A dreaded suggestion regarding Immortality.

[Lanidrak]

In fact rewinding and mutation could both be used to kill an immortal creature.

If you make a creature immortal with a spell/ability, then it is rewinded and you play it again, it is once again mortal and can be killed. Logically though it is still the same creature (even if from games point of view it is a new creature).

I didn't specifically mention this, but I guess to clarify - my idea would be that Quintessence makes a creature Ethereal . And creatures which are Ethereal cannot be targeted by anything. Then Immortal would be a status, which can be targeted by certain effects.

So, if you play Quintessence on a creature - it would work exactly like Immortality currently does - the creature is immune to anything and everything.

With mutation it is similar - you change an immortal creature into a (probably) mortal creature and kill it, even though it is still the same creature.

Yup. Mutate (the un-upgraded version) has a small chance (10%?) to kill the target creature, and simply for that 10% chance it cannot be used on the new version of Immortal creatures.

Improved Mutate on the other hand, gives no chance to kill the target and therefore can be used as a way to remove the immortal status from a creature - or as you put it, mutate the creature into the same version of itself without immortality.

You still wouldn't want to used improved mutate on an enemy creature - you can always give him something with high hitpoints and Steal or Destroy for example, which you cannot necessarily deal with. But, Improved Mutate is therefore still an option to deal with them.

As for your example regarding Ice Bolt - it is, along with Fire Bolt, the highest damage cards in the game (if you have quanta, that is). I didn't consider the freeze chance on an Ice Bolt and simply included it in the list of spells which could not damage immortals. I believe the chance to Freeze is relatively low. Besides, I personally would much rather use Ice Bolts against high HP creatures or the opponent player himself.

[Xinef]

So, if you play Quintessence on a creature - it would work exactly like Immortality currently does - the creature is immune to anything and everything.

The question remains if shields (especially fire shields) should affect ethereal creatures. (In my opinion they should, because it is not targeted, and ethereal creatures need to become material to attack).
Thus ethereal creatures can be killed in two ways - either by shields, or if they were poisoned before becoming ethereal. Immortal creatures on the other hand should not be able to die from poison or shields (although other shield effects would still work on them), even if you poison an immortal before it becomes immortal.

or as you put it, mutate the creature into the same version of itself without immortality.

I meant something a little different. I'll give an example.
Take Superman, and assume he is immortal. No amount of punishment can kill him
(Kryptonite would be that 'card removing immortality' that some people required, although I do not think such a card should exist).
Now, lets take our Superman into Chernobyl, or some nuclear testing ground... and expose him to extreme amounts of radiation...
Now if he was able to mutate into some other creature due to radiation, it would be the same person, just in different shape and form... for example a two headed cow from Fallout universe
The question is, should this cow, which is in fact Superman, be still immortal?

And my answer is - Superman would just not mutate. He is immune to mutation, because he is immortal. And even if he mutated, he would become a Supercow =D (still immortal).


And I think icebolt has a 30% chance to freeze, just like the shield. And if you (for unknown reasons) include an icebolt in a rainbow deck, or eg. a trio deck, then it would be less of a damaging spell, and more of a creature control spell. Also I've seen fake gods and AI3 often using icebolt even if it would not kill the creature, although often freezing it. Though, chaos seeds and freeze/congeal were more reliable in this case.

I think that cards such as chaos seed and ice bolt should be able to target immortals, you would just apply only the effects that cannot kill (either 'rerolling' the random choice, until an effect that can target immortals is chosen, or the spell would just fail if the wrong effect is rolled).

[bobcamel]

But why just not make it "Creature cannot die, even when reduced to 0 HP."

"All creatures cannot be reduced to negative HP, and die at 0 unless Immortal."

[Xinef]

I see bobcamel, you mostly agree with my main idea.
I guess it would not be hard to implement, as Zanz only needs to change the code that checks, if a creature died, the code responsible for skills and spells instantly killing (devour, paradox, mutation, immolation... maybe reverse time, but it is another matter to discuss), maybe the code responsible for buffing creatures, but that's it... at least that's what I guess.

There are a few balance issues though:
Right now, the only ways to deal with immortals (i know of) is to either block them with shields, or stun/freeze them with shields, or kill them with fire shields, or poison them before they are immortalized.

Now, if we make the changes I suggest, then we can no longer kill them with fire shields, nor can we kill them with poison. We can on the other hand use spells and some (not instantly killing) abilities on them. We can lobotomize them to remove their abilities like devour, growth, or whatever the creature had when it was immortalized (but I think we should not be able to remove immortality itself).
This basically means, that it would be easier to affect immortal creatures and inflict statuses, but harder (or preferably impossible) to remove them from the field.
This would certainly need balancing... it's hard to guess if this would make immortality less powerful, or more powerful than it is now.
If immortality proves to be overpowered after these changes, then it could be easily nerfed by adding one change - immortal creatures being unable to attack if below 1 HP. Then immortality decks would need creature healing (angels/hp buffs) to make their creatures once again able to attack, and this would clearly make them less powerful.
On the other hand, I suppose it would be a good situation to add more creature healing cards (eg. some kind of regeneration).

As a side note:
If we have negative attack, then I suppose there is nothing wrong with negative HP either. I guess it could be implemented if attack could.

[Bfdragon1]

I'm not really a big fan of immortality just because its such a rarity that it doesnt even need
to be considered a threat (my opinion)

[Lanidrak]

68.9% of people want to implement some sort of change to Immortality.

The majority of those, want a distinction between Ethereality and Immortality.

The remainder of the votes (excluding those who want Immortality to remain unchanged) all want a way to remove Immortality, a distinction and a way to remove it or revert back to when shields don't effect Immortals AND a way to remove it.

I still stand firmly by my suggestion; of seperating all effects into damaging and non-damaging and make Immortality work around that. Then, include a new status, Ethereal which cannot be targetted at all (Immortals, Phase Dragons etc, will have this; Quintessence will give this). I suppose Immortality will have to become a Time status, and Anubis will be able to buff it on things for (instead of the usual Quintessence he can cast).

In some of my earlier posts, I suggested that through seperating effects into Damage/Non-Damage - you will also gain a way to remove Immortality; eg. Lobotomize and Liquid Shadow (both, remove abilities and can target Immortality buffed creatures).

Regardless of any of this debate as to what people want to see implemented or, what they think is best or prefer etc... The point remains, I think something, no matter what, must be done to change immortality. (Only slightly ignoring the 14/46 people - 31.1% - who want it to remain as it is.)

[Xinef]

I still stand firmly by my suggestion; of seperating all effects into damaging and non-damaging and make Immortality work around that. Then, include a new status, Ethereal which cannot be targetted at all (Immortals, Phase Dragons etc, will have this; Quintessence will give this). I suppose Immortality will have to become a Time status, and Anubis will be able to buff it on things for (instead of the usual Quintessence he can cast).

I remember someone posting a better solution (EDIT: I found it here http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,942.0.html )
basically abilities that cost a different element than the creature are a good thing, making duo and trio decks more useful. So I agree that Immortals should be immortal, Phase Dragons ethereal, Quint making ethereal, Anubis making immortal, Morning Glories ethereal, and Anubises ability costing aether.
This makes immortality an aether/time status, while etherealness an aether/light status, which makes it more universal and fun, than keeping everything separated in one element or the other.

[Lanidrak]

Yeah, I sort of said that Anubis Immortality become Time/Time out of desperation, class was starting!

Your idea is much better.

[BluePriest]

I think if you make immortals so that they can be targeted, and then add in the etheral status as well, they would get a little too overpowered. Think about it like this, You get an immortal creature (I like the superman example). So yo get superman, and  theres a stupid bone shield in front of you. The haxor (not really, but just saying) got it beefed up to 30. Well, at first superman seems next to helpless in this situation. But then, all of a sudden, someone uses momentum, followed by a quint. now, superman cant be hurt, cant be targeted, and cant be stopped either. Well, youre pretty much doomed.

The health going below zero wont work with the setup of immortal vs etheral. Theyd have to just not be able to be damaged, or have any spell with the potential of damage be put on them. Why do you ask? Because, lets take superman again, and instead of buffing him up with momentum, why not have the ulimate Armagio? put a gravity pull on him, and he will just keep absorbing and absorbing damage. Your health is now infitnity. My opinion on how this should go,
  = invisible. (cant be targeted, but area effects still happen)
  = Immortals. can not be hit by any damaging effect, or with the potential to damage. That includes them not being able to be lobotomized.

Why do I say they should keep their immortality? Because, they are already extremely debuffed. If they can be congealed, effected by all shields aside from fire buckler, and put back with procrastination, then its pointless to make it so that they can be stripped even further to be destroyed finally.

Also, a thing I just now thought of, just have the immortals have a little infinity sign for thier health, that way they just cant be destroyed (tehy can be targeted by any spell, any creature (good luck getting an oty to infinite defense), and the only thing they CANT be targeted by is mutation (including improved mutation unless they keep thier infinite defense), gravity pull, and that one spell that switches attack and defense around. That gives minimal coding adjustment (only making it so that a 3 -6 (counting upgraded versions) cards cant hurt him, and instead of dividing all spells into attack/defense spells, you just make the possibility of infinite defense possible.

[Xinef]

Good point about gravity pull, I did not think of that one... but indeed immortal creatures should be unable to use it or be targeted by it.

As far as infinity is concerned... it is a problematic thing in programming In most programming languages you cannot set an integer to infinity, so you would have to for example set creature's hp to the maximal value an integer can have, but what if you cast plate armor on the creature? The number goes over the maximum and (in most programming languages) it results in a most negative number you can store...
so basically if you want infinities, you have to keep an additional variable with information if the number is infinity and with every operation on this number you have to check that variable, so that you know for example that (infinity - 6) = infinity (you cast a rage potion on your immortal creature)...
Only floating point variables have a mechanism to store infinities and NaN (not a number) thingies, but in a game like this one you usually do not use floating point values too often.

As for the lobotomy, mutation and so on... I guess it could work similar to what I have seen with momentum... I mean I've seen momentum behaving differently than most skills in that it remains after a creature is mutated. Maybe it is considered a 'state' and not an 'ability' (such as being poisoned, or affected by aflatoxin, or frozen is a state and not an ability), so maybe immortality could also be considered a state of being immortal, not an ability, and so it would not be removed by lobotomy... but on the other hand I guess momentum IS removed by lobotomy... oh well

[Lanidrak]

As for the invisibility - I suggested it in the past. My version meant that Invisible creatures cannot be targeted by the opponent - since it's your creature, you know where it is and can buff it, your opponent cannot. Another question is, do invisible creatures attack? If so, then it is - as you suggest it - just another brand of immortality (from everything except Plague, Thunderstorm and Rain of Fire). The idea of invisibility needs to be ironed out; so that it adds a new game dynamic instead of just re-addressing what we already have and giving it a new name-tag with a different font.

From what you (BluePriest & Xinef) have said. This is the way I see it now,

  (or maybe  or  ) - Invisibility.
First, we'll need a few new cards which enter the game with this invisibility buff (a bit like Phase Dragons and Immortals currently). I can think of a couple "Stalker, 2-2 Darkness", "Assassin, 6-1 Darkness". But, should there be a way to remove the Invisibility from a creature? Then we'll also need a creature with the "make invisible" ability. Maybe a spell (like Quintessence) which makes a creature invisible? "Enchanted Cloak - Target creature becomes invisible."

Invisible - See first Paragraph regarding how invisibility should actually work.

- Immortal. (new)
Okay, Anubis ability will be this one, maybe a few new creatures based around the (new) idea of immortality. Maybe a card like Quintessence which gives this status to a creature.

Immortal - Creature is immune to damage.

- Ethereal. (duh, new)
So, Quintessence gives this status, Phase Dragons and Immortals (might need to rethink a name for them) enter the game with this ability.

Ethereal - Creature cannot be targetted.

[Xinef]

The idea of invisibility needs to be ironed out; so that it adds a new game dynamic instead of just re-addressing what we already have and giving it a new name-tag with a different font.

Maybe make it an activated ability like dive? You have to spend 1 each turn to keep it working? Because the ability to buff your creature, while your opponent cannot would be overpowered...
just imagine invisible units + angels (or invisible angels)... they can be healed and you can buff their offense and defense so killing them with RoF od plague would be almost impossible... and you could PU them, while your opponent cannot...
Imagine an archangel buffed with blessings, turned into a vampire with liquid shadow, and then turned invisible - dealing like 20 damage and healing you 20 hp per turn, and opponent cannot rewind/freeze/mutate him... and then you PU him a few times... and if you need, you can heal them with another invisible archangel... (and all this in a trio deck, or duo if without PU)

certainly, this would require a lot of balancing and I think making it an activated ability (and adding it to a creature would remove previous abilities) with a cost of 1 or even 2 each turn would be required... and would make it different from etherealness

As for the immortal, let's keep him immortal, that would mean more diversity in aether decks. Right now he is just a 'small phase dragon', which makes him less interesting.


EDIT:
One more idea to nerf invisibility:
To target your invisible creature, you would have to 'not activate' the ability during your turn. Then your opponent can target your creature. Then during your next turn you can target it (if it has survived), buff it, heal it, then make it invisible again.