Improving the Portal 2 Variant of Arkham Horror

So after play-testing the Portal 2 variant of Arkham Horror I went back and looked over my comments and tried to make some changes to the game to even things out a bit and make some of the effects simpler and/or more useful.  There are a number of changes, so I'll go over them a bit one at a time.

Changes to the overall story and guardian/herald/ancient one:

One of the main takeaways of the play-test was the growing hassle of figuring out who had to roll a die when and what that roll was for.  I've collapsed all the die rolls that occur during a turn to a chart on the overall story card which then references you to the individual effect on a different card.  By only rolling one die you are guaranteed that something is always going to happen.  The roll takes place at the start of mythos so that monsters placed as a result move during that turn.

Changes to herald, Cave Johnson:

It didn't feel like Cave Johnson was doing too much in the play-test, so I added a few more small effects.  I like the idea that there are a limited number of sentry turrets, but I'm realizing that I forgot to specify how many that should be.  House rule!  Choose your own adventure.  Also, if you don't get the reference for 'protect the things that matter most' you should probably search you tube for...wait, I can just link it here...

 

 

Changes to guardian, Wheatley:

Minimal change to Wheatley - 'failure to grasp the basic rules of mathematics' upon closer inspection actually has some very complex math behind it.  If you're paying one clue token to get an extra die you have a 1/3 chance of success.  The extra clue token gets you to 2/3 by switching to a 12-sided die.  However, you could have just spent an extra clue token to get an extra roll at the 1/3, thereby also increasing your odds to 2/3 over the course of two rolls.  So, before you start rolling each are equivalent.  Well, sort of.  If you roll the first and succeed, then you've only spent one clue token instead of 2.  If you roll the first and fail, you now have 1/3 odds again, as the rolls are independent of each other.  At that point, you should look back and say "I should have done the 12-sided" but now you can't.  And even that is somewhat flawed, because you're basically in the same place as you are when you started, with a choice between 1/3 odds on one roll or spending the extra to get the 2/3 on the 12-sided.  And you're STILL going to pick the 1/3 odds because it's only one clue token and you're hoping to get lucky even though you just didn't.  

So...long story short I changed it to a 20-side.

Changes to ancient one, GLaDOS:

Cleaned up the language a bit, lowered the doom track length and set difficulty to -1.  This one might take some iterating.

Changes to the portal gun:

The portal gun was a fun item, but it felt a little underutilized due to the limitations on it.  I didn't really want to make the base item too much more powerful, so I figured it would make it interesting if players had to earn a better version.  The better version, the 'advanced portal gun' is quite a bit more powerful and tied to the players' story cards, making them all the more important to finish.  I also cleaned up the base guns' cards to remove the weapon aspect (which they aren't).

 

Changes to the gravity gun:

Originally just way too powerful.  Toned it down a little and tried to improve the 'push' feature.

Changes to the characters:

The biggest changes to the characters was a little (needed) nerfing of Gordon Freeman.  I also took away one of his starting skills in lieu of some more items.  The other players should only have minor tweaks for the most part.

Changes to character stories:

Biggest change here is the inclusion of the advanced portal guns as rewards.  Also, since Gordon's story requires other stories to be completed (to get advanced portal guns) his benefits are a bit larger, since he basically has to help the others during the early part of the game.

Changes to other cards:

Some of the cards just needed minimal wording changes to work with other cards.

Cards without changes can be found in the original posts.