Magic Effect Drawing

[Apolito Ghosh]

Heyeverybody! Nearly two months ago I wrote an article about evaluating different creatures in Magic: The Gathering (which you can find here). Today, I plan to do the same thing, but with spell abilities instead. If you are interested in designing your own trading card game, or simply want to learn more about Magic: The Gathering, then this is the article for you!

This card would be so weak without the card draw that it would never get made, but if it had a more powerful ability it probably would have to cost more mana. A higher cost would significantly weaken the card, as combat tricks require players to not spend some of their mana during their own turns.

For cycling cards, which require players to choose between the ability or the card draw, the average cost is usually either 2 colorless mana or, occasionally, a single colored mana. These cards tend to be slightly weaker or slightly more expensive than their non-cycling counterparts, but make up for it by being extremely flexible.

This ability is often mixed with life gain (as a small bonus) or life loss (as an additional cost). It can also be mixed with synergistic effects like Scry (which I will talk about soon) and is also often paired with discard effects due to opposing nature of the two abilities.

All of the abilities listed so far have been single use effects. However, there is also another category of card drawing abilities that allow players to draw multiple times by either paying mana or achieving some condition.

If the ability is simply to pay some mana and draw a card, these abilities tend to cost about 3-4 mana. However, most of these abilities tend to have some additional requirements for the card draw, which can reduce the cost. These extra requirements can range from causing damage to the opponent, to having the largest creature, to having the fewest cards in hand.

Cards that simply require mana to draw tend to be more expensive because they can be used multiple times each turn. On the other hand, if an ability requires a tap to activate, then it tends to be much cheaper because it can only be used once per turn. Because of the initial mana and card investment, it can take several turns for these sorts of cards to become valuable, but if they can stay out for many turns they can gain huge amounts of card advantage.

Aside from pure card drawing, there is also what is known as card filtering. These abilities involve getting rid of cards in your hand (either by sending them to the graveyard, exiling them, or shuffling them back into the deck), and drawing new cards to replace them.

If a card discards 1 less than it draws, then you break even. While this could be considered comparable to drawing a single card, in most cases it is considerably better. This is because you have a choice of which card to keep and which to get rid of, which gives you a much better chance of getting one of the cards you want.

For example, take a card such as Compulsive Research that allows you to draw 3 and discard two. Clearly this card should cost less than a card that simply allows you to draw 3 cards (which would cost about 4 mana). On the other hand, it allows you to keep one of your cards, so it should cost more than a card that simply lets you draw a single card (about 1 mana). Therefore, this card should cost somewhere in the range of 2 or 3 mana. Compulsive Research costs 3, because the ability to sometimes keep two cards makes it more expensive. However, I could see a version of this card that only costs 2 without that possibility (maybe with two blue mana).

I am the Head Designer of Rempton Games, and primary writer for the Rempton games blog. I am currently a graduate student in computer science at Kansas State University, and work on game designs every spare moment that I can.

Basically, in the world I am building, magic-users draw the energy necessary to use their abilities from other Realms - specifically, these other Realms are actually planets in the solar system. This is not something said magic users are aware of, however, due to strange magic that makes planets appear as odd phenomena in the night sky.

Drawing power from another Realm, in this case, entails creating a small fissure in reality that draws power from that other Realm. While the fissure is open, you can draw energy from another planet. Once it closes or is forcibly closed by someone else, you're out of luck until you can open a new one.

However, even though the main Human Planet that said magic users are on has its own energy, the magicians that live there cannot draw on it. In the same way, if someone from the Human Planet was to end up on one of the other planets through whatever magical means, they would not be able to access the magical power of that current planet, but would be able to tap into their own, original planet instead.

Each planet has its own, slightly different magical field. Either it's all one thing that just has different levels, or they actually have different kinds of "mana" or whatever that interact with each when brought into contact. Either way, power doesn't come from the planet's "aura" or "mana" or whatever directly--it comes from the flow of mana through a fissure from one realm to another, or from the interaction when different kinds of mana meet.

So, clearly you can't draw power just from the planet you are currently on. It would be like going to Venus and hoping that you can run a Sterling engine off the atmospheric heat--it doesn't work, 'cause there's nowhere for the heat to go--everywhere is equally hot! But if you can make a portal from Venus to Earth, with a hot side and a cold side, you can absolutely run an engine off of that. Magic works the same way, but instead of extracting power from heat, it's... magic.

The idea here is that everything on a given planet is so acclimated to the magical energies of that planet that they outright ignore anything which said energies try to do to them. You can gather all the local energy you want, but no matter how hard you push it into a spell, it has no effect.

The reality-based equivalent to this would probably be related to how a person can get acclimated to a constant noise or smell, to the point that they don't even notice it any more. Or more like gravity or air pressure - humans are constantly under pressure from several tons of atmosphere, but we don't feel it because we're used to it (and if it suddenly disappeared, we'd notice).

The astral projections of these magic users varies to some degree but is always immense, and centered on their physical form. Their own home world and other objects in the vicinity are within this form and inaccessible. Near objects can be accessed only with painful contortions. There is a set of objects within easy reach of their astral projections. Objects that are too far away are likewise unreachable.

Astral projections of non magic users might be considerably smaller, but even if somehow they learn or develop the skills to make them, these projections are of no practical use to a non magic user. But could a non magic user able to project herself team up with a magic user?

Attempting to draw magical locally creates a negative feedback loop the prevents the magic from working. By drawing the power from a remote source, the feedback effect it out of phase or otherwise diminished allowing you to get a successful power draw.

Creating a fissure in a large nearby source will create a flow of energy that is too strong to manage, and maybe dangerous. A fissure to a far-way place dissipates most of the energy along the way, or to maintain a fissure, so the resulting energy is manageable.

Feedback interference. You know how radios have feedback loops that disable them in close proximity? It's the same type of interference that makes it impossible to draw power from the planet you're on. Of course you could be more technical about it, but as far as a general explanation, this is good enough.

Additional: Mana exists in fields that exist around planets. Trying to siphon off mana from outside the field is easy, but drawing mana from inside its field is very difficult. This is the same sort of system that keeps electrons in fields around atoms. If you hit an electron with a strong force, it will simply bounce away from the nucleus before it comes into contact. However, electrons can be stolen by outside forces with a strong pull.

What immediately comes to mind when considering this question is that the the system is symmetrical - that is, it works exactly the same even if someone from planet 1 is transplanted to planet 2. It is not a subjective exclusion from the current planet. The energy of the current planet is objectively unusable. So what would make that happen? The simplest answer, for me, is that something in the transition from planet X to planet Y is necessary for it to become usable.

To find what that is, I would look at the physical layout of a solar system. What is between you and another planet that isn't between you and your own planet? This could be some object in its own orbit, or maybe the energy must be drawn through multiple planets to amplify. But my thought is that it must be drawn through the sun.

Why? Well, it's big, bright, and your planet's energy can never ever go through it on its way to you. The sun could act as a focus or an activator of another planet's energy, and that energy must be (inadvertently) drawn through the sun to be useful to a magician. Or perhaps the journey of the magical energy through the sun's radiation between planets activates it and it doesn't physically have to go through the sun, but the idea is the same. Something between the planets (the sun or some other arcane object) acts as a catalyst for magical reactions. The energy around planets is the fuel, but it needs a spark somewhere out in space that just isn't available on the planet you stand on.

The other simple observation is the sheer distance involved. I liked it Renan's inverse square law idea, but I like it better the other way. The further the planet is from you, the greater distance the energy has to build momentum. If you draw it from a paltry 4000 miles from the center of your planet (or less if it's from the atmosphere), it is equivalent to a musket-ball rolling out of the barrel. But, drawing from a Pluto analog 5 billion miles away, your magical bolt comes screaming like an abused particle doing loops somewhere in a Swiss lab.

3a8082e126