Thomas Cartwright said:

No, you may not. Core rules, pag 8 (emphasys mine):

"Once an investigator begins combat with a monster for any reason, his movement is over. Regardless of whether or not he wins the battle, the investigator loses the rest of his movement points and must remain where he is"

Justin Alexander said:

That's true. In fact, entering combat ends your movement. Cfr core rules, pag 8

Tibs said:

Thanks Tibs, to answer this for me :-)

thecorinthian said:

That's probably what they were thinking about when answering that question. If you end your movement on a location with an open gate, the movement phase ends before you're drawn through the gate, because being drawn through the gate counts as a location encounter. So when you have entered the Other World, the movement phase for that turn is already over, which means you cannot cast Find Gate that turn.

However, if a Nightgaunt sends you through a gate, you're still in the movement phase when you have entered the Other World, although your movement ended when you failed the combat check against the Nightgaunt. Therefore you can immediately cast Find Gate and return to Arkham, skipping both Other World encounters instead of only one, as is normal.

I imagine this is the reasoning they used when answering the Nightgaunt question. And if you read the rules strictly, you'll probably arrive at the same conclusion. However, that doesn't mean that this is the best way to play the game. If one or more of the investigators have the Find Gate spell, it could well be an advantage to have a Nightgaunt on the board. In my opinon, monsters should be a disadvantage rather than an advantage. Besides, the Nightgaunt can be exploited even if you don't have the Find Gate spell.

One related question, though: Can you choose to fail a combat check, or do you have to roll the dice? If the former is the case, the Nightgaunt can be exploited to a rather big extent. If the latter is the case, it doesn't necessarily make much of a difference, though. Just nudge your fight down to 3 (or less) and face the Nightgaunt empty-handed, and you can never win unless there are other effects in the game.

In any case, I'll house rule that you're not allowed to cast Find Gate the same turn a Nightgaunt sends you through a gate.

eiterorm said:

To explain away the "monsters should be a disadvantage" thing, the FAQ says (and has said, since the previous version) "Thematically, as servants of Nodens, Nightgaunts sometimes helped investigators." Granted, it's answering a different question, and the probability is much lower for that FAQ answer to be applicable, but the idea is there.

eiterorm said:

That's a good point. There are two issues coming with this, though:

a) it was never clarified (that I'm aware of) that the movement phase can extend after your movement ends. Rules tell us that at the beginning of the movement phase you receive movement points, and that you can spend them, and that, as soon as you enter combat or spend all the movement points you have, your movement ends. If the movement phase could be extended after all the movement points are gone, it should have been stated somewhere

b) failing the Combat Check against a Nightgaunt and casting immediately after a Find Gate spell allows you to have zero encounters in the OW, plus it allows you to seal the gate the round you entered there. When a gate opens under your feet during the Mythos Phase, you're delayed, and it was clarified by the designer of the game that this rule was made to avoid investigators having zero encounters while in the OW. Now, I don't have Tibs' logic, but I'd say that if by design you don't want investigators to not have encounters in the OW, the Nightgaunt FAQ is kinda contradictory. Plus, as soon as you seal the gate you entered, another investigator can teleport thanks to the SAME Nightgaunt in another OW. Consider a party with Patrice or a Carcosan Page to transfer the Find Gate, and you'll see Cthulhu begging for peace

eiterorm said:

Nope, you have to roll the dice. But you can choose not to use any weapons. Still, against Nightgaunts, my fave strategy is max my Speed and try to Evade: the hitcher receives the combat damage, without having to roll for Sanity

Julia said:

"A turn in Arkham Horror is divided into five phases. During each phase, every player, starting with the first player and continuing clockwise, performs the actions that take place during that phase. Once all players have completed a phase, the next phase begins."

I always interpreted this to mean that the end of a phase is decided by the players, and not by events in the game. In other words, a phase ends only when the last player has completed his/her last action in that phase. But the question is still valid, though. Do you get any more movement actions after you have failed a combat check?

Julia said:

Yeah, that's why I'll house rule the Nightgaunt. Consider a team including Norman and Patrice. During setup Norman draws a Carcosan Page. Now you're just waiting for that Nightgaunt to fly out of that first gate. =P If Cthulhu values his life, he'll never send that Nightgaunt at you.

Julia said:

This is obviously preferable! Why didn't I think of that? *stupid* I've even done the exact same thing myself, in previous games.

eiterorm said:

That's true, sorry, let me rephrase this: there is nowhere said that you can do something inside your movement phase after you spend all your movement points / do something that makes you finish your movement. Rules simply say "you receive N movement points, you can spend all or some of them, but as soon as you enter combat with a monter, your movement ends". Again, I'm no Tibs, but I'd argue that this implies you don't have any chance of doing any movement action after a failed combat check.

Just to be a little trolly… let's say the Nighgaunt failed check does not end your movement. So, you enter the OW, and it's still your movement phase. You cast Call Friend, and summon a friend of yours in the same OW (if you're allowed to cast Find Gate after losing a combat check against a Nightgaunt because it's a movement phase spell, then you should be allowed to cast any Movement Phase spell of the deck). Then you cast Find Gate, return to Arkham and, as soon as you return to Arkham, you cast Plumb the Void, teleporting your pal back to Arkham. If you're lucky, this could mean two seals with zero OW encounters. Impressive.

eiterorm said:

Nightgaunts are frequently useful even if you don't have a Find Gate spell: For a minimal risk of losing 1 sanity, you can get dumped straight into a gate that has a stack of otherwise impassable monsters on it. The regular players in my group will frequently go out of their way to avoid killing a Nightgaunt even if there's no immediate use for them.

eiterorm said:

In a couple occasions in the past we've gone hunting for a rule clarifying this. AFAICT, it doesn't exist. In the absence of it, I'm fairly certain that you're not allowed to choose failure.

Thomas Cartwright said:

No. Entering combat expends all your movement points, so you don't have any left to read the tome with.

Tibs said:

Entering combat may expend all your movement points, but there's absolutely nothing in the rules that suggests expending all your movement points immediately causes your Movement Phase to end. Nor is there anything to suggest that entering combat causes your Movement Phase to end. In fact, there are plenty of reasons that it's clearly not true.

For example, there's Call Down the Storm: A spell that takes up a hand, must be cast during the Movement Phase, and adds +2 to any Combat check that takes place in your neighborhood until the end of the phase.

If your interpretation of the rules were correct, this would be a spell designed to be used during combat (hence the hand requirement) which cannot affect that combat.

Tibs said:

I'm skeptical of any rule interpretation that starts with "ignore what the rules actually say…" and ends with "…and then make up something else to replace it". This is something you and Julia seem to do a lot when answering rules questions. It's a bad habit. You should try to break it.

Justin Alexander said:

No conflict at all with this one. The Phase lasts until all investigators are done with their movement. It's your movement that is over when you enter combat. Two completely different things

Justin Alexander said:

And this is something you should apologize for. If you look at my answers, I cite almost every time the source of what I'm saying. Rules with pages, threads with official answers, or general forum consensum. And please, Tibs was asked by FFG to work on the FAQ project, and his knowledge of the game is considered almost unmatched in the gaming community. Not to mention that most of us will probably follow his logic instead of some rulebook written in haste (look at what happened to the ES rulebook before saying anything about the quality of the rulebooks, thanks)

So, if you're pleased to participate in rules debates, you are certainly welcome. But please avoid personal comments about myself or Tibs. If you are so much better than us in answering rules question, please, be my guest, spend almost your free time here answering ALL the questions while I and Tibs will do something different with our free time.

Julia said:

Haha, that's a funny hack! You can't lose with this strategy. =P

Julia said:

Nice, Julia.

I thought of this: Luke faces a Nightgaunt on a Gate.  Fails Evade, gets dropped through Gate.  +1 Clue.  Casts Find Gate.  Arrives next to the same Nightgaunt.  Chooses not to ignore it, and encounters it again?  Yadda yadda yadda…+1 Clue.  Repeat as often as Luke has Find Gate Spells.  Works even better if he has a Elder Things Crystal.

Was any of that not legal, according to this new not-well-thought-out ruling?

jgt7771 said:

::clap:: ::clap:: ::clap::

Well said, my friend!