What counts as Bash? Electrical? Etc?

Hey amigos,

There are lots of cards (usually traits) that increases the damage of other cards. You know, like how Bruiser or Bash increase "Bash" damage, or Spark Induction or Spark Generator increase "Electrical" damage, or how Slicer and Strong Chop increase "Chop" damage, etc.

What I'm wondering is if there is a guide somewhere as to what cards do/do not count for these categories.

For instance, through trial and error I have discovered that "Bash" is not synonymous with the Melee Crushing damage type. A lot of cards like Simple Strike, Bludgeon, and Tr. Bludgeon do NOT seem to count as "Bash," while things like Lunging Bash, Powerful Bash, Simple Bash, and, of course, Bash, DO count as "Bash" damage. So for that one I believe that "Bash" damage refers to the actual title of the card and not really the type of damage it does.

By contrast, that counts as "Electrical" damage doesn't seem to just go off of the card's title. It seems like the Zaps (Big Zap, Little Zap, Penetrating Zap) all count as "Electrical" damage, and so, also do the Sparks and Bolts. A lot of these cards have the damage type Magic-Electrical, so I thought maybe that was the common thread, but a lot of them also have the damage type Magic-Arcane. So go figure.

What have you guys found that does/doesn't work? Can we get a chart for this info somewhere?

 

You are mistaken about the Electrical/Arcane ones. You have Spark Inductor or Spark Generator, right? Yeah, those cards have effects on BOTH Arcane AND Electrical cards, so it's easy to get confused. Sparks are the only Electrical cards in the game (all the others you listed are Arcane).

The rest is as straightforward as you say. It's a "Bash" if the card says "Bash," and the only place it ever says "Bash" is in the title. It's "Electrical" if the card says "Electrical," and the only place it ever says "Electrical" is in the keywords.

 

Thanks, Sir Knight, I see what you mean. My Spark Inductor is triggering on everything that is Arcane to make it harder to block, and triggering on Electrical to make it do more damage. That will help me tweak that deck. I suppose that's the trickiest one, if everything else just goes by keywords. Hope this info helps other newbs!

 

This inconsistency is annoying and difficult to navigate when trying to build around certain traits. I would love for 'types of damage' to be more uniform. I have enjoyed this game a lot, but the inconsistencies (coupled with the gigantic issue of inventory (deck) management) add up to me getting to level 10 and not feeling any real drive to continue playing. Trying to delve into all of the cards/inventory combinations is very frustrating... it's just so unwieldy and things like what this OP describes are especially annoying! It's hard to figure out what cards are affected by what traits. It should not be hard or something that requires trial and error..

I must remind myself that it is beta and I do know that the devs are working on many of these issues

 

The inventory issue in this case is nicely fixed with the text filter - there's a little white box next to the sorting buttons. If you type "bash" or "electrical" In there, it will filter out (almost) all the cards you're not interested in.

 

The text filter does help, and I know what's going on now. But I think the devs should maybe consider some tweaks to just make it more intuitive to other players that are starting the game.

I think it would make the most sense for all of these boost cards to be consistent, like by having them all buff one particular damage type. I think Bash and Bruiser should buff all "melee crushing" damage, so that it includes things like Weak Strike, Bludgeon, Simple Strike, or Tr. Bludgeon. That would make more sense to me (personally).
By the same token, cards like Strong Chop and Slicer wouldn't just trigger off of cards named "X Chop," they would trigger off of all melee slashing damage, so they would include things like Strong Hack, Shred Strike, Polearm Slash, Dancing Cut, Lunging Hack, and Reaching Swing.

That's just what seems most intuitive to me. Though it might be easier to just go the other way and make Spark Inductor and Spark Generator just buff everything with "Spark" in the title and ignore whether or not its damage type was Electrical or Arcane. I'm cool either way, my main requests are 1.That these types of effects be consistent, and 2.That this sort of thing is explained for newbs in whatever resource becomes the main guide.

 

So it could be that I'm permanently scarred from playing Magic the Gathering, but I think that the complexity is intentional and purposeful.

The different types of attacks have different characteristics. Crushing damage encompass all the knock-backs, the huge damage bludgeons, and some really significant status effects (Anvil Strike), but there's no piercing, there's very little step, and there's no bypassing blocks. The inclusion of cards like Bruiser and Strong Bash sets up conflicting pressures - on the one hand you want all bashes to get the most out of the synergy, and on the other hand that leaves you very limited in what your deck can handle well, because bashes don't have good range, don't have a good way around armor or blocks, and (usually) have the opposite of good positioning (for a warrior).

That sort of tension makes deck building interesting and challenging, precisely because there isn't a right answer. Maybe you go with 100% bash weapons, spend a major token on your martial skill, and build the rest of your party around the weaknesses that creates. Maybe you ignore the martial skill buffs until the end, and just take a utility martial skill, or the one that best fits the attacks you've taken, even if that's only a couple. If it was just "more damage", or even if it was easy to include only cards that get buffed without handicapping yourself, it would be a lot less interesting to build the deck.

 

I personally don't see anything mutually exclusive in what both of you are saying. You can satisfy Contextual easily without reducing the deckbuilding tensions by simply making keywords in the text that say "Bash" or "Chop", so that you don't have some cards referencing rules-text only and other cards that have identical formatting referencing title-text only. It would be a trivial thing to change; just basically adding a keyword "Chop" to all cards that have "Chop" in the title, and it would make the system a lot more intuitive. It would also free up the devs to be more creative with their card naming in the future, as with "Chop" as a keyword, you could easily have the card "Hackneyed Hack" have the "Chop" keyword, and so on.

I think it's a great idea, myself.

 

I strongly second the notion that the text needs clearing up so there's never any doubt whether an attack card is boosted by a trait or not. I totally didn't know Spark traits triggered on Arcane attacks, and I'm not sure what boosts the melee Slicer cards, or whether "Melee pierce" attacks have "Penetrating" (sounds like it).

Good news is, it should be pretty simple to make clear to us dumbnuts

 

If you want to suggest they change things to keywords only, go for it. There are plenty of games that refer to cards by title, though, so it's not unfamiliar to the card game world in general. And then it gets funny if you insist that rules text, likewise, be represented in the keywords. See:

For those last two examples, the rule continues to apply directly. Slicer says "Chop"; Impaler says "Penetrating" (also "Melee"). It's a "Chop" if the card says "Chop," and the only place it ever says "Chop" is in the title (e.g., Chop). It's "Penetrating" if the card says "Penetrating," and the only place it ever says "Penetrating" . . . is in the rules text. "Melee Piercing" does not include the word "Penetrating," so you know it doesn't count by itself.

If you need examples of these, just use the text sort in your inventory. Type "Penetrating" and you'll see what I mean.

 

I know what you mean -- but that doesn't mean that it isn't confusing to have cards use the exact same rules text templating and have half of them be referring to a keyword in the rules text section and half of them referring to a word in the title of the card. As an avid Magic player who has seen all of the struggles they've gone through with rules text templating, this kind of thing just sticks in my craw.

It would also be perfectly OK with me if they changed the templating for those cards that strictly referred to the rules text (not the title) to say "adds X damage to any card with the Y trait". That would clear it up just fine as well; but as it is with the exact same wording ("Add X to any Y card you play") being used to refer to two completely different things, it's a mental hiccup, especially for new players.

 

I'm all for standardizing this sort of thing, and I don't think it should be done by words in the cards title. That will just lead to all sorts of confusion and unnecassary rules text down the line. Has anybody here heard of Yu Gi Oh? Careless planning and using a part of the card with little to no organization (like the name) ends up with wasting card space explaining that certain cards don't apply and also means devs have to be extremely careful not to use certain words or phrases in future cards. Example here: yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Froggy_Forcefield (Fortunately for digital cards, though, errata is a trivial matter, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure as they say).

Edit: I think I bummed up the link. It just takes me to a blank page.

 

Rorre: What Essence said. In other words--I agree with you that these cards are well-designed and add some nice complexity to the game, and I'm not trying to mess with their functionality at all. If the devs don't want Bludgeons to synergize with Bruiser because Bludgeons are supposed to be high-damage on their own, that's fine, but they could communicate that to us in a more intuitive fashion by tagging all the Bashes Bruising damage and all the Bludgeons Crushing damage, or something like that.

Sir Knight, Essence, and Unlucky Scarecrow: My main interest is just that things be consistent and user-friendly. But you guys have convinced me that the keyword (damage type) route seems wiser than the card title route. There's only so many adjectives you can pair with "Bash" before you end up sounding silly.

 

I hear what you're saying, and there's obvious value in spelling everything out.

However, I think there's *also* easy to miss value in non-obvious mechanics. This comes in a few flavours.

Firstly, I enjoy figuring things out. I love wondering about unusual interactions and corner cases, and trying them out to see what happens. There's a feeling of exploration there that's quite special. There's also the little surprises you get even after you've played for a *long* time. Sometimes these are things that are spelled out, but you just didn't realize it, but sometimes it's just when you see a grey area resolved.

Secondly, there's brevity. Spelling things out is a slippery slope. Lets take a look at Only Bones. Now, I know that it does in fact include penetrating damage, so "Always triggers and prevents all damage from piercing attacks, including Penetrating attacks".

I don't know how it interacts with Shredding Strike. I would guess that shredding strike would override only bones: So I'm guessing it's something like: "Always triggers and prevents all damage from piercing attacks, including Penetrating Attacks, but not overriding Shredding Strike", but most people will not have seen Shredding Strike when they first see Only Bones.

Do we need new keywords for all these different ideas? Do we need new keywords for all the combinations? Impenetrable Nimbus stops a character taking damage. Whether we use keywords or not, that's going to have an ambiguous interaction with Shredding Strike. Based on my observations, Impenetrable Nimbus seems to proc last, so I'm pretty sure that shredding strike will destroy all the armor and then do no damage afterwards, but I did want to make the point that there's nothing magical about keywords - there will still be ambiguity and complexity afterwards.

To come back to the bash question specifically, you're mostly just protesting "title text" as a valid "target". It's limiting the design space. Is that what you actually want to do?

Right now, there aren't many examples of cards that use this, but by invalidating this option you're obliterating some unmeasurable future potentials. Off the top of my head, imagine a "Crushing Intellect" card that adds a damage component to "Telekinesis". If this applies only to Telekinesis and Improved Telekinesis, then it can have a decent value (maybe 2 damage?), because these are very limited, but the keyword here is "Push", which includes a lot of cards. Even just the difference between including Winds Of War or not is going to be a big deal.

I think, at it's core, I'm arguing that allowing the card designers to use title text enables them to be more creative, and I think that that's not something that should not be discarded lightly.

 

Brevity, yes, and that reminds me: there's only so much space on the screen!

People are currently reporting it as a "bug" if the whole name of the item of origin does not fit in the limited space for text (off to the right of the keywords, mind you). Other people are complaining that text, as of now, is too small and cramped to read.

If they can make something clear by a short selection of oft-repeated keywords, plus conventions about card naming itself, plus very brief text (with longer tooltips) in the rules box, then that's probably for the best. And though we haven't heard back from the devs on this topic, we know in general that sheer efficient presentation is high up on their list of priorities.

 

I know that part of this game's schtick is that it is supposed to be difficult, it's this whole meta-commentary on nerdiness. So I understand that with this game the devs might be cool with keeping the learning curve fairly steep and they might be opposed to dumbing things down by having to spell out every tiny little detail.

I understand that, and that's not what I'm arguing for. I don't want to over-encumber Bash with a longer description like "Add 2 damage to any other card you play with the word 'Bash' in its title (this does not include Bludgeon or Strike cards)." That would certainly clarify things for me, but it lacks elegance. What I'm arguing for is "Add 2 damage any melee-crushing attack you play." Equally simple, just more consistent with the way things like Spark Generator already work.

I'm not as big of a fan of ambiguity as you to begin with, but I would argue that the way things currently work isn't just ambiguous, it's downright misleading. When I first saw a Martial Skill like Untrained Bruising that comes with 2x Bruiser and 1x Weak Strike, it gave me the strong impression that Weak Strike counted as a Bash attack. I mean it looks just like Bash, they are the same damage type, the words are definite synonyms, and it doesn't seem like a leap to assume that Weak Strike is put in there with Bruisers because they synergize. But they don't (which I later realized was so that other, more advanced Martial skills, do come with Bashes where the synergy actually works). Hm. So then I realized that the game is really literal about what a Bash card it. Swinging to the other side of restrictiveness, I wondered if Bruiser literally only comboed with the card Bash. But that's not true, either. It took some trial and error to figure out that it includes all cards with "Bash" in their title (and that this usually corresponds to a knockback effect). Okay, then I thought I understood things, and I looked at Spark Generator and it buffs Arcane and Electrical. Psh, who knows what that means! More trial and error!
To me, it doesn't feel deliciously ambiguous, it feels annoyingly inconsistent.

I understand your desire to not make things overly-explicit, but I still argue that consistency is a more important virtue than ambiguity. If you are inconsistent out of the gate, that sloppy design-work will catch up to your game in the long run. You should make things consistent and intuitive first. There will still be plenty of ambiguity to go around as the game grows and the card interactions become more rich and complex.

 

I have to agree here, that this ambiguity can be confusing for new players: we have cards that boost cards based on the cards name (Bruiser, Slicer), based on key words (Impaler), based on damage type (Mass Frenzy) and sub-damage type (Spark Inductor).
Personally I think the last three are clear enough just Bruiser and Slicer could be redone. This could either be done by adding new damage sub-types (i.e. slashing and for the lack of better word bashing) or by adding key words to them (i.e. Slash: Choose up to two different targets for this attack).

I personally would prefer the first solution, because it doesn't afford a lot of additional changes (only one i can think of is adding these damage types to the resistant armors of skeletons and blobs respectively).

 

Ok I am new on this forum.
Maybe if a Trait card in the deck could show an effect like Highlighting of the cards that it adds bonuses to, that way we could swap out different trait cards and see in a fast way what is getting a Bonus.
Or do we think that it would make Decks to much of a cut and paste type of thing?

 

You can get this effect with the text search. There's a little white box up the top of shops and equipment page. If you type "bash", "penetrating" or "chop" (without the quotes) you'll get all the equipment that that has cards effected by Bruiser, Impaler or Slicer respectively.

 

One thing I'd like to point out is how a wizard has it a lot easier to do attacks that get boosted by an arcane skill, while the warrior in the early levels will rarely ever get boosted by a martial skill. You simply don't get enough Bash cards early on to make Bruiser worth while. Most melee slashing and melee crushing cards you'll have don't trigger any martial skill. I'd rather have +1 damage to any crushing attack than +2 to any bashing attack, etc.