Editing Eldritch Horror (section)

== Mechanics ==

You play a character, that character has stats. Combat with monsters and encounters revolve around stat-tests where you roll a number of D6s for how large the relevant stat is. For most tests, a single success will suffice no matter how many dice you roll, and a 5 or 6 is a success, unless you have a Blessed condition, then its 4 to 6 - or if you're Cursed, then its only a 6. If you have an encounter that says test Lore -1, and you have a lore stat of 3, then you roll 2 D6 and hope for the best. You can never have a stat roll reduced to less than one d6.

Equipment and other buffs your character can get can allow for a near endless mix of re-rolls, adding +1 to a dice result, having [[Exploding die|6s count as two successes]] and so on. You want these.

Your character has a limited number of health points and sanity points. Your character dies or goes nuts if these hit zero - and it can happen fast. Luckily its possible to get spells that allow for casters to undo limited health and sanity loss, or boost recovery, or do pretty much anything else. Spells generally serve a supporting role in the game, allowing for casters to conjure up clue resources for to player characters, teleport people around the game board, buff stats and generally help out. Rolling badly when casting a spell is roughly as bad as crit failing casting a spell in [[FATAL]], at least for your character, and can be just as messy. Protip: Equip your casters well for lore rolls.

Speaking of which, with the 50+ different characters you will have access to once you have all the expansions, you'll quickly realize that while all characters can basically do anything as long as they're tooled up for it, then there are some basic [[Class|character archetypes]] that makes each character lean towards a specific area of specialisation. Indeed, all characters have a unique action ability and a unique passive ability.

* The Warrior
This type of character typically has both good health and sanity stats. At least 5 or 6 in each, ideally more. Additionally they have high starting Strength stats, and often also good Will stats, though there are characters like the Farmhand who has a passive ability which means that unless he gets physically hurt in combat he doesn't have to test Will in combat, and can thus entirely avoid sanity loss. He's basically a jock who's too dumb for Cthulhu to scare him. Another fun warrior character is the Gravedigger who basically gets bonus loot for killing monsters as his passive ability, so once he gets rolling he can easily become an unstoppable monster killer.

* Clue Generators
This type of character can take on a variety of forms, but ultimately it boils down to their special abilities allowing them to crank out Clues. Usually the mysteries you have to solve to defeat the Old Ones require Clue tokens to be spent somehow, so you want a ton of these. The Psychic is a classic example of this via her ability to 'scry' new conditions players get and gleam clues from those, or the Mechanic who can convert Ressource tokens into clues, or the Researcher who gains extra clues from Research encounters and can spawn new clue markers on the game board.

* Gear Generator
Characters with high Influence stats are great for Acquire Assets rolls, so they'll be your go-to solution for getting weapons for your warriors, tomes for your casters and booze for anyone who needs to avoid sanity loss. Characters like the Politician, who has the passive ability of being able to ship any kind of purchased asset directly to other characters no matter where they are on the game board, makes him the best gear generator in the game, and he synergizes quite well with the Millionaire who has the ability to allow other characters an extra Gather Resource action AND Acquire assets roll on his turn. The Salesman character can, if you work him right, end up with the ability to be able to purchase clues, making him a hybrid Gear and Clue generator able to gain endless amounts of clues per turn, especially if the Millionaire helps him out.

* Casters
Spellcasting in the game is vital for support purposes. Incantation spells like Flesh Ward and Instill Bravery can save characters from dying or going insane, while teleportation, permanent skill buffs and clue conjuration also helps. Any character with high Lore and sanity can fit this role, but characters like the Waitress have abilities for easy spell generation, and the Psychic also starts with high lore so she can double as a clue generator and caster. Similarly the Parapsychologist is a good hybrid caster and clue generator. The Magician straight up has a passive ability that says that once per round he gets a second spell when he would gain one spell, go figure.

* Portal hunters
The Shaman and the Dreamer both have abilities that let them teleport to active portals, and you really do not want too many of those active. Stat wise you want good all-round stats for this, but abilities that let you move quickly across the board help a lot here. It also helps if they can fight or hide well, because monsters spawn when gates open up.

* Support
A lot of characters don't have abilities that tie them into any of the other specializations, but often just help out in supporting others. The Musician and the Secretary both buff the dice-rolls of other players, and in the secretary's case even herself, when they're on the same space as others. The Nun can pray to make the madness conditions of other characters go away, and similarly the Psychologist can give other characters on her space extra rest actions that also remove madness conditions. The Butler allows characters to get two tickets instead of one when they buy tickets - might not seem like much, but being able to effect fast travel is really handy if your caster can't teleport people.

Ideally you want a good balance of character types - at least one warrior, one caster and one clue-generator - or you can go nuts and pick a character randomly if you're insane. If a character dies doom advances one, you start a new character next turn, and you can go to your dead character to loot them for gear, spells, clues and anything else, along with retreating doom by one - provided that what killed them doesn't kill your new character.

Oh ya that's another fun game mechanic: Doom. There's a track at the top of the game board counting down. Certain events in the game, or if the stars align and the right omen comes up while there are certain colors of gates active on the game board, will see the doom counter tick down. You never ever want it to hit 0. For some Old Ones it 'simply' summons them into the world of living, meaning that you have to solve X number of mysteries AND then physically defeat the final boss to win, but for others... it simply means game over. You really want to avoid this.

Additionally, one of the expansions add a personal quest system to the game. Basically each character starts with a personal mini-quest that usually ties into what their special abilities make them good at. If you complete them the quest rewards often include stat or ability buffs, or enhance your character in some other way. Some quest rewards are rather dull - say if they're just stat buffs, because you might already have those stats buffed to the max, but for the Salesman it allows him to straight up purchase clues via Acquire Asset rolls, while the Psychic it allows her to spend clues cancel out Mythos card effects which is hilarious broken and basically turns the game difficulty down to "Game Journalist Review Mode". However, these quests can be failed, and some can be failed quite easily if you aren't careful - and the penalties can range from light stuff like stat debuffs which be fixed pretty easily to horrible alterations to game mechanics that make the whole game much harder, like altering how the game calculates mystery completion criteria. Sometimes you will want to kill off a character to prevent quest failure if you don't have any other options.