[Gameplay Discussion] The double standard of Banish


Rules Questions and Gameplay Discussion


Disclaimer: The suggestions I'm attempting to make is not intended to change the gameplay, but the presentation of information.

To preface why I had this thought, I've been a veteran player since the game's inception but just recently got the Core Set and I'm playing with a new group of complete novice players.

One of those players had the card Balmberry and the question was raised on why'd you ever WANT to banish it to use its effect. I had to read the entire card before I got it myself, the recovery step and anyone with a good Craft skill or a character power (another player was using Fumbus). But then it began to bug me... why did it take reading the entire card, to know what to do with it? Answer: Keyword Banish, or more specifically that Banish means more than one thing in-game.

On the player reference card, banish is the only keyword that has multiple meanings. Either put in recovery pile or box depending on if it has a recovery step. I feel this kinda causes some unnecessary confusion that can break the flow of the game.

The solution? My thought is to make a new keyword specifically for sending a card to recovery and then in the recovery text, handle the conditions to prevent a card from being banished.

Suggested words:

1) Exhaust. First one to come to mind. Easy to imagine (recover from exhaustion), however with the Scourge Exhausted, may cause confusion.

2) Spend. Again easy to imagine (recovering spent cards), however, it reads funny to me. (For your combat check: Spend to roll Arcane + X .....). Feels like something else is required.

3) Tap. This one is interesting, I hadn't thought of it until I was looking up synonyms for Exhaust. This has some added benefits that any experienced CCG player would instantly understand what to do and its natural implication to recovery. Heck, you can have the card display at 90 degrees and it's clear that it's a card to recovered later. It would probably change the Recovery Pile to a Recovery Phase instead, but that might be a good thing (my newbie players have mixed up discard and recovery piles before).

Regardless, I think that splitting Banish's options into two separate terms would greatly improve the clarity of what we need to do with those cards without having 'to know' what the appropriate option is while not changing functionally what the game does.

Thoughts?


In short; I agree in principle, and I'd have supported having two distinct definitions of "Banish" to clarify the difference between "Send to Recovery" and "Send to the Vault".

A big issue is that any further terminology change would make pre-Core cards and character powers a bit harder to adapt to the new parlance, perhaps especially for previous Alchemists who have to interact both with Recovery and standard Banishing effects. Not saying it's impossible, but new terminology would have to come alongside cohesive Conversion Rules as well.


Problem is, although the idea is really good, this is impacting way to many cards to be a reasonable request IMHO.


Yewstance wrote:

In short; I agree in principle, and I'd have supported having two distinct definitions of "Banish" to clarify the difference between "Send to Recovery" and "Send to the Vault".

A big issue is that any further terminology change would make pre-Core cards and character powers a bit harder to adapt to the new parlance, perhaps especially for previous Alchemists who have to interact both with Recovery and standard Banishing effects. Not saying it's impossible, but new terminology would have to come alongside cohesive Conversion Rules as well.

Hmm, I didn't consider preCore; mostly my OCD would get triggered. Who are you referring to as a character that interacts with both Recovery and standard Banish? I can't think of one off the top of my head.

I thought that for the most part, my suggestions wouldn't affect the main flow of the game, so knowing the edge cases would maybe help refine my idea. The programmer in me has been triggered >.<


Frencois wrote:
Problem is, although the idea is really good, this is impacting way to many cards to be a reasonable request IMHO.

Probably, it may just be something for a Core 2.0 or something. I was hoping it wouldn't do that. Mechanically, I didn't think it'd change much.

General envision was that if the card innately has a recovery text, then the banishes on the card that activates powers would change to say Tap instead. The recovery section would then have the assumption that the card is Banished if you fail the recovery check (unless the card specifically says otherwise, like getting Buried or Discarded instead)

There is a programming principle that a function/subroutine SHOULD do one thing, and one thing only. It makes it easier to track down errors when there is only one place that a thing could possibly trigger. In this case, the keywords would be those functions/subroutines.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

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I made the very same arguments while working on Core.

(My suggested terms:
Retain them into a retention pile; deal with them during retention.
Bank them into a bank; deal with them during banking.
Suspend them into a suspension pile; deal with them during suspension.
Defer them into a deferment pile; deal with them during deferment.
Expend them into an expended pile or a recovery pile; deal with them during recovery.
Deplete them into a depleted pile or a recovery pile; deal with them during recovery.
Consume them into a consumed pile or a recovery pile; deal with them during recovery.
Spend them into a spent pile; deal with them during recovery.)

I even proposed eliminating the word "banish" altogether, introducing the verb "vault" to mean "put into the vault."

But while those solutions might make sense in a wholly new edition in which we didn't care about the usability of older cards, this isn't that.


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Vic Wertz wrote:
Bank them into a bank; deal with them during banking.

Just like Abadar to talk about banking spells.

Lone Shark Games

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Vic Wertz wrote:

I made the very same arguments while working on Core.

(My suggested terms:
Retain them into a retention pile; deal with them during retention.
Bank them into a bank; deal with them during banking.
Suspend them into a suspension pile; deal with them during suspension.
Defer them into a deferment pile; deal with them during deferment.
Expend them into an expended pile or a recovery pile; deal with them during recovery.
Deplete them into a depleted pile or a recovery pile; deal with them during recovery.
Consume them into a consumed pile or a recovery pile; deal with them during recovery.
Spend them into a spent pile; deal with them during recovery.)

I even proposed eliminating the word "banish" altogether, introducing the verb "vault" to mean "put into the vault."

But while those solutions might make sense in a wholly new edition in which we didn't care about the usability of older cards, this isn't that.

I believe I said at the time, "I agree with every word you said, and no, we can't do that."


Mike Selinker wrote:
Vic Wertz wrote:
I made the very same arguments while working on Core...
I believe I said at the time, "I agree with every word you said, and no, we can't do that."

I guess Vic forgot to say "please" ? :-)

Note for self : whatever the selected character, use your first hero point to get a +1 in Diplomacy before posting anything Mike may read.


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For teaching new players, I wouldn't distinguish between "banish to vault" and "banish to recovery". Make "banish to recovery" the default, and then during recovery, if a card doesn't have a "during recovery" power, it goes into the vault.

There are very few specific characters or cards that will be treated differently handling things this way, but those are for players who are comfortable with the rules.


eddiephlash wrote:

For teaching new players, I wouldn't distinguish between "banish to vault" and "banish to recovery". Make "banish to recovery" the default, and then during recovery, if a card doesn't have a "during recovery" power, it goes into the vault.

There are very few specific characters or cards that will be treated differently handling things this way, but those are for players who are comfortable with the rules.

... that would actually work. I like it. It'd only require a change to the rulebook rather than the cards, so shouldn't break anything. Nice :)


eddiephlash wrote:

For teaching new players, I wouldn't distinguish between "banish to vault" and "banish to recovery". Make "banish to recovery" the default, and then during recovery, if a card doesn't have a "during recovery" power, it goes into the vault.

There are very few specific characters or cards that will be treated differently handling things this way, but those are for players who are comfortable with the rules.

If you changed all effects to implicitly "Banish to Recovery", the big issue arises that is that "During Recovery" powers don't distinguish about how the card was sent to Recovery in the first place. In other words, if any effect causes you to banish a card, you can easily get around it by just banishing a spell (or another card) that has "During Recovery" text, and then just discard/recharge it later and ignore the banish.

If there's a location, a bane, a scenario power, an hour, anything that says "Banish a boon to X" or "If you X, banish a boon" or "to defeat, banish a random boon" or "if undefeated, banish the top card of your deck" - all of these effects (of which there over a dozen such effects in the Core Set alone, even before considering Curse of the Crimson Throne) suddenly become almost significantly less effective against casters, whilst remaining devastating against non-casters.

When playing a card, treating all banish as 'banish to recovery' is fine, but when banish is being used from any other context in the game it will cause issues when you bring Recovery into it. Plus, it creates confusion when you banish boons that you fail to acquire, banes that you defeat, or remaining cards from locations that you close - if there's no difference between banishing, then why can't you attempt to recharge a spell that you failed to acquire, but you can attempt to recharge a spell that you cast?

Long story short; I don't believe the solution is that simple at all.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Yewstance pointed out the big problem with that idea. Another issue is that you still have "banish" meaning two things: When playing a card, it would mean "put it the recovery pile;" during recovery, it would mean "put it in the box." So still not ideal.


So maybe I'm being stupid, but I don't see how introducing a new term for this (if it had been done at the time of Core's release) would have been any less compatible with older cards than introducing the new definition of banish.
Every older card that has recovery needed it erratad in anyway. How would it have been any worse to errata them to say "deplete" (for example) than "banish"?

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

While the conversion guide necessarily has to tell you to replace this word with that word, telling you that a word on this card means something different from the exact same word on that card is a bridge too far.


Vic Wertz wrote:
While the conversion guide necessarily has to tell you to replace this word with that word, telling you that a word on this card means something different from the exact same word on that card is a bridge too far.

Really? I thought that I described what it could be in two sentences earlier...

Ironvein wrote:
General envision was that if the card innately has a recovery text, then the banishes on the card that activates powers would change to say Tap instead. The recovery section would then have the assumption that the card is Banished if you fail the recovery check (unless the card specifically says otherwise, like getting Buried or Discarded instead)

I can't think of any cards without a recovery text where banish would mean anything other than putting the card back in the box... isn't the recovery text the indicator for which meaning of banish to use?


Vic Wertz wrote:
While the conversion guide necessarily has to tell you to replace this word with that word, telling you that a word on this card means something different from the exact same word on that card is a bridge too far.

Now I'm even more confused. For two reasons:

1: is that not exactly what you've done with "banish"? Yes, there's the indicator of recovery text, but it's not exactly straightforward even then. (For prime example, banishing a card with recovery to another card's effect.)
2: I don't see how using a new keyword for recovery would do that?? You'd just be saying to replace the word in question with (e.g.) "deplete" rather than "banish". No double meanings required, as far as I see?

In conclusion, ??????


foxoftheasterisk wrote:

1: is that not exactly what you've done with "banish"? Yes, there's the indicator of recovery text, but it's not exactly straightforward even then. (For prime example, banishing a card with recovery to another card's effect.)

I think you unintentionally restated Vic's point there.

My proposal is to change Banish only on cards with Recovery text to a new word for Sending to the Recovery Pile. Cards that banish other cards aren't supposed to be affected; those cards remain as Banish because you are sending them directly to the box, no recovery possible. As it should be in that case.

foxoftheasterisk wrote:
2: I don't see how using a new keyword for recovery would do that?? You'd just be saying to replace the word in question with (e.g.) "deplete" rather than "banish". No double meanings required, as far as I see?

But Banish DOES have multiple meanings currently, you either

1) Return a card to the box OR
2) Put it in the Recovery Pile, which is then usually sent to the box if you fail the Recovery check.

This is a discussion on decoupling these two actions into separate terms. Not trying to change the rules, just make it more readable and less confusing.


Ironvein wrote:


2) Put it in the Recovery Pile, which is then usually sent to the box if you fail the Recovery check.

To be honest, the whole thing gets even more absurd and confusing with card the are *played* by Banish - but never actually *resolve* as banish - such as the Harrow Decks. I have a new player that is constantly getting thrown for a loop by this.

EDIT: And for the record, though I'm not sure if anyone's counting, even all my new players actually keep trying to resolve their cards upon playing and NOT by waiting for the Recovery Step - so I don't know how much this innovation is actually "simplifying" the game. For us it's been nothing but hurdles and "take-backs" all the way.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Yes, banish does have two meanings now, depending on whether the card has recovery text. And, as I've mentioned before, I don't love that.

The distinction I'm making is that the alternative I was replying to would require that banish have multiple meanings differentiated by when the card was printed in addition to the presence or absence of recovery text. Specifically, in foxoftheasterisk's proposal, on new cards, "deplete" would mean "put in recovery" and "banish" would mean "put in the vault," while on old cards, "banish" would map to "deplete" in some cases and "banish" in other cases. To me, that's turning the potential for confusion up a notch, not down a notch.


Vic Wertz wrote:

Yes, banish does have two meanings now, depending on whether the card has recovery text. And, as I've mentioned before, I don't love that.

The distinction I'm making is that the alternative I was replying to would require that banish have multiple meanings differentiated by when the card was printed in addition to the presence or absence of recovery text. Specifically, in foxoftheasterisk's proposal, on new cards, "deplete" would mean "put in recovery" and "banish" would mean "put in the vault," while on old cards, "banish" would map to "deplete" in some cases and "banish" in other cases. To me, that's turning the potential for confusion up a notch, not down a notch.

I would like to think that the fact that we as a community are actually having this discussion that we are actually smarter than that.

It seems to me that it boils down to if the card has recovery text; banish = 'deplete'. With the caveat that depleted cards banish if recovery check fails unless the card states otherwise.

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