Jim Culver is an investigator whose power level varies wildly depending on which difficulty settings you play with, and that's a big reason why Jim tends to vary so much in tier lists.

For most play groups on Easy or Standard difficulty, Jim is a Mystic investigator with a mediocre stat line and strong synergy with card interactions that involve skulls. Outside of Jim's 4 Will, none of his stats are particularly noteworthy, his signature Jim's Trumpet is a mediocre source of sanity healing, and Jim's primary appeal will probably be 5 level 0 cards outside his class. The ability to treat Skulls as "0"s isn't that attractive when the worst modifiers in the token bag usually cap at "-3" or "-4".

For play groups that play frequently at Hard/Expert difficulty, Jim becomes a functional god of the token bag. Skull tokens are relatively mild in most Standard/Easy Scenarios, but Skulls scale upwards at high difficulties until they're functionally auto-fail tokens, so Jim becomes one of the few investigators who can consistently pass skill test by fishing "0" tokens or skulls out of the bag (with cards like Dark Prophecy, Nksoi Mabati, or Grotesque Statue. When the token bag is full of modifiers like -5 or -8 and you have to overcommit by 2-3 cards to guarantee a success, Jim becomes a godsend. Jim doesn't need a great stat line or level 1-2 cards from other classes if he can near-guarantee drawing a "0" modifier on important skill tests.

You can also defeat an ally on demand with Forbidden Knowledge, slowly making back some/all of the play cost to put down again to reactivate their come into play effect, recharge uses, or clean up doom. (Art Student, Laboratory Assistant, Professor William Webb (3), Arcane Initiate, etc.) They just never stop giving!

Did you know that you can use bandages as a filter to reduce the harmful effects of smoking?

It's a good combo ... Effectively, you are paying 3 resources and two actions to heal three horror, which isn't terrible.

But it really shines with Bob, where you are paying zero actions and one resource (if you have Shrewd Dealings in play). Plus you can probably reuse them with Scavenging or even pass them to a friend in need.

Now you might be thinking that Bob has a lot of sanity, and that's true, but if you start building up trauma as a campaign progresses, swap these two in with Adaptable.

Maybe I'm missing something but this is pretty terrible card. Just take unexpected courage which always gives you +2 so you can at least succeed instead of failing. And if you happen to pass, you get +2 anyways.

The only benefit of daring maneuver is like Lucky!, you can play it after the fact to get guaranteed value. Unexpected courage gets wasted if you draw the auto fail token or you fail because your skill even with unexpected courage was just too low (should be somewhat rare).

Its been years since first aid came out, and I was thinking of giving it another look now we have shiny new core set and examine the problems with it and see how things may have changed, a lot of people agree on a few key points.

Cost: Guardians for many years were the poor class, they had very little economy and the stuff they had wasn't completely reliable, but now we have stand together level 0 and even clean them out as source of cheap fast injections of cash, so the 2 price is less relevant today.

Limited Use cases: this seems to still be a big mark against it and one that doesn't seem like it will ever be able to be worked around, you can only heal investigators, only at your location. the fact that it is completely slotless is a huge upside but not enough of one to overcome such a minor use. (that a lot of other healing cards don't share)

Action Sink: the big bug bear of the card is that 3 actions for 3 points of healing is rather slow, even if you get first aid into play fast and free you still only max out at spending a turn to get a sizeable chunk of damage/horror off people, hardly worth the two extra actions from not using a healing event to gain that extra 1 point of healing. (again in the best possible case)

Fair to say first aid has only really improved one of its drawbacks (or to say it's less relevant today), and in that time we have had a huge tidal wave of healing effects that do incredibly well in the two area's it can never overcome. it is however the best possible counter for the edge weaknesses (it can heal both types, over any number of turns and from up to three people), but that only really matters if more than one player has one, otherwise you'll be much better of just taking a healing card that specializes in the type they need healing for.

The sad proclamation is that first aid remains very useful to the game in its true position, being a floor no healing card will ever dip below, and still may see some minor play due to edge weaknesses and down the rabbit hole.