Redoing AST Card System

[LariaKirin]

If Royal Road only decreased the power of a card rather than discarding it - that would allow them to be played as well as RR fodder.
That system could be worked as Sleeve Draw’s purpose. Salvaging Royal Roaded cards (like the ‘bottom draw’ card trick, to match Spread’s ‘second draw’ card cheat). Sort of like a second spread, it would let you save mitigation for exactly when you wanted it.

What are your thoughts?

If you do not discard it, then yes, it will be played or left to expire. But the system itself revolves around making the most out of your DPS cards and whatever support you get is secondary.

I think you need a system where the DPS side is separate from the Support side. You can put the randomization in the DPS side, but I think it's crucial that the Support side be reliable.

I've toyed with this idea of an "activator slot" for Divination in a different thread. This slot would allow you to bank one card and access Divination. You could Sleeve Draw to gain access to this card, but lose access to Divination until you played another Support card. It's mostly just a quick brainstorm, not a thoroughly defined system, but maybe you can use some of the ideas. Quoted below:

I've said this in a different thread as well and I agree that dps increase and support cards should be separated because support cards cannot compete with dps cards.

I'm not a fan of different DPS cards because the direct damage increase will always be better. Meanwhile, a direct hit or a crit card can be either great or useless for a given target.

So here's a quick brainstorm:

Draw/Play (DPS): 2 DPS cards, one for melee, one for ranged.
Draw/Play (Support): up to 4 support cards - pick your favorites (e.g: mitigation, SB lady, self ewer, next cast is free).

Redraw:
- If used after drawing a DPS card, give the opposite card (details below).
- If used after drawing a Support card, give another support card.

Divination:
- Base 4% for example.
- 4 slots for DPS cards: 1% better divination for each card, going up to 8% (details below).
- 1 slot for a Support card: functions as the activator. Fill this seal (use any one support card) and you can cast Divination.

Some details:

Divination could give an additional 1% for each pair of different cards: 3 melee + 1 ranged (9%), 2 melee + 2 ranged (10%). Maintain the Balance, if you'll pardon the pun. But if this is the case, you'll want to Redraw to ensure that 10% Divination, in which case you're giving up reliability on the Support side and can cause reluctance to use Support cards.

Redraw on Support cards needs to be reliable. So if you've drawn Card 1, then Redraw will give 2,3 or 4. If you don't want the 2 you've redrawn, the second redraw will pick between 3 and 4. Draw resets your pool of cards and Redraw shrinks it to the point where you're guaranteed to get the one you want.

If both statements above are the case, then we need a lower cooldown on Redraw (or just deal with the randomness on the support side, because 2 Redraws will be saved for the worst case DPS draws in favor of 10% divination). If Support redraw is on 1 min cd, we might not. Gotta think about this some more.

Minor Arcana and Sleeve Draw can disappear in the interest of having fewer buttons.
If you want even more interaction, you can have the Support seal in Divination function as Spread did in SB. This will seal the card and give you access to Divination, essentially banking one support card for later use, giving you access to two support cards at any one time. But you'd have to make sure a Support card is sacrificed so that Divination is usable when it goes off-cooldown.