Desperate Prayers

[Baron.Pocket]

 Desperate Prayers

Sorcery

As an additionnal cost to Desperate Prayers, pay 3 life.
Gain 20 life and skip your next turn.
Draw 2 cards.
Desperate prayers are the only issues for those without faith.

EDIT: See the second post for the newest Desperate Prayers because this version tries to do too much.

[Ephraim]

This card is trying to do way too much. Most cards in the game exchange one resource for one other resource. Mana, life, cards, permanents, etc. are all resources. This card is playing around with four different resources. You have a mana payment, a turn payment and a life payment in exchange for a life gain and a card gain. The life payment/gain is also very clunky. It prevents you from using this if you're at three or less life, but it's very cumbersome. In general, I can barely begin to comment on the power level of this card, because it's so busy. I guess that Meditate suggests that the cost of four cards is three mana and a turn. This card costs roughly one mana more than Meditate (two coloured mana of different colours : 1/2 + 1/2 = 1) and it yields only two cards. That leaves a cost difference between this and meditate of one mana and two cards. That is definitely insufficient to balance out a life gain of 17.

[Baron.Pocket]

You are right.

I was trying to create a card that could gives Rector Storm decks some time.

I really appreciate your comments and it's true.

What about this version?

Desperate Prayers
 
Instant

As an additionnal cost to Desperate Prayers, pay 5 life and discard your hand.
Draw 5 cards.

Desperate prayers are the only issues for those without faith.

[Matt]

The new version looks decent!

[asmoranomardicodais]

Doesn't seem very white to me, more blue/black than anything. I think it should cost UUBB to avoid it being to spashable, and four mana because it is almost wheel of fortune at thesame price. I feel at four it can at least pretend its not a draw seven wannabe.

[Ephraim]

I agree that white doesn't seem appropriate for this spell. I understand that it has the word "prayers" in the name, but that alone doesn't justify it being white. Mechanically, I'm not sure what to think about this card. The going rate for four cards, presently, is five mana at sorcery speed (Tidings.) Black's most recent way to draw four was Infernal Contract -- three mana and half your life. Black also has Promise of Power -- five mana and five life for five cards. I suppose that for this to be useful, you have to have few cards in hand. Three mana plus five life plus your hand for five cards. That two mana discount seems fair enough for the penalties associated with this card, since it requires one or fewer cards in hand just to be approximately as good as Infernal Contract. My only concern is that this is an instant. Supposing you change this card to mono-black, if you want this to be an instant, I'd probably insist on increasing the cost to {B}.

[Jacob Orlove]

Also, please see the Card Creation Forum Rules, especially about a Current Wording post.

[Nova442]

Well colors aside is this too much better than concentrate or ambition's cost?

[Ephraim]

Well colors aside is this too much better than concentrate or ambition's cost?

I hadn't even thought of those. I was too focused on the draw-fours and draw-fives. Comparing this to Promise of Power, my inclination is to say that this would be fair at a cost of {B} as a rare card. Since I don't think there's any feasible way of making a draw-five that isn't rare, I'm ready to pass this. If we were trying to try to make this uncommon, I'd say that it would need to look more like Ambition's Cost, as far as the numbers go -- probably {B} or {B} and five life for five cards.