one (I'd allow the rule that he may not need to roll the exact number to land on the opponent space). Then I would just forget the Reaper card instructions and make my own- for example, the player controlling the Reaper chooses the opponents strength or craft to test, which ever is the lowest, and tests to see if that character dies based on that.

Not sure how that would work out, but I'm just throwing some ideas out there.

Perhaps they should have made the Reaper a proper character to control like the others. If a player picks him, he can go round adventuring as usual, but his main aim would be to build up his powers to collect the souls of the other characters. If he collects a soul from each player (or a minimum of 3) then he wins the game. Just another idea.

There is no need for me, to change the reaper.

He is already a dangerous character, and people want to stay away from him.

Because of this... it's possible that players will getting closer to each other so that pvp combats will occur, unless they want to evade that too, but then they must follow the way where the reaper is waiting

It's one way or the other...

This is another thing that makes it difficult to evade pvp because of the reaper.

But the funny thing is that i rather walk to the reaper to risk to roll a 1 if he land on me, than staying close by my opponent .

That's an interesting way of looking at it Velhart. As you know I am waiting for this expansion to arrive, so will have to play test it a few times to see what I think too before changing any rules myself. I may feel the same as yourself. However, I do like to think of new ways to adjust the rules to add a bit of variety, so I may see myself doing that too.

wastedyuthe said:

The only thing is that the reaper is only activated if someone is rolling a 1.

So with 2 players is it different if he move a lot or is only moving a little.

For me, it's no problem, but there are players who want to activate the reaper if someone rolls a 2 too !

So if you have already put your mind to it that you will change something. Then you can give this a try and see how it turn out !

But i have see many times that people are finding themself together at the same side of the board ! very funny

I've only played 4 games of 4th edition so far, and only one of them used the Reaper.

But I must say that I did not feel that the Reaper added anything to the game in that one instance - and he was getting a lot of action that game since we were playing with 9 players! Lots of 1s being rolled that day, yet the Reaper only encountered maybe 3 characters during the entire 3 hours we were playing. Really, all he did was slow down the game in my opinion.

9 players!!! And that only took 3 hours? You must play very quickly. It took 2 hours to play a 2 player game for me yesterday, and that was the 3rd edition with the quick and easy finale.

9 players, 3 hours sounds awesome. Our 3-player games clock in rarely over 1.5h.

Haha. I guess I need to clarify that we did not actually finish the game in that 3 hours - we were playing at a game convention and the owner of the game called it at three hours because he wanted to get something to eat before he had to set up for Battlestar Galactica the next session.

But at the three hour mark, we had one character in the Middle Region and several other characters who were strong enough to challenge the Sentinel and about to make their way there as well.