Pokemasters

[Manxome]

I'm not familiar with L5R or Shadowfist.

Cosmic Encounter is a board game where you win by establishing bases on at least 5 planets originally controlled by other players. The number of (offensive) victories you need to score is invariant with respect to the number of players; in that regard, it seems to have the feature you want. It's not possible to be eliminated before the game ends (and it's rare even to be significantly marginalized).

However, if you currently have 4 bases, and are attacking to try to get a fifth, there's a pretty good chance that every player who doesn't want to lose is going to ally with whoever you're attacking, which means the resistance you face in scoring your last victory increases in proportion to the total number of players in the game. Even in three-player games (which is the minimum number), in my experience, victory is almost never achieved except by surprise or conspiracy, and it's not implausible for a large game to last a very, very long time.

And that's in a game with strong random factors, substantial hidden information, and all sorts of crazy unbalanced stuff.

I can't think of any strategic games where free-for-all variants don't require radically different tactics from two-team variants. The ability for many players to gang up on whoever appears to be winning generally guarantees that politics trumps strategy.

I generally prefer my strategy games with two teams (or one team of "real" players vs. AIs). Reduces politicking, and increases the expected number of times any given player wins.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Having played a LOT of magic, and a fair few games of Munchkin, I prefer "loss" conditions for multiplayer games. Munchkin has just too many turns of everyone stopping the player who is just about to win, such that the actual victory condition is not "get to level 10" but "be the person who gets to level 10 just after everyone else exhausts their hand". It ends up feeling completely random and worthless. The same thing happens in Illuminati: New World Order, but at least there you can sometimes get a solid enough position that people don't realize you're about to win until they can't stop you.

And yet, some people can STILL be stuck in a game that they have no chance to win and waste an hour watching other people keep trying. I'd rather get knocked out of the game and start a new game up, instead of being stuck like that.

"Win" conditions are good if you want everyone to be playing one single game at a time, but if you have few enough people to make that desirable (say, 3-4), you should play a boardgame instead, since those work much better for a group of that size.

[angelfromanotherpin]

You actually usually want at least some randomness, for fixing quantization error and preventing two games from playing out exactly the same.

Okay, I had to look up 'quantization error,' which seems to be about signal conversion, so I'm not sure what it means in this context and I'd appreciate some clarification on that.

At the same time, many games (Go, for instance) include no mechanical randomness, but contain sufficient valid options that 'playing the same game' isn't an issue. In a customizable deck game, where each time you sit down your opponent might be doing something entirely different, I think it would be even less of a problem.

You can use die rolls or something and give players access to all their "cards" at all times, but at that point I hesitate to describe it as a "card game," simply due to the traditional implications of that term.

Yeah, well, people were actually reluctant to call Magic the Gathering a card game when it came out, simply due to the traditional implications of the term, because a deck of cards had clubs and hearts, dammit; and everyone should get a random hand from that common diamond-and-spade-having deck.

In other words, I don't care what you would call my proposed game style. I call it 'better.'

Having a huge number of cards available every turn also tends to slow games down, especially with novice players.

Novices are always slower, no matter what game you play. In my experience, players with any seasoning usually know what they want/need at any given point and can find it fairly quickly. What slows the game down (and provides negative play experience) is turn after turn topdecking for the last piece you need to win that you put max copies of in your deck but somehow are all clumped in the bottom quarter, and similar.

I've played MTG and been bulldozed because of late-game land runs. I've played L5R and seen games stall out while both players waited for a Rallying Cry. I've played Babylon 5 and groaned because Strike At The Heart came up too late, and now all the players are stuck waiting on Elder Races Triumph. Et cetera, et multiple cetera.

Some of it is card pool and the resulting environment, but tweaking those is always going to be unpredictable. Just removing the major random factor creates a much better experience, because being in control is more fun than being at the mercy of whatever force governs topdecking.

[Username17]

The best solution to top decking is giving out hand refills at the start of each turn rather than just a single card draw.

You'll note how much ot a problem Dynasty randomness is in L5R while Fate Randomness often leads to boring waiting games.

-Username17

[virgil]

I still want to see a game of Knightmare Chess where the decks are stacked in whatever order you want.

[angelfromanotherpin]

1195479030[/unixtime]]The best solution to top decking is giving out hand refills at the start of each turn rather than just a single card draw.

You'll note how much ot a problem Dynasty randomness is in L5R while Fate Randomness often leads to boring waiting games.

-Username17

Dynasty randomness remained a significant problem in L5R until Gifts and Favors (and its successors), which removed a significant chunk of that randomness.

I've played full hand-refill games (like Lord of the Rings) and partial hand-refill games (like Burning Sands) and they are definitely better, but just because you are getting a larger number of randomly-determined resources, leading to a larger probability of not being screwed, sometimes you catch the low end of that probability curve and get screwed anyway. That it happens less often only highlights how lame it is when it eventually does happen.

[Username17]

I have to say that managing deck resources in order to maximize your chances of getting what you need is like, the entire point of deck design. You end up putting in more of various stuff than you want because getting less of it than you need is considered unacceptable.

You don't win every game. It's a card game, that's kind of the point.

-Username17

[tzor]

1195378763[/unixtime]]Cosmic Encounter is a board game where you win by establishing bases on at least 5 planets originally controlled by other players. ...

You know I haven't played that game in decades. The later editions had expansions to the basic game. A good board game that is expandable (like the more modern Settlers of Catan) has a lot of features of a collectable card game in that you get variety through new (and hopefully balanced) additions.

[Judging__Eagle]

1195488036[/unixtime]]I have to say that managing deck resources in order to maximize your chances of getting what you need is like, the entire point of deck design. You end up putting in more of various stuff than you want because getting less of it than you need is considered unacceptable.

You don't win every game. It's a card game, that's kind of the point.

-Username17

Which is why, when designing a deck, I try to design the entire deck around one card.

Mostly to keep myself from putting way too many useless cards in my decks.

On the other hand, when I've got a strong theme, I can identify what cards belong and what cards don't.

Like my white/black deck that centred around the Mortal Combat card and relied on nothing but white rebels and black mercenaries to block (and die); the only other effects that the deck had were a bunch of "pull card out of graveyard" and "pull card out of deck" effects to ensure that Mortal Combat was in play when I hit 20 dead creatures in my graveyard.

Of course, someone with a graveyard destruction card would ruin my day, but thems the breaks and most people don't target other people's graveyards.

My flying/swampwalking zombies deck relied on the Zombie leader card that came out of Torment as well (the one that turns lands into swamps if you tap a zombie and gives either 1 or all of your zombies swampwalk if you tap a zombie).

[the only reason I had Mortal Combat was b/c I bought a box Tormet boosters for 80$; if I ever started buying cards again, I'd just buy a box of boosters and see what cards I could build a deck around].

[angelfromanotherpin]

1195488036[/unixtime]]I have to say that managing deck resources in order to maximize your chances of getting what you need is like, the entire point of deck design.

That sort of consideration doesn't stop just because you can pick your draws from a deck. In a hypothetical choose-draw MTG, there's still a minimum amount of land you want, for instance, but calculating how much is still a judgement call. You want at least as much as your most expensive spell, maybe a little more if you think you'll see any land destruction, maybe a little more for various other reasons. That the number is probably less than the number mandated by enforced desperate gambling doesn't bother me.

Think about getting an opening hand in such a game. How do you compose it? All good spells, because you can just pull the land-per-turn you'll play anyway? What if your opponent throws something unexpected? You probably have a counter for it, but it'll screw up your mana curve. Maybe one, maybe two lands-in-hand to start with, as placeholders for your contingencies? I don't know, I've never played MTG that way, but the idea of it engages me a lot more than the usual opening hand experience, which is 'I hope I don't have to mulligan.'

You end up putting in more of various stuff than you want because getting less of it than you need is considered unacceptable.

Throw-mud-at-the-wall-style deckbuilding is the industry standard, to be sure. I just think it's a bug, not a feature.

You don't win every game. It's a card game, that's kind of the point.

Losing or not is not the point, it's the means by which losing is achieved. In a game which is me against another player, (as opposed to something like Arkham Horror) I would prefer to lose solely because of my own bad decisions (play mistakes, bad deckbuilding, environment miscalculation), rather than because of a combination of bad decisions and bad luck. In a multiplayer game, I would also accept failure of negotiation as an acceptable factor, because managing interplayer relationships is part of the game.

In Yu-gi-oh, you can win the game before a single card is even played if you happen to draw the Exodia combo. In L5R Open, it is possible to win the game on the first turn if four Events which destroy enemy provinces show up. Most people agree that kind of shit is unacceptable game design, but in fact everyone is playing that game to some degree while draws are random.

Now, skill does seem to be a much bigger factor than luck in most of the successful card games, which is why the same names keep showing up at the top of the tournament lists. Would it really hurt so bad to have even less luck involved?

[Username17]

Would it really hurt so bad to have even less luck involved?

Yes. If I wanted play a game with no random element I'd play Chess. The strategy and tactics of a card game are entirely based on reacting to the surprising situations that arise.

If you play your entire deck as your hand, then the only surprise is what comes out of your opponent's hand. And that's fucked. Especially in a world with NetDecking, where that probably won't even be surprising.

Choosing your draws biases the game in favor of combos at the expense of reliable workhorse cards. As a result, victory combos would have to be eliminated from the game and that would diminish things greatly. Then we actually would just be playing Chess - each player given a deck with a Pawn, a Knight, a Bishop, a Rook, and a pile of Queens.

-Username17

[Manxome]

1195476625[/unixtime]]Okay, I had to look up 'quantization error,' which seems to be about signal conversion, so I'm not sure what it means in this context and I'd appreciate some clarification on that.

At the same time, many games (Go, for instance) include no mechanical randomness, but contain sufficient valid options that 'playing the same game' isn't an issue. In a customizable deck game, where each time you sit down your opponent might be doing something entirely different, I think it would be even less of a problem.

Quantization error occurs when you convert from a richer medium into a poorer medium and the "rounding" you do in the conversion introduces a systematic error.

Say you've got a grayscale image and you need to convert it into a two-color (black and white) image. The simplest way to do that is to look at each pixel and turn it white if it's <50% gray and turn it black if it's >50% gray. But that means that if you have a gray region of the image, it'll turn solid white or solid black. It would be much better to turn some of those pixels white and some of them black, so that the average color stays about the same (this is called dithering).

When you play a complicated game, you make a lot of choices; there are a lot of inputs into the game, and often many objectives. But at the end of the game, that's reduced to a binary result: you win or you lose. And it's dull and unfair for a player who's only marginally better to win 100% of the time. It would seem much more natural, fair, and interesting if a marginally better player wins, say, 60% of the time, with that probability increasing with the difference in player skill, so there's a greater chance of an upset between two closely-matched players than if one player is vastly better than another.

Now, it's true that you don't necessarily need mechanical randomness to accomplish this; you can also do it by evoking semi-chaotic behavior from the players. But including some mechanical randomness--say, at a little bit less than the expected level of pseudo-randomness from the players--often helps defend the game against unanticipated exploits and introduce more variety without dramatically impacting the gameplay (ignoring the costs of implementing the randomness, which for deck-shuffling are generally very small).



I think the problem you're having with your example games is that the random influence is too strong; we want randomness to provide a chance of upset in a close game and to force players to adapt to new circumstances, not to trump player choice as the primary decider of the outcome. But that's a problem with the design of the game, not a fundamental problem of random deck-ordering.

For example, in Magic, it's presumably very destructive to the game if you happen, by chance, to get most of your lands very early or very late in the game. That problem does go away if you let players choose cards at will instead of at random (or even if you just let them put their deck in any order they choose at the start of the game), but such a drastic step is not strictly necessary. For example, you could also solve that problem by putting lands in a separate pile from other cards, so that players can choose whether they want to draw a land or not, but cannot choose which specific land or non-land they want to draw. Now the player doesn't need to cope with all his mana being at the bottom of the deck, but still needs to cope with, say, his mana pool occasionally being slanted towards one color: still a random influence that will change how the game is played, but less likely to dramatically change the outcome.

Alternately, maybe there are no "land" cards, but any card can optionally be played as a land of the same color--now you have to choose which cards to sacrifice to increase your mana pool, and at what point the value of all the cards in your hand exceeds the value of putting another land in play.

That's just one specific problem; you may not find this particular change to your liking, and there are doubtless other issues. But you can certainly overcome these kinds of issues with clever game design without eliminating randomness from the game, and I think the deck-shuffling mechanic is probably worth preserving, because it's an extremely elegant and efficient way to introduce randomness throughout a computation-light game.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Yes. If I wanted play a game with no random element I'd play Chess. The strategy and tactics of a card game are entirely based on reacting to the surprising situations that arise.

Well, the customizable issue makes the analogy less like Chess and more like what I would call Kung Fu, where you have a very large (but finite) number of moves to choose a more limited set to train in, and see if your Kung Fu is better than the other guy's. Maybe I'd better call it Kung-Fu Robots, to acknowledge that specific interactions between moves do always play out the same way (unlike human martial arts).

If you play your entire deck as your hand, then the only surprise is what comes out of your opponent's hand. And that's fucked. Especially in a world with NetDecking, where that probably won't even be surprising.

Well, first, there's a distinction between draw-picking and deck-in-hand (which I have tried and am not advocating). I'm sure you get that distinction, and if it's not meaningful to you then I'll say no more.

As to the predictability of decks, surely that's the result of lackluster environments? I mean, in a truly robust and diverse environment, that kind of predictability rarely exists as an issue. My experience of the tourney scene is that most tourneys aren't won by netdeckers, but by the innovators who explore truly alien concepts, or put clever turns on old classics.

Hell, if it can be netdecked, in can be net-meta'd, and in a choose-draw game that meta isn't going to sit useless in your hand in any other match-up, because if you don't want it, you don't draw it. Conversely, if you do need it, you will get it, so if you have thought ahead, you have the advantage.

Choosing your draws biases the game in favor of combos at the expense of reliable workhorse cards. As a result, victory combos would have to be eliminated from the game and that would diminish things greatly. Then we actually would just be playing Chess - each player given a deck with a Pawn, a Knight, a Bishop, a Rook, and a pile of Queens.

It's only a bias, it's not an enthronement. Combo-style cards might have to be weakened, workhorses might have to be beefed up, but I'm sure a balance point could still be found. That's a playtest issue.

Once again, as long as there are a wide variety of meaningfully different Pawn-types, Knight-types and so on to choose from... it ain't Chess.

[cthulhu]

1195498951[/unixtime]]

Now, skill does seem to be a much bigger factor than luck in most of the successful card games, which is why the same names keep showing up at the top of the tournament lists. Would it really hurt so bad to have even less luck involved?

This is because they play best of 3 or 5 matches so if you get a shitty match you tend to able to use the other 2/4 to come back. Sometimes you just get screwed though. Individual games are chancy though. Someone really can just get the nuts.

also the level of skill in the games are underrated. Especially in the formats with tutors, the decision space is *very* large just in your own turn.

[Prak]

So, how would team rocket work? How do you handle stealing Pokemon from a pokemaster, looting a dead one?

[Chamomile]

[Prak]

Your point, Cham? so it's a four year old thread, what's wrong with necro-ing it, exactly?

I'm looking at playing a pokemaster in a game, and the question has come up, how do you handle stealing pokemon. The question has also come up, are pokemon actually summoned, or just controlled as if they were, and I'm hoping Frank will peek in here and give some advice. ...and possibly a team rocket class.

(also, pick a better source for pics. That one doesn't show up in thread)

[Quantumboost]

Pokéballs and Pokémon: When a Pokémon is caught with a Pokéball (see Craft Pokéball below) it is shrunk down and placed in stasis like with Gloves of Storing. While in a Pokéball, Pokémon do not need to eat, sleep, breathe, etc. A Pokémon can be returned to its Pokéball or removed from its Pokéball as a standard action by the Pokémaster which owns it within a range of 25 feet + 5 feet per two caster levels. If a Pokéball with a Pokémon in it is traded, given, or sold to another person, ownership of the Pokémon is also transferred. A Pokémon heals rapidly while within its Pokéball. Regular damage is converted to nonlethal damage at the rate that nonlethal damage normally heals for the creature. Nonlethal damage heals at the normal rate while in its Pokéball.

Control Pokémon (Ex): A Pokémaster can have a number of owned Pokémon in Pokéballs equal to her Charisma Modifier be "Controlled." A Controlled Pokémon behaves like a summoned monster when released from its Pokéball, and is essentially under the control of the Pokémaster. A Pokémaster cannot control a Pokémon whose Challenge Rating is equal to or greater than the Pokémaster’s Caster Level. See the rubric for increasing challenge rating based on extra hit dice or class levels in the Monster Manual to determine if the Pokémon is Controllable. An uncontrolled Pokémon will act as it sees fit, possibly going on a rampage, running away, or simply sleeping until it is returned to its Pokéball. Furthermore, Dragon type Pokémon are harder to control than other Pokémon, and use twice their CR or their own CR + 4, whichever is less, to determine whether they will obey their Pokémaster. A Controlled Pokémon cannot use any Summoning ability to summon uncontrolled Pokémon.

More than one Controlled Pokémon can be out of their balls at any one time, but only the first one released behaves like a summoned monster – any subsequent released Pokémon will act normally, usually standing around and watching events transpire, or sleeping (extreme events can cause them to take direct action at DM’s option).

Increases to Charisma only affect the number of Pokémon which can be Controlled if the increase would affect spells per day for a Charisma-based spellcaster. As such, effects like Eagle's Splendor do not increase the number of Controllable Pokémon, but a Cloak of Charisma would. Once a Pokémaster has reached the limit of the number of Pokémon which can be Controlled, the Pokémaster cannot Control any more until one or more of the Controlled Pokémon are released from Control or killed. Releasing a Pokémon from Control takes about 10 minutes. Control can be reasserted, but only if the Pokémaster has the ability to Control that many Pokémon.

So, Pokéballs are physical objects, and the Pokémon are actually physically contained within them (via a gloves of storing-like effect). They behave like summoned creatures, i.e. for the purpose of giving them orders, but there are actual rules for when they die, which means they don't just vanish like summoned creatures when they go to -10 hp. I'd conclude that they're not summoned creatures, especially since they're actual creatures being transported around in (reduced) physical form and/or teleported, and there's nothing that specifically says they are Summoned creatures beyond following orders.

Presumably that means that Team Rocket et al steal Pokémon from someone by stealing the actual physical Pokéball, and bring the Pokémon inside to their side first by adding them to a Rocket trainer's set of Controlled Pokémon and later via the 4th level ability that causes alignment shift.

[Prak]

Fair enough. I figured as much (though I keep kind of wishing they were summoned, for Augment Summons), and it means that a Staff of Steal Summons, like my friend suggested, is rather pointless.

As far as I can tell, however, there is no reason one cannot capture a creature that has been summoned, and use it as normal, is there?


Also, I may write up my own Team Rocket PrC. I've got fuck all to do today.

[Quantumboost]

Fair enough. I figured as much (though I keep kind of wishing they were summoned, for Augment Summons), and it means that a Staff of Steal Summons, like my friend suggested, is rather pointless.

You couldn't do that anyway, since Augment Summoning specifies summoning spells, and Control Pokemon is an Extraordinary Ability.

As far as I can tell, however, there is no reason one cannot capture a creature that has been summoned, and use it as normal, is there?

You probably could, but keep in mind that if it's spell-summoned, once the spell ends the creature probably ceases to exist. Demon/Devil summons may or may not be the same; they're supposed to go "whence they came" after an hour, but that could just as easily mean that they magically go somewhere else and are still attuned to the Pokéball, so you just tell them beforehand to return to you as soon as they can.

Calling creatures, of course, is even more useful for Pokémasters than for Necromancers trying to get fancy skeletons.

[Josh_Kablack]

Frank had a Team Rocket PrC on the old site. It got a bunch of rhyming abilities, including a disguise bonus when using flimsy moustaches and the like.

[Orion]

I thought summoned creatures disappeared at 0 HP, making them uncapturable.

[Seerow]

Where is this pokemaster class?

[Quantumboost]

If the damage is nonlethal, it doesn't have <=0 hit points. It has nonlethal damage equal to or greater than its hit points.

Edit: Current location of Pokémon d20 is here.

[Dominicius]

Well since we are talking about Pokemon I'd like to ask a question regarding the topic. I'll probably be playing this some time soon.

So on a scale of 1 to 10 how ass are these rules? Considering this was made by 4chan my hopes are not too high.