The Spellbook of Tarot: The Magician

[IAmBatman]

Looks solid. No clue what sort of text room we have to use for spells.

[MrNobody]

Very small amount of text. I think Flesh To Stone is our "let's not do that again" mark, and it's barely a 7 in my very unofficial system of counting. That rewording I just posted is almost a 6.

[Lord Pyre]

Looks good to me! I'll always lobby for clearer wording, as without that blue text I wouldn't know if it was before or after OM's, which could add an important tactical decision.

Also, maybe we could fill in a quick bio for these from here on out just so we can get the theme? Your explanation seems a bit of a stretch, but if those who know them are good with it I won't complain.

[MrNobody]

Threw a quick copy/paste job in the bio section. Before final editing I'll try to rewrite to make it a bit smaller, but I think the full context is useful here.

[Ronin]

Are all the Tarot spells gonna be high-end out-of-turn spells like this one? I don't see "Doom just gets drafted with a bunch of Tarot spells now" as a big concern if they're expensive and you're rate-limited to only be able to drop one a round.

[Lord Pyre]

Cool

I personally appreciate quick bios right away so I can get a feel for the character's (spell's) theme while we're designing!

[MrNobody]

Originally Posted by Ronin

Are all the Tarot spells gonna be high-end out-of-turn spells like this one? I don't see "Doom just gets drafted with a bunch of Tarot spells now" as a big concern if they're expensive and you're rate-limited to only be able to drop one a round.

Definitely thinking this’ll be one of the marquee effects, and probably one of the more expensive ones. Hoping we can get quite a few <20 ones, so you can actually draft a real deck, and not just like one or two cards.

I like the “only draft one unless” restriction not only for thematic reasons, but also because it encourages actually drafting the Tarot character. If Xanadu has to put stuff in a deck and Doom doesn’t, really don’t think there’d be much of a reason to draft Xanadu instead of Doom.

[Ronin]

To me, it'd be more intuitive to like, let her actually do a reading at the start of the round and pick three, breaking the usual limit. She gets randomness in exchange for being able to triple-cast them. Plus that implementation would be light-weight enough that you could throw her some other little trinkety advantage with Tarot spells pretty easily.

Current implementation just feels a little "We designed it so that it benefits X more than Y, but we'll solve it by just telling you that you can't do X". Which is fine, sometimes that's the best you can do, but I thought it made sense to question this now instead of after you've got three of these things wrapped.

[johnny139]

I do feel like the Tarot thing isn't QUITE there yet, and could use a bit of brainstorming/squishing/pulling/shuffling/whatever. Have been meaning to make a post to that effect but haven't had the bandwidth today - hope to soon.

[MrNobody]

Originally Posted by Ronin

To me, it'd be more intuitive to like, let her actually do a reading at the start of the round and pick three, breaking the usual limit. She gets randomness in exchange for being able to triple-cast them. Plus that implementation would be light-weight enough that you could throw her some other little trinkety advantage with Tarot spells pretty easily.

Current implementation just feels a little "We designed it so that it benefits X more than Y, but we'll solve it by just telling you that you can't do X". Which is fine, sometimes that's the best you can do, but I thought it made sense to question this now instead of after you've got three of these things wrapped.

My problem there is the speed you’ll burn through them; even if we design all 22 Major Arcana cards and the player drafts all of them, that’s not even 8 full rounds of effects. Realistically, we’ll probably get 3-5 for an initial release, and that’s not even 2 full rounds. For a design that’s meant to tie together a group of characters, that feels like a real bummer.

And yeah, totally appreciate the effort to talk this out now rather than later.

[Yodaking]

I actually think it makes more sense for 'the Magician' card to make MD figures into sidekicks for the round. Take a turn with anyone, then bond with an MD figure in your army. Then 'the Magician' is making their presence felt for the whole round by getting 3 free turns.

[Yodaking]

Just catching up here, and I like the idea of a 3 card reading at the start of the game quite a bit, but then all 3 card effects should last the whole game rather then be a one off. Only people with the Tarrot card power can draw three cards at once though, other MD figures only can play 1 at the start of the game. Also like the idea of just paying one price for the whole deck, which you shuffle up, then draw a card randomly. So anyone can draft the deck, but only the Readers can draw 3 of them. Since the powers vary quite a bit and it's a random draw, you may be really happy with your points investment, or you may be pretty disappointed.

Example of a 3 card draw below:

The Magician Card : Play this card at the start of the game before any Order Markers are placed. For the rest of this game, once per round, after revealing an Order Marker on the card you control, before taking that turn you may immediately take a turn with a figure with the Magical Defense special power. You may not take any additional turns with other figures you control.

The Death Card : Play this card at the start of the game before any Order Markers are placed. For the rest of the game, when an opponents figure is destroyed, no power on any card may return that figure into play.

The Fool Card : Play this card at the start of the game before any Order Markers are placed. For the rest of the game, once per round, when taking a turn with a figure with the Insane personality, you may immediately take one additional turn.

So the Magician card is pretty good since you had to have at least one MD figure in order to play the card. The other cards are more random in nature. If you opponent has Grundy of Dr. Fate II in play, the Death card is pretty great, if not it doesn't do anything. If you drafted an Insane figure into you army, the Fool card is pretty nice, but if not then it does do anything for you. So games you may draw 3 cards that are all useful and it's awesome, another game you may draft 3 cards that don't help you and you lost that points gamble. Make the whole deck cost something like 50 points to draft so it's a bit of a risk, but could also be a pretty nice reward.

*edit* Or you could have any MD figure draw three cards, then the Tarot Card power people can redraw the cards once if you don't like what was in the first draw. That means you'd need at least 6 Tarot cards to start off with though.