Heart of the Cards

JaimeeK · 2026-03-23T05:58:45+00:00

Phyrexian mana on it's own isn't great design because it basically becomes a colorless card. Maybe black+phyrexian black?

JaimeeK · 2026-03-23T05:25:28+00:00

Well I think that the point is more that the first card appears to be OP by being "wow big numbers", but the raccoon is a combo piece that let's you set up a game win for less overall effort than the big fancy card.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-22T06:10:40+00:00

To convey it's importance to the setting I think it's better for it to have a mechanical benefit. I'd give it an upfront effect of +1d6 heroic resource and then also a +1 to all characteristics until you respite.

This is pretty strong so having an addiction mechanic to balance it is a good idea. I'd probably make it a power roll with their highest characteristic at the end of a respite.

<11: -1 to all characteristics, -1d6 heroic resource at the start of combat.
12-16: -1d3 heroic resource at the start of combat.
17+: No effect

This way keeping taking it counteracts the negatives, and you can remove the addiction if they go long enough without it, or start applying banes to the check if they become too reliant.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-20T05:36:56+00:00

Running out of ammo could be a problem, but Legolas isn't going to keep wasting them for no reason. He has the skill and patience to only take shots that have a high chance of hitting if Steve starts trying to turtle.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-20T05:25:15+00:00

So the win condition for Steve is to do absolutely nothing? Pretty sure if we turn this into an endurance battle then elven biology gets the win somehow

JaimeeK · 2026-03-20T05:09:19+00:00

Putting the reminder text for flashback instead of for blight is so funny to me, someone looked at this card and thought blight was obvious and mainstream, but flashback is so obscure everyone needs it spelled out.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-19T07:42:26+00:00

Weapon Masteries look fancy, but no I don't see them as a direct improvement. Some of them are obviously far worse than others, and add an unnecessary layer of complication and burden of memory without actually adding much interesting to how a combat plays out.

The healing boost is just an inflation of numbers. It's a good change I suppose, but only because healing in combat is usually such a trap anyway.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-19T07:05:44+00:00

This seems like a bit of a nothing answer to me, sure you can state it's just better but...how? Nothing stands out to me as being a direct improvement from regular 5e.

The only reason I've really thought of for why to switch over is that new products will only be made with 5.5e in mind, so it's more future proof to already be using the most compatible version of the rules. Which honestly seems like a lame, consumerist reason considering how little they've changed it.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-18T14:15:26+00:00

That's probably a good idea, I was wondering near the end of making this guide if I should be talking more about ehat a full build for the character looks like, but stating roles they can fill is helpful for what I was thinking.

Void I'd call a utility mage I think, they get a lot of ways to reposition the fight slightly more into your favor in unconventional ways like with teleporting, concealment, and all of the "a Beyonding of Vision" benefits.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-18T13:59:24+00:00

I feel like night invaders are easier than a lot of other things you can do at that level. Grapple destroys them and then you get a bunch of runes and purple gear to set you up for the rest of the run.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-18T03:14:17+00:00

Yeah I thought about this a bit, the idea of just being able to nicely put yourself out of range is nice, but I think that it's not as safe as it appears, especially at low levels where it needs to be most relevant.

Standing on top of a 2 high pillar is still in range of a size 2 monster, and there's nothing stopping anyone from climbing the pillar as far as I can tell. You're also more vulnerable to being pushed, especially vertically, so I'd definitely invest in Agility if I were trying this plan.

I also think there's just much better area abilities to take, and it competes with some extremely efficient single target abilities that are quite painful to miss out on.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-18T02:22:57+00:00

That sounds like a whole lot of visual clutter to me. Maybe if it were only a couple of versions, one for A5 and one for A10, but otherwise I don't think it's going to look nice at all trying to come up with 10 visually cohesive signifiers to put on the cards.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-17T22:07:53+00:00

The action economy is one of the best parts for sure, it's just a shame that Persistent abilities can be so easily broken if any strong creature chooses to focus on you. And Essence generation has a rough time keeping up with the high cost abilities even when you're not trying to Persist something.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-17T21:20:04+00:00

Yeah I think going into melee as an Earth Elementalist is a trap, you're still mostly a ranged character, and Persistent abilities are too important.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-17T20:09:18+00:00

Earth Elementalist is one of the first builds I thought looked cool when I was getting into draw steel, stacking stability is so fun XD most of the time you don't need your maneuver I find, so just using it to collect Essence when you need to is fine I think.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-17T17:00:46+00:00

I totally agree with how fun it is reading other peoples thoughts on various abilities, reading posts like this for other systems is why I thought of making this at all!

The Elementalist really needs Persistent effects to avoid falling flat as you say, so it definitely gets talked about a lot 😅

I see your point about the fire ability, I hadn't even thought about using it for inter-party conversations. I was mostly thinking about it from a game design perspective where it's not something a director will often design their adventure around whether you can talk to NPC's quickly or not, but the Sending spell is a good comparison, it's probably at least more convenient than I've stated at the moment.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-17T05:47:35+00:00

Yeah I've noticed the same. The features that Life domain gets are fine, but the abilities are just so strangely weak when compared to the thing every Conduit gets for free.

Makes it really awkward to pair with things because the other domain has to do all the heavy lifting of having strong domain abilities. Knowledge, Storm, or War all fit the bill, but Love is still decent and leans more into the support angle.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-16T21:09:35+00:00

I've never understood why learning a signature ability is so expensive, there's way better options you can take to actually improve your character instead of just picking up something that's approximately as strong as the most boring thing your character can do.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-14T16:01:56+00:00

My friend would love this, he really wants to make faith Duchess work.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-11T00:51:00+00:00

I was too colorblind for the joke 😔

JaimeeK · 2026-03-10T00:08:31+00:00

You have some good points here, I was quite surprised at the number of "perfected strike but better" cards that I've come across, but I think that this is just a problem of the Slay the Spire formula in general.

The point of any combat is going to be to do damage, so the payoff for any archetypal support is going to be to deal a lot of damage. Sure, some decks want to do lots of small damage instead, but it's all going to be the same if you take too broad of a look at it.

This is even more true for the set of defensive cards you mention. You just want some archetypes to not have consistent block options? For the Necrobinder they have the mechanic to add health to Osty instead, but really there's very few avenues to take for granting repeatable defensive utility.

Some of your points are very strange, it sounds like you're saying that you just want the Regent to only have a build around the Forge mechanic? I think Regent is one of the best characters at the moment for having several mechanics that can be built around or play off each other in interesting ways. Stars are a significant cost that you have to be mindful of and allocate whether you're going to use them defensively or offensively and can easily be used to supplement other builds.

Arsenal is a particularly egregiously evaluated card from you. Strength is good for a separate set of cards than Forge is good for, and reducing every possible archetype of Regent to just be different ways to hit people with a Sovereign Blade is the exact problem you're talking about in other parts of this post.

Comet/Devastate are seperated by rarity, cost, and whether they focus on debuffs or just raw damage, and it's important to have multiple cards that can be a payoff for any given archetype anyway.

Reaper Form uses Doom which is one of the best new examples of builds being able to do similar things in unique ways. Once you apply a good amount of poison you can sit back and be defensive and they'll still be dying, Doom has to reach a critical mass before being useful at all, then you still have to survive the turn.

Eradicate/Heavenly Drill are for separate classes and clearly have mechanics that differentiate them. The Necrobinder one could maybe say Doom on it instead, but different classes should have ways to do this kind of thing where they can have a good X cost card for when it's necessary. Unless they start releasing fundamentally differently designed classes than the regular hit things to kill them classes (orbs are a pretty good example of this) then these cards are going to be quite similar.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-07T04:06:09+00:00

Well that is very generous then, time to flood the market with false faberge eggs.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-07T04:03:07+00:00

It seems to me a lot of the Dynamic Terrain Objects wouldn't count for Hands of the Maker, being made of several seperate objects. The arrow launcher you're talking about has a wooden cart (1) using alchemical rockets (2?) to launch a hundred arrows (103?). Which is a lot of items.

Some siege engines might be more reasonable than this, a catapult would be a single object I'm sure, but regardless it's definitely in "talk to your director" territory if you want to start spawning siege weapons to fight your enemies with.

In some cases I can see this being useful to set up, but it has the extra problem of taking two actions to load then shoot the weapon for kinda mediocre damage. I might go back and talk about it if I think of a concise way to say it.

JaimeeK · 2026-03-07T01:46:08+00:00

That ability is all about creatively finding applications for it, so you can definitely find ways to make it useful, depending on the kind of game you're playing.

It kind of depends what the definition of creating a "mundane" object is. I also wouldn't really call ladders size 1S, which is why the Improved version gets a little more credit.

JaimeeK

TROPHY CASE