Edit: Some Luke and Marie testing, also no need for the Lola shade.

This card is great.

At face level, this is not a bad level 0 card, you can get a bonus trigger from a combative spell like Shrivelling or clue spell like Rite of Seeking without paying any resources to put it in play or even spending an action. Pushing the limits to make 4 attacks in a turn is a great ability on it's own, well worth a card, but when you start upgrading cards and using this to key off-of them it becomes outrageously good.

• 4 Shots from Shrivelling to deal 12 damage in a turn, normally something not possible without very big guns combined with cards.

• Trigger Encyclopedia as a fast action, to gain that bonus to a combat relevant ability and use it to win a fight.

The sneaky bit of goodness to this card is the ability to hit cards in your hand as well, you get a chance to oust yourself from scary situations by calling upon assets you havent got in play yet, this is especially useful at the start of a scenario or when the mythos deck is killing assets or resources.

It also gives you leeway to play with an overloaded slot ( characters tend to have an overabundance of Hand items, characters have trouble with Arcane slots). While your hands or Arcane slots are full you can snipe a card in your hand, possibly saving charges on something, whilst also refunding a potential dud draw.

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The biggest issue with Knowledge is Power is it's class. It's a decidedly card that's printed yellow. Which limit's it's extreme power, which I guess is fair, if this card were it'd be a contributing factor to making Akachi Onyele and Agnes Baker the uncontested best characters in the game.

The standouts who get the most from Knowledge is Power are:

• Norman Withers, he needs to make use of his level 0 to do a lot of work, and this card definitely helps him stay relevant while he is still skilling up Shrivelling and makes him an outright powerhouse once he's got just 10 XP. The way Norman powers through a deck with his ability, you can get all of this goodness set up at breakneck pace.

• Luke Robinson, he's fresh off the presses so I dont fully know all the options, but he has native access so he can get the fancy Tome shenanigans going that Norman cannot. I still think Norman's raw draw power wins out in the end. Also he can do some interesting teleport spellcasting. Think Mists of R'lyeh blasting an enemy engaged with a friend at another location or Rite of Seeking nuking a location from his pocket dimension.

• Marie Lambeau has very few / slots, but spending 2 of them on Knowledge is Power is perfectly viable. Slower then Norman gut good nonetheless.

P.S. Daisy Walker, Rex Murphy and Finn Edwards can do some stunts too, but it's coming at the cost of precious slots or locked to triggering on 0 level spells, sure you can trigger it on a big book like Pnakotic Manuscripts but really, that card doesn't hold a candle to beasts like Shrivelling or Rite of Seeking.

how will it work with Charon's Obol? Who will get the additional exp？ I guess the owner will.Because u should get Charon back when the game ends,and Charon give the owner exp during the resolution of a scenario. Or the thief will get?That's very interesting.

Other people than I should likely weigh in here, but ok, Ill go first!

I thought this was a pretty crap card compared to an upgraded Rite of Seeking, and in many decks that will remain to be true. However, if you are going on a token manipulation deck; a deck that utilizes cards like Olive McBride, or Eldritch Inspiration which give you multiple "If X is revealed during this test" triggers, things start to change dramatically. Already, this card gives the same +2 testing buff as an upgraded rite, but the sneaky ability to trigger the "investigating as if you are the chosen position IN ADDITION to your location" trigger makes this card at least as good as the first upgrade of Rite of Seeking, and the occasional time to trigger it twice, netting you at least 3 clues from 3 locations utilizing the most favorable shroud value. That last point isn't to be understated. When resolving multiple nasty tokens makes for some complicated math if you can't get something like 2 shroud as your base.

Also, the negative ability on rite is just brutal sometimes. Turning it into a plus has the ability to supercharge some builds. For a deck that is going full-on token manipulation, consider this card at even or maybe even better than an upgraded rite. Rite has limited ammo and costs a 2 more to boot. This card really shines in multiplayer, too, as you have other people unlocking locations for you. The drawback, like all combo decks, requires a very picky set of conditions. With Olive only able to trigger once per round, without other token manipulation, you might find Sense rather wanting.

In the end, more stable cards like Rite will likely continue to be the mainstay for most clue/mystics. But don't overlook this very interesting build path.

Father Mateo +++

Being that Father gets superpowers on resolving Eldar symbols, going token manipulation already is a very clutch strategy that gets turbocharged by adding this upgrade path.

Jim Culver++

While Father benefits FAR more than Jim, being able to "0" out the skulls really allows this card to shine more if Jim is manipulating the bag!

Diana Stanley+

A lot of the problem with setting up a deck manipulation strategy is getting the right cards at the right time. Few base characters in the game can churn through their deck faster than Diana. While you have to dedicate a huge number of slots to exercise this churn and burn, there are likely enough slots to throw-in a few token tricks *stairs longing at Eldritch Inspiration. Of course, if you resolve it twice rather than cancel it, you don't get the same churn and burn ability, and other cards give up more looks at tokens are generally items or assets we would rather not see leave play, which def makes Diana the least suitable to lean heavy into this path, but it is still at least slightly more powerful than other mystics abilities line up for.

All other mages might actually be actively bad to try this path. Though others might have more to say about synergies that I haven't considered as a relatively new player. So don't overlook Sixth Sense, it might just help you see the way forward!

How does "Eat Lead!" affect your chances of success?

Using the standard difficulty Night of the Zealot chaos token pool:

+1, 0, 0, –1, –1, –1, –2, –2, –3, –4, skull, skull, hood, tablet, auto-fail, elder sign; with 1 ghoul at your location and assuming the elder sign gives at least +1

Here are the odds. For each, the numbers give your stat versus difficulty, percent chance of success without "Eat Lead!" --> percent chance with "Eat lead", relative risk reduction (how much it decreases chances of failing), absolute risk reduction (how often it makes a difference):

1. 4+, 93.75% --> 100%, infinite (can't fail), 6.25%
2. 3+, 87.5% --> 99.6%, 30, 12,1%
3. 2+, 81.25% --> 97.5%, 7.5, 16.25%
4. 1+, 62.5% --> 87.5%, 3, 25%
5. 0, 25% --> 45%, 1.36, 20%
6. -1, 12.5% --> 24.2%, 1.15, 11.7%

(Sorry about the error with the first post, my new analysis changes my impression significantly.)

As you can see, "Eat Lead!" decreases your chance of failing considerably, especially when you're already at a disadvantage. This means that if the penalty for failing is really bad, "Eat Lead!" can almost guarantee you don't get burned. However, the effect usually doesn't do anything, since the absolute risk reduction is never more than 25%. So the analysis confirms the intuition that the best use is for really bad penalties.

Is "Eat Lead!" worth using? I think most investigators won't use it, because they don't have extra bullets to spare. Personally, I also think that the chances of failing are part of the fun of the game and I don't like the uber chaos-bag manipulating strategy (e.g. Protective Incantation, Seal of the Seventh Sign. So I think I will only use this in versions of Diana Stanley that have firearms, since she also gets the resource/card/willpower bonus that puts the card over the top.

Must admit I'm struggling to think of many investigators who would want to take this card. It does look very tempting when you think about the potential action compression you can get from grabbing 3 clues for 1 action, but there are some pretty substantial drawbacks too. On the positive side, running three of these nets you 3 clues more than you could get from normal investigating, always assuming that you pass both of the skill tests. It can also be recurred with Resourceful two more times for a potential net gain of another 4 clues. Seven extra clues ? Sign me up. The issue though is that you're spending 7 resources to achieve this, so it's not exactly cheap, and in addition to that you're forced to use up 10% of the average deck solely for these cards, so there's an obvious opportunity cost involved. There are no skill pips on the card either, so the first one that you draw is a dead card in your hand that you need to find a way to discard. Wendy and Pete can both do that with ease, but they have base intellect of 3 and 2 respectively so they're unlikely to want to play this since they most likely need to boost the skill checks with other cards to ensure successfully investigating. Yorick obviously doesn't take it for the same reason, likewise Rita. I guess you could make a case for Calvin since most Calvin builds try to focus on getting horror up to 4 as soon as possible, but I still don't think this is a natural fit for him.

The standout of course is Patrice. She can guarantee seeing all 3 of them, has a ready-made way of getting them into the discard pile and has no issues with committing cards to the skill checks. She also has a larger deck size so the opportunity cost of having 3 of these is minimal. The lack of pips on the card itself is still a bummer for Patrice though, and she also has the problem that she needs to be on a location with multiple clues on the turn that she draws the card in order to get any tangible benefit from it, and if she doesn't have any book pips in her hand at the same time then she probably can't pass the test.

Off-class survivors who can take it include both Minh and Mandy. I suspect this is where it's most likely to find a home. High base intellect and the ability to pick and choose when you play it makes it a potentially powerful option for them, and in Mandy's case it should be pretty simple to find them all. That said though, there are better options available to seekers for getting multiple clues. A single copy of Archaic Glyphs would most likely net you more additional clues than you'll get from having 3 copies of this card in your deck, albeit at an xp cost.

I'm certainly going to try this card out in a few decks and see if I'm completely wrong, but as it stands I suspect it's going to fizzle.