Our plucky private eye, Joe Diamond, stepped into the Science building, hoping to find some nice double A batteries. Problem was, a few hours ago, it had become a shimmering gate to The Abyss, with a horrible, terrible, no good Chthonian lurking about the premises. He attacks the Chthonian, failing his Horror check (poor dear), and fails his combat check as well. The Chthonian punches him in the nose, and then Joe is sucked into the abyss.

Two turns later, Joe has returned from the abyss, with serious desires to inflict grevious bodily harm on his Chthonian friend. The question that came up amongst the investigators: Joe Diamond has faced this beast before; does he have to make a new new horror check against this squiggly faced aberation?

The rule book said:

"Whether he passes the [Horror] check or not, an invesigator only needs to make one Horror check each time he does battle with a monster."

Half of our investigators thought that since this was "new" battle, a new Horror check was called for. The others insisted this was the same battle, drawn out over two turns due to gate suckage. Thematically, I really liked the idea of this particular Chthonian being an enemy Joe was familiar with, and was willing to side with the kids who thought he shouldn't have to make a new Horror check, even though I didn't quite read the rules that way.

Anybody have any particular thoughts on this, or maybe I should just keep knitting and leave the monster hunting to the professionals?

While I find your interpretation of the rules intriguing ~ it makes sense that if you've seen something before, you're far less likely to have it cause Sanity loss ~ the intention that you make a Horror check every time you face a monster.

Er, in this situation, the combat would have continued until Joe either died or defeated the Cthonian. Unless he fled, he wouldn't have been sucked into the gate.

Chronicles said:

Seconded. Unless you interrupt the combat by successfully evading a monster, you have to go on until you're knocked unconscious or the monster is defeated. And yup, as the Professor said, having seen a monster before does not prevent you from rolling again every bloody other time you face the same creature. I guess they're so nightmarish that seeing them once is not enough to have any Sanity loss prevented

@ The Professor: Ah, okay. They're just that scary then.

@ Chronicles: Well, no, because… hold on a moment… ::read:: ::read:: Huh.

@ Julia: Sigh . Yeah… I can see where I made my mistake. I failed my Lore check again. I always saw the word "drawn" as in "the investigator is drawn through the gate" as being more active than it really was, I suppose. Couple that with the part of the Combat rules that state "If the Investigator remains concious, sane, and in the same space as the monster after this step is resolved…" [emphasis mine] and years of turn-based RPG combat, and my faulty interpretation of the rules maybe makes sense to someone who's not addlepatted?

Thanks so much, guys! Your help is very appreciated!

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