Greetings, fellow Mythosians!

My group played with the Dunwich Horror expansion for the first time last Monday, and we came across a situation that doesn't really feel right to me. So let me run it by you guys and see if there's anything I failed to consider.

The Dunwich Horror had awakened, and the player using Michael McGlen went into fight it. The card we drew for the monster's stats was "If you fail the combat check, lose all your items." McGlen passes the horror check, attempts his first combat check and fails. So now that all his items are gone, he's down to a just his Fight stat of 6. The combat modifier on this card is only -1, so how it seemed to us was he could just keep rolling over and over until he got successes on all 5 dice. He now has no items to lose, and unless I missed something no other damage is dealt. I looked through all the rules and I couldn't find any reason why it wouldn't work, so we just decided that given an infinite number of rolls, he would _eventually_ get 5 successes and we just declared a victory.

But that just doesn't seem like the way it should work, thematically or logistically. So... am I missing something?

I think it was ruled that in these cases, whenever there is the slightest chance for the player to kill a monster unable to damage your character, you can avoid rolling dice until the end of time and score the victory. So, if you have 5 dice to roll against a monster with 5 toughness and unable to damage you, then you can consider to have rolled the required successes and kill the monster. In case you can't damage the monster and the monster can't damage you (i.e. 4 dice to roll against a monster with 5 toughness), then the fight is resolved for the monster, with the character going insane

Usually I agree with Julia (she happens to be right in her case), but this is the DUNWICH HORROR we're talking about here. That particular DH card, about losing all your items, has caused trouble before. I'd change it to "if you fail the combat check, lose all your items and the battle immediately ends."

So that's my suggestion, which makes it a house rule. If that's not your thing, then listen to Julia's suggestion.

I would go like Tibs for this one. Each time you fail a combat check, you stop the combat. You can a new one, next turn drawing a new DH card.

so from the rules:

"The drawn card is used for the dura- tion of the combat, and is discarded only after the Dunwich Horror is defeated, the investigator is defeated, or the investigator escapes from the combat."

knowing that most of the card do not do damage to the investigator, we may understood it as Tibs suggested.

cheers

The interesting thing here is that the rest of the Dunwich Horror cards will eventually kill you. The fight can go multiple rounds without a problem with any of the other incarnations, just as long as your investigator can take the punishment.

If you draw the ones that deal sanity or stamina damage, you will go insane or unconcious if you keep failing the roll, or possible devoured on the one where you lose both. If you draw the ones that give you a Madness or an Injury card, you will eventually draw duplicates and be devoured (unless you're Rita, I guess, which may actually be another question for the FAQ). And then there's obviously the one that devours you. The rest of them don't create a problem except in the one corner case.

So, the rest of them don't really need fixing, as you will eventually triumph or go away. Mortal combat works for the rest of them. This is the only one that needs to change.

amikezor said:

I would go with Julia. But... I wouldn't mind an official FAQ post saying that combat is over after you lose all your items.

There are investigators who can mortal combat certain ancient ones, so I see no problem with the fact that McGlenn has a 1 out of 8 chance to mortal combat the Dunwich Horror.

awp832 said:

Yeah... Technically it's fine... But... Eh... It strikes me as kind of sleazy ;') unless you're willing to keep rolling until you actually get the hits, in which case I'd say awesome :'D pay for that kill with blood sweat and tears! And a few hours and dice rolling induced carpal tunnel.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to remember someone else (not me and whose investigator had a fight of 5 or less) and the judgement wast that the investigator is LiTaS. But since the mobster (add a few others) have fight of 6, I would say look at what the average Stamina loss on the other DH cards is and only fight till you would normally be knocked out then be LiTaS.