As described my group are getting our bottoms booted old school style.

There are two of us each playing two characters. I stripped everything back to basics rules wise just the base game with add on items gates and monsters.

Characters with 3 sanity are useless no? We always seem to get wasted two or three turns in when we haven't got the clues to start sealing gates yet and there is normally some nasty monster with a sanity loss of 3+ meaning he never sees combat as he either wrecks his fight value to make a low probability save or stays high and joins the crazy brigade because there are loads of high sanity loss monsters stopping movement. Is there a way to mitigate that?

What is the best way of varying the intensity speed to play it almost more RPG speed just until we are up to speed, a mythos every other turn is all I can think of?

The main problem is we always feel a bit like we just wasted three hours of our life rather than getting thwarted naturally if that makes sense?

Lilikin,

As I play always in RPG mode and almost exclusively four Investigators with all of the expansions, my playing Variant is really designed for that type of play. However, a simple fix for you might be to, as you say, reveal a new Mythos card every other turn. My friend Julia will be along and she will kindly tell me to "pull up my big boy pants" and not recommend the Mythos Card every other turn variant...but I'm thinking about you!

Cheers,

Joe

Julia's just happy that her friend Joe has got a good recipe to enjoy Arkham in the way he likes the most

This said... IIRC, some threads ago you said that after finishing the current rotation of AO, you'll return to "normal" play for some games. I'm eager to read your feedback on this

Julia,

You're absolutely correct...I did finish my last game of Arkham (with all of the AO s and all of the expansions) about a month ago, but my attention has been turned to " The War " in which I'm assisting with several videos to aid new players; creating a series of Production Sheets; and play-testing scenarios for the designer...and he has real deadlines, unlike some of the games I've play-tested this past year.

In short, you're right...I have to find some time to play a few games without my Variant and see how easily my Investigators are slaughtered...

Ciao,

Joe

Micahel McGlen has Sanity 3, and he's pretty good. Low Sanity can be managed with high Will, and if you don't have high Will then high Fight will substitute.

Joe, good luck with that I know you really like that game, so I do hope you're having a great time helping with the playtest

As for the original inquiry, 3-Sanity characters aren't that bad (unless you get Mythos Lore as starting skill or play against Cthulhu). Clearly, they are more difficult to play considering the existance of higher-sanity damaging monsters, but I'd not say they are "useless". It is certainly true that Sanity has a higher value in the game than Stamina, so I'd prefer a 7/3 Sanity character to a 3/7, but still, you can play and win games even with 3/7

Micahel McGlen has Sanity 3, and he's pretty good. Low Sanity can be managed with high Will, and if you don't have high Will then high Fight will substitute.

How would a high fight ever beat a monster that will probably take all your sanity before the fight begins?

that's my point? you could have the deathstar under your arm but if it goes crazy before it comes to the fight part of the combat it will never fire!

Michael Mac Glenn is Fight 3-6 and Will 4-1. He starts out with a tommygun, so if he max-out his will, he's left with 4 dices for Horror checks and 9 for Combat check. Thats ok for lots of monsters, there are not that many around with -3 to horror check, most have -1 or -2. And if a 3+6 Combat is not enough, you have the option of using dynamite, for 11 dices. Against strong monsters with low horror modifiers (like shoggots or dark youngs) you can take the risk of lowering a bit your Will.

Michael starting with 8$, you can go to the Administration building and buy him an additionnal skill. There are skills that will boost Fight or Will, or that will allow reroll for Combat and Horror checks.

Also, there are few monsters which tackles 4 San at once, usually, the most frightening take 3. So a whiskey common item is enough to avoid madness - though you'll need to rest after that kind of fight. There are also other items that may come in handy, like a cross (+1 to Horror checks).

Also, some allies may help bossting your Will.

And sometimes, if you're not lucky with items, skills or allies, you will ultimately have to use clues to add dices to your Horror Checks, but it may be worth it if you're fighting a really nasty monster.

With the Innsmouth expansion, the low sanity fighters Michael Mac Glenn and Mark Harrigan (from Dunwich), get a +1 to max sanity if they managed to pass their Personnal Stories.

Thank you, my immaturity at this game is showing and your advice will be applied to my next game!

Just what I needed. I drew a dark young in both my last two games so it wasn't a lot of fun TBH

I seem to have bad luck with the Dark Young. I truly believe Chaosium (and by extension FantasyFlight) has a 'thing' for the Dark Young. They are among the toughest and most widely spread monsters in both Call of Cthulhu and Arkham Horror, I think.

If I may add something to the previous brilliant post of ZoogyStardust, remember also that Arkham requires some team work and (almost) all characters have some good points you can work on (and I believe this is one of the most fascinating things of the game); low Sanity characters could not be the best monster whacker in town, but they could be good on many different other thing. Enjoy the ride. You'll certainly be smashed a couple of times (like we all have been), but then you'll see the real Death Star is the team work

The thing about high Fight is that it means you can keep Will cranked and not be useless.

Remember the magic number is three. Luck won't always be on your side, but if you have a dice pool of at least three, you can expect to pass a Test.