I play hearthstone as one of my main two games, League of Legends being my other game (as you might be able to tell from the profile pic). In terms of other blizzard games, I play diablo from time to time, but I have never played and never intend to play WoW, despite how my name looks.
I've been creating concepts for online games ever since I started playing them, starting out with class ideas for maplestory in like 6-8th grade, then moving into champion ideas for League of Legends, and now I'm currently focused on card and class concepts for hearthstone, with some ideas for smaller games that I play/used to play here and there. I read this suuuper long guide to League of Legends champion design (converts to about a 700 page book), which is my unofficial source for most of my design philosophy. I made a guide for maplestory class creation (which, looking back on it, was pretty bad), and I intended to make a syntax guide for hearthstone, although I'm not really sure I'll ever get around to doing it. I have also made a concept for a game, what would have been my ideal mmorpg. It got to about 40 pages in google docs, then I restarted it, and now it sits gathering dust at around 10 pages.
I like hearthstone design so much because it's not hard to get started -- just get on hearthcards.net and go, as opposed to LoL, where you can only confidently start if you've already thought about something for a long time. It has the detail and balance of League designs, but much simpler and easy to enjoy. The other thing that's amazing is the community. Back in my maplestory days, I met two other people on the forums that were interested in class design. Just two. I sat and hoped that I would get even a single comment on the things I worked so hard on, but I was just disappointed most of the time. It was really lonely, and pretty depressing that my one way of being creative was so obscure and unpopular, as opposed to the artists, writers, etc (even today, it still makes me pretty sad). I moved into more popular design communities in League, and then into hearthstone, and today it's absolutely amazing to see that one of my creations has 4,000 views and 60 responses - I can't even describe the feeling.
I created Lich as an entry into the Class Creation Contest, or the CCC. It made it through Phases I, II, and III, all the way into the finals, as you can (will) see from my avatar and title. It ended in third place below Twilight's Hammer and Merchant.
This is my second class concept after my Monk. Unfortunately, as I have started progress on this class, I officially declare Monk dead. As I was designing this class, all of the flaws that I knew were in Monk became so hugely obvious that I just couldn't bear to think about it anymore. On the bright side, at least it shows that my design skills are improving.
As of right now, I've been working on it for about a month. This is an incredibly short period of time relative to me. More than 6 months passed from the point that I decided to work on my Monk concept to the time that I published it, and then 3 more months or so were put into it from that point. And from there, it's not even done. The fact that I have an entire class made here in one month is both an incredible (and stressful) feat for me, and also the reason that there are so many unrefined cards here.
That's all for now, thanks for reading!
-DKP
Special Thanks To:
- Everyone who has given me feedback. There are too many here to count, but DonnieMcKarlo and Melioro come to mind.
- All the people who have voted for me. I never thought I would make it this far, all the way into the final phase of the competition.
- My friends, who have given me behind-the-scenes feedback and initial balancing. Without them, I probably never would have had the guts to join a design community.
- Katsuni (a person from the LoL champ concepts forums from a while ago, not the p*rnstar), for giving me a source of inspiration and a concrete basic sense of game design.
- Anyone who has commented/upvoted/viewed/done anything regarding this class or even my monk class in any way. The fact that I can "come up with an idea for an addition to a game that doesn't really exist" and know that there is at least one other person in the world who cares, is amazing.
If you want to playtest Lich and its cards, you can download for the "Hearthstone Mod" for LackeyCCG HERE.
To use this program, simply take out the Hearthstone Mod folder, then run "Hearthstone Mod.exe" to start it.
This program is somewhat complicated. To learn it, you can either fiddle around with it for a while, use the LackeyCCG tutorials, or watch this outdated installation video that I made (it includes a tutorial on how to use the program, ignore the sections for installing).
Here are some of the decklists that we've been trying out. Feel free to comment or PM me your own.
Progress
Just Finished
1.2.1
Playtester updated to TGT
Currently Doing
Playtesting new changes
FIXING MARROWGAR
Up Next
Removing and fixing the messy cards, as well as Inspiration MIA
Hero
<=>
Unique Mechanic: Scheme: (X)
The Unique Keyword for the Lich class is Scheme: (X). It will cause you to look at the top X cards of your deck. From there, you may choose any number of them to send to the bottom of your deck (Like a Mulligan, but they go straight to the bottom). The ones you leave on top will stay in that order. Note that you won't see the replacement cards that come up. For example, if you Scheme: (4), and choose to send cards #2 and #4 to the bottom of your deck, the top two cards of your deck will be cards #1 and #3, but you won't see what the next two cards after that are going to be.
When you send cards to the bottom of your deck with Scheme, they go in the same order they were in on top of your deck. In the example above, card #2 would be the second to last card in your deck, and card #4 would be the last one.
This spoiler contains mechanical explanations on most of the cards.
Frost Maiden - If you Lich Slap this, it will become "Destroy any minion damaged by this minion.
Occult Keeper - For example, if you cast Contingency Plan and Mind Flay then this card costs (1).
Lich Slap - Freezes a minion and give it Water Elemental's effect.
Frigid Desolation - In case it wasn't clear, this card functions like a mega-cleave. It Freezes 5 random different minions, and thus requires that there be 5 minions in play for this to be played. This is how the card is balanced, not restricted by it's mana cost but restricted by needing minions on the board.
Annihilation - To see how this card is balanced, check out the spoiler.
How in the world is 4 mana: Deal 7 damage to a minion BALANCED?
You might look at this card, and accuse it of being designed based on the premise that Shadow Bolt sucks (which is not okay), or say that I'm balancing based on fireball (which is purposefully OP, and as such other cards shouldn't be compared to it), or that regardless It's just OP. But allow me to explain...
As I was looking at cards like Savagery and Shield Slam, I wondered how they could possibly be balanced. I mean, shield slam can easily get to deal 10 or even 20 damage, for 1 mana. I mean sure, it requires setup, but still... if you balance minion damage off of Shadow Bolt, there's not that big of a difference between minion damage and regular damage... so how the heck is 1 Mana: Deal 20 damage to a minion even the slightest bit reasonable?
What I realized is that, unlike pure damage cards (which cap out at around a 29 mana value (29 Mana: Deal 30 damage is technically balanced), since if you increased the damage then it wouldn't matter (unless against a warrior) since the most value you can get is 30 damage, which is worth 29 mana) minion damage caps out at a slightly less than 5 mana value, no matter how high you set the damage. This is because of the card Assassinate, and the common notion that "Destroy a minion" is worth 5 mana on its own. That means you could make a card like:
And, it's actually slightly underpowered! This is because it gives the slight disadvantages of not being able to breakdivine shield and triggering enemy "whenever this minion is damaged" effects.
Anyway, back to Annihilate. Clearly, not breaking divine shield and triggering effects is not enough of a drawback to justify a card like Holy Moly! to cost only 4 mana. As such, the value we have to choose for damage shouldn't kill every minion in the game. That's why I chose 7, because while it kills most minions, the fairly large category of 8 and 12 health minions escapes this card. I think that a drawback like that is enough to justify a 4 mana cost. Even if it is a little strong, remember that this card isn't a damaging card, it's just a different way of going about hard removal. And this is a game where "execute" is considered balanced...
Absolute Zero - Whereas Frigid Desolation represents the Low-end Shatter synergy, this is as good as it gets. For a 9-mana two card combo, you can silence and destroy all enemy minions. The card was costed at 6 specifically so that the mana cost could be driven all the way up to 9 mana. The only other card you can play here assuming you haven't reduced the cost of these spells is probably something like Soul Harvest.
Essence of Winter - At first glance, this card might seem strange, or out of place in Lich. It's purpose is to help shoot Lich into the lategame, since most of its combos require AT LEAST 6 mana to happen. It does so without some sort of gimmick to intrude on Druid's ramping - this is basically turning the clock 3 turns ahead. Definitely a risky play, but the idea is that it can be more rewarding in that it allows you to run a much higher mana curve than most other decks could get away with. Not to mention, it also becomes "both players draw 3 cards" if you play it at 10 mana, due to the Excess mana cards. This also opens up some ridiculous and crazy combos for Mill Lich with the use of Lorewalker Cho.
Permafrost - Causes all frozen minions to miss their next two attacks instead of one. The effect does stack, so double permafrost works.
Countermeasures - Normally Blizzard doesn't like when you discard your opponent's cards, but this is cards from their deck, not their hand, and they don't even get fully discarded. Note that your opponent will be able to see you while you are scheming in their deck, and they will see which cards you send to the bottom.
Ice Eater - The battlecry must actually activate to gain the buff. You can still play it when there are no frozen minions, but it will just be a 2/1.
End of Hope - This card can only gain the buff once, and can still be silence once it is played.
Master Plan - There has been concern about whether or not it's possible to scheme 15 in one turn, but I think you can do it.
Frost Breath - An interesting take on the Dragon-holding mechanic. It works the same way as a minion would, if you have a dragon at the time of cast, it does something.
Devoted Adherent - The battlecry targeter changes based on what your hero power is, it will be point-and-click if your hero power is Darkchill Blast and it will be nothing if its empower. The activated hero power obviously bypasses its mana cost.
Bad-Tempered Lich - Your hero power has Lich Slap's effect and costs 0 mana. This lasts only until Bad-Tempered Lich dies, then your hero power returns to what it was before.
Frost Drake - This minion can attack while it's frozen and can't attack while it isn't. Even though it can attack, while Frozen it is still counted as Frozen for the purpose of cards like Shatter and Frost Incarnate.
Detonate Mana - Molten Giant Value.
Surge of Power - This triggers off of itself, so playing it alone would draw you one card. Playing two would draw you three cards.
Changelog
1.1 -> 1.2.1 (8/20/15 - ???)
New Cards
Rage Winterchill: 8 mana, 5/8: Taunt. Battlecry: Reduce the cost of the last four cards in your deck to (0).
Mind Freeze: 6 mana: Take control of a random Frozen enemy minion.
Detonate Mana: 7 mana: Destroy a minion. Gain its mana cost as armor.
Perilous Plan: 3 mana: Scheme: (5). Reveal a minion in each deck. If yours costs more, draw a card.
Frost Drake: 2 mana, 4/4 Dragon: This minion can only attack while it is Frozen.
Mastermind: 5 mana, 3/6: Inspire: Add a random Plan to your hand.
Bad-Tempered Lich: 3 mana, 2/4: Your hero power is Lich Slap.
Ice Golem: 6 mana, 7/8: Battlecry: Freeze this minion.
Occult Keeper: 4 mana, 4/3: This minion costs (1) less for each Mana you've spent on spells this turn.
Removed Cards
Soulbind
Wicked Deathspeaker
Reworked Cards
Reworked Cards
Shadowfrost Lich: 5 mana, 4/5: While this minion is frozen, it has Spell Damage +3.
Raise Army: 3 mana: Summon a 3/3 Skeleton. If a friendly minion died this turn, summon two instead.
Crazed Seer: 5 mana, 3/3: Battlecry and Deathrattle: Draw the bottom card of your deck.
End of Hope: 6 mana, 4/8: If this minion was sent to the bottom of your deck with Scheme, it gains +8/+4.
Evil-O-Matic: 3 mana: 2/3: Battlecry: Shuffle 3 Giant Evil Robots into your deck. Giant Evil Robot: 2 Mana, 3/3 Mech: Battlecry: At the end of your turn, give your outher Giant Evil Robots +2/+2.
Surge of Power: 3 mana: Draw a card for each Spell you've cast this turn.
Raw Power: 3 Mana: Deal 2 damage to a minion. If that kills it, add two 'Decay' spells to your hand.
Dominate Mind: 3 Mana: Return an enemy minion to your hand. Your opponent draws two cards.
Essence of Winter: 2 Mana: Both players gain 3 empty Mana crystals. Scheme: (3).
Annihilation: 4 Mana: Deal 7 damage to a minion. Deal any overkill damage to the enemy hero.
Changed Cards:
Frost Incarnate stats to 3 mana 2/2 (from 2 mana 1/1).
Devious Plan no longer draws a card.
Frozen Veins buff to +1/+2 (from +2/+2)
Master Plan now draws two cards (From 1)
All of Grimkor the Wicked's spell thresholds have been increased by one (0 spells now summons nothing, and one spell summons cannon fodder)
Depths Lurker stats to 5 mana 3/5 (from 3 mana 2/4)
Frost Breath mana cost to 2 (from 1)
Minor Changes:
Countermeasures name changed to Subversion Plan
Various Rarity Changes, the only significant ones that Mind Flay is now a rare and Permafrost is now an epic.
1.0 -> 1.1 (7/25/15 - 8/20/15)
Entomb has been removed; replaced with Depths Lurker [3 Mana, 2/4 MINION, Whenever this minion takes damage, add a 'Decay' spell to your hand.]
Legacy
Here are old cards that were removed, or reworked beyond recognition. They include the version number in which they were removed. View them at your leisure ^_^
Entomb | v1.1 Shadowfrost Lich | v1.2.1
Crazed Seer | v1.2.1 Surge of Power | v1.2.1 Raise Army | v1.2.1 Soulbind | v1.2.1
Sorry, this thread isn't compete yet. I would have responded sooner, but for some reason I'm not getting notifications from it. I'll update it with a definition of scheme in a moment.
Here it is, though:
View the top X cards of your deck, choose any number of them (can be 0) and they are sent to the bottom of your deck. The remaining cards stay in the same order.
I think Lich might be a bit big for just 4 mana, especially if you were given the scenario of playing the cultist to it's death turn 3 and topdecked the Lich next turn.
Maybe a 7/4 which lets it be taken by a BGH or an equal 4-cost. Or even 5 or 6 mana? that also puts it out of range of Piloted Sky Golem.
I don't know, just throwing around ideas. But I would like to hear why those stats in particular
Comparison to the deathrattle of Harvest Golem. For this situation, we'll assume that the main bodies of damned cultist and harvest golem are basically the same, so we'll compare the deathrattles. As a general rule for balancing, if we set all the elements of each effect on two sides of an equation, simplify as far as possible, and arrive at a true statement, this implies that the card is balanced.
[Summon a 2/1] = [Summon a 7/7] + [Pay 4 mana] + [Wait until you draw it (and technically lose a draw for that turn if we're balancing like this, but we'll ignore it)]
Now, we substitute in known mana values.
[1 Mana] = [6.5 Mana] + [-4 mana] + [-x Mana]
The "wait until you draw it" remains as X since it's rather subjective. We'll come back to it.
Now we simplify:
[1 Mana] = [2.5 Mana] + [-x Mana]
[x Mana] = [1.5 Mana]
Basically, what we arrive at is the question "Is waiting for a minimum of 1 card draw/ 1 turn worth 1.5 mana?" I think yes, especially if you compare this thing to a card like Corruption.
Numbers and strict math aside, I think this card really isn't too bad since BGH exists and it's vanilla. I mean, we have the druid card "Druid of the Fang" which is also a 4 mana 7/7, and that's arguably an even easier condition with a lower stat cost (-.5 vs -1).
This concern is understandable though, a lot of people have had it. This is the beauty of Lich, being able to get huge value by waiting for cards in your deck.
Holy moly, that "promotion" really worked... 37 people viewing at once, 11 replies as I try to respond to one!
I'll address the turn length concern in the comments section for Master Plan.
Also, there are a number of cards here that are very OP or badly designed that I'd like to change, but I don't have the time/rules clearance to do so. Here's a list off of the top of my head: Shadowfrost Lich, Raw Power, Lord Marrowgar, Essence of Winter.
I don't know if you have ever played mtg, but scry is very powerful. Any kind of deck manipulation is very good. I think a lot of these cards with scheme are very undercosted. The one for 1 mana to scheme 2, then if both went to the bottom scheme 2 again is way too cheap. Going through potentially 4 cards for 1 mana is insanely good. The class overall looks awesome though, which an amazing power. Good job!
Cool class but, as other people have said, your legendaries are too strong.
Lord Marrowgar you would never even have to play to win the game. Just have him in your opening hand and you have an endless fount of crazy cheap control spells. And you can just use him plus bone storm as a big finisher. Two bone storms if you still have the coin on turn 10!
And I am assuming Grimkor counts himself so getting getting four spells out would not be hard. You could drop him, the coin, and a spare part for three on turn 5 alone, giving you 8 attack/ 10 health and three card draw worth of stuff!
That being said I really like both legendaries, just need to tweak them down a bit.
I don't know if you have ever played mtg, but scry is very powerful. Any kind of deck manipulation is very good. I think a lot of these cards with scheme are very undercosted. The one for 1 mana to scheme 2, then if both went to the bottom scheme 2 again is way too cheap. Going through potentially 4 cards for 1 mana is insanely good. The class overall looks awesome though, which an amazing power. Good job!
He is trying to fit scry into HS, whenever you see any scry that is op in the lich class is mostly because blending more interesting mechanics with scry then balance them all at the same time is kinda of a time consuming job.
Nice concept, but some of cards are WAY unbalanced.
1) Devious Plan - shuffle AND guarantee mana reduction for your hand should at least cost 3 mana. Hunters have 3 mana reduction on Call Pet, but drawing beast is random.
2)Marrowgar is a pure insult to the balance - passive infinite uncontrollable draw from the hand should never exist, not to mention that guardian cards triple effect is way OP. Suggestion - change draw mechanic to *whenever minion dies while Marrowgar is on the board* and rebalance the rest.
3)Essence of winter - NO, just NO. you can't break flow like that, it just doesn't seem healthy for the game.
4)Soulbind text unclear, copy part is unnesesary if it's just a 3/5 token, or clarify what and how it summons.
5)Most of cheap sheme cards are unbalanced, considering it's impact on the game, most scheme(2) should be scheme(1).
6)How do countermeasures work? if that allows you to shuffle opponent's topdecks - that's odd for hearthstone.
I don't know if you have ever played mtg, but scry is very powerful. Any kind of deck manipulation is very good. I think a lot of these cards with scheme are very undercosted. The one for 1 mana to scheme 2, then if both went to the bottom scheme 2 again is way too cheap. Going through potentially 4 cards for 1 mana is insanely good. The class overall looks awesome though, which an amazing power. Good job!
I have indeed played MTG, although I am not very good at it. In order to find out how much Scry was worth, I went to MTG card design forums and looked at their mana values, then I tried to equate it to hearthstone (a very handwavy process), then cut the scheme values in half (since MTG has double deck size, I assumed scry would get twice as much). I was surprised by how much scheme you could get from a single card according to those guys. I may have gone a little overboard, though.
I've also heard of cards like brainstorm being one of those super op/banned/whatever/Idon'tknow cards, although I think that's because it both does a sort of Scry 3 AND draw a card. Accordingly, I made sure that no single card had both scry and draw a card (except for master plan, intentionally)
Nice concept, but some of cards are WAY unbalanced.
1) Devious Plan - shuffle AND guarantee mana reduction for your hand should at least cost 3 mana. Hunters have 3 mana reduction on Call Pet, but drawing beast is random.
2)Marrowgar is a pure insult to the balance - passive infinite uncontrollable draw from the hand should never exist, not to mention that guardian cards triple effect is way OP. Suggestion - change draw mechanic to *whenever minion dies while Marrowgar is on the board* and rebalance the rest.
3)Essence of winter - NO, just NO. you can't break flow like that, it just doesn't seem healthy for the game.
4)Soulbind text unclear, copy part is unnesesary if it's just a 3/5 token, or clarify what and how it summons.
5)Most of cheap sheme cards are unbalanced, considering it's impact on the game, most scheme(2) should be scheme(1).
6)How do countermeasures work? if that allows you to shuffle opponent's topdecks - that's odd for hearthstone.
I like when people point out specific lists of cards they don't like, so I'll respond to this.
Devious Plan - I compared this card to emperor thaurissan. At the cost of 1.5 mana, you get "Reduce the cost of ALL cards in your hand by 1, and then repeat this effect at the end of each of your turns until this dies." Whereas this card is only "Reduce the cost of only spells in your hand by 1, and then it happens only once" plus draw a card. Even if 50% of your deck is spells, the effect would only be worth half as much as Thaurissan's, without factoring the fact that it doesn't repeat. That's why it draws a card, to fill in that void. If anything, this card isn't unbalanced for its mana cost, it's just strong because of how granular it is to play, as thaurissan can't be played until turn 6 while this can come out very soon.
Marrowgar - This card was honestly a complete mess in design as I tried to make a really cool legendary. I think the GvG legendary came out much, much better than this one. Not only is it OP, but it's ugly, and it will likely get a full rework. The "balance" behind this card was the idea that you have to first kill minions once it gets into your hand and then scheme down to the Guardian cards before you can actually play it, then you were only guaranteed one tripled card effect before it probably got killed. Even this alone is probably too strong. I had to make the Guardian cards baseline on par with cards that existed, otherwise it would actually feel like some sort of weird hindrance to have your deck clogged with useless cards after he died. Once the design hit this point, I had a lot of dissatisfaction. But in the way of this competition, I didn't have time to do anything.
Essence of Winter - I don't really see what's wrong with this card, while skipping 3 turns ahead is pretty crazy, I think it falls into the category of "surprisingly big" rather than "absolutely gamebreaking". That said, I do have other dissatisfactions about this card regarding how it does the mana, and I'll be adding Scheme to it and changing the Mana Crystals to empty when I rework it.
Soulbind - Yes, I have spent so long trying to clarify this text, and I haven't found a way. If you read the "comments and explanations" section, you can see what it really does.
Scheme - This is the kind of thing that doesn't exist at all in HS, so it's hard to balance. I started with higher numbers based on some MTG stuff, but this is my main target for playtesting. Since it's more important to see if cards are actually balanced rather than to see if they look OP/UP on paper.
Countermeasures - Yes, you can deny your opponent topdecks, and yes, this is weird for hearthstone. As said in the comments+explanations section, Blizzard does tend to stay away from this kind of thing, interacting and thwarting your opponent's deck. However, their cards aren't discarded, only sent to the bottom, and those cards weren't from their hand. Technically, if your opponent played countermeasures on you and you're not Lich, you have no interaction with deck order and thus drawing is going to be pretty much the same random chance, excluding 0-2 cards. This card might get reworked depending on how anti-fun it is, but I think it's alright rn.
Cool class but, as other people have said, your legendaries are too strong.
Lord Marrowgar you would never even have to play to win the game. Just have him in your opening hand and you have an endless fount of crazy cheap control spells. And you can just use him plus bone storm as a big finisher. Two bone storms if you still have the coin on turn 10!
And I am assuming Grimkor counts himself so getting getting four spells out would not be hard. You could drop him, the coin, and a spare part for three on turn 5 alone, giving you 8 attack/ 10 health and three card draw worth of stuff!
That being said I really like both legendaries, just need to tweak them down a bit.
Yep, same dissatisfaction with marrowgar.
As for Grimkor, why would he count himself as a spell? He's a minion. In that scenario, you would only have two spells, and it's a 3 card combo, and it would give you a 3/4 with windfury.
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Introduction
Hey guys,
Welcome to my Lich Concept!
First, a personal background.
I play hearthstone as one of my main two games, League of Legends being my other game (as you might be able to tell from the profile pic). In terms of other blizzard games, I play diablo from time to time, but I have never played and never intend to play WoW, despite how my name looks.
I've been creating concepts for online games ever since I started playing them, starting out with class ideas for maplestory in like 6-8th grade, then moving into champion ideas for League of Legends, and now I'm currently focused on card and class concepts for hearthstone, with some ideas for smaller games that I play/used to play here and there. I read this suuuper long guide to League of Legends champion design (converts to about a 700 page book), which is my unofficial source for most of my design philosophy. I made a guide for maplestory class creation (which, looking back on it, was pretty bad), and I intended to make a syntax guide for hearthstone, although I'm not really sure I'll ever get around to doing it. I have also made a concept for a game, what would have been my ideal mmorpg. It got to about 40 pages in google docs, then I restarted it, and now it sits gathering dust at around 10 pages.
I like hearthstone design so much because it's not hard to get started -- just get on hearthcards.net and go, as opposed to LoL, where you can only confidently start if you've already thought about something for a long time. It has the detail and balance of League designs, but much simpler and easy to enjoy. The other thing that's amazing is the community. Back in my maplestory days, I met two other people on the forums that were interested in class design. Just two. I sat and hoped that I would get even a single comment on the things I worked so hard on, but I was just disappointed most of the time. It was really lonely, and pretty depressing that my one way of being creative was so obscure and unpopular, as opposed to the artists, writers, etc (even today, it still makes me pretty sad). I moved into more popular design communities in League, and then into hearthstone, and today it's absolutely amazing to see that one of my creations has 4,000 views and 60 responses - I can't even describe the feeling.
I created Lich as an entry into the Class Creation Contest, or the CCC. It made it through Phases I, II, and III, all the way into the finals, as you can (will) see from my avatar and title. It ended in third place below Twilight's Hammer and Merchant.
This is my second class concept after my Monk. Unfortunately, as I have started progress on this class, I officially declare Monk dead. As I was designing this class, all of the flaws that I knew were in Monk became so hugely obvious that I just couldn't bear to think about it anymore. On the bright side, at least it shows that my design skills are improving.
As of right now, I've been working on it for about a month. This is an incredibly short period of time relative to me. More than 6 months passed from the point that I decided to work on my Monk concept to the time that I published it, and then 3 more months or so were put into it from that point. And from there, it's not even done. The fact that I have an entire class made here in one month is both an incredible (and stressful) feat for me, and also the reason that there are so many unrefined cards here.
That's all for now, thanks for reading!
-DKP
Special Thanks To:
Links to each of my CCC submission threads:
Playtesting!
Progress
Just Finished
Currently Doing
Up Next
Hero
<=>
Unique Mechanic: Scheme: (X)
The Unique Keyword for the Lich class is Scheme: (X). It will cause you to look at the top X cards of your deck. From there, you may choose any number of them to send to the bottom of your deck (Like a Mulligan, but they go straight to the bottom). The ones you leave on top will stay in that order. Note that you won't see the replacement cards that come up. For example, if you Scheme: (4), and choose to send cards #2 and #4 to the bottom of your deck, the top two cards of your deck will be cards #1 and #3, but you won't see what the next two cards after that are going to be.
When you send cards to the bottom of your deck with Scheme, they go in the same order they were in on top of your deck. In the example above, card #2 would be the second to last card in your deck, and card #4 would be the last one.
Cards
Basic Set
Minions:
Spells:
Classic Set
Minions:
=>
Guardian Cards:
Listen to Marrogar's Emotes Here!
Spells:
=>
Naxx Card
=>
GvG Set
Minions:
=>
Monstrosities:
1 Spell:
2 Spells:
3 Spells:
4 Spells:
5 or more spells:
Spells:
BRM Cards:
TGT Cards:
Minions:
Spells:
Tokens for Justicar Trueheart:
Explanations
This spoiler contains mechanical explanations on most of the cards.
Frost Maiden - If you Lich Slap this, it will become "Destroy any minion damaged by this minion.
Occult Keeper - For example, if you cast Contingency Plan and Mind Flay then this card costs (1).
Lich Slap - Freezes a minion and give it Water Elemental's effect.
Frigid Desolation - In case it wasn't clear, this card functions like a mega-cleave. It Freezes 5 random different minions, and thus requires that there be 5 minions in play for this to be played. This is how the card is balanced, not restricted by it's mana cost but restricted by needing minions on the board.
Annihilation - To see how this card is balanced, check out the spoiler.
How in the world is 4 mana: Deal 7 damage to a minion BALANCED?
You might look at this card, and accuse it of being designed based on the premise that Shadow Bolt sucks (which is not okay), or say that I'm balancing based on fireball (which is purposefully OP, and as such other cards shouldn't be compared to it), or that regardless It's just OP. But allow me to explain...
As I was looking at cards like Savagery and Shield Slam, I wondered how they could possibly be balanced. I mean, shield slam can easily get to deal 10 or even 20 damage, for 1 mana. I mean sure, it requires setup, but still... if you balance minion damage off of Shadow Bolt, there's not that big of a difference between minion damage and regular damage... so how the heck is 1 Mana: Deal 20 damage to a minion even the slightest bit reasonable?
What I realized is that, unlike pure damage cards (which cap out at around a 29 mana value (29 Mana: Deal 30 damage is technically balanced), since if you increased the damage then it wouldn't matter (unless against a warrior) since the most value you can get is 30 damage, which is worth 29 mana) minion damage caps out at a slightly less than 5 mana value, no matter how high you set the damage. This is because of the card Assassinate, and the common notion that "Destroy a minion" is worth 5 mana on its own. That means you could make a card like:
And, it's actually slightly underpowered! This is because it gives the slight disadvantages of not being able to breakdivine shield and triggering enemy "whenever this minion is damaged" effects.
Anyway, back to Annihilate. Clearly, not breaking divine shield and triggering effects is not enough of a drawback to justify a card like Holy Moly! to cost only 4 mana. As such, the value we have to choose for damage shouldn't kill every minion in the game. That's why I chose 7, because while it kills most minions, the fairly large category of 8 and 12 health minions escapes this card. I think that a drawback like that is enough to justify a 4 mana cost. Even if it is a little strong, remember that this card isn't a damaging card, it's just a different way of going about hard removal. And this is a game where "execute" is considered balanced...
Absolute Zero - Whereas Frigid Desolation represents the Low-end Shatter synergy, this is as good as it gets. For a 9-mana two card combo, you can silence and destroy all enemy minions. The card was costed at 6 specifically so that the mana cost could be driven all the way up to 9 mana. The only other card you can play here assuming you haven't reduced the cost of these spells is probably something like Soul Harvest.
Essence of Winter - At first glance, this card might seem strange, or out of place in Lich. It's purpose is to help shoot Lich into the lategame, since most of its combos require AT LEAST 6 mana to happen. It does so without some sort of gimmick to intrude on Druid's ramping - this is basically turning the clock 3 turns ahead. Definitely a risky play, but the idea is that it can be more rewarding in that it allows you to run a much higher mana curve than most other decks could get away with. Not to mention, it also becomes "both players draw 3 cards" if you play it at 10 mana, due to the Excess mana cards. This also opens up some ridiculous and crazy combos for Mill Lich with the use of Lorewalker Cho.
Permafrost - Causes all frozen minions to miss their next two attacks instead of one. The effect does stack, so double permafrost works.
Countermeasures - Normally Blizzard doesn't like when you discard your opponent's cards, but this is cards from their deck, not their hand, and they don't even get fully discarded. Note that your opponent will be able to see you while you are scheming in their deck, and they will see which cards you send to the bottom.
Ice Eater - The battlecry must actually activate to gain the buff. You can still play it when there are no frozen minions, but it will just be a 2/1.
End of Hope - This card can only gain the buff once, and can still be silence once it is played.
Master Plan - There has been concern about whether or not it's possible to scheme 15 in one turn, but I think you can do it.
Frost Breath - An interesting take on the Dragon-holding mechanic. It works the same way as a minion would, if you have a dragon at the time of cast, it does something.
Devoted Adherent - The battlecry targeter changes based on what your hero power is, it will be point-and-click if your hero power is Darkchill Blast and it will be nothing if its empower. The activated hero power obviously bypasses its mana cost.
Bad-Tempered Lich - Your hero power has Lich Slap's effect and costs 0 mana. This lasts only until Bad-Tempered Lich dies, then your hero power returns to what it was before.
Frost Drake - This minion can attack while it's frozen and can't attack while it isn't. Even though it can attack, while Frozen it is still counted as Frozen for the purpose of cards like Shatter and Frost Incarnate.
Detonate Mana - Molten Giant Value.
Surge of Power - This triggers off of itself, so playing it alone would draw you one card. Playing two would draw you three cards.
Changelog
1.1 -> 1.2.1 (8/20/15 - ???)
New Cards
Removed Cards
Reworked Cards
Changed Cards:
Minor Changes:
1.0 -> 1.1 (7/25/15 - 8/20/15)
Entomb has been removed; replaced with Depths Lurker [3 Mana, 2/4 MINION, Whenever this minion takes damage, add a 'Decay' spell to your hand.]
Legacy
Here are old cards that were removed, or reworked beyond recognition. They include the version number in which they were removed. View them at your leisure ^_^
Shadowfrost Lich | v1.2.1
Crazed Seer | v1.2.1
Surge of Power | v1.2.1
Raise Army | v1.2.1
Soulbind | v1.2.1
I'm sorry - what the heck is scheme supposed to be, again?
Check out my Custom Undead Expansion!
...Or my Custom Elemental Expansion!
I'd play this were it an option. More comments coming soon, but I think in general the costs and effects are appropriate.
Does scheme let you search for a card?
Priest (60) / Warrior (49) / Hunter (47) / Mage (45) / Warlock (36) / Druid (35) / Shaman (34) / Paladin (33) / Rogue (19)
Sorry, this thread isn't compete yet. I would have responded sooner, but for some reason I'm not getting notifications from it. I'll update it with a definition of scheme in a moment.
Here it is, though:
View the top X cards of your deck, choose any number of them (can be 0) and they are sent to the bottom of your deck. The remaining cards stay in the same order.
Lol for the Guardian cards off of Marrowgar... Marrowgar is never technically "alive", being undead and all.
As for Master Plan, that's a good way to kill yourself with fatigue.
Ice Eater is really cool though.
Grimkor also looks really fun.
I think Lich might be a bit big for just 4 mana, especially if you were given the scenario of playing the cultist to it's death turn 3 and topdecked the Lich next turn.
Maybe a 7/4 which lets it be taken by a BGH or an equal 4-cost. Or even 5 or 6 mana? that also puts it out of range of Piloted Sky Golem.
I don't know, just throwing around ideas. But I would like to hear why those stats in particular
I love Grimkor, Marrowgar seems overpowered a little. There seems to be no drawback to drawing him first in mulligan.
Also, Master Plan, very nice! However, looking at 15 cards at once.. turn length would be a bitch there
Both Legendaries are way to OP! Try making Marrowger weaker and his spells cost more with less of those huge effects!
i like it' it looks well thought out and quite fun possibly infuriating to go against tho
Here's my balancing logic behind Damned Cultist:
Comparison to the deathrattle of Harvest Golem. For this situation, we'll assume that the main bodies of damned cultist and harvest golem are basically the same, so we'll compare the deathrattles. As a general rule for balancing, if we set all the elements of each effect on two sides of an equation, simplify as far as possible, and arrive at a true statement, this implies that the card is balanced.
[Summon a 2/1] = [Summon a 7/7] + [Pay 4 mana] + [Wait until you draw it (and technically lose a draw for that turn if we're balancing like this, but we'll ignore it)]
Now, we substitute in known mana values.
[1 Mana] = [6.5 Mana] + [-4 mana] + [-x Mana]
The "wait until you draw it" remains as X since it's rather subjective. We'll come back to it.
Now we simplify:
[1 Mana] = [2.5 Mana] + [-x Mana]
[x Mana] = [1.5 Mana]
Basically, what we arrive at is the question "Is waiting for a minimum of 1 card draw/ 1 turn worth 1.5 mana?" I think yes, especially if you compare this thing to a card like Corruption.
Numbers and strict math aside, I think this card really isn't too bad since BGH exists and it's vanilla. I mean, we have the druid card "Druid of the Fang" which is also a 4 mana 7/7, and that's arguably an even easier condition with a lower stat cost (-.5 vs -1).
This concern is understandable though, a lot of people have had it. This is the beauty of Lich, being able to get huge value by waiting for cards in your deck.
Holy moly, that "promotion" really worked... 37 people viewing at once, 11 replies as I try to respond to one!
I'll address the turn length concern in the comments section for Master Plan.
Also, there are a number of cards here that are very OP or badly designed that I'd like to change, but I don't have the time/rules clearance to do so. Here's a list off of the top of my head: Shadowfrost Lich, Raw Power, Lord Marrowgar, Essence of Winter.
Thanks for explaining it again. I remember now that Ysera gives Emerald Drake which gives these values even more validation.
The Legendary cards are nice I'm really interested in the wicked deathspeaker just really curious to see how that card plays
I don't know if you have ever played mtg, but scry is very powerful. Any kind of deck manipulation is very good. I think a lot of these cards with scheme are very undercosted. The one for 1 mana to scheme 2, then if both went to the bottom scheme 2 again is way too cheap. Going through potentially 4 cards for 1 mana is insanely good. The class overall looks awesome though, which an amazing power. Good job!
Cool class but, as other people have said, your legendaries are too strong.
Lord Marrowgar you would never even have to play to win the game. Just have him in your opening hand and you have an endless fount of crazy cheap control spells. And you can just use him plus bone storm as a big finisher. Two bone storms if you still have the coin on turn 10!
And I am assuming Grimkor counts himself so getting getting four spells out would not be hard. You could drop him, the coin, and a spare part for three on turn 5 alone, giving you 8 attack/ 10 health and three card draw worth of stuff!
That being said I really like both legendaries, just need to tweak them down a bit.
Why am I sticky?
He is trying to fit scry into HS, whenever you see any scry that is op in the lich class is mostly because blending more interesting mechanics with scry then balance them all at the same time is kinda of a time consuming job.
Nice concept, but some of cards are WAY unbalanced.
1) Devious Plan - shuffle AND guarantee mana reduction for your hand should at least cost 3 mana. Hunters have 3 mana reduction on Call Pet, but drawing beast is random.
2)Marrowgar is a pure insult to the balance - passive infinite uncontrollable draw from the hand should never exist, not to mention that guardian cards triple effect is way OP. Suggestion - change draw mechanic to *whenever minion dies while Marrowgar is on the board* and rebalance the rest.
3)Essence of winter - NO, just NO. you can't break flow like that, it just doesn't seem healthy for the game.
4)Soulbind text unclear, copy part is unnesesary if it's just a 3/5 token, or clarify what and how it summons.
5)Most of cheap sheme cards are unbalanced, considering it's impact on the game, most scheme(2) should be scheme(1).
6)How do countermeasures work? if that allows you to shuffle opponent's topdecks - that's odd for hearthstone.
I have indeed played MTG, although I am not very good at it. In order to find out how much Scry was worth, I went to MTG card design forums and looked at their mana values, then I tried to equate it to hearthstone (a very handwavy process), then cut the scheme values in half (since MTG has double deck size, I assumed scry would get twice as much). I was surprised by how much scheme you could get from a single card according to those guys. I may have gone a little overboard, though.
I've also heard of cards like brainstorm being one of those super op/banned/whatever/Idon'tknow cards, although I think that's because it both does a sort of Scry 3 AND draw a card. Accordingly, I made sure that no single card had both scry and draw a card (except for master plan, intentionally)
I like when people point out specific lists of cards they don't like, so I'll respond to this.
Devious Plan - I compared this card to emperor thaurissan. At the cost of 1.5 mana, you get "Reduce the cost of ALL cards in your hand by 1, and then repeat this effect at the end of each of your turns until this dies." Whereas this card is only "Reduce the cost of only spells in your hand by 1, and then it happens only once" plus draw a card. Even if 50% of your deck is spells, the effect would only be worth half as much as Thaurissan's, without factoring the fact that it doesn't repeat. That's why it draws a card, to fill in that void. If anything, this card isn't unbalanced for its mana cost, it's just strong because of how granular it is to play, as thaurissan can't be played until turn 6 while this can come out very soon.
Marrowgar - This card was honestly a complete mess in design as I tried to make a really cool legendary. I think the GvG legendary came out much, much better than this one. Not only is it OP, but it's ugly, and it will likely get a full rework. The "balance" behind this card was the idea that you have to first kill minions once it gets into your hand and then scheme down to the Guardian cards before you can actually play it, then you were only guaranteed one tripled card effect before it probably got killed. Even this alone is probably too strong. I had to make the Guardian cards baseline on par with cards that existed, otherwise it would actually feel like some sort of weird hindrance to have your deck clogged with useless cards after he died. Once the design hit this point, I had a lot of dissatisfaction. But in the way of this competition, I didn't have time to do anything.
Essence of Winter - I don't really see what's wrong with this card, while skipping 3 turns ahead is pretty crazy, I think it falls into the category of "surprisingly big" rather than "absolutely gamebreaking". That said, I do have other dissatisfactions about this card regarding how it does the mana, and I'll be adding Scheme to it and changing the Mana Crystals to empty when I rework it.
Soulbind - Yes, I have spent so long trying to clarify this text, and I haven't found a way. If you read the "comments and explanations" section, you can see what it really does.
Scheme - This is the kind of thing that doesn't exist at all in HS, so it's hard to balance. I started with higher numbers based on some MTG stuff, but this is my main target for playtesting. Since it's more important to see if cards are actually balanced rather than to see if they look OP/UP on paper.
Countermeasures - Yes, you can deny your opponent topdecks, and yes, this is weird for hearthstone. As said in the comments+explanations section, Blizzard does tend to stay away from this kind of thing, interacting and thwarting your opponent's deck. However, their cards aren't discarded, only sent to the bottom, and those cards weren't from their hand. Technically, if your opponent played countermeasures on you and you're not Lich, you have no interaction with deck order and thus drawing is going to be pretty much the same random chance, excluding 0-2 cards. This card might get reworked depending on how anti-fun it is, but I think it's alright rn.
Yep, same dissatisfaction with marrowgar.
As for Grimkor, why would he count himself as a spell? He's a minion. In that scenario, you would only have two spells, and it's a 3 card combo, and it would give you a 3/4 with windfury.