Because dodge stacking is much more radically overpowered and ridiculous than reducing damage in any game. With any generated percentage that is the same between dodge and damage mitigation(say 60% dodge/60%damage reduction), dodge will always rank higher because of absolute avoidance. With mitigation your still getting hit, still taking on hit effects, still taking damage every time, dodge avoids all of that and thats why it will always be overpowered. Also runequest? really?
I never understood how a high level characters thought they could wade into a horde of enemies saying, "I have AC-7, they can't hit me."
The same way you roll up in the mid-evil times with an Abrams Tank and say "I have reactive armor on the exterior of my plated layered armor, they cant hit me."
Quick clarification: once an enemy Armor card has been revealed, you'll see the roll for it each time thereafter. And it's a good feeling, to see that roll fail when you really need it to...
Other icons we've seen describe the (re-)action a card gives your character. This new icon on the right is a property of the card itself: staying in the hand. What other things can a card do as a card? I'm mindful that we haven't seen any system for cards with duration of effect - buffs, poisons, etc. The second space in the box could be room for a timer of some sort. P.S. For a tricky twist on "return to hand," how about "return to deck?" Jon said earlier that if you draw through the whole deck, the discard pile is shuffled and put back into play -- but get a couple of nice return to deck cards and your drawbacks will only appear once because you never run out of deck. Of course, a really nasty drawback card might show up again and again, too.
I might have missed it... but from everything I've read about reactions, it sounds like they trigger automatically, and you do not choose to play them?
I think you're right. But what if you have 3 or 4 block/armor cards in hand. If they all fail you have to roll 3 or 4 dices. But who decides for which card will be rolled first?
I think this is partially solved by the "only keep two cards" rule at the end of your turn, but there hasn't been an official breakdown of what an entire round of play might look like in all its glory. Still, your point remains--what happens when you have multiple reactive cards to play in order? I guess shields could go before armors (that makes sense, right? you'd hit a shield before you reach the armor) but that does not solve the problem of two armors or two shields. Could the armors stack? If a player can only use one, do they pick or is there a default order?
Your gear cards are linked to item slots, so I don't think you'd be able to carry two shields or wear two sets of armour. Though logically, you should be able to layer some armour.
But each item of equipment gives you a card suite, which I figure will probably contain multiple armor or shield cards if the item is a suit of armor or shield, right? Like a broken board of a shield might have 1 or 2 blocks in the suite, while a big tower shield might carry 5 or 6.
It makes a lot of sense that you'd hit a shield before chain mail in a physical battle, but I hope that in CH it goes the other way. Why use up a great shield card on an attack my armor would absorb? On the other hand, we may just endure the occasional "oopsie" the same way we tolerate drawbacks. We know that it checks reactions on multiple block cards, but those are pass/fail -- does the program continue to check after an armor "passes" yet doesn't absorb everything? I'm guessing yes, but it's only a guess. And since the reaction process is automatic, I have to believe there is a programmed order in which the cards are checked. As a defensive-minded player, I would prefer Armors in order from least to highest mitigation followed by Blocks in order from least to highest chance of success. I think that should maximize the potential of each card for me. Aggressive players may have differing opinions.
The statistical side of me wants this as well. I'd also wonder if there could be "dodge" or "parry" reactive cards for dex-based players (same format w/ a d6, but the roll could be to sidestep the worst of a blow, or maybe to make the enemy miss entirely!). Still, I figure you'd aim to block or divert an attack first, unless you were really confident in your armor. I think this could be programmed either way--once the incoming damage = 0, stop checks, or just let a 0 value run through the remainder of the checks. I too would like to have the checks run from greatest risk to surest reward (or maybe based on rarity or a built-in card value, in case some reactions carry additional benefits other than just blocking a blow)
Yeah, it makes more sense in combat terms to go shield first. It may come down to tuning the program to reach a battle speed/flow goal -- the order in which defenses are processed will determine how quickly the better cards are "used up." And we haven't had an official preview, but Jon has talked about Parry cards being part of a sword's suite, so the raging barbarian will be able to react in the heat of combat. I assume that's another type of block; probably not very many armor cards from non-defense suites. Dodge is interesting because it could be a card that moves you away from an attacking enemy. Better hope you don't escape from a Wimpy Squirrel into the Unclimbable Pit of Angry Vipers! (As someone said in a movie once, "I hate snakes!")
This seems to fall right into the good-natured drawback flavors we've seen so far--sometimes you can go out of the frying pan and into the fire!
I think the use of 'improvement' cards to play on an attack card might give you pause before you use your armoured head as a block instead of a shield. The sequence / arms race of adds to the attack and defense cards will be an interesting mechanic: Attacker: Wimply Blow! Defender: Ha! Plate Mail A: Vorpal Edge! D: Ah, er, Shiny Helmet! A: OK, try some Poison Blade! D: Glancing Blow! A: On The Rebound, double damage! D: Ach! Out of cards - I take 10 damage?
If the defensive cards are that expendable...that kind of sounds like PvP or boss fights might end up being little more than battles of attrition. Assuming roughly equal attack values, there would be no reason not to burn as many defensive cards as needed to block an attack, since you're either allowing the attack or going all out to block it. Sure, you could use one block each time to make your opponent burn twice as many actions, but you'll end up getting hit each time, and who's to say you won't be dead by the time he tires out? So all of the early attack rounds burn large amounts of cards, until one side exhausts their offensive or defensive options, and the fresher opponent simply kicks him to death while he's down? I'm sure there has to be some kind of mechanic to prevent the early rounds from turning into extended slapfights like that.
Cowardly Apprentice Mage: "Eeek! A spider! Run!" "Oh no! A hornet's nest! Go Back!" "Spiders!" "Hornets!" "Spiders!" "Hornets!" I hope that Dodges actually come in bad, okay, and great flavors like everything else. So my Ballet Shoes of Nimbleness might give me a Fancy Footwork card that lets me dodge two steps and I get to choose the end square. If it's a range attack I dodge, I could actually end up moving forward to unleash a melee strike!
So, to try to clear up some of the issues about blocks and armor - there are different kinds of "triggers" that can cause cards to get played reactively. The first kind of trigger is being targeted - this is what blocks react to. The second kind of trigger is taking damage and that's what armor reacts to. Since you get targeted before you take damage, blocks are always going trigger before armor. And, if a block does trigger and cancel an attack, you won't ever take the damage so the armor won't trigger. In cases of multiple cards of the same type, for example, armor, they get checked in a fixed order from the newest card in your hand (leftmost) to the oldest (rightmost). If the damage is reduced to zero, no more armor checks are made. Make sense?
