I am currently designing my ability catalog and I am an interrogation about ratios. Here is a sample of spell abilities for moving cards from a zone to another:
Cost 2: 2 trash (1:1)
Cost 3: 3 trash (1:1)
Cost 4: 4 trash (1:1)
Trash to Deck: Search and recover X trash on top of deck in any order
Cost 3: 1 trash (3:1)
Cost 5: 2 trash (2.5:1)
Cost 7: 3 trash (2.33:1)
Groove to Deck: Search and recover X energy, Shuffle
Cost 2: 3 Energy (0.66:1)
Cost 4: 5 Energy (0.8:1)
Cost 6: 7 Energy (0.85:1)
Groove to Deck: Search and recover X energy on top of deck in any order
Cost 2: 1 energy (2:1)
Cost 3: 2 energy (1.5:1)
Cost 4: 3 energy (1.33:1)
The parenthesis contains the ratio of mana paid vs cards affected. As you can see, 3rd ability have a cost per card increasing while all other abilities have their cost reducing.
So I was wondering if the ratio should drop or raise if more cards get affected.
One way to see this is that the ratio should be increasing because it requires you less cards to do more. For example, with the 3rd ability, you could
use 2 cards for 4 mana and transfer 6 energy,
use 1 card for 6 mana and transfer 7 energy
So you pay more because you can do more with 1 card.
Does anybody think it should be the opposite way?
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Another situation I have is that any player can be the target of a spell weather it's positive or negative. If we take again that ability above:
Groove to Deck: Search and recover X energy, Shuffle
Cost 2: 3 Energy (0.66:1)
Cost 4: 5 Energy (0.8:1)
Cost 6: 7 Energy (0.85:1)
I could use this to sacrifice "energy" to get new cards in my deck, or I could use this to get rid of my opponent's energy but give him cards in his deck.
Now I was wondering if the cost for such dual purpose spell would always be balanced.
In the example above, probably yes since there is a bane and a boon, it's just that it's not the same perspective:
On my self:
Boon = card I want in the deck
Bane = Less energy
On my opponnent
Boon = Less energy
bane = have more cards he might not want in this deck
But there are other abilities like the one below that has no benefit for me to use it against my opponent.
Trash to Deck: Search and recover X trash, Shuffle
Cost 2: 2 trash (1:1)
Cost 3: 3 trash (1:1)
Cost 4: 4 trash (1:1)
But maybe that is OK, player will judge what cards could be useful against your opponent and later in the design, some other cards could make the ability above useful.
So in the first case, the effect is more useful against your opponent than yourself, while in the second case it is more useful when cast on yourself.
So I was wondering if it should be necessary to give 2 different cost and restrict if the spell is cast on yourself or you opponent.
Personally, I like the dual use of spells since it gives more options and allow to use spells creatively, but on other other hands, cost might be inaccurate.
[...] Once the cost reaches a certain point (6+ mana) it becomes incredibly likely that you lose the game before you are able to play the card.
So in MTG, the ratio seems to be decreasing mostly due to the fact that high cost spells are less likely to be cast. But like explained in another thread, high cost cards is not much of a problem in my game.
That is what I was thinking. But now you have to consider the value of a card. I my game, players have the option to discard their hand to draw a full hand at the end of the turn. Which means the scarcity of card is not so low.
So maybe an increasing ratio is not good at all for me, but I don't see why a decreasing ratio should be better. So either a flat ratio, or no ratio at all. So an effect can only be done once per card.
That is an interesting question, I think one of the reason I used 3 ranks is to first make sure that the cost does not exceed 9, but also to prevent very strong effects. At least with multiple cards, the player needs to draw many cards with the same ability in order to use them together.
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Now I have been thinking a bit and I get the following situation:
A. If I use an increasing ratio and the min cost is 2 and max 9, I get little cost scale permutations:
2-5-9
3-7
4-9
Which could be a good thing because it limits the possibilities and make some effects limited to rank 2. I might make all effects limited to 2 rank.
B. Use no effect multiplication except with special abilities. For example I have an ability called "echo" that makes the spell stay in play once cast to get cast a second time on next turn. That is like a rank 2 effect but on 2 separate turn.
So maybe I should focus on using such special abilities for the multiplicity of effects. Or use both Method A and B for more variety.