Xanowrath’s active card system

I have been considering how we can implement a card system that won’t turn this game in to a turn based snore fest waiting on each player but still have that deck drawing feel and I think I may be on to something.

To start I am going to rename our active skill bar to our hand. The card of course being our chosen skills. When a card is played from your had it goes to the bottom of the deck (or perhaps shuffled in) and a new card is drawn to your hand. This allows active combat with the randomness of a card system.

In my system players should be able to put as many cards in to their deck (even less than their hand size) if they wish. This allows the player to play with a static set of skills if they wish to since the cards they will draw will always be the ones they just played. This allows us a risk vs reward system you risk not getting the card you want for a larger toolset of cards in your deck.

I see a few different deck types steaming from this. The static deck as described above. The combo desk which contains just above their had size in cards so they can rotate through their preferred combo and the other cards in their hand are for utility. The dual class desk which keeps two types of cards (Like healing and Damage) just above their hand size so the more damage they do the more healing cards they get but not so many that they run out of one type or the other.

This kind of stability seems to make the reward of having a large deck not as beneficial as the risk it brings. To combat this I recommend small starting had sizes (like 3 cards) with hand size gains granted through rare items (giving up an item slot for another card). Also a draw 2 or even draw 3 card that allows us temporary slots for that combat in exchange for the time we could have use to use another spell. This allows larger decks to be king of the long fight as they will eventually have their entire deck available to them as they continue through the same fight. I would recommend these “draw” cards only be allowed in decks that are of a predetermined size.

To keep the hand/action bard from getting too chaotic we can use the current put a skill into a slot system to designate those slots to be the preferred slot for that card if drawn. This allows the player some control over what kills go where in their hand and not have to keep trying to find where the skills they use the most keep popping up at.


Please tell me what you think and what ideas you may have to change/improve upon this.