I absolutely adore this card because it mitigates a core problem of this game that has existed since Dunwich: investigator death.

In the past, if you failed certain scenarios, were an unlucky Charon's Obol bearer, were Doomed, or just suffered enough trauma to kill or drive your investigator insane, you would have to restart mid to late campaign with a deck that is severely under-leveled for the scenarios you would be playing into. I’m sure at many tables, players opted instead to just be flexible with the rules in these tense moments (“oh did we remember to hunt with that enemy last round?” looks at damage on investigator card “yeah I’m sure we did”).

With Ascetic, it’s still not good, but it’s significantly less painful to have to start over with a fresh investigator late in a campaign. This is exactly the power level this card ought to be at because we still want death to feel bad, but not so bad that the campaign feels derailed or that players have to fight off the urge to cheat.

I love that it's a weakness that you can remove while progressing the game but it's too easy for cluevers.

I think this is well balanced for fighters as you can always get help from a teammate... unless you draw it during your turn. I had this in Marion and it was terrifying. In my most recent game I had 5 turns in a row where I draw this during my turn (after playing an event) and I was forced to take a horror and shuffle it back in my deck before anybody could help remove it. I ended the scenario with 1 sanity remaining and this being the only card in my deck. Very scary.

In the right hands, this skill will always net 5 tokens for 0 cost. This puts it on par with the upgraded version of Keep Faith!

I found this particularly effective with Father Mateo/Favor of the Sun and Ancient Covenant. This guarantees a success with +2 your base stats.

This card mechanically feels similar to "I'll take that!" to me - you play an item from hand after succeeding after a specified test. However, I'm a bit flabbergasted by how much better that card seems than this one. First, Hold Up requires you to play it in advance of performing the fight action, whereas "I'll take that!" is fast and allows you to respond to your own success. The auto-fail sends this card to your discard pile as opposed to you being able to retry the same test for another chance at an over success. Second, Hold Up's effect replaces the damage of the test, while you keep the clue or the evasion of the enemy with "I'll take that!". Finally, this card costs 1 resource while the other card is free. These cards are on a completely different playing field in regards to level of power!

No mention of Preston here yet! For the Preston who wants to automatically succeed, this card seems like it would be bomb-diggety. Just uh... make sure you get approval from potential teammates. Or don't. You're a rogue after all!