Elder Lore is a specialized skill, which means it's actually a group of 5 separate skills. (Artifacts, Creatures, Great Old Ones, Locations, and Tomes)
- Base Attribute is intelligence.
- You may substitute your elder lore skill for spellcasting and horror checks if you choose.
- You may not take it at creation. (Except, maybe, if you're in a cult.)
- You may not spend xp on Elder Lore.
- You may not take Well-Educated for Elder Lore.
- You get Eldrich Experience for adventuring exposure (1 optional point), reading tomes (based on their level), and going insane (50% chance of 1). This MUST be spent on Elder Lore (you may wait to spend it on the most expensive skill, but you must spend it when you have enough).
- For the record, it takes 30 xp to get this skill at level 5. or 150 to get all 5 at level 5.
The issue comes from the sanity cost. In Chthulu, there's a Mythos skill (as a percentage), and your max sanity is 100 - mythos skill. This is bad, but not crippling as getting your mythos skill to even 30 is beyond most campaigns.
In Leagues, you lose a permanent point of sanity for every skill level you have, and for every specialization you have. This is fine, except...
These aren't one skill. And, that same 30 xp could get you 2 of the skills at level 3 and one at level 2... for a total of 8 permanent sanity loss. That's a bit much. Even in base Cthulhu you really can't drop your max sanity to 0 as it's next to impossible to raise skills above 90... (you have to use the skill, then roll over it at the end of the adventure, and when it's that high, it only goes up by 1...)
So, poking at some ways to mitigate this. Not eliminate, I mean, getting the skill at 5 with a specialization drops even someone with an above average wisdom and charisma to a max sanity of 1 or 2... and the skill doesn't max.
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*: Elder Lore is not sufficient to gain access to the dog park. The City Council would like to remind everyone that dogs are not allowed in the Dog Park. People are not allowed in the Dog Park.