Hello FFG,
We've only recently started using TTS due to the COVID19 situation and prior to that we were meeting face to face, using purchased materials of the product. TTS was an absolute saviour to our Arkham Friday nights. I understand needing to pull it because of your trademark but have you considered even the timing of the situation? And now to even suggest this, is an absolute tone-deaf suggestion or a slap in the face. I understand you might be thinking that you could sell more product (which by the way is very hard to acquire, if at all in the present situation) but I hope you've consider the PR or goodwill costs.
It does not look good on you at all.

Hello FFG,
We've only recently started using TTS due to the COVID19 situation and prior to that we were meeting face to face, using purchased materials of the product. TTS was an absolute saviour to our Arkham Friday nights. I understand needing to pull it because of your trademark but have you considered even the timing of the situation? And now to even suggest this, is an absolute tone-deaf suggestion or a slap in the face. I understand you might be thinking that you could sell more product (which by the way is very hard to acquire, if at all in the present situation) but I hope you've consider the PR or goodwill costs.
It does not look good on you at all.

Hello FFG,
We've only recently started using TTS due to the COVID19 situation and prior to that we were meeting face to face, using purchased materials of the product. TTS was an absolute saviour to our Arkham Friday nights. I understand needing to pull it because of your trademark but have you considered even the timing of the situation? And now to even suggest this, is an absolute tone-deaf suggestion or a slap in the face. I understand you might be thinking that you could sell more product (which by the way is very hard to acquire, if at all in the present situation) but I hope you've consider the PR or goodwill costs.
It does not look good on you at all.

Hello FFG,
We've only recently started using TTS due to the COVID19 situation and prior to that we were meeting face to face, using purchased materials of the product. TTS was an absolute saviour to our Arkham Friday nights. I understand needing to pull it because of your trademark but have you considered even the timing of the situation? And now to even suggest this, is an absolute tone-deaf suggestion or a slap in the face. I understand you might be thinking that you could sell more product (which by the way is very hard to acquire, if at all in the present situation) but I hope you've consider the PR or goodwill costs.
It does not look good on you at all.

Hello FFG,
We've only recently started using TTS due to the COVID19 situation and prior to that we were meeting face to face, using purchased materials of the product. TTS was an absolute saviour to our Arkham Friday nights. I understand needing to pull it because of your trademark but have you considered even the timing of the situation? And now to even suggest this, is an absolute tone-deaf suggestion or a slap in the face. I understand you might be thinking that you could sell more product (which by the way is very hard to acquire, if at all in the present situation) but I hope you've consider the PR or goodwill costs.
It does not look good on you at all.

Hello FFG,
We've only recently started using TTS due to the COVID19 situation and prior to that we were meeting face to face, using purchased materials of the product. TTS was an absolute saviour to our Arkham Friday nights. I understand needing to pull it because of your trademark but have you considered even the timing of the situation? And now to even suggest this, is an absolute tone-deaf suggestion or a slap in the face. I understand you might be thinking that you could sell more product (which by the way is very hard to acquire, if at all in the present situation) but I hope you've consider the PR or goodwill costs.
It does not look good on you at all.

Hello FFG,
We've only recently started using TTS due to the COVID19 situation and prior to that we were meeting face to face, using purchased materials of the product. TTS was an absolute saviour to our Arkham Friday nights. I understand needing to pull it because of your trademark but have you considered even the timing of the situation? And now to even suggest this, is an absolute tone-deaf suggestion or a slap in the face. I understand you might be thinking that you could sell more product (which by the way is very hard to acquire, if at all in the present situation) but I hope you've consider the PR or goodwill costs.
It does not look good on you at all.

Hello FFG,
We've only recently started using TTS due to the COVID19 situation and prior to that we were meeting face to face, using purchased materials of the product. TTS was an absolute saviour to our Arkham Friday nights. I understand needing to pull it because of your trademark but have you considered even the timing of the situation? And now to even suggest this, is an absolute tone-deaf suggestion or a slap in the face. I understand you might be thinking that you could sell more product (which by the way is very hard to acquire, if at all in the present situation) but I hope you've consider the PR or goodwill costs.
It does not look good on you at all.

Hm, I honestly question who asked for this setting. I feel there isn't much of an overlap between the card game and RPG players.

I would go to https://arkhamdb.com/ and do some searches.
For instance, including basic weaknesses, there are 103 in the core set, 112 in Dunwich, 119 in Carcosa, 109 in Age, 106 in Circle, and 13 in Novellas.  Typically, those include 1 copy of each investigator and their cards, 1-2 for all weaknesses, and 2 for everything else.
As far as reward cards, those are usually singles unless they're weaknesses.  I don't know how many are in each campaign.  The core has 1 ally.  Dunwich has at least 3 (also allies) and 4 weaknesses.

This thread has been infected by maho, the dead raising kind. Phoenix, should have known. 😐
 
 

I don't think I ever expected a fully objective answer to come from this thread, it's partly why I put emphasis on opinion.
I was just really befuddled by my friend who declared Carolyn as the worst investigator, over Lola Hayes.

I think you need to ask yourself if you are okay with the expense of this game in general.
Just the first core set doesn’t give you much of a game. It is the gateway to the game itself. There will be a more or less $15 purchase once a month if you like this game. If you are already balking at the entry price, maybe you should back out now?

At the moment, everything is legal at the moment and it should stay that way probably 9 months (at the absolutely unlikely earliest) to maybe a year.
3 core is absolutely needed for competitive play but I will say you can make legal and workable decks at 2 core for casual play.

So I had the chance to try this out this weekend. 2 friends of mine that I play some keyforge games with were interested in this game. I made 4 decks to kind of introduce them to it. My rules were simple:
No roles. No clan mixing. No dueling. No disguise. No composure. Turns out when you break things down to the bare basics, the decks get pretty easy to build as your card pool drops a lot. The one I estimated as a lion player definitely enjoyed his clan and the "army smash" feel of it. The phoenix player was interested but I don't know if it "grabbed" him right away. (poor phoenix - don't seem to have anything appropriate for a newbie)
They were asking me questions about costs and getting into the game. How exactly do I explain rotation to them... (should they bother with this or that cycle or wait? etc) The challenge of the core set is probably their biggest hurdles. Right now since I have a complete collection I can supply most of the decks. May see if we can run some kind of casual league with little interior rules on roles & clans.

Usually the first thing I do is check the scenario card for the special token effects.    If there is something that has a bad consequence on failure,  I want to keep that in mind.   There are some really bad ones out there,  that can spawn doom or monsters, or other nasty effects.    So if you're in a scenario that has something like Cultist Token:   -3,   if you fail, draw the top treachery card in the encounter discard pile-          then I really want to be up by +3 all the time.  


Even if that isn't the case, it's generally a good idea to be able to pass most checks that you try, unless you are planning to get something by failing.   Cards like Drawing Thin, Look What I Found, or Rabbit's Foot,   -even Lucky!  change the dynamic a lot.   That's a post for another time.   So lets assume for a second that you're not doing fail shenanigans,  you're not doing any -cancel a token- effects,  etc.,  which if I'm interpreting your post correctly was the intent.  Failing a check still does have some cost,  mainly the cost of an action.  So the next thing to do is to consider what you can do with that action.  Sometimes it's just a resource or a card.   But maybe you have Dario out,   then you could get 2 resources for an action if you havent used him this turn.   Let's again,  sort of assume that it isn't a special case.

Then I look ahead to next turn.   Is there something in my hand that I would like to play,  that I don't have enough money for,  and won't have enough money for on my next turn?   If I'm trying to play a 4 cost card,  and currently have 3 resources,  getting a resource isn't ultra important because I will get a resource during upkeep and be able to play my card anyway.  But if you are sitting at 2 resources and looking to play a 4 cost card,  then taking 1 resource looks very attractive,  as you'll grab your resource this turn and get to 3,  upkeep will put you to 4,  and you can play your card next turn.  

Just having an extra resource can be very beneficial if you are using Talents as well.  If you are using talents,  resources are on-demand stat boosts,  which is very useful sometimes.  Resources usually don't go away (although they can in some scenarios,  or with Paranoia, etc),  so they might very well come in handy later.   And what definitely wont come in handy is a failed investigate action.   So it should be clear that I value resources....   I also value cards.   It's a card game,  so you're going to need cards.   There isn't much else to say.   If your hand is running low,  if you don't have a tool that you need....  drawing cards is going to be a must at some point.   You'll need to keep in mind your weakness,  whether it's a good idea to draw, especially on your last action,  but still...  drawing cards is essential to most characters and most builds.  For however much I've dwelled on the importance of resources,  cards are just as important.  Card icons are also on-demand stat boosts,  and can sometimes be far more effective than boosting with resources, if you're willing to give up the card.     If you have an action to spare,  and your hand isn't at 7+ cards, and you wont be crippled if you draw one of your weaknesses,   then drawing a card is pretty much always a good idea. 

So back to the core topic.    Given that resources and cards are going to help my investigator in the future,   when should I risk not getting them in order to attempt to gain some other advantage,  like perhaps, a clue?   Check your chaos bag.   If you have a less than 50% chance to succeed,  I wouldnt even think about it.   For example,  if it is....   I could get a clue if I draw a +1,  0,  or Star....    don't even bother, just get the resource or card.  Looking at the Circle Undone setup for standard,  before adding any tokens for storyline or quest consequences etc,  your chaos bag looks like;   Star, +1, 0, 0, -1, -1, -2, -2, -3, -4, skull, skull, fail.     For the sake of argument,  lets just assume that star is auto-pass,  even though it might not necessarily pass on all characters.  

So we've got 13 tokens.    -2 or -3 are common values for special tokens.   For this first part,  lets say skull is -2.    If you are +1 over the difficulty,  you have 6/13 chance to pass the check.   46%.    I would not attempt this check.      What if you were +2?   your chances improve to 10/13.   About 77%.   Notice the huge difference here.   At 77% chance to succeed,   this is worth the opportunity cost of an action, IMO.   I would attempt this check.   Just for funzies,  look what happens if you are +3:   Your odds improve to 11/13,   about 85%.   An improvement for sure,   but an improvement of about 8% when going from +2 to +3,   compared to the improvement of 31% when going from 1 to 2.  

Now lets do the same experiment with skull at -3.    At +1 over the difficulty,  your chance to pass is again 46%,   I would not attempt the check here.    At +2 over the difficulty,  your odds are now 8/13,  about 62% to succeed.  This is above 50%,  but it's still borderline.   Some people might attempt the check here.    A situational call,  how badly do you need what you are going for?   Is it worth the risk?   Personally,   I would probably not.    Because...    At +3 over the difficulty your odds improve to 11/13,   85%.  For 1 more resource/icon/stat boost you improve your chances by 23%,  a large boost.   I would most likely take a resource or a card and attempt to secure the +3 over the difficulty attempt on my next try,  or try to draw into something to improve my engine,  rather than trying the 62% chance.  

TLDR:   be up enough that you can succeed on the Special tokens,   your odds improve the most that way. 

Hope that helps!

It's a bit unfortunate that an LCG's main selling point has inadvertently also become its barriers. The long term costs of playing an LCG is vastly cheaper than that of a CCG and cuts away the complication of chasing rares, especially in smaller communities. For a while during oL5R, playing with one-ofs even on the kitchen table felt miserable. However, people are interested in the immediate start up, especially when they aren't sure if this is something they want to commit to.
Working with what we have with now and as they are, it would be neat see a community made "start-up shortcuts" if players are interested in certain clans so they feel they don't need to buy into every pack if they are interested in playing certain decks.

It's a bit unfortunate that an LCG's main selling point has inadvertently also become its barriers. The long term costs of playing an LCG is vastly cheaper than that of a CCG and cuts away the complication of chasing rares, especially in smaller communities. For a while during oL5R, playing with one-ofs even on the kitchen table felt miserable. However, people are interested in the immediate start up, especially when they aren't sure if this is something they want to commit to.
Working with what we have with now and as they are, it would be neat see a community made "start-up shortcuts" if players are interested in certain clans so they feel they don't need to buy into every pack if they are interested in playing certain decks.

I'll hit the "Getting New Players In" button every time when asked this question. Unfortunately, LCGs tend to suffer from this problem. From the release of core to the early cycles is generally the cutting point of who will be playing this game years from now. If your group has a strong early foundation, you might be set up for the future. At least, that's assumption judging from the local Netrunner community. Very few players got in after a certain point.
Rotation is good for getting new players in but also a bane when it comes to designing starter product, which is even more true when lined up with the role locking process. Erik's deck could have been great but unfortunately illegal due to the role locking process and Restricted List (which I'd say that the latter is fully understandable...the former is debatable to this day). What would be my work around with the current structure as is? It would have to be some sort of role neutral, ever-green..potentially under-powered starter deck that will never make it to the RL. Unfortunately, this deck will lose 9 out of 10 times (potentially 10 out of 10 vs a competitive deck) but it does put a product in the market "start this game with playsets at the same price as a Magic starter". 
Even then, I feel something like this might be disingenuous or in vain. Supposedly, the Thrones starters did not inject new blood. .
TLDR: I don't have a good answer. 

I don't think I ever expected a fully objective answer to come from this thread, it's partly why I put emphasis on opinion.
I was just really befuddled by my friend who declared Carolyn as the worst investigator, over Lola Hayes.

Great thread everyone! I took a data-driven approach and wrote about it here:
https://decipheredreality.com/investigator/who-is-the-worst-investigator-in-arkham-horror-the-card-game/
(also - this is a new blog! I'll be writing about the data behind AH:LCG. Let me know what you think!)

Really liking the discussion here, thank you for the responses. I never thought of Calvin as potentially the worst, as I thought that would be universally Lola. 

I think if we are willing to say that there are good or strong, or powerful investigators,   then it only follows logically that there are weaker ones too.  Change the question to "Which investigator is the hardest to build a good deck  for?"  if you like.   The essence is the same.  

With that said,  here are my picks for the top 5 worst investigators, starting with...

A (dis-) Honorable Mention:    Lola Hayes.   Lola gets dishonorable mention for being the only investigator on this list I have not actually built a deck and played with.  I couldnt bring myself to put her in the top 5 worst for that reason.    However....   there is also a reason I have not built a deck with her.   Lola is a deckbuilding nightmare and while some people might feel up to the challenge,  I really don't.   Lola also generally wants to take all the good cards from all the classes,  making her a bad partner for those who share a card pool with their group.  Lola has mediocre stats, poor health and sanity, and no access to higher level cards.   She only makes up for it in jank.   

Number 5:  Carolyn Fern.    Well,  I'm sorry to say she does make my list.    Coming in at #5 is Carolyn who suffers from an extremely poor class choice.  Carolyn's stats say she wants to be a seeker, her medic role says she wants to be a survivor,  but she got classed as Guardian.  Most of the higher level guardian cards are utterly useless to Carolyn, making her very difficult to level.  Add to that that healing is just not something you need that much of.   Typically, characters include enough self-heal or soak to keep themselves alive throughout a scenario, leaving Carolyn's entire schtick somewhat superfluous.  With no access to the higher level seeker cards she suffers from not being able to get clues fast enough, or team-support well enough.  She can't fight, or even evade, and Rational Thought puts the brakes on the one thing she's supposed to be good at doing.  Oddly, despite being a Guardian class, she almost always finds herself in need of being protected.  I did enjoy playing her and she could contribute somewhat to the team, which is why she only comes in at number 5,    but at the end of the day....  you probably should have picked a seeker instead.

Number 4:  Skids O'Toole.   Skids used to be the only investigator with access to both Guardian and Rogue cards,  which was a fun little combo.   But he's not anymore.  Skids has 2 main problems,  firstly his low(ish) fight score.   Being a rogue/guardian,  a 3 combat is just pretty low if you want to be slaying monsters.   And beyond that, if you are trying to use him as a monster slayer,  his best stat -agility-  often goes unused.   With the release of some nice Rogue guns, he can still pack a bit of a punch,  but he compares unfavorably to most other slayers.   His other major problem is his low willpower and low sanity.   A rotting remains can easily take away half his sanity pool in one fell swoop, and he can't really back himself up with Liquid Courage since that relies on willpower to be efficient.   He can now pack Something Worth Fighting For, and that helps to keep him alive, but he still has a tough time.    His weakness is pretty annoying as well,  and his signature strength has got to be one of the worst signature cards in the game.   More often than not,  I ditch On The Lam for its icons.   Feels bad...

Number 3:  Rita Young.  We're assuming you're not doing the Rita-infinite-combo here.  I suffer from not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing with Rita.  Her intellect is terrible, her combat is mediocre, no access to any good weaponry to help out with that.  All she really does is evade very well.  But evasion just isn't something that is all that helpful when compared to murdering stuff.   Sure, on occasion in the Forgotten Age or so there are times when you'd rather evade than fight,  but in general...   Rita doesnt do enough to pull her weight.    I did play Rita with a bow and found her to be okay... but I ran into problem after problem with being out of arrows at the wrong times, forcing me to waste actions to evade, reload, and attack.  Rita is the first of this list to suffer from a simple issue:  the survivor card pool.   On its own,  survivor cards just arent good enough.    They can be great when combined with other classes,  but when you are restricted to a pool of almost exclusively survivor cards, you have problems.    In the survivor pool you find yourself very hard-pressed to find a decent weapon, or a way to get lots of clues easily.   With no access to high level cards, Rita falls behind pretty fast.   If all that wasn't bad enough,  Hoods is a brutal weakness that Rita has a lot of trouble dealing with by herself.  Her signature strength,  I'm Done Runnin',  is also weak.   This is very reminiscent of Skids, at #4.   It's easy to get Rita up to so much Agility she is an absolute ninja,   but the problem is simply that that isn't good enough.  

Number 2:  Ashcan Pete.   Again, we are looking at Survivor problems.  Pete's card pool is limited to exclusively Survivor + Neutral+ 5 other level-0 cards.  It's not good enough.   This alone drops him to #2.  No good weapons, no good way to secure clues, especially at higher XP levels.   Duke can make up for it a bit,  but once bigger damage numbers are needed,  Duke doesn't cut it.  And if Duke ever gets knocked out, Kidnapped, or whatever,  Pete finds himself in a lot of trouble.    While Pete is a decent solo character because of his ability to both fight and find clues at least a little bit (though he's not the only investigator who can do this),  on teams he is a liability.  Even with Duke around, he struggles to get the raw numbers he needs to hit a high-combat enemy,  or find clues at a high-shroud location.    This is getting to be more and more of a problem as things like Retaliate and Haunted start to show up more.

Number 1:   Calvin Wright.   It's hard to argue that it is a difficult task to make an effective Calvin deck.   He has to be on death's door to before his stats are anything good, and you spend most of your deck slots trying to mitigate this crippling weakness of his terrible statline,  rather than doing anything good.  Your deck is going to be stuffed full of cards to try to keep Calvin alive, and cards to try to get calvin to the point where he has 4-5 stats in everything.   You're left with a deck with very little useful deckspace.  On top of that, add Survivor Problems.   No good weapons, hard to get multiple clues, hard to spend XP on somethat that improves Calvin in a meaningful way.   Calvin takes a very long time to set up, and once he is set up, he still has to be able to somehow make use of the statline you worked so awfully hard for.   Any scenario where you need to move fast,  deal with an early monster, or get early clues,  Calvin is pure dead weight.   Oh, and his weakness gives trauma.   Are you kidding me?   Even if by some miracle everything seems to be going well,   a single mythos card, a bit of bad luck, and its TKO for this guy.    

I'm going to assume that by worst you mean least likely to be of help completing a scenario, rather than anything to do with how fun they are to play. In that case I think I'd have to nominate Lola Hayes, followed by Calvin Wright.
Lola has a larger deck size, making her less consistent, is a frail 6 health and 6 sanity, has two copies of a signature weakness that can have a devastating effect (which can lead to her taking sub-optimal moves until both copies have been drawn), has an investigator ability which is a handicap and a perfectly average stat line (which means she'll probably have to have some way to boost her skills to pass a difficult test in any of the four disciplines). I have yet to see a Lola deck whose goals couldn't be met more effectively by replacing Lola with another investigator.
Calvin is weak early on in the scenario when his stats are low, so other investigators will probably need to carry him. Once he is set up he has great stats and Survivor tricks in case he fails, which is great, but set up for Calvin means red-lining so an unlucky Tentacle pull on a Rotting Remains or Grasping Hands can easily polish him off, leaving the rest of the party having to literally carry him out of the scenario at the end.

It's clearly the case that not all investigators are created equal, and following where that leads, if the investigators differ in their power, it must logically be possible to compare their relative power and utility. Wendy Adams is clearly a more effective investigator than Calvin Wright in the majority of situations; Rex Murphy is so good at collecting clues (the primary Seeker job) that he was nerfed in the Taboo list. Moreover, the OP isn't asking "what investigators are bad", they are asking "what investigator is the least good (at contributing to success at the game)" - even if every single investigator were a triumph of design and highly effective, there is still going to be some degree of variance in power between them as a simple function of how balance works, and therefore there would be a "best" and a "worst", even if the margins were very narrow.
But it's also the case that "best" and "worst" depend a whole lot on the situation; Mark Harrigan and Zoey Samaras are very strong characters for a 4-person party because they're really great at killing monsters, but their relatively lacking clue gathering ability means that they aren't as impressive solo. Rita Young is very reliant on getting certain cards in order to gather any clues at all, but in the right circumstances - the right scenarios - the right team configurations - she can be extremely, uniquely effective. Really, any investigator with a strong focus in one area, or any kind of support ability, is stronger with more players. Conversely, a generalist like "Ashcan" Pete is going to be a strong solo pick. Jim Culver is much better solo than Agnes Baker, but Agnes has much more raw power to bring to bear if she has a group to cover for her.
Power also fluctuates a lot as more cards are released. Skids O'Toole was rubbish when the game first came out because rogues had so little in the way of good cards in the core set. Now he's a lot stronger - but he still seems to be the weakest rogue, since his Guardian off-class does not do much for him (I think he should have been 0-2 Survivor...) and his ability is both overshadowed by other rogues' and less impressive on higher difficulties. Calvin Wright has seen a whole host of cards that seem almost tailor-made for him, so he might be more effective now than when he first came out. Conversely, some investigators are now relatively weaker than when they first appeared - Zoey languished for a while because Seekers got some more economy cards (and the other guardians aside from Mark now all have a lot of strong economy options), making her resource gain less special, but she seems to be back on the rise with some very pricey Guardian assets and some particularly good uses for her 5 off-class slots. Applying taboos will significantly shift the relative power levels of certain investigators, bringing rogues - particularly Preston - down a peg and nerfing all Seekers but especially Rex.
So there's a lot of caveats, but for my money the answer is always and forever going to be Lola Hayes. Sure, you could make some builds that only she can truly take advantage of for particular effect - lots'o'tarot, for instance - and there will be board states where she can be potent, but even her best builds will rely on luck more than any other, because she has a lot more things that can go wrong than other investigators and assembling special combinations will only be valuable if you can get all the pieces together (a combo Mark Harrigan without his combo pieces is still a 5-fight beefcake who can punch himself for card draw and boosts; Lola without her combo pieces is a low-health/sanity 3-in-everything jack of all trades without an investigator ability) so you're vulnerable both to the luck of the draw and to any asset/hand/draw hate from specific scenarios. In addition, unless we see a large number of cards brought out that actively improve her and only her (to an extent, you could argue that the dual-class cards and more permanent cards do so, since they make her deckbuilding much easier to handle), she will continue to drop in relative power as more investigators are brought out, each with their own deckbuilding options, and each new unique set of deckbuilding options will shrink the possible combinations of cards that only Lola can access - imagine, for instance, if you wanted to combine Dr Milan and seeker passive boosts with Guardian support cards and some Mystic sealing and utility, to make a support clue-gatherer with sealing - well initially you would have to choose Lola, but now, Carolyn Fern also exists, covering the same area, able to do pretty much everything you wanted, and does so with a strong Investigator ability, a far better health/sanity total, a smaller and therefore tighter deck, no restriction on which class of cards you can use moment-to-moment and fewer, less devastating weaknesses. But beyond that, beyond the inherent weakness of the investigator, I don't feel that Lola makes the game better by being in it. The only times she will be a strong choice, strictly better than another, different choice, will be if she can create a uniquely powerful combination that imbalances the game, and that's still bad for the overall health of the game. And outside of those situations, she's mainly a trap for the unwary. It's certainly possible to make a bad deck for any investigator, but with Lola you have to really, really know what you're doing to make a deck that actually works properly, and I fundamentally object to anything that can lead players - new players especially - to making mistakes. I think you can still have fun building weird gimmicks with her, but I think she's a fundamentally flawed and bad piece of game design, and that's why I think she's the worst investigator.