avec said:

Played with this last night. Hypnos. Lemme just say: it's very difficult. The only strategy I could come up with, once I realized I couldn't pass the gate closing checks without spending lots of clues (with McGlen) was to go to the Newspaper and look for jobs, then head over to the Curiosity Shop to shop for elder signs and sit and shop, or have encounters to let money build once it ran out. I lucked out and got an elder sign right as the doom track was half filled, but the streets were full of low powered yet-unbeatable monsters. I ran out, got through an otherworld (no critical checks required) got back and sealed my first gate. Then I ran into an Elder Thing. 6 Fight + 6 Tommy Gun = 12 -10 = 2 for combat check, and failed my first few, and he ended up eating my tommy gun. He couldn't hurt me, but I couldn't hurt him. Also, I couldn't evade. I wasn't sure what to do, so I just ended my turn. Luckily, a mythos card killed the elder thing for me. (Question: What do you do in that situation?)

Shortly thereafter, on my way back to newspaper (I lost my retainer) the doom track filled. Final combat was a brief affair.

My constructive criticism: The bonus to Hypnos seems rather more than offset by the penalty. Consider adding another benefit, or perhaps decreasing the penalty mod. I'll try again at -9, but I don't think it'll be a significant change.

avec said:

Played with this last night. Hypnos. Lemme just say: it's very difficult. The only strategy I could come up with, once I realized I couldn't pass the gate closing checks without spending lots of clues (with McGlen) was to go to the Newspaper and look for jobs, then head over to the Curiosity Shop to shop for elder signs and sit and shop, or have encounters to let money build once it ran out. I lucked out and got an elder sign right as the doom track was half filled, but the streets were full of low powered yet-unbeatable monsters. I ran out, got through an otherworld (no critical checks required) got back and sealed my first gate. Then I ran into an Elder Thing. 6 Fight + 6 Tommy Gun = 12 -10 = 2 for combat check, and failed my first few, and he ended up eating my tommy gun. He couldn't hurt me, but I couldn't hurt him. Also, I couldn't evade. I wasn't sure what to do, so I just ended my turn. Luckily, a mythos card killed the elder thing for me. (Question: What do you do in that situation?)

Shortly thereafter, on my way back to newspaper (I lost my retainer) the doom track filled. Final combat was a brief affair.

My constructive criticism: The bonus to Hypnos seems rather more than offset by the penalty. Consider adding another benefit, or perhaps decreasing the penalty mod. I'll try again at -9, but I don't think it'll be a significant change.

Ha ha ha, sorry. I think I'm funny sometimes.

The idea of someone actually suffering through that made me giggle, so I wrote up a fake report.

I do kinda like the idea of making Hypnos harder, though.

How about each time your investigator is knocked unconscious or driven insane, after you choose either injury/madness or item/clue loss, you must immediately have an encounter in the dreamlands and are delayed? Thematically, it would be something like being trapped in dreams like the protagonists of the Hypnos short story.

Of course, so many dreamlands encounters are good that it might not be that much of a penalty. And who gets knocked out that often?

Maybe on upkeep, the first player must draw and resolve a dreamlands encounter, and if he fails a skill check during that encounter he is delayed?

What if, instead of the first player having a dreamlands encounter during upkeep, anyone picking up a clue token in a stable location during movement immediately has a dreamlands encounter (ie the cost of picking up hypnos clues is a dreamlands encounter), It makes things a sight more interesting than just picking up clues and is quite thematic since it is a recurring occurance in Lovecrafts stories for protagonists to gain insight in frightening dreams.

Well, Avi, when I looked at the subject of this thread, I thought you were thinking of heraldifying the custom guardians that we may have made, so that's what I did. Here is Azrael, an Archangel Herald that is meant to be the counterpoint to Anahera, an Archangel Guardian. I'll repost Anahera in the custom guardians thread because I think her link got lost, in case anyone wants to see what she's about.

He's pretty rough, so any polish for him would be appreciated. I haven't done this in quite a while, and it can be hard to get back into the swing of things!

Yes, hehe, the time to mourn was meant to be brutal with those gates. I don't actually have access to the Lurker yet, so I'm not sure how many gates have abilities that would be exceptionally painful with this herald power.

I like the idea of raising the terror level when someone is devoured (in this way).

The clue token thing was meant to make rolling for curses effectively a roll of 0 dice, which you can always spend a clue token on, but it is kind of clunky. You like something like, "Upkeep: investigators who are cursed do not roll to remove curses. An investigator may spend 1 clue token to roll to remove their curse. If they do so, any other investigator may also roll to remove their curse." ?