Like how cards are pooled until rolled through, then reshuffled, I suggest we do the same with dice rolls. That is, in batches of 6 consecutive rolls for each characters, each face turn up exactly once. The players are informed of the remaining possible faces in the batches.
I think I've heard tell of games like this. The strategy comes in that you have to plan for the "ups" and "downs" as the numbers play out in front of you. It's certainly interesting, but is it worthwhile to include in Card Hunter? It sounds like one more thing to remember as you plan your strategy--or, rather, 36 more things to remember at minimum, given 6 characters in multiplayer or more in single-player.
That's why I also suggested to display the remaining rolls of the current batch. And to be clear just in case, the upcoming rolls of the batches should not be disclosed unless it's the last one. Even then, only people with brilliant deduction logic would be able to figure out. For example, if my batch is 642135 Display: 1 2 3 4 5 6 1st roll, got 6. Display change to 1 2 3 4 5 2nd roll, got 4. Display change to 1 2 3 5 and so on...
It's pretty basic. if it's a 4+, you've got a 3/6 chance = 50%. If it fails, it's 3/5 = 60%. If that fails, it's 3/4. If that fails, it's 3/3. It's not rocket science. But it's also overly complicated, and I don't think it adds anything. It makes older abilities better than weaker ones. It would interact oddly with cards that reduce dice rolls. It would be complicated with armor. And it increases odds of proccing. For example, a parry has a 1/6 chance of failing. The second hit also has a 1/6 chance of failing. In your system, this would never happen. You're improving the card. You'd also devalue newer cards, since a block that failed would be better than an identical card of the same type. It adds unneeded complexity.
Looks like you didnt figure out something else. Elaborate Roll dice, deduct X from it, apply the result or 1 whichever the higher. How odd. Elaborate. The system I'm proposing is per character, not per card. Building luck into a game of skill by itself is already unneeded complexity.
I don't think the added complexity of having a dice system like that would be worth the benefits - mostly because I'm not really convinced that there are benefits. In some sense you could say that a benefits is that players wouldn't get an unlucky streak of rolls in a row, and thus the game would be less luck based or something like that. But on the other hand, there would be a different kind of luck. There are many situations where a dice roll is make but which isn't important, and so under the suggested system there would be a new kind of luck involved where players could waste their good numbers of rolls which aren't important. That kind of bad luck would probably be more demoralizing than anything that can happen currently in the game, because it would be essentially be telling the player that their next (potentially critical) block and armour rolls are definitely going to fail. Also, the new system could lead to somewhat weird decision-making, for example if a player knew that their next roll was definitely going to be 6 (because it's the only number they had left), then they may choose to discard their Reliable Armour and keep Unreliable Block - or something like that. Similarly, if they knew that their best rolls have been used up, they might get rid of their Reflexive Teleport. The value of cards on any given turn would depend very heavily on which numbers were available to come up on the next dice rolls, and so it would lead to a lot of unintuitive and memory intensive techniques which I think would distract players from the core gameplay. You say that 'only people with brilliant deduction logic would be able [exploit such a system]', but I don't think that's really true. I think most players would very quickly get a rough sense of what they need to do to exploit the system and it would become a critical part of multiplayer games. I think it the new tactics and new styles of thinking would actually be pretty interesting, but I don't think they're suitable for Card Hunter, because I think having player constantly focused on tracking and manipulating their dice rolls would distract people from the fun parts of the game that they are currently enjoying. The game wouldn't be so much about what the cards can do but about which cards need dice rolls, and what dices rolls are going to come up next.
I totally understand what you want and where you are coming from. But I agree with all the other comments. This increases code and gameplay complexity without any benefits.
This promote the exact strategy currently in use: Use weak attacks to test the defense. Isnt it kind of, you know, tactical? You mean the core game play that depends heavily on the cards that might or might not show up in the turn to begin with? What's the distinction now? It's all random stuff to begin with. Why do everyone jump on my deadpan remark? It's not like every other players are this bad. I disagree. Games are series of interesting choices. The more choices, the better. And if you're talking about "core fun", there's already a meta to manipulate cards drawn and it's cherished as a part of the game. There're also bunches of cards that influence the dice roll directly (bad luck, harnesses, spark traits) and this is well beyond what's suggested here, which's purely dice gauging. The other thing that's directly comparable with what I'm suggesting is card reading and it's in the game too.
What I'm trying to say is that a system like you are suggesting would become a critically important part of all tactical decisions in the game, and it would take a great amount of thought and concentration for players to keep on top of it; and I think that would undermine the focus on cards, deck building, positioning, and so on. It would probably still be a fun and tactically deep game, but and it may still be a very fun game - but it would be a significant shift in emphasis. It's not the same. Currently players use weak attacks to test defense, but in your system players often wouldn't need to do that. If the roll distribution still had all its numbers, then players would use weak attacks to test defense - but when there are a bunch of numbers already used up and only a few left available for the next roll, players wouldn't need to test the defenses of the enemy - they'll know in advance whether the defences will trigger. They might know, for example, that their Obliterating Bludgeon will bypass the Parry. And if they want, they can use a Spark or something to trigger an armour dice roll to manipulate the possible rolls for their more important attacks. It would become critical to keep track of not only which numbers can currently come up, but also it would be critical to know which cards can trigger a roll. Suppose for example that you have Altruism, which discards itself when you roll a four - and gives a bonus card with some of the high rolls etc. With your suggested system, it may often be beneficial for players to hit themselves with their own attacks just to trigger their armour so that they can maximise the chance of getting an extra draw from Altruism, and avoid the discard trigger. Again, that may be tactically interesting, but it would unintuitive and out of character for the game. I do know of other games that use a system like you are describing, such as Warcraft III and dota 2. But those are real-time games with a lot of other stuff going on. It isn't really feasible for players to concentrate on gaming the pseudo random system. Whereas in Card Hunter, gauging probabilities is already a key part of the gameplay, and there is plenty of time to think because it's a turn-based game. With a pseudo random distribution like you are describing, the activation probabilities would no longer reflect how likely a card effect is to trigger, because player would be constantly manipulating the odds by deliberately triggering rolls.
We agree to disagree then. I think it's more fun manipulating the dice, because it lessen the luck factor. If I want to bet my life on the dice, I'd have played ludo or something.
And thus this may not be the right game for you. No big deal, lots of games aren't right for lots of people.
