If Daisy Walker shares the "Practitioners of the Art" relationship with another investigator can she take responsibility for the Sanity cost and reduce the cost by 1? If so, this would mean her partner could cast a spell with a Sanity cost of 1 and not have to pay any Sanity.

MS, I can see a number of well-reasoned responses for this question. For me, Daisy's Special Ability works on her alone and may not be "transferred" or used by another Investigator. Daisy would pay the "cost" associated with another Investigator casting spells. Oh, there will be a third response (most likely, Avi - "Just shuffle that Relationship card back into the deck and draw again" : P)

Daisy Walker's ability is overpowered as it is. To extend that ability to a second investigator would be unthinkable.

Regardless, I would have said that her reduction only applies to her attempts at casting spells:

Daisy's Sanity cost to cast spells is always reduced by 1.

Dexter's and Harvey's personal stories read in a similar fashion ("Dexter reduces all Sanity costs to cast spells by 1"). If you were to argue that these benefits extended to their partners, then you could also argue that the wording was vague enough that they apply to everyone's spells.

Though there is nothing stopping Daisy herself from casting a 2-sanity spell, reducing it to 1, and having her partner pay the 1-sanity cost.

To be honest, I'm more worried about the Mystic Knights relationship card. In fact, under certain circumstances, it can produce an impossible-to-lose final combat. So I move that, like with Terrible Old Man and Herbert West, it gets discarded when the AO awakens.

Impossible to lose? How so? I can't think of a way to guarantee you always get two successes on a spell check.

Very difficult to lose, yes, certainly - but a combination of Heal and Feeding the Mind can prolong a fight for as long as you keep rolling successes.

Actually if Harvey passes his personal story, the Heal spell combined with Ancient Language can keep him alive indefinitely versus Yig. (If Michael McGlen or Leo Anderson gets Heal, Ancient Language, and Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan, he can similarly stay alive indefinitely versus Ithaqua)

I think the solution - rather than trying to cover every possible obscure combination of items from multiple expansions that might keep someone alive indefinitely versus Yig/Ithaqua/Hastur - is just to beef up their attacks very slightly.
- Yig: lose 1 sanity, 1 stamina, and your choice of 1 max stamina or 1 max sanity
- Ithaqua: lose 2 stamina and 1 max stamina
- Hastur: lose 2 sanity and 1 max sanity
- Rhan-Tegoth: lose stamina for every failure, and 1 max stamina regardless
Then scrap all the rules about Rhan-Tegoth's unpreventable damage, and all the various cards that need discarding at start of battle - in fact, you're even welcome to keep the Healing Stone and Flesh Ward and the rest.

In most circumstances, this extra part of the attack does absolutely nothing. In circumstances where you have some way of surviving indefinitely - or at least for much longer than normal - the maximum drain will get you in the end. (Actually, the change makes Rhan-Tegoth marginally easier to fight, but that's probably not a problem)

Here's how you pull off an Impossible-to lose:

The two involved investigators are of the type who can prevent or heal one point of something.

The AO is either Yig or Hastur, depending on if the "something" is sanity or stamina.

One of the investigators has the Ancient Language skill (one free spell success) and the Mystic Gift skill, along with two exhaust-instead-of-spending-a-clue abilities:

• Mythos Lore skill
• Granny Orne ally
• Changed card

Now one of the investigators can guarantee two successes, which means a guaranteed sanity point to each. Each investigator can additionally heal or prevent one point, so the Ancient One can never whittle them down.

You also must not be using Epic Combat, of course.

Unlikely, yes—but if Lily's stalemate against Yig and Herbert West's and Terrible Old Man's similar exploitability caused an errata, then this should cause one too.

"along with two exhaust-instead-of-spending-a-clue"

Right. I forgot about those.

I think the problem with these ones is that there are so many components needed. So if you own Dunwich, Kingsport, Lurker and Miskatonic, Mystic Knights needs to be discarded for the final fight. If you only own three of the four, then there's really no need to - it can't be exploited.

Similarly Heal, which is absolutely fine in base game, would need to be retrospectively errated to say "discard in a fight" when Kingsport and either Dunwich or Innsmouth are in play. (That, or a list of the various enabling cards for my Heal exploit above need to be errated, and that's even less obvious)

The single-item ones (or in the case of Lily, zero-item ones) you can errata away. Once you need to go on a convoluted treasure hunt to get the various items you need to defeat the Ancient One ... well, actually, that sounds like a fun way to win if you can somehow pull it off, and a bit different to the "get 30 clues and a shotgun" or "get 6 seals" approaches ... but if you do want to make it impossible, then trying to fix it by ruling various components out of order is just going to give an ever-growing list of previously fine items as the number of interactions and obscure exploits increases.

Heal wasn't supposed to be safe because there's a sanity cost. But there are now characters who can eliminate sanity costs so this would have to be a "discard" too.

And even though it's hard to get everything you need for the Mystic Knights combo, if you have most of the components, then it will very easy to roll the second success.

Okay. So check this out.

Knowing now exactly how many components are "potential exploits," and realizing that all of them require components from Kingsport and are only effective against three not-so-hard base-game Ancient Ones, I am forced to assume that anyone who owns Kingsport will always be using Epic Combat against these Ancient Ones. Once you add in Epic Combat, of course, all bets are off.

cim, you have to understand how very important it is to me that the tiniest such loophole is eliminated. But once you have to start modifying base game components, there is a problem.

I guess what I'm saying is, thanks for helping me come to this (sad) realization so that I can ease off it for futility's sake.

...Yet another reason why Epic Combat is so great.

Actually - sorry! - there's at least one combination exploit that works without Kingsport, so you can't even rely on Epic Battle being available.

Leo Anderson with Mystic Gift and Mythos Lore passes his personal story. That gives him the ability to exhaust any ally for a clue, and Mythos Lore gives a second. Seven Cryptical Books to cancel the sanity cost of casting Heal, and his own damage prevention power, gives him infinite time versus Ithaqua or Yig with only Dunwich and Innsmouth components.

With Black Goat as well, then instead of Heal, Steal Life could be used instead, if "every success" refers to the spell check - and that would be a really bizarre spell to have "discard if the ancient one awakens" added to it.

I'd like to have all these loopholes closed too, but I don't think the items is the way to go - the problem is that their attacks are just a little too weak.

I've never passed Leo's story, so I didn't know about what it did.

Looks like the problem truly is with Yig, Hastur, and Ithaqua. But, what to do? I don't want these guys overhauled to oblivion, of course.

Maybe each one deals one additional point to the First player (with Yig, you choose)?

Tibs said:

What errata did it cause? Would you mind posting it here?

Sure.

• When moving her sliders, Lily's maximum sanity and stamina are based on the slider's ending position. That is, you can't, in one motion, move the notch once in one direction and once in the other, thus restoring one sanity and one stamina.
• Additionally, she may only heal one point per slider movement. That is, no matter how many notches in one direction she moves her slider, she only restores one point of stamina/sanity.
• Herbert West and Terrible Old Man are discarded when the AO awakens.

Don't forget Healing Stone and Flesh Ward. I currently have twice as many of both of those items cause I think there was a set of them that didn't include the discard against AO text.

On thats note I actually got that combination in the last game I played. Me and a friend were playing 2 investigators each. He had Daisy and Walters while I had Culiver linked to Walters with PotA. What this could mean dawned on us both. I was about to say that it probably doesn't work but he quickly said that it was fine and just let it be over powered this one time. Personally didn't have a problem with that so I shrugged and just let it be. It was nice cause he passed his mission early and I casted Voice of Ra every turn with Culiver.

The game itself went fairly well also and by well I mean turn 1 each investigator recived a power and then we kept getting Rekoning Cards that did bad stuff to people with power. Ultimately we got 2 investigators devoured, 1 due to the Reckoning and the other due to (get this) The Devouring Gate opening on him. We ended up winning in the end by taking advantage of power to seal quickly.

Tibs said:

Not sufficient if you can guarantee two successes on Heal and have damage prevention, which isn't completely impossible. Two extra points of damage to the first player is probably excessive for ancient ones which are supposed to be relatively easy to fight.

I suggested above making them attack maximum as well as current, though at a slower rate. Players not in possession of an exploit won't notice the difference; players with an exploit will eventually get worn down anyway. There aren't any items or spells currently that repeatedly - or even as a one-off - prevent maximum sanity/stamina loss; if there were they'd be discard in final fight anyway to save Cthulhu from a stalemate.

I don't think Leo would hold off infinitely if the AO dealt one more point. Having Mythos Lore, passed PS, Seven Books and Heal, he could heal one point and prevent the other, but of course when it's his turn to be attacked he couldn't mitigate all three points. Eventually enough investigators will go down that he'll be taking 3 points constantly

BUT...

A good clean rule would be that if the first player fails his defense check against any ancient one (effectively only six from the base set), in addition to the penalty, he must also lower either maximum by 1. Or, alternately, the first player must lower it by 1 whether he passes or not. This would work well enough that you could effectively reverse all those "discard when the AO awakens" rulings. In fact, you couldn't even hold Nyarlathotep at bay indefinitely with certain clue-gain abilities anymore.

This idea... is awesome! I will seriously consider playing this integrally.

Tibs said:

There are a few expansion Ancient Ones - Y'Golonac, Cthugha and Rhan-Tegoth - which don't have a defense check but could be held off indefinitely with Flesh Ward, if that was re-allowed. (And it has a sanity cost and a tough casting modifier, so it's probably fair enough to allow it for "normal" final battles)

So possibly just a general rule that for all ancient ones the first player lowers their maximum sanity or stamina by 1. Doing it that way makes Cthulhu marginally more powerful, but I think that's fine.

And allowing clue-gain abilities in final battle would be nice, too. Rex (with passed PS) and Roland could last quite a bit longer versus Nyar - and versus Chaugnar they might get a valuable extra round, which is okay, I think - but more importantly Tommy's PS could work in final battle (it seems rather harsh for it not to, as a consequence of preventing infinite-clue-gain powers)

cim said:

Actually, none of those can be held off.

Y'Golonac's total damage increases without limit.

Cthugha's damage is based on a die roll, and no single investigator can hold off 6 points of damage.

Nothing can prevent the stamina loss from Rhan-Tegoth's attack, so no matter how well Heal patches you up between each round, there's still a chance you could roll all failures.

And (without epic combat) Roland's ability as written holds off Nyarlathotep infinitely. So would Rex's passed story.

Unfortunately the best way to mitigate the Nyar-clue issue is to disallow any clue gain at all. With enough effects in play you could probably hold back those "discard 3 clues" bosses too.

If you're re-allowing Flesh Ward on the grounds that Ithaqua/Yig/Hastur will get you in the end through maximum sanity/stamina loss, then someone with spell cost reduction and guaranteed successes can block an unlimited amount of stamina damage from a single source once a turn. So those AOs need it as well. Heal isn't sufficient, I agree. (You could keep Flesh Ward banned, but in non-exploit final fights I think it's fine - a really good spellcaster might stay alive a bit longer, but probably only a few extra turns)

But if you give maximum draining to every ancient one, which is simpler, then Rex/Roland's clue gain isn't sufficient on its own to save them from Nyar, as eventually their maximums will get worn away even though the main attack can't kill them.

I liked the idea of adding the maximum-drain only to the AOs with skill check attacks because the only ones with those checks were the weak base AOs.

And I don't want to allow clue gain just because, with certain effects and against Nyarlathotep, his attack will become the maximum-drain.

Fair point on the clue gain versus Nyar. It's not even particularly difficult to get there, I suppose, since Roland can do it intrinsically. (Perhaps I'll make an exception the other way for Tommy's personal story, though)

I think you'd still need to add maximum drain to Cthugha, though - if you were reversing the rulings to reallow cards like Terrible Old Man in the final fight, it's not completely impossible that someone could get 6 points worth of healing and/or damage prevention. (And we don't know what new exploits revised CotDP or Miskatonic might add...)

Well, for those cards that have already been ruled, I don't feel the need to reverse the rulings. Particularly since that those two allies are now reminiscent of Earl Sawyer and Ammi Pierce. It's a canonical thing.

It's those cards that haven't yet been ruled that I may lay off of in lieu of this new final combat idea. But, of course, this new final combat idea is unofficial, so I'd still need to consider loopholes.

Tibs said:

Can you point me to where Kevin Wilson clarified the Herbert West and Terrible Old Man ruling, please? Thanks in advance!

I don't know if it was clarified by Kevin. I think it was clarified in an email. The rationale is that they are supposed to be analogues of the two Dunwich allies that prevent damage so that you can't infinity-kill some base AOs.

Final Battle cards. End of everything. Problem solved.