I know Keeper actions can be used as long as you can pay for it, but I was curious about this one as it prevents cultists from attacking later. I just finished Story 2 with objective 1C because I summoned 6 cultists and then used Dark Ritual 3 times (drawing 18) in one turn to mill through the injury deck for 'No Way Out' and killed an insane investigator. Seems harsh, is it legitimate?

I have only played Story 2 variants with two investigators so far, and it is on my list of things to test for balance. Even only getting 2 threat a turn, you can literally churn out cultist sacing them for huge monsters and random other things. My players have yet to win one of these, but both times we have done one we were able to see something along the lines of "if I had just done this...", so Im still on the fence.

I could not imagine playing this with 4 investigators, unless they just blow thru the chapel extremly fast, the sheer insane amount of enimes you will have (one of the event cards even gives your MORE THREAT PER CULTIST) you could simply just horror check them to death.

Driving the insane investigator to take their "only way out" can work against you, since they can just grab a new investigator unless the Objective is revealed. Sure, ther is nothing wrong in actually doing this, but it seems like a waste of your three threat (you'd have to discard other Mythos/Trauma cards to "mill" for the one you want). It may be fun, and occasioanlly useful, to do this, but I've found that by not concentrating on the objective the Keeper can lose the game.

Also note that you can't find the card and then use it to kill an investigator. You have to wait untill they suffer a horror to be able to play it. Smart players may use this against you as you used 3 points and discarded most other trauma and mythos cards in the process of finding it, as they just have their investigator run away until they can be healed a few sanity points

kanageddaamen said:

Actually, when an investigator is insane, the Keeper can play insanity Trauma cards on that investigator as a Keeper Action. Pg24 of the rulebook:

If an investigator ever has zero sanity, then he is not killed, but
is instead driven insane. The keeper may play insanity Trauma
cards on an insane investigator as a keeper action (see page
25).

dvang said:

ah, missed that one, thanks

This was after the objective had been revealed, and my goal was to kill an investigator; so I wasn't really worried about whether it was worth my time or not, I was more concerned with if it was allowed. But yeah, spending that much trauma in one turn to draw a bunch of cards that don't get used was painful.

In case you didn't spot it, this has now been answered in the FAQ - Dark Ritual can only be used once per turn.