I've played AH for nearly 2 years now, and I always played it that way that when an investigator is about to be devoured, I always make he or she hand all his items to another investigator before being sent to a tentacled doom. Could being devoured, in this case, be beneficial? I mean, all the items of the dead person are retained, while when you draw a new investigator, you received his or her starting possessions all over again. Same case for retiring. So, I was thinking: can there be some way I could houserule it to make this not happen?
Question about being devoured
The investigators tend to get a little beat down as the game goes on it's often beneficial to get devoured.
mi-go hunter said:
I've played AH for nearly 2 years now, and I always played it that way that when an investigator is about to be devoured, I always make he or she hand all his items to another investigator before being sent to a tentacled doom.
Retiring is different; this is something you can plan for and it is somewhat open for abuse. However, don't forget you lose a complete turn with that investigator. This reduces the benefit a bit.
jhaelen said:
Unless you're in Final Combat, how do you know an investigator is about to be devoured?!
Retiring is different; this is something you can plan for and it is somewhat open for abuse. However, don't forget you lose a complete turn with that investigator. This reduces the benefit a bit.
True, you can't exactly anticipate when you're going to be devoured. How about Quacchil-Uttaus stalking ability? Once you reach the very final deck, you would know that your end is nigh and simply hand over all your items to another investigator. No big deal, unless of course it's a powerful investigator. Other than the case of Final Combat (which, when you die, you can't become a new investigator), if you can anticipate being devoured and make the most of it, it sounds pretty helpful to me. And I agree with you, retiring is even more exploitable.
There are some ways to exploit this too. Having a Moon beast on the board, for example, could help you while getting rid of Sister Mary and be delighted for the rest of game
Well, for one, you could play with this notion in mind: no investigator wants to be devoured, unless he knows that he'll die for a noble cause(Silas' personal story), so don't exploit this mechanic. If it happens, fine. But don't plan for it.
As for Quachil, you could houserule that each time he devours someone via his stalking ability, add a doom token to the doom track. Just to pennalize the exploit.
A good houserule (at least, in my opinion)was the one suggested by Avi some time ago: every time an investigator is devoured, then raise the terror level by 2. This should be scary enough to avoid this kind of exploit
Another one is that devoured investigators count towards the total number of investigators. Though that might be a little too harsh.
Not really. It's rare to have more than 1 or 2 devoured in a game (pre-final combat). I would extend that rule to retired investigators as well.
I have a great idea! I have been brooding over this idea for a bit, then I thought of a houserule that might prevent investigators from exploiting this rule any longer:
- When an investigator is devoured, when you draw a new investigator, he or she is devoid of one skill (as this replacement is a newbie, and not as experienced as the ones that start out with.)
- For every investigator that is devoured in a game, it takes one extra success to remove a doom token from the track during Final Combat (the Ancient One draws strength for every slain investigator).
- Finally, a retired investigator follows the rules above, except for the second one, as the investigator chickened out before he could be destroyed utterly.
Thoughts?
Veet said:
Not really. It's rare to have more than 1 or 2 devoured in a game (pre-final combat). I would extend that rule to retired investigators as well.
For devoured investigators I like Avi's suggestion better.
jhaelen said:
Veet said:
Not really. It's rare to have more than 1 or 2 devoured in a game (pre-final combat). I would extend that rule to retired investigators as well.
I actually once suggested this house-rule for retired investigators, but I wouldn't use it for devoured investigators. That would be too harsh, imho.
For devoured investigators I like Avi's suggestion better.
I love when I get credit for suggestions I don't even remember making anymore ;'D
I liked avec's suggestion (and not just because his name sounds like mine). I think it'd be a neat effect of slowly eroding investigators capacities to deal with monsters over the game. I don't think I'd want to use the raise terror level rule so much (I'm too much of a shopping addict). But I'd find avec's fun and I think it'd add to the thematic feeling of the game. You should probably combine the two rules though to set a cap at eight (i.e. if you have "eight" investigators and one is devoured, raise the terror level by two instead).
mi-go hunter said:
I have a great idea! I have been brooding over this idea for a bit, then I thought of a houserule that might prevent investigators from exploiting this rule any longer:
- When an investigator is devoured, when you draw a new investigator, he or she is devoid of one skill (as this replacement is a newbie, and not as experienced as the ones that start out with.)
- For every investigator that is devoured in a game, it takes one extra success to remove a doom token from the track during Final Combat (the Ancient One draws strength for every slain investigator).
- Finally, a retired investigator follows the rules above, except for the second one, as the investigator chickened out before he could be destroyed utterly.
Thoughts?
migo hunter, it's cruel and sanity damaging. I like it.
thanks cthulhurocks! I'm glad you like this house-rule. In fact, I'll try it out on my next game tomorrow. Bwahaha! (crude imitation of maniacal laughter)
Oh, I foresee that Ghatanothoa, Eihort , Yog-Sothoth and Quachil Uttaus will benefit greatly from this.
We actually tried the house rule that I mentioned against QU. It was pretty harsh. But even then I think he only devoured two people.
We tried adding a doom token when an Investigator is devoured, unless other effects happen. This was kind of harsh. Then we tried adding a doom token on top of an existing one so the GOO is harder to kill if it wakes up.
I think I like mi-go hunter's idea better. Easy to keep track of too, just put all devoured Investigator markers on top of the GOO card. The number of successes needed to remove a token should be equal to the number of investigators that have been in the game. I think this would probably stifle the crowd who feels that killing the GOO isn't a "real" win.
Since my friends and I have only played a couple games so far this hasn't come up and I don't think it ever will, they got quite into the roleplaying aspect of the game and being devoured on purpose doesn't really fit that. However I think a good balance would be for investigaters that enter the game after the start, they don't get to draw their random items since I always felt they represented what a characters picked up in the "prologue" to when the Arkham Horror session began. They would also have half their starting money (since they rushed to Arkham) and could get to roll to draw one item (success = unique item and failure = common item)and gain 1 clue token instead of the random to represent the devoured investigaters final gift and a lead.
tehrevel said:
Since my friends and I have only played a couple games so far this hasn't come up and I don't think it ever will, they got quite into the roleplaying aspect of the game and being devoured on purpose doesn't really fit that. However I think a good balance would be for investigaters that enter the game after the start, they don't get to draw their random items since I always felt they represented what a characters picked up in the "prologue" to when the Arkham Horror session began. They would also have half their starting money (since they rushed to Arkham) and could get to roll to draw one item (success = unique item and failure = common item)and gain 1 clue token instead of the random to represent the devoured investigaters final gift and a lead.
This sounds like an interesting idea. Maybe I'll couple that with my other rule in which each investigator devoured requires one extra success to remove a doom token in final battle. Or maybe that will be a little too harsh...
tehrevel said:
However I think a good balance would be for investigaters that enter the game after the start, they don't get to draw their random items since I always felt they represented what a characters picked up in the "prologue" to when the Arkham Horror session began. They would also have half their starting money (since they rushed to Arkham) and could get to roll to draw one item (success = unique item and failure = common item)and gain 1 clue token instead of the random to represent the devoured investigaters final gift and a lead.
Yeah looking at it written down it does seem a bit harsh, I forgot to mention they would still get to draw Skill and Allies from their random possessions and they would still inherit the devoured guys gate and monster trophies but I could see how it could lead to a cycle of the least equipped investigater getting stuck in a cycle of doom.. I would also only implement this rule if I thought people were "gaming" the devoured mechanic anyway.
jhaelen said:
I'm not sure if that would be a good idea. Punishing the player of a devoured investigator by reducing the new investigator's effectiveness is bad for that player. I feel it is better for the fun of everyone to only apply disadvantages that affect every player equally.
Well, my ruling of losing a skill for a new investigator I thought wasn't so bad. Also, for every investigator devoured in the game, add one extra success to remove each doomer during final combat. This punishes all investigators collectively, as they all have to bear the brunt of the load. Anyway, this houserule was never a problem with my gaming group, probably because it only consists of me and my sister.
The only rule I've applied regarding devouring is that the new investigator does not inherit any unspent trophies (gate or monster) these trophies are "removed from play" and stay with the original investigator for scoring purposes.