Card Critique: Clear Spindle Ioun Stone

[Mhuirich]

The upcoming core set has me excited about creating new adventures, but I’m not up to date on the theorycrafting. I’ve been working through the threads, but on the idea that one learns by doing, here’s a card I’ve been working on.

Clear Spindle Ioun Stone
Item 1
Traits: Loot Accessory Object Magic
To Acquire: Intelligence Craft Wisdom Perception 10
Powers:
Display. While displayed:
* Once per turn, when you would discard a card other than this one you may recharge it, or when you would banish a card you may bury it.
* Discard to heal 1d4.
* Bury to reload a card from your discard pile.

General feedback welcome, I’ll save specific questions until I hear folks thoughts.

[Yewstance]

I like the idea of card critique, and I'm happy to give my thoughts. Do note that I tend towards expecting custom cards be a little weaker than pre-existing cards as a general rule, or be particularly niche or corner-case, to allow them to be thematic without just representing a clear power creep or 'cheating' element to the base game if played with.

With that said, here's my thoughts.

The idea of a card that you display and then heal is a highly desirable one - very comparable to Angelstep in the Ultimate Wilderness Deck. In the early game, the heal is less valuable so you can just clear it from your hand, after all. So it's a card that would appeal to me in deckbuilding. Points for that.

I usually associate Loot cards with having multiple, distinct functions, especially since Mummy's Mask. An armor that also heals, a weapon that also enhances your Wisdom, an item that explores or adds to combat checks, etc. This card does have 3 powers, but all 3 are some variation of a 'heal' effect (with the possible exception of the "Banish->Bury" power), and it collectively provides options that healing effects even from later Adventures won't necessarily be able to match.
(Speaking of; shouldn't it have the Healing trait?)

Overall, I think all three of its powers are a little too good in various ways, however - but mostly only the first. To go into more depth...

=================================

FIRST POWER

The first power is incredibly good - basically this card displays itself to allow you to heal a card every turn (since you're turning discards into recharges), which is comparable to AD5+ Items/Armors that you normally have to keep in hand. It's even better, since the 'heal' is non-random - you choose when you replace a discard with a recharge.

Note that as-written, you can turn a discard into a recharge during every turn. So if you're playing Blessings (or failing Spell recharge checks) on other players' turns, you're getting more 'heals' with it - allowing you to provide much more self-healing than the Item 5+ Ring of Regeneration which would normally also fill up a slot in your hand.

Additionally, replacing banishing cards with burying has it serve a purpose similar to the Item 1 Riffle Scrolls (allowing non-spellcasters to bury their spells rather than banish them), whilst it has a whole host of other advantages over Riffle Scrolls.

This first power alone would render this Item 1 more powerful than almost any comparable item I can think of (note that Staff of Minor Healing is often printed as an Item 1). However, if it's desirable that the power be left-as-is, I recommend changing the template as follows...

"Once per turn, when you would discard a card other than this one you may recharge it, or when you would banish a card you may bury it."

To...

"Once during your turn, when you would discard a card from your hand for its power, you may recharge it instead; or when you would banish a card from your hand for its power or from recovery, you may bury it instead."

The change removes the awkward "other than this one" template since it can't affect displayed cards (nor do powers tend to interact with displayed cards anyway). It also prevents you being able to skip discard and banishment to non-power costs, which can lead to some funky interactions at times or just unintended behaviour where you cheat certain effects.

To keep the intent the same, you could also change it to something like the following...

"* When you discard a card for its power, banish this card to recharge it instead.
* When you banish a card for its power or during recovery, banish this card to bury it instead.
* (Power 2)
* (Power 3)

DURING RECOVERY
* Discard this card; you may succeed at an Arcane, Divine or Craft 6 check to reload it instead."

With the rewrite above; It's pretty easy to reload it with 3 different skills, and since recovery is right before hand reset (to my knowledge) that means you should immediately redraw it at the end of your turn once you use it. So using its first power (or in this case, it's first 2 powers) provides a 'heal' at the cost of replacing one of the cards you'd draw, and can't really be exploited on every other player's turn anymore... but it still lets you cast spells and use potions (especially noncombat spells/potions) without proficiency, it still lets you recharge your blessings, allies and weapons, and all whilst still remaining largely available to you.

=================================

SECOND POWER

The card discards itself before the heal, so it can easily heal itself. Usually undesirable. Otherwise, a display-able 1d4 heal on discard sounds about right for my perspective of the 'main' power of a Loot 1 or 2 card (compare to the much weaker deck 0 loot of Scarab Buckler, Sacred Prism, etc).

THIRD POWER

Recent blog posts and developer comments have explicitly stated that they're moving as far away from 'targeted heal' effects as possible. Admittedly, a reloaded card from your discard pile based on the burying of another card seems like a pretty good variation of that specific design area. You can't really exploit it multiple times a scenario (assuming you don't have ways of drawing cards from your buried pile), and you can't leverage it on the same turn you use it unless you have a draw effect, so it's sufficiently slowed down that I'm largely okay with this - though combined with the other two powers (particularly the first) it does seem to strain the measures of what I'd expect a Loot Item 1 to be able to manage.

[Longshot11]

Accessory and Object are, to my experience, mutually exclusive traits. Accessory is usually something you wear on your person, like rings, necklaces, belts, etc. Still this looks like the more intuitive trait here.

Lore-wise, I like the 'display' mechanic as I see it as a good translation to the fact that Ioun Stone should probable not be adding any encumbrance or mental effort (which is what I see the "character hand" being a representation of).

All of Yewstance's observations are valid, and I just don't see any chance you can keep the first power (and even ONLY the first power!) as-is, and still pretend this is a Level 1 item. This is all cool, of course, if you're fine with an OP card or two for your home game, but if you're actually trying to emulate the real PACG power levels - you need to scale back quite a lot.

A more acceptable L1 version of this power, imho, would be:

Display. While displayed:
* when you would discard a card, recharge to recharge that card instead
* when you would banish a card, discard to bury that card instead

Second and third power seem fine, I'd just adjust the wording to current parlance, as I understand it:
* Discard to heal 1d4 cards. (while the word "cards" is understood, I believe they still write it on the cards?)
* Bury to reload a card from your discards.

Finally, from a thematc standpoint, I don't particularly like the card's design. From what I can find, this Ion Stone is supposed to completely remove a character's need for food and water (which sounds like a pretty powerful thing, I'd say around Level 4 card at least?), not heal them.
In PACG, the lack or abundance of food and water (and the exhaustion thereof) is something I'd rather associate with movement, exploration, physical exertion.

Some powers I'd consider, off the top of my head:

- Dicard to explore (usually reserved only for Allies; if you bump it to at least L4, I'd make that "Recharge to explore")
- Recharge to move; you may not play this power during an encounter (it's a pretty cheap price to move mid-turn, but Core severely devalues such powers, so sounds about right to me)
- You may give this card to another local player, except during an encounter (easy to way to be able to bump someone with 1 Healt in the nick of time, or provide the right local person with an extra exploration, if combined with the explore power above)
- When you would bury, discard, recharge or shuffle into your deck a card for your character power, you may do so with this card instead (this effectively "extends" your character hand, while at the same time provides you with a "safe card"to use for your powers even if you have been hand-wiped, by a BYA power for example)

Of course, this only reflects MY opinion on what this Ioun Stone represents and how it translates into PACG, but as long as you're having fun - anything goes.

Yewstance wrote:

SECOND POWER

The card discards itself before the heal, so it can easily heal itself. Usually undesirable.

I believe in one of the blogs they said"as a blanket rule the new "heal" will exclude the card doing the healing?

[Mhuirich]

Thanks, this is really excellent feedback. I’ll get to the details shortly, but my high level takeaways are:


* The cards powers were not clearly aligned to the theme and goals I had in mind, so I need to go back to the beginning and build up slowly from there.
* The cards powers were not correctly leveled. The lack of a good index of card powers (or a good memory for what’s out there) is a challenge. I’ll need to pull out all the sets and lay out a bunch of cards at the target level to get a better baseline.

THEME AND LEVEL

Longshot11 is exactly on point around the two key thematic elements I was trying to draw from the source material, “no encumbrance,” and “never starve”. In the RPG, Ioun Stones float about the head, requiring no effort on the wearer and being difficult (though not impossible) to lose. They come in various shapes and colors, with different powers for each, with the Clear Spindle being the lowest level; it allows the wearer to go without food or drink indefinitely.

This seems somewhat powerful, but in practice (assuming you play in a game that tracks food and encumbrance, which isn’t as common as it once was) it is more valuable to lower level characters. At higher levels, characters end up with lots of ways to produce food magically or carry preserved items in magical voids. Its monetary value is in line with a level 4-5 RPG character, which is about the same as a late Tier 1/early Tier 2 character. 

I also really want it to be a loot card, a specific scenario or adventure reward, not just some card that you stick in the box. It has a check to acquire because new loot cards will, but it’s not meant to be an OP toy to wreck your game with. I want it to be a tool you’ll want in your deck at least through adventure 3. 

BASE MECHANICS

My goals were clear in my head, but I missed the mark in some of the base mechanics. I think I got the “display” feature right, thematically. I want it to be something that for the most part is out and adds value, modeling a stone that just floats about your head giving power. I need a better sample of what other display cards can do, though I might need to wait for the Core set to arrive, to judge how much power that accounts for in-game. 

That, unfortunately, is at odds with the really useful suggestions to control the strength of the card, such as banish/recovery, but I do very much want it to be an “at most once on your turn” effect, so unless I get wordy, banish is probably the way to go. Yewstance, I really like your approach there, though I might add an “or else discard” clause, as I wouldn’t want it banished for good. 

So how, then, to model lack of hunger? I’d tried adding “save your cards” powers because I had models for those, but I admit it never felt right, it felt too much like healing damage. Exploring or moving is an OK option, it models the idea that you get to keep going when you want to stop; I’d considered it earlier and could be a good secondary function. I like Longshot11’s power ideas around this, but it feels more like “going without sleep” than “going without food.”

I think want the core mechanic to be around having cards in your hand; to me that models “no hunger” better. I can’t go too far with it; having to draw cards and not being able to is what kills you, and I don’t want to interfere with that. But it could provide different opportunities to obtain or keep cards, possibly in different ways.

Some ideas in that space, not thinking about power level:
* Draw a card into hand when you would recharge it during recovery.
* Reveal a card instead of discarding or banishing it.
* Draw a card from your deck when you discard a card.
* Receive a card from a local player on your turn.

I’m liking this set of ideas, but I don’t have a good sense of their relative power. Mike’s guide on custom cards said, “Loot should be pretty darn awesome," so I want to target great but not OP.

[skizzerz]

“Draw a card into hand when you would recharge it during recovery.” — good, but I’d suggest having it reload instead of draw; that only improves the recovery by one step.

“Reveal a card instead of discarding or banishing it.” — completely OP and would enable turn 1 wins and infinite combos. Even if limited to once per turn, this would likely be around the power level of an AD5 or AD6 card.

“Draw a card from your deck when you discard a card.” — very strong. Should probably require doing something with the stone so it’s only usable on every until recovery gets it back.

“Receive a card from a local player on your turn.” — not sure how this fits the theme of the card.

Notes about balance:
1. Anything that lets you draw cards during your turn is ridiculously good and needs to be limited in use. These should be one shot effects that can’t be used again until after the recovery phase. Otherwise, you enable a lot of overpowered or infinite combos, or otherwise just make it so that the hourglass becomes a non-issue.

2. Costs for things are as follows. A low-level card probably shouldn’t be reducing the cost of something by more than 1 or 2 steps:
Reveal
Reload
Recharge
Discard
Bury
Banish
Remove from game (in general, these types of cards should never be improved in cost as they typically give permanent feats)

As a side note, the presence of a recovery box lets you easily write one shot powers without being wordy. Just say bury or banish in the main power and have recovery let it reload/recharge/discard instead.

[Sarah Bull]

What about something like this:
Display this card. On your turn, recharge a random card from your discard pile and draw a card. You may only do this once per turn.

I'm in the middle of packing to move so pardon me as I can't check my cards. if I remember correctly, the staff of minor healing is low level (adv 1 I think?).

I think thematically it fits the clear spindle ioun stone from the rpg. A free single card random heal is nifty but not OP in my opinion. I'd happily fight off anyone for a card that did that but it also isn't a game breaker. It allows you to draw a card which fits in better with your no hunger requirement without decreasing the size of your deck. It also has the joy of simplicity on its side. ;)

[Yewstance]

A simplified version could be display-able, and simply say...

While Displayed
* At the end of your turn, you may recharge a card to recharge a random card from your discard pile.

Drip-feed of healing like that can arguably represent ongoing sustenance, and the requirement to recharge a card can even be a good thing as it it lets you cycle undesirable cards out of your hand. Still probably too good for an Item 1 - since it's again comparable to Item 5 and Armor 5 cards that normally have to be held in your hand to provide healing-over-time.

Alternatively, I think there's an argument to say that food/supplies/sustenance in PACG could be associated with drawing cards or exploration powers. It doesn't tend to come up much, though - the best I can think of is the Goblin Poog auto-banishing any animals he plays (presumably eating them) allowing him to draw cards and (with a power feat) heal.

However, 'drawing cards' is the most powerful effect in the game, in my opinion. I've demonstrated that repeatable draw effects allow for turn-1 wins with several characters, most notably Reepazo (who is, by far, the most powerful character in the game, able to turn-1 almost any scenario from as early as Adventure 2, even in Organized play).

A draw-themed equivalent might be something like...

While Displayed
* At the beginning of your turn, reset your hand, then roll 1d12. If you roll a number less than the number of cards drawn, bury Clear Spindle Ioun Stone."

I think that would be about the power level of a Loot Item 3 or so, since it's highly comparable to the Loot Ally 3 Tetisurah (who also had the unusual, and powerful, ability to reset your hand at the start of your turn by being revealed, but still filled your hand in the meantime). This one doesn't fill your hand, but if you get too greedy about spending cards off-turn to draw a full hand size back over and over you run an increased risk of losing it for the remainder of the scenario. Burying it might be representative of it running out of charge, or something else happening to it, I suppose. Keep in mind cards really seem to 'disappear' or be 'used up' a lot faster in the card game than you'd expect from the RPG - just look at all those weapons being recharged and discarded in combat!

Mhuirich wrote:

Yewstance, I really like your approach there, though I might add an “or else discard” clause, as I wouldn’t want it banished for good.

My original suggestion already had that! XD

Yewstance wrote:

DURING RECOVERY

* Discard this card; you may succeed at an Arcane, Divine or Craft 6 check to reload it instead."

[skizzerz]

As another draw-adjacent power, it could increase your hand size by 1 while displayed. This is in line with low-level powers and effectively nets an extra draw while avoiding all of the issues of drawing during your turn.

[Yewstance]

skizzerz wrote:

As another draw-adjacent power, it could increase your hand size by 1 while displayed. This is in line with low-level powers and effectively nets an extra draw while avoiding all of the issues of drawing during your turn.

Is it in line with low-level powers? It's basically the equivalent of discarding an Imp or a Mastiff every turn, isn't it?

Admittedly, 'reset your hand at the start of every turn' has a really strong argument for being technically stronger, but I think a straight unconditional hand-size increase on display seems better... on the other hand, I suppose it's converting a Card Feat into a Power Feat, which shouldn't be overpowered on the surface of it.

I guess I have a bias towards thinking that would be too powerful, because I'd have a hard time finding characters whom I wouldn't automatically take a display-able Loot Card that just increased my hand size by one for.

[Klaxas]

I dont think i have enough experience with the game to comment on power levels but what about this.

Display. While displayed bury to recharge a card from your hand.
During recovery succeed an intelligence or craft check to display instead.

So on your turn you could cycle your deck a little or mitigate some damage. Off turn use is limited unless you wanted to get a card out of your hand in case an effect is causing you to lose a random card.

I feel the recharge causing it to redisplay is thematically representative of an ioun stone.

[foxoftheasterisk]

I like that "during recovery, display" power. Depending how good the power is, it could then become reload or recharge on a fail.

Personally, my initial thought on "go without food or water" is that it should affect Survival checks. How's this?

Display. While displayed:
* Banish to add 1d10 to your Survival check.
* Banish to add 1d6 to a local Survival check.
* When you suffer any number of scourges, bury to remove those scourges.
DURING RECOVERY
Reload this card; you may succeed at an Arcane, Divine or Craft 7 to display it instead.

I'm not sure if that last power actually works, but..
(The second power is based on the Resonance effect in Pathfinder 2E; the third power on the Resonance effect in 1E).