I could not find clarification in the rule book specifically stating these circumstances are still in effect or not during your battle with the ancient one:

1-Do you continue to resolve "at midnight" effects on adventure cards in play during your battle with the ancient one? for example we had in play " horrible visions" which tells you to add 2 doom tokens to the doom track every midnight.

2-similarily do locked dice on adventure cards in play remain locked?

3-it does state that if you are devoured due to complete loss of sanity, stamina or both, a doom token is added to the doom track. is this still the case when you are devoured during the final battle(which isnt necessarily due to sanity or stamina loss) ?

and a final thought, we played retaining all those consequences in effect and still easily defeated our ancient one only having to draw 2 additional investigators, leaving of course 12 still in the draw pile. that seems to make all the time(well over an hour)and effort spent trying to prevent the ancient one from awakening a waste. looking over the ancient one cards, its clear some are certainly easier than others, but being able to draw a new investigator out of a stack of 16, even removing from play permanently devoured investigators seems to cheapen the final battle when it occurs.

1. No.

2. A good question. My guess would be no, but I'm not sure.

3. Again, my guess would be no, the reasoning being that Cthulhu's sheet states that monsters do not appear during final battle, indicating that Cthulhu is the only Ancient One who might possibly regain Doom tokens during the final battle. Of course, this type of reasoning has led me astray before.

Also...it seems strange that Cthulhu's sheet specifiies this, since monsters would have no impact on the final battle unless they locked dice. This leads me to believe that dice are locked during the final battle, so I revise my answer to the second question.

Woah, I just read your post again and fully comprehended the ending. Note that investigators devoured during final battle are not replaced. Replacing them would definitely make final battle a lot easier.

I'd also interpret as Walk posted, but these are more questions that do need official clarification.

1 - No. (lingering effects of Mythos cards are ignored, so I'd apply that same logic to Adventure cards).

2 - No. (again, basically extending the idea that the Battle phase is completely separate from the previous Adventures, I'd clear any locked dice and add them to the pool. but I could easily see this going the other way, so that you'd *really* try to clear any locked dice if it looked like the Ancient One was going to awaken soon.)

3 - No. (similar to Walk, seems like the Doom is fixed for the final Battle, with Cthulhu explicitly having a special effect to add. but, again, I could see this ruled the other way.)

And, also just restating, you do not get to replace Investigators during the final battle. "Any player whose investigator is devoured during the battle is out of the game."

Thanks much for the response.

I tried to find where it states in the final battle no new investigators are drawn when devoured when battling the ancient one, but don't see that actually specified, however I must agree with you both, that has to be the case. I imagine that players are allowed to draw a new investigator when devoured prior to his awakening must simply be a mechanic in place to keep all players engaged until the endgame. It would, after stink, if you were killed off and had to simply watch the rest of the group continue on for untold amount of time....

I apologize if this post twice, I navigated away while typing and thought I lost my post...

whoops, sorry malgr3, you actually typed out the sentence in the rulebook that does in fact clarify that last point. any player whose investigator is devoured during the final battle is out of the game. the key word here being, player! oops.

ALLular13 said:

On our play through we woke the ancient one as well. My thoughts:

1. No

2. Yes, I think they do. The final battle is supposed to be tough. If all the dice are freed up then you would gain a potentially significant advantage.

3. No, doom tokens are the fixed health of the beasty. So unless it states specifically, like Cthulu, then I think you just take em off. (Same mechanic as Arkham Horror).

My question: When you are rolling the dice to meet the combat task, for instance rolling two terror, and you succeed, do you take those dice out of your pool (like on normal adventure cards) or do you only lose dice from the pool only if you failed to meet a combat task? And, if you don't lose dice from your pool on a success, what do you do with yellow and red dice that helped you complete a task?

The rules state that 'players roll dice as they did during the Resolve an Adventure Card step' which would imply that those dice are gone from the pool. However, the rules also state that 'Investigators may complete the task any number of times during the Attack the Ancient One step (but only once for each time they roll the dice)', which would seem to imply that you don't lose dice from the pool for each completion of a combat task.

Thoughts?

Replies:

ALLular13

1. No.

2. Yes. More incentive to beat monsters that are irrelevant if the Great Old One awakens.

3. Yes. That way every death makes the game harder. Cthulu adds a token ONLY during midnight, not every turn. So it would make sense that if he killed off a bunch of you in a go, he would suddenly become stronger. Same with any other Great Old Ones.

Dr. Jay

1. Yes. You remove the dice that you used to beat a task, and they are LOCKED. You may not re-use them during the adventure. The adventure implies your turn during a battle.

They should really make a quick-reference that says : "The most negative effect is always the one we intended."

After looking them over again, the answers 'strictly by the rules' are -

1 No (once the Ancient One awakens, the player's turns 'no longer consist of the same steps as previously in the game' and the Battle has a new Advance the Clock step which only says 'each time the clock returns to midnight, the players resolve the Ancient One's attack', so Adventure midnight effects are not resolved)

2 Yes.

3 Yes.

One thing that I've been wondering is, when an investigator is devoured during the final battle, does their absence leave an "empty spot" in the turn order? Meaning that when the turn of the destroyed investigator would come again, he still must advance the clock (eventhough they can't attack)?

This would mean that losing an investigator in the final fight would actually make chances of success lower for the remaining investigators, which would be thematically correct... If the devoured investigator doesn't leave a gap, then nothing bad really happened... the rest of the investigators just somehow begun fighting harder to keep up.

Pietu85 said:

No, the player is out of the game and the active player moves the clock hand.

Pietu85: Following the pattern of Arkham Horror, the answer would be that you still advance the clock on the devoured investigator's turn, but the rules seem to imply otherwise. Of course, the real problem is that we're given no clarification on what "eliminated" means. This game has been out for less than a month, and it's already surpassed Arkham Horror in terms of important rules that are unclear.

I'll summarize this very helpful topic from what it was written above me just so all questions are clear:

1-Do you continue to resolve "at midnight" effects on adventure cards in play during your battle with the ancient one? NO

2-Similarily do locked dice on adventure cards in play remain locked? YES

3-It does state that if you are devoured due to complete loss of sanity, stamina or both, a doom token is added to the doom track. is this still the case when you are devoured during the final battle (which isnt necessarily due to sanity or stamina loss) ? YES

4-When you are rolling the dice to meet the combat task, for instance rolling two terror, and you succeed, do you take those dice out of your pool (like on normal adventure cards) or do you only lose dice from the pool only if you failed to meet a combat task? YOU REMOVE THE DICE THAT SUCCEEDED ON THE TASK AND ROLL THE REST UNTIL YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY SUCCEED THE ANCIENT TASK

5-One thing that I've been wondering is, when an investigator is devoured during the final battle, does their absence leave an "empty spot" in the turn order? Meaning that when the turn of the destroyed investigator would come again, he still must advance the clock (eventhough they can't attack)? YES

6-Do you replace devoured investigators? NO

If I forgot something lemme know. This post answered a lot of questions I had after my first play.

SolennelBern said:

Our opinions differs on the answers to 2 of the questions :

#3, to me the "spirit of the game" uses the "add doom counters" mecanism to threaten the players of a shortened game, not to strengthen the Ancient One during the fight (except for Cthulhu of course). BTW, what would you do, if the doom track is full and someone gets devoured ? Will you add one or not ? So, NO .

#5, as stated above, it is the active player that advance the clock. Devoured players aren't acitve anymore. So again, NO .

Martin_fr said:

#3: You're right on this one but it means that only Cthulhu poses more of a threat than any other Old Ones with his regeneration attacks...but by the rules you're right.

#5: That would mean the less investigator the easier the Old One is to beat...i'd play it by still advancing the clock with devoured investigators...even though the rules are not 100% clear on this one.

SolennelBern said:

#3 : Cthulhu has a pretty weak attack (as it reduces your max stats, instead of deals dommage directly (so, you basically start with your full Stamina / Sanity against it). The regenerative effect counterbalances this.

#5: as long as the "play experience" of this game correspond to what you expect it to be, any way to apply rules sohuld be considered the "correct one". (this also apply to #3, of course)