Father Mateo the Ascetic (18xp Replacement Investigator)

Did you fly too close to the sun in your campaign messing with Charon's Obol? Or were you a Lost Homunculus that was finally put out of your misery? Maybe you just got caught in Arkham Asylum while all your friends escaped. Either way, you are now in need of a new investigator halfway through a campaign when everyone else already has a good chunk of experience. How will you possibly keep up with the remaining scenarios?

Intro

Meet Father Mateo, a mystic that can be built to focus on fighting, investigating, or a mix of both. He starts with 5 experience. When we include In the Thick of It of it, we are able to trade 2 trauma for 3 experience. Ascetic gives us an extra 10 experience, in exchange for no longer being able to gain experience. All together our brand new Father Mateo gets a full 18 experience coming in as a new investigator.

This in and of itself is solid, but Kymani Jones and Roland Banks are capable of doing this same 18 experience replacement. What make Father Mateo unique is that he can also take Down the Rabbit Hole and two copies of Arcane Research. These cards give you a discount towards your next upgrade, up to three experience off for spells. Ascetic prevents you from earning experience, but does not prevent you from upgrading your cards. This allows you to replace an investigator part way through a campaign and still upgrade your deck between the remaining scenarios.

Trauma

I recommend spliting the trauma from In the Thick of It to give 1 physical and 1 mental. This combined with 2 Arcane Research will giving you a starting health/sanity pool of 5/5.

Customizable Card

There are not very many cards that upgrade for only 1xp, so having a place to put any leftover experience permitted by Down the Rabbit Hole helps prevent waste. I went with Summoned Servitor for this deck, but you can replace it with Living Ink or Power Word if you prefer. You will want to have some experience already in your customizable card with space left to upgrade between scenarios based on how many scenarios are left in your campaign.

Other cards to consider

• Divination - good investigation spell that also costs 3 xp to upgrade into the level 4 version
• Arcane Initiate - improves card draw, and when coupled with the Hallowed Mirror makes you a more consistent healer too
• Any of the other fight/investigate/evade spells

What investigator you are replacing, what role you need to fill, and what difficulty you are playing on will all determine what specific cards you want to put in your deck, but the Arcane Research, Ascetic, Down the Rabbit Hole, In the Thick of It combo will give you space to continue to grow for multiple scenarios.