Greetings fellow Forumites

Me and my regular playing group have been tinkering with some rules designed to make the Final Battles a little more fun and a lot more flavoursome. While we don’t own Kingsport, some of our acquaintances do, and we’ve used the epic battles therein, but weren’t that fond of them. They do certainly add a random element, but many of the effects are very generic, and we like each god to be his own unique challenge, rather than just being a different hurdle to jump over every turn. The other problem we found, of course, is that a few gods (primarily Nyarlathotep and Hastur) are utter weenies, while others are nightmarish tsunamis of brain imploding horror (Yog Sothoth and Cthulhu).

So, I put together custom sheets for each of the Ancient Ones (or, the seven in the basic set, at least) which give them their own special abilities and themes. Basically how the system works is that every turn you roll 2D6 to determine what attack the AO uses. The bad guys also have Focus, which is a sort of measure of their power that lasts between turns. We use a single D6 to keep track of it, as it can only range between 1 and 6. If he uses a big attack, it goes down, if he uses a weak one, it goes up. This gives the system a bit of averaging out, meaning it’s unlikely they’ll keep throwing a constant stream of either the biggest or the weakest attacks at you.

The rules are as follows. When the Final Battle starts, rounds go as follows. First there is the refresh step, same as normal, followed by a new Focus step, where you determine exactly how the ancient one will be melting your brains this turn, then the player attack step, then the ancient one attack step.
In the Focus step, roll 2D6 and add the Ancient One’s current focus, then consult the table to see which ability he uses. Any effects labelled immediate happen right away, otherwise they occur during the ancient ones attack step. Each attack also has a focus gain or loss associated with it which should be applied.

Also, most Ancient Ones have a “basic” attack which many of their other abilities cause them to use. Resolve these attacks as normal, but don’t apply the focus gain or loss.

For example , say in a given round Cthulhu has a focus of 5. The players roll 2D6, getting 8, for a total of 13. This causes Cthulhu to use Occult Shield as his ability. The immediate effect gains him immunity for this round. Then the players attack in their step, then in his attack step he uses Crushing Wave. His focus goes down by 2 for using Occult Shield, bringing him to 3. Although he did use Crushing Wave, his focus does not go down by an additional one, as it was part of the Occult Shield ability.

So, with that in mind, here are a couple of the Ancient One sheets we've cooked up.

Cthulhu didn’t need a lot of beefing up, in fact he’s probably a bit easier. I really liked the inevitability of his attack wearing you down with no possible way out, so he almost always uses Crushing wave in his attacks. So as his offence doesn’t vary much, it becomes a bit of a damage race to see if you can bring him down in time. As a result, most of the abilities are either making him tougher or making you hit harder.

Cthulhu, the Dreamer of the Deep
Starting Focus : 2 -6 Combat

15+ : Unearthly Appetite (-3 Focus)
One of us was plucked from the ranks and stuffed, screaming, into that flabby maw.
Pick a player at random. That player is devoured, and Cthulhu gains a doom token

13-14 : Occult Shield (-2 Focus)
The Dreamer’s tentacles writhed as if in prayer, weaving vile magicks around its corpulent form.
Immediately: Roll a D6. On a 1-3 Cthulhu gains Physical Immunity for this round, on a 4-6 he gains Magical Immunity for this round.
+ Crushing Wave

10-12 : Crushing Wave (-1 Focus)
The weight of the demonic beings sheer presence bore down on us, tearing our flesh and our souls alike.
Each player loses one maximum sanity or stamina, their choice. Cthulhu then gains a doom token.

9 : Dream Eater (-1 Focus)
Our minds screamed and the alien god writhed in delight, orchestrating our nightmares and drinking deep of our fear.
Cthulhu gains a doom token. Also, each investigator must make a Will Check (-). For each that fails, Cthulhu gains another doom token.

8 : Last Hope (+1 Focus)
Even as doom itself rose before us, we found something deep inside our hearts that gave us the will to fight..
Immediately: Each player rolls a D6. On a 5+, they are blessed.
+ Crushing Wave

7 : Mortal Peril (+2 Focus)
Heedless of the danger our hero strode forward, fighting with every weapon he had.
Immediately: Pick one investigator to risk himself. All of his attack dice succeed on a 3+ this round.
As Cthulhu’s attack, roll a D6. On a success that investigator is devoured and Cthulhu gains a doom, otherwise nothing happens.

6 : Unbinding (+2 Focus)
The abomination before us was still clawing its way into existence, and we mustered all our magicks to force it back.
Each player may attempt to unbind instead of attacking. To unbind, discard up to three unique items and/or spells, and roll a number of dice equal to the number discarded. For each success, Cthulhu takes four damage. Also, if at least one investigator succeeds, Cthulhu does NOT use Crushing Wave this turn.
+ Crushing Wave

2-5 : Perfect Shot (+3 Focus)
Deep behind the the maze of foaming tendrils, for a brief second we saw the mouth of the dread beast. This was our chance.
This turn, all attack dice that roll a 6 count as an additional 2 successes.
+ Crushing Wave

Nyarlathotep, conversely need a lot of powering up. As we all know, he is the biggest punching bag of the lot, his defence is nothing special and his offence, given how easy it is to stack clue tokens, is more suited for a schoolgirl trying to get back her lollipop than the harbinger of the Outer Gods.
To boost his defence a lot of his tricksy abilities mess with the players offence, and to increase his offence he has the commonly used Labyrinth ability, which drops players to D3 clues, meaning any number of clues you bring in over 3 have rapidly, rapidly diminishing returns. Overall, he messes with your investigators perceptions, creates illusions, turns you against eachother, and generally plays with your minds.

Also, note that we only use the monsters from the base set, so Masquerade might work a bit differently with other Masks.

Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos
Starting Focus : 3 Magical Resistance -4 Combat

15+ : Join Me... (-3 Focus)
Visions of power and riches beyond human conception flashed before our eyes.
Immediately: Starting from the first player and proceding clockwise, each player may chose to defect. If a player defects he now wins if the others lose, and vice versa. The defected player immediately stops fighting and Nyarlathoteps combat modifier increases by -2.
Only one player may defect. If NO player defects, Nyarlathotep immediately uses the Labyrinth and then Masquerade . If a player does defect, Nyarlathotep does not attack.

14 : Masquerade (-2 Focus)
The twisting horror dissolved into shadow and smoke, leaving behind one of its Avatars.
Immediately: The players select one of their number to fight. Draw a random mask to fight that player. They must defeat it or be devoured, they cannot evade.
For this combat, the God of the Bloody Tongue has a -1 combat value, the Dark Pharaoh is Magic Immune, the Haunter of the Dark is Physically Immune, and the Bloated Woman has horror and combat damage of 3.
The players do not attack this round.

11-13 : The Labyrinth (-2 Focus)
I chanted the banishing ritual I had read of, but the mercuric beast seems strengthened. How much of what we read had been planted by the insane god to foil us?
Each player rolls a D3, and discards any number of clues over that amount. Any player that loses clues this way cannot attack this turn.
If no players lose clues this way, each player immediately loses a clue and is devoured if they have no clues.

10: Veil of Chaos (-1 Focus)
The world spun with illusions of loved ones and unnameable horrors. Nothing was as it seemed.
Each player who rolls more 1’s than 6’s for their attack roll has been decieved. Their attack does no damage to Nyarlathotep, and for each investigator who was decieved, you must chose one investigator with allies to lose all their allies, or one investigator with no allies to be devoured.
+ Web of Lies

8-9 : Web of Lies (±1 Focus)
It took every ounce of focus we had to negotiate the tangle of deadly plots woven around us.
Each player must make a Lore check (+1) or lose a clue. Any players on no clues are devoured. The modifier decreases by one every round.
*+1 Focus if round 3 or before, otherwise -1 focus.

7 : Glimpse of the Truth (+1 Focus)
As glamours and illusions flashed before our eyes, we caught a split seconds view of the insane schemes that lay behind them.
Immediately: Each player takes a Will Check (-). If they pass, they gain a clue.
+ Web of Lies

6 : Twisted Scheme (+1 Focus)
From the shadows a thousand glassy eyes gazed on us, as Nyarlathotep plotted his next move.
Next turn, Nyarlathotep gains an additional +3 to his roll to determine which ability he uses.

2-5 : Final Face (+3 Focus)
For a single second behind his thousand mirages, we saw Nyarlathoteps true face.
This turn, all investigators may reroll any failed dice.
+ Web of Lies

interesting indeed.

Though, have you seen Avi's herald (among others, check the herald thread for an exhaustive list) that boost the easy AO for the final battle ? I do not like the final battle at all myself (nor the end game as it is), so I posted some time ago a variant for the game end that you can find here .

Anyway, please keep posting your ideas, that si always good to read. I would however suggest that you turn them into a nice card using Strange Eons.

Thanks for the feedback Those are quite nice heralds, and they do address the difficulty, but I also like a bit more flavour than just a stat boost, if you know what I mean... I've got the hang on Strange eons and you're right, they do look far, far nicer . I've started putting my ancient ones into card form. On which note, here are my Yig and Hastur.

Yig was quite fun to do, as compared to the other ones he's just a big old snake, and not that scary. The thing that makes him different, I figure, is that he cares about his followers, so he is fuelled by vengeance. I represent this by having him pick one player who did the most damage to his children, poison him (which we use a token to represent) and focuses everything on him, kills him, and moves to the next. This also means that even when he is fairly outmatched, he will still almost always kill a few investigators.

Which brings us to Hastur, king of Insanity. Hastur' is also quite weak in the normal format. His offence is okay, but his defence, if the terror level is kept low, is outright tragic. So, to combat this, I have made his offence get big rather quickly - unlike most other Ancient Ones he gains Focus very quickly and doesn't lose it easily, giving him a good chance of killing everything before he dies. Also, the Yellow Sign effect he uses at the start of combat and ocassionally during makes the investigators pick between shoring up their defence (Luck) and their offence (Fight) first. This significantly weakens the players at the start of the fight, and gives Hastur a better chance of powering up.

Adelphophage said:

Heh... I don't really think of my heralds as "a stat boost" although they do that too. They're all designed to provide a significantly game altering variant (although admittedly some of the designs didn't quite work as well as intended and had to be displayed more properly in the Fan Creation League). I understand what you're saying about theme. I don't include much of it though because A) there's only so much space on a heralds card (and even less on an Ancient Ones card— which is why I tend to prefer heralds, that and that they can be used to customize more than AOs can) and B) because I tend to focus on game mechanics and how they affect the overall game. I also threw in quite a bit more theme in the Fan Creation League. While that was a very time consuming project, it was nice having more space to work with.

I enjoyed reading your flavor text and I think your custom final battles are an interesting idea. Even though, as Amikezor said, we generally try to avoid Final Battle here. If anything, I'd say your rules would encourage this foul and abominable practice! Once you've finished working on this project and have everything done to your satisfaction (and Epic Battle cards as well), I'd suggest making one verrrry large post in the Ancient Ones thread and preserving this in a place where it will not get buried away. BEYOND THE SIGHT OF MAN! Cough.

Uch... I'm kind of embarrassed you saw that Dracula photo... I need to update it already. Sigh. That's the fourth or fifth photo it's had... No one likes any of them (I liked one of them, but no one else did). While I'm at it, I should probably fix the Whateley photo as well... Something less accurate, but at least something with an image I won't hate every time I see it...

Hmmm... Well... I guess there's another expansion idea for FFG. Individualized Ancient One final battles decks.

Dracula: I strongly suggest you to switch a little charcteristic of this guy in order you can use the picture here . Nobody will complain, then ::laughter::

did you try to put all text and effect of a single AO in a large scenario format ? (which would be convenient to just set near the AO as the final battle starts).

EDIT: funny. As I was writing about final battle, I got called... time for me to have a real one (referring to the third one coming up). cheers.

Julia said:

amikezor said:

Avi_dreader said:

When, I said Stat Boost, I meant as far as the Final Battle as concerned, obviously your heralds do much more interesting things during the main game

I'm totally in agreement about the importance of final battles, the point as far as I'm concerned is to seal the gates, fighting the Ancient One is the last of last ditches. To be honest, the reason I started doing these was when an experienced player joined our group, saw we were fighting Hastur and said something along the lines of "This guy is a weenie, screw the gates, just collect guns and we'll be fine".

Now, he was perfectly correct that gave us a better chance of winning, so I wanted to make them harder so that Hastur could squish that guy like the amoeba he would be. Same goes for Nyarlathotep. So then I got interested in how I could make them tougher, then had a few ideas for different things they could do and here I am. In the balancing of these Ancient Ones I've tried to make them *hard*. In our playtests even when we have a well equipped party and a fair few turns to gear up, we still lose about two thirds ot the time. They're still intended to be a very last ditch attempt to win the game.

Also, I kinda like the picture of Wilbur...

Anyway, I've taken Ami's advice and played with Strange Eons some more and made a format for putting these guys on the Scenario sheet, so without further ado here is my take on Yog Sothoth.

So Yog Sothoth was one I felt needed weakening, his attack is horrible, a test on what is bound to be the lowest stat in a battle, and takes away a resource it is very hard to stack a lot of. So I have made him use that ability reasonably infrequently (about 50% of turns, based on my simulations), and also the common Exile ability actually allows you to get new trophies during the fight, although only at great, great risk to yourself.

Exile is my favorite of the abilities listed there. No one has ever thought of having an Ancient One attack force you to do encounters, but it's very interesting, both in terms of variety, and thematically.

I want to replace the more traditional Wilbur image with a tentacley flesh peeling undead looking monster (that's a much better drawing).

Yeah, Exile is always an exciting one to roll, particularly with Yog's LiTaS means death thing...

Anyway, next up is Shub Niggurath. He/she/it is a little tricky to balance, very tough and good offence, but if you're playing a long game with the GOAL of killing Shub, you can stack up on trophies by bashing cultists and zombies for half the game, making her very easy. And as I want to make it very difficult to try to devote your game to fighting rather than sealing, I wanted a way around that.

The first method is Mothers Call, which she uses infrequently, reanimating the trophies which are both discarded and claw up the investigator in the process. The other way is that as well as trophies, Shub can also kill you via stamina, with the fairly frequent Dark Genesis and Dark Young abilities, both of which can do a LOT of stamina in one go if you roll badly enough. So between these two she should be very hard, and while killing lots of monsters will help you fight her, it's by no means a guarantee...

There is also a little strategy involved in balancing the stamina attack, which is on Speed, and the trophy attack, which is on Sneak, so players can pick which they are vulnerable to at any given time based on what they can afford to lose.

It looks very nice in large scenario format. ::thumbs up::

will you do the first ones you posted in the same ready-to-play format ?

Most definitely Might take a little bit to transfer them over, but you can count on it.

Next up is Ithaqua. The main gripe I had with this guy is his destroying items ability, which makes the fight very hit or miss - either you have all your tommy guns and swords of glory blown out of your hands before the fight starts and its impossible, or you hang on and he's a big teddy bear. So I changed it so it's only a 1/3 to lose an item, and only the weapons actually used at that time, BUT it applies every single turn.

Between this and his Blood Rites ability, Ithaqua gets tougher and tougher as time goes on, making him kind of the opposite of my Hastur - rather than a race to Hastur before his offence becomes apocalyptic, it's a race to take down Ithaqua before his defence becomes unassailable and Death Chill finishes you off.

Also, you'll note I've changed it to only effect weapons, not spells (as that didn't quite make sense). However, spells aren't the 100% solution to Ithaqua, as he often uses Flesh Gorger, a luck based attack, making any high lore spell flingers vulnerable.

Also, here is Nyarlathotep in the new format. Yes, I know the picture is supposed to be Hastur, but the mask really suits Nyarl, and the Yellow Sign he is holding is just out of frame

Oops, slight typo up there, Ithaqua's Fimbulwinter should only be 15+

And without further ado, here are Cthulhu, Yig, and Hastur in the new format. Now I just need to move onto making rules for the Ancient Ones in Innsmouth, who have just this morning arrived

Really nice pictures. Yeah, i know, it's not the main interest of the idea, but it adds some cachet.

By the way, i think on certain cases, the focus could reach a negative value. What about that ? No problem ? or 0 is a minimum ?

I know that even if it's going under 0 it will be back over it, but just to have your idea.

... Okay, you said in the first post, that you're using a D6, because it stands between 1-6.

But let's take Yig, starts with Focus 2. You roll a 10 +2, gives 12. Focus -3, so become -1.

And in the other way, starts with Focus 2, You roll a 2 +4, Focus become 6. Then you roll 2 +6, Focus become 8.

The intent was that 1 and 6 are the limits, so in your examples he would go from 2 to 1 and 6 to 6, respectively. YIg in particular is designed to go up and down very rapidly, as you can see from the fact that all his abilities have rather large focus changes, it's less likely to come up with the others.

The idea was to keep the highest and lowest rolls nice and rare, whereas if you were on -1 or +8 focus they might not be. I balanced them with the distribution of abilities you get with those hard limits of 1 and 6, but I can't imagine it would have a great difference if you allowed them to overflow, given how rarely they'd come up.

Oh, on a somewhat related note, we play it that if you have some abilitiy allowing you to avoid an Ancient one's attack (Warding statue for instance), you can wait till after an ability is rolled, BUT the entire ability is cancelled, including the focus change.

Actually... You'll find that the Innsmouth AOs are already quite difficult to beat in final combat, but I guess if the idea's to make it more thematic, have at it :')

Okay, so, 1 to 6 ;o)

Did you think about adding at the bottom right of the scenario sheets, 6 images of Doom Token with a number... ?

The idea would be like the Ancient Old One sheet having 6 doom Token from 1 to 6 in order to represent easily the focus. The starting focus could be reddish.

You could use that code :

<image res://doomtokens/dt01.jp2 32pt> <image res://doomtokens/dt-red02.jp2 32pt> <image res://doomtokens/dt03.jp2 32pt> <image res://doomtokens/dt04.jp2 32pt> <image res://doomtokens/dt05.jp2 32pt> <image res://doomtokens/dt06.jp2 32pt>

First from Innsmoth is Quachil Uttaus, which you'll note employs Hugues idea about the doom track, which was quite a good one

Firstly, it seemed a little odd that the god was the little mummy baby that chases you around via the dust deck the whole game - if he's already here what exactly are you trying to keep away? So, I somewhat unilaterally decided that that thing is just a Mask-type avatar of the big daddy. Obviously his theme is dust and aging and so on, so I've made him a time based enemy, a sort of infinitely old entity who sort of dumps his own massive excess of age onto other things, reducing them to dust and ashes to keep himself alive.

Mechanically, your *life* in this fight is your skill sliders, which begin the fight set to max Fight, Speed, and Lore. His various abilities wear these down, weakening you and bringing you closer and closer to turning to dust, when a slider gets pushed off the end, all of which kind of thematically fits wearing you down

Also, you (usually) have a choice as to which sliders go down - Fight is obviously useful, Lore stops his common Curse of Years from pushing your sliders even farther, and Speed defends against his rare but VERY nasty Child of the Dust and Eternal Gaze abilities, giving the investigators a chance to pick their poison, so to speak.

Defensively, he's kept the total Physical and Magical immunity, but his combat modifier is now PLUS one, making him somewhat possible to kill (but still very hard when you consider your fight is going down during the fight). We're winning about 25% of the time against him.

This is a copy of the story Quachil appears in.

Yeah, I've read it The story seems to imply that the little baby thing IS Quachil Uttaus, which, as I said, is a bit odd

Due to the whole dust deck mechanic, it seems pretty clear that the baby is on earth chasing the investigators down, yet the whole point of the seals and gates and such is to keep something out - ergo to my mind it seems the baby can't be the whole of Quachil uttaus, just a little fragment of a greater being. And my final battle is the greater being.

I like the concept of the Epic Battle cards adding special attacks/abilities for the Ancient Ones (the Sinister Plots), but not the fact that many of the cards penalize players and shift the odds in the AO's favor. So one solution I have come up with is to ignore any Epic Battle cards unless they are Sinister Plot cards or the End of All Things. If any other Epic Battle card is drawn, the round is played out as normal (players attack, then the AO). If players want a more challenging final battle, the Epic Battle cards can be used as normal.

I'd like to see a single card: a black "End of Everything" card. Then to play the Final Battle you take 8 of the Green cards, 8 of the Red cards and the black card. In this way 4 of the green and red cards will not see use, so the Final Battle will always be a little different and a little harder to predict.