@spineflu, hhelibebcnofnena:
These are both great wording choices for Lute and are certainly safer than what I'm trying to do. Which is have a starting card that starts at $0 and gets much better if you hold onto it. I just worry that if Lute gives $1 initially and scales later, holding onto it is a no-brainer.
I think Lute can work as-is, but it probably needs a cheap ($2-$3) cantrip as a counterpart to make it viable. Musician is anything but that. Any suggestions for a Musician change? Even a complete overhaul would be fun to discuss!
well
I'm thinking mainly on the ruins slowdown here
but you could have Musician look at the top two cards of the ruins pile, trash one and gain the other. Cuts into the number of cards in the ruins pile, empties it faster, makes sure you're getting the "good" ruins.
An alternate suggestion would be, on play, to discard any number of Ruins or Curses and draw a card (or two cards?) per, kind of a Shepherd for garbage. Thematically you can justify that as taking inspiration from tragedy, i guess.
As far as mitigating the opening, you could have musician, if it's the first card you buy on a turn, give +1 Buys which allows you to keep a $1/$5 opening but still get 2 new cards by turn 3.