Touch of Death should be unblockable (atop of penetrating) = instant death for infinite drawn deck

It'd be a good deterrence against infinite draw decks.

Touch of Death, if it successfully bypasses blocks, can be an immediate death sentence for character who's stacked with infinite drawn cards. Touch of Death already penetrates armors. It should also be unblockable.

In addition, its damages should also follow geometric progression (instead of 2 damages per card):

1 card = 1 dmg
2 cards = 1 + 2 = 3 dmg
3 cards = 1 + 2 + 3 = 6 dmg
4 cards = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 dmg
5 cards = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 15 dmg

15 dmg for 5 cards are punishing but still reasonable. The current Touch of Death causes only 10 dmg for 5 cards.

If an opponent has more than 5 cards, more likely than not he is using infinite draw deck, (the only possible exception is he has multiple Officer's Harnesses.) The penalty for having more than 5 cards start to become severe:

6 cards = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 = 21 dmg
7 cards = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 = 28 dmg
8 cards = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 36 dmg

So, 8 cards = automatic death sentence for even a full-health dwarf. The current Touch of Death causes only 16 dmg for 8 cards.

 

Actually almost all draw decks that I have played with will buff their character who come to wipe your team with Impenetrable Nimbus, so this is not quite a solution in my opinion.

 

Which means there should be divine weapons/items have Purges and Touches of Death on them.

 

And the luck to draw both Purge and Touch Of Death in the first 2 rounds of a game...
I would prefer the already announced nerf...

 

If my priest has a weapon that has two Touches of Death and two Purges, plus an item that has one or two purge, the odd of drawing them is decent.

 

You can already chain War Cry/Quick Run with Touch Of Death. Imo, it does not need a buff. And from the wiki's extreme builds, a party can have a max of 30 Impenetrable Nimbuses, its here to stay. Learning how to cycle attachments is a far better strategy.

 

I wouldn't mind seeing something like this. Of all the cards, I rarely hear anyone mention this one. I recall bringing it up as a draw spam counter and mostly everyone just giggled at me. Now that draw spam is getting addressed anyway, that still doesn't make Touch feel any more exciting to me. If anything, it just removes one place where it might have been interesting to use it. Devastating blow too, for that matter. Then again, I don't really go bragging about strong hacks, and I use them all the time, so maybe Touch is just already nicely centered as it now sits and simply feels unremarkable as a result.
One thing for certain though, is that with this proposed change it will be entirely possible to create a build that 2-hits the dragon at the end of the game, and quite easily at that. This card would become a very accessible boss-killer, and also wreck any minions of a group that are large enough to contain many cards. I'm fairly confident that some other way of changing the Touch (besides boosting the damage) would be more appropriate, if we wanted it to become more powerful/useful.

 

erm, I think ToD is still as exciting. What hasn't been commonly brought up/used is using draw as an offensive tactic in combo with control (Halt/Stun/Encumber etc). Flooding an opponent with cards and Cantrip + ToD was a valid tactic during beta. Shrugs...

 

5 cards in hand is quite normal at the start of a round, and no one want an elf to slip right under his nose and just dash out 15 damage (sometimes I do that and my opponent was not very happy although it's only 8 or 10 damage).

 

There are already weapons that has 10+ dmg per attack. So it's not anything that's out-of-ordinary.

 

It is very common to have a character with 5 (2 kept + 2 drawn + racial move) or 6 cards (Officer's Harness). The damage you are suggesting is far too high.

 

Except for the fact that they don't have Penetrating or being a Magic attack. Both those type or cards have maximum damage of 9 (without bonus, of course).

 

The goal is to make it so that it's somewhat useful against something that isn't exclusively draw spam, though. 3 cards is usually the average for a target of Touch of Death, and that's very low for a Melee range attack.

However I also feel that if the damage potential was increased, it couldn't be paired with other powerful cards like Impenetrable Nimbus (see: Duality Mace).

 

They also do not have the limitation that Touch of Death has. Touch of Death is only useful during the beginning of every round, and in a very limited situation: the character that has the Touch of Death must be already standing right next to an enemy character to use the spell to its maximum damage. After that, it is mostly useless when characters have used most of their cards. As it is now, Touch of Death is fairly useless and harmless in 99% of the situation.

Even if its damages are increased based on the geometric progression, the damages are only useful for characters who have more than 4 cards: and we all know there is only one particularly situation for any character to has 5 or more cards all the time. It is time to put the fear of Touch of Death in players who has that kind of character.

For people who do not stack infinite cards on a character, the Touch of Death's geometric damages will not that much of a big difference or a big deal.

 

Duality Mace is a card with a fairly high token cost. It currently has a bunch of weak cards: Touch of Death and chop are mostly useless. The only good things are the dual Impenetrable Nimbuses and Lifesaving Block.

Even with an upgraded Touch of Death, the spells will still be fairly harmless and useless in most situations. It will be useful in only three specific situations: (a) the character with the Touch of Death have somehow maneuvered right next to an enemy at the beginning of the round and can move/attack first, (b) the character with the Touch of Death is right next to an enemy with multiple Officer's Harnesses, and, (c) most importantly, the enemy is using an infinite drawn deck.

Situations (a) and (b) are rare. The player using an infinite deck in situation (c) is abusive and should be penalized, so I do not see a qualm with implementing an upgraded Touch of Death to cause that player some grief.