Hmm. The "and" came out wrong. I meant that when you decide to exhaust a pact to gain power, the sequence of operation is:

- exhaust pact

- lose sanity/stamina to get power

- draw and resolve the reckoning

- now use the power any way you want.

The key situation I'm addressing is a person exhausting a pact to gain power and then immediately using the power (as clues) to seal a gate. The reckoning happens before you can spend the power (to seal the gate). If you get a bad reckoning (say it drives you insane), then tough luck ... you don't get to seal the gate.

Avi_dreader said:

oh, Fungi, that sucks. Lurker really needed to be made much more detrimental. Thats more of a shame than the persistent lack of Cult membership entry points. Although I have started looking at AH slightly differently since MH and have now started stripping the skill deck down so that its more thematic, and Im also thinking of stripping the other small decks down too, which will improve my odds of drawing Signs. I guess theme has started to draw my interest more since it is now less diluted. But why bother with Lurker or Goat when they have the problems they do?

Here's what I've been doing to curb this:

1. Pacts come into play exhausted (and don't exhaust immediately, obviously) so that you can't immediately take out power.
2. Bound ally pacts never return to the stack: if the "attached" ally is lost, discarded, or freed, the pact goes to the AO sheet, to be used during final combat (since the pact has yet to be fulfilled)
3. Investigators lose their pacts during final combat, rendering Power useless. Only the weaker base-game AOs suffer from power use anyway.

ricedwlit said:

That's definitely an improvement... :')

I still dislike Lurker though. Even if it happens to blow up in your face, odds are its going to work in your favor.

Tibs said:

Definitely going to try this out, what is your experience of using it like? Rule 2 seems especially appropriate, as if they meant to state this but forgot.

Honestly, I haven't had much chance to try these Pact variants. The only times I've ever played against the Lurker was during my introductory scenarios. This means that the Lurker was always paired with Yog-Sothoth, making him incredibly nasty. But the problem seems to be power and ally exploits, so these variants cap them.

It should also be said that since Bound Ally pacts don't return to the pile, then there's a finite number of Bound Ally pacts that can be taken out over the course of a game (eight). I know that eight were made so that every investigator can have one at a given time, but it works better that after eight have been taken out, no more may be taken out, since the prior ones can't be returned.

Tibs said:

Aaand... I thought up another one ;') but I'm saving it for a herald posting. Maybe Wednesday? Yar... Actually. I don't want to wait... Basically you combine a couple ideas and add one more.

Power can not be used to prevent reckoning losses, power on exhausted pacts can not be used, and :') When a soul or blood pact comes into play, you must immediately exhaust it to gain two power.

This is good because it means that you'll have to get through at least one mythos phase (to use two power), but if you want even *more* power, you'll have to go through a second mythos phase. This way it will keep the suspence of will a reckoning trigger, won't it? But also it can't be used

Avi_dreader said:

This is nice - it not only forces you to wait, but also lowers sanity/stamina from max.

One question: you say "power on exhausted pacts" ... does this mean that once a person has one or more pacts, all of their power must be associated with a pact?

ricedwlit said:

Whoops. I took that part for granted. Yes, place power on the pact you got it with. Alternatively, you just can't spend any of your power if any of your pacts are exhausted (I might go with that when making the herald, probably will take up less space to explain, and it's a cleaner way of placing stuff on your table even if it does limit strategic options a little bit more that way).

Either way sounds good. Personally, I go with "power goes on a pact once you have one or more" since then it forces the player to decide how he wants to use it.