This thread is mainly to get some feedback about the elements I am designing for my as-yet-unnamed expansion.
WIP expansion needs advice/commentary
First, the rules; these are based on Rise of the Servitors:
Servitors are powerful (and usually human) servants of the Ancient Ones. Their
task in Arkham Horror is much like that of a Herald: to pave the way for their
god's coming.
After choosing the Herald/Guardian, select three Servitors. If two have iden-
tical Domains, discard one and choose another until each is in a unique location.
Mark the locations with Domain tokens.
Servitor rules:
1. Concerning Gates:
A. When a Gate opens at a Servitor's location, do not
generate any monsters with it.
B. The difficulty of closing the Gate increases by one.
C. Gates with a Servitor may not be sealed.
D. While the Gate remains open, when its Mythos symbol comes up for monster
movement, take a monster from the cup and place it at the location.
2. Fighting Servitors:
A. During the Arkham Encounter phase, an Investigator at the Servitor's
location may choose to enter combat with the Servitor instead of having
an encounter or closing the gate.
B. Combat against a Servitor proceeds as against a monster, except that an In-
vestigator cannot flee once combat begins.
C. Passing the Combat check(s) against the Servitor removes one Doom token from
the track at the bottom. The Servitor cannot be engaged again by the same
Investigator that turn.
D. When the last Doom token is removed from the Servitor, its token is removed
from the board and the Servitor is defeated.
3. Defeated Servitors:
A. The Investigator that removed the last Doom token from the Servitor claims
its Domain token as a trophy; this is worth 1 gate trophy.
B. Any monsters at the location are banished and returned to the cup.
C. If there is an open gate at the location, it is closed and the Investigator
takes it as a trophy.
D. Remove a Doom token from the Ancient One and place it Elder-sign up at the
Servitor's (former) location. This acts as a Great Seal; gate bursts and
similar effects will not break this seal!
E. No Mythos card is drawn this Mythos phase!
F. The Terror level is reduced by one! Closed shops will remain closed.
Looks like I broke the link for the first card! Let's see if these stay up! Sorry about that.
- Gio
I like your new Servitor rules better than the original rules, except that without a special token at the location, it seems like it would be easy to forget the seal there is a Great Seal. Also, you're giving too many prizes for defeating a Servitor. You get a Servitor trophy, a gate trophy (if there's a gate there), and a permanent seal, and you're reducing both the Terror Track and Doom Track by 1, and removing the Mythos Phase of that turn. And there are 3 of these in play, so you can do it 3 times!
On the other hand, it does take 3 attacks each. That's nine turns (or 3 turns, if you have 3 investigators doing it at once), and there's a good chance you're taking damage in the process (either Sanity or Stamina loss).
One thing I really like is your expansion of the Servitors' abilities, so that they're not just benefits for the AO during final battle.
After reading your post, I thought about it a bit and went over the rewards again.
- Servitor trophy
- Gate trophy
- Banished monsters at location
- Great Seal / Elder Sign
- No Mythos card
- Terror Level -1
Having a trophy for defeated the Servitor makes good sense, I think, and so does the gate trophy. Banished monsters also make sense to me, as the Servitor's power over the location have been broken.
Of course, that leaves the final three! After thinking about these a bit, I would probably get rid of the Great Seal effect, and the "no Mythos card" effect. These are the most broken of the effects. Also, I remember reading that lowering the terror level is against AH's design philosophy, so that's out also. So, that would leave us with:
- Servitor trophy
- Gate trophy
- Banished monsters at location
- Elder Sign
So, that works for me. I'll revise my local documents accordingly!
> One thing I really like is your expansion of the Servitors' abilities, so that they're not just benefits for
> the AO during final battle.
It did make more sense to me to do that! And thanks very much for your comment.
I had noticed your thread on Servitors; I didn't post there because I didn't want to potentially hijack it, hijacking being rude.
Of course, feel free to use these revised Servitor rules with the old Servitors! They are backwards-compatible!
- Gio
I would only banish monsters from the location if using the variant wherein monsters at a location are banished when a gate there is closed. Since I usually do not play with that variant, I would usually not banish monsters by defeating a Servitor.
Aside from that, I like your revision, and I think I am going to be revising my Marathon Horror rules, so I'll use your Servitor rules rather than the original ones. (They work better within the context of Marathon Horror anyway.)
Yenreb said:
I would only banish monsters from the location if using the variant wherein monsters at a location are banished when a gate there is closed. Since I usually do not play with that variant, I would usually not banish monsters by defeating a Servitor.
Well, it made sense to me, seeing as the Servitor that summoned them has been defeated. Still, I can see your point there, and I agree. I'll make that change as well.
Yenreb said:
Aside from that, I like your revision, and I think I am going to be revising my Marathon Horror rules, so I'll use your Servitor rules rather than the original ones. (They work better within the context of Marathon Horror anyway.)
Hey, awesome.
The Domain tokens are just the normal hexagon tokens using the image from the back of the Servitor card. Fairly simple to make. ^.^
- Gio