Hello all,

We played through the Inner Sanctum scenario this evening, and although we had fun, it seemed like it was REALLY easy for the Keeper to win.

He had the Objective of getting the four cultists to the Chapel to summon the Cthonian. Since there was four investigators, he could summon four cultists on one turn, then spend the rest of the time moving them all to the chapel where he could summon the monster and if we didn't kill it in four rounds, we lose.

Now, he didn't do it quite like that; he stymied us where he could as we looked for clues, but eventually he just moved his four guys there, summoned, and we were all far away at the time. Then he just spent his time moving the Cthonian away from us (not that we really had any chance to catch it anyways) and we lost.

Did we do something wrong? Did the Keeper just play well? Or are we missing something? I'm not trying to complain the scenario was too hard or anything; if that's the way that one is, I'm fine with that. It just seemed really easy for the Keeper.

What I found, and others will chime in to say more about it, is that some scenarios are made the way that with less investigators it's harder for the Keeper and sometimes easier…same with more investigators. Like Inner Sanctum, if you play a full force, the Keeper gets 4 threat a turn so he can summon quickly and make is win easier.

Maybe retry this scenario with 3 or less investigators and see how it goes.

A long time ago I played this scenario as the Keeper with 3 investigators against me and it was not that easy. Summoning/moving the Cultists took more time and I had to make some choices like do I spend threat hurting the investigators or I keep summoning the Cultists.

Try it with fewer investigators and see how it goes…problem is, you already know the objective so you'd have to play like it was your first time, which might be difficult

If you see the Keeper doing something in 4 Investigators games, you need to split the party

I had this near same experience in a FIVE player (yes, I know 4 is the limit) game with this same scenario. I was wondering the same exact thing. I wanted to make sure that I could summon INDEFINITE amount of Cultists, so long as I had enough threat! Now, my other question though is, could I summon X amount of cultist and then IMMEDIATELY sacrifice them to make them Zombies or Hounds of Tindalos, etc. in THE SAME TURN??? so long as I had the threat to use the Keeper Card?? I'm thinking, yes, but I would like to make sure.

thanks!!

I don't think the rules have said anything against the immediate sacrifice, so technically I think you can.

But for the sake of gameplay and story-telling, I think it is not appropriate to do so, not to mention the reasonable time (turn) spent for the cultists to set up the ritual in the virtual reality.

Minor spoilers below

We also have had this problem, the investigators can never seem to win this mission, and they're never even close. The first time I played as a keeper, I just kept summoning worshippers, over and over again. Making sure that the players were occupied by trying to kill loads of cultsists, all the time. And since I could summon cultists faster than they could kill them, they hardly found any clues.

The second time was almost a repeat of the first, but to make the game "easier" I sacrificed my cultists for hounds of tindalos, I thought that maybe the lower number of monsters at a higther threat cost might make the mission more balanced. I was wrong, again the investigators had trouble and got nowhere.

The third time wasn't the charm for the investigators either. This time ( spoiler altert! ) i focused on trying to gather a number of cultists in a specific room to reveal the objective. While this tactic allowed the investigators to move more freely as I did not focus on them and encounter only a few cultists they stood no chance when the objective was revealed. They gathered some clues and at least had a minor shot at winning the game, but it ended with three dead and one insane investigator and a total victory for me. But it felt like I didn't do my best, that I tried to "be nice" as a keeper to give them an oppurtunity to win and playing like that that doesn't feel as fun as a keeper.

We talked about it and almost believed that we had misunderstood some rules as the keeper allways seem to have a really easy path to victory, even when cutting the investigators some slack.

We've thought about a house rule that might be a solution to the problem. As the problem seems to be that it's so easy to summon a cultist horde we thought about only allowing the keeper to use summon worshippers once at each altar, making two cultists the maximum summoned each turn, and making sure they are more spread out. That way, it takes longer to summon monsters and cultists become more precious to the Keeper. What do you think of that house rule? Any input?

k7e9 said:

While Inner Sanctum is the most shoot 'em up scenario, I would say the investigators (and players) are at fault here. Goal is not to kill everything, it is to find the clues, evade and move. If an investigator moves three times (using Action to run), cultists can't catch up. If the Keeper spends threat to move the cultist(s) after the investigators to pressure them, that is threat he isn't spending elsewhere.

I have a different idea. I thought the Inner Sanctum was the most difficult basic scenario for Keeper, when I first read the whole Keeper's Guide.

In the real game, my Investigators chose awfully bad Character-Item set - the ONLY starting weapon was the Guitar. However, it was really hard for me to win. They found shotgun, they stunned several cultists with fists, I was always lack of threats, blahblahblah. I never thought Joe Diamond with Cult Robe and Magnifying Glass could be that powerful. I won the game because the two Shoggy made several miracles (especially slamming the Barrier with one shot)

I thought it was because,

1. The keeper should move ALL THE CULTISTS with Command Minion, requiring 1 threat for each cultist. Thus, the Keeper cannot save any threat while moving 4 cultist each turn, even with 4 investigators. There is no free mythos/trauma with Evil Presence. The ONLY other threat source is Event 2, and there are no Take Sample, no Blood Relative, etc.
2. It is a extremely long trip between the Altar and the Chapel. The only help is the ladder, but the Doggy and the Shoggy cannot use the ladder. Moreover, there is no vent for Doggy.
3. Cultists are too weak against weapons, especially ranged weapons. Each cultist kill makes the Keeper to spend threats again. The worst one was Tommy Gun - It often TERMINATES 2 cultists each turn. (In fact, it even kills Shoggy in a turn, with the rare case)

I wonder how the other Keepers could play Inner Sanctum that easily.

Playing this story with my friends today, a doubt arose. 1B with the same objective - to bring the cultists to the chapel.

When I, as Keeper, brought the 4 cultists to the chapel, a investigator was in the room. In this case, you should get tested for horror to the 4 cultists or just for the Chthonian ?

Horror checks are made when a monster enters an investigator's room (or vice versa). If the investigator was in the Chapel, first four Cultists move in, that's four Horror checks, then the Cthonian enters, fifth Horror check for that.

TEnOTT said:

I think that you nail is pretty much in topic 1 - Which this scenario has been won by Keeper alot - when I hear that people can keep throwing their Cultists at investigators I am puzzled because of the Threat limitation (In case of Inner Sanctum it is 4 x 16 + X being the number of Cultists in play, which at least means up to 16 Cultists with ability to move a total 96, an estimate of 6 each) There is on top of my memory (I didn't check this, please do correct me) 7-8 spaces from the nearest altar to the Chapel. So if a keeper wants to be cheap, and by god does it seem to happen often, a maximixed force can be moved in like that.

I also remind people playing (Another mistake alot of people make) is that a Cult Leader, does not count towards the 4 cultists that have to make it to the Chapel, I refer here to the rulebook, page 12: "Special Note: Cult leader monsters are not considered to be cultists for the purposes of card effects and abilities."

To answer number 3, yes Cultists die easily, protect them as your children, while luck has alot to do with dice rolls, try to play the game story based. When the players do finally get to the chasm the distance between the altar and the chapel is much much easier. Allowing for a quick summoning of the Cthonian, with the chapel being not much further than 3-4 spaces away (The cultists were apparently in such a hurry they forgot about that ladder before the Investigators found it, supposedly it was a cultist that couldn't find the ladder that called them?). Look at the map as a keeper and think about baits, possibilities and movements, there is no shame is sitting with a scenario beforehand and overview your possibilities. And if all else fails, put a Shoggoth in a room that you don't want the players to enter. Or bait them to that room. Play with their expectations, or their paranoia of your hidden games.

I would recommend sitting a Shoggoth down in the first Altar room, and just… sit there. It doesn't have to do much else to protect the Crypt where the last Clue is (Yes, it is relatively easy to dodge with a modifier of +0, but it's damage is massive). Wait for the investigators to either waste time killing it, moving cultists out of the room, but keeping the Shoggoth there, alternatively leave a few cultists behind to cause either evasion checks or turn them into hounds if near death. Or make a Shoggoth move to a room that is important, one of my first moves in one game was to make a hound, and then move it to the bathroom, paralyzing the northern end of the map. While I have yet to win this scenario, I have been close, had it not been for an extremely lucky karate chop delivered by Harvey, that killed himself as well, and I couldn't ask for more heroic and fun ending ever when I was like "Mwahahaha I will win" until Harvey (Now with-out spell because he failed), moved into my space, did a flipping 1 roll on attack and made the Cthonian explode in a bile of goo.

My group has run into the original poster's problem as well. Looking through some other forums online, I came across some fan-made "fixes" to some Stories that are generally deemed unbalanced. This one's solutions modify the Summon Worshippers card to be used 'once per altar per turn'. Also, using the Objective described above, it was modified as well. The Investigators now have 5 turns to kill the Cthonian, and the monster cannot leave the chapel.

We played it that way yesterday and it was the first time the Investigators won that Story. That's not to say it wasn't still challenging for them, and we only played that Story the one time, so your mileage may vary, but it seemed okay for us!