EDIT:

Thanks everyone for the comments! Let me outline the discussion on top for anyone revisiting this card in the future.

If you fail this skill test and would like to choose option #1, then as Zinjanthropus in the comments clarified, the damage is dealt to "an ally" rather than "allies", "you", or "your investigator". And since it specifies one ally, this means (as StyxTBeuford notes) the card is effectively telling you to discard one ally. However, the card does NOT specifically say "discard" even though that's exactly what it wants (although because it is damage, as Hylianpuffball notes, this means you can trigger reaction effects upon death such as Brother Xavier). Do note that you cannot have multiple allies absorb the hit in order to keep them alive either (this is largely impossible anyways). It tripped me up at first because ordinarily, treacheries tell you when they want you to discard (e.g. Crypt Chill). In this case it does not because it sounds scarier, but more importantly, it is more thematically consistent. Someone is getting killed (or severely wounded) from a snake bite. This ally must be able to receive damage though so the incorporeal Guiding Spirit cannot take the blow as SGPrometheus brought up. Django and others point out that in short, when an encounter or other card effect requires you to do something, you can only choose to do it if you are able to meet the request in part. In other words, it has to effect the game state. If it says to lose 3 resources, and you only have 2, you may still choose this option. In our case, when it says to deal 5 damage to an ally, as long as you have an ally with any amount of health, they can take the hit even though the rest of the effect will not amount to much.

I maybe wasn't clear in my original "review" but my intent was to ask the community so that I know to make sure I play the card correctly, and so that others with the same question can now find an answer. As an aside, yes, Agency Backup and Trusted x2 is about the only combination that could have an ally survive this hit, but not for untamed wilds (unless you start with bonus exp somehow). If anyone has dealt 5 damage to an ally and the ally survived, I'd love to hear about it because it sounds epic.

ORIGINAL:

I'm not sure I understand why this card pretends to offer you a choice should you fail.

Dealing 5 damage to an ally means the ally must be able to receive 5 damage (during the assign damage step). If the total incoming damage exceeds the card's maximum health threshold, then the rest needs to be dealt to your investigator (or any other card that can take damage). So my question is, can I choose this first option even if I only have one ally up, say William T. Maleson or Jake Williams, and then stomach the rest on my investigator?

If you can, it's a lot of damage but at least poison can be averted. If you can't, then you'd be forced to choose the second option and suffer poison. But frankly, you'll never be able to choose the first option without having at least 2 allies in play. Why? Because the only allies who offer 4 HP are Agency Backup and Red-Gloved Man, and that still isn't enough to satisfy the requirement. It may not be as big a deal in later scenarios, but if we're talking about Untamed Wilds (which this card is in), then the only investigator who can effectively tank this is Leo Anderson, AFTER he has Mitch Brown AND one or two other allies in play. There is Trusted but it won't be enough. Mateo could soak it in theory since he can spend his bonus EXP on Charisma and two Summoned Hounds, but sheesh. I do feel like the severity for avoiding poison should have some bite, but this is impossible at lvl 0 for anyone but Leo (beyond protecting himself, he can sort of protect someone else with Tetsuo Mori but he didn't release until well after FA) and Mateo (again, only with hounds who did not release until much later). You can buff yourself with some armor, but most lvl 0 options are too minimal to help much.

In short, this card is scary.

I want to like Anna, I want to make her nonsense work. It's just tricky to justify when she amounts, more or less, to a 1/1 Ally that grants a net +2 to your skills at a cost of 6 XP (4 for Anna, 2 for the tarots), which literally 14 investigators can get thru Peter Sylvester (2) for just 2 XP, and 6 more can get thru Lola Santiago or Delilah O'Rourke for 3 XP, plus all the sanity/clues/murders they respectively bring.

One novelty, something of a swingy thingy if you feel lucky while playing Carolyn Fern or Roland Banks:

• Stick To The Plan
• Anna Kaslow
• Astounding Revelation x2
• Tarot of your choosing (Carolyn uniquely has access to three useful tarot)

==

If you draw Anna in your opener/mulligan (odds improved as STTP + AR thins your deck by 4), you'll start Turn 1 with:

• Your deck thinned by 6 cards
• 9 resources
• Anna
• 1 tarot of your choice in play

Assuming I used this card-draw calculator right, a hard mulligan for Anna puts the odds of landing her at about 61%.

All for the low price of... er... 18XP. huh.

I have to agree with the consensus that this card is a bit strange, but I don't necessarily think it should grant clues or some such. I do think it could be altered to scale differently. Here's how I'd house rule it:

The text would read: After you successfully investigate, exhaust Burglary and gain resources by however much you succeed by, to a maximum of X. X is the printed shroud value of your location.

This version would offer the benefit of not forcing you to "waste" an action investigating to get resources, you'd just get them as a result of successfully investigating like normal. The number of resources you'd gain would be quite low most of the time, but you probably won't be spending a lot of extra cards or resources to succeed by a large amount anyways, certainly not on low shroud values. High shroud locations can net you far more resources, but you would have to succeed by that much more in order to get them. The function of the card is not to net you a large chunk of change; most likely it will trickle out resources as you investigate along the way (and the exhaust keeps it from being too overpowered). Note that I would emphasize "printed" shroud value to allow cards like Skeleton Key to combo. You could essentially hack the shroud value, but still gain large quantities of resources in this way. It might need to be lvl 3 as opposed to 2, but if it means the card sees play rather than how it is now, then I think it'd be worth it.

But enough tooting my own horn. The card as is, does have some viability. Finn might like it, or anyone playing Fence since you can get it up quickly and then snag some dough whenever you have a spare moment at a low shroud value. You can still combo cards like Double or Nothing and "Watch this!" to heap a pile of cash, and I suspect this is probably the instance it'll be used (Boss Leo would probably love this). The problem, of course, is that while you can net a grand total of 16 resources this way, you could get 12 with Burglary lvl 0 which I would think is plenty. So I guess I'm back to being confused over where the allure in this upgrade exists.

"You owe me one!" is a unique action economy event whose inefficiency is made up for by the possibility of playing a card your investigator might never have otherwise had access to. It's kind of like a mini-Teamwork, but where Teamwork costs you a card, "You owe me one!" replaces both itself and the card you "borrowed". This ends up being action economy because, as an example, had your partner played their Emergency Cache (0) on its own, they'd be down a card and up three resources, but with "You owe me one!" they get that card back, and someone on the team still gets the three resources. It's almost like playing Emergency Cache (2), just with the resources going to a different player.

If this action economy was all it did, "You owe me one!" would be pretty boring. A fast zero-cost event that draws you and another player a card is certainly positive value (and this is comparable to the drawing cards effect of "You owe me one!"), but it is not a particularly powerful effect. Like Teamwork though, "You owe me one!" can allow for all sorts of crazy combos when you play things outside your cardpool. I'm actually not going to delve too deep into the possibilities here as they're as broad as your collection, and many have been mentioned in other reviews (including for Teamwork, so do look at those too if that's what you're after). What I am going to do is try to show briefly why "You owe me one!" is much better than Teamwork for a typical investigator deck, and also how to best take advantage of it and make it shine.

While Teamwork lets you exchange any number of Item and Ally assets and even trade resources, it has always been held back by its cost. "You owe me one!" only lets you swap a single card, but the meager action economy also offered makes a huge difference to the card actually generating an advantage for the team. Teamwork has to enable giving or receiving something really momentus to justify burning an action and a card, whereas you can play "You owe me one!" and be satisfied with even a mediocre trade. Additionally, "You owe me one!" allows you to play any asset or even an event from another player's hand, so can trade some things that Teamwork cannot, and I think this is generally much stronger than resource re-allocation. The cherry on the cake is that, bizarrely, you needn't even be at the same location! Luke Robinson, eat your heart out!

One big downside to "You owe me one!" being used to set something crazy up is that investigator hands are hidden zones, and the rules prohibit explicitly naming or revealing cards in your hand to other players. This is a fairly soft and fuzzy rule so I'm sure if you were determined enough you could work around it, but even sticking to the spirit of it very closely there are still some ways to know what is in another investigator's hand.

Firstly, Norman Withers. Vengeful Hound aside, Norman reveals every card he draws, and if you pay attention you can be sure what kinds of favors are available. Secondly, cards that add bonded cards to hand. If your partner just played their Occult Lexicon, you know they will be holding Blood-Rite. Do note though that, if you play a card like Occult Lexicon with "You owe me one!", your bounded cards don't include Blood Rite, so the book itself is useless to you (as are many other cards with bonds, such as Summoned Hound, which you cannot play with "You owe me one!" because you cannot pay the additional cost). Thirdly, cards that move other cards from non-hidden zones to the hand will also guarantee you targets; Calling in Favors, Sleight of Hand, Resourceful, and Scrounge for Supplies can all tell you a card in another investigator's hand without breaking or bending the communication rule. Searching hidden zones for certain cards can also give partial information; if your partner just played Prepared for the Worst and drew something, you know they have a weapon you could "borrow"!

There may also be some other edge cases where you can reliably infer a card in your partner's hand. One example I am aware of: if your partner draws a second card with Mr. "Rook", it must be a weakness (they may even announce so). If they don't then resolve a Revelation effect and just add the card to their hand, it may be their copy of The Tower or Dark Pact or Carcosa campaign spoiler, and perhaps you'll then want to play "You owe me one!" to do them a favor and play that weakness for them! "You owe me one!" does not allow you to play weakness cards, so my particular example here is moot. Thank you user SGPrometheus for the correction!

With all those options available, it is entirely possible to co-ordinate your deck with a teammate to make it likely that you know when there is something good to "borrow". Even if you don't do that though, it should be pretty rare for "You owe me one!" to miss entirely unless your partner's deck is all skills and unique allies. Just play it while your slots are open and they have a healthy handsize. You can however also build your own deck to take even greater advantage of "You owe me one!".

Rogues tend to generate lots of extra resources - particularly Preston Fairmont and Jenny Barnes - and you may be able to take and play a card that another investigator was struggling to pool the resources to play. Building your deck to be more generalised also makes you likely to be able to take advantage of whatever you find, rather than being a monster hunter stuck with a Magnifying Glass. Finally, consider the value of combining "You owe me one!" with Crystallizer of Dreams. I already discussed how "You owe me one!" is a kind of frictionless action economy, replacing itself and the card you play with it, which is absolutely perfect for the Crystallizer to grant you effectively "free" skill test icons for the future. Even better if you play another investigator's event that you can also attach to the Crystallizer!

Existing reviews for Stargazing understate its power. A comparison to Ward of Protection is in some ways fair, as both are low level Mystic events that mitigate the debilitating effects of the Mythos Phase, but they do so in very different ways, and are ultimately quite different beasts. User Bronze is right to point out that, where Ward protects your party from a particularly nasty treachery, such as Ancient Evils, Stargazing instead reduces the number of encounter cards you draw, replacing one of your next 11 encounter deck draws with The Stars are Right. Ward of Protection is a comparatively costly silver bullet to shut down a punishing treachery, and Stargazing is all-round Mythos Phase protection and fantastic value proposition. I think it is ultimately clear that Stargazing has a place in more decks than Ward.

User AquaDrehz rightly points out that the action economy for Stargazing is exceptionally favourable. You draw one fewer encounter card, which saves you whatever cost you would have spent dealing with that. This is a variable reward, but while some encounter cards can be shrugged off, others (e.g. Frozen in Fear) can eat several actions or outright threaten to defeat a vulnerable investigator (e.g. Rotting Remains). Many enemies you draw will do both! Preventing just a single encounter draw can be a substantial action advantage, but on top of that, The Stars are Right makes Stargazing effective action economy too. You trade an action and a card for an action, a card, and a resource. That might not sound amazing, but the ability to move actions from one turn to another is often useful, and The Stars are Right can grant any investigator the reward. Stargazing is a bit like an Easy Mark in that it replaces itself and grants a meager resource benefit, but it also lowers the threat of the encounter deck and re-gifts the action spent to play it. This is incredible value!

The catch is that the reward comes later, and is only guaranteed while there are enough encounter deck draws left before the end of the scenario. In a 2-player game, you are guaranteed to draw The Stars are Right by the 6th round following your playing Stargazing. That is a while to wait for your reward, and you will also have to beware of effects that shuffle the encounter deck, which could put The Stars are Right completely out of reach. These effects usually come from advancing agendas, and you can play around them in many of the scenarios where they come up. While Stargazing clearly has a larger window with more players and in longer scenarios, most scenarios have plenty of time to Stargaze, and you won't hate missing it in your opening hand as much as the Tarot assets. In short, Stargazing's conditions are not as restrictive as you might have thought. Solo play is really where that condition becomes truly cumbersome as 11 rounds is too long to wait.

While playing through Return to Path to Carcosa, I occasionally found myself playing Stargazing even when the team weren't totally guaranteed to draw The Stars are Right due to the encounter deck shuffling or the scenario ending before we could draw 11 more cards from it. The value you gain from drawing The Stars are Right is so great that it is sometimes even worth gambling on! It also just feels incredibly good to draw something actually positive and helpful from the encounter deck, which usually has you reaching gingerly across the table for whatever punishment the mythos has in store for you. Stargazing is going to be a staple of my Mystic decks for the foreseeable future.. which is kind of fun to say given that its Augury traited!