Quote Originally Posted by flowerfairy View Post
Ooooh. When I read it, I thought Royal Road worked like Redraw (rerolling your card to get a random card with its own RR effect) but it actually consumed the card to put its RR effect onto the next card you play. It’s way cooler than I thought… That does sound like a pain to balance.
Yep, the way it worked was Royal Road gave your next card played an additional effect. So each card you used Royal Road on gave this buff:

Balance/Bole: Next card played had 150% increased effect
Arrow/Spear: Next card played lasted 200% longer
Ewer/Spire: Next card played was AoE for 50% less effect

The fun of AST was taking what you got and trying to make the most of it. Jobs in HW and SB were much more unique, so MNKs and BRDs benefitted from crit a lot more than other jobs. They changed Spear to give extra crit, so if you were pulling strong single target Spears, you'd priortize those on MNKs and BRDs. Arrows were best used on BLMs. Sure you'd have terrible draws and only keep pulling Spires or Ewers or Boles, none of which directly increased DPS, but that was fun. High highs, low lows. Then you'd pull of that AoE Balance and everyone loved you.