Weapon Dueling (Mechanic Design for Series Idea)

[OdinVanguard]

Hello all, over the time I've been here I've seen (and made attempts at) several mechanic ideas that are aimed at emulating battling between creatures / players.

This time I am hoping to take a bit of time to flesh out a mechanic for battling between players and creatures or player to player using equipped weapons.

The basic idea is that the player will use their equipped weapon to battle a creature (or the opposing player). E.g. the player deals damage to the duel target / victim equal to the ATK of their equipped weapon and (maybe?) receives damage from the opposing player or creature in return.

The specifics on this can have a subtle, but significant, impact on how this mechanic is balanced.

I already have a series example that revolves around this mechanic to give an idea of how it could be used.

Spoiler for Weapon Dueling Series:

What I am aiming for in this thread is to get some discussion / outside input on how best to implement 'dueling',

E.g.
Should weapon and creature abilities get triggered, and if so, how to handle abilities that don't normally target a particular dueling target.
Should it be a simple exchange or continue until one of the duelists drops dead (more useful for creature duels, but might still be used for weapons as well)
How much is dueling worth in terms of 'cost theory'
How much does being able to pick / or get directed to certain targets affect this cost (versus random or standard targeting)
Should shields be ignored during duels involving players?
Should duelists with adrenaline get to attack multiple times in a duel (or multiple times for each strike from the opponent)? And if so, what happens when both duelists have adrenaline?
Should the dueling target / victim get to strike back if the other duelist would deal enough to kill them?
etc.

I would also like to develop some thematics for builtin target selection (auto-targetting). E.g. Greed -> target highest cost creature -> / ?, bravery -> target strongest (highest ATK) -> etc. The spoilier shows what I have for some initial ideas but I think many of them could easily fit into different elements.
The idea, however, is to have each element assigned a 'theme' for auto-targetting. The themes are as below (though other ideas are welcome)
-ATK based; strongest = highest ATK, weakest = lowest ATK
-HP based; largest = most HPs, smallest = fewest HPs
-Cost based; Most expensive / least expensive
-Abilities; Highest skill cost / lowest skill cost
-Time in play; Oldest (in play for most turns) / Newest (in play for least turns)
-Random vs Direct selection
-Battling opposing player
What is needed is to brainstorm themes and element assignments for the above targetting schemes (see series spoiler for example).

[OldTrees]

Mechanically the "When a player replaces a weapon they must do X" effect can be thought of as a permanent with the "When a weapon is played, do X" triggered effect. The value of such an effect is as follows:

V(P₀,P_X) = c(P₀+P_X) -kP_X.
P₀ = baseline number of weapons played
P_X = number of additional weapons played due to motivation from this permanent
c = benefit gained per triggered effect
k = cost associated with playing more weapons than you would have otherwise

Generally with triggered effects you would want them to have a decent number of triggers during their activity period in the average game that contains their source.

If I normally use 3 weapons to ensure an early draw but only play 1 and I include 3 cards with this triggered effect, then I am likely to play my 2nd and 3rd copies of my weapon after I have 2 of these cards in play and I might get one of them in play before my 1st weapon. So for including 3 copies of this card I am expecting to morph my strategy to expect to gain the effect 3-5 times in a longer game and 1-3 times in a short game. That is less than 2 activation per card drawn (reminder: triggered abilities should generally be expected to trigger more than once per card drawn).


So to make a triggered ability that is informed/effected by the weapon equipped, you would want to choose a trigger other than when the weapon is played. When the weapon attacks (cooldown optional) comes to mind as an option.

[OdinVanguard]

Hmmm... what about niche strategies, or decks that are built around using this as CC.
E.g. nightmare + animated dagger and voodoo dolls to force your opponent to duel the dolls if they want to free up hand space.
or alternately, using this with animate weapon and fractal.

If the dueling is directed to the opponent when no creatures remain, then fractal weapons could be a viable 'creatureless' strategy.

As an alternative to 'replacement' the duels could trigger when a weapon 'leaves play' which would open up utility as an anti-PC (or synergy with PC in cases like voodoo dolls).

[OldTrees]

1) Considering niche cases is important, but I would not build off niche cases since then you are looking for making a niche in a niche which is quite small.

Nightmare + Animated Weapon + Dagger + Voodoo Doll + a "*effect* triggered when opponent plays a weapon" card is a lot of investment for one half of a strategy. Without the other half there is no reason for them to play rather than discard. I would not consider this strategy much.

Fractal + Animated Weapon + a weapon + a "*effect* triggered when you play a weapon" is less investment for a more complete strategy but building off this would mean any result would be bound to a forced combo. I would remember this when considering balancing but not when considering the broader strokes of the mechanical design.

2) Leaves play opens up anti-PC but also removes 1 expected trigger per game. If the goal is to see it triggered then this reduction is quite severe given the already low number of triggers per card per game. If the goal is to not see it triggered as a means of preventing the opponent from doing something, then we should look at the number of events desired to be prevented per game. PC targeting a weapon happens very few times in a game and strong protection against hard PC is quite cheap for weapons (due to the low number to protect).

Strategies that rely on the opponent being dumb (like spamming weapons against weapon destruction) are not ideal. They will be weak when they need to be strong.


3) In conclusion I think you should stick with the goal of representing dueling / getting the weapon more involved but choose a more appropriate trigger to tie your triggered effects to.

[OdinVanguard]

I see.. so weapon replacement is occurs with too low of a frequency to make a good trigger...

I suppose this could be streamlined into a single spell / permanent which simply targets a player and chooses the dueling partner based upon the element of quanta that is spent.
E.g.
Permanent with ability '1 : Arena - Target player duels an enemy based upon the element used to pay this cost. Dagger is equipped if needed.'

or

1 cost spell 'Target player duels an enemy, based upon the element used to pay this cost.
Dagger is equipped if needed.'

Would this be more feasible?

[OldTrees]

An activated ability would happen with a useful frequency so it is an implementation to consider.

Having an effect change based upon the type of quanta spent takes away some control from the player as the cost of adding that variability. So the decrease in control would need to be examined first. The lack of control can be severely mitigated in deckbuilding so I think it is a valid modifier to use when there is a reason.

So both of those would be feasible. However it would be interesting if you could find an even better implementation. You gave yourself an interesting design puzzle by choosing to focus on 1 slot & try to increase the impact of that slot(oversimplified summary).

Restated: The activated ability permanent is a good idea but you are digging in an area that may or may not have a great idea.

[CactusKing]

I see.. so weapon replacement is occurs with too low of a frequency to make a good trigger...

I suppose this could be streamlined into a single spell / permanent which simply targets a player and chooses the dueling partner based upon the element of quanta that is spent.
E.g.
Permanent with ability '1 : Arena - Target player duels an enemy based upon the element used to pay this cost. Dagger is equipped if needed.'

or

1 cost spell 'Target player duels an enemy, based upon the element used to pay this cost.
Dagger is equipped if needed.'

Would this be more feasible?

This would probably make the card a bit too random for most players, considering you can't normally choose which element you use to pay for cost abilities except in a mono deck, and most of the potential combos with this card require at least two different elements to play

[Espithel]

Also consider how weapon replacements, as of right now, would be triggered by chucking more weapons into your deck. 1 weapon = 1 trigger, 10 weapons in a deck = 10 triggers (Give or take.)

I'm unsure how fun or competitive chucking 10 weapons into a deck is. You'd have to chuck in about 10 pillars, probably more, leaving you with 10 slots to do anything else. This is of course assuming that you want 10 weapons, but you get the gist.

This is the ultimate shortcoming of practically every weapon-based card; we just don't want to use that many weapons to justify that effect.

Is it possible to use dueling as a reward for different triggers? For example:

Whenever you summon a creature, you duel a target creature.
-
Duel enemy creatures when they enter play. If they survive, they get +3 | +3. Equip a dagger if necessary.
-
: Both players duel each other.
-
Shield: Reduce damage and duel damage dealt to you by 1+X. Whenever you win a duel, increase X by 1.

[OdinVanguard]

Is it possible to use dueling as a reward for different triggers? For example:

Whenever you summon a creature, you duel a target creature.
-
Duel enemy creatures when they enter play. If they survive, they get +3 | +3. Equip a dagger if necessary.
-
: Both players duel each other.
-
Shield: Reduce damage and duel damage dealt to you by 1+X. Whenever you win a duel, increase X by 1.

This is certainly an avenue, I just liked having dueling linked to weapon replacement to help keep the potential for rampant CC under control.