Rethinking Initiative, and gotta work on a summary

So the original idea of initiative was to track both player turn order and position to monster for targeting. This was rolled at the beginning of combat and players had to adjust from there. But if I'm going to have Fitness abilities to be able to adjust, and in such a way require certain levels of initiative, then why roll in the beginning? I could now just decide to incorporate initiative into the combat system, have spells have a penalty, maybe a kind of penalty for certain spells. But initiative was a relative position from the monster, not an absolute one, so an initiative of 1, the furthest from the monster, could still be within arm's reach, just behind the other players.

Course now this brings up the question of battlefield mobility. Since the monster targets enemies with both fixed and relative positions, players can feasibly dodge moves with something that could move them about. But do I make movement core or ability card based. I could tie it to the action energy cards, but these energy cards are an easy catch all for everything that may be too general to throw into randomly collected abilities. This means too many mechanics in one place, and that I think is bad design. Course, I should first figure out what they're currently being used for to see if I declare it overburdened.

So far Action energy is used for

• Shuffling discard pile into the deck while out of combat and at home. 
• Discard and draw hand while out of combat and at home.
• Use in special attacks. 
• Draw a card at any time during your turn, or any time while out of combat. Can be modified by different skill cards to perform this differently. 

With this in mind, I am considering having initiative being set versus randomly rolled at the beginning of combat. D&D rolled for initiative purely for turn order, and was more or less set for an entire encounter. If I have players that are suppose to be mobile, then they need to be able to dictate that movement a bit more. But then if its going to be key, then it needs to interact with the player more than just order and targeting. Namely in their abilities. But THEN that's just more restrictions on card use, and that sounds like it will narrow gameplay. 

Sitting on this more.

Another thing is I probably should get to writing a one page summary for the "about" page, cause no one is going to bother reading my mind nor my posts just to get an idea of what my game is. I think I can go with "Deck building Themed card combat board game."

Fitness Card Idea and then other junk

Finally decided fitness attacks are going to be fighting game style chain attacks. Each fitness attack ability would have a classification: light medium, heavy, jump, and knock-up. Each attack can be used on its own, or can be stacked in a certain order for bonus effects. Each attack will also have an initiative requirement to perform, and some attacks will change your current initiative.

The core of this idea is the light > medium > heavy combo concept. On their own, each attack has a base damage. When chained with the proper attack by being used in a sequence, a secondary effect takes place. For 1 star attack, its a bit of extra damage. For more advanced moves, like a leg sweep, it can disable the enemy for one move. In this case it just removes one die from the enemy's attack.

Tier 3 abilities would be like supers with a failure rate that can be mitigated with the right chain attack.

Social I think I'll create these catagories:

Enhancements: cards that buff individual abilities.

Trainers: You take time out of combat to gain ranks with a trainer. Each rank grants a new ability to use with this card.

Companions: These act like a normal ability that are played and tapped.

Instants: Played from hand spells that can happen at any time.

Items: I guess I'll need this slot if Bento heal kits are going to stay social cards.

So far I got sorcery spells for int. Played from hand. Have other cards play up that style.

Gonna go from here.

Social is just going to be Green

Easy design decision: Make social decks act like Green decks, or at least the green starter deck I got, which was a mix of powerful creatures and buff enchants. So running with that.

What to do about Social

So I had good ideas of what Fitness and Int abilities should be like. (Fitness are creatures and Int are spells). Social originally was buffs and companions, but that feels like its viability as a single color deck was shot.

Another bit was some companions were also tied to specific events, but when if a player gets the card not as a social energy build, then that card is worthless.

How about have these events grant either the companion or an equilvalent tier item. So like my military companion social card was someone that could call in a mortar strike. Others could get a weapon or attack for fitness or Int based equipment.

I need to write more down.

Card Draw Solution

Just came up with an interesting way to add more card draws: make the card draw a core ability with action energy, base 1 card per draw, and have each other type of draw be an enhancement to that draw ability. This would add a more reliable way to have card drawing in combat other than having to stack card draw abilities. Other abilities will still maintain a tap or discard strength use. Also when in town every time as player draws an event with an action energy the player can also draw a card. Maybe give a bonus if they don't.

Also had more thoughts on the villain deck. Might change the draw from 3 to 2. With a 60 card deck that's a difference of 10 turns. Buy that will have to come down to play testing.

And that requires something to test.