I am trying to throw together a custom character for a friend as a gift and I'm in a bit of a hurry, so bear with me if this is stupid, poorly researched or otherwise annoying

How is this for balance and power as a special ability:

A madman's insight

Whenever N.N involuntarily loses sanity without going insane, he immediately gains one clue token.

I am thinking only loss here, not cost from spells or encounters/effects saying "you may spend" or similar. And not 1 for 1. Never more than 1 clue at a time. Could probably even be "once per turn". This is not a very serious creation, but I expect to play with him a couple of times, so some balance would be good.

Thoughts?

Point is that you can simply start sending him monsters hunting and having a good series of bonus clues. Sometimes more than once in the same turn: more than one monster in the same location could trigger this several times. So, yeah, limiting to once per turn is vital. If you don't want this to be spoiled too much, just give the guy a bad Fight stat (max 3, for example), or a low starting Sanity (3 again), so that he's encouraged to follow different routes

I had considered low sanity, but a bad fight stat should also work well. And yes - once per turn is vital.

I will fiddle a bit with it and see.

Update:

Any phase: Once per turn, if N.N involuntarily loses sanity without going insane, he immediately gains a clue token. (Does not apply to sanity cost; spells, effects etc.)

Sanity: 4

Stamina: 6

Max fight of 3 and a high lore stat to encourage spell casting with associated sanity cost.

Too difficult to balance for the character? Still to good special? (I don't think so, but could be wrong...)

Will very much appreciate feedback on this. I will have time to do some tweaking tomorrow morning.

Wording: Once per turn, if Mr. X loses Sanity without being driven Insane, he gains a clue token.

Stats are ok

Start game, read KoY, gain 5 clues, get to first gate asap? Seems pretty good.

And yeah, the ability is fine. As Julie pointed out, the best way to balance out that type of ability is to penalize the player for attempting to abuse it, in this case with either low sanity or low combat stats. Having a Lore of 5 with his ability does mean he wants ALL the tomes, ever.

Thanks, guys!