Could be at uncommon. Maybe its an uncommon effect but don't really just want to redo Read the Bones or something like that.

I reckon the discovery threshold could be three and give this target player, compared to Night's Whisper and Sign in Blood.

This is definitely 'meh' from design perspective.

It kind of is meh, in that without meeting the Discovery requirement, it's an overcosted Sign in Blood.

For simplification this could affect only the controller rather than target - the different modes are plenty complexity by themselves.

Is it pretty much agreed that 3 seems to often be the magic number for Discovery?

Still, I'm not sure about this card or cards like this. Without Discovery, it's an overcosted Sign In Blood at a higher rarity. With Discovery, it gives you a slightly better effect that may as well just be what you get for the mana cost without Discovery. That's feel-bad or underwhelming to me. I'd rather just put Sign In Blood in my deck, or have a card like "Target player draws 3 cards and loses 3 life." for .

Cards like the original Solar Ritual are somewhat similarly problematic to me. Without Discovery, it's useless. With Discovery, it's close to useless with Discovery 2 or less, redundant with Pyretic Ritual with Discovery 3, and then with Discovery 4 or greater it finally does something extra or unique, potentially being OP for a common in the late game (Say, Discovery 7, then it's for ). The card wildly swings from useless to OP.

This is why I expressed hesitancy or misgivings about Discovery, at least some of the designs. I'm not sure if we've truly figured out how to best use it yet, or it's easy to go astray with on some designs.

At the moment, it seems to mainly serve as an X variable on cards to provide a ramped up version of an effect when you have a high Discovery, like on Spontaneous Evolution, or as a "win more" thing or "do a more powerful version of the same thing" on cards at a Threshold of Discovery 3, like on Rip to Shreds and this card. In both cases it functions as a contingency, either as a variable or a threshold you have to meet to truly make things happen. Some of such designs might be okay, but some of them also struggle with balance issues or otherwise can feel underwhelming.

Other than that, we do have cards that use Discovery as a psuedo-landfall, like Vengeance of the Sun and Planar Conciousness, and unlike the other usages of Discovery, that does have the benefit that you can gain perks as your discovery increases, rather than perks being contingent on your discovery being high. They allow you to immediately benefit from Discovery, while many of the other cards turn Discovery into something you wait to benefit from. On the other hand, it was decided we shouldn't over-use the psuedo-landfall on cards, because of how close it is to landfall.

I have to wonder if there is some other more interesting or rewarding way to be using it.

I don't know about a "magic number".

I'm currently removing this kind of discovery from common.

I don't think it will stay at the other rarities, but common is where I'm currently putting my focus.

When I think about it, I agree that, if anything, the cards I'm most wary about are exactly instants and sorceries like this that treat discovery 3 or more as a contingency threshold.

I liked the direction of what you're talking about with Stalking Horror more than that. Keeps Discovery as a flexible number, but allows you to immediately benefit from it.

A threshold might still have some other uses, like to trigger something on a permanent though.