As Luke Robinson you are not worried about any enemies around you. As soon as they form a threat you just hop into your Gate Box and zip out of arms way. That is untill you meet this card. "Hello snakes!"
Crazy good.
This card is a Sneak Attack on tap, it gets expensive to run but sure enough but with a relatively basic resource generation engine you can trigger her most rounds. Typically evade values are a bit lower than fight values and the vast majority of threats have an evade value of 2 or 3. A card like Lone Wolf will make you just enough resources to be triggering Delilah O'Rourke repeatedly.
To get the most from Delilah O'Rourke you need to be evading, not a problem for high characters like Finn, "Skids" O'Toole or Winifred Habbamock. Finn Edwards in particular with his free roundly evade can kill a minor enemy before he even spends an action! Even if you dont evade though, nailing something with an automatic 1 damage can be so very very helpful, say for example to put a point of damage on an odd-health opponent, also dont forget that there are several 1-health enemies that an angry Delilah O'Rourke will make short work of!
Oh, right, did you notice that she also buffs two stats and has some tank? What IS this crazy value?! Fighting with tends to be expensive, so there's a little anti synergy with her ability, a cheap combat method like Switchblade or Sleight of Hand + Lupara or other inexpensive weapons is recomended (like .18 Derringer for Finn, Enchanted Blade for "Skids").
Between Lola Santiago and Delilah O'Rourke characters sure are spoilt for choice.
Still not very good.
Typically characters need combos and techniques to deliver successful investigate actions, a card that depends on these actions to do anything at all is never goign to be a good for a who'se is less than 4 (on that note, try the 0xp variant in a Rex Murphy deck, all of a suddent you trigger Burglary on every test where you're going after 1 clue anyway and the card becomes a powerhouse.
If Burglary is to be changed to be useful at all, it needs to deliver clues alongside the money, or something other then just money. Perhaps a 1-round shroud reduction?
Whatever it is missing, Burglary just isnt delivering, not because it doesnt deliver enough resources, but because resources alone will never be useful enough to jump through the huge number of hoops that you must to make the card work.
There's a tradition in the Lovecraft Mythos that nightgaunts, frightening monsters that they are, are at times helpful and benevolent. Keeping with that tradition, under the right circumstances, this encounter is a godsend. How's that? At a modest fare of 1 damage and 1 horror, the "Nightgaunt Express" (as my group has come to call it) offers two very valuable services:
1) Saving you actions if you need to move across town. I don't know about you, but out of every action you can take on your turn, Move is my least favorite. It's slow, it does nothing on its own, and depending on the board state, moving toward a location often means moving away from a location you'll need to go to later, costing you even more actions. There's a reason cards like Shortcut, Elusive, and (sometimes) Astral Travel are so highly valued. Actions are precious--far more precious than the health and sanity you lose from failing the test for this encounter. Actions you don't need to spend moving can be spent gathering clues, doing damage to enemies, playing cards, and completing Act objectives. Why walk when you can fly?
2) Rescuing you from danger. This is a fantastic encounter to draw for investigators who are waylaid by (non-Nightgaunt) enemies and are either ill-prepared to fight/evade or whose actions are better spent on other things--seekers mainly, but anyone who just doesn't have the right cards in hand or in play can appreciate a helping claw from our favorite blank-faced tickle monsters.
About the third or fourth time my group drew this during our first playthrough of the Midnight Masks, we learned to love it. It allowed us to budget our actions to do just enough damage to take down a very tough enemy at a crucial moment. It reminded us of the many, many times--playing the 2nd edition of the board game--nightgaunts helped our investigators get across town and past tough monsters on their way to explore a gate. All aboard the Nightgaunt Express!
Slap it in -nearly- any deck and you wont regret it.
A huge +3 to get 1 or 2 clues with is quite good. It can help finish a high difficulty location or speed you up through a medium/low difficulty one. It's so simple and so good.
Keep in mind that on every success, even the one's that dont net you an extra clue, the card saves you an action that is the equivalent of one successful investigate, here's why:
Only on a complete failure is the card wasted, but what test-based card is'nt wasted when youre drawing such big negative tokens that 5+ value tests fail?
Even if you're not playing a clue dude give this thing a fair consideration in multiplayer, if there's a running around with a 4+ base then you can bring this to chuck at them, it is a non-binary way to contribute clues but an effective one nontheless.