[Suggestion] Cleric Sub-Class equipment.

The elevator pitch: Additional class-dependant equipment that plays off the current kit and allows players to further specialise into roles associated with the class theme.

Introducing the first in a set of sub-class-themed cards. You love Clerics, this is for the Paladin in you.




What If I would like my cleric to lean a bit more into the magic side of things? No problem Jimmy, here is a sample of the Priest-Mage/Blood Mage cards.




Don't freak-out with Judgement day. Firestorm would have to be balanced again before this is introduced. My thoughts are that it would be a good way to essentially keep the kill from afar strategy as an option, but this time with a bigger combo needed to actually run it successfully.


It's true that you can already achieve some sub-classes within the bounds of the game, but I just think it currently lacks that extra bit of synergy that would really make one cleric stand-out from another.

For the record, I am positive that Blue Manchu will do well with this game regardless of what they decide to implement in the future. This is just a suggestion that would take the multiplayer fun factor to the next level for me.

"But Genki... how will we balance all this out? Wont it break the game? You mad man!"

Balancing can start as early as right now . Let me know if you think any of these card are overpowered, game-breaking or simply not fun. If we can reach a consensus I'll just update it and forward we shall go.

 

+2 feels a bit powerful for a blanket damage reducer, but it does sound very paladin-like. I suppose if it were mine to design, I'd have made the buff grant +1 or 2 to armor dice rolls to make it feel more like the old "protection from evil" savings throws adjustments from D&D. Your chances for being saved are increased, but it's still possible to take full damage. Essentially granting your allies a free temporary harness effect, if you will.
The other two (Hammer and shield) make me want to ask what your game influence was when thinking of what a paladin represents. They've come a long way through game history as a class, and this vision you seem to have feels "modern" to me, for lack of a better way to describe it. I probably would expect something like "lay on hands" being featured more than a really interesting but tricky hammer bash. I think I'd have a better understanding of how your paladin's cards would be expected to synergise if I had a clearer picture of what a paladin means to you. If it's not any trouble, could you define the class for me a bit?
Coincidentally, would you mind if I posted a couple ideas here too? I've been looking for a thread to toss around new card ideas and I seriously don't know where to put them without making things too spammy.

 

Yeah I think you are probably right. For now I have made a minor change reducing it to 1 instead of 2 (but your idea of adding to armour dice rolls is probably where it will end up, seems pretty solid). I do still like the idea of giving non armoured characters a buff too though. Lets see what others feel about it.

That's a good question, it is more of a modern approach. For me it basically boils down to : a frontline tank/fighter combined with a bit of healing/damage prevention utility on the side (so anything that falls under this loose definition is ok with me, if its fun).

As for game influences, they are many. But for the hammer specifically, I mainly just wanted something to give players another reason to run with many of those lower value healing cards (to create that mix of melee damage and healing). Having the buff on a weapon that doubles as a defensive move would give the priest a difficult choice of whether to use it offensively/defensively or hold onto it for the boosted healing. Seemed like a fun idea at the time .

For the shield my main motivation was to encourage the paladin to actually be confident in the frontline, to be able to play aggressively and make the first move. I envisioned players using it for the most part aggressively anyway. If you know your Paladin cant close the distance on this turn, he can use it to potentially block a ranged attack and if that fails, sacrifice it for a little healing instead of discarding it.

Absolutely. Especially if it fits the idea of sub-classes! I'll even put up some concept cards for the popular ones.

 

@Aramaki:

Blessed Armor: I'd change the name to Holy Vestments. Armor 1, Roll 1+ is a value I'd expect on something made of Cloth or Leather.
It's Reliable Hide (paper) + bonus, so Bronze quality.

Defensive Aura: Very cool card. I'd say with a Roll 3+, it's a good silver. At 4+, it's too unrealiable to depend on it.

Divine Blessing: Good card. +2 heal over Team Heal (Silver), but situational. Good Silver.
Needs a name that has a stronger connection to healing (blessing = buff)

Smite: -1 damage but one better block penalty over Deadly Spark. Same range. It's again a Silver.
The name suggests a melee attack, but it's ranged.

@Genki:
Holy Hammer: Right now, it's Barge (Bronze) and Healing Spirit (Bronze) added to a Bash (Silver), with +1 damage but no damage bonus to other bashes. I think it's balanced at gold, but I'm not sure.
By the way, it's good to keep the wording consistent between , so it should say "When you play a Heal card, add 1 to the amount healed."


Shield of Faith: "Sacrifice" is MtG vocabulary . For CH, it should say something like "When you discard this card, heal 3 hp" (one is a bit too fiddly...) Also, I think it should have the same 3+ block chance as standard Block (Bronze), but one better quality (silver) for the added flexibility.
Maybe switch it around? "If this card is in your hand at the start of your turn, heal 4 health"?

Judgement Day: I love the idea but I am not convinced about the execution. Right now, it just invites all-Cleric parties that overload on this. For something called "Judgement Day", you expect a really powerful card that can decide a combat, but is expensive. I'd bump it even higher to Emerald, rare. It's only on divine items, and maximum one per item.
In return, the effect should be really strong:
6 damage to all, ignore armor. Clerics take half damage. Discard all unholy cards and attachments.

 

I do like the Holy Hammer or unholly bolt ideas, since they work in a particular build, but otherwise don't offer much. Very nice suggestions.

 

That sounds pretty fun to me! If you don't mind I will turn this into a concept card for one of the proposed warrior sub-classes (The defender). "Spartans! What is your profession?!" - Leonidas.

I really like the idea of adding smite, particularly to the Paladin subset - as it is now it just feels too much like a mage card though (I don't want to marginalise mages). Feels like it could work but is missing something. A drawback effect perhaps (if for the blood mage) or some kind of existing card to combo it with (if its for the paladin).

@Martin K: Good suggestions with the wording, I took your advice and updated those cards to fit more inline with the wording on others.

(Also, the idea of a melee card healing you if you hold onto fits well with the paladin and sounds fun - maybe it deserves a card of it's own).

Having it ignore armour seems like a logical step.

I think you have some good points. I'll try and answer by letting you know my thought process with this card.

An effect that covers the board is extremely powerful (imo). This card does a couple of things but my first thought was it could be used side by side with firestorm as a combo card (with FS toned down as previously mentioned). I like the ingenuity of the tactic and would like it to remain in the game for that very reason. Having the damage any higher though would only make the strategy much too abusable. It's very possible that 3 clerics could start the game with one of these cards each. That would potentially be enough to kill and elf team in the first turn (fun for the caster but too much in the no-fun zone for the receiver).

For each of the main classes I wanted to include at least 1 card that rewards you for running 3 of that class, for the cleric this seems fitting. Definitely would not like a player to be able to run with many of these though (maybe even only 2 per character).

What you say about the wording is very valid. If it sounds like it should be more powerful than it is, it can leave you feeling like it's a weak card in general. I have just renamed a couple of the cards, most notably Unholy Bolt is now Charged Bolt - to fit more with what it actually does. If you have any suggestions about name changes I would be happy to hear them.

Cheers mate. That's definitely the goal I have in mind for these cards.

 

Glade to see other that share a similar concept of sub-classing
Love what you done with the cards. Great mods.

So a priest/wizard hybrid. Sounds good.. and match well with the theme too.

 

So in D&D, there was a sort of class of priest spells that were actually super dangerous. They rivaled some of the most powerful mage spells. To keep them in check, they had enormously long casting times. This allowed the mage to remain the primary source of the party's magic damage, but every now and then the cleric of the party could surprise everyone by praying to his god patiently in the corner for a few minutes and busting out with some crazy surprises.
Interestingly enough, on a side note, both wall of fire and firestorm were cleric spells in D&D, and held these extremely long casting time limitations, so if in fact anyone likes the mechanic I'm about to propose, then it may very well serve as a guideline for changes to our CH wizard's existing firestorm cards as well.
The problem to implementing these in a game like this is simply, how do we represent a spell that requires casting time (or channeling as it's commonly understood these days by most MMO players) in a turn-based tactics game?
So I'm going to take a shot at doing that for a couple of the old cleric spells that were big hitters. If you had to define it's theme as a sub-class, I'd call it "channelers". I'll explain how the spell used to work, and why I think my idea does a fair job doing justice to that old game mechanic, as well as why I think CH could be made more interesting if such a spell were introduced. Just for clarity, I'm going to name them directly after the old D&D spells, so that anyone who knows what they were can more easily see what it is I'm trying to reproduce. Naturally, for a finished product, you'd want to give them your own cool names so as not to disrespect anyone's work with direct plagiarism.



Flamestrike wasn't originally a cone effect, but I think something like this would get a little crazy if it allowed for something as versatile as a "burst" effect.
The pros to this card, is obviously damage.
The cons to using it is that for the remainder of your turn, you're both stuck in place "praying" for it, and telegraphing your intent to any opponents. They can both see you casting it and avoid it (it's an obvious attachment on your priest), or do something to purge the effect from you, thus simulating the old mechanic of "casting interruption". After casting it, you probably can't do anything else, and you certainly can't use more than one ability per turn that has this sort of limitation, so it's not spammable.
I should admit I'm not completely satisfied with this solution, either, since such a spell could still potentially be too useful if a player simply saved it until the end of each round. This is where I mostly want feedback, I think.
In practice, it's a ticking time bomb effect that works well as an ambush or causes enemy panic without being terribly useful at close range.
Actual numbers are of course negotiable, it's merely the overall idea that I'm interested in discussing. Ever since seeing zombies with festering guts, I've realized that CH doesn't have a lot of these sort of thrills that you get from something that is clearly going to hit you unless you do something about it by turn's end. Maybe tile attachments do this too, but not in the same way, since I can't go and attack the floor and kill it before it kills me, you know? However, I can certainly go stand behind a squishy priest and beat him up when I see he's clearly trying to nuke me with something that leaves him effectively motionless.

I also tried to simulate what a casting duration would feel like if it were built into a terrain attachment.



This would be a sort of trap or bunker buster you could lay. Easy-ish to avoid, and even easier to simply cover up with your own attachments, giving more value to cards that give cleansing effects. The reason I'm not immediately assuming it will get covered up by your opponent, by the way, is that this is the sort of attachment that has a wide enough effect that one could simply place it on the other side of a wall. I'm assuming that part of the tile's effect description would be that it's burst ignores blocking terrain. I see a lot of use for something like this, and it's especially fun to me because you have to try and predict where everyone is going to be three turns from now, and use it either as a trap in SP campaign adventures, or as area denial in MP.

 

The idea of channeling spell is good, but I don't think it would work well here since you can cast it at the end of the round when everyone is out of movement cards, and even if they have one or two movement cards to spare, those cards will most likely can't get them out of that huge cone.
The Earthquake, on the other hand, is pretty promising, but I think it's more like an arcane spell than a holy spell.

Beware of copyrights.

The main concept is praying the Big Man to smash you enemy to pulp, so it's ranged and has Hard to Block. But it can be fixed to match the holy theme.

And here is some unholy card.

 

Yep. Like I said, I'm not entirely satisfied with the first one. Something about it would probably need to be changed to bring that one loophole into line... but either way I'm glad the delayed effect resonates well with you.
Funny thing about stuff like earthquakes, is that the further back in game history you go, the more likely effects like that fell into the priest's realm. Nature effects like weather changes, moving mountains, and plagues were all things that were considered more "miraculous" than magic, although there was quite a bit of crossover. Just because I'm a big fan of keepin' it oldschool, I proposed this one be holy.

It might also be fun to do some version of those old priest abilities that let you place psychic suggestions in people's minds. It would have some room for humor, too.
Something like:

Induced Masochistic Streak
Attack/unholy
range: 4
If target has an attack that deals 3 or less damage in their hand, they immediately hit themselves with it.
Flavor text: "You like it... You know you do."

 

Thanks Actionjack, its been fun throwing around ideas. I'm happy your on board with it I hope Ben Lee doesn't think that I'm butchering his work.

Now we're talking! I'll do this one next though I might play around with the numbers a little if that's cool with you, better to introduce it a bit on the underpowered side and buff it later if people think it lacks. Also true about the copyrights, I hadn't considered it.

Aldones,

I love the concept of channelling for a few reasons. The idea of telegraphing your moves sounds fun for both players, it builds suspense for the caster and provides the possibility of fun counter-play opportunities for the enemy. The mechanic for it is very similar to the terrain effect cards, (in the sense that you cast something and it happens the next turn, or at the end of the turn in your example) but has a different flavour. I also agree it could be a nice change for firestorm.

As for the counter-play opportunities while channelling, on top of purging etc, I think it would be fun if once a channel card is played the opponent has the chance to break them out of it by hitting them with damage. Perhaps all channel cards could come with a concentration check that you roll on when you take damage, like a block roll in disguise.

If Blue Manchu were prepared to consider adding in the mechanic we could definitely make an interesting Mage-Channeler subset around it. A couple of holy prayer-channels fits in pretty well too.

Interesting ideas guys, keep em coming!

 

You and I are on the same wavelength, definitely. Truly, the only reason I didn't add exactly what you suggested is that the card itself was running out of room, and I know these guys like their cards to be as terse and streamlined as possible. I can respect a game that tries to keep complex things down to one elegant sentence that leaves no room for doubt... and I'm afraid that the next step would have been either one of those split-window cards with two effects, or creating a new underlined game mechanic Channeling that would sum up it's rules in a tooltip.

 

Yeah I think one of the split window cards would do the job pretty well. It could be as brief as : Channel 1 (when dealt damage, roll the save or be interrupted).

Speaking of split windows, I've just updated all the cards with the appropriate borders and colours to fit with the game properly and added a new card for the Blood-Mage/Unholy-Mage: Forbidden Transfer.

Could provide some interesting moments . Thoughts anyone? Game breaking perhaps?

 

Bare minimum, you might want some kind of explanation about what happens if the transfer brings your health over your normal maximum. I'm imagining elf wizards using this to walk around with 35 health after using their warrior like a HP storage battery.

 

Yeah I had similar thoughts too, I just couldn't decide if that would break things or not. With your example it does most definitely

I was going to follow with 'health cannot exceed the race restriction'. Probably the way to go. With that in mind, still think its too abusable?

 

I think I do, but perhaps I feel that way because it's got 6 range and is a gold rating? My thoughts are clouded by the way I hear MP currently is. After some of the expected balances occur, something like this might be totally fine.
Right now, What I'd expect from this is a firestorm build that's nigh unstoppable. Especially for just farming SP where the AI won't be as quick to realize what you're up to. You could just layer combustable onto your wizard without caring, and armor on a dwarf warrior or two, and once you've burned yourself to death the first time, you just start over. With the added range, your wizard can even stay safely in the back and let your warrior contribute to the fight rather than just standing around like vampire food.
I think that if I were to build this card... and you might not like this, but I'd have it outright kill the swapped target completely. Make it clear that this card is pure evil and you're the worst kind of vampire that ever lived. You just keep your friends around like ghouls for food.
This would also make the effect one-way, so that a healthy wizard couldn't use it to rescue a warrior... but wait, I think you wanted that effect to be possible, didn't you? Huh.
Edit: one mistake I'm making, is assuming like an idiot that this is a wizard skill. There would be at least a two step process to get the health onto your wizard, so take my concerns slightly less seriously.

 

(because I'm sick of only having purge)
Cast out thy demons
attack/holy
damage 3 range 1 slide back 1
Removes oldest enemy controlled attachment from the target.
Chose to discard another card and increase slide and attachment removal both by 1.

(unholy version)
Gimmie dem demons
attack/ unholy
damage 1 range 1
removes oldest enemy controlled attachment and attaches it to you.
Chose to discard another card and remove a second attachment in this way.

 

I hadn't thought about the AI, I know it acts a bit funny with nimbus currently.

True, we'll have to wait for the patch but it would be broken in the current game. No doubt.

I was going for versatility but only if it could be balanced somehow. I don't mind the idea of having it kill the target though, good suggestion.

Cast out thy demons, I like it. That will be next! Should it also transfer the effect to you though? It could just be used a purging bash.

 

Well, I kind of liked the idea of holy and unholy versions. One looks like faith healing (*punch* Be HEALED!), and the other steals them for personal use, but does less damage and has no knockback.

I also sort of fancy the idea of a faith attack that actually blasts enemy attachments off of a target in a linear path, such that anyone lucky/unlucky enough to be in a direct path behind the target gets "haunted" or "blessed" by it instead. This game has a comical side to it and something that's both interesting and funny like that might be worth exploring.