The Rod feels impossible to review, due to the complete disconnect between what the card says it does, and what it really does.

It says you get to apply Rot to non-elite enemies. In practice, it lets you trigger "whenever a symbol is revealed during a skill test" triggers on your cards far more often, and more reliably, than it ought to.

I have a feeling a taboo for this card is inevitable, what do we think it will be? I think the most elegant way to make sure the card is only used for its intended purpose would be to make it require an action to use - no more using it during skill tests.

How is there no review for this card?!

Absolute banger with the right setup.

The new line "If a symbol was revealed during this investigation, return Read the Signs to your hand at the end of your turn." changes friggin EVERYTHING.

Play it in blurse, play it with Olive, play it as Sister Mary or Jacqueline Fine, and consistently grab 2 clues per turn. Bonus points if the Signs say "TCU" - the haunter becomes the haunted!

Heck, the upgrade also boomerangs back if you fail, letting you say "um, okay, I'll just try again next round".

The only caveat: It costs you 2 resources every time, which can get expensive, so you better put on your Robes of Endless Night, which conveniently also only triggers once per round. Alternatively, checking out Prophetic could be worth it, although personally I don't like these kind of cards.

I battle-tested this in the last two Hemlock Vale scenarios and had a blast :)

Side Note: The same goes for Spectral Razor and Ethereal Form, but I think Read the Signs is the most viable overall. However, if you deck-build around symbols I'd probably run them too.

One of thing to note in particular is that this action can be performed on an Elite enemy. The majority of the time you're going to get +2 or +3 to Fist, so it's probably best to have this card in the deck of an investigator w/3+ Fist. I'd consider 1 resource for 1 Damage & Auto-Evade a boss to be a pretty decent bang for your buck. Or inversely, 1 Damage & an action from the book of your choosing. Pretty solid for a Level 0 card in my opinion.

This card is designed for Alessandra Zorzi and her Parley tricks, but also works well in other high-intellect Rogues/investigators who can take it as a crowd control card a la Storm of Spirits or Dynamite Blast in multiplayer. Most enemies will end up making this a 1-2 intellect test which even without Fine Clothes trivializing the test, shouldn't be too hard to pass with a great return on damage output. Bonus points for being able to take out pesky Aloof enemies and the optional Move effect on +2 succeed is just icing on the cake. (Plus who doesn't love the idea of making Nightgaunts fight amongst themselves?)

I think the cards design isn't good.

When you have so many chaos tokens in the chaos bag that you can afford playing The Stygian Eye, you are very likely to draw more than one of them.

So what do you get: The first curse you draw on each test is a +1 instead and you draw another token to resolve. There are way more efficient ways to do that.