Skill. Weakness

Curse.

Neutral

Bonded (Nightmare Bauble).

While Dream Parasite is in your hand, you must commit it to the next skill test you perform, if able.

This skill's icons subtract from your skill value instead of adding to it.

If this skill test fails, take 1 damage and 1 horror.

McLean Kendree
Weaver of the Cosmos #331.
Dream Parasite

FAQs

(from the official FAQ or responses to the official rules question form)
  • Clarification: If an investigator’s deck contains a card that summons one or more bonded cards, those bonded cards are set aside at the start of each game. The number of copies of each different bonded card that are set aside in this way is equal to the number of copies of that were included in the product in which that bonded card was introduced. The number of cards in your deck that summon the bonded card in question does not factor into this limit. *For example: An investigator may only have 3 copies of Soothing Melody set aside at the start of the game. Similarly, an investigator may only have 1 Essence of the Dream set aside at the start of the game, regardless of how many copies of Dream Diary they include in their deck. - FAQ, v.1.7, March 2020
Last updated

Reviews

Important considerations, a.k.a, Why Dream Parasite Is Not The Worst:

-If you have Charisma to put Jessica and Peter out, which is not unheard of since that set up is amazing, the damage and horror will be healed passively by your allies.

-If you have Lucky! in hand, it can potentially counter Dream Parasite's -2 skill value.

-If you have Live and Learn in hand, it can redo the entire test and Dream Parasite will be gone for the 2nd try (although you will have to resolve the damage and horror).

-If you are Calvin, taking 1 damage and 1 horror gives you stats.

-If you are Silas, you can return Dream Parasite to your hand once per round, and dodge the damage and horror on a fail, because you did in fact still commit the card.

-Potentially, you can engineer what skill test this goes to. You can do something really easy that you can pass even with -2, such as a Flashlight on a Shroud 2, or you can do it on a low value test where you don't care if you fail or even want to fail, and can activate when you fail effects like Take Heart.

Soloclue · 2594
Interesting addition: if you have the weakness The Tower in hand, this card cannot be committed. (They'll still count towards your hand size, though.) — Prinny_wizzard · 251
Stella can ignore it with her uniques. — MrGoldbee · 1451
You could also commit it to someone else's test if their skill values is huge — OrionAnderson · 69
@OrionAnderson: Interesting observation; it only works if there is another player's test before your own, though. — AlderSign · 284