What the data actually says
Players expect Superstitious to interact with the dungeon’s spookier furniture: panic on cursed floors, penalties in darkness, some hidden aversion to omens. The datamined coefficients say otherwise: courage −0.10, and that is the complete combat-AI entry. There is no condition-specific behaviour anywhere in this trait’s combat-AI footprint. A Superstitious hero behaves identically in a cursed hall and a clean one, apart from the same small courage lean they carry everywhere else.
That makes it the mildest member of the fear family by a clear margin: Shaken sits at −0.15, Haunted at −0.16 with a caution rider, Cowardly at −0.25, Brittle at −0.26. The gap between what the name promises and what the numbers deliver is the whole reason this wiki datamines traits instead of paraphrasing tooltips, and Superstitious is one of the clearest cases of flavour text writing cheques the coefficients never cash.
In play: a small lean
A −0.10 courage cut surfaces rarely, because courage is the parameter the combat AI weighs heavily only when a delve is going wrong, and most delves don’t go wrong. Across a routine season, a Superstitious hero and a neutral one produce reports you could not tell apart. In the genuinely bad rounds (wounds stacked, a party-mate down, a rescue needed), the Superstitious hero opts to hang back slightly more often than they should. In a fight that is the entire effect, and at this magnitude it usually costs a beat of one hero’s output in a four-hero action economy. It rarely costs a fight. Even hunting for it in the delve report is unrewarding: the lean is small enough to hide inside the ordinary noise of round-by-round decisions, which is itself a fair summary of the trait.
Worth repeating for the specific case, because it changes real roster decisions: cursed floors. Managers bench Superstitious heroes whenever the conditions list shows a curse, on pure instinct. The data gives that instinct no support whatsoever. Curses are bad for everyone in exactly the usual ways; they are not extra bad for this hero. If the composition wants them, send them, and read the delve report afterwards with a clear conscience. Nothing in it will trace back to the trait.
Where it fits in a party
Almost every role tolerates Superstitious. At −0.10 it is the one fear trait that doesn’t really disqualify anyone from anything: even a front-liner can carry it if the rest of the kit earns the slot. For a dedicated anchor, the hero whose entire job is the bad moments, you would still prefer the courage-positive column, a Stoic or an Iron-Willed, but “prefer” is the operative word rather than “require”. That distinction separates Superstitious from every other trait in its family.
The genuine planning rule is about stacking. Fear traits compound badly in company: one hero leaning back in a crisis is survivable, two leaning together is how routs begin, and even the mild member of the family counts towards that total. Keep Superstitious away from Shaken, Haunted, Cowardly and Brittle within the same four. Beyond that, build the party as if the trait weren’t there: synergies, formations and conditions all treat the hero completely normally.
Recruiting: when to ignore it
Treat the trait as a rounding error with a useful side effect: it frightens other managers. Any discount the name generates on the transfer market is close to free money, because what you are actually buying is a −0.10 lean on a parameter most delves never seriously test. A Superstitious hero with better attributes than the clean alternative is simply the better hero, full stop. The recruitment guide framework (price a flaw by what it costs your delve plan, whatever its name) gives this one the lowest cost in its family: a soft preference against one role in a fight, plus the leader’s-seat caveats below.
Selling logic mirrors the buying logic. Never let the trait drive a sale, and never accept a lowball that prices it like Cowardly; if a bidder discounts for it aggressively, they have told you they don’t read coefficients, which is useful information for future negotiations. Sworn Oaths need no special handling either. Unlike the deeper fear traits there is no crisis-role restriction worth baking into term length, so sign whatever term the attributes deserve.
On ageing, the usual behaviour-trait rule applies: coefficients don’t decay or deepen with the years, so the twenty-season veteran carries the same small lean as the rookie who just walked out of the academy. At this magnitude, that permanence is a shrug rather than a sentence.
Outside the fight
The combat AI barely notices Superstitious, but the rest of the 2.1.8 code does.
- Sealed doors. At a dungeon fork, a Superstitious leader leans hard away from a sealed side door (−3) and toward the known path (+1). That leaves about a 6% chance to open a sealed door and about 33% to take a treasure room or named lair, fresh or hurt. A leader with no lean takes a side room 60% of the time when the party is fresh and 20% when it is hurt.
- The retreat order. You set when a party should turn back: after the first knock-down, at half, at most, or never. Superstitious is one of the fearful traits (with Cowardly, Shaken, Haunted and Brittle) that pull a leader’s order a step earlier; bold traits push it later, and the net sign decides. A Superstitious leader with nothing bolder calls retreat one step early. Steady leaders (Stoic, Cool-Headed, Methodical, Steady, Iron-Willed, Unbreakable, Stalwart) follow your order exactly.
- The Echoing Tomb. In this treasure-room event, a Superstitious, Cowardly or Shaken hero refuses to break the seal unless an Iron-Willed, Brave, Professional, Stalwart or Methodical hero is there to do it. The party leaves the tomb shut: 6 stress off everyone, and no gold. With a composed hero the tomb pays full gold and an item; with neither, the party forces it for less gold and 8 stress.
- Earned in the dark. After a delve, a wounded hero has a 10% chance (4% for an unwounded hero who lost a comrade) to come home Shaken or Superstitious, up to four earned traits per hero. Earning Superstitious removes Hopeful or Iron-Willed if the hero had it.
- Jobs. Bounty contracts list Superstitious among their disliked traits, taking 6% off the hero’s suitability: every omen on the road gets a hearing.
- Council. When a retiring hero joins the Council, Superstitious adds 3 toward the scryer’s post.
- Festivals. −2 in the valour discipline.
- Flavour. On pair duty the hero speaks with the “luck” voice shared with Lucky, Gambler and Streaky.
Superstitious can never appear with Iron-Willed or Hopeful.
So the cursed-floor instinct is wrong, but a different caution is right: do not hand a Superstitious hero the leader’s seat if you want the party to explore or to hold on when it gets hurt.
Version history
Since v1.9.6 the coefficient has not moved through v2.1.8, and no combat rider has ever been attached. The hooks outside the fight are read from the 2.1.8 code; earlier versions of this page missed them. Small, stable, and safe to build past in a fight; the leader’s seat is the one place to remember it.