Koren (from the fun Paladin class deck) has a power on his Unflagging Champion role:
☐ At the start or end of your turn, if a bane is displayed next to the deck of another character at your location, you may display it next to your deck instead.
In the days of RotR and Skulls, there were some banes that got displayed by characters, notably various flavors of Haunts and those with the Curse trait. In Mummy's Mask (which came out after this Class Deck), such effects on cards were all but removed in favor of the Scourge table. In a post-Core world, this idea was mainly replaced by Scourge cards .
The power as written seems mostly useless, except for the small handful of cards that it applies to. Would it be possible to have this power changed to work against Scourges? That seems in the spirit of the original power, both in function and flavor.
Something like:
☐ At the start or end of your turn, if a local character has a bane displayed or is suffering a Scourge, you may display the bane or suffer the Scourge instead.
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Note that I've quoted this suggestion in the Core Set Version Character Sheets for Legacy Characters? project.
The amendment I would make to the suggestion would be to change the wording to:
□ At the start or end of your turn, if another local character has a bane displayed next to their deck or is suffering a scourge, you may display the bane next to your deck or suffer the scourge instead.
On other character sheets and the rulebook, "scourge" is not capitalized. Also, while not of significant meaning in the context of this power, the legacy wording "another character at your location" converts to "another local character" in Core.
□ At the start or end of your turn, if another local character has a bane displayed next to their deck or is suffering a scourge, you may display the bane next to your deck or suffer the scourge instead.
I don't actually believe that 'suffering the scourge instead' would explicitly remove the scourge from another player; in fact, I'm not sure it does anything at all. You only 'suffer' the scourge at the moment its applied, which is also the only time comparable post-Core effects take place.
Scourge: These cards have lasting negative effects. When a card tells you to suffer a scourge, if that scourge isn’t already displayed, draw it from the vault and display it, then choose a marker design that isn’t already in use and mark it. Then place a corresponding marker next to your character.
While so marked by a scourge, that scourge’s powers apply to you.
If you suffer a scourge that you already have a marker for, the scourge has no additional effect; do not add another marker.
If you encounter a scourge in a location, immediately suffer it; the encounter is over.
Some effects cause a scourge to mark a location. If you’re at a location when it is marked, or if you end your turn at a marked location, suffer the corresponding scourge.
Powers that remove scourges remove them only from characters, not locations, unless they specifically say otherwise. When a power removes a scourge, remove the marker from the character or the location as appropriate, and if no characters or locations currently suffer the scourge, you may return it to the box
☐ When a local character would suffer a scourge (☐ or damage), you may recharge a card or reveal a Shield armor to suffer it instead.
☐ When a local character would suffer a scourge, you may suffer it instead.
Whilst wordy, the only fix would be something like...
□ At the start or end of your turn, if another local character has a bane displayed next to their deck, you may display the bane next to your deck. Additionally, you may remove any number of their scourges and suffer those scourges instead.
I would also indicate, however, that displayable banes do occur in every set (except maybe Core, but certainly in Curse), so the power is fully functional without stretching it into de-scourge territory... which starts to arguably barge into the territory 'weakening' other powers implicitly - for example, by making it largely better than Core Seelah's quoted power by removing the cost, letting it occur twice during his turn, and removing the requirement to be at the right place at the right time.
As a result, I am personally overall against making any such change to Koren, ostensibly so he does not get a role power that outshines actual Core character role powers, and I am in general against any functional change to an older character power that would make it largely stronger than a post-Core character power (if it wasn't already).
I would like to fully support Yewstance's last two paragraphs.
I'm a little conflicted.
The intention of Koren's power _was_ to absorb the Haunt/whatever that was plaguing the other player. It does apply to Curses in MM, but that was a bit of futureproofing by the team.
On the other hand, super narrow powers that only apply to 1 adventure path (especially on a role) wasn't that far out of line with the design in the older APs (eg Seoni's Corruptor role, Harsk's Abyssal Walker role, Jirelle's Pirate Queen role, etc), so while I think this could be improved, I'm not sure it must be improved.
There's also the issue that you can't suffer scourges again once you've already got one marked on you, so we'd have to figure out how that edge case works (does the scourge get negated, or you just can't play the power?)