The Gaming Den

The Dealer
"It's time to duel!"



I saw a stray quote on this forum earlier today about someone playing a wizard in the style of a Yu-gi-oh character. Make a deck of spells, draw them, and play them. Presumably for teh lulz. Thing is, I think thats kinda hilarious. And there should be a class that lets you do just that. Thus, the dealer class is inted to be played a bit like the Crusader from le Book of Nine Swords: Tome of Almost Good Enough Stuff.

Starting Age: As Wizard
Starting Gold: As Wizard
Alignment: Most Dealers are of a chaotic alignment, seeing the luck of the draw as the source of their power. A few though, see it as a game of probability and statistics. Dealers may be of any alignment.

Hit Die: d6
Base Attack Bonus: 1/2
Good Saving Throws: Will
Skill Points: 4 + Int
Class Skills: Appraise (Int), Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Craft (Any), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Int), Knowledge (Arcana, Religion, Nature) (Int), Perform (Any) (Cha), Sense Motive (Cha), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Spellcraft (Int), Use Magic Device (Cha).

Level:	Abilities:	Maximum Card Level:
1:	Deck	1
2:	Card Trick	1
3:		2
4:	Card Trick	2
5:		3
6:	Card Trick	3
7:		4
8:	Card Trick	4
9:		5
10:	Card Trick	5
11:		6
12:	Card Trick	7
13:		7
14:	Card Trick	8
15:		8
16:	Card Trick	9
17:		9
18:	Card Trick	9
19:		9
20:	Win The Tourney!	9

All of the following are class features of the Dealer.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency:Dealers are proficient with all simple weapons, but not with type of armor or shield.

Spellcasting: A dealer casts arcane spells which are drawn from the sorcerer/wizard, the Cleric, and the Druid spell lists.

To learn, or cast a spell, the dealer must have a Charisma score equal to at least 10 + the spell level. The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a dealer's spell is 10 + the spell level + the dealer’s Charisma modifier.

Unlike other spellcasters, the dealer does not have spell slots, but instead casts spells by drawing them from his deck (see below).

Cards: Cards are spells and class abilities that can be added to the Dealers deck in the form of a card. In order for a card to be added to the deck, it must be of a lower level than the dealers Maximum Card Level (see table). The level of a card is either the level of the spell on it, or the level of the class ability (stated in the abilities entry).

Deck (Su): The Dealer must build his deck every day by getting a good night’s sleep and spending 1 hour studying. The Dealers deck always contains 40 cards and all cards within the deck must be unique. The deck may contain any number of first level cards, but higher level cards are limited. A deck may only contain a number of cards of any given level (above first) equal to 4 + the number of bonus spells he would get if he were a traditional caster. For example, third level dealer with a charisma of 20 would be able to include 5 2nd level spells in his deck.

Whenever combat is initiated, the dealer draws 7 cards. At the beginning of every round beyond the first round of combat, the Dealer also draws a card. The action that playing a card takes depends on the spell or ability on the card. Spell cards are cast just like the spell on them, using actions normaly for casting the spell and following all rules for spell casting. The caster level is equal to the number of Dealer Levels. Wild Cards have their level specified by the ability. Once a card is used, it is discarded. A discarded card is placed into the 'graveyard', which is really just a pile of cards you've used.

If the Dealer has more than seven cards in their hand at the end of their turn, they must discard cards until they only have seven.

If the deck no longer has any cards in it (that is to say, they are all in the Dealers hand or graveyard) they can no longer draw. Refreshing the deck only takes a short amount of time, any five minute span where the Dealer is not in combat or otherwise in danger is sufficient.

Some abilities have special requirements in order to use them. Discarding is taking cards from your hand and placing them into the graveyard, burning on the other hand requires you to remove a number of cards from the top of your deck and place them in the graveyard.

The Dealer's deck is not a physical object. It is a set of magical cards gatherd from within the Dealer's... soul, or money, whatever their source of magic is. No attempt to take cards from the Dealer is ever actually successful.

Cards Known: At first level, the Dealer has all first level spells from the sorcerer/wizard, the Cleric, and the Druid spell lists as cards. The Dealer also has one Wild Card (see the list at the end of this entry) at first level. Every time the Dealer gains a level they select one Wild Card and four spells with a level up to the Dealer's Maximum Card Level and gain them as cards. The Dealer can also gain new cards the same way a Wizard can add spells to thier spellbook.

Card Trick (Su): The Dealer gains one trick from the following list. Using a trick takes a swift action and burns four cards.

• Empower Card
• Enlarge Card
• Extend Card
• Heighten Card
• Maximize Card
• Quicken Card
• Silent Card
• Still Card
• Widen Card
• For serious, I'm taking suggestions for more of these.

Win The Tourney!: You've done it! You've won the card tournament! The judges all say you're the best! Claim your prize! You get one Whatever-The-Fuck-You-Want from the DM!

---

For the Wild Cards I'm aiming for about 4 per card level. Suggestions appreciated.

Level One Wild Cards:

• Draw Two: Non-action - Draw two more cards.
• Slow You: Standard Action - One opponent within medium range has their initiative reduced by 5. This never grants an opponent an extra turn.
• Me too: Standard Action - One ally within medium range has their initiative increased by 5. This might grant your ally an extra turn.
• Take a Peek: Swift Action - For the rest of the encounter the top card of your deck is laid face up.

Edit: I lied, I finished some more tonight. Now I'tll be until after Thanksgiving till I work more on it.

Cool concept, but obviously needs work. The most obvious problem is simply deck cycling out of combat. It takes 5 minutes to refresh the whole deck and only 3 minutes to cycle through to any card in the deck. Once you start concerning yourself with stuff like greater magic weaon or even goodberry (which I remind you that they currently get for free at 1st level), they become really annoying. And possibly over powered. But mostly, irritating.

The thing is that even at very low levels there are cards somewhere in the deck that last a lot longer than it takes to flip the deck over. And worse than that, they rapidly grab a hold of cards that give them special powers that last about as long as it takes to flip the deck over (like eagle's splendor and shit) and that means that it becomes actually important what is in their hands when they draw down to those buffs.

What needs to happen unfortunately is to write up actual cards that are made to be used like this. A lot of them can be straight spell ports like magic missile and whatever. But they need an entirely different buffing mechanic, because sitting around shuffling the deck for 32 minutes does not cut it.

-Username17

I was thinking about a similar class myself, and here's what ideas I got.

• Summoning is a bitch, so give monsters 1) really shallow stats 2) the option to be used as a single attack, for more effect.
  
  Buffs ought to have a really low duration, probably limited to encounters or ''scenes''.
  
  Contingent cards are a must.
  
  Need the ability to screw the rules. Summon more monsters than allowed, use ESP to predict moves, etc.
  
  Cards ought to be tailor made for the class. Spells are shitty/broken/way too fucking strong for the most part.

Not much, more later.

Alright, so after trying to figure out a way to fix the "I sit here and cycle through my deck out of combat" problem. And as far as buffs go, you could have all active spells from cards be dismissed if you refresh your deck, that ones pretty simple. But as far as instantaneous spells... I'm not sure. Perhaps if you had a mechanic where you could only refresh your deck once between encounters, or with an actual nights sleep it would work. Sure you could cycle through your deck for cure spells, but you end up discarding crap and likely start the fight with half a deck and having discarded a good deal of your combat spells.

But, if someone can point out some major problems with that, and I'm sure there are some, I need to think of cards for the dealer. They should probably be broken up into a few themes, like the colors in MtG or... whatever the heck Yu-Gi-Oh uses. I'd say there should be five to six themes: Martial, Buffs/Healing, Evocation, Summoning(Both creatures and Items), Lockdown/Counterspelling (Think MtG blue deck), and Necromancy/Illusion (I think they work neat together). Optimally the cards should synergize in such a way that there'd be incentive to make a deck on one or two themes instead of spreading the cards between all the themes. If anyone has alternative theme ideas, id like to hear them.

Also, another thing I've been thinking about is deck size. The form of resource management I've been trying to get to work (aside from the action economy) is the burning of cards. Presuming the deck ends upp being 40 cards, and every class ability requires you to burn 4 cards, you could easily burn through a deck in about 7 rounds, burning 28 cards (70%) of your deck. So under optimal conditions where you get have a card in your hand worth using an ability on every round, you start running out of cards about the same time most combats end. In less optimal conditions you end up burning cards you wanted. This seems about right to me, but I'd like opinions on it.

Card uniqueness is a bit of a sticking point too, if you have a 40 card deck, and want to have people be able to focus on just one theme, each them would need a crazy amount of first level cards for there to be variety. If, on the other hand you allow 4 cards of any given name to be in the same deck, you could probably get away with about 20 first level cards for each theme.

Anyway, I'll start pondering on cards, but I wanted to throw my thoughts out here so I could gather opinions.

Isn't Yugi-HO! 3 per card per deck?

Maybe, I'm not sure. I did 4 per deck because its the Magic the Gathering maximum. Also because figuring the probability of getting one of four cards in a 40 card deck is easy.

Utterfail wrote:Maybe, I'm not sure. I did 4 per deck because its the Magic the Gathering maximum. Also because figuring the probability of getting one of four cards in a 40 card deck is easy.

3 in 40 chance of getting one of them....

shadzar wrote:

Utterfail wrote:Maybe, I'm not sure. I did 4 per deck because its the Magic the Gathering maximum. Also because figuring the probability of getting one of four cards in a 40 card deck is easy.

3 in 40 chance of getting one of them....

Try 1 in 10.

I meant at the game standard of 3 per card per deck.

I've looked at that sentence for about five minutes shadzar, and can't make any sense of it. You clearly didn't understand that it was easier to calculate to figure out 4/40 (since thats really 1/10) than 3/40. Don't try to cover for it by starting an argument and derailing the thread.

shadzar wrote: I meant at the game standard of 3 per card per deck.

Then 7.5%

Sorry for the slight derail.

Utterfail wrote:I've looked at that sentence for about five minutes shadzar, and can't make any sense of it. You clearly didn't understand that it was easier to calculate to figure out 4/40 (since thats really 1/10) than 3/40. Don't try to cover for it by starting an argument and derailing the thread.

I wasn't I was just pointing out the 3/40 is all it takes, but I still don't know how it works. Was trying to help you fucking adhere a bit to the game both in RL, and the TV programs.

Since you clearly said above you didn't fucking know when I mentioned 3 per card per deck, I was trying to fucking help you with something that might return a Gambit-esque type of class.

But fuck it up however you want. Do your own damn research from here on out about it.

Usually Yu-gi-oh decks are either centered around one card, a monster type, or card combo. Even deck with a theme will also has some general utility cards as well.

I would be easier to make it 4 of each type, since you will be burning through cards. For Yu-gi-oh from what I recalled has card divide like this:

Monster cards
-1-4 level summons (can play that turn)
-5-6 level summons (sacrifice a creature in play to summon)
-7 level summons (sacrifice two creature in play to summon)
-8+ level summons (special summons need a ritual card to summon)
-various levels: fusion summons (need a special card and specific creatures to summon)
-various levels: effect monsters

Magic cards
-Spell cards: these do an effect
-Field cards: changes the field
-Equip cards
-Reaction cards

Trap cards
-Equip
-Reaction

There are other but these are the basic ones.

Utterfail wrote:Alright, so after trying to figure out a way to fix the "I sit here and cycle through my deck out of combat" problem. And as far as buffs go, you could have all active spells from cards be dismissed if you refresh your deck, that ones pretty simple. But as far as instantaneous spells... I'm not sure. Perhaps if you had a mechanic where you could only refresh your deck once between encounters, or with an actual nights sleep it would work. Sure you could cycle through your deck for cure spells, but you end up discarding crap and likely start the fight with half a deck and having discarded a good deal of your combat spells.

But, if someone can point out some major problems with that, and I'm sure there are some...

The basic problem, and it's a big one, is that spending down the entire deck is in almost all cases exactly what you want to do anyway. Combats in D&D land are usually over in 4 rounds, so if you could pick and choose 4 standard action cards and 3 Swift action cards, that would be totally fine. The current system of discarding cards when you have extra cards in your hand makes running through the entire deck and having "nothing left" the preferred state!

What you're going to want is a very short cycle of drawing and reshuffling like a Crusader, because otherwise people seriously will just start the countdown well in advance. Having a cherry picked hand is worth far more than having more turns of reinforcements. Even a long battle is scarcely ever going to deplete seven standard actions of level appropriate bad assery.

-Username17

wasn' blaming you for the derail, Leress, not to mention that it hadn't really gotten derailed yet.

In any event, thinking a bit more on it, I think a 20 card deck comprised of unique cards is the way to go. I'll drop the hand size to 5 and make it so you burn two cards for each abilty. Throw in some cards that require discards or burns and I think you can get it so that the deck usually lasts about 4 rounds till the Dealer starts running out of cards. Out of combat use may still be a bit of an isue, but between effects dissapating if you refresh your deck and the 5 minute wait I don't think its too terrible. It would essentially let the dealer mulligan until he gets the staring hand he likes, or heal the party to full strength if they have a lot of down time, assuming he prepared a healing deck that day. And thats not particularly game breaking. Maybe they could only draw a full hand in combat? otherwise they just draw one at a time?

I think I really need to start making abilities and playtesting before any more deck math is really useful, but any ideas are still welcome.