Divine Healing

[Nefarias]

Divine Healing
3W
Sorcery
Double you life total.
Checker -- If you have 6 or less life, triple your life total instead.

A quick word on Checker; it's a simple little keyword I made up to help tie together a string of different cards I had thought up of that all got better based on your need for it. Realisitically, I don't know if I like it as a keyword, but just thinking about it really opens up a huge range of possibilities. It's basically Threshold, except the conditions can be different. The nice thing is you can just remove it and the card works exactly the same. So really, it's more of a nice brainstorming tool than a good keyword, but I thought I'd throw it out there for everyone. Also, I'm removing Checker from the Current Wording right off the bat.

///CURRENT WORDING///
Divine Healing
3W
Sorcery
Double you life total.
Checker -- If you have 6 or less life, triple your life total instead.

[Ephraim]

I like having it as a keyword. Mark Rosewater wrote recently on keywords and I think that if we can come up with innovative new mechanics, we shouldn't be afraid to keyword them. You've noted that your Checker mechanic is similar to Threshold, but you could "define" Checker, for the purposes of other card designers, as "A mechanics that checks a condition related to the effect of the spell and increases the effect of the spell based on that condition." I definitely like the idea; I'm not sure about the name. If you're looking for anything else, "Boost" might work.

That said, I really like this card propossal (although I think that if we nominate to adopt the Checker/Boost mechanic, it will be the real gem of this thread.)

[Matt]

I like having it as a keyword. Mark Rosewater wrote recently on keywords and I think that if we can come up with innovative new mechanics, we shouldn't be afraid to keyword them. You've noted that your Checker mechanic is similar to Threshold, but you could "define" Checker, for the purposes of other card designers, as "A mechanics that checks a condition related to the effect of the spell and increases the effect of the spell based on that condition." I definitely like the idea; I'm not sure about the name. If you're looking for anything else, "Boost" might work.

That said, I really like this card propossal (although I think that if we nominate to adopt the Checker/Boost mechanic, it will be the real gem of this thread.)

Right on, I love this card.

Also, didn't we make a card with a keyword "condition"? The hydroelectric dam one...check the master lists.

[Ephraim]

If you want to make this card into a cycle (which isn't uncommon with new mechanics), I would like to suggest the following possibilities.

Divine Thunder

Sorcery

Divine Thunder deals 4 damage to target player.
Checker -- If that player has 16 or more life, Divine Thunder deals 6 damage to that player instead.

Divine Wisdom

Sorcery

Draw two cards.
Checker -- If you have no cards in your hand, draw three cards instead.

Divine Genesis
{G}
Sorcery

Put two 2/2 Bear creature tokens into play.
Checker -- If you control no creatures, put three 2/2 Bear creature tokens into play instead.

Divine Malice

Sorcery

Target player discards two cards.
Checker -- If that player has six or more cards in his or her hand, that player discards three cards instead.

[Jacob Orlove]

If you're doing "or more" and "or less", then it seems like this would be hard to keyword, since you'd have to spell out which one it is each time anyway. You'd save more text by just leaving off the keyword.

Edit: also, I don't like how this gives you more life if you're at 6 than if you're at 7 or 8.

[Nefarias]

If you're doing "or more" and "or less", then it seems like this would be hard to keyword, since you'd have to spell out which one it is each time anyway. You'd save more text by just leaving off the keyword.

That's the main reason why I'm skeptical about keywording it. Each card with Checker is only loosely connected, and they can't be too complicated because it takes so much text.

I'm not sure about the name. If you're looking for anything else, "Boost" might work.

Yeah, I came up with the name in literally two seconds, because it "checks" to see if you meet the condition. I would not at all be adverse to changing it.

also, I don't like how this gives you more life if you're at 6 than if you're at 7 or 8.

Although that's kind of the spirit of the card, I agree that it shouldn't happen to such a great extent. Can you think of a way to tweak the numbers?

Also, I like the cycle, Ephraim. Isn't Checker really simple to design for? I think the challenge is in development, trying to find out what numbers are just right.

[Ephraim]

The point is not that the card does not require clarification of what the Checker does -- it is that these cards share an idea in that they provide a greater effect if a condition related to their function is met. Think about Imprint. All Imprint cards remove something from the game, but they remove different kinds of cards from different locations. Every Imprint card had to specify exactly how it worked and yet they all had the Imprint Mechanic.

[Nefarias]

It's funny that you say that because in MaRo's article today, he mentions Imprint as

"This mechanic was created when the designers solved the puzzle of how to make a number of seemingly different cards into one mechanic."

So yeah, if you're all for Checker, that's cool with me.

I also like the idea of a common, basic cycle to kick-start the mechanic, and all of Ephraim's are nice, simple, and color-specific, but I don't think that Divine Healing belongs in it. While I like Divine Healing, it seems like an uncommon to me, and it doesn't involve fixed amounts like the others. Any suggestions?

[Ephraim]

Actually, all of my cards are probably uncommons as well. Especially if the checker condition is met, they're all costed very cheaply.

In fact, Divine Genesis is really pushing the "well-costed" boundary even if the checker isn't met. Divine Thunder is probably the weakest one and it could easily be tweaked by lowering the limit on which the checker boosts the spell. I would say that Divine Wisdom is probably on par with Thirst for Knowledge (except in formats with Welder). Divine Malice is possibly better than either Mind Rot or Fugue.

[Nefarias]

So, what's the general concensus? Do you think I should start posting more Checker cards? I have a bunch of them. Also, are others interested in making Checker cards of their own?

[Jacob Orlove]

Imprint is funamentally different from this, though, because it lets you connect a card in play with a card in the RFG zone. You get to say "the imprinted card", too, which makes templating easy.

With these cards, you don't have that fundamental gap that the ability bridges. If you wanted to make all the conditions the same, that's fine--then you'd have something like threshold. But just setting up a keyword for the sake of emphasizing that similar cards are similar doesn't make sense. Think about writing an entry in the comprehensive rules for "checker". You don't gain that huge templating advantage from having messy stuff in the comp rules instead of on the cards (like madness or imprint), but neither do you get to standardize something like Fear or threshold. Instead, you basically say "these cards do what they say they do". That, in my mind, is a poor keyword.

[Ephraim]

I would argue that this isn't all that much different from Kicker in that regard. The only thing that ties the Kicker cards together is the words "If the kicker cost was paid..." If that little, mechanical clause is so important to the unity of the spells, I'm sure it could be worked in somehow with these.

Divine Thunder

Sorcery

Checker -- Target player has 16 or more life.
Divine Thunder deals 4 damage to that player.
If the checker condition is met, Divine Thunder deals 6 damage to that player instead.

Divine Wisdom

Sorcery

Checker -- You have no cards in hand.
Draw two cards.
If the checker condition is met, draw three cards instead.

Divine Genesis
{G}
Sorcery

Checker -- You control no creatures.
Put two 2/2 Bear creature tokens into play.
If the checker condition is met, put three 2/2 Bear creature tokens into play instead

Divine Malice

Sorcery

Checker -- Target player has six or more cards in hand.
That player discards two cards.
If the checker condition is met, that player discards three cards instead.

[Jacob Orlove]

That's much better.

[combo_dude]

OK, it is better - but I still fail to see why this makes the card(s) any better or simpler. Surely (for example) a "{this} has {this effect}. If {this condition, e.g. target opponent has 16 life or more, is met}, then {this better effect} instead" is easier?

I know it doesn't look it with all the brackets, but I'm sure that it would be easier; this looks like a mechanic that unites cards for the sake of it, rather than simplicity or condensing an otherwise overly wordy card.

Sorcery
Double you life total.
Checker -- If you have 6 or less life, triple your life total instead.

...is worse than:

Sorcery
Double you life total.
If you have 6 or less life, triple your life total instead.

...or:

Sorcery
Checker - You have 6 or less life.
Double you life total.
If the Checker condition is met, triple your life total instead.

[Nefarias]

Sorcery
Double you life total.
If you have 6 or less life, triple your life total instead.

There's no doubt that this is the simplest way of saying it, and that it is functionally identical to the other proposed methods.

I think that the problem is that this forum is so Keyword hungry, because while Wizards continually comes up with 4-6 very interesting and dynamic keywords per block, we have yet to devise one (to the best of my knowledge). That is the one thing that both our sets in the making lack, and a solid keyword (or two or three or four) would really tie the sets together well.

Now, I personally believe that the mechanic of Checker is good and underexplored, though not untouched by Wizards. Furthermore, I think card designers could benefit from trying different things with Checker in mind. However, it obviously doesn't need to be Keyworded, as it works just fine without it.

I think it comes down to two questions: First, how desperate are we for a keyword? Checker is certainly choppier and less elegant from a Keyword perspective than say Entwine, Threshold, or Provoke. The fact of the matter is, though, that a unifying keyword or two is the next big step. We've proven that we can come up with great, original, playable cards, so now we have to prove we can do more than that. I'm not saying Checker is the answer, but something needs to be done. (I realize that this has probably been a hot topic in this forum since its creation, although I have only been active in it for a few weeks.)

The second question is simply if we theoretically had a set with thirty or so cards that could have Checker but didn't (which I personally think a set could support easily), would we feel a need to link those together somehow? I woudl suggest perhaps an instant/sorcery subtype (Instant --Conditional?), but creatures should have checker, too.

Ultimately, while I would love to be the guy that came up with TMD's first big keyword, I myself have serious doubts.

P.S.: As for the newly proposed templating, while that certainly hides the fact that the keywording of Checker is superfluous, it does cramp it slightly. For example, I had creatures with double Checker such as this one:

Savannah Lions II
W
1/1
Checker -- If you have more life than an opponent, ~ gets +0/+1.
Checker -- If you have less life than an opponent, ~ gets +1/+0.

While stuff like this would be a small price to pay, I have to wonder if the new templating is much better (although it is much sneakier!)

[Ephraim]

I apologize if my zeal for this mechanic deviated from your initial vision of it. I imagined it as something that would typically only be meaningful on instants and sorceries. Because there's a precise time when they occur, they lend themselves to enhancment under certain circumstances. Further, the way I saw this mechanic working was this:

The spell performs some function. The checker condition somehow relates to that function. If the checker condition is met, the spell performs the same function, only better.

That sort of precludes having creatures with checker, but it also provides a source of unity. You don't end up with a card such as:

Checker -- Target opponent has 16 or more life.
Draw two cards.
If the checker condition is met, put three 2/2 Bear creature tokens into play instead.

Obviously, this card represents an extreme way in which the functions can differ from one another and the checker condition. A card with vaguely related functions, however, would still violate the above-proposed guideline for checker. If, in fact, Checker is a viable keyword, and it is important to maintain the unity of cards with Checker, then that guideline would be one possible way of doing so.

[Nefarias]

...And I apoligize if I sound inflexible or defiant. While it's true that my original concept of checker worked almost exactly like Threshold, I am not at all opposed to changing it. in fact, one of my biggest concerns was it being too much like threshold, and your way of looking at it takes care of that problem. After all, that's what this forum is all about, no? The biggest function of this forum is the development process.

I'm sure there are many more examples, but even taking Wizard's most recent crazy mechanic, flip cards, things go through huge changes. There original concept, for those unaware, was to have two different game states: Night and Day. Certain cards would change what time it is and other creatures, like Nightstalkers and Rats, would become more powerful at Night. Pretty awful, huh?

While I do/did like Checker on creatures, I am not at all opposed to making it a sorcery/instant only mechanic, and maybe coming up with something new and different for the creature aspect of it.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like the Instant subtype idea. That way, the word Checker could be completely eliminated in the text, which removes the inherent flaw of it being superfluous, while at the same time allowing more text on the card, as well as tying all "checker" card together, making it seem more uniform. How does everyone like this?

Divine Healing
3W
Sorcery -- Conditional
Double your life total.
If you have six or less life, triple your life total instead.


EDIT:Although, after reading the previous post a second time, I certainly have newfound respect for the Condition/Affect/Condition Affect templating. I like this option, too:

Divine Healing
3W
Sorcery -- Conditional
Checker -- You have six or less life.
Double your life total.
If the Checker condition is met, triple your life total instead.

[Ephraim]

I'm wary of giving these spells both a subtype and a keyword mechanic. Do you have other mechanics in mind that would also require the subtype "conditional." After all, this is not something that you'd want to limit to as few cards as possible (such as the suptype "Locus"). In fact, the conditional subtype would really only be useful to other cards, in much the same way that Arcane spells don't matter unless you've got a spiritcrafter or a card with Splice onto Arcane. Further, while we could certainly tack on the conditional subtype now and then try to come up with a mechanic to use with it later, I think that puts pressure on us to do something that may or may not be really interesting. Rather, I think it would be better to leave off the conditional subtype for the time being. If we come up with an interesting mechanic later that can interact well with conditional cards, then we can go back and modify these later.

I have to admit though, I also don't likef the conditional suptype in general. One of the reasons I tried to define Checker so strictly was because it had a lot of potential to be a catchall mechanic that would fit on every card that changes its function (for example, besides Checker, Kicker, Entwine, and Threshold could also use the conditional subtype.) I think that it would be a mistake to encourage the use of a subtype that would fit so many mechanics.

[Nefarias]

Well, I was basically just putting it there for flavor and unity issues, but I can see your point. I couldn't really think of any card that could use the conditional subtype interestingly (like spiritcraft), unless we did a Splice onto Conditional ripoff. I think that I was probably just overeager: now that we can use Instant/Sorcery subtypes, I wanted to try to use them as much as possible.