So I have a conflict mechanic I've been pondering. Here are several versions inspired by CCGs. Does this exist already enough to seem like a ripoff? As always any mechnical feedback is appreciated. Even a quick thought on which seems the most interesting.
The background game is a FF Style-RPG/Dungeon Crawler. Each player has a group of 3 characters or so. I want something quick for the combat/resolution that is still upgradable and expandable as characters progress.
1) Each Card has a power icon on it, a no-cost ability, and a cost ability. On your turn you play a card, you can either use its nocost ability, or if you have enough power you can use the cost ability. At the end of your turn, you add this card to the power stack. So as you play cards you start with weak (nocost) abilities and end up getting into the big hitters. I like that it will have a defined end, as I expect some Cost abilities will scale with power. Power Icons are based on schools of attacks, perhaps class based. So as you expand you add new "cards" to the "deck".
2) Similar to 1, except the power icons aren't on the cards, you just the card into the power stack. In order to use a costed ability, you have to discard an appropriate number of cards from the power stack.
Not sure there are advantages here, just thought about it.
3) Power is accumulated by the character itself as an energy number, instead of being a stack of cards. So a discarded/played card is gone, but has the same idea of nocost and costed ability,just the cost comes from the characters themselves.
This has some advantages to allow characters to act differently, but it isn't quite as 'slick' feeling to me.
So any feedback or thoughts would be appreciated. I want each battle to be 60-90 seconds if possible.
@fecundity: The cards would be less likely to be items and more likely to be moves/skills. Although I can imagine (ala Starcraft tBG) that having certain items adds cards to your deck as the special abilities of those items. It is supposed to be quasi-cinematic, turn parry thrust dodge oo oo aha.
@brisingre: Yeah, BGG is down, but I do want to look at what you mentioned in Anachronism. The reason this has got to be lightening fast is that it really isn't the main meat of the game. It is the conflict resolution system of a larger system. So I can't have 5-10 minute battles and still expect people to stay interested. That said I want the conflicts to carry a lot of the 'providing choices' load so they definitely need to be long enough to be tactical, and you need to feel both like you made good or bad decisions, and have the incentive to improve the character deck.