Ascetic is also useful for inviting new players to join mid-campaign, like to replace someone that is suddenly busy and will not available to play for short or long period of time. Instead of fearing miserable time dropping into high stats enemy and high shroud locations and outright denying the invitation, they now immediately able to have fun with the XPs as if they have been with the team since the start. If a card allow more game time for more players I'd say it's a great card.
It is also fun for that invited player to create a deck within 10 XP (or 13 with In the Thick of It) and try out any combos they've been itching to test, but don't want to fully commit a full campaign run and climb from 0 XP then get stuck with that idea for too long.
Here's an another idea : If campaign kills a player, you can be strategic about the replacing investigator to come in with exactly what the team needs with this 10 XP, because you got to learn real interactions of your team members for about half a campaign now, while at the start of campaign, you all might have built your decks separately in vacuum. For example :
- Start with heals like 2x Earthly Serenity (4) because your team suffered too much trauma.
- Use 2x Stand Together (3) or 2x Ever Vigilant (4) that let non-Ascetic player draw/play their more valuable cards.
- Build a deck with cards that can use other player's card like "You owe me one!", Flare, A Chance Encounter (2), Eidetic Memory, or Copycat and use their XPs to your advantage.
- Get on-success XP skill cards like Vicious Blow (2), Deduction (2) then provide support via committing to other players with high stats to get the bonus, or simply premium skill cards like Seal of the Elder Sign.
- Provide testless support like Guidance (1), Counterspell, Ward of Protection (2), Working a Hunch (2), token sealing, The Scarlet Keys Survivor Dilemma cards, XP generation such as Keep Faith (2).
