Base game Arkham has 48 Clue tokens. The rules say to use other things as Clues if you need more (this has been discussed in another thread recently).

A while ago I made a custom AO called Ythogtha, who causes Clue tokens to return to the box as the investigators spend them, and stops you using other tokens as Clues, so you have a 'hard limit' of 48 Clues in each game. I think this is a pretty good idea for an AO ability and I'm probably gonna use it on some other custom content I'm making; but I need more data in order to know if it's balanced. If the ability is too harsh, the AO needs to give the investigators a chance of restocking the clues; and if it's not nasty enough then the AO needs to occasionally drain extra clues so that the investigators feel the pinch.).

SO

Has anyone ever kept track of how many Clue tokens actually get used/discarded in a typical game?

Even rough estimates would be useful.

I'll keep a log for you in the next few games and post here when I'm done? That work?

As a suggestion for this AO, you could make the final battle a little more forgiving if it looks like investigators are going to be running low to get a 5th-6th seal. You could also have the AO grant 2 clues to the first player during his attack or something like that. These clues could come out 2 at a time until the box was empty of clue tokens. Investigators spending clue tokens during the final battle are not discarded to the box but to the normal clue token supply.

Sure, great! I'd do the same thing myself but I've not got a regular player group nearby at the moment.

Those ideas for the AO aren't bad, though I'm not that keen on rebalancing the ability by making the AO do something nice for the players - that goes against the theme a bit! Tbh I plan to recycle the ability on to something different (a herald or some other custom content type) anyway, so the question may not arise.

If you are to win a game by sealing gates, you'll need to spend 30 clue tokens just on sealing the gates (unless you draw an elder sign as a unique item, of course). That leaves 18 clue tokens which can be spent on other things. If clue tokens have to be spent by an investigator in order to be returned to the box, 18 extra clue tokens doesn't sound very bad. However, if clue tokens which are lost (e.g. when a gate opens or when an investigator is knocked unconscious / driven temporarily insane) are also returned to the box, those 18 extra clue tokens might be gone surprisingly quickly.

And if you're playing with the Innsmouth expansion board, it might happen that you need to spend 6 clue tokens to prevent the Deep Ones Rising track from filling up. Then you've spent 6 of those 18 extra clue tokens, which leaves you with only 12 extra. If these 12 extra clue tokens are returned to the box if they are lost, then you might end up not having enough clue tokens to seal 6 gates. Some of these clue tokens will inevitably be lost when new gates are opening, and how many of them are lost will depend on your (bad) luck. You'll most likely also lose some of the clue tokens in other ways, e.g. through encounters, being knocked uncoscious, etc.

My suggestion is that clue tokens which are lost are returned to the cup, and only the clue tokens which are spent are returned to the box. If 48 clue tokens appear to be too many, you can always state that only 40 (e.g.) clue tokens are to be used when playing with this custom Ancient One.

eiterorm said:

6 seals times 6 clues per seal means 36, not 30 (shall we consider Hastur as well? I know it's another AO, but if you play with Avi's Ianus Herald, you can have two AOs in play). Plus, you have to take into account gate bursts, rumors, clues discard forced by Dagon and so on. It heavily depends on how harsh you want your game to be. For "normal" games, I'd say go with a cap of 60 - 64 clues (48 due to six seals + 2 bursts - in my experience, the worst game ever had 3 bursts in a row. I still won by sealing - and 12 for spare things, like rumors, skills, Dagon and so on, and you still should have a little margin in case some investigators have a couple of clues left). This should be ok for normal games, and allow some little chances of survival for unlucky games. If you want to press your investigators harder, lower the cap to 50, and if too many things burst… that's like, folks

Julia said:

And clearly, two months passed since my last game. Sorry! 6 times FIVE ::ashamed:: means 30. Still, scale down my previous estimate by 6

(man, I need a vacation ::laughter:

Apologies, again

I see that as an AO that you would have to take down hard and fast. Losing clues with gate openings and being KO'd/Insane would cause more damage than usual to the investigators. I love how his ability would make players hold thier breath as they draw mythos/encounters, afraid more of thier clues would sink into the abyss. Im looking forward to hearing how this turns out.

I'm glad y'all like the AO idea, but I did already post that one a while ago; it's on the AO thread already, go give it a try!

What I'm trying to do now is re-use the ability as the basis of a mini "expedition board". (It kinda represents there being a limit to how much knowledge you can gain in Arkham, and you need to go and explore places.)

The idea is that any clue that is discarded or spent , for any reason , is "lost" rather than being put back in the supply; then you have to go and have encounters on the Expedition board; some of the Expedition encounters will give you the chance to restore all the lost clues, or half the lost clues, or a fixed number, etc, etc, but of course the encounters are difficult and dangerous.

The other rule I have in mind is that if every clue in the game ends up in the "lost" pile, the ancient one awakens; so even if you think you can manage without Clue tokens, you can't afford to let the supply get emptied out.