Beta-based card ideas

Ok, can't help myself. Something I loved about Chrono Trigger is combos. Combo cards will have a base effect which can be used alone. However, if an ally has the right cards and is in the right position you can increase the effectiveness of the base card.

Not sure if the combo damage would be additive to the base attack or processed separately. If done separately there could be different damage types. Currently they just add to the base damage type.

Frost Blade (Red): 4 damage. 1 Range. Magic Cold.

Ally: Range 2. Discard any one (Red) Magic Cold.​

Combo: +2 damage, Encumber 1, duration 2. Discard oldest armor.​

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Fire Lance (Red): 4 damage. 3 Range. Magic Fire.

Ally: Range 2. Discard any one (Red) Magic Fire.​

Combo: Linear (5 squares), +1 damage.​

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Steel Conduit (Red): 4 damage, 2 Range, Magic Electrical

Ally: Range 2. Discard any one (Red) Magic Electrical.​

Combo: Cone (3 adjacent squares), +1 damage for each revealed card.​

Nova Hammer (Red): Burst 1, 2 damage, 1 Range, Magic Arcane, Slide Back 1.

Ally: Range 2. For each Arcane discarded add combo effect.​

Combo: +1 damage, +1 Slide Back 1​

Strike Duo (Red): 4 damage, 1 Range, Melee Slashing.

Ally: Range 1. Discard any one (Red) Melee.​

Combo: 3x damage (12).​

This is Cardhunteria! (Red): 1 damage, 1 Range, Melee Crushing, Stun 1.

Ally: Range 1. Discard any number of blue cards.​

Combo: +2 damage for each card discarded. Discard 2 random cards.​

Flavor: Madness?​

Perhaps this is too complicated. The numbers would really need to be tweaked to make the combo worth pulling off versus just hitting the target with individual attacks. Combos with a base magic card may be more interesting, but I need to get back to the books. If the combos were setup correctly they may make lesser damage cards more useful and increase gear diversity later in the game.

 

I could see that being implemented first for enemies. Imagine, if you will, an "Even-Larger Ogre" enemy which does the effect you describe with most hits. Also, to increase terrain discomfort for the players and allow it to survive its own low mobility, it could toss boulders as a ranged version of the same thing.

Oh, and the tossed boulders could be Burst 1, to keep them smaller than Cave In and thus avoid redundant cards.

 

Double-posting, but I'm thinking about card ideas over the next 30 levels (we can reach 20 in the beta so far, and evidence suggests we'll go up to 50 in the end). We have a pretty broad range of cards today, so where can we go next?

Especially when you consider we already have Perfect Block. "Perfection"? And 30 more levels to go? So I'm gonna guess here.

At the start, level 1 characters average 12 HP, and the strongest attacks do 5 or so damage, for 2.4 times as much HP as damage. At level 20, we have 26-ish HP, and the strongest attacks do 17 or so damage. We can be sure Obliterating Bludgeon (17 damage) will become commonplace at higher levels, and the damage/HP comparison implies we'd have 41-ish HP at the time. But at level 50, we average 48 HP: so expect a card stronger than Obliterating Bludgeon that will do 20 damage.

Don't expect cards to do much more damage than that: Obliterating Bludgeon is "second-best" card quality, so there's only one quality ranking left to go. Instead, I'm guessing that they'll go the route of Devastating Blow, Anvil Strike, and so on, thus adding more and more side effects. After all, Perfect Block is "perfect" because it replaces itself AND has a nasty effect on the enemy, but that's just one possible nasty effect.

So I really hope we'll see more mixtures. For instance, I expect to see more Halt effects on Attacks, but I hope also to have something like the "Leave It All Behind" Move card I suggested to discard attachments. If the card discard on Perfect Block is so "good," then there will probably be more deck manipulation via attacks, too.

 

fyi: Almighty_Bludgeon, Almighty Hack. Is there any interest for tracking cards based on strength and variation ? I've not given too much attention to cards in the wiki.

 

Ah ha! Behold the magic of wiki-scouring!