We played a game last night in which one of the players had the Elixir of Life. He entered into combat and lost, resulting in his stamina dropping to zero. Here is where our question came up.

When you voluntarily choose to take and injury or madness card to prevent losing half of your stuff secondary to unconsciousness/madness, can you choose to take the card, get its benefit (full health/sanity, no loss of items/cash/clues), then play the Elixir card so you don't actually have to take the injury or madness card?

To me, it seems that that card would be used to offset getting an injury or madness card secondary to an encounter or bad roll. It seems kind of gamey to me to be able to voluntarily take an injury/madness card to avoid losing your stuff, get all of its benefits, then say 'oh but I have the Elixir so I don't have to take the card'.

I see the Elixir card applicable to places where you are made to draw and injury or madness card, not where you choose to take it.

Thoughts?

Yeah, no probs with that. You can be smashed to zero stamina, choose to be fully recovered and then instead of drawing an Injury, you discard Elixir of Life. Full benefit, no detriment.

Otherwise, I think the Elixir would be too circumstantial to ever see much use.  It'd be different if Madness/Injury encounters were more common, but hanging on to an Elixir "just in case" seems about as practical as always having two toughness worth of monster trophies in anticipation of the day you get that ichor-embossed invitation to join the One of the Thousand Cult 

Luckily, the Cult accepts blood as payment.

I love joining the groups.  I am trying to make it to be a Sliver Lodge, Cult, and Sheldon Gang Deputy myself.

Tibs said:

All the more reason to have an Elixir of Life handy, I suppose.

Still, if I have to pay in blood, I prefer to use someone else's.