Hey guys,

Have played a handful of games of the new edition and the reaper expansion and have found the Reaper to be lacking in terms of adding anything in the game. Perhaps if we played with more players this would change (been only playing with the wife), but at the moment the current rules for the Reaper makes him (it?) inconsequential to the game. So I've seen some house rules posted here and thought it might be a good idea to institute some of our own.

From this thread: http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=49&efcid=1&efidt=21931&efpag=2 Gentlegamer has suggested using a black die (d6) to roll with your movement die and if the black die rolls a '1' the Reaper moves. This is a great idea as was discussed in the thread it always gives the Reaper a chance to move even when situations prevent you from rolling to move.

In that light, I'm thinking of instituting these house rules (in addition to the normal rules for the Reaper) to give more bite (and hopefully more fun) to the Reaper:

1) The Black Die (courtesy of Gentlegamer): a black die is rolled in addition to rolling (or not rolling) for movement. This will dictate whether the Reaper acts or not after your turn.

2) On a roll of '1' on the black die, the Reaper moves as per the normal rules (for flavor, use the black die!); On a roll of '6', the Reaper teleports to any space that you choose.

3) If a player lands their character on a space with the Reaper on it during their movement, the character loses 1 life.

Now #3 has also been discussed in another thread somewhere I just couldn't locate it any more, but it was some else's idea (to give credit where due). Initially we had wanted to make the Reaper move more and our little house rule made it move on a 1 or 2 instead of just a 1, but the rules above I think would make for interesting interactions with the Reaper.

I'm hoping to try these tonight.

Well we tried these rules (2 player game) and for some reason our black die was a little too accomodating of the new rules. The Grim Reaper moved, and it moved ALOT. We had about half a dozen instant kills, but only 1 actually stuck thanks to Fate. We lost a lot of lives because we were short on followers especially early game. But it sped up the game some too because we were rolling a lot of 6s.

The dice rolling 6s definitely made the Reaper more fun but started getting ridiculous at one point when we would roll a 6 (means teleport the Reaper instead of rolling to move), then we would roll 2 5s after that, which made the Reaper be a ping pong ball between us.

So I think we'll ditch the roll 6 and the Reaper teleports rule. Keeping the other rules, though, and maybe, just maybe, combining the rules so that a roll of 1 allows you to teleport the Reaper instead of rolling for it; that way it's still 1 in 6 chance he does anything.

How about you can just move the reaper every turn like a normal character? You don't have to wait to roll a 1 to activate him, every player automatically activates him during their turn. He still has to land on a player to do his thing but at least my rule increases these odds.

Our house rule is that we use the standard movement rules of the Reaper, but add in the rule of if you land on the Reaper you must roll as if the Reaper was sent to you. It might make someone think twice before landing on the space with the Magic Stream if the Reaper is waiting for him, especially if they have no fate tokens.....