Providential

Literally unplayable

Providential might easily be one of the worst Skill cards in the game, and I'm not being hyperbolic in the slightest: I can see things like Leadership and Intrepid actually seeing more play than Providential, if only because they have no exp cost attached

About the only good thing I can remotely say about this Skill is that it has a decent commit for +2 will, +2 fight or +1 to everything else, but guess what? Dauntless Spirit on average will give you a bigger stat boost than Providential, with the only drawback of being limited to Willpower and Fight, and it is one exp cheaper

There is no way, anyone that isn't doing something with blessing would take this card for the commit alone...

Then what about the bless-related effect, is that good?

HAHAHAHAHA

Of course no, it sucks!

First off, you need to pass a test in order to actually trigger the effect, which is a bit of an oddball decision in the Survivor's card pool given they usally benefit from their cards indepedently if they fail or pass or ONLY if they fail. Given the very volatile nature of the Chaos Bag, that is a serious point against this stupid card as failing the test means you get nothing out of it. And unlike Scavenging this card does NOT have a strong enough effect to justify this clause

Second, you add 1 bless token for each damage or horror you have, now an effect that would have been somewhat decent is completely ruined by the fact you don't get to choose which type of harm scales with the token generation: you only can scale with the lesser amount of the two

This design choice is what makes this card useless

Because imagine you are playing Silas to gurantee triggering its effects with his special ability, and you have 8 damage on him and no horror (somehow, maybe you screwed the pooch with Dreams of the Deep), and you commit this card and pass a test.

Guess what?

You are generating zero blessing, because 0 is less than 8!

That also means, for characters that have very unbalanced spread of Health/Sanity this card gets worse as it can only truly scale most of the time with their weaker endurance pool, so at most Silas would be able to generate 4 blessings, that is literally the same of flipping Keep Faith!

This card can ONLY maybe work on character that have "balanced" endurance, so we are talking about Investigators like Wendy, Preston, Minh and Calvin and even then, they need to be literally on death's door and almost out of their mind to use this card to its full effect and maybe generate 6 bless tokens: it is stupidly designed!

The best user for this is without a doubt Calvin if he is doing a "Blessed Survivor" because he is encouraged to keep, his health and sanity low, but even the Calvin can instead use Signum Crucis to take advantage of the fact his base skills are all 0 to generate tokens equal to the test difficulty.

And mind you, Signum is not only on average a better burst bless generation than Providential, it is also currently the ONLY card with exp cost that is considered not good enough to justify having to spend exp for it in the first place, so it was buffed to cost 0 exp and let you include it in your deck as part of your level 0 pool at the start.

Providential is the proof FFG does not learn from their past mistakes, because something like this wouldn't have been printed as a level 2 card if they took just a minute to look back at the Survivor card pool.

My group already decided that we will either make it 0xp or make so if you have 0 dmg/horror it ignores that value and gives the other one. That way if you have 4/ for example, you always ignore that 0 and put blesses equal to the other value. We will see, but it really does suck lmao — Blood&gore · 352
@Blood&gore Honestly, that is how Providential should have been: if this was a level 0 card, then maybe Signum could have gotten untabooed as an "upgrade" to it — HeroesOfTomorrow · 34
Literally unplayable? You can play it, but it's bad. — MrGoldbee · 1391
I mean, how literal are we being here ? It's a skill card, it is literally unplayable in that you can't play it, only commit it .... — aurchen · 1
...Damn, true. — MrGoldbee · 1391
To play devil’s advocate for this one. First, it’s pretty flexible in allowing you to UC for fist or head icons, which is better than crucis. It’s also a red skill that adds bless, meaning it’s recurrable- crucis is as well, but finding a test to use it on may not be as feasible as using this in the right investigator. I could very easily see this work well in a Bless Tommy deck alongside Spirit of Humanity. That said, 2xp does seem overpriced. — StyxTBeuford · 12918
@StyxTBeuford How is this even good on Tommy? Tommy tanks everything on his assets, most of the time Providential won't generate anything — HeroesOfTomorrow · 34
Torrent of Power

Has a niche interaction with Runic Axe which can regenerate charges, potentially 2/turn. Gives you a hefty skill boost on turns when you don't need to murder something.

Can also be used with Living Ink for 3 zero-cost charges, if you really want to spend an action and two cards to get that bonus.

The problem remains, several years on, that no one that can take it really needs a 7-willpower card that requires setup to play. Mystics generally have good enough willpower already, and those charges are usually better spent doing the thing the asset does.

CombStranger · 240
Ethereal Weaving

So for the investment of 1 resource and 2 actions we get 3 actions, 3 resources and 3 Unexpected Courages.

Thats a pretty good payoff, but requires you have 3 different spells you wanted to play, that they had tests involved, and that you could afford the rest of the cost of the spells.

kamiidude · 27
I think, the main issue with these card is the current card pool: many events are reactive and won't work at all, there is (in mystic) only one investigate spell event, two for fight and several for evade. It's unlikely, that you want to play multiple evade spells in a turn. It's ridiculouse, that this cost 2 more XP and 1 more action than "Ever Vigilant" (1), and still has the restriction of DIFFERENT events. Using it for two RtS or two SR and one other event, would make it almost playable. Also, you most likely have to eat an AoO, even when playing fight or evade events with it. I guess to make this better, we need 1) several more different fight and investigate events, 2) an official mystic gator like II Agnes, who is rewarded for primarily taking events, 3) "Spirit to the Plan" for Mystics, to have the card reliably online, when you want it. (I wonder, how they do that without making the triggered ability of "Winds of Power" trivial.) — Susumu · 330
Lily Chen

Can a Firearm scenario card be added to her deck? I can't find a ruling on whether scenario cards ignore deckbuilding restrictions. Watermelon watermelon watermelon watermelon watermelon watermelon.

Nope You cant Check another side of card "Deckbuilding Restrictions: No firearms assets — Vansolt · 1
The usual term for scenario card is as far as I remember "This card doesn't count for your decksize". Therefore other restrictions like lily's still count. — Tharzax · 1
You don't need watermelons, if you ask questions on BGG forum or reddit. — Susumu · 330
Ravenous Myconid

Just as good as the Carnivorous Strain, except for treacheries. Just need as much growth as the shroud where you stand and you are now immune to treachery effects. Between the 1-2 Uncanny Growths (in case you held it over from last turn) and Pathfinders/Shortcuts from being Seeker, this is a trivial task. Never mind that you can use it on any investigator no matter where they are!

You barely have to play the game with this thing. At the very least the cost of drawing Uncanny Growth should be an action like on the base unidentified version.