Idea: Card Based Combat

[Mistborn]

So as I was thinking about my terrible pet project I had an idea I thought I would run out. Since the game I'm working on involes mages that generally have access to all their spells I've found it hard to make a resourse system that not terrible. So hears another one of my terrible game ideas. Well it's more of a lose framework

Card Based Combat: basically you use MTG style "power cards" as your resource. So the basic idea is you have a "strife deck" and you get a number of your powers at the begining of each encounter and when the powers are used up the go back into the deck. Now how it pans out from there has literally infinite possibilities. You could shuffle you deck WoF style or you could just have people pick what they want. More interestingly is that you could do oddball things like have people give up actions to "draw" cards or "discard" cards as part of the cost of using one of your better powers. You could also have powres that get removed from you deck for a set period of time after you use them and therefore funtion as a kind of encounter/daily power. If your not doing WoF that means more situational powers "cost" less to take since you can alway elect not to draw them when you don't need them.

So why did I think this bad idea was even remotely worth ranting about inchoherently? Well it potentially solves some problems I've been having One it's a potential way to control intrupt style actions since having acess to the takes up the same slots as everything else. Plus this sort of system can support a lot of complexity without alienating new players.

[Previn]

So something like WHFRP 3e?

[Mistborn]

So something like WHFRP 3e?

I've never played any Warhammer what does their system look like?

[Previn]

Uh... let's see, I've only glanced over it.

You make a deck of 'action cards' some things modify the cards you can have in that deck. You can also spend creation points to get more cards.

When you preform an action, you roll the funky dice pool, and see what additional bonuses you get from the card.

Sample Cards:

[Mistborn]

So I have no idea how that system relates to what I'm trying to do.

So hear is the rough skeleton for how I plan to implement my card system. So you have 8-12 cards in your strife deck and you always just look through your deck take what ever you want when you "draw" a card. So when combat starts you have a hand of three cards and the way the action economy works out is you can choose to either draw another card each turn or use that action to be able to make another move. If you end you turn with more than three cards you have to discard back down to three. You also have reactions that work like imedate actions except you can do them as many times as you have cards for.

So you get lots of options do you play conservatively and continually draw one card and then use it or do you insted leave yourself vunrable by taking a double action.

[Previn]

So I have no idea how that system relates to what I'm trying to do.

It uses cards (plus dice) to determine what actions you do in combat. The exact details are different but that's generally exactly what you're trying to do: Use cards for combat. If you can't see how they relate I have no idea what to tell you.

So hear is the rough skeleton for how I plan to implement my card system. So you have 8-12 cards in your strife deck and you always just look through your deck take what ever you want when you "draw" a card. So when combat starts you have a hand of three cards and the way the action economy works out is you can choose to either draw another card each turn or use that action to be able to make another move. If you end you turn with more than three cards you have to discard back down to three. You also have reactions that work like imedate actions except you can do them as many times as you have cards for.

If you only get 8-12 cards, and you get to pick what they are anyways, why are they cards? It sounds like 4e powers and power cards as opposed to actually using cards for things like randomization and adding an element of the unknown.

[...You Lost Me]

If you only get 8-12 cards, and you get to pick what they are anyways, why are they cards? It sounds like 4e powers and power cards as opposed to actually using cards for things like randomization and adding an element of the unknown.

I think that it would be because if you want to shoot off three fireballs at a time, you need to make your deck that way (which removes your other options--decisions and stuff!), and also cards will help you keep track of what powers you've selected.

It sounds hard to balance, and suffers from regular card problems. Firstly, combat can't be rocket-launchery because then players will always choose to nuke as hard as they can (especially because they can draw whatever they want) in round 1. So you've restricted combat to a non-3e more padded kind of fighting--and that's OK, it's just a thing.

My biggest beef is that this doesn't solve any problems in regular card systems. Printing cards is big pain, it's easy to lose (though 8-12 cards helps with that), and everybody feels the same (I know players don't actually have to be at all, but people will feel that way)

[rasmuswagner]

WHFRP3 is not really a card game. It's just that your character sheet is made up of cards and cardboard pieces, instead of a list of feats and spells.

[Previn]

If you only get 8-12 cards, and you get to pick what they are anyways, why are they cards? It sounds like 4e powers and power cards as opposed to actually using cards for things like randomization and adding an element of the unknown.

I think that it would be because if you want to shoot off three fireballs at a time, you need to make your deck that way (which removes your other options--decisions and stuff!), and also cards will help you keep track of what powers you've selected.

I could seriously just write down a list of 8-12 things on my sheet. At the start of combat I choose 3 of them. I can spend an action to do one thing, or choose to replace one thing or fill a used thing with another thing from the list.

Building the deck doesn't do anything different from listing out the abilities, it's just sleight of hand in how the restrictions are set (only 4 cards by name in a deck; no more than 4 fireballs on your list at once).

[...You Lost Me]

Requiring someone to keep track of abilities they have on hand off of a list sounds like a pain. People will want something easier, like poker chips next to the abilities they have. Or maybe cards.

Hm, cards. Funny how that works.

[Mistborn]

It sounds hard to balance, and suffers from regular card problems. Firstly, combat can't be rocket-launchery because then players will always choose to nuke as hard as they can (especially because they can draw whatever they want) in round 1. So you've restricted combat to a non-3e more padded kind of fighting--and that's OK, it's just a thing.

The princible is that if you fire off your sweet 2x nuke combo you leave up fewer cards to use as interupts. The optimal way to play this sort of system is not to blow you load round one but to sit back on conters until your shure you can drop someone with you doom combo. In theory the system I'm working on works out to 3-5 round fights (which is how things tend to work out in 3e).

[Previn]

Requiring someone to keep track of abilities they have on hand off of a list sounds like a pain. People will want something easier, like poker chips next to the abilities they have. Or maybe cards.

Hm, cards. Funny how that works.

It's 8-12 abilities. You're seriously claiming that being a 5th level Swordsage gives you difficulty tracking your maneuvers. I cannot even begin to imagine how difficult a sorcerer must be to play in that case.

[codeGlaze]

Requiring someone to keep track of abilities they have on hand off of a list sounds like a pain. People will want something easier, like poker chips next to the abilities they have. Or maybe cards.

Hm, cards. Funny how that works.

It's 8-12 abilities. You're seriously claiming that being a 5th level Swordsage gives you difficulty tracking your maneuvers. I cannot even begin to imagine how difficult a sorcerer must be to play in that case.

QFT. I've never actually run into someone who preferred cards or counters over a (readable) list.

[OgreBattle]

Hey Mistborn isnt that pretty much how the crusader n warblade work?


Ive thought about card based play but from the other direction of MTG, that is you have a list of your powers but what you select is your 'mana pool' to play your powers with. Your 'mana pool' is refilled every 2 rounds so you have to think a turn ahead.

Ex:

Mana types
-offense
-defense
-maneuver
-magic

so a flurry of blows takes two offense mana, a tumbling strike takes 1maneuver1offense, while 1maneuver1defense gives you a tumbling dodge.

[...You Lost Me]

It's 8-12 abilities. You're seriously claiming that being a 5th level Swordsage gives you difficulty tracking your maneuvers. I cannot even begin to imagine how difficult a sorcerer must be to play in that case.

I'm going to suppress the urge to fill this post with profanity and call you stupid, and will instead explain my case again in a way that's easy to understand.

Firstly, this is a hypothetical game in which every ability is usable both as a standard attack and as a counterattack. That means every ability will have two uses, which means a fair amount of reading. This means that it will be ideal to have the ability text on hand instead of ground somewhere within a book. So either having a list of things pre-written or having cards is good.

Secondly, a player may have multiple different abilities or copies of one ability at any given time. They scan have anywhere between 0 and 4 of these abilities, and keeping track of both the number of copies and which specific abilities were pulled can be difficult. Having something to keep track of this is good.

Now, there are a few different possibilities I see here:

1. You have a list of your abilities, and look them up in the book when you use them. This is a terrible idea and we both know that.
2. You have a list of your abilities, and have them memorized. This doesn't happen.
3. You have a list of abilities on which you have written the entirety of the ability text, and you use counters or something to keep track of abilities.
4. You have a small deck of cards with the card abilities written on them, and you use them to keep track of the abilities.

The last two work, and one of those is a card ability. If you think it is more practical to memorize/look up every single ability you might throw down, each with at least 2 uses, then more power to you. But the rest of us people who have lives and want to make them easy will gravitate to a different thing.

And your very dumb hyperbole about sorcerers and swordsages is very dumb. The swordsage is built so as to have a list of abilities you want to use and a small list of abilities that are crap which you will never use. Instead of juggling 0-4 of those you simply put a check-mark next to them once you've used them and then they're gone. Each ability only has one use instead of 2+, and only one copy of an ability can be readied at a time. At this point I wonder if you've even read the OP instead of cursorily glancing over it.

[Mistborn]

Firstly, this is a hypothetical game in which every ability is usable both as a standard attack and as a counterattack.

Sorry if It wasn't clear but the idea is that any card has one use either as an attack or as defensive interupt.

[...You Lost Me]

Firstly, this is a hypothetical game in which every ability is usable both as a standard attack and as a counterattack.

Sorry if It wasn't clear but the idea is that any card has one use either as an attack or as defensive interupt.

Oh, then nevermind. It would probably be very easy to memorize and prepare decks then.

[Previn]

You have a small deck of cards with the card abilities written on them, and you use them to keep track of the abilities.

Or... you have 1 page with the abilities listed on them, maybe using both sides. You can fit the complete spells of Animal Growth, Animal Messenger, Animal Trance, Animal Shapes, Animate Dead, Animate Objects, Animate Plants and Animate Rope on 1 sheet of paper. That's 8 spells, none of which are short, and I seriously can't see something as complex as Animate Dead fitting on a reasonably sized card.

10 ToB maneuvers/stances fit on a single page as well.

So, to track those abilities, we use a 3x5 index card that really does look like this:

Code: Select all

Thing		 #	Readied
Ability A	1	
Ability B	2	
Ability C	1	x
Ability D	4	xx
Ability E	2	
Ability F	2	

That is very simple to track, and covers both the number of 'things' available and which 'things' are pulled/readied. It's quick, it's simple, it can be done on a sheet of scrap paper.

What is the point of cards? So that if I have 20 total abilities and 4 players, I need to have 320 total cards printed out to make sure everyone can have the deck they should if they can have 4 of any specific card?

[...You Lost Me]

You have a small deck of cards with the card abilities written on them, and you use them to keep track of the abilities.

Or... you have 1 page with the abilities listed on them, maybe using both sides. You can fit the complete spells of Animal Growth, Animal Messenger, Animal Trance, Animal Shapes, Animate Dead, Animate Objects, Animate Plants and Animate Rope on 1 sheet of paper. That's 8 spells, none of which are short, and I seriously can't see something as complex as Animate Dead fitting on a reasonably sized card.

OK, so I'm at the point where I've confirmed you are either deliberately trolling or you have trouble reading. You literally took a point I made, and then repeated what I said in the sentence directly before it as though that was a different argument and you were totally right. I'm going to rage at you this once and then leave this thread because you are (intentionally or unintentionally) threadshitting.

So, to track those abilities, we use a 3x5 index card that really does look like this:

Code: Select all

Thing		 #	Readied
Ability A	1	
Ability B	2	
Ability C	1	x
Ability D	4	xx
Ability E	2	
Ability F	2	

This actually doesn't make any sense. Like I honestly don't know what the numbers mean, or why you have listed 6 abilities when we're using 8-12 (is this a shorthand or something?). The only thing I actually understand is "Readied", and that's stupid because you appear to be advocating for writing and erasing something 1-2 times per round.

That is very simple to track, and covers both the number of 'things' available and which 'things' are pulled/readied. It's quick, it's simple, it can be done on a sheet of scrap paper.

I can't even read it.

What is the point of cards? So that if I have 20 total abilities and 4 players, I need to have 320 total cards printed out to make sure everyone can have the deck they should if they can have 4 of any specific card?

You are an idiot. There are definitely bad things about using cards. No one, literally no one is arguing against that. The point I have been arguing (which appears to have gone straight over your head) is that the card system has value in the situation I thought LM was describing. Having been corrected by LM several posts back and now knowing that his system is much simpler, I no longer believe his project should be done with cards, but I did think so at the beginning because the difficulty in tracking abilities did warrant something like cards.

I am not here to advocate for specific ways to print your cards so you have enough copies for everyone. I am not here to advocate for condensing non-combat abilities into cards. The only reason I posted in this thread was because I thought 8-12 combat abilities with 2 or more uses each warranted the use of a card-draw mechanic, and I just cannot fathom the depths of hurgle burgle you must be channeling right now in order to totally ignore everything I'm saying.

[codeGlaze]

You could always just print pseudo-cards at the end of a character sheet like the original 4e character generator did for powers.

[...You Lost Me]

I think printing needs to be less expensive before printing cards becomes a thing.

[Blade]

I've played a game with card based combat. Depending on your combat skills you got more or less cards. Each card was a maneuver you could pull during combat. The biggest issue I had was that even if you got a lot of cards, you could end up with only useless cards, and your combat expert was unable to do anything effective.

[zugschef]

I've played a game with card based combat. Depending on your combat skills you got more or less cards. Each card was a maneuver you could pull during combat. The biggest issue I had was that even if you got a lot of cards, you could end up with only useless cards, and your combat expert was unable to do anything effective.

write better maneuvers on the cards then?

[Previn]

So, to track those abilities, we use a 3x5 index card that really does look like this:

Code: Select all

Thing		 #	Readied
Ability A	1	
Ability B	2	
Ability C	1	x
Ability D	4	xx
Ability E	2	
Ability F	2	

This actually doesn't make any sense. Like I honestly don't know what the numbers mean, or why you have listed 6 abilities when we're using 8-12 (is this a shorthand or something?). The only thing I actually understand is "Readied", and that's stupid because you appear to be advocating for writing and erasing something 1-2 times per round.

It's really simple if you take a couple of seconds to look at rather than just flipping out. The first column is the things (cards) you have in your deck. In this case we have 6 'cards' that make up our deck. The number denotes how many of that particular 'thing' or 'card' you have (and adds up to 12 total since we can have 0-4 of any thing/card). Just like in MtG if I were to list Lightning Bolt x4 you'd know I have 4 in my deck. The X would denote the card being in your hand/ready. It is seriously a short MtG deck list with an extra column for readied/in hand.

Also, how many times do you have to write/erase HP in a round? If that really bugs you that much, write it out slightly larger and use dice. I can easily line up 12 regular size dice on a 3x5 index card with plenty of room to spare.

[...You Lost Me]

Oh lord, your defense of your crappy system is "I understand it therefore you are stupid". It's so... just... oh my god how do you function?

And of course, your defense of having to erase/re-write things is that I already do it therefore it's OK to add more, which is also stupid.

And then your final suggestion is entirely a repeat of exactly what I said three posts ago. And then you also continue to ignore every other aspect of the argument that doesn't allow you to spew nonsense. I can't handle you.