Help with summoning mechanic

[Typherion]

Hello! I'm looking for some ideas for a mechanic for the creature battle card game called Summoner I first posted about here http://www.lackeyccg.com/forum/index.php?topic=671.0
I'm having trouble thinking up a new summoning system for putting creatures into play.

Background
There are 3 levels of creatures. Level I creatures are the standard and should make up most of the creatures in a deck. Level II creatures are your elites and should be used less often than Level I creatures. Level III creatures are your unique bosses that your deck should be built around.

Creatures in play are used to attack your opponent and defend against their attacks.

If a deck is 40 cards, then the aim is to have 20 supporting spell cards, and about 20 creatures total with around 14 Level I's, 4 Level II's, and 2 Level III's.

The Mechanic
So I need either:
a) a resource mechanic for summoning different level creatures, or
b) a restriction mechanic that only allows summoning different level creatures in certain circumstances.

I am trying to achieve a certain play style, so here are some guidelines.

1) Ensure that creatures of all levels are relevant throughout the game (eg: Level I creatures shouldn't be irrelevant during the end game, same for Level III creatures in the early game).

2) No boring resource cards (eg: lands) that cause continuous resource ramp.

3) Shouldn't involve removing one's own creatures from play (eg: tribute in Yu-Gi-Oh) because they are important for defending.

4) Should allow the possiblity to summon multiple creatures in a turn (eg: a big aggressive or desperate turn).

5) Style points for using the terms "Summon", "High Summon" and "Grand Summon."

I have looked at the mechanics in a lot of other games, but I'm hoping you guys can help me out with some ideas.

[DavidChaos]

My, my, this is a challenge.  Think I can figure something, though.

Basically, you have a set number of resources per turn.  Let's say 5, for example's sake.  Level I Monsters could cost 1, Level II could cost 2, and Level III could cost 3.  So, if you get a hand full of Level I?  No biggie, you can go ahead and put them all out while you try to get higher-level stuff.  Fixed-resource seems to be a somewhat popular mechanic nowadays.

[Typherion]

Thanks for the response!

It is a very tricky request. I think the fixed-resource idea comes close, but still falls a bit short.

You could dump a full hand of level I creatures on your first turn, but you wouldn't be able to do it more than once because you would run out of cards. Every level I you draw after that first turn would be less useful because you wouldn't be able to make best use of your fixed resources.

I think it would encourage players to stack their decks with level II and III creatures so they could consistently maximise the use of their resources.

This wouldn't be a big problem if players could draw a full hand every turn, but I don't really want to do that.

[magekirbys]

How about something like a focus/experience value that goes up or down during the beginning of a player's turn depending on how many summons he has out in play?

Like for example you'll start with 0-5 and with each level one monster you manage to keep alive it'll go up the value goes up by 1+(X).
X being the amount of level ones out during the start of the turn.
Then once you reach 20+ you're able to play a level 2 summons but have to pay some of the value depending on how strong the level 2
Finally when you reach 30+ you can play your level 3's but once one the value goes down to 0 so you have to build your way back up to being able to summon another one.

As for being able to summon more than once during a turn that should have kind of extra cost the summoner can pay depending on what level of a monster he's going to summon.

[Crovack]

If you're familiar with magic (as it's the easiest system for me to explain based off of), you could simply use life as a resource.
You start the game with 100 power/life/'resource'.
You can spend this resource at any time to play your creatures and spells.
The catch starts to then come into how certain creatures and spells will interact with your resource on a turn by turn basis.

A creature that, for example, costs significantly more but then gives you +X resource per turn would allow for creatures like that to become an investment, and your opponent would be obliged to kill it as fast as possible or risk it becoming, over time, free or profitable.

Bigger more powerful creatures could also include a resource cost per turn to maintain, some may be so costly that attempting to maintain them without the support of other resource producers would be close to suicidal.

The final aspect of this that makes it, in my mind, an interesting mechanic is that your resource is also something your opponent can attack directly and by sacrificing your resource you put yourself closer to losing the game.  If the game includes the ability to do 'burst' damage, the guy who drops 2 huge costly creatures and tries to empty his hand first turn, may well just be hit and killed because he's brought himself too close to the brink of death by over-investing.

If you're familiar with magic's suspend mechanic, you could also incorporate something similar in the following manner:
Spell
Cast Immediately: 25 resource
Cast with 1 Suspend Counter: 20 resource
Cast with 2 Suspend Counters: 13 resource
Cast with 3 Suspend Counters: 3 resource
This allows you to have spells and creatures that can be played with a 'I need this now' mentality, but at a higher cost.  To simply this mechanic you could have spells that had a fixed cost (ex: 25) and you could suspend it for as many turns as you wanted (possibly up to a fixed number?), each turn you remove a suspend counter you add 5 resource back.  This is a less complicated manner and possibly even more flexible manner to do so.

[Saethori]

You could also use cards as a resource. One example is the existing Yu-Gi-Oh mechanic where you must destroy your creatures in play in order to summon higher levels. Couple this with limitations, and you'll have situations where you have to spend some turns building up Level I creatures, then you can pitch them to get your Level III into play.

If that seems too difficult, you could just have discarding creature cards themselves as the cost, thus creating the decision on whether it's better to have a bunch of little guys or one big guy.

[Typherion]

Wow, some excellent ideas here. I will spend some more time thinking on them.

If possible, I want to keep the game simple by keeping all numbers around 10 or lower. 10 is pretty much the maximum attack/defence for level III creatures.

It seems like I need some kind of changing cycle in order to make all levels relevant. I had an idea similar to yours Crovack that involves building up resources.

Essence Summoning
Each time you summon a creature of any level, you generate 1 Essence. The maximum amount of Essence you can have at any one time is 3.
Level I creatures can be summoned for free.
Level II creatures cost 2 Essence to summon.
Level III creatures cost 3 Essence to summon.

This system requires players to use level I creatures as a basic resource generator. It lets players have big turns up to a limit, or play more conervatively. However, it also makes it difficult to play with both level II and level III creatures at the same time. Summoning a level II will reduce your Essence, making it harder to summon the Level III...

Another worry is that this system will encourage players to use so many creatures that there is no room in their decks for supporting spells, because spells don't generate resources...

[cap.tiny]

If Level 1 Creatures are free, then why wouldn't I just flood the field with Level 1s? Levels ones shouldn't be free, You can have a rule of a starting number of essence, like 1 essence, that way you can summon you first creature, OR ya can just say you first level 1 is free in the game.

[Typherion]

You wouldn't want to flood the field with level I creatures because;
a) you would use up all cards in your hand
b) you could have summoned a level II or III

But I think you are right that it would cause players to want to just get as many creatures out as fast as they could, and then top deck the rest of the game.

If there was a limit of 1 summon per turn, I think the game might play like Yu-Gi-Oh, but without most of the special summoning combos. This might work if Essence costs were changed a bit.

So an example could look like this,
Turn 1: Summon level I (Essence = 1/2)
Turn 2: Summon level I (Essence = 2/2), or you could spend 1 Essence and Summon level II (Essence = 0/2).
Turn 3: Summon level I (Essence still = 2/2), or spend 1 Essence and Summon level II (Essence = 1/2), or pay 2 Essence and Summon level III (Essence = 0/2).

So Summoning is a once per turn action. This would prevent players from dropping their entire hand on Turn 1.
The system encourages mixing low and high levels to maximise Essence use.
Note that more creatures could still be put into play via abilities and spell effects, eg with a resurrection spell.

I think this might be worth some play testing. Hopefully it isn't too predictable and boring in practice.

[cap.tiny]

here is my tweek and you can play around with it too.

players receive 1 free essence per turn. You can summon as many creature per turn as you want. Players receive 1 essence per turn per creature they control.

cost to play are:
Level 1: 1 essence
Level 2: 2 essence and sacrifice a creature
Level 3: 3 essence and sacrifice one Level 2 creature OR 3 essence and 3 Level 1 creatures

This encourages to play all 3 levels. and it wont start a flood unless you just want a deck that way (the weenie decks).

Do you use essence to play non-creature cards? if so your essence pool drains right before you start your turn.

[Ripplez]

are there different colours of monsters? what is the average speed of the game, is it fast? are there more options for drawing and in larger amounts (like pokemon) or slower like mtg or like yugioh?

[Typherion]

Yeah, there are 5 colours of creatures similar to Magic but with some different colour philosophy behind it. So you would gain and spend White Essence by summoning White creatures.

The only option for drawing extra cards is through creature or spell effects.

I want the game to focus a lot on fast paced creature combat. Because creatures attack the opponent's deck of 40 cards instead of Life Points, the absolute fastest I can see a game ending is 3 Turns if the other player doesn't do anything to stop your creatures. But I hope for normal games to last about 10 Turns.

[cap.tiny]

interesting tell us more.... 

[Typherion]

Sure! Although there's a lot more info in the thread I linked at the top.

All creature cards have a colour and a type.
White and Black are opposing colours like light and darkness. Blue, Green and Red interact in a circle.
Blue(water/wind) is good against Red(fire), which is good against Green(earth), which is good against Blue.

Blue will be flexible, Red will be aggressive, Green will be defensive

Creature types will also have a relationship like this. It's not rock always beats scissors, just a sub-theme I want in the game for flavour.

Beasts are good against Mystics (eg green beast named Spellthirster)
Mystics are good against Spirits
Spirits are good against Warriors (eg blue spirit named Mistwraith)
Warriors are good against Beasts (eg red warrior named Dragonslayer)

[cap.tiny]

very neat... can't wait to play it