vs.

If you had an encounter "gain 1 ally or 1 skill", what would you choose? also a sub-question: would your choice differ if you were playing Amanda Sharpe? for any investigator other than Amanda I would go with an ally, as they increase your skills and give a nice bonus. With Amanda, however, I would choose a skill for the chance I would draw one of the "success" skills (1 free success at evade, horror, combat, etc.) What about you? (Ofcours I'm talking about a random ally just to be clear)

Link to The Great Debate #1: Shotgun vs. Tommy Gun

Link to The Great Debate #2: Dread Curse of Azathoth vs. Spectral Razor

Ally, hands down. Allies are hard to come by--harder so now that mixing all the expansions makes most allies MIA anyway.

Allies offer bigger stat boosts than skills, and comparable ancillary abilities asthose of skills. It's always nice to see Mythos Lore or Grapple, but I'd rather have David Packard or Granny Orne.

Plus, if you drew a skill like Expert Occultist, you may find that it does you no good, when an ally like Professor Armitage at least gives you a bonus when closing gates, or to raise your Luck to counterbalance the boost in Lore, even if you don't make use of his magical resistance ability.

Skills blow. They are the most over priced thing in the game. There's an Ally that gives you a bonus skill for heaven's sakes!

-Frank

This ones a bit of a no brainer as Kevin has written "Allies cost 2 Gate trophies because they are the most powerful investigator cards in the game" pretty much word for word on the old forums, about 2005-6 I think.

Agreed, although I would rather draw Mythos Lore than most of the allies in the game (Granny is obviously better, that's why I said most). Same is true for the 1 success for combat checks, the 1 success for spell checks (but only for a spellcaster, as non-spellcasters tend to have low sanity), the 1 success for horror checks and even the 1 success for evade checks. Still though, those skills are rare, and then again it sucks to draw Expert Occulist for a non-spellcaster, whereas there's no such thing as a useless ally, for any type of investigator. That is why allies take the take.

Btw I've noticed non of you answered my sub question?

p.s. imho, duke and that +1 stamina guy blows and I would rather take a random skill over them any day.

I think for Amanda I might even pick an Ally.

For Lola Hayes I would definitely choose a skill.

Ally in both cases. I usually don't like skill draws. A good ally can be worth two or even three skills. A bad ally's worth about one.

I agree about Lola though. I'd probably take the extra skill in that case, unless I knew for a fact that the ally deck was stacked with high powered allies.

kroen said:

Otherwise it's a no-brainer. as others have mentioned there are allies that are the equivalent of two or three skills and can get you additional items or clue markers as well.

I would go so far as to say that Skills are simply over priced. Seriously, 10 bucks? I can get a lot of ale and wenches in this game for that.

Fight is a great skill. It's one of the best skills. How much better is it than a set of $3 Brass Knuckles? Twice as good maybe?

Paying $6 for a skill seems a lot more reasonable than what people are paying now. Keep in mind that as things currently stand, even the skill shopper character seriously considers getting other things than skills, because skills are across the board not worth $10..

-Frank

Frank said:

Are you referring to character sheets? because skills cost 8$ in administarion, not 10$... still overpriced, though.

I'd say skills should cost 6.5, but since there's no way of doing that, 7.

Avi_dreader said:

Unless you have a good magical AND physical weapon, people would still rather shop for common/unique. Maybe skills should just be purchased for a gate trophy or 5 toughness worth of monster trophies?

kroen said:

You'd have the problem of them being underpriced again (unless you paid the price and could only draw the top card).

I think that would be a fair price if you just drew the top one. It would be a hard choice between that and a Blessing.

With the expansions though, I think the skills have caught up somewhat. While there are some excellent new allies, there are some outragously broken skills. Allies are still better of course, especially since you can handpick them, but if you've got some extra money on your hands there are worse choices than buying a skill or two.

This one's easy IMO. Ally. Usually get two skill enhancements and another boon (draw an item, recover stamina, etc.). It seems more a 50/50 proposition with skills where you get something worthless to the investigator who draws it.