Okay, so sat down for my first (and so far only) game with the Lurker Herald. I was Harvey Walters, and ended up taking out all three pacts. I kept getting into scary situations, though, and even with Harvey's ability I was reduced to one sanity. I ran to the Asylum, paid 2$ and then... realized I could just gain 6 power?

So then next turn, I'm still at the asylum, and because of Bound Ally I can spend power as money. And I'm still at one sanity. So... spend two power to gain another six?

I then proceeded to spend the next three turns there, gaining an insane amount of power that I could use as clue tokens, stamina, sanity or money. I then ran around and sealed three gates in a row without pausing for breath. This made the game startlingly easy, though I admit not enough gates were opening so I avoided any nasty reckoning cards.

This can't be right. Have I interpreted the rules correctly?

The relevant cards read:

Any Phase: While this card is refreshed, anytime you would gain any amount of Sanity, you may instead gain that amount of Power.

You may spend a Power token as either a Clue token or as $1.

Yup, that sounds legit. Your only risk is getting a scary Reckoning card such as "add 1 doom token for every three power tokens the investigators own" or something.

Tibs said:

Yeah...Lurker is a huge Risk vs. Reward expansion if you're using the Herald, from what I've seen. That tactic could theoretically work wonders (and of course there's the equivalent for St. Mary's and Stamina), but if you get the wrong Reckoning card, watch out...and there are some hugely bad ones in there for investigators with a lot of pacts or power. It'd probably be a little safer to try to do something similar, but by jumping in and out of the Asylum / Hospital in between gate runs, instead. Sometimes you just get lucky, though.

If the tactic bothers you, you could always house-rule that the $2 spend at St. Mary's / Arkham Asylum can only get you Stamina / Sanity, respectively.

Actually have my own question on this...the Reckoning "Strange Behavior" requires each investigator with a Bound Ally to pay 3 clue tokens or raise the Terror Level. Can you still spend Power as those clue tokens, or do those have to be legitimate Clue tokens? (And similarly, what about the Reckonings that lose you Stamina or Sanity?)

The pacts say that power can be spent "as clue tokens." So spending power for your Reckoning card would be fine. The only hairy ones would be things like "lose 1 stamina for each two power tokens you have." Clearly, spending power to prevent stamina means you have different power tokens and have to lose different stamina. The only fair way to rule this is that your stamina loss is calculated up front, and doesn't change just by spending the power.

MustardTheTroops said:

Unfortunately that's right. Well... The way you played it was actually far riskier than necessary. Just get a few of your investigators pact cards (preferably while they have one or two clue tokens) right before they exit an Other World. Then gain power and spend power in the same turn as clues, and there's no risk of any reckoning. (I hate the Lurker guardian).

Avi_dreader said:

Aside from maybe the psychologist and the doctor, or maybe the Heal spell, how do you actually do that? I'm not aware of all that many ways to gain Power tokens other than specific locations converting San/Stam (which you'd have to end your move on) or a very few items, or of course Reckoning cards themselves that sometimes give Power. If I got a Pact right after I left an Other World, it seems like I'd have a pact but no Power...but I haven't done this much, so maybe I'm missing something. :-P It just seems kind of unlikely that someone would be able to regularly pull off a "get the power I need and immediately spend it" strategy without having at least one Mythos phase in between. Not trying to argue your point, as the Herald does seem more helpful (thus why you call it a Guardian) than harmful, but just wondering how you manage that.

I actually misread the rules for the Herald the first time we used it and had it give us a Reckoning card at the gate step of every Mythos phase whether a gate opened or not, in addition to any other time a gate opened. O_O

Sdrolion said:

You're not fully thinking through how the Lurker pacts function.

http://www.arkhamhorrorwiki.com/Blood_Pact

Soul pact works the same way.

You trade sanity or stamina for up to five power during Upkeep by exhausting the card, then you spend those clue equivalents to seal a gate during Arkham Encounters, then when the Mythos phase comes around, you will have zero power (i.e. power gained during upkeep, power spent during encounter, no power remaining to trigger negative effects of reckonings during mythos). So. Basically you can buy 4-5 clue tokens for 2 dollars using this trick... That's insane. The real trading cost of those sorts of things are more like 15 dollars and three turns. And of course, when you can do that with *all* your investigators. Feh. The game almost always ends in an easy victory if you play Lurker and know what you are doing. I refuse to use an unmodified Lurker. It's just ridiculous. You might as well just play with Patrice.

Avi_dreader said:

When we play we treat lurker as guardian - not herald

Avi,

I agree that it's a lot easier to gain the Power vice Clue Tokens, but you're still parked at At Mary's for a turn to regain those lost Stamina Points (and if so, you're not spending them), or you're lowering your Stamina before plummeting through a gate...neither option is necessarily a beneficial tactic. How have you "modified" the Lurker to keep him less Guardian (though I'm sure not more Herald-) like?

The Professor

Avi_dreader said:

Nope, it's a free King in Yellow. Same price, same effects ::laughter.:

Yeah, insane

Professor,

I know your question was for Avi, so in case apologies. I just wanted to let you know that many of us have tried to create another Herald to be used with the Lurker in order to fix it. You can check - if you like - mine here , and if you dig into the custom herald thread you'll find also Veet and Amikezor's Heralds to fix this problem!

The Professor said:

I think you're misunderstanding the tactic. You go into an other world with full health or sanity (and one or two clue tokens, just in case), then the turn you get out, you take a pact, sacrifice all but one sanity or stamina (or both) and you seal the gate with those power tokens. Very easily done. Come to think of it... It's even worse than I thought... Because you also get a gate trophy ::facepalm::

Beyond using custom heralds? We had a contest to make ones to heraldify The Lurker and there were several good ones. I'd say there are a couple basic ways. One, don't allow power to be spent on an investigator with an exhausted pact (this is essential). Two, consider having a reckoning being drawn every turn, and perhaps draw two reckonings if investigators have three or more power combined (this makes the five clue token snatching attempts considerably more dangerous). Oh yeah, and don't allow pacts to prevent damage from reckonings. There's also the minor tweak of discarding all power when entering final battle... Implement those changes and you have a herald on your hands. Granted, you can still get benefits out of it, but it will be much riskier. It's still sort of a guardian though (because you can choose not to take these benefits) unless you pair it with something really nasty (like Yog-Sothoth) that will practically force investigators to rely on those extra clues. Or you can force all investigators to gain one power whenever a gate opens on a seal ::evil grin::

[bashful edit: I see Julia already said some of that]

Avi/Julia,

Thank you both ~ I see the Guardian-like attributes, and I completely agree that if exhausted, the Investigator should not benefit from it...similar to Spells and several Allies.

The Professor

The Professor said:

Unfortunately FFG disagreed ;'D but that's what house rules are for. In my opinion even with the possibility of drawing one reckoning, it's still guardianesque (since after the first few turns, new gates don't open that often), you can just use it for the last three seals and it's fairly safe.

What if you had to draw a Reckoning card each time a gate closed? That is, you come back from another world, you close the gate, but before you can seal it you have to resolve a Reckoning card. That seems like the point at which a Reckoning would do the players the most damage, especially if their San/Sta is already low from drawing power tokens. Of course, you'd combine that rule with the the rule that forbids using power with an exhausted pact, and the rule that forbids using power to reduce damage from Reckoning cards.

Hm...with all that, yeah, I see what you mean. I had honestly forgotten about the "trade X Sta/San for X Power" thing entirely (we haven't used the Herald much, and none of us actually even took a pact the first time because of my mistake with the Reckoning rule...was dang tempting, though, against Hastur's "8 clues to seal a gate."). O_O

Seems like the "you can't spend it if the pact is exhausted" rule would help somewhat, at least (and frankly that does make sense to me)...that ensures you'll at least risk getting a reckoning card between getting the power and being able to spend it (even if the risk is minimal late in the game when you have several seals). And the way the cards read, they almost say that. O_O I think probably next time we use the Herald we'll use that idea to make sure that tactic can't be used.

Of course, if you really wanted to just ensure that reckonings had to be dealt with, you could just make my mistaken rule the real rule: you draw a reckoning card at each gate opening, but you draw one during the mythos phase whether a gate opens or not. Not sure if I'm ready to go that far, but it does basically ensure there will always be a reckoning. Or, to make it simpler to manage, just rule that you draw a Reckoning at the beginning of each Mythos phase, rather than tying it to gate openings.

I honestly don't mind the Herald being helpful in a risk vs. reward sort of way, though it'd be nice if they had come up with another term for it other than "Herald" in that case, since the Herald cards generally signify increased difficulty rather than just altered game mechanics. The Herald does make gates a little nastier, but not much.

Rather than making investigators discard all power at the start of the final battle, I'd suggest just making them continue to draw Reckoning cards at the start of each round. After all, the Mythos energy powering/causing the Reckonings is now utterly free. Their pacts now provide only limited benefits, since they don't have as many ways (and may indeed have no way) of restoring the San/Stam they spent for Power, but they could suffer some major penalties.

Alternately, maybe just draw one last Reckoning card at the start of the final battle as the last price of power, and then remove the pacts from the game and put the bound allies on the AO as instructed. The Mythos tempted you while it needed to, but now that it is free it has no need to corrupt your soul...it'll just devour you.

But yeah, overall...I think if I were building the Lurker Herald I would have made the Reckonings less frequent but more damaging...tie them to player actions, like the aforementioned gate closing, or perhaps just when you spend Power at all. When you, theoretically, see benefit from the pact, that's when there's a Reckoning. I'd also have probably made them depend more often on the fact that you had a pact, not that you had a lot of power. (The thing that should matter is that you even bargained with the darkness in the first place.)

Julia said:

Fantastic work Julia, on all 5 ... definitely adding to my next print...

Also where is this Custom Herald thread... ??? I have gone back a ways but can't seem to locate it...

It's under the sub-thread "Fan Creations" towards the top (or here: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_temas.asp ).

There you'll find a full list of threads, one of which is a Herald Thread ( www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp ) which may or may not contain the large list of Lurker 'fixes." There may be an entire thread dedicated to it, but I'm too lazy to find it...

ahh of course... thanks

DoctorDR said:

Thanks a lot :-) Just a little side note: the Inhabitant of the Lake is not 100% completed yet, I have to improve the wording on a couple of point, and change the image for something more Glaakish. Just in case you want to avoid printing the non-definitive version :-)

And there is something strange almost ready to be added (a Herald using flying gates)

Julia said:

...my brain just exploded at the concept o_O

EcnoTheNeato said:

::laughter:: I like to add movement monster types to strange things. First I had fast flyers, then aquatic gates... the following step was clear in my mind.. a gate in the Sky, and flying gates. Another thing still in development is starting the game with a gate stuck in a vortex. This one needs *a lot* of playtesting. Unfortunately, I don't have too much time. But I'm still reworking all this stuff into my mind.

C'me on Ecno! Come to join the fan creation party! Delve into the deepest madness of Avi's custom league :-) Or start playing with some other AOs or Heralds. There are tons of stuff with some great ideas behind it :-)

Heh, I'm trying to get some of the basics down first. There's still so much I have yet to explore in the non-custom stuff! But I'll get there. And it'll be a blasty-blast!

EcnoTheNeato said:

::laughter:: yeah, I see what you mean :-) but don't worry, as Jgt usually says, the Carnival is always open :-)