Daedalus wrote:That's a cool idea. I agree with torilen a shuffle should be required.
I made the Shuffle clause optional on my first writing with the idea that the Dowsing Rod user would be able to decide whether the rest of the cards on top of the Treasure deck were mostly "good" or "bad", and choose accordingly. However, I have just remembered that all of the "bad" cards such as Wandering Monsters explicitly say to shuffle them back in, so I'll have to change the text as per your and torilen's suggestions.
As a one-use-only card, I don't view this type of effect as being terribly powerful, although that depends on the power level of the Treasure deck being drawn from. The more "high-value" Treasures are in the deck (such as Potions of Healing or particularly large sums of Gold), the higher the scale goes. Nonetheless, I would value this card as slightly less powerful than just drawing the best Treasure card outright.
Among my homebrew HQ creations I do have a few cards which permit multiple-use Treasure scrying. These are generally restricted to looking at only one or two cards, though. For example, a Wizard with the Alchemy spell group gets the re-usable spell "Dowsing", which permits a Treasure Card to be drawn, but can only be kept if it has a Gold value, thus ignoring Hazards, but also Potions or other useful items. The most powerful Treasure-searching Artifact I have is the Trueheart Compass, which is one of the two "level-up items" afforded to the Woodsman Hero and has the effect "Once per Quest, when Searching for Treasure, look at the top 5 cards of the Treasure deck and take up to 3 of them.", which is indeed very powerful and thus is not intended to be found until the very late-game.
Daedalus wrote:This card makes the Treasure deck a bit safer. For that kind of advantage, I'd make this card an expendable Artifact Card. Something like Elven Boots that wear out on a bad die roll. Maybe roll a Combat Die for every Treasure Card drawn. If a white shield is rolled, draw again. If a skull is rolled, stop searching. Keep one card. If a black shield is rolled, discard. Hmm, yours is simpler.
Perhaps the one-use version could be re-named to "Treasure Map" or similar, and a new low-level Artifact be invented for the Dowsing Rods. I'd probably word it as
When you Search for Treasure, you may look at the top two cards of the Treasure deck and choose one of them, then roll a Combat Die. If a black shield is rolled, the rods wear out and must be discarded.
I'll edit later with updated images.