The problem I see with this is that the 'abuse' of Altruism is through the use of 2 or more drawing priests. Having the other character draw cards wouldn't help in that situation. In a non-abuse attempt of casually using the card this could be helpful and interesting, but it actually reduces the support that the priest can offer, as opposed to him drawing an additional support card. Instead I feel like this reduces the choices for priests and the priests roll pretty much only becomes a buffer.
My original proposal uses 50% odds, so it works very similarly to flipping a coin. I'll compare the effects to existing cards: 50% of the time it simply replaces itself. In these cases it's similar to an Inspiration that you have to self target, or a Spin Around without an effect. It's better than Lateral Thinking since that normally requires you to discard another card. All of these are silver cards. 25% of the time you'll draw one additional card, plus the card to replace the trait, so you draw two cards in total. This is better than the effects of Forward Thinking , a gold card. The remaining 25% of the time your drawing at least two additional cards, plus the card to replace the trait. That means Altruism is drawing you three or more cards, better than Inspirational Thinking provides as a green quality card. So at worst, Altruism would still function similar to silver quality cards. The rest of the time it's functioning at gold quality or better. Quality matters, the quality of Altruism is why you can get three Altruisms in a deck for a single blue power token via Focused Piety . I agree that my suggestion looks much worse than the existing card. It's just that the existing card is incredibly good (as I continue to point out) compared to similar cards. I honestly am not sure I went far enough. At least 25% of the time Altruism is going to be an amazing card to play, and I think that will help overcome the worse case scenario of it just replacing itself.
Yeah, I think your suggestion is way more balanced (I agree it may not even go far enough), and it's not the overall balance I'm concerned about. I just don't want to see the card get introduced with a 50% chance of doing nothing and disappearing immediately. I feel like that effect in particular would feel pretty frustrating and make Altruism a super hit and miss proposition. I would like to see some way of balancing the card that is more constant, where you keep the effect on you while providing a bonus to your allies. I think this may be impossible as long as the interaction between Altruism and Inspiration/Inspiring Presence exists. As I've seen others suggest, I really think those cards need to have their type changed to Psychic so Altruism can be balanced without interference from additional drawing effects.
That's just the thing though. A blank trait still replaces itself and doesn't take your turn so it always does something. Traits are incredibly powerful due to the deck thinning mechanic. One of the biggest issues in the game in my mind is deck consistency. If I could load my deck with multiple traits that were literally blank I would because the deck recycles. Getting a minor bonus off a cycling card just makes it better. So just by existing it is doing something.
I'm not claiming it's doing nothing as all traits cycle, my issue is that I fundamentally don't think blank traits are a boon to the game. I think they should always have an additional effect on gameplay and it should not be possible for a trait to appear and then disappear without having any additional effect on the game.
Okay, I've decided I can't test this. The only time I draw a card off of it out of 18 chances, I roll a 4. My past games, I can't get seem to get a 1/8 draw rate. I'm sure someone can break it. I'm not that one. I must say, the discard makes it feel like a really bad card. But again, my luck being what it is I may be biased.
I've been messing with it myself with three priests. Its still effective but not like it was. Though I think it is more disappointing to play with now because it disappears. The other day I drew a card off it, the turn passed and I was thinking OK play another holy spell for another attempt at a free card. Only after I cast the next spell did I realize the card had fallen off because I rolled a 4 on the last play. So I ended up playing sub-optimally because I didn't account for Altruism possibly going away.
The expected number of cards you can draw from Altruism is the limit of the function 1 + ( x . 2^x) -------------- ( 2 . 3^x) As x -> infinity. I don't know how to evaluate this function . . . my math skills aren't great any more. But just brute force evaluating it, it comes out to exactly 4.
That function above didn't print right. It is 1 + (all the stuff in brackets divided up) I arrived at this by the following: - You get one card for free, plus what happens from the rolls. Hence the 1 + (brackets) - When you roll a 1-3, nothing happens. Thus, the odds of discarding altruism when you get a card is 1/3 (there are three options 4, 5 and 6 and you discard on 4) Thus the probability of each number is: 1/3, 2/9, 4/27, 8/81, 16/243 . . . Which is 2^x / 2 . 3^x To find expected value multiply by x. Thus (x . 2^x) / (2 . 3^x). Add one for the initial draw from the trait.
It's pretty simple to come out to it being 4. For rolls between 4-6, you'll get an equal number of each (in a sufficiently large sample size), so you'll discard altruism after an average of roughly 3 rolls. Two draws, a 3rd draw that causes you to discard, and one for playing the trait in the first place.
Uh . . . all you've said is that in a sufficiently large sample size there is a 1/3 chance that a draw will discard. There's nothing in between that assertion and the claim that it will take three draws. Consider a situation in which the odds were different and there was a 1/1000 chance that altruism would discard (999 times it would just draw, 1 time it would discard). Would you then say that altruism would draw (on average) 1000 times with a sufficiently large sample size? Perhaps you're right, but what is your reasoning?
