Thought I’d pose my thoughts concerning cards that really should have had additional testing prior to release.

Note: My intentions are to start this thread with the desire to deal with players’ thoughts and how/why they would re-design certain cards, abilities, actions and so on.

While I believe many Dynasty character cards are either overpowered for their cost/abilities, or simply badly designed/conceived, venturing into this topic at the start of this thread will probably start a sh******m among us on these forums. So I’ll put that off for now and see where this thread goes.

I’ll begin with Event cards as I find players in my neck of the woods willing to discuss various design and effectiveness aspects more easily and less passionately than other, Clan specific cards. With a few exceptions, of course.

Event cards

Policy Debate - our small group of card players have found this card to be unbalanced. One of us in our group lllloooovvvvveeeesssss this card, and I personally hate this card. I find it too easy to use, simply designed to not look at but also remove an opponent’s card, with little if any threat to your hand. In the games that I’ve played, I’ve found this card to be equivalent to playing a card from the bottom of the deck, in proverbial terms. Meek Informant and Kitsuki Investigator are in the same field of its ability,both costing a fate and involving a character (which IMO sounds reasonable), but the use of this card is disheartening to my opponents and just too brutal in its effectiveness... You see your opponent’s hand, and you get to remove a card. Too strong of an ability when compared to other Event cards. I had 2 copies in both my Phoenix and my Dragon decks, but I didn’t wish to continue using it when it just sapped my opponent’s will and crushed their willingness to play our match.

My version. Cost 0 Policy Debate Action - During a Conflict, randomly discard a card. Choose a participating character you control and a participating character your opponent controls. Your character challenges your opponent’s character to a Political duel. The controller of the losing character reveals his or her hand, and then randomly discards a card.

This will force the player using PD to discard a card (which means they must have one to discard to begin with), and then might still fall victim to their own debate if they lose the political duel. This should pressure players to use PD more strategically than they are now, as one needs to take into account that it might certainly backfire as normal, but you must also give up a card to begin with.

A Fate Worse than Death - once again, all of our players, and yes including the Scorpion player, believe this card to be broken. I won’t spend too much time giving an explanation, so I’ll go to what I’d think it should read.

Cost 3 A Fate Worse than Death Action - During a Conflict, choose a participating character - either send it home and dishonor it, OR bow it and remove a fate from it. Until the end of the phase, treat it’s text box as if it were blank (except for Traits).

Thoughts???

First lets get something straight, Policy Debate provides no card advantage as the end result is a card for card discard. What good is it then? The benefit of Policy Debate is to look at the opponent's hand (minor ability) and choose a specific card to discard (major ability, and why it gets played). However, we are forgetting something in this equation. In order to win this ability the player will likely need to pay honor, a potentially steep price against the wrong deck. The "fix" above will turn a beautifully evil event into this:

Policy Debate may be on the NFE side but it is not anywhere close to broken right now.

I agree that Fate Worse than Death is problematic. To me its primary negative impact is discouraging the play of higher cost characters. I wish they would have costed it at 5, because that should be the price of wrecking a clan champion.

Policy Debate is dumb, and I think most people agree that it's not very well balanced. However, IMO it's something of a symptom of the duel system just not really working. It seems like thematically duels are meant to have an element of risk/reward to them in terms of bidding honour. But realistically, the way the game works it usually just means 'duel their weenie with your big political dude, everyone bids one, discard their best card'. Due to that, it's under costed and ubiquitous; if they were going to keep it linked to a duel it probably should have either cost 1 or not been a neutral card.

As for Fate Worse Than Death, I think it's fine (even if it really hurts to get hit by it). It's essentially the equivalent of a 'kill spell', something that certainly isn't inherently broken. It costs 4, which is a **** of a lot. And if you're sitting on that amount of fate, you're missing out somewhere else. It can be cancelled, which with the strong cancel presence and high cost is a significant threat. And it can be played around by not mindlessly throwing your big characters into conflicts (granted, not using big characters isn't really viable due to the nature of the game). Honestly, the only thing that I think really makes this 'broken' right now is that the meta has a lot of 'voltron' decks, and this is an anti voltron card. But as other play options come in to the game I don't think this will be a problem.

PD should probably have had a cost, been political only or like Abyss said, is broken because of the duel system. A clan champion dueling some no name character with 0 political? How honorable is that? PD is the symptom but dueling is the disease. Dueling should really only involve characters of the same skill value or something.

AFWTD is not broken, it can be cancelled and costs 4 fate. It does suck to get hit with it but I won't deny, it's a cool and thematic card and I play Dragon.

7 hours ago, Tokhuah said:

First lets get something straight, Policy Debate provides no card advantage as the end result is a card for card discard. What good is it then? The benefit of Policy Debate is to look at the opponent's hand (minor ability) and choose a specific card to discard (major ability, and why it gets played). However, we are forgetting something in this equation. In order to win this ability the player will likely need to pay honor, a potentially steep price against the wrong deck. The "fix" above will turn a beautifully evil event into this:

Policy Debate may be on the NFE side but it is not anywhere close to broken right now.

I agree that Fate Worse than Death is problematic. To me its primary negative impact is discouraging the play of higher cost characters. I wish they would have costed it at 5, because that should be the price of wrecking a clan champion.

The odds of honor exchange are actually almost low because Policy Debate lets you pick the participants so its always going to be your strongest versus their weakest character. The better fix would be to make if target players so you each nominate a participant rather than letting one player pick both. The other fix would be limit it to only during political conflicts so that participants are more likely to be appropriately skilled.

Nothing about dueling as a political tool in Rokugan is about fairness. It's totally bully dueling as practiced by Crane and Scorpion.

sorry but if I play PD, I actually intend to win it. as any duel I could play actually. so of course I'll set up a duel of one of my strong against one of your weenie. if I have to be fair and give you a chance to win, it means there's intrinsically a chance for me to lose. My own card being potentially detrimental to me isn't part of my game plan.

leave it as is, everyone can play it, so it levels the field. nerf it and it becomes a dead card no one will play anymore.

But intending to win duels in O5R, was about making a deck around dueling, using duelists, card that duel, and high focus/bad effect cards for the duels. Here is just, I choose my big skill vs your low skill and instawin the duel.

As much as I liked dueling in old5r, with the cards to focus, or things like karmic strike, this isn't old5r anymore. So no much point to compare. I actually find it cool that duel may be a general mechanic usable efficiently by all instead of a niche you have to design your deck around. But even in old5r, you wouldn't throw a duel if there weren't at least serious probability to win it.

10 hours ago, Barbacuo said:

But intending to win duels in O5R, was about making a deck around dueling, using duelists, card that duel, and high focus/bad effect cards for the duels. Here is just, I choose my big skill vs your low skill and instawin the duel.

Duels were also incredibly one sided by in the last decade-ish of old5r resulting in that same situation. Why would I ever issue a challenge to someone who I thought had an even chance of beating my character? I played Crane honor dueling in old5r through all of lotus, when the dueling rules changed and dueling itself became more prevalent. It was so easy to make monumental gains while locking down the opponent that I was basically playing solitaire unless I was playing against pirate raid or another duelist. At that point you really didn't need many duelists because chi was such that you could bully duel with a high chi character, and there were so many high focus valued cards with good limited/battle effects and focus effects that there wasn't much of a weakness in building wholly around dueling itself. The meta was poor because there wasn't enough of it to match how easy it was to generate a duel. That I could force my opponent to focus with Shattered Focus or Kakita, guaranteeing me two focuses in most instances when I was using a duelist, made the game that much faster.
While PD may seem too simple/easy/etc. on its face, the fact that I can't build a deck entirely around it or dueling specifically and suck the fun out of it for the other player tells me duels and dueling as we see them now are an improvement from a game play standpoint.

While I don't really have a problem with bully duels, there should be some risk for it if it's intended to be a 'cost' to get a powerful effect. Right now it's a pure numbers game; my skill vs their skill and account for honour. As long as you can beat them by enough there's zero risk and in the case of a card like Policy Debate there's zero cost for an exceedingly power effect.

A couple of effects that can interact with dueling (say, a weapon that can be played in response to a duel, or a free character for losing a duel) and suddenly it's a little bit riskier, which seems to be be the point with PD.

The alternative of course is not to use dueling in that matter, which I'm also fine with. Not having played old L5R, I'm not sure what purpose it filled gameplay wise.

12 hours ago, Abyss said:

A couple of effects that can interact with dueling (say, a weapon that can be played in response to a duel, or a free character for losing a duel) and suddenly it's a little bit riskier, which seems to be be the point with PD.

As I said, I made some homemade cards that can fit that spot, as an example of what can be done with dueling. I quote:

Quote

I’m not so good at balancing so bear with me, and the reason I’m not assigning some cards to clans (help me here if you wish). Oh, and the fact that duels don’t have an action window is the reason that all of them are Interrupts or Reaction.

-Duelist Trainer
Dynasty Character - 2 Fate - 2/1/1
Reaction: After honor dials are revealed during a duel - raise or lower your bid by 1.

-Kakita Yojimbo (Crane clan)
Conflict character- 3 Fate -3/3/2
Influence (2?)
Interrupt: When one of your characters is challenged to a duel - Put this character into play. He becomes the challenged character instead.

-Dishonor on your cow (name in progress)
Neutral event - 0 cost
Interrupt: When one of your characters is challenged to a duel - Dishonor that character. The duel does not initiate. Cancel the effects of the duel.

-Niten daisho (Dragon)
Attachment - ? Fate
Influence 2
+2 MIL
Reaction: After a duel initiates, but before setting up the honor bid - play this attachment on a character participating in the duel. (Not sure on this one, maybe after setting up the bid but before revealing will be better)

-False Rumor
Basically the same as the above, but gives -2 POL (to attach to opponent’s character)

Rigged Duel (Scorpion)
Event - 1 Fate
Influence 1
Interrupt: After losing a duel - give 2 honor to your opponent. Cancel the effects of the duel.

Ancestral Dojo
Holding - +1
Reaction: After losing a duel - Honor a character you control.

Public place at the sunset
Holding - +1
Reaction: After losing a duel, sacrifice this holding - Dishonor the challenging character.


Maybe the wording is not entirely right, but my point is making some cards that make your opponent think twice before challenging you a duel, and making the bidding mechanic actually a risky bid, and not as predictable as it is now. Also, cards that gives you an advantage even when you lose a duel. I think that dueling desperately needs a rework, but instead of make it changing the rules, just through cards that interact with the Duel Timing sequence.

Policy Debate is the only card in need of a fix right now.

It should have costed 1 fate, Pol only or discart at randon.

In any case of the above, I would still use it.

7 hours ago, Nagori-A-Go-Go said:

While PD may seem too simple/easy/etc. on its face, the fact that I can't build a deck entirely around it or dueling specifically and suck the fun out of it for the other player tells me duels and dueling as we see them now are an improvement from a game play standpoint.

Someone built decks about shootings. All his fate was made or ranged attacks, boosting ranged attacks, lowering Force, destroying force pumping attachments. Was this simple "shoot'em all" mechanic boring for your oponent?

Other one builds deck about sending home and negating movement (back). Is it also boring for ops?

Another one built deck about force reducing and negating force boostings. Also boring?

Same way with old dueling. You sacrifice freedom of fate deck building becasue higly restrictive deck construction (high focus value) to increase effectiveness of your actions. If you faced standard deck your whole "duel abilities" just became proper limited/battle actions. Battle: Duel = insta Battle: Do Something (kill, bow, send home) like 99% of actions in other decks. Sometimes you hit hard into duel meta (mostly as focus effect of common Strategies) same way as ranged attack deck could sometimes meet Outer Walls or Turtle's Shell. Allowing to focusing from hand also could counter your crucial duel if your opponent stacked some 4FV cards in hand (Rings?).

Real fun for dueling decks started if you faced another duel deck or high focus one (Tacticians?).

So treat "dueling" of old L5R as just additional mechanic ould work as each other and sometimes it was just much more fun.

And high focused deadly duels weren't common thing in post Lotus editions (killing ones had 1FV or maybe 2FV for most of time) that increased chances of failing. Also something stupid as Double Chi has gone as well. Also Discipline mechanic in Ivory+ increased chance for card advantage for your opponent after bully focusing.

Policy Debate, while over the top, has never straight up just won a game on its own. Getting dishonored at Shameful Display and then moved to a Feast or Famine by Talisman of the Sun has.

I'm still not going to declare any card is "Broken" because in the 2 games previous to that one, I attached Above Question to my Niten Master and then just rolled over Scorpion twice in a row. But in order to do that I had to remove my Crab Splash and Pathfinders Blade which made me vulnerable to Talisman and Province effects.

There are several cards with effects that could be considered too powerful but I don't see anything that is "Broken."

I don't think PD is Broken but compared with the many conflict cards and its costs is pretty obvious that if it wasn't a duel it would have received a fate cost or some restrictions to be played.

But the way it works is exactly the same as playing a 0 cost event..

4 hours ago, kempy said:

Someone built decks about shootings. All his fate was made or ranged attacks, boosting ranged attacks, lowering Force, destroying force pumping attachments. Was this simple "shoot'em all" mechanic boring for your oponent?

All of those things had reasonable meta, or at the very least were balanced compared to the revised dueling mechanics and cards. Through the entirety of Lotus, dueling did not. That's why it was boring for me: there were very few equal matches for it in what was marketed as a diverse play field. And consider that the meta at the time actually helped dueling decks (shattered focus) and that redesigning dueling in general, with the nixing of double chi, adding duelists and streamlining dueling effects, was all done because for years players complained that the original "focus from hand" mechanic was itself unfair. Short of determining the winner with a coin flip, dueling will always favor the person who builds for it.
Right now we have little meta for it. The upside is that the effects of winning duels aren't nearly as absurd as they used to be (iirc Emperor had toned it down quite a bit, too). If the problem players have is that the player initiating the challenge is going to pick the easiest fight for them to win, well, that's not going away. That's just sound strategy. I like the idea of refusing duels at a cost or, as started in Emperor, cards that punish the winner if certain conditions were met or give something to the loser if other conditions are met.
But unless duels become really common again I don't see it as a major problem.

13 hours ago, Abyss said:

Not having played old L5R, I'm not sure what purpose it filled gameplay wise.

In Old L5R, it was basically "Kill another player's character. Then trigger a whole bunch more benefits from doing so."

7 hours ago, kempy said:

Someone built decks about shootings. All his fate was made or ranged attacks, boosting ranged attacks, lowering Force, destroying force pumping attachments. Was this simple "shoot'em all" mechanic boring for your oponent?

Other one builds deck about sending home and negating movement (back). Is it also boring for ops?

Another one built deck about force reducing and negating force boostings. Also boring?

Same way with old dueling. You sacrifice freedom of fate deck building becasue higly restrictive deck construction (high focus value) to increase effectiveness of your actions. If you faced standard deck your whole "duel abilities" just became proper limited/battle actions. Battle: Duel = insta Battle: Do Something (kill, bow, send home) like 99% of actions in other decks. Sometimes you hit hard into duel meta (mostly as focus effect of common Strategies) same way as ranged attack deck could sometimes meet Outer Walls or Turtle's Shell. Allowing to focusing from hand also could counter your crucial duel if your opponent stacked some 4FV cards in hand (Rings?).

Real fun for dueling decks started if you faced another duel deck or high focus one (Tacticians?).

So treat "dueling" of old L5R as just additional mechanic ould work as each other and sometimes it was just much more fun.

And high focused deadly duels weren't common thing in post Lotus editions (killing ones had 1FV or maybe 2FV for most of time) that increased chances of failing. Also something stupid as Double Chi has gone as well. Also Discipline mechanic in Ivory+ increased chance for card advantage for your opponent after bully focusing.

Oh, please. With archery decks, you'd sometimes devote several cards to taking down one big target--during which time your opponent would also have actions to try to save him--and you'd usually have to bow one of your characters to do so, removing his Force from the battle (unless you spent another action to straighten him). It could be frustrating at times, but the back-and-forth definitely fit with the other military strategies in the game.

With dueling, you only really needed to get your Duelist out and a card to trigger a duel, and then you could reap the rewards of excellent focus effects and reactions to winning a duel (usually force pumps and honor gains). Your claims of deck construction being "highly restrictive" are utterly laughable, as the vast majority of Fate cards that created duels, interrupted duels, or had good focus effects also had high focus values. Honestly, dueling would have been far more interesting if pro-dueling cards had had lower Fate values, so that there actually would have been some thought required in building decks, rather than the decks practically being made for you.

15 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

With dueling, you only really needed to get your Duelist out and a card to trigger a duel, and then you could reap the rewards of excellent focus effects and reactions to winning a duel (usually force pumps and honor gains). Your claims of deck construction being "highly restrictive" are utterly laughable, as the vast majority of Fate cards that created duels, interrupted duels, or had good focus effects also had high focus values. Honestly, dueling would have been far more interesting if pro-dueling cards had had lower Fate values, so that there actually would have been some thought required in building decks, rather than the decks practically being made for you.

Have you ever played duel deck and faced big fat guy with higher chi that made 95% of your fate useless? Or have you faced a someone with trait "use Force as duel stat" or a guy with "cannot be challenged" etc. So imagine now, that your "deck restrictions" should include such examples and in many cases they didn't fit your prefered focus values. Also for long time most deadly duels had 1 or 2 FV only.

And what's the difference - effect wise - between a Strategy with "Battle: Bow a Personality" in standard military and "Battle: Challenge. Bow the loser." in duel deck?

Getting a guy out that can auto-win a duel is not trivial, and without that guy out PD is less-than-great.

It is a very good card. I wish it let each player chose their participant. But I am not sure why everyone seems to think that the "duel" part of it is wasted ink.

I play scorpion, and have found myself in situations where I simply cannot play it. They don't happen a lot, but they definitely happen.

26 minutes ago, kempy said:

Have you ever played duel deck and faced big fat guy with higher chi that made 95% of your fate useless? Or have you faced a someone with trait "use Force as duel stat" or a guy with "cannot be challenged" etc. So imagine now, that your "deck restrictions" should include such examples and in many cases they didn't fit your prefered focus values. Also for long time most deadly duels had 1 or 2 FV only.

And what's the difference - effect wise - between a Strategy with "Battle: Bow a Personality" in standard military and "Battle: Challenge. Bow the loser." in duel deck?

For one thing, when you factor in focus effects and interrupts, it was actually closer to "Battle: Bow a personality, gain 3 honor, play an item for free, give your personality a +1F token, and take another action."

20 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

For one thing, when you factor in focus effects and interrupts, it was actually closer to "Battle: Bow a personality, gain 3 honor, play an item for free, give your personality a +1F token, and take another action."

But getting to do all those things, in the old game, was difficult to set up, especially when those effects were often on cards with lower focus values and had no other significant impact unless you won the duel............and required your opponent to keep focusing to pull it off. So the reality for dueling was, you come in with a dueling deck and I'm just playing the auto-include strong cards of the format, I kill your duelist before you get to duel, or you somehow get to initiate your duel and I just strike without focusing, or focusing the minimal cards when forced to focus, and you get a pretty crappy duel effect because most of the duel cards were terrible............because they had to prevent the outcome you describe from being easy to produce.

It sucked all the way around. I don't remember a time when dueling was ever "good" in old5r. It might have been fun for some, but, I don't know that it was ever balanced or added value to the game..........and I loved old5r. But there are plenty of parts of it that were just bad in retrospect.

FFG needs to be very careful in how they approach dueling in the new game so that it doesn't become what it was in the old game. Imagine if you could get those bonkers results your described from a duel without ever actually moving your honor dial............that would just be dumb. It makes the effect of Policy Debate look like trash in comparison.

This leads me to believe that PD is not broken and we may see stronger duels in the future with more restrictions on cost, targeting, etc. PD is just strong now because the card pool is shallow.

4 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:

But getting to do all those things, in the old game, was difficult to set up, especially when those effects were often on cards with lower focus values and had no other significant impact unless you won the duel............and required your opponent to keep focusing to pull it off. So the reality for dueling was, you come in with a dueling deck and I'm just playing the auto-include strong cards of the format, I kill your duelist before you get to duel, or you somehow get to initiate your duel and I just strike without focusing, or focusing the minimal cards when forced to focus, and you get a pretty crappy duel effect because most of the duel cards were terrible............because they had to prevent the outcome you describe from being easy to produce.

It sucked all the way around. I don't remember a time when dueling was ever "good" in old5r. It might have been fun for some, but, I don't know that it was ever balanced or added value to the game..........and I loved old5r. But there are plenty of parts of it that were just bad in retrospect.

FFG needs to be very careful in how they approach dueling in the new game so that it doesn't become what it was in the old game. Imagine if you could get those bonkers results your described from a duel without ever actually moving your honor dial............that would just be dumb. It makes the effect of Policy Debate look like trash in comparison.

This leads me to believe that PD is not broken and we may see stronger duels in the future with more restrictions on cost, targeting, etc. PD is just strong now because the card pool is shallow.

What "lower focus value" dueling cards was everyone seeing? I remember playing dueling decks in Ivory/20F, with the majority of my cards having good Focus Effects, abilities causing duels, or abilities triggered by duels, and the entire Fate deck was 3-4 FV. I would have loved if they would have actually balanced dueling cards in the way you suggest, but sadly the few cards that were lower FV were made unnecessary by all the high-FV dueling cards.

47 minutes ago, Yogo Gohei said:

Getting a guy out that can auto-win a duel is not trivial, and without that guy out PD is less-than-great.

It is a very good card. I wish it let each player chose their participant. But I am not sure why everyone seems to think that the "duel" part of it is wasted ink.

I play scorpion, and have found myself in situations where I simply cannot play it. They don't happen a lot, but they definitely happen.

In those situations that you "simply cannot play it" why is that?

Likely because the stats difference between your character and your opponent's character is too close to allow you to just auto win the duel...........amirite?

That's what makes the "duel" part of the card irrelevant. Right now in the game the only value in PD is getting the opponent's best card out of their hand and the only way to do that without risking honor is to have a large enough stat lead that you don't have to bid more than one. When both players are just revealing 1 on their dial...........because one character has a stat that is 4+ higher than the other, is it really a "duel?"

Maybe at some point PD will be used in situations where the stats are closer to try and leverage an honor gain from you opponent and trick them into bidding high in a duel you don't care about winning........but, I don't think honor running is there yet. I've tried it, and it generally sucks but, I'm sure there is someone out there who is more creative/better than me and might pull it off. My gut says we are not at that point though and so for now PD might as well not have a duel attached to it because people are only using in when they are dueling from ahead by a lot.

3 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

What "lower focus value" dueling cards was everyone seeing? I remember playing dueling decks in Ivory/20F, with the majority of my cards having good Focus Effects, abilities causing duels, or abilities triggered by duels, and the entire Fate deck was 3-4 FV. I would have loved if they would have actually balanced dueling cards in the way you suggest, but sadly the few cards that were lower FV were made unnecessary by all the high-FV dueling cards.

IvE/20F dueling was about everything but not killing guys. Notice that deadly duels had low FV like Stand and Run 2FV, Weakness Exposed 2FV, The Eternal Chase 2FV, Come One at a Time 1FV. 3FV or 4FV duels had only bow/send home effects (except Avenge Your Slights that required Invest to became deadly action).

2 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

What "lower focus value" dueling cards was everyone seeing? I remember playing dueling decks in Ivory/20F, with the majority of my cards having good Focus Effects, abilities causing duels, or abilities triggered by duels, and the entire Fate deck was 3-4 FV. I would have loved if they would have actually balanced dueling cards in the way you suggest, but sadly the few cards that were lower FV were made unnecessary by all the high-FV dueling cards.

Any 3 fv in a duel was a liability, especially in an environment where most of the decks in the top tiers were running cards that were comprised of almost all 4 fv. Still you had to get your opponent to focus more cards to get all those great bonus effects..........the duels themselves were generally weak with a few exceptions.

There were never a lot cards that initiated a kill duel. The other cards that initiated duels generally had mediocre effects or could be refused with some small penalty. Those duels you wanted to try and chain more of the cards that had good duel effects that resolve if you won, but, there were so many cards that could stop you from doing that, or the small dip in focus value could lead to losing a duel, or your opponent could just simply choose to suffer the effect of the weak duel and come back with a big power effect. Remember this was time where there were decks that had cards with straight up unit kill!

It was a noble effort by design in respect to the dueling cards, but, there were too many good auto includes with high focus values that dueling was not viable, in terms of fate generated duels. Duels printed on personalities was another beast altogether.