"............................................................................... ...................................................................................... ...................................................................................... ...................................................................................... ...................................................................................... .......................................................it hurts a lot." -Yig

I think that the text added with the taboo list is wrong. Exhausting him shouldn't prevent him of repeating the ability since exhausting it is not part of the cost. It should say limit one per round or turn.

Well, know that I think of it, Scavenging works similar without the taboo too.

Darrell is a remarkably powerful investigator. It’s not just a five in his main stat, it’s that he’s the epitome of the 'reduce difficulty' archetype.

This makes him a great support character, and he’s probably better in duo compared to solo. The Kodak can trigger on the monsters that your guardian draws or grabs off of you with guard dog(2), or 2 action-to-remove treacheries.

With Hawkeye folding cameras in each hand, you’re generating evidence like no one’s business. And there are some really brutal tests in this game with low difficulty that you’re not gonna pass on expert. (For example, a check not to fall off a train headed to Dunwich.) Even without survivor tech, the ability to lower difficulties means that things like rotten remains can do one horror max, because you can only fail a difficulty one check by one.

Most of seekers’ best cards are level zero. Considering the modern card pool, and an effective evade of five, the photographer is able to carry a companion who is a slow starter. He does require more micro than the average investigator, because you’ll be placing and removing tokens multiple times a turn, but the man is top-tier.

Why on Earth is this weakness so brutal?

My mind immediately goes to Bob Jenkins and his signature weakness for comparison:

1.) Bob has the same health/sanity partitioning as Darrell,

2.) Bob's weakness also has the capability to deal you 4 horror, and

3.) the amount of horror you take is inversely proportional to your...."preparedness". Preparedness in quotations because it's up to raw luck if/when you pull this.

I feel like this is a fair comparison to make; if you agree with me on that, then you must also agree that this weakness is way too brutal. Here's how they differ, and Ruined Film is worse in both ways.

1.) Greed's (again, Bob's signature weakness) effect depends on your resource count, and with secondary 0-2 lvl Rogue class access, Bob can get to 10+ resources in a single turn. Even if you build Darrell around evidence (and you...probably should be doing that), getting to 4 evidence in turn 1 is literally impossible. With the current card pool, as big as it is, building 4 evidence takes quite a lot of time on average. Your best bet is honestly just manically getting 4 clues and dumping them on the floor for Research Notes, and that just means that you've undone 4 clues worth of progress exclusively for padding yourself against this weakness on top of the fact that I don't like constraining myself to a Research Notes-exclusive deck for Darrell simply because of this one freaking weakness. But it hurts SO much.

2.) Now, the resource condition is also constraining for Bob in that he's forced to, in some capacity, go for a big money build. It's really not that bad because if you're hovering at less than 10 (which isn't big money), you still only take 2 horror, so Bob is barely constrained at all, but for the purposes of making my point, let's just say he leaned hard into it in order to completely circumvent his weakness. He draws it, laughs it off, and keeps playing with his black fan, his connections, and his expensive caviar. Because he got to keep his resources. Darrell has to pay 4 or all of his evidence to his randomly drawn weakness, take the appropriate horror, and now start over from scratch. Again, evidence is not nearly as easy for Darrell to build as it is for Bob to build resources. And currently, Darrell is unquestionably the best at building evidence. If Bob had actually lost 10 resources, I would argue he'd still be able to recoup the loss better than Darrell.

3.) But why the need to recoup? Well, for theoretical hand-wavey big money Bob, hitting his resource threshold is what allows his cards to trigger. There are other things he can likely splurge on if he needs to, but he'd then have options that allow him to budget out what he can buy and what he can't. Darrell needs evidence because he needs to spend evidence. That's his fundamental ability. So not only is Ruined Film removing evidence when Greed is not (removing the analogous resources), but the use of the one that is getting removed is for it to be spent, whereas the need for big resources in a big money Bob deck pushes him to ultimately be successful and completely unencumbered in the face of Greed.

Honorable Mention: Barring extenuating circumstances like going hungry or a bad reading, Bob starts the scenario with 5 resources. Darrell starts from scratch. He can barely get evidence on the board in the first turn. If Bob did absolutely nothing turn 1 and drew his weakness on upkeep, he'd still only be 1 resource away from taking 2 horror, and that's strictly because you have to draw the card first before getting the resource.

I dunno...it's just aggravating how Darrell puts so much effort into having so much of what makes him fun so that he can lose it. Another comparison along the same vein is Harvey's weakness, which tbf is probably worse than Darrell's quantitatively measuring it in terms of damage/horror taken on average since that one is essentially "the faster you pick up speed and momentum, the harder you hit the brick wall when it inevitably comes", but even then, at least Harvey doesn't have to discard down to it, and Harvey draws cards easier than Darrell gets evidence. I'm not about to look up a comprehensive dossier on signature weaknesses, but I'd say as far as those that deal damage/horror, this is definitely one of the worst. Not exclusively because of the amount of horror you can take, even though that can be very severe, but because of how much it sets you back. Harvey's brick wall hurts, but he just....keeps going. Amnesia sucks way more in Harvey than in someone like, iunno, Finn? because cards are Harvey's bread and butter, and discarding his entire hand sets him back (honestly probably more than losing evidence lol). Darrell's weakness frequently does both; it's like the school bully taking your money, and then beating you up when you don't have "enough", and the inner feeling you get afterwards...just stinks. Sometimes I feel like I'd rather just take my chances with Final Rhapsody so I can just brace for damage/horror and keep trucking forward, or at least be eliminated instead of spending the rest of the scenario playing catch-up.

One of the absolutely worst designed weaknesses in the game by a long shot (Other honorable mention are the ones from Edge of the Earth), which is not surprising given it comes from Forgotten Age, an expansion filled with anti-player agency and some of the most anti-fun design choices I ever seen in any board game

Weaknesses are supposed to be a spanner in your wheel: they are something that will stall, cripple or potentially lead to your defeat if you are not prepared to deal with them. And even if you are prepared, they can still be a significant threat if drawn at the wrong time. And that is fine: it helps keep the tension in the game and even leads you to consider deckbuilding choices you normally wouldn't with specific investigator to counter said weakness (like using Bandages to temporaly stop Internal Injury)

That is not the case for Doomed, Doomed is literally a timed bomb attached to your back without a timer about to go off any time, and you have no way to defuse it. Take too long in camapaign and you can say good bye to your investigator and all deckbuilding progress you did.

While I do agree with many a review that do say that it fits thematically with Arkham (and that is about the only thing I appreciate about this weakness, really), and I don't blame anyone that is alright playing with it, I think design wise this weakness is beyond creatively bankrupt, given that its just a delayed instant kill. This is a game where weakness can have as various effects from simply make you discard cards and resources to more outlandish ones like draw encounter cards or have a nemesis that can block your special abilties. All of these are great! Because they make you think "How can I deal with these?", "What card can I include to counter them?" and "Can I afford to draw cards and risk getting my random basic weakness?"

Meanwhile, there is no countering for Doomed unless you can cancel the weakness' Revelation with Foresight effect or use searching to try to banish it at the bottom of the deck (usually with stuff like Scrying, Scroll of Secrets or the recent Friends in Low Places) or just try to avoid drawing as much cards as possible (which must making playing with this weakness as Mark extra fun). You are completely left at the mercy of the rng of the game whether you draw it or not in most cases, which in an already rng heavy game such as this, is not a good design choice

The effects of this weakness can be absolutely catstrophic on your campaign, not only for the effect itself, but also because of how it affect the player. Wanted to do some standalones toghether in the middle of your campaign? Forget about that, you are just gonna raise the chance to end up being killed before the end of it! It's a bit similiar to the effect of Charon's Obol in a sense: it makes you play scared, more guarded, because one mistake can be final. But while Charon's Obol's side effect can be avoided by good deckbuilding and planning, Doomed can hit you regardless of your readiness. While the Obol give you a reward for in exchange of making every defeat fatal and you can just... Not choose to pick it, Doomed, according to the rules, MUST be shuffled among your weakness if you use Forgotten Age cards and content

There is no other weakness, that I can think about, that makes you want to play less of the game: is the antithesis of fun.

But honestly, what I absolutely hate about Doomed ( and Accursed Fate) is not that they will eventually lead to The Bell Tolls. No, what I HATE with a passion about Doomed is that it is a weakass weakness on its own!

You drew this in Night of the Zealot or Dream Eaters? Congratulations, you basically got something that is arguably even less lethal than Indebted, depending on how good or bad your draw is. Even someone like Roland would look a this effect and laugh at the one horror it inflicts with his 5 sanity. It does esentially NOTHING, because the campaign will be over before this becomes a threat. That is AWFUL: a weakness should be at the very least a serious annoyance to the player, Doomed is ironically a relief in the right circumstances!

And you don't even need to draw this in a short campaign, if you luck out and avoid drawing this for half of your campaign, you are probably in the clear as well and can avoid worrying about dying from it depeding on what kind of investigator you are playing as or what scenarios are left, because most scenarios will be likely over before you could go through a deck multiple time and most investigator do not have the draw to do so anyway.

However if you are playing as someone like Harvey, Amanda or Patrice and got this card? You might as well use their superior draw to get your non-signature weakness 5 times in one scenario to spare you from the suffering of dying in 2 to 3 scenarios having already gathered and spent some exp on them

It's invevitable that some random weaknesess will be more punishing than others to some investigators (5 sanity investigators shudder seeing Chronophobia, as do 5 health ones to Internal Injury. Many a Seeker gets countered hard by Amnesia. Silas and Winifred are in for a bad time if they get The Tower • XVI, etc.), but the sheer variability of how lethal Doomed can be show just how weak its design is.

And that's what in all honesty ruins Doomed; it is too random mechanically to properly mesh with the design of Arkham. Sure sometimes it does managed to give you that sense of inevitabile demise creeping towards you, but when it fails to deliver on that, what you are left with? A good theming can only carry a card so far before that is all that it has left

And don't get me even started with the whole "campaign mode only", burn that concept with fire and impale it with prejudice! Basic wekanesses should be designed to be a threat in every scenario, because that way, no matter when they are added, they can affect your game somehow. It's signature weaknesses that can afford to have long-lasting effects (like trauma), because they are required to be added from the very start to a specific investigator deck, so they WILL affect them as long as you are playing a campaign. By the same logic, if you are playing scenario mode with specific investigators like say: Roland, Zoey and Akachi should you replace Cover Up, Smite the Wicked and Angered Spirits with other weaknesses given that trauma suffered at the end of the scenario does absolute jack in scenario mode?

Honestly what boggles my mind the most is that not only has the Return Version of Forgotten Age a better basic weakness than Doomed in Offer You Cannot Refuse, which not only has actual counter play you can engage against it, but despite being "Campaign Only" as well, it has still a nasty effect in scenario mode, given it will sap your resources regardless if you can pay your "debt" or not, meaning you can honestly still use it outside campaign mode. Even without the additional exp bonus it's WAY better designed than Doomed.

No, what leaves me speechles is that Doomed is beaten by a weakness introduced in the same box: Dark Pact is an EXCELLENTLY designed random weakness with long reaching consequences in the The Price of Failure. This is how you do basic campaign weaknesses with a nastier bonded version that will make you suffer if you cannot deal with the original weakness properly. It beats Doomed in every aspect: it's almost unreal they were designed from the same people and came from the same game.

Then again, Finn and Calvin are also from the same expansion, so I shouldn't be surprised by Forgotten Age's incredibly inconsistent design at this point