First off, how does one find either of Dignitary's effects complex? I'm reading the current text and there's just no misunderstanding. It's phrased very well.
This reminds me of my (and friends') early games with Secret Chamber and Torturer. These cards are part of what is supposed to be a beginners' set but newbies tend to agonize about which cards to put back and which ones to discard. Dignitary is no more complex than that, and while people resolve one half of the card they don't need to think about the other half of it.
I would argue that "trash all but 4 cards from your hand", while elegant in the context of the rules, is wonky and hard to parse. There's no better wording available without also discarding Dignitary, which I think would be too weak. But the average player reads that and either gets it wrong or asks, "Why doesn't it just say to trash a card from your hand?" "Trash down to 4 cards in your hand" was great, but then came Donald's unfortunate ruling that "down to" means do them one at a time, opening up the possibility of an inescapable infinite loop with a hand full of Fortresses. Goddamn Fortress.
Also, the card is 8 lines of text. That's a lot! It's intimidating. It's good that it's split into two parts of 4 lines each, but it's still a lot. The idea behind splitting it is to pair each half with another half that's less wordy.
Please don't smack something on there just for the reaction's sake. Your suggestion is not too close to anything but it's also not particularly interesting. And there's already Profiteer as a Gold gainer in your set. I know he does it under completely different circumstances but there's enough cards in your set that "care about treasures" already, anyway. It's not a very intriguing theme, in my opinion.
Well, that's fair. I wouldn't put a Reaction on there just for the sake of having a Reaction, exactly. It's just that I don't think the card stand on its own without some sort of under-line text. It could be an on-gain or something, but a Reaction seems better.
Whether split up Dignitary or not, have you considered phrasing the action like this:
+2 Cards. You may put up to 2 cards from your hand on top of your deck. +$1 for each card you put back.
?
This is both easier to comprehend and makes the action more flexible (which I'm not sure is what you want). IMO, this would suffice to be an Action card on it's own. What do you think?
I think that might be too strong for $4, but it looks pretty unappealing at $5. Both this version and my version are stronger than they look. That's why the Reaction is there: it gives you another reason to buy the card. I guess I could try [+2 Cards; +$2; Put 2 cards from your hand on top of your deck] for $4. Again, though, that looks like it could use a Reaction to spice it up. I could also try [+2 Cards; Put any number of cards from your hand on top of your deck; +$1 per card you put on your deck], though that seems like a $5 card and therefore starts to look very Vault-y. I dunno, maybe it could work at $4 after all. Seems very strong, though, unless your deck is full of junk.
Anyhow, thank you for your candor, co0kieL0rd. I'm not for-sure changing Dignitary. It's just the most complex card in the set currently and I'm trying to simplify where I can.