I got my Ghouls of the Miskatonic promo Ally card in the mail today.

+1 Luck, +1 Speed

When you fail an Evade Check , monsters do not deal combat damage to you.

I like it.

Overpowered, fix please.

MyNeighbourTrololo said:

That was my first reaction, too. But then I realized that even if you can avoid damage from failing the Evade check, you must still enter combat with the monster. And Oliver doesn't allow you to escape damage if you fail a Flee check, so it's not like you can keep spamming Evade checks to avoid damage.

He's a useful Ally, but not overpowered, IMO.

Well, also the fact that there is no specific encounter to get him does make him less likely to show up during a game. Since he is a professor, at least according to the book, I was kind of expecting him to add lore... Since he read about and did reports on the occult practices... Not luck and speed..

Well, some of you may recall my mentioning that before the revised Dark Pharaoh, there was a slight imbalance in total stat bonus summed over all allies, yielding a bonus +1 Luck and +1 Speed (William Bain). The revised DP allies restored balance by offering bonuses to all stats except Luck and Speed, but I guess Grayson re-imbalanced the stats again.

No biggie though. I think he's neat. Particularly since it's hard to get him.

avec: Are you sure about that? According to the rules, a flee check is an Evade check. From page 15: "Flee: The investigator tries to evade the monster, using an Evade check just as described under "Evading Monsters" earlier in these rules."

Oh crap, it totally is. "Flee" is just the thing you can choose to do instead of making a combat check. It's still totally an Evade check.

Yeah, I read it as "evade check to avoid entering combat" too. That's probably what it's supposed to be.

Welllll...it's not that overpowered if taken as written. It just means reduces most monsters to speed bumps if you don't want to kill them, assuming you can deal with the Horror check.

...On second thought, it sounds pretty overpowered put that way. Although it's not Patrice level, since it doesn't directly relate to winning the game.

Hmm, yeah in that case, he is pretty overpowered.

Hmm... So the agreement seems to be that it allows auto-evading provided you have your sneak high enough? I'd say it's strong, but not overpowered, I mean, the only way you're going to get it is by trading ten trophies. That'll take some time to do, and by the time you're at that point in the game, is it really a wise decision getting him instead of, say, four clues?

I mean, look, it's a nice ability, but to use it effectively, you're going to have to bump your speed down, plus it has a large opportunity cost to obtain.

He can also be obtained via random draw for some situations.

I dunno. I guess I'm not going to fret about not having him in my set.

Avi_dreader said:

Well, even if it's not overpowered, it's really cheesy. Flee check... failed, flee check... failed, flee check... failed, [ten repetitions later], flee check... success! At that point the monster is either bored or laughing its ass off at the absurdity of it all.

How does this interact with the Wailing Writher?

How does one obtain this ally?

But you still get damage from encounter asking for an Evade Check aren't you ?

avec said:

That never occurred to me. Yeah, that's pretty dumb.

avec said:

pretty much like fighting a 1 stamina damage monster with michael.

Veet: Since it only negates damage, the ally does nothing to counter monsters' effects that trigger when you fail an Evade check, such as the Wailing Writher's, the Nightgaunt's, the Skinless One's, or the Elder Thing's.

Walk said:

I disagree.

Arkham's rules, page 15:

Note that some monsters have abilities that add some special effect to their combat damage. For example, the Nightgaunt drops the investigator through the nearest open gate instead of causing the investigator to lose Stamina tokens.

Wailing Writher should still devour you because it specifies "Evade check" which implies that its effect isn't part of Combat Damage. But those other monsters technically have their effects canceled.

Tibs said:

That's pretty much what I was thinking. I had no doubt that monsters like skinless one could get auto negated by this ally but wasn't sure about the wording on the writher.

is this card still available?

Buy Ghouls of the Miskatonic, it has a mail-order slip in the back