After a few more games with the revised Curse of the Dark Pharaoh expansion, I have another question. This one is about the Dark Pharaoh herald and his nasty "Blood Will Boil" effect: "At the start of the Upkeep Phase, before rolling to get ride of Curses, each Cursed Investigator loses 1 Stamina."

It's obvious that if you get cursed and let yourself be driven unconscious by this power, you're in a doom spiral, but we're not sure just how bad. Namely, does going unconscious this way at the very start of upkeep and being sent to the hospital just deprive you of your encounter that turn, or do you lose the rest of your upkeep (i.e. rolling to get rid of your curse), and movement as well? The "Unconscious in Arkham" paragraph in the rules reads, "The investigator is restored to 1 Stamina and has no further encounters this turn." You're not technically delayed at the hospital, so after I'm sent there by this effect, can I still roll for my curse, use upkeep items (hello Healing Stone), and then leave the hospital during the movement phase? I assume I'll still not get an encounter at my destination (even if that destination has an open gate?)

If going unconscious from Blood Will Boil ends my turn immediately, without getting an upkeep or movement phase, then I'm really screwed. That would mean I don't even get a roll to lose the curse and my only hope is that another investigator blesses me at the church.

Since investigators usually go unconscious during the Movement or Encounter phases, this hasn't come up for us before. There aren't that many ways to go insane/unconscious during upkeep!

That's a good point. Technically, using Injuries from the DH expansion will fix the problem. Anyway, I'll allow you to roll for the Curse (in the same way I allow people to roll their retainers / curses / blessings while LiTaS), especially because this loophole, while not playing DH as well, will screw your investigator forever, unless someone blesses him at the South Church

Indeed, the "Blood Will Boil" effect occurs before the investigator gets to do his/her upkeep actions or adjust the skills. However, if you are deprived of any further upkeep actions when you're knocked unconscious during the upkeep phase, the "Blood Will Boil" effect will render your investigator useless if he/she only has one point of stamina left at the beginning of the upkeep phase. Unless the victim investigator is blessed or healed by another investigator, draws an injury card, or is somehow devoured, you're practically playing a game with one less investigator. If your victim investigator was devoured rightaway, you could start the next turn with a new investigator and thus have a fully functional team again. So if you're deprived of any further upkeep actions when you're knocked unconscious in the upkeep phase, the "Blood Will Boil" effect will be worse than being devoured, which seems a bit extreme to me.

If I played a game where the same thing happened, I'd allow the victim investigator to complete all the mandatory upkeep actions --- i.e. rolling for curse, retainer, bank loan, etc. --- before moving to the hospital and ending the turn there. Even if you're allowed to complete the mandatory upkeep actions, and thus roll for the curse, it is still a pretty bad effect. The investigator is still useless until you roll a one for the curse, which might not even happen before the game ends, but at least there is a chance that the investigator won't be useless for the rest of the game when playing like this.

Whether you choose to allow for a roll on the curse or not, I'd say the best thing to do is to make one of the other investigators spend trophies on a blessing at the South Church. Skipping turns and attempting to get rid of the curse through rolling a single die every turn might take too long time for it to be worth the try. This is, of course, assuming you're either not playing with injury cards or do not wish to draw one.

Finally, I'll quote the rules on the upkeep actions: "Each player must perform all Upkeep actions listed on his investigator’s cards every turn." Because of the emphasis on the word 'must', to me it seems reasonable to roll dice for all the mandatory upkeep actions, even though your investigator had just been knocked unconscious. Besides, if the bank gnomes can confiscate all your investigator's items while you're in another world, due to a defaulted bank loan, why shouldn't you be allowed to roll for a curse after your investigator was knocked unconscious? =P

I support that you still roll after going unconscious.

Thanks for the replies. It looks like the consensus is to still roll for curses, blessings, etc. when you're knocked unconscious in this way. But what about using upkeep items like the healing stone the same turn you get knocked out? How about adjusting sliders? Are you giving the investigator a full upkeep phase or just the "roll to keep your cards" part of it?

A very related question here is when the investigator is restored to one point of stamina after being knocked unconscious. Is the investigator immediately restored to one point of stamina, regardless of which phase he/she was knocked unconscious? Or is the investigator restored to one point of stamina at the very end of the turn (i.e. the end of the mythos phase)?

In the former case, a healing stone would give you an extra point of sanity if you were allowed to use it. In the latter case, the healing stone wouldn't help at all. It would give you back one point of sanity, but that's what you'd be restored to at the end of the mythos phase anyway. The same goes for Vincent Lee's healing ability and Lily Chen's "Yin and Yang" ability.

So let's assume you're restored to one point of stamina at the end of the mythos phase. To me, this makes sense because an investigator can't be knocked unconscious twice during the same turn. Right? If you're then allowed any further actions in the upkeep phase, those actions would be done at zero points of stamina. For instance, if you were to cast an upkeep spell with a sanity cost, and that sanity cost would bring your investigator to zero points of sanity, your investigator would be devoured.

And what would you do if another (conscious) investigator spent his/her last points of sanity in order to cast a spell, i.e. such that that investigator was reduced to zero points of sanity, during the upkeep phase? Would you allow the investigator to make the spell check and, if successful, cast the spell? Or would you deny the spell check because that investigator was just driven insane? The rules clearly state that the sanity loss occurs before the spell check.

Personally, I wouldn't allow an investigator to make that spell check, because he/she was just driven insane. For the same reason, I wouldn't allow any further upkeep actions other than the mandatory ones (curse, bank loan, etc.) if the investigator was driven insane or knocked unconscious in the upkeep phase.

Not having DH, and its injury cards, yet, we decided to house-rule that "Blood Will Boil" does not affect investigators who are already down to their last point of stamina. This cuts down on the herald's power a bit, but avoids the endless hospital cycle that we found went beyond being challenging into just-plain-not-fun territory for the players stuck there. Thematically, the curse of the pharaoh enfeebles you until you're at death's door but doesn't quite finish you off.

BTW, the Dark Pharaoh herald with the new version of Yig? So much pain.

Oh, and another painful pairing: Dark Pharaoh herald and the revised version of Cthulhu, with Monterey Jack in play: he starts the game with a max sanity of 1:

-Normal MJ sanity: 3

-Cthulhu reduces max sanity by 1: 2

-Dark Pharaoh makes MJ looses two sanity for his unique items during setup; off to the asylum.

-Revised Cthulhu reduces max sanity of insane investigators by 1: 1

"Here, Duke! Good boy, Duke!"

Just about the nastiest pairing is new Yig with Dark Pharaoh with Rex in the game.