During a test game, I encountered a situation where an investigator with 2 luck was carrying the ceremonial skull. The Keeper had access to uncontrollable urges.

Using uncontrollable urges to activate the skull will result in the keeper gaining threat 80% of the time. These are fine odds. Once the keeper has done this, and gained his threat, couldn't he immediately spend the threat to make the player molest the skull a second time? A third? A hundredth? That player will get some skill tokens, but with unlimited threat tokens, you could use uncontrollable urges to move all of the investigators back into the same bathroom every turn until the end of the game, so that they can't make any progress whatsoever.

Perhaps I misread the card or something, but it really seems like uncontrollable urges might be better if it could only affect each investigator once per round.

The better fix may be that the skull could only be used once per turn.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Agreed.

Or, I think a better fix would be that Uncontrollable Urges can only be used once per round per investigator. Which is how I've played that card so far anyway as the keeper.

I disagree. After all, the Keeper has to spend precious threat to activate it anyway, which is already a limiting factor.

Personally, I would suggest that the Keeper cannot force an investigator to do the same thing more than once in a turn. So, he could force an investigator to move and then use an item, for example, but couldn't force the investigator to move twice or use the artifact twice, etc.

Pigeonbane said:

I am playing it this way also, since it solves the problem you mention amongst some other I am ecountering with this card. Seems quite unfair to me to limit movement in Investigators turn to two spaces and then, Thread permitting, being able to move him 4 or 5 in the Keepers turn.

The infinite thread possibility with the Skull combination is a great example of why this card should have this limit indeed.

I think, unless otherwise indicated, I am going to treat all Keeper Actions as "once per turn per target" and have been playing it this way, including the Uncontrollable Urges.

Good points. Has anyone asked for an official answer? Maybe the solution is that the player has to the item? But an official answer is best, make Corey work

The investigators have the Ceremonial Skull solution themselves: Give it to the player who, when spending a skill point, will pass the check on a 8 or 9 or less. The Keeper gets to make all Required choices, but spending a skill point is not required, so the investigator's player gets to make that choice. This lowers the Keeper's chance of gaining extra threat, and will likely not get used multiple times by the Keeper.

The other option, just the skull. If no one is holding it, it can't be used.

Sure, there is still at least one round where the Keeper can try and break this combo, but how many skill points does s/he want to give an investigator?

JerusalemJones said:

You can't spend Skill points to add Luck to Luck

The players could just the skull.

Players can't just the skull on the same turn that they find it, since it uses an action to the skull. That means that when they find it, the Keeper is going to have at least one turn to abuse this process.

Dan said:

Wow. Surprised we missed that (and by we, I mean the three of us who read the rules all the way through).

Well, guess the Investigators are screwed for a turn!

If we need a fix for this, though, I'd rather it be a "once per turn" rule for the skull rather than Uncontrollable Urges.

UU Needs to be limited. I also posted this on BGG, but wanted to get feed back from here as well:

When Playing a scenario requiring all investigators to escape, the keeper could just save all their threat for the conclusion. Upwards of 20 threat focused on one investigator from escaping with UU would be plenty and the keeper would have that much before the 3rd event card is revealed in a two player game.

This strategy would give the investigators no way to counter. Any mechanic with no counter is broken in purely competitive game. If a keeper just plays to win this game, I would say the keeper has a severe advantage.

I love this game as light RPG not requiring all the for thought that is required in setting up an adventure, but I want to keep the game fun for my investigators. I will pull punches for the simple fact that the two scenarios I played, I could have won without the investigators being able to do anything to stop me, both times would have used UU. As it was, I still won while going soft and largely because of using UU even though I limited my use of UU to once per turn per investigator.

I need to play as an investigator to see if it's knowledge of the game or just that the keeper should not play competitively.

I could see a restriction on UU based on a scenario, but not an overall errata. It seems that a Keeper focused on just hoarding threat to move the investigators away isn't going to be the best use of threat. One scenario I played only needed one investigator to escape. If the Keeper decides to "meta" his threat, the investigators may choose to "meta" in return, and leaving one investigator in the entrance/exit. But in your case, where all Investigators need to escape, I could see a limit being imposed by the Scenario, and not to all uses of the card, every time. This card only becomes broken in your scenario, because it is used to cripple to win condition. In other scenarios, hoarding is not going to work to your advantage.

That is part of what I love about this game, the ability for Scenarios to change or override the core rules.

Either limit it to once per turn per investigator at best, or disregard everything you think about "balance".

Without any regulation, you could send one investigator to the other end of the map within a single turn, provided you saved up ~10-16 threat (3-4 rounds). Maybe a non-combat, Int-based one, maybe jump one or more monsters on him/her then. Next turn, when someone tries to help, pull them back more steps than they moved towards the victim. See a pattern? You can move investigators farther than their players can, provided you saved some threat, for a couple of turns. If they try to escape or some fighting character tries to get there, Mythos + Broken Leg him/her, so s/he will never, ever, reach their comrade, especially since you can move them back.
Sounds pretty rubbish to me.

Limit it to once per turn per investigator, use it to spread them out if they stand in one space all the time or if you know there's a nice trap nearby. Let them check out that dark closet, or that nice little fire, or engage the monster in close combat. Imho, sending them around EACH TURN kinda kills the mood the card is expected to create. Unless you want to let the investigators be complete morons, having SO MANY urges of course

(What are they doing? Search for food & drink, taking a piss just one round later? Do I WANT to know?)


Regarding the Meta-Thing: Keeper knows the objective, investigators don't. If they try to leave a single character at the Foyer EVERY GAME, I'm glad. Or maybe kill him/her regardless because, depending on the character, a single cultist could be enough on the long run. You're not expected to play the same story twice with the same investigators immediately afterwards, I guess.

I think limit it to "once per turn, per action, per investigator" would be good: allows you to use it to move them, then again for another action, but stops you moving them more than once.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that the Keeper can use a specific Keeper Action card only once per turn unless specifically stated, like in the case of "Command Minion" which the Keeper can use multiple times during the turn but only once per monster. That's how I understood this fragment: "p.10: During this step, the keeper may resolve any number of these Keeper Action cards that he wishes (threat permitting)". Any number of cards (for example 3 cards out of 5 that the Keeper has in Story # 1), and not "any number of times of any card".

Sagremor said:

That limit (as well a the one per game round found in other cards) actually implies that you can use the same Action card many times per round (threat permitting) except if this limitation is stated.

Sagremor said:

I initially interpreted the rules like that too.

The thing that made me realise that I was doing it wrong was the "Creature of the Night" card. That one specifically says "You may only use this card once per game round" (emphasis in original).

That card is the exception that proves the rule. In other words, there would be no reason for that card to have that text if the general rules was that you could normally only use each card once. Therefore you must normally be able to use each card multiple times unless they say otherwise.

Guys, this is not a flame, but constructive criticism

One cannot assume that FFG watches each Forum thread. If you have a question about Uncontrollable Urges and the Skull, or saving up threat to move an Investigator a huge distance, or whatever, send an official question, Rules Questions are at the very bottom of the page. There is nothing in all this huge discussion to indicate that anyone has sent the questions to FFG. Has anyone?

Well, I just did, just in case.

Anyway, I expect them to at least read their own Forums, and take note of all this discussion for future FAQs. I don´t think this debate is by any mean, sterile.

I understand the policy of not giving official answers here, but would seem very unwise not to listen to the gaming community, specially nowadays, when internet is such a precious tool to get the gamers connected to their favorite game designers and companies.

Cheers

Mariano

I also submitted the query on Action cards yesterday.

The game is intended to be thematic not just I pull out the easy win so I would advise just using your discretion when dealing with things like this afterall if your abusing all technicalities and going for nonstop no win scenarios no one will want to play with you anymore, when playing the keeper keep in mind it's still meant to be fun for the investigators, that said make their life hell but don't go overboard on things like those described in this post.

Scilin said:

Since the game engine is built around the Keeper bringing hell on to the rest of players, I think is a very risky stuff to leave game limits into the players hands. The game might become a joke for many people. Who decides the limits to the rules? Based on what reasons? What I might find a fun balance, other friend of mine might not. In my opinion, the rules should never need any limit auto imposed by the players to make the game fun. If I am playing by the rules, but that turns the game into something not fun for anyone, I don´t think is my fault, really. I think there is something not working as it should.

That said, my greatest complaint is still the use of this card (UU). I am still waiting for official answer to my queries. In the meantime, I found the need of imposing limits to the game precisely to make it fun and avoid discussions. The use of this card in story 5 is definitely a game breaker. If i can just use it to start making the players shoot each other every turn, the story turns into a bloody cheap western with half the group dead in two turns. Either that, or the Investigators better come unarmed. Just think about the Tommy gun. Spend four Threat in the first turn and pretty much finish off any 6/8 Health Investigator. Why such an option should be allowed by the rules?