Posted on by DerBK

Otherworldly Abominations

(replaces Hideous Abominations from The Dunwich Legacy)

Goal of this replacement set: There are two issues i have with the base Abomination set and both revolve around the Conglomeration of Spheres. First, i think it punishes certain playstyles a lot more than others. For example if you have a Survivor as your enemy handler, evasion is really the only option because all they have for weapons is melee traited. The other thing i dislike is that those Conglomerations do not come with Victory points. For an enemy that can potentially take six actions to defeat, that would have seemed very appropriate. Also, it turns The House Always Wins into a lottery where you either get the opportunity to gain another VP or not because the first abomination drawn is random. The only two scenarios using this set are The House always Wins and Lost in Time and Space (and possibly in Where Doom Awaits if you killed Silas), so it’s not like that would have introduced too many XP into the campaign.
The attempt of fixing both issues lead to the Proto-Shoggoth, a creature that punishes all manners of attack evenly, but rewards Victory for doing so. The other creature, the Reaver is modeled fairly close to the Lurker it replaces, with some stats switched around and a Forced effect that is more likely to fire.
For using this set I suggest swapping out the whole thing, but making an Abomination set with three of the four enemies is certainly an interesting option as well. For Where Doom Awaits, I suggest using the original set since it calls out one of the enemies by name in the story text.

Replaces Conglomeration of Spheres. Number of these in the encounter set: 2

About this card: Investigators will have to team up to defeat this monster in one turn while solo investigators would need to use one of their actions to evade if they want to kill it without being hit back. The fight value of three was chosen so that most investigators may still want to use a weapon when attacking Proto-Shoggoth, even if it’s just for a combat bonus. I chose to reduce the evasion of both enemies in this set, to open up another venue to finishing the scenario (maybe even saving Peter Clover!) for players who are not able to deal with these monsters yet (it’s the first or second scenario after all).

Replaces Servant of the Lurker. Number of these in the encounter set: 2

About this card: Just like Servant of the Lurker, the Reaver is a tough enemy to fight, so claiming the Victory point becomes an ordeal. This is especially true under the time pressure of The House Always Wins which also can have players running around with their level zero starting deck, so the evasion of 1 was done as a failsafe that players can exploit if they need to get past it without being dragged into a fight with this enemy.

4 Replies to “Otherworldly Abominations”

  1. In Where Doom Awaits, the whole set gets added if you killed Silas, not just the Conglomeration that starts in play, so you’ll need to address that. But the extra VPs still wouldn’t break the campaign anyway. These alternative guys are nasty for solo-at least Pete can kill a conglomeration in one turn on his own if he can stand Duke twice (or sacrifice a fire axe), while Wendy could double backstab or use sneak attack. I guess she can still kill it in one round if she has Leo De Luca out and she can definitely evade it if she feels like running from it.

  2. Oh right, the rest of the set gets shuffled in, i forgot about that. But yeah, it doesn’t really matter either way, i don’t think it needs to be adressed in the cards in any way. I am firmly comfortable with having some extra XP in Dunwich especially. Or well… just use the original set in that scenario since one of its monsters is called out by name anyways.

    These enemies shouldn’t be a bigger problem to solo players than the original ones are, right? And as mentioned, those evasion values should make it possible for someone like Wendy to just dance circles around them.

  3. I think it’s investigator and card pool dependent for solo-the proto-shoggoth turns off so many cards that can be used to accelerate killing the conglomeration, like dynamite, I’ve got a plan, double or nothing, vicious blow and acidic ichor, and it’s harder to hit. With a large enough card pool though you should have the means to handle it with some trick or tank it, especially by scenario 8. I do still think it’s a nice design and good idea to have another Shoggoth in the cycle.

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