You are a group of powerful wizards, competing to become the Grand Wizard. Your skills in spell preparation and casting will be tested during battle. Harness the chaotic power of the elements and reduce your foes’ health to zero with magical attacks. Defend against their attempts to do the same to you and be the last wizard standing to win the game!
Every turn, you will “prepare spells” by rolling spell dice and then “cast spells” to attack an opposing player.
JewellGames,
Really cool concept.
Here is a problem that I see: Player 4 will never have a choice of who they attack. The other three players will decide that for them. Additionally, if player 1 attacks player 2, player 2 attacks player 3, and player 3 attacks player 1, player 4 can only attack him/herself.
I may misread this in the rules, but this is worth addressing.
Perhaps whoever rolled the highest last round starts. This would change the starting player each round.
Hope this helps!
By player 4 I mean the last player. This could be the case for any number of player higher than two.
You may be able to solve this by stating the same player can't be attacked two turns in a row (unless there are only two players).
The rules do say that the same player can't be attacked twice the same round but if the other three players attack eachother the fourth can only attack his or herself. Even if they don't player four never gets to choose who to attack.
If you mean you can't attack the same player two rounds in a row, the cycle could just be reversed.
I think the player order would have to change.
Hmm. Maybe then the player who was just attacked is next?
I don't think that could work because if P1 attacks P2, and P2 wants to attack back, that would make it P2s turn again before 3 and 4.
I think it almost has to change order each round. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could actually fit into the theme.
You could have a "magic off" every round to see who goes first. Roll five dice, no rerolls, highest score wins. Or most healing. Or most fire. Players could make a new challenge every round. It might actually be fun for players to decide what determines the winner each round.
However, you may want to just consider rethinking the "players can only be attacked one per round" rule. Or at least have alternative rules.
It sounds unfair, but many games feature a voting mechanic. This could be an indirect voting mechanic. If everyone wants to gang up on one person, they can.
At least consider making it an advanced players option. However, even if you did do this you might still have to change player order each game. Otherwise P4 is at a severe disadvantage.
It'd be similar to most PYL
Just my opinion, obviously it's your game, but do you really want it to be like MOST PYL games?
Personally I like your idea of letting people attack whoever they want. It adds a degree of strategy to balance out the luck at least a little.
Obviously do it how you believe is best but I think it's worth tinkering to make the current system viable.
Overall, the rules seem clear and easy to understand. The colored text doesn't bother me either way.
As for the targetting system, there are many different options depending on how you want the game to be played. For example:
Option 1: Attack left. This option is "fair" and reduces hurt feelings about getting ganged up on (especially for younger players and casual gamers), but is also a bit boring and eliminates the opportunity for strategy / metagaming.
Option 2: After you have been attacked, take 1 Shield token. On your turn, discard 1 Shield token. Each shield token protects you from 5 damage against all attacks.
Option 3: Everybody starts with 1 Target token. You can only attack somebody who has at least 1 Target token. Every time you attack somebody, take 1 Target token from them and put it on yourself. If your spell fizzles, take 1 Target token from a player of your choice and put it on yourself (this stops people deliberately fizzling spells to avoid being attacked).
There are plenty of other ways to deal with it too, those are just examples. Option 2 discourages ganging up without banning it, while Option 3 essentially bans ganging up. Options 2 and 3 both have the possibility of affecting the Target/Shield tokens via dice rolls, thus introducing a new element of strategy if you wanted to go down that path.
As an aside, the healing power may be too strong, especially in a 2-player game. I suspect that you could end up with a stalemate.
Good luck with your design and with playtesting.
Regards,
kos
Thank you for the awesome targeting system. I updated the rules with it and added Chain Lightning to Storm spells. I cleaned up the rules a little bit too.
I had thought about an ability or two for Death as well so all 6 had something.
Version 1
Feign Death: When you cast 3 or more Death spells during your attack, do not take a target token afterward.
This is very powerful because not taking a token means you go a whole round without being targeted (if you didnt have a token already) but it also means that your attack is probably very weak. And lets say you have 2 Death spells and you are trying for a third, you have to do some real manipulation of your spell dice without your total spellpower lowering on the next roll.
Version 2
Feign Death: If your spells Fizzle with 3 or more Death spells in play, do not take a target token.
This is more forgiving if you got a bad reroll that included a few Death spells.
Also about the healing. That will need to be tested more and can be tweaked to a lower value if needed.
But keep in mind that if you roll a Life spell on later rerolls, it has to basically replace a Death spell or combo with something else that bumped up your spellpower or else your overall spellpower will probably be lower.
So in order to mass heal, you really need to get lucky with Life spells on your initial roll or in combination with rerolls.
Edit: I also updated the rules and dice.
Ok, after feedback from you guys and further playtesting I have made quite a few changes. The core idea of pressing your luck to cast a stronger spell and attacking other players is set.
Now comes the balancing of the spells and their abilities. I will explain each change and its impact on the game. All these changes are still in beta playtesting and are not be reflected in the current rules.
click to enlarge
Soul Siphon is a very strong ability. Its overall damage (steal + heal) is on par with Fire spells. However, its usually the go to die to reroll and can really hurt you when it comes up on rerolls. Also, this is the ONLY healing in the game now.
Illusion is a completely new ability that acts as a wildcard. It can help you get that 3rd matching spell you need to activate an ability or boost damage otherwise. It can also be as is or copy a Death spell to purposely lower you spell power for the next reroll.
Chain Lightning is the same as before except the clunkiness of it only hitting players with target tokens is gone. It's a straight up area spell better used in high number of player games.
Frost Trap is a new and fun ability. Ice spells do the most unconditional damage upfront and getting 3 adds an explosive cherry on top the next time someone targets you. The Trap's damage is inconsistent and you won't know who will end up targeting you so that keeps its balance in check.
Due to the penalty of Unstable Flame, Fire has had its spell power boosted compared to the other spells. This hopefully makes it a more difficult decision on whether you want to keep the hard hitting fire spells or drop them for the safer (but overall weaker) ice spells. If its still deemed too weak itll bmp up another 1 spell power.
Life has taken over the old Mystic ability as Wild Growth.
The table below the listed abilities shows you the potential damage of every spell based on number of copies in play. Death spells do not go past 5 because if you chose to reroll and got a 6th death spell, your spells would fizzle.
The N for Chain Lightning is for Number of opposing players (always a minimum of 1).
Let me know what you think of the changes.
HUGE update to the rules and spell abilities.
Check it out and let me know what you think.
Obviously playtesting is the only way to sort out whether the dice/ability combinations are going to work or not.
Turning the healing ability into a life steal is probably a good change, because it makes a stalemate impossible. I think the key to this kind of game is to be short and snappy, especially since it involves player elimination. The worst thing you can do is leave most of the players sitting around getting bored while the last 2 survivors fight back and forth without getting anywhere (also known as, "When Risk turns ugly").
The changes introduce more decisions, which is a good thing, though they are still only short term decisions. Again playtesting is the key, but one thing I'd watch out for during playtesting is how long people are deliberating over their dice and/or calculating the optimum outcome.
Regards,
kos
Thanks for the comments. Indeed that'll be a consideration.
I wanted to make a PYL game that had a little more than just "stop or continue rolling" like ZD. It's a fine balance between quickness, ease of play, and depth.
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Another option is your attacks automatically target the player to left.
It'd be similar to most PYL in which "your" points is basically the player to your lefts "remaining HP".
This removes some of the decision in targeting but makes things easier.