Hi friends,

just played some ES games so far, and I still don't have a complete grasp of the rules, so sorry if my question is silly.

I'm not sure to get this point of the rules: it's said that whenever you fail a task, you may use one of the rolled dice to focus or assist. It's the assisting thing I'm not sure about. It's said you can give the die to one of your fellow investigators actually on the same Adventure Card. But how's possible to have two investigators on the same adventure? If I understand correctly the rules, player A plays. He moves to the Entrance or on an Adventure card, he resolves the Encounter Phase, he advances the clock, and then he returns to the Entrance if he's successful, otherwise he stays on the Adventure card. The only possible situation for assisting someone else is the following one: investigator A tries Adventure 1 and fails. Investigator B tries the same Adventure, and fails as well; so he leaves a die to investigator A for a possible next turn re-match on the same Adventure. Is this correct?

Another question: let's say Investigator A is on an Adventure card with a Terror effect. Let's say he fails twice in a row his attempts to finish any quest: and he now has only 4 dice, but 5 are required to pass Adventure. Is he allowed to stop rolling dice in order to avoid the risk of triggering the Terror effect? Or has he to roll dice until he has no one left? What if he has 5 dice, and decides not to roll them, because the odds are too low? Is this allowed?

Thanks for help

JULIA

Julia said:

If you fail an Adventure, you don't go back to the Entrance, you sit at the Adventure. So B could come in and use A to assist (though I'm not really seeing the point between assist and focus TBH).

Julia said:

"Regardless of whether or not the active player resolved any
Terror effects, he must then do one of the following:

1. Attempt again to complete a task.

2. Fail to resolve the Adventure card." (p. 7)

To me that says you can just declare fail and not have to reroll the dice if you don't want to.

Dam said:

Yeah, this was my point too. But in this way the "assisted" investigator will gain benefit for your assistance only during the next turn, which means is much less powered than focusing. It can be good for some nasty cards, btw, but I don't see a tactic very often usefull

(so, you do play even ES, don't you? Dam, wherever I turn my glance I see you... ::laughter:

Dam said:

Ok, this sounds fair enough for me. I wasn't sure that "failing" could be a real option you were allowed to select. Happy to hear this. Anyway, great game, a lot of fun, but not that difficult...

Remember, when it's your turn, assisting doesn't mean you assist another investigator, they assist you. Assisting and focusing are essentially the same thing, but you can normally only focus once per turn, so assisting allows you another instance of it.

Walk said:

Yeah, but they cannot assist me if I'm not already there, right? So it's kinda difficult to achieve (2 investigators required, failing both the Adventure, just to give one extra die to the first investigator, attempting in the next turn again the same Adventure)

Julia said:

If I understand the assisting rules right, it works like this: If you choose to go to an Adventure Card that already has an Investigator on that Adventure Card, then they can assist you during your turn to try and complete this Adventure Card. So here's an example of how we play it: Person 1 attempts an Adventure Card and Fails, so their token remains on this Adventure Card, so then Person 2 decides to attempt the exact same Adventure Card, and moves their token to this Card also. Now Person 2 can decide to use the assist ability since Person 1 has their token on this Adventure Card already.

So bascially, its useful if someone just failed an Adventure Card because now you can attempt it with the benefit of their help (since they are present).

Regulator18 said:

Yeah, but Person 2 can only assist Person 1, implying that Person 2 fails the story and Person 1 will try this one again in the coming round. Rules state that the active Player may assist someone that is already on the very same Adventure. Very, very, very limited usage of this rule. If I had 2 Investigators losing the same Adventure in the same turn, I'd go probably somewhere else (after all, we have only at least 6 Adventure Cards in play, even more with OW Cards) in the next round! Unless very special circumstances (like: AO almost awaken and this is the only Adventure giving me the missing Elder Sign to win the game; or: keeping this Adventure in play will cause in some way my defeat)

Hmm...I think you may be confused. Or perhaps I am. I'll try to cover what might be the issue. As I said, focusing and assisting are basically the same thing. The active player can utilize focusing and assisting, but if you reword that phrase to use verbs (the active player can focus and assist), it sounds like the active player is helping someone else, which is not the case. The active player is being helped by someone else; all you need to utilize assisting (that is, be assisted) is to attempt an adventure when someone else is on it.

Also, be careful with the term "failing." There are two varieties. Failing to resolve any tasks with a particular roll and failing to resolve the adventure as a whole are two very different things. Assisting can be utilized after the former, not the latter.

Julia said:

Okay, I think I see where you are getting tripped up. On page 10 of the rule book it states "a player may choose to either focus or use another investigator on the same Adventure card to Assist him." So again, if we look at my previous example, when Person 2 is attempting the Adventure card they would use Person 1 to assist. So both players would not have to fail the adventure in order to use this ability, only Person 1 would have to fail. The difference here is that the active player (Person 2) is using Person 1 as an assistant.

Does that help at all?

Regulator18 said:

Probably. Let's go with order, and let me see if I got your point.

a) Player 1 attempts Adventure A and fails. He cannot Assist anyone, because there is no one else on the card. I think we all agree on this.

b) Player 2 attempts Adventure A as well. He fails the first check and, according to the rules, he can Assist and / or Focus. He decides to Focus, and save an Investigation die on his marker. And decides to Assist too, and save a Peril die on the other Investigator's marker (and he can do this, because there is another Investigator on the card). Then he throws the remaining dice. At any moment during HIS turn on THIS card, he may take the "focused" die or the "assisted" die and use them to pass the Tasks on this very same card.

c) When Player 2 attempt to pass Adventure A is done, Focused / Assisted unused dice are discarded, regardless of Player 2 passing Adventure A or not

Is this correct? Especially c)?

(man, it is me or rules could have been made clearer?)

Walk said:

This should answer the c) point in my previous post. Thanks Walk!

Julia said:

Yes, you pretty much have it. Just be careful that you do not Focus and Assist on the same roll. You can only do one or the other per roll. So going back to your example, if Player 2 attempts Adventure A and he fails the first check, he could then decide to focus and save a die, if he rolls again, and fails the second roll, then now he could decide to assist and save a second die. Alternatively he could decide to Assist on the first failed roll and Focus on the second failed roll instead.

You are certainly right about one thing, the rules could have been made a lot clearer. I'm grateful they came out with a FAQ for this game, because it answered almost all of my questions on the ambiguous writing in the rulebook.

Regulator18 said:

Yeah, you cannot Assist and Focus at the same time, you're right (and this is absoluetely clear in the rules)

And wops, I guess I didn't notice the FAQs being available. Time to study those as well!

Finally, thanks for help. Really, you've enlightened my path

Julia said:

Probably because you're used to not having the new AH FAQ ?

Dam said:

That's a good point. I tend to forget that all FFG games but Arkham have an updated FAQ... ::sgrunting gently::