I wanted to show off some of the flexibility thoughts for the combat engine, and introduce at least some of the moveset for James Kopecky, the gambler character.

James’ ability to manipulate luck and his skill at doing so in the casinos makes him a natural to muck about with his fellow players’ luck. By that I mean he can alter the kinds of card draws they get, or how the cards interact in their hand in unnatural ways. He has his own moves too, but his luck manipulation only works on allies, not himself, so he needs to watch what his allies have in their hand and choose to act where he can to bend the odds in their favor.

James has a category of cards that are Cheats, and they have the ability to monkey with luck.. at a price.

• Bottom Deal: The next cards drawn come out of the discard pile from each deck. If played after a fresh shuffle, then it can guarantee the same redraw.
• Expend: After playing, removes this card from the deck this combat. Useful to be rid of cards that the player doesn’t particularly like in general, or cards that don’t work during this combat (i.e., an AOE card against a boss who doesn’t have minions).
• Palmed: Until this card is played, it won’t be discarded. Basically saving a favored draw for a later use, like a timely heal that will surely be needed in the future, but not yet this round.
• Hot Streak: This card will stay in your hand even if played. There’s a 50% chance the card expends when played. Each time it doesn’t expend, James’ fate meter increases.
• Mulligan: Redraw all the cards in their hand at random.
• Holdout: Creates an additional slot and places this card into it. This has the same effect as Palmed, but frees up the slot to roll up other cards in addition to holding this one.

(StableDiffusion does not *get* eyepatches. I’ll add his eyepatch using an edit, but if you ask it to make a character with one.. yeesh.)

All of these cheat moves do benefit a fellow player — but bending fate has a way of backlashing on a person. Each of these moves increase James’ fate meter, some more than others. Once that is filled up, James must play his meter move, which is always something beneficial to the enemy. Things like “your next hit is a critical hit” or “your next attack ignores armor,” sorts of things you don’t want to let them do. Much like in real casinos, cheating is a risky move: Do it a little and you won’t get caught out. Do it too much and you’ll have a nice chat with goons in the desert. Who have lead pipes. Incidentally, there is an expression for when a gambler has pushed the cheating too much: Finger up your spine.

Not all of James’ special moves are Cheats. He also has Sharks. These help speed up the combat, but at the cost that everybody must “pay in” to the system. So far I only have one combo:

• Ante Up: Each round, ALL combatants take a percentage of their max health as damage. Replaced by:
• Up the Ante: Increases the percentage of Ante all combatants must pay to play

Does this sound unwelcome? Remember, Alastrina is a healer, and she gets to heal every turn in addition to her attacks. So this isn’t as much of a drain on James’ team as it may be on the monsters — but of course, they’re hitting you, so it is a bit of a risk/reward balance.

I’ve already covered why everybody hates Cait Sith, so I needn’t dwell. What I wanted to avoid with a gambler character is the idea that you’re just rolling dice to see if you step on a rake and smack your face. There’s nothing fun about losing in gambling, and RNGeezus can be a cruel god. Instead, I wanted the player to be able to see the rake coming. The more you cheat, the more its going to hurt when it comes, but until then, you enjoy the ride.