There's a Dark Pharaoh (of course) Science Building encounter where a Mi-go attacks you and if you fail a Speed (-2) check "[...] it seems to move with preternatural speed, and you may not use any investigator cards in this encounter."

Zoey Samaras wandered into this encounter last night ... while Cursed. Obviously the knife, and the cross, and the Bravery skill, etc. were all unusable, but the Curse itself is an investigator card. 2 dice Horror check, followed by a 2 dice Combat check, both needing to pass first time to avoid losing, and no clues.

Fortunately they got a 6 on both rolls, so it didn't come up, but ... by the strict wording, Curses shouldn't count in the fight (and neither should blessings, which are perhaps more common, so it's not as if you gain an overall advantage playing this way) ... on the other hand "it moves so fast your bad luck doesn't have time to affect the outcome" makes no sense!

(Similarly, what about personal story pass/fail cards - or what about the conditions? If Patrice fails the Speed check, is she prevented from putting a token on her PS because it's an Investigator card and the Unique Item was gained while it was unusable?)

I think simply ignoring items and allies would be better. Skills, curses / blessings, benefits / detriments, madness / injury cards and personal stories should still work, IMO. I don't own BGotW, so I can't say much about the corruption cards, but I suppose there is no reason to ignore them, either (except for RAW - but we're talking about CotDP here ^^).

Are there other investigator cards that matter in such a situation?

Items, allies and skills is what I suspect it's supposed to mean, and then other than curses and blessings, all other Investigator cards that existed when it was only CotDP and the base game work fine, I think.

However, you can get some unusual results from cancelling Allies - consider Harvey Walters (3 max stamina), versus Cthulhu (-1 max stamina), with Dark Wind Covers Arkham (-1 max stamina in Arkham, among other effects) as the environment, having that R'lyeh encounter from Innsmouth (among other effects, -1 max stamina), and having Sir William Brinton (+1 max stamina) as an ally. Cancelling allies temporarily, for the fight, gets Harvey devoured... (none of the things affecting their stamina negatively are Investigator cards, so it doesn't really matter what you count).

cim said:

I guess that makes sense - except for skills. Thematically, why should a fast Mi-Go makes you lose the bonus from the +1 Fight skill, or from Martial Arts? This makes even less sense when you consider that Martial Arts can be a skill as well as an investigator ability, and it seems arbitrary if it's ignored in the first case, but not in the latter.

cim said:

Er ... no comment.

CotDP really does seem to be littered with tricky wordings like this, doesn't it?