So my friends and I just picked up our first Arkham expansion, Innsmouth (we hadn't been having too much difficulty with the base game and thought a little bit of Ancient One beat-down might be exciting). The problem is that several of Innsmouth's ancient ones have worshipper abilities that affect monsters like Gnoph Keh and Tcho Tcho, which can't be found in either Arkham or Innsmouth. It seems a little shaky to blow these abilities off altogether, so we though we might replace the monsters that we don't have with monsters that we do have. Has anyone else experienced this problem? What monsters would you all suggest to replace the monsters we don't have?

Chaugnar Faun and Zhar deal with Tcho Tcho and Tcho Tcho Priests

Rhan Tegoth deals with Gnoph Keh

Huh, I thought the listed worshippers should be included with the expansion in question. I bought both Kingsport and Innsmouth together though,after I already had Dunwich Horror, so I didn't encounter this shortage problem.Umm, you could use the closest approximations to these monsters from those you already have.

I'll give you the stats.

Gnoph-Keh-maybe I miscounted but I found only one such monster.

Anyhow, his stats are:

a regular black-bordered monster with the square dimensional symbol. His awareness rating is -2, he has Physical resistance, Overwhelming 1. His horror rating is -1 and sanity damage 1. His combat rating is -3 and his combat damage is 3 stamina. He has 2 toughness.

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Regular tcho-Tchos- I think they're four of them in total

Stats: Regular black-bordered monster; dimensional symbol-moon. Awareness rating:-2 . Horror rating: none Combat rating: -2 Combat damage: 2 stamina. He has 2 toughness

Special abilities: Ambush. If you pass a combat check against Tcho-tcho, return it to the box and draw 1 Common Item.

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Tcho-tcho priest: Red-bordered monster(fast). Dimension symbol-moon, Awareness rating: -1 Horror rating:-2, Sanity damage:: 3, Combat rating: -2, combat damage: 2 stamina. He has 2 toughness.

Special abilities: Magical immunity, Ambush, Nightmarish 1

Gnoph-keh can be found here ; and yes there is only one of such monster in the whole game (originally appeared in the Kingsport expansion)

Tcho-tcho can be found here ; they arrived with the Dunwich horror expansion

Here you have the Tcho-tcho priest, again arrived with Kingsport

It's interesting to notice that even if Mythos cards / Encounters very rarely have this cross-over issues, they are present with monsters and AOs..

There's few enough of those creatures that I personally wouldn't worry about it, but if you're really adamant that the AOs not pull any punches, the Vampire is similar enough to the Gnoph-Keh that you could read the effect as applying to it instead.

...As for the Tcho-Tchos and their Priest, I dunno, nothing's really comparable. If you wanted to give the effect to creatures that are roughly similar in power and number, you could go with Elder Things (or Formless Spawn) and High Priests; the one problem there is it doesn't take the Tcho-Tcho's "return to box" effect into account. In that regard, maybe Mi-Gos would be a better choice, even though they're a lot weaker.

In my opinion, exactly as subochre said, I wouldn't worry about it. Those AOs are worshiped by those particular monsters, and you don't have those monsters, so for once the Worshiper ability is going to work to a very, very slight benefit (rather, a lack of a small sting). In fact, Zhar and Rhan-Tegoth are pretty nasty as-is. Chaugnar Faughn is another matter altogether but... if you must, you might as well use Cultists. They may be weak, but at least there's a lot of them to counterbalance this.

I mean yeah, over 100 monsters with all the expansions in, and only ONE Gnophkeh.

All the more incentive to get Kingsport and Dunwich I suppose

Tibs is correct, you can't go wrong beefing up the cultists. For one thing it's what they were meant for originally. Besides unmodified they pretty much just hand you a knife and ask to be stabbed.

Well, you can't use Cultists as worshippers of Rhan-Tegoth because any Cultists drawn are put on his card. You could use Maniacs and say, Ghouls as Rhan's worshippers. Give them Nightmarish 1, and that's it.It doesn't even matter that Maniacs don't have a horror rating. Each time you fight one, you'll have to automatically lose 1 sanity.

Wow do I feel like an idiot after that. Yeah, then I'd recommend using following Rhan's sheet as written: i.e. no available worshipers.

It's only one single monster token, and Rhan already sucks to play against. No need to make it unnecessarily harder on yourself.

I have tried pretending that the two Gugs were Gnoph-Keh (total of three in the Cup) whenever I played Rhan...but it still hasn't mattered once yet.

You may also make a general house-rule for AOs who have a small number of worshippers: all monsters with the dimensional symbol of the current worshippers gain the ability printed on the AO's sheet. So, for Rhan-Tegoth you could house-rule that all monsters with the square symbol gain Nightmarish 1. For those monsters who already have Nightmarish 1, or their horror damage is 1 sanity, increase it to Nightmarish 2

I see no reason to convert more worshippers to those AO's that have only a few of them - they are meant that way and are balanced by the other abilities of those AO's.

Think of drawing a Gnoph-Keh when playing against Rhan-Tegoth like drawing The Blackest Night and the Haunter in the Dark when playing against Nyarlathotep - an extremely rare case of **** happening, but still possible.

-Villain