I find that people hardly use the books, tomes, etc.. and they are just things to discard rather than the good stuff like flamethrowers and such. I have come up with a house rule and I wanted to try it with you guys first.

Since its a book the spells you find are not one shots. As long as you have the book, you can recast the spells. You still lose sanity when you read the book, but the pay off is a bit better as you now have a small, magical arsenal that gives you more than just one magical punch.

John Bua said:

This would allow Daisy Walker to cast endless Alchemical Process during the same movement phase and completely break the game, for instance. Don't focus only on combat spells: some other spells are much more interesting, and this suggested rule could be really unbalancing. For instance, in the same way you could use a Find gate spell, refresh it because of the book and pass it via Carcosan Page to another player, able to cast it again; and so on.

Julia said:

I think the OP means 'tomes' not 'spell cards'; the spells he refers to are the ones you cast by exhausting and discarding the tome.

It's a nice idea but the same problem applies: many tomes, if they can be used repeatedly, will "break" the game. Just off the top of my head: King In Yellow would allow you to get unlimited Clue tokens and Eltdown Shards could be used to prevent the Doom track ever advancing. Dhol Chants would supply unlimited allies.

thecorinthian said:

Yeah, good catch, sorry, I made some confusion by reading it quickly. But as you wisely said, the point's the same. De Vermis will grant you an automatic closing victory, Dhol unlimited allies, and so on

Julia said:

The game's designers must share some of the blame! In Arkham Horror, books (a physical object) are one-use-only, while spells (which describe an effect) are mostly permanent and… have a picture of a book on the back. LOSE 1 SANITY.


At one point I did consider re-balancing the item decks a bit by moving all the unique tomes into the spell deck… but you'd have to print bootleg versions of the cards with alternate backs and it probably wouldn't fix much anyway.

thecorinthian said:

::laughter::

John Bua,

The only House Rule I use for Spells is that you pay the Sanity Cost if you succeed in casting the spell…otherwise, it wasn't that mind-bending of an experience…but you still used the hand for that combat round, for instance.

Thanks for all the feedback. I haven't play tested this yet, and the books are so rare, and they give only a spell or two that I didn't think it would be that much of a game breaker. I still want to try it, and what with the books still being able to be lost via being sent to zero sanity or such, I really don't see it being much of a problem.

Has anyone tried this?

The spell/tome mechanic in the game is really not ideal, and even the designers have admitted it.

In general, the game seems to think the sanity costs are more trivial than they actually are (specifically, the game's rules don't seem to fully realize how signficant the difference between a sanity cost of 0-1 and 1-2 are given the low totals for investigators). Due in part to that, spells are a bit underpowered (only investigators with high sanity and special abilities relating to spells can make much use of them). Vicariously, tomes are also underpowered because the majority of them are meant as a source of spells. There are a number of ways you can try to tweak things:

1. The revised CotDP helps the spell deck tremendously by replacing a few of the weakest spells with some pretty strong spells. I find this to be a nice partial fix and it also helps improve the usefulness of tomes that grant spells.

2. You can try eliminating or dramatically reducing the danger of sanity loss by filtering the monster cup to heavily favor 'tough' monsters rather than 'scary' ones.

3. You can make a simple general rule, something like "successfully reading a tome always grants 1 clue token in addition to whatever else is in the text" to help make the sanity/movement costs more worth it.

4. You can filter the spell deck or change a handful of the weakest spells to where they are much stronger. My personal biggest peeves are Spectral Razor and Fist of Yog-sothoth, which 90% of the time are absolutely terrible.

I personally use the two following house-rules, just as an FYI, they help a bit:

1.) . On any round, you can pay up to 2 stamina during your movement phase to gain an extra movement point or a +2 on a single fight or sneak check per point spent. I find that because sanity is more precious than stamina on average, high sanity investigators perform better than high stamina investigators. This helps balance the two, and also gives a nice boost specifically to Vincent (one of the worst by RAW), who can fuel the benefit for himself on most turns.

2.) All "Cast and Discard" spells are now "Cast and exhaust". In order to refresh them, you have to visit the magic shoppe and pay $2 for reagents. Conceptually, I never liked the idea that just because a spell was powerful you could only cast it once. This gives a nice boost to the potential power of the spell deck.

Really, I feel like the balance would be better if investigators had a 4/8 min/max on their sanity and stamina instead of 3/7 (making the sum 12 instead of 10). I might do that at some point.

Einlanzer80 said:

So, technically you can camp out at the Magick Shoppe with a Credit Rating and cast countless Greater Banishments? Or bless your whole party, or learn countless Skills? I'm not so sure I'm with you on this point.

@John: the main point of our critique wasn't related to Tomes giving you spells, but to Tomes giving you other things or allowing you to choose a spell. A Livre d'Ivon that is not discarded after reading grants you:

a) round 1, Alchemical process
b) round 2, Arcane insight
c) round 3, Find gate
d+) repeat round c)

This allows you to farm the spell deck for all the useful spells and technically break the game. Same stuff for Eltdown shards: you can freeze the doom track to zero. No challenge, no interest in the game any longer. Clearly, it depends heavily on the level you play, but still, it's too easy to exploit. Not to mention that this'd allow some PSs (like Minh's for example) to be passed really quickly

Julia said:

It's not as crazy as you're implying, but I've considered that $3 might be more appropriate.

The powerful spells all have 2 sanity cost and low casting modifiers, making your ability to "spam" them finite and your chance to fail while casting them relatively high About the only time it's really exploitable is if you have all of the following at the same time: a high sanity/lore investigator, one of those very rare spells, an ability to mitigate sanity costs, blessing and/or lore bonuses, and a retainer/Alchemical Insight. Having all of those things at once is very unlikely to say the least, and I've nerfed the only investigator who has a decent chance of pulling it off (Daisy). In fact, I've found that in general the strategic value of spending a turn going to the magic shop and paying money to refresh a single powerful spell is about right. It's a good enough idea to do sometimes, but not so good that it's always a no-brainer.

More importantly - considering the rarity of those spells, in practice it turns out to rarely be a game changer, but in every game it helps incentivize players to recognize the value of spells as being roughly equivalent to unique items.

Einlanzer80 said:

::laughter:: I wasn't implying it's crazy, but just trying to highlight why certain spells are "cast and discard" and not "cast and exhaust". Combos able to break the loop aren't that impossible to find. You can bank loan some money in order to have all you characters blessed before FB, for instance. Or having Credit Rating, or being Darrell with his Retainer (maybe teamed with a Mary that has passed her PS?) can help a lot. And there are other combos exploitable. Being Carolyn Fern with Ancient Language, for instance.

Generally speking, it shouldn't be so difficult having an investigator with a Lore of 4 or 5. You can drain his Sanity, and then start over the process.

If I had to name a price, I'd say 5$. It's the price you pay at the Magick Shoppe for a spell, and for that money you can have a crappy one or a good one, depends on how lucky you are while drawing from the deck. So, paying 5$ for a spell that *is* good - you choose it! - seems fair.

I am going to print out and use the books created by the Fans at the Investigators site located in the Fan Creations thread. It looks like they may have solved my issue with the spell tomes.