Elric: You seemed to miss my point entirely mageith. An earlier post implied she was overpowered, and this nerf brought her in line with the rest, and that simply is not true.

Mageith: I don't think I missed your point.  I just don't agree with it.  I remember an earlier post implying she was underpowered. I just defended her and said she was adequately powered or just about right in relation to other characters.

Elric: Now she is pretty weak in my opinion. All she can do is fight well against monsters. Monsters can be killed well with many investigators, and Lily's lack of resources makes her pretty much the groups monster basher, and nothing else. Gates must be closed, rooms sealed, etc, there has never been a shortage of ways to bash monsters into oblivion.

Elric: Its true she is above agerage with regards to monster bashing, but in all other areas she is now below the average. She has no resources, can only heal herself when other doctor type investigators can heal anyone, and you think thats above average compared to the doctors like Leo who can prevent san/sta hits to anyone, anywhere at all? 

Mageith: No. I think she's comparable to Leo.  Leo's not a doctor, but he can help others by preventing a stamina or sanity.  A stamina or sanity is worth 2 points.  Lily can protect herself by restoring a sanity or stamina -- Also worth 2 points.  Other than that Leo is average.  Lily can bring 9 points of unmodified damage to the fray. That's worth four dice.  I'd rather have Lily than Leo, even now, but both are assets to the party.  If their only difference between the two was the ability to heal herself and/or others, then of course Leo would be a little more superior.

Elric: I agree with frank, no way on earth was Lily better than Leo, even pre-nerf. And mandy was way better too, in my opinion.  She can give the equivalant of up to a 16 dice combat test with her re-roll ability to any character that starts with a gun, once per turn, and thats better than 9 unmodified from Lily, ill take mandy any day.

Mageith: I still maintain Prenerf Lily was twice as good as Leo or nearly so. Of course, that was only true if she put herself out there and actually fought monsters.  I don't get your point about gathering clues and closing gates.  Most investigators can gather clues on the same basis and with a 5 Fight, she can close gates just fine.   Darrell, Wilson and Kate can avoid the horrible gate and monster.  Rex and Diana can generate clues.  Everyone else is pretty much on a par.  Most investigators have a 5 in lore or fight, but not all.

Mageith: Mandy's one of the three best.  Leo's not.  I'll take Mandy over Lily too.

Elric: I think we can agree to dis-agree on this one.

Mageith: OK

One of my personal favorites is the dreamer. I know he isnt really that powerful, but by checking dimensional symbols on gates, he can pop out of any portal on the board and sometimes he gets some pretty nice monster un-summons on strong monsters, after he closes their gates that have matching dimensional symbols.

Sometimes we can get some pretty interesting zero danger monster kills that way. Plus i just like his character concept.

mageith: Leo's not a doctor, but he can help others by preventing a stamina or sanity.  A stamina or sanity is worth 2 points.  Lily can protect herself by restoring a sanity or stamina -- Also worth 2 points.

That assertion is wholly unjustifiable. Preventing the loss of a Stamina or Sanity is better than healing one after the fact, because it can stop people from going to the Hospital. So for example: if our Professor was exposed to one or two Stamina loss then he would be at the same point if Leo prevented a loss or he got healed by 1 afterward. But he would be in a much better situation if he suffered a loss of 3 and had one prevented vs. suffering a loss of 3 and having healing available next upkeep. That fact alone makes Leo far superior to the doctor, the psychiatrist, or the martial artist - his power essentially increases people's turn by turn resilience, and the others don't. But beyond that, providing your bonus to any character who needs it is better than providing it to yourself.

Lily's power doesn't do anything at all on those turns in which she wins her fights, goes shopping, or has an uneventful time in another world. If she personally isn't injured, her power is useless next turn. For Leo's power to be invalidated, every single other character has to go uninjured for a whole turn. In a two player game, his ability is useless half as often. In a six player game, his ability is useless one sixth as often.

Even if Lily's power were twice as big as Leo's, it still wouldn't be as good because Leo's works to save people instead of cleaning up next upkeep, and Leo's works to save who needs saving instead of just saving Lily. It's a cooperative game, and cooperative powers are better than selfish powers. Full stop.

-Frank

But.... Leo's ability only works on losses. Lily's can heal after a cost. While still not as grand as being able to reduce it for anyone, it still has its uses.

Elric91 said:

Hmmm, it never has come up in one of my games, but I suppose that if Lily were to gain Duke as an ally she would also be able to gain a point of sanity as well. I'll have to see if I can swing that sometime just for giggles. :-)

Nghtflame7 said:

She would gain Max Sanity, not gain a sainity point. 

mageith: Leo's not a doctor, but he can help others by preventing a stamina or sanity.  A stamina or sanity is worth 2 points.  Lily can protect herself by restoring a sanity or stamina -- Also worth 2 points.

Frank writes: That assertion is wholly unjustifiable. Preventing the loss of a Stamina or Sanity is better than healing one after the fact, because it can stop people from going to the Hospital. So for example: if our Professor was exposed to one or two Stamina loss then he would be at the same point if Leo prevented a loss or he got healed by 1 afterward. But he would be in a much better situation if he suffered a loss of 3 and had one prevented vs. suffering a loss of 3 and having healing available next upkeep. That fact alone makes Leo far superior to the doctor, the psychiatrist, or the martial artist - his power essentially increases people's turn by turn resilience, and the others don't. But beyond that, providing your bonus to any character who needs it is better than providing it to yourself.

Mageith: Wow! You are superlative at superlatives to emphasize (or exagerrate) minor differences.  The net result for the team between Leo and Lily's healing/preventative skills is nearly negliable.  I'll concede that preventing another's damage is superior to healing one's self at the cost of a focus point.  I'm pretty sure I conceded that earlier.  However 2 points is 2 points and their abilities are directly comparable.  So I can't agree with your assertions that one is much better or far superior than the other here. I can go with superior and better, if that will help. 

Frank: Lily's power doesn't do anything at all on those turns in which she wins her fights, goes shopping, or has an uneventful time in another world. If she personally isn't injured, her power is useless next turn. For Leo's power to be invalidated, every single other character has to go uninjured for a whole turn. In a two player game, his ability is useless half as often. In a six player game, his ability is useless one sixth as often.

Mageith: Both of their powers will probably go unused on the first turn.  But if Lily loses more than one stamina or sanity, then she can heal herself while shopping, etc.  Lily's power does take some action by her to kick in and Leo's only requires that someone remember he has it.  Again, in most cases Leo's healing power is superior.  However, Lily as an investigator is as useful as Leo, however which has always been my contention.  In fact, if I were need to rate one or the other as better, I'd always prefer to have Lily except against Glaaki.  Leo is just as good against every Old One.

In fact, when I did my own personal rating of investigators, Leo was the standard for average.  In order to be an average investigator, you had to be able to bring back an average of nearly 2 points TO THE TEAM per turn.  As you stated, Leo can do that practically every turn.  But he can never do better than that.  Any investigator that can't bring back 1 point per turn is a drag on the team (Dexter is the worst since is very weak power is seldom even used.).   Superior investigators bring back more than 2 points per turn, I put Darrell in that category because if he deliberatley uses is skill, he should be able to maximize the good things of encounters and more importantly prevent the horrible gate/monster from appearing. But Gloria is below average even though her power looks similar because she's unlikely to return value and her power will probably only be used 4 times in a normal game.   Three characters were even better than that: Mandy, Daisy and Wendy.  (Being able to remove 1 gate or stop 1 gate/monster automatically qualified an investigator for average or OK status, for example Marie, Kate and Wilson.)

Frank: Even if Lily's power were twice as big as Leo's, it still wouldn't be as good because Leo's works to save people instead of cleaning up next upkeep, and Leo's works to save who needs saving instead of just saving Lily. It's a cooperative game, and cooperative powers are better than selfish powers. Full stop.

Mageith: Absolutely disagree that cooperative powers are better than selfish powers.  Two of the best three top tier investigators are Daisy with the Summon Shantuk spell and Wendy.  Both have selfish powers (though you could construct Daisy to be altruistic if you wanted.).  The third top tier investigator is Mandy, which supports your assertion.   Now I would agree that exactly comparable abilities that help others are superior to powers than are selfish.  For example, Leo would be better than an investigator that has the healing stone power. 

ColtsFan76 said:

...uh...

Think about what you just wrote there, ColtsFan.  I suppose it depends on how you interpret separate paragraphs within the Special Ability box...but isn't that exactly what Lily's ability is?

jgt7771 said:

Yeah, I don't see a reason she wouldn't gain the point along with the max sanity boost.

jgt7771 said:

Alright, I guess it is a bit more tricky than I thought. 

With a typical investigator, Duke gives a boost to your Maximum Sanity AMOUNT, not your actual Sanity Points (the exception being during setup when he grants both).  So she would go up from a Max Sanity of 7 to a Max Sanity of 8.  If she were sitting at 6 Max Sanity points and acquired Duke, she would go up to 7 Max Sanity points.  Does that mean she gains an extra Sanity if she were 6 Sanity points or less?  I am not sure.

Her ability says she gains a Sanity Point when "she increases her Maximum."  Technically, she is not increasing it, the Ally is.

But if you say that she should activate that ability whenever her sanity goes up, then she shoudl get the free point of Sanity as well.  I see the argument but not sure I can buy it just yet.

ColtsFan76 said:

Yar! I mis-typed when I was writing about Duke, and did in fact mean max sanity. And I still think my interpretation is correct. Though "she" is not causing the the max sanity increas, Duke is, it is "her" max sanity which is increased. Therefore "she" has the effect of having her max sanity increased, and "she" gets the extra brain token to go along with the increase.

Ya 'all have a Happy New Year!

Ahh, but her ability does state that  "Each time Lily increases her maximum Sanity, she gains 1 Sanity. Each time she increases her maximum Stamina, she gains 1 Stamina.

So Duke increasing it isn't the same as Lily increasing it.

I think it was written that way because her maximums were going to be changing a lot, specifically at her own whim. Personally, I believe her ability applies to any maximum increases, including Duke and Brinton. But if thematically it is incompatible with her Yin and Yang (which is internal), then I could see that ruling.

Reading the whole card again, it does look like the increase of the current numbers is a function of her moving her slider. Somehow I was thinking it was a separate ability.

I'm still trying to figure a way she can work with Yig and not get an auto-win. The only solution I see is to only allow a single increase in stamina or sanity a turn depending on which direction the slider moves. However, this greatly weakens her only ability.

Is Yig the only thing that she breaks? I can't think of anything else. Perhaps it is easier to just alter Yig.

thorgrim said:

Which is the point I am trying to make.  Duke doesn't give people sanity if he is acquired mid game.  He just gives them the potential to go higher.  So in the case of getting paired with Lily, I think his intent shoudl still be followed: she has the potential to increase sanity but does not automatically gain it.

Thematic arguments are always weak, I know.  But her skill is a regeneration of sorts.  Duke's ability is keeping you sane by having a loyal companion.  Because she gets a dog doesn't mean her regeneration kicks in.

Also, her actual Sanity skill slider does not go up when Duke is acquired.  Otherwise she would have to drop her corrseponding Stamina - which isn't how Duke works.  So she doesn't slide the Skill marker, she just adds +1.

I am still sticking with Duke doesn't giver her a Sanity point.