Wanted to create a thread to share a mechanic I developed over the last couple days. This is Pierce.
Pierce - Creatures with pierce may deal half of their combat damage (rounded-down) to the defending player or planeswalker as though they were not blocked.
The mechanic is loosely based on Thorn Elemental but halved and rounded down. Halving it and rounding down widens the applicability of this mechanic and makes it accessible to all rarities though it will only appear in the most basic form at common (French Vanilla creatures). Similar to Thorn Elemental, the pierce effect means you choose between full damage to the creature or halved-damage to the player/planeswalker--you don't split the damage (Double-strike being a noteworthy exception). The ability helps push damage through blockers in a new way outside of trample pushing this capability beyond green in a way that makes sense to all colors. For now, I placed this ability in Jeskai, but I do think it could be in all colors. I also created a couple of support cards to show how it could be integrated within a set.
Jeskai SpearmasterR
Creature - Human Warrior (U)
Pierce (You may have Jeskai Spearmaster assign half of its combat damage, rounded-down, as though it were not blocked).
2/1
-This is a French Vanilla but as a 2 power one drop in red with upside this definitely merits being an uncommon--and a very strong uncommon at that.
Riverwheel Assailant1UU
Creature - Djinn Monk (R)
Flying
Prowess
Pierce (You may have Riverwheel Assailant assign half of its combat damage, rounded-down, as though it were not blocked).
3/2
- Riverwheel Assailant pairs prowess with Pierce which can be a potent combination. Even if they have a blocker in the air, pierce can ensure damage and a single prowess trigger makes sure it is at least 2 damage getting through.
Support Common for Pierce
Jeskai Soulmender1W
Creature - Human Monk (C)
Whenever a creature you control is blocked and deals combat damage to a player or planeswalker you gain life equal to the amount of damage dealt to that player or planeswalker.
2/2
- This card supports the mechanic first and foremost but is also worded in such a way as to be applicable to trample to make it less narrow.
Bomb Mythic
Narset, Soulstriker1UR
Planeswalker - Narset (MR)
+1: Target creature you control gains +2/+0 and pierce.
-2: Until your next turn the first noncreature spell you cast costs UR less to cast. This effect only reduces the amount of colored mana you pay.
-6: You gain an emblem with “Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, deal 2 damage to any target.”
(4)
- A U/R aggro/spells matter hybrid! The first ability can just be a pure pump spell or it can help push through the last points of damage with pierce. This is a bit new for Narset in that she has an ability that pumps creatures here, but most of the card stays true to her noncreature theme and being the enlightened master she is, I like this new direction for her. The second ability is cost reduction that lasts until your next turn. Hello UCounterspell! Free Lightning Bolt,Opt, or Izzet Charm? Or cast a Prophetic Bolt for 3. Lots of nasty potential. The emblem turns every noncreature spell into that spell + Shock. I might still need to tinker with the values on this one a bit, but I want to keep the ability set.
A couple other awesome ideas with this mechanic that I haven't designed yet would be a firebreathing creature (obvious synergy with pierce) and a double-strike creature with pierce which would be incredibly interesting in that each strike could be applied to a different target. So a 2/2 double striker with pierce could take out an X/2 and then deal a damage to the player despite being blocked or just deal two to the player and none to the creature or deal four damage to the defending creature.
This is a bit more "mathy" then trample or afflict, but halving/rounding small numbers isn't really that complex either. Soulmender is totally granting a pseudo-lifelink (though I wouldn't call it bad lifelink as I'm not actively trying to compete with lifelink here either). It's just a support common that interacts intuitively with pierce but isn't so narrow that it only does something with pierce. This would be a perfectly draftable common in a deck with some good pierce or trampling dudes, but they can't all be first picks. Thanks for commenting!
I'd say Pierce should be simplified to allow all combat damage being dealt to a blocker to also be dealt to the planeswalker or player the piercing creature is attacking.
Pierce (If this creature deals combat damage to a blocker, it also deals that much combat damage to the player or planeswalker it's attacking.)
Hmm...I wonder if this would work as a UR keyword? Blue likes to mess with physics, plus it has ice and other viable means of piercing opponents. Red of course has the usual piercing beams, stone shrapnel, horns, spears, etc. My main concern is that it's a little too similar to Trample.
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
If you want the mechanic to work without having to place extreme limits on the design space then it cannot exist as you suggest. If pierce worked as you propose the card I printed that costs R would probably have to cost 2R at the very least and this is the most basic iteration of the mechanic. The whole mechanic would be confined to high converted costs and low power to account for the power of being able to hit both creature and player/planeswalker simultaneously. It's actually quite different than trample as trample is about spillover damage hitting the player/planeswalker rather than a set amount of damage coming through regardless of whether or not your creature is blocked and regardless of potentially having less power than the toughness of the blocking creature. Again, I don't think halving and rounding down needs to be simplified.
Have you tried playtesting these with random players? I'm not talking about close friends of yours, I mean random people you've never met before, like new faces at LGSes. Just because something is intuitive and easy to understand for you doesn't mean it is for everyone. How many times have you seen halving or rounding at common?
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MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
Yes, I actually have a design team at my local LGS that playtests all my custom designs /s.
Knowing a 4/4 with pierce can deal two damage directly to the player because two is half of four isn't complex. For the under ten year olds who struggle with the idea of rounding down when they have a 5 power creature with pierce, someone who completed 4th grade math can easily explain it to them. I agree with making mechanics intuitive and accessible to the masses, doesn't mean we have to design to the lowest common denominator.
Ignoring the sarcasm, a regular design team would be too accustomed to properly playtest anyway. You need a random group of players, preferably those who are new to the game, to get the most conclusive playtest input. And not everyone wants a heavy amount of math in their Magic even if they do understand it, so you should drop the condescending attitude if you want help with your designs. What you're currently attempting just reads like Trample with extra math; I know that's not what it is, but I have the practiced ability to see concepts from the layman angle as well. One instance of Pierce isn't too mathy, but three or four instances? With different power?
I can't understate this: some players really hate math. Simple addition and subtraction is one thing - if my creature's power is higher than your creature's toughness, my creature destroys your creature - but when you start adding in multiplication and division, some people just go "ugh" and shut down, because it forces them to spend more time thinking about numbers than they want to. And don't assume those people are knuckle-dragging ogres who do grunt work; for one, that's a grievous insult to physical laborers who deserve just as much respect as "intellectual" workers, and two, people who do work jobs that require heavy amounts of number crunching might be looking to get away from math for a while, to give their brains time to relax. (In contrast, people who feel stuck in their physically-oriented jobs because they don't want to go into debt for college degrees might relish the opportunity to prove their intellect in other ways.)
If you're mathematically inclined, I can understand how this might be frustrating, but the fact is as a business Magic can't afford to cater to just niches; designing to "the lowest common denominator" is precisely how they flourish. Thus, most of the mathier cards that involve doubling, halving, etc. are kept to rare and mythic.
At any rate, how many commons and uncommons would you be planning to use Pierce on in a given set? Would you be intending for Pierce to become an evergreen mechanic? If so, what purpose do you feel Pierce serves as a mechanic that current mechanics don't already serve?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
That wasn't condescension, that was great satire. Suggesting that MTGSalvation casual card designers have random groups of people at an LGS to playtest our daily ideas is ridiculous enough to warrant a satirical response--as are your tangential tirades about white collar vs. blue collar workers just to drive the point that some people don't like math.
Unfortunately, I have to block you as you only came to criticize my idea in response to my constructive criticisms of your design and now you're just being rude. Really don't need the kind of help you have come to offer and I expect only more of the same should I not block you. You can go keyboard warrior on someone else.
could it be better that pierce has a static number? like pierce 2 would do 2 damage to the attackers target when blocked (and if you still wanted the thorn elemental feel you could reduce its power by the pierce number). would remove the need for having to work out rounding up/down on even powers and you could print all the cards with pierce to functionally do the same damage as it would in the original post.
i would also make that planeswalker cost 4 mana or have it start with 1 less loyalty as its ultimate is pretty good for something that can go off on turn 4 fairly consistantly (mana dork or proliferate spell)
I like the idea of pierce as a static number though the ability then becomes awfully similar to afflict. I mean nearly identical with the caveat that afflict will always deal a set amount of damage to the player when the creature with afflict is blocked and deal combat damage whereas pierce will force a choice of damage to the creature or direct damage to the player. I think pierce being inherently weaker than afflict in this way allows for higher pierce values than their afflict equivalent would have but I'm not sure it is functionally different enough from afflict to be worth a whole new mechanic if done in this way.
Thanks for the feedback on the PW. These are both things I was thinking as well. Leaning more towards the less loyalty solution.
That wasn't condescension, that was great satire. Suggesting that MTGSalvation casual card designers have random groups of people at an LGS to playtest our daily ideas is ridiculous enough to warrant a satirical response--as are your tangential tirades about white collar vs. blue collar workers just to drive the point that some people don't like math.
You referred to people under ten years old as an example of players who don't like math. While I won't disagree that kids tend not to like math, I feel you were implying that only people with the intellect of children would balk at the halving/rounding calculation, which sounded pretty condescending to me, thus I felt it necessary to establish that Magic players aren't just number-crunchers, and that those who are may be trying to get away from math. Perhaps it was a tangent, but it's where my dialogue flowed at the time in order to demonstrate my point.
At any rate, I was merely suggesting that you stop by your LGS and ask any Magic players there if they'd be up for some playtesting. Or you could take your set design online and find some playtesters there. The basic idea being: playtest the designs with people you don't know. You need raw data from people who aren't afraid of being critical of your ideas.
Unfortunately, I have to block you as you only came to criticize my idea in response to my constructive criticisms of your design and now you're just being rude. Really don't need the kind of help you have come to offer and I expect only more of the same should I not block you. You can go keyboard warrior on someone else.
Fair enough. I've blocked plenty of users on this forum for posting hate against Jace and the Gatewatch, and for otherwise being obnoxious. I apologize if you feel I was being rude. My approach was blunt and harsh, but it was not intended to be insulting nor destructive. I will point out that I lead with a suggestion of how to simplify the mechanic, and I did ask several critical design questions at the end of my previous post. I will repeat them here, in the event they may prove to be of some use:
How many commons and uncommons would you be planning to use Pierce on in a given set?
Would you be intending for Pierce to become an evergreen mechanic?
What purpose do you feel Pierce serves as a mechanic that current mechanics don't already serve?
Since you've blocked me, I will try to avoid your future card and set design topics since my input there will evidently not be welcome. And since you won't see any of my responses to your posts anyway, I guess I'll block you in turn so as to save space on my monitor. Farewell.
MTGS Wikia Article about "New World Order"
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
PSA to everyone who keeps forgetting about the Reserved List:
You're on a website dedicated to talking about MtG. You're only a few keystrokes away from finding out what cards are on the Reserved List. You're also only a few keystrokes away from finding out why some cards on the Reserved List got foil printings in FtV, as Judge promos, or whatnot, as well as why that won't happen again. Stop doing this.
I can't see your response, but I'm going to assume it was exactly what I expected. Moving on to others feedback.
It's an apology, if that's what you expected.
The conversation about the complexity of halving aside, I'm not super crazy about your approach here. Beyond the category of evasion mechanics being absolutely saturated, even among just the ones that actually exist, you've chosen the narrow territory between trample and afflict to sidle into. What I mean is that trample is basically the king of partial-damage evasion mechanics, so it'll compete with everything in its category. Afflict, at least, wasn't size dependent, but its design wasn't popular enough to make it into WAR. By making your mechanic size-dependent, you place it directly into trample's design space. Putting this mechanic outside of red and green helps, but trample has a tendency to stretch the color pie when creatures get sufficiently large. All else being equal, that means trample would bully pierce out of the range of larger creature, much like what happened to afflict.
Your mechanic functions just fine in the middle ranges or with 2-power creatures, but it needs something extra to set it apart from the king as well as the failure it shares so much with.
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Pierce - Creatures with pierce may deal half of their combat damage (rounded-down) to the defending player or planeswalker as though they were not blocked.
The mechanic is loosely based on Thorn Elemental but halved and rounded down. Halving it and rounding down widens the applicability of this mechanic and makes it accessible to all rarities though it will only appear in the most basic form at common (French Vanilla creatures). Similar to Thorn Elemental, the pierce effect means you choose between full damage to the creature or halved-damage to the player/planeswalker--you don't split the damage (Double-strike being a noteworthy exception). The ability helps push damage through blockers in a new way outside of trample pushing this capability beyond green in a way that makes sense to all colors. For now, I placed this ability in Jeskai, but I do think it could be in all colors. I also created a couple of support cards to show how it could be integrated within a set.
Jeskai Spearmaster R
Creature - Human Warrior (U)
Pierce (You may have Jeskai Spearmaster assign half of its combat damage, rounded-down, as though it were not blocked).
2/1
-This is a French Vanilla but as a 2 power one drop in red with upside this definitely merits being an uncommon--and a very strong uncommon at that.
Riverwheel Assailant 1UU
Creature - Djinn Monk (R)
Flying
Prowess
Pierce (You may have Riverwheel Assailant assign half of its combat damage, rounded-down, as though it were not blocked).
3/2
- Riverwheel Assailant pairs prowess with Pierce which can be a potent combination. Even if they have a blocker in the air, pierce can ensure damage and a single prowess trigger makes sure it is at least 2 damage getting through.
Support Common for Pierce
Jeskai Soulmender 1W
Creature - Human Monk (C)
Whenever a creature you control is blocked and deals combat damage to a player or planeswalker you gain life equal to the amount of damage dealt to that player or planeswalker.
2/2
- This card supports the mechanic first and foremost but is also worded in such a way as to be applicable to trample to make it less narrow.
Bomb Mythic
Narset, Soulstriker 1UR
Planeswalker - Narset (MR)
+1: Target creature you control gains +2/+0 and pierce.
-2: Until your next turn the first noncreature spell you cast costs UR less to cast. This effect only reduces the amount of colored mana you pay.
-6: You gain an emblem with “Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, deal 2 damage to any target.”
(4)
- A U/R aggro/spells matter hybrid! The first ability can just be a pure pump spell or it can help push through the last points of damage with pierce. This is a bit new for Narset in that she has an ability that pumps creatures here, but most of the card stays true to her noncreature theme and being the enlightened master she is, I like this new direction for her. The second ability is cost reduction that lasts until your next turn. Hello U Counterspell! Free Lightning Bolt,Opt, or Izzet Charm? Or cast a Prophetic Bolt for 3. Lots of nasty potential. The emblem turns every noncreature spell into that spell + Shock. I might still need to tinker with the values on this one a bit, but I want to keep the ability set.
A couple other awesome ideas with this mechanic that I haven't designed yet would be a firebreathing creature (obvious synergy with pierce) and a double-strike creature with pierce which would be incredibly interesting in that each strike could be applied to a different target. So a 2/2 double striker with pierce could take out an X/2 and then deal a damage to the player despite being blocked or just deal two to the player and none to the creature or deal four damage to the defending creature.
Trample and afflict seem more elegant and much less mathy.
Soulmender seems to be granting bad lifelink.
I don't know about pierce.
Pierce (If this creature deals combat damage to a blocker, it also deals that much combat damage to the player or planeswalker it's attacking.)
Hmm...I wonder if this would work as a UR keyword? Blue likes to mess with physics, plus it has ice and other viable means of piercing opponents. Red of course has the usual piercing beams, stone shrapnel, horns, spears, etc. My main concern is that it's a little too similar to Trample.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Knowing a 4/4 with pierce can deal two damage directly to the player because two is half of four isn't complex. For the under ten year olds who struggle with the idea of rounding down when they have a 5 power creature with pierce, someone who completed 4th grade math can easily explain it to them. I agree with making mechanics intuitive and accessible to the masses, doesn't mean we have to design to the lowest common denominator.
I can't understate this: some players really hate math. Simple addition and subtraction is one thing - if my creature's power is higher than your creature's toughness, my creature destroys your creature - but when you start adding in multiplication and division, some people just go "ugh" and shut down, because it forces them to spend more time thinking about numbers than they want to. And don't assume those people are knuckle-dragging ogres who do grunt work; for one, that's a grievous insult to physical laborers who deserve just as much respect as "intellectual" workers, and two, people who do work jobs that require heavy amounts of number crunching might be looking to get away from math for a while, to give their brains time to relax. (In contrast, people who feel stuck in their physically-oriented jobs because they don't want to go into debt for college degrees might relish the opportunity to prove their intellect in other ways.)
If you're mathematically inclined, I can understand how this might be frustrating, but the fact is as a business Magic can't afford to cater to just niches; designing to "the lowest common denominator" is precisely how they flourish. Thus, most of the mathier cards that involve doubling, halving, etc. are kept to rare and mythic.
At any rate, how many commons and uncommons would you be planning to use Pierce on in a given set? Would you be intending for Pierce to become an evergreen mechanic? If so, what purpose do you feel Pierce serves as a mechanic that current mechanics don't already serve?
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
Unfortunately, I have to block you as you only came to criticize my idea in response to my constructive criticisms of your design and now you're just being rude. Really don't need the kind of help you have come to offer and I expect only more of the same should I not block you. You can go keyboard warrior on someone else.
i would also make that planeswalker cost 4 mana or have it start with 1 less loyalty as its ultimate is pretty good for something that can go off on turn 4 fairly consistantly (mana dork or proliferate spell)
Thanks for the feedback on the PW. These are both things I was thinking as well. Leaning more towards the less loyalty solution.
You referred to people under ten years old as an example of players who don't like math. While I won't disagree that kids tend not to like math, I feel you were implying that only people with the intellect of children would balk at the halving/rounding calculation, which sounded pretty condescending to me, thus I felt it necessary to establish that Magic players aren't just number-crunchers, and that those who are may be trying to get away from math. Perhaps it was a tangent, but it's where my dialogue flowed at the time in order to demonstrate my point.
At any rate, I was merely suggesting that you stop by your LGS and ask any Magic players there if they'd be up for some playtesting. Or you could take your set design online and find some playtesters there. The basic idea being: playtest the designs with people you don't know. You need raw data from people who aren't afraid of being critical of your ideas.
Fair enough. I've blocked plenty of users on this forum for posting hate against Jace and the Gatewatch, and for otherwise being obnoxious. I apologize if you feel I was being rude. My approach was blunt and harsh, but it was not intended to be insulting nor destructive. I will point out that I lead with a suggestion of how to simplify the mechanic, and I did ask several critical design questions at the end of my previous post. I will repeat them here, in the event they may prove to be of some use:
Since you've blocked me, I will try to avoid your future card and set design topics since my input there will evidently not be welcome. And since you won't see any of my responses to your posts anyway, I guess I'll block you in turn so as to save space on my monitor. Farewell.
Every time I read a comment about "Well if this card had card draw/trample/haste/indestructible/hexproof/life gain...", I think "You're missing the point." They're armchair developer comments that fail to take into account the card's role in the greater Limited and Standard environment. No, it may not be as good as whatever card you're comparing it to. There's a reason for that. Not every burn spell is Lightning Bolt, nor does it need to be or should be.
It's an apology, if that's what you expected.
The conversation about the complexity of halving aside, I'm not super crazy about your approach here. Beyond the category of evasion mechanics being absolutely saturated, even among just the ones that actually exist, you've chosen the narrow territory between trample and afflict to sidle into. What I mean is that trample is basically the king of partial-damage evasion mechanics, so it'll compete with everything in its category. Afflict, at least, wasn't size dependent, but its design wasn't popular enough to make it into WAR. By making your mechanic size-dependent, you place it directly into trample's design space. Putting this mechanic outside of red and green helps, but trample has a tendency to stretch the color pie when creatures get sufficiently large. All else being equal, that means trample would bully pierce out of the range of larger creature, much like what happened to afflict.
Your mechanic functions just fine in the middle ranges or with 2-power creatures, but it needs something extra to set it apart from the king as well as the failure it shares so much with.