Hi!

I've a question. What if :

1. You pick Daisy Walker as the investigator.
2. First upkeep take Blood pact (or take it while casting Heal)
3. First movement read Livre d'Ivon and find Heal spell.

Now every upkeep cast Heal (gaining 2 (3 with bless) powet tokens on avarage. If you should lose sanity, spend power tokens, if you lose stamina, use heal. With spare power tokens - seal gates. Is there something I play incorrectly, or are those Pacts a bit unbalanced (those reckoning cards aren't that cruel).

sa3xxx said:

Another way to make the Lurker into a bad joke. I can't say I'm surprised ;')

Congratulations, you just discovered the double agent Herald that is really a not-so-secret Guardian .

If you want to play Lurker as a Herald, check out the fan creations section (we posted a few heralds there and variants in the last few weeks that were actually designed to make Lurker challenging).

I just wanted to ask, if it realy works this way. If so, I'd think about removing some "positive" cards from Reckoning deck to make the output more negative.

You can't gain a Power Token instead of a Stamina Token while you're at Max Stamina. If you aren't actually gaining the Stamina, you can't gain the Power instead of it.

So I'm assuming you're keeping Daisy at 1 Stamina in order to accomplish this every upkeep? Because surprise losses of Stamina never happen, right? You should probably just take a Soul Pact to protect your low Stamina with Power as well. Which means everyone else should probably do the same so that Daisy isn't the sole target of the Reckoning Deck. What could go wrong?

Why do you think you don't get power tokens with max stamina? This is not Hospital situation. This is not refreshing stamina while having stamina at maximum (wich gives you 0 stamina and therefore 0 power tokens). Where is the problem?

Heal gives you stamina.

Dark pact turns that stamina into power tokens.

There is a rule, that you can't have more stamina ten maximum.

I think pacts are supposed to get use of stamina/sanity gained above maximum.

But imposing that limit would halt this particular exploit. Plus, I'm still not convinced that you can gain power in place of stamina or sanity that you weren't allowed to gain in the first place. If you have full stamina and something says to gain 3 stamina, it becomes gain 0. Deciding you want power instead really shouldn't change that back to 3.

the rules says : Stam/San cannot exceed max value.

That could mean :

1. That thing Tibs said.
2. Having more then maximum stamina is equal to have maximum stamina. That means you get stamina when you are at maximum but it doesn't change anything.

If the second is correct you get the power tokens. Both those interpretations works with rules, so there should be some errata/clarification about Pacts, not?

sa3xxx said:

Meh. The problem with the reckoning deck is it can be gamed by gaining power the upkeep of the turn you want to spend it. Since the reckoning takes place during mythos, you can then spend your power the same turn without any significant risk, and huge potential reward. If you want to fix the reckoning deck so it's somewhat threatening, you need to play one of the custom heralds, or at least make a house rule that if a pact is exhausted, power can not be spent (and probably also that power can not be used to prevent loses from reckonings).

My two cents about this issue.. Heal spell states that you gain stamina. The blood pact says that instead of gaining stamina, you gain power. Rules say you cannot gain stamina (or sanity) above your maximum. Being at your maximum - imho - makes the stamina gain equal to zero. No points gained, nothing to trigger the blood pact condition.

The suggested combo should work fine with Daisy low with stamina, but obviously, as Jgt noticed, there are some nasty triggers that can make this situation risky

Julia said:

No, the rules says : Stamina/Sanity cannot exceed maximum value. That's different.

It is different. It does need clarification. But I know which interpretation I'm going with (the less exploitable one) until it's answered officially.

It does entail that, though. If you allow gaining additional stamina or sanity when they're already at their maximum, it means that your current stamina/sanity would exceed the maximum, and that's forbidden.

I think if your current sanity and stamina are at their maximum, any gain to these stats would be nullified.

Of course you could treat it as an absolute maximum of sorts in which case max value+X (where X>0)= max Value, and X could be 100000 hypothetically but I don't think that was the intent.

The same way as a roll of a single die cannot exceed 6 and applying any positive in-game modifiers to it would still be equal 6(that is, a success, mechanically ) since rolls higher than 6 are not defined by the rules.

Well, it's not quite the same, but you get my point.

sa3xxx said:

I take your point, it's different, but nonetheless, these rules were written eons before the Lurker was out, so probably they didn't need at that time a more precise wording. Anyway, I still believe you may not exploit the Lurker in this way, but this is just the way I play it. It feels to me more correct, but obviously this is only my point of view

Julia and Tibs are correct. You can only gain power instead of Stamina (for a Blood Pact) each time you would actually GAIN Stamina. Just because you cast heal doesn't mean you are gaining Stamina. If you are already at Max Stamina, and you cast Heal, there is nothing to gain, that Stamina is just lost in time and space. The Blood Pact is worded, "any time you would gain any amount of Stamina" and if you are already at Max Stamina, then you're not gaining any, so NO power tokens.

Well, imho, if there are two possible interpretations of a rule, one of which is clearly broken, the other interpretation must be the right one.

I'm sure there's name to this approach, similar to Occam's Razor. It seems to work well for every game.

I dubbed this approach as "Arkham's Razor" but the term became more popularly defined as "when in doubt, do what hurts the investigators more." In this particular case the result is the same though.

Tibs said:

There there, Tibs, I appreciate your pun.

The term has been appropriated into a manner that suits it.