Fundamental Problem with Card-Based Combat System

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

So's here's the idea I've been kicking around.

Really stripped down of things like treasure and whatnot, here's what happens. A character chooses a from a list of level/class appropriate abilities a bunch of abilities on cards. Each card has a separate attack and defense (defense is rated slightly higher) ability so if you get a crappy hand you can default to defense.

All of these abilities collectively form a trunk of cards. A character chooses their favorite or anticipated abilities from the trunk to form a deck of minimum size depending on their level.

When combat starts, they draw a number of cards from their deck that goes up with their level. And during situations where they draw new cards (almost always the start of their turn), it goes up with their level.

Basically, level one gives you a hand size of 1 card and a deck size of 5 cards. Level 10 (highest level, on par with gods), gives you a hand size of 4 cards and a deck size of 20. The idea is that a character of any level will churn through their deck in about the same amount of time, but higher-level characters will crush lower-level ones with not only their better abilities but options as well.

But to limit the lameness of the Crusader whose ability selection is random, every character gets a level-appropriate number of 'Signature Technique' slots, in which they can put in cards that will always be available rather than going away when expended or waiting to be drawn.

If a character wants to use an ability they have in a non-combat situation, they simply swap a card in their trunk or deck into their Signature Technique slots. The process takes about 3 or 4 rounds in combat to discourage people from doing it in these situations.

The problem is that I don't know how to make a rule from stopping players from just drawing up a hand whenever they feel like and churning through their deck until they get an optimal hand and then nuking their opponent when combat starts. I want signature techniques to always be available but hands only in combat situations. But I have no idea how to do this, or if it's even possible.

[Username17]

What I would rather have happen is to have a game that you could play with a deck of cards you happened to already have rather than making a new deck for every character and configuration.

So rather than giving people cards of Flaming Fist Strike that they can slip into the pile, you'd just deal them cards out of a normal deck. This is advantageous because it means that you can play with minimal preparation and that you can use the same deck for every character.

So then you let each character learn character abilities that they can use with a Club, a Diamond, a Spade, a Heart, or a Face. If you play a Jack of Hearts you can use a Face ability or a Heart ability. If you play a 4 of Diamonds you have to use a Diamond ability. You could make the game more complex by having specific cards do specific things, and you could do various things with resource management by discarding and drawing and passing cards. An adaptive defense, for example, might allow you to take a card that is used to activate an ability used against you into your hand if you want.

What I don't want to do is write with pens on a deck of cards or photocopy card powers out of the book and then cut them up like I was in kindergarten.

-Username17

[Talisman]

Interesting concept.

There are upsides and downsides to both. Using a standard deck of cards (or even a tarot deck, for extra flayvah) is easy: everyone has a deck of cards, they shuffle well, they're cheap, etc. Downside is that you'd have to come up with a list/chart/whatever to remind you that 9 of Diamnods is "rain of blades," while 7 of Clubs is "skullcracker blow." This unfortuantely mitigates the coolness factor of the cards - it woild be almost as easy to roll 5d20 (or whatever), check the chart, and note what abilities you have for that combat.

Of course, as Frank noted, a custom deck is rather harder to create, expecially if you intend to (1) be able to shuffle it, and (2) have it last any respectable length of time. Once it's done, though, all the info is literally right there.

The problem is that I don't know how to make a rule from stopping players from just drawing up a hand whenever they feel like and churning through their deck until they get an optimal hand and then nuking their opponent when combat starts. I want signature techniques to always be available but hands only in combat situations. But I have no idea how to do this, or if it's even possible.

I played a D&D one-shot that replaced all d20 rolls with cards. While we quickly found out that it sucked - few things are lamer than having a 2 in your hand and knowing you have to use it - I did get one thing from it that might be helpful. Basically, whenever combat starts, you deal out a new hand. Thus, it serves no useful purpose to spam your cards in he hopes of better ones - as soon as the goblins appear, your cards get reshuffled and redealt.

Obviously this tactic needs refiement, especially if you have a lot of noncombat/utility abilities in your deck, but it's a start.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

What I don't want to do is write with pens on a deck of cards or photocopy card powers out of the book and then cut them up like I was in kindergarten.

Why not?

From a game design standpoint, what's so hard about, say, a program (that comes with the game) that puts card designs on a piece of paper and prints them out for you?

You obviously wouldn't use regular pieces of paper as-is. You'd have to use card stock or at least construction paper.

Or since games love revenue-enhancing devices, you could sell books of the cards for the really snotty gamer. 19.99 gets you 400 cards of a certain category.

Personally, I'd rather spend an hour prepping for a game than spend 30 minutes while in it looking through charts and stuff. But that's just me.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

So then you let each character learn character abilities that they can use with a Club, a Diamond, a Spade, a Heart, or a Face. If you play a Jack of Hearts you can use a Face ability or a Heart ability. If you play a 4 of Diamonds you have to use a Diamond ability. You could make the game more complex by having specific cards do specific things, and you could do various things with resource management by discarding and drawing and passing cards. An adaptive defense, for example, might allow you to take a card that is used to activate an ability used against you into your hand if you want.


Though I do see what you're getting at, however.

How about this for the gamer who doesn't want to spend time going back to kindergarten:

Ahead of time, you write on your character sheet which abilities you want to go into your deck. Each ability is attached to a certain face and suite. So 4 of Diamonds nets you Smoke Grenade / Swinging Grappling Hook Kick and 5 of Diamonds gets you Pyro Cover / Flame Shot so on.

You keep assigning cards to abilities until you run out of abilities, then get rid of all of the leftover cards. Then you draw normally.


On the other hand, I still don't know how to solve the problem outlined in the OP. Hmm.

[Talisman]

*cough* (eyes previous post meaningfully)

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

*cough* (eyes previous post meaningfully)

Sorry, guess my edit must not have gone through.

Anyway, here it is again, paraphrased.

There is the whole chart thing, I know, but the advantage I had in mind for cards over a chart system was that I wanted to have a Yu-Gi-Oh!-ish 'reaction' system, where you lay a card facedown and then flip it on someone you hate when they pull a certain action (and either get rid of it or not draw any more cards if it's not activated after a certain number of turns).

Also I am intrigued by Frank's idea of discarding and passing for certain effects and I'd like to hear more.

So while a chart system might superficially be the same, a tarot/playing card game would require less mindbending, be more physical, and allow for a lot of metadynamics without a bunch of erasing and fiddling with outside tokens.


.......................


Anyway, here's some more ideas.

Eternal Life is just what I'm calling this new gaming system. For those of you paying attention, it's supposed to work with the card-based ability system I'm cooking up.

Anyway, here's some ideas that I'm kicking around.

The skill system is divided into two broad categories: occupations and specialties. Occupations represent a wide range of knowledge and skills for your chosen job while specialties represent odd or unrelated skills your character happened to pick up. Occupations have a wider range of applications than skills; to accomplish a task with an occupation you justify how your occupation will help you accomplish the task and the GM assigns a bonus or penalty (or disallows a bonus altogether) based on how much you have to stretch the explanation. Your character gets a separate pool of points to put into occupations and skills; you're not disallowed but it's discouraged from a game balance setpoint to have abilities overlap.

If you have neither the occupation nor the specialty, you can still attempt the skill. In these cases, it becomes a simple attribute check.

Occupations:

Fortune-Teller
Engineer
Ninja
Gentleman Thief
Gladiator
Bandit
Farmer
Craftsman
Gambler
Street Rat
Diplomat
Apothecarist
Merchant
Nomad
Veteran
Military Officer
Scientist
Gravekeeper
Security
Cosmopolitan
Warrior Class
Medical Personnel
Jester
Gladiator
Detective
Seaman
Clergy
Spy
Politician
Rancher
Butler
Astrologer
Illegal Marketeer
Spelunker
Tour Guide
Scout
Martial Artist (doesn't encompass actual ability to inflict beatdowns, covers the 'culture' like showmanship, ritual, breaking boards, etc.)

Specialties

Balance (encompasses what would be the 'ride' skill)
Handle Fauna
Influence
Convince
Intimidate
Athletics (encompasses Climbing, Tumble, Jump, Swimming)
Sprinting
Handle Flora
Investigate (allows character to draw conclusions about situations)
Knowledge: (science, magic, culture, history, current events)
Disguise
Manipulate Magic
Channeling
Divinining
Survival
Research
Performan
Manipulate Device
Alchemy
Health
Craft (organic, creative, soft object, hard object, machine)
Search
Notice
Drive
Gather Information
Forgery
Read Motive
Concentrate
Organize




The 'single/multiclassing' system in this game is actually quite simple.

When you gain a level (including level 1), you pick one class to draw cards from for a Major Focus, another class as a Minor Focus, and any number of classes Free Focus. If you want to, you can make every single card come from the same class, it's neither required nor desired. The vast majority of fantasy warriors wouldn't just have one class anyway:
Conan would be a Power Warrior / Stealth Warrior with minor bits of Projectile Warrior and Summoner. Aladdin would be a Finesse / Stealth / Mounted Warrior. Luke Skywalker would be a Gadgeteer / Mentalist / Finesse Warrior. Sora would be a Summoner / Power Warrior / Evoker. So on.

To encourage 'single-classing', there are a number of archetypes in the game that give bonuses if you have a certain number of your abilities in your deck coming from a select number of schools.

For example, having in your deck 3 abilities in Stealth Warrior, 2 in Projectile, and 2 in Nature Magician would qualify you for the 'Ranger' archetype.

You get three categories of bonuses depending on what kind of game you're playing. For games that encourage a character focus, you pick category A, which hands out substantial bonuses. For games that encourage multiclassing, you pick category B, which hands out tiny bonuses. For games that encourage nor discourage neither, you pick category C, which hands out moderate bonuses.

While the game strives to give your characters a wide variety of classes and archetypes, we certainly could not cover every single one. It's up to the GM, players, and interested third parties to determine what else is missing and add on to it. Details on making your own archetype and classes will be discussed in a later chapter.

The 18 Fundamental Classes (they do what they sound like)

Gadgeteer
Projectile Warrior
Finesse Warrior
Power Warrior
Stealth Warrior
Nature Magician
Illusionist
Evoker
Summoner
Transmorgifier
Mentalist
Mounted Warrior
Holy Magician
Healer
Martial Artist
Performist
Leader
Shifter



Before I start, I credit Frank and K solely with this idea. I'm just expanding on it, hopefully in a way they find pleasing. Thanks, buds.

Creatures in this game have hp mostly based on size and level. This unfairly favors small and medium creatures. Deal with it. They also get a Size Category box, which determines certain effects in this game, mostly damage penalties.

I know the math doesn't exactly work out, so a gigantic creature on the verge of death is getting punished more than a Tiny-sized creature. Oh, well.

Micro - 1 Health Box / Size Category 1
Miniscule - 3 Health Boxes / SC 1
Tiny - 5 Health Boxes / SC 2
Small - 7 Health Boxes / SC 2
Medium - 10 Health Boxes / SC 2
Large - 14 Health Boxes / SC 3
Huge - 20 Health Boxes / SC 3
Gigantic - 35 Health Boxes / SC 4
Titanic - 50 Health Boxes / SC 5
Titantic Plus (If a creature is larger than Titanic size, then they become a monster of several connected 'parts' of varying sizes you damage separately)

The game uses 8 basic stats that oppose and supplement each other. The six stats are a (generally) one-digit number that determine how many 6-sided dice you can roll for an action. Like Shadowrun.

Strength \
Power \
Body / \
Physical
Agility \ /
Speed /
Dexterity /

Knowledge \
Logic \
Intuition / \
Mental
Willpower \ /
Wisdom/
Charisma /

This is a basic physical attack roll with no other modifiers whatsoever: You roll your agility opposed by someone's dexterity. A certain number of net hits on the attackers' part adds to the number of damage rating you can add to your strength roll. If you land the attack, you roll your strength plus any net hits from agility opposed by someone elses' body for damage.

There are attacks in the game that have a fixed damage value, like guns or poison, which ends up devaluing strength. This is intentional, to give the level 0 and 1 mooks a chance to gang up and take on level 2 and even 3 opponents. Past then, however, almost every physical attack benefits from more strength. Even guns and poison, because you're not using mundane guns and poisons by this point.

This is a basic mental attack roll with no other modifiers whatsoever: You roll your knowledge opposed by someone's intuition. A certain number of net hits on the attackers' part adds to the number of damage rating for your charisma roll. If you land the attack, you roll your charisma plus any net hits from knowledge opposed by someone's willpower for mental damage.

Most low-level creatures in Eternal Life don't get a mental attack by default. But they're really easy to get if you want one, even if you're a rampaging barbarian.

There's no universal damage for attacks in Eternal Life. All attacks inflict a certain category of damage, which default to Death, the closest thing to a universal damage. So setting someone on fire inflicts Fire and Death damage, stabbing someone with a poisoned knife inflicts Poison and Death damage, so on.

Status conditions in Eternal Life occur on a sliding scale. It's not all or nothing. Once you inflict enough of a certain kind of damage to put a creature in a condition, you can't cause them any more of that kind of damage. You can only make someone so blind or nauseated.

Of course, not all damage is created equal. That's intentional; it's much easier in this game to make someone deaf or dizzy than to turn them into a statue or even make them blind. Design intent is to have traditional 'save or dies' become easier to land if the enemy is already softened up. Note that most conditions inflict a penalty to either dodging ability, which racks up DPS and direct damage from power and logic or saves of a broad category while working their way to the final condition. It's easier in Eternal Life to petrify an ogre with a pet basilisk's gaze once the fighter has been beating on it with an axe for awhile and the thief have been jabbing cursed daggers into his side.

Example conditions:

Blindness: Once you receive your level - 2 in blind damage, you suffer a -1 penalty to all melee attacks, skills that involve sight, and a -3 to ranged attacks and your sight range is halved. If you receive your level +1 in blind damage, you receive a -3 penalty to melee attacks, -5 to ranged, your sight range is reduced to 10 feet. When you recieve your level +4 in blind damage, you cannot see at all. All enemies have total concealment relative to you.

Death: For every Size Category amount of death damage you receive, you take a -1 penalty on all actions. If you receive your Size + Level worth in death damage, you're incapacitated. If you recieve your size + 1.5x your level worth in death damage, you die.

Petrification: If you receive your level + 2 in petrification damage, -2 to all physical stats, -4 to initiative, -1 to save, lose ability to perform minor actions, base speed reduced to half. If you receive your level + 4 in petrification damage, receive a -3 to all saves and stats, base speed reduced to 1/4th, lose ability to perform minor AND move actions. If you receive your level + 8 in petrification damage, you become a stone statue.


Obvious, the math is nowhere near it should be, but should give a ballpack figure.

[Bigode]

What I'd think about it would be to use a 4-attribute system (SAME, for example; I'd like to see one for TNE, but I guess it's unworkable at this point) and attach each suit to one; then perhaps divide abilitties into offensive/defensive/neither or some other not-so-arbitrary distinction to make it easy to remember, and assign those to number ranges. So, say, an Offensive Willpower ability is usable on hearts 1-3, plus heart faces. That would not require tables at all for people with decent memory, much less custom cards.

Buttlords: no, we don't want custom cards because we aren't a corporation profitting on suckers. Will read your stuff later, I'm paying per minute here.

[Talisman]

I was just referring to the "how to stop card-spamming" part, i.e., redeal before every combat/major challenge. Sorry for the lack of clarity.

Your game is intriguing; I like the card mechanic. I'm wondering, though, if it might be better to ditch the level mechanic in favor of a more skillz-based game...or at least tone it down, a la Savage Worlds's "ranks." One of the problems I have with D&D is the huge power curve between levels 1 and 20...I'd like a FRPG where you start out with, say, 30% of your total power, with the remainder spread evenly over the campaign.

I do notice that you seem to have a huge number of occupations and specialties...might it be better to just give some examples and say "if it's not on the list, make it up"? Likewise the 18 classes and 12 stats...are all of these really necessary? Seems awfully crunchy.

Regarding the cards, I think the soution might be twofold. First, you assign each power a number and suit, so the game can be used with a standard deck o' cards and a chart. Next, you create individual cards in PDF format; interested parties can download the PDF and print 'em out. The printed cards will never be as slick as professional-quality playing cards, but them's the breaks.

[Bigode]

Regarding the cards, I think the soution might be twofold. First, you assign each power a number and suit, so the game can be used with a standard deck o' cards and a chart. Next, you create individual cards in PDF format; interested parties can download the PDF and print 'em out. The printed cards will never be as slick as professional-quality playing cards, but them's the breaks.

If you make the card suit/number pairs say something about the powers themselves, you don't need to check anything. And what do you gain by forsaking the ability to play poker with the same deck (fvck tarot, I wanna play a huckster)?

[PhoneLobster]

I've been running a card based home brew for a while.

So couple of things.

Printing cards, not a big deal but certainly somewhat tedious.

Printing MULTIPLE COPIES, somewhat more of an issue.

Even for a system with a small number of classes and moderate possible selections of cards within a class that is a LOT of cards. I'm running what? only nine classes currently and I got something like 200 cards. You are probably looking at even larger numbers of cards.

I'm doing it a fair bit differently to you. No random draw mechanic. No attributes outside of the cards themselves and a bunch of other stuff.
closest thing to a relevant link, somewhat out of date

So I'm looking at your description and realising that with that much investment in writing and printing cards PLUS a randomising element in the management of cards the whole bit where you also have a complex (off card?) attribute system AND some sort of dice pool thing for even more randomisation and stuff... Well. That seems like too many sources of randomisation and too many sources of complex interacting/stacking options and attributes.

So I think if you are putting that much effort into the cards they should be pretty much the main if not the entire meat of the system. And if you are using a randomised hand element that should be the ONLY randomising element you use (random draw OR dice rolls, both is too hot for my kitchen)

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

What I'd think about it would be to use a 4-attribute system (SAME, for example; I'd like to see one for TNE, but I guess it's unworkable at this point) and attach each suit to one; then perhaps divide abilitties into offensive/defensive/neither or some other not-so-arbitrary distinction to make it easy to remember, and assign those to number ranges. So, say, an Offensive Willpower ability is usable on hearts 1-3, plus heart faces. That would not require tables at all for people with decent memory, much less custom cards.

Well, I don't want to divide abilities into offensive and defensive to start with.

All abilities (cards) in Eternal Life are actually a combination of two abilities, an offense and a defense one related by both theme and ability. For example, a card might have Tear Gas (causes visual concealment and blindness) on one side and have Infrared Goggles (cuts through visual concealment and blindness while protecting you against both) on the other.

Thus there's no such thing as offensive or defensive specialists in EL; you specialize according to a damage, save, mobility, or whatever, but you never have the choice or misfortune between being stuck with no cards on the defense or offense. Yes, there's going to be the problem of people picking up abilities while only caring about one side or the other, but you always get a consolation prize in case you get a bad draw.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

So I'm looking at your description and realising that with that much investment in writing and printing cards PLUS a randomising element in the management of cards the whole bit where you also have a complex (off card?) attribute system AND some sort of dice pool thing for even more randomisation and stuff... Well. That seems like too many sources of randomisation and too many sources of complex interacting/stacking options and attributes.

It's a bit hard, but I'm trying to skew things in such a way that a character 2 levels higher than their opponent will crush them without mercy; a character 3 levels higher than an opposing party should easily beat them. There are only 10 levels in the game after all.

The point is that higher level characters can easily forgoe a lot of the randomness if they're facing monsters (who are intentionally supposed to be weaker than PCs pound-for-pound) or lower-level opposition; since they will be able to call up abilities/have access to equipment that will neem their opposition to zero quite easily but still have to rely on strategy and randomness to beat equal or higher-level opposition.

[Username17]

Player characters are like story characters. As such, giving them more than about 10-20 powers is usually counter productive. So you can very easily imagine a system in which characters have 2-4 abilities that they can activate by spending a card of an appropriate type. Players should usually have some kind of choice, and players should definitely have something to do with every kind of card.

Having players able to read their powers all the time by putting them on their character sheets is more valuable than having players able to read the powers they can use next round by having them printed on the cards themselves. As such, putting the abilities onto cards isn't merely expensive and annoying, it's genuinely counter-productive. The hands of players may change several times between their turns, and players should be able to check on what their powers do all the time, not merely when an ability is currently in-hand.

---

So every character needs:

• Club Abilities
• Diamond Abilities
• Heart Abilities
• Spade Abilities

Each of those abilities are usable on precisely one fourth of all cards. You could make the game more tactically approachable by having all Club Abilities be force-based, all Diamond abilities be Finesse and so on (so you'd want to load a Giant's hand up with any Diamonds you had, for example).

You can then institute additional cross-suit options for special cards:

• 3/13 (just shy of 1/4) of the cards are Face cards (Jack, Queen, King)
• 1/13 of the cards are Aces (or any other specific card you think is important).
• If you leave the Jokers in, you can have some Wild cards, which substantially increase the odds of getting whatever it is that you want or need.

As for defenses, I think it best if you set aside a certain number of cards face down as your defense options, and then revealed them when you were attacked. Putting a Diamond there would allow you a Finesse defense, for example, which would tweak off your own agility and be good against certain attack types. If you set aside more defense cards, you'd have more defensive options, but less attack options.

I figure that you should get a new hand at a specific time rather than whenever you burn through your cards. If that leaves you defensively running around or shaking yourself off, so be it.

-Username17

[the_taken]

Here's an interesting system I just came up with. It uses two standard deck of 54 cards, one deck for each side. You can have complicated three way battles by adding another deck for another side.

When a fight begins, draw four cards, look at them, and place them spread out and face down in front of you. These will be your defence options.
Draw five cards.
Randomly determine which side goes first by cutting each side's deck. Highest goes first (Joker>A>King). Then have each side determine their order. Alternate having a player from each side go. If your opposing team outnumbers you, pick start the order again and keep alternating.

On your turn you have the must either:

• take a card from your hand and place it face down in front of you as a new defence option
• take a card from your hand and place it face up in front of your opponent, to attack them
• Draw one or two cards from your team's deck. If your hand is empty, you must draw two cards.

Resolving Attacks: An attack is declared when an opponent places one his cards face up in front of the defender. The defender then either chooses to turn one of his defence options face up, or discard an already face up defence option. If the attacking card is higher, the defender discards a number of cards from his team's deck equal to the difference between the attacking card and the defence option used.
A player leaves the fight when he is attacked and has no cards in his team's deck, or when his hand is empty and can't draw at least one card.

Any questions so far?