Joker Concept - Rain Check

[scarlet cairn]

Takes half the chips and mult of discarded cards and stores them until the next hand is played (works with any card upgrades including the red seal retrigger)

[unique zenith]

So as in

Half the Mult and chips of the hand that the discarded cards would make?

[scarlet cairn]

Yes, or if that's too powerful then just the cards themselves if they were all scored with no hand type.

Or maybe full mult and chips just no joker effects so you can't score 2 million and add that to the next hand and have the jokers multiply it again

Encourages getting more card upgrades and planets

[rare quartz]

So if I discard this hand my next hand will gain +292 chips at the end of the hand? How broken it is depends on its interactions with xmult and other jokers I suppose…. But i think this is too complicated

[scarlet cairn]

I've been thinking about it and this is how I'd want it to work now, it would take that hand, add chips and mult like it normally would (based on card upgrades only, no joker interaction) and then store those values. So for your hand it would store a chip value of 73 and a Mult value of 4. On your next played hand it would add those values to your current hand (either as the first thing before it starts scoring cards or depending on where the joker is placed on the lineup) so if you played the exact same hand again it would be a 146 chips times 8 Mult.

The chips and mult are stored separately.

[arctic halo]

So if I discard a hand worth 50 * 4, then play a hand worth 50 * 6, I'd get 300 chips and then the Joker would add 200 to the total after the fact, resulting in 500 chips?

Isn't that the same as just playing the original hand? You're just turning discards into hands, burglar with extra steps (plus just a direct upgrade)

[rare quartz]

Ah, so like a reverse flint kinda. Might be way too good with pairs

[scarlet cairn]

which is why i've been kinda debating whether to half the discarded hands value or not.

[arctic halo]

That would make it a direct downgrade in 90% of cases

[scarlet cairn]

i mean onyx agate is a direct upgrade from gluttonus joker yet its still apart of the game

[arctic halo]

I could see a concept like this being revisited when new Jokers start utilizing discards more often, but in the current balance of the game I'm not too sure this really has much of a use. Not a bad idea by any means but I just don't think it really fits into the game yet, since as of now there's very little distinguishing this from Burglar.

[arctic halo]

Imma be honest I hate the fact that Onyx Agate does that lmao. Seems really lazy to me.

[scarlet cairn]

not every card needs to be "great" they just need to be interesting IMO (which onyx agate also fails at) and i feel like this is an interesting joker that could have some niche but still interesting synergies. it's honestly impossible to tell whether any joker idea is good or not because there are so many variables in balatro, from what type of deck you use, to what cards you have in your deck, to what other jokers you have.

[scarlet cairn]

which is why i love this game by the way, finding synergies with cards that you never thought would have any good synergies.

[arctic halo]

As of now there's pretty much zero synergies with discards, so I'm not really confident that (as of now) this has a reason for being in the game. Again I certainly don't hate the idea, but until we get more Jokers that synergize with discards that aren't "destroy discarded card" this is pretty much just Burglar (with maybe even less use since I don't think this Joker uses multipliers from other owned Jokers). I get onyx agate is just a direct upgrade but honestly I'd VERY much rather distance the game from that sort of thing since it pretty much goes directly against the core values of "every Joker has a use".

[scarlet cairn]

i mean it has the use of adding more chips and mult to your next hand so instead of having 100x(50x3) (or whatever other mult multiplier jokers you have) you instead have 200x(100x3) which comes out to than just playing the same hand twice.

[arctic halo]

Like I can go through everything that uses the discard context just to put it into perspective
Banner - Antisynergy
Mystic Summit - No impact
Delayed Gratification - Antisynergy
Burglar - Antisynergy
Faceless Joker - Synergy
Green Joker - Antisynergy
Mail-In Rebate - Synergy
Drunkard - Synergy
Trading Card - Antisynergy
Ramen - Antisynergy
Castle - Honestly no clue
Merry Andy - Synergy
Hit the Road - Synergy (Kinda?)
Burnt Joker - Synergy (Kinda)
Yorick - Synergy (Kinda)

There's a couple in there but two of them are econ, two of them just add more discards, and the rest are there to power up regular hands

None of them directly improve this Joker, and this Joker doesn't directly improve anything else. It's essentially a standalone bonus, which doesn't really fit with what the game is all about.

[scarlet cairn]

like on paper i get what your talking about, but again, there's still so much more going on with card upgrades, what decks you use, what vouchers you get, heck you could just get a red deck and both discard vouchers, boost your high card to the heavens and just play extremely high value high cards. is it optimal? no. is it funny and makes it worth it? yes. and that's what matters to me. you can have your naneinf synergy builds but ill always get a laugh at beating the ante 8 boss blind with the most cursed deck combination and a high card.

[arctic halo]

Wait am I misunderstanding what this does? I thought it just added what was essentially the value of the cards to your final score after the fact, like (50 * 6) + (50 * 4), but this makes me think it's more like (50 + 50) * (6 + 4), which is considerably different

[scarlet cairn]

yeah, thats what i was going with.

[arctic halo]

The latter one? Hm...

[scarlet cairn]

also thats simplified with only the hand type counting, in practice i wanted it to also count the chips and mult of the cards that would've been played had you scored it instead of discarded it (minus the jokers that would've applied to the hand since that would be insanely powerful i think)

[arctic halo]

Actually this might be a good incentive to focus on upgrading cards over finding better Jokers, since if your main scoring aspects are the cards you'd ideally be getting about X4 results from a single hand. 50 * 4 = 200, discarding that hand and playing an identical one gets you 800. I'm a bit torn now, I dunno.

This might be rediculously overpowered actually lmaoo

[scarlet cairn]

yeah, balancing isnt my strong suit as i'd need to actually use this card to see if it's too powerful or not, but the concept is there. it was why i was thinking about having the discarded hands chips and mult be halfed (or having some sort of percent taken out) before getting stored

but keep in mind it the discarded hand wouldnt be affected by jokers for the stored value. only the hand and card upgrades themselves would count.

[arctic halo]

Would make Hit the Road and other stuff more satisfying too, since you're upgrading it while kind of playing a hand... It took me a while but I'm starting to see the vision lol

Actually I think that might be Hit the Road exclusive but that Joker needs Synergy anyway it's literally the only Jack joker lol

[scarlet cairn]

yeah, i understand why you were concerned at first now that i know you thought it was just the total score of the discarded hand plus the total score of your next hand.

hit the road is limited in its use, but i like it just for the pun.

[arctic halo]

I'd have to see it in action cause I might be wildly incorrect but this seems reeeally good, I'd def say lower the gained values in some way.

[scarlet cairn]

if only i knew how to mod because i would definetly add this in.

[arctic halo]

Like again just comparing to Burglar cause why not, assuming the average hand is let's just say 100 total chips, 7 hands with Burglar would be 700 chips while 4 hands 3 discards with this would be roughly 1300 chips

And Burglar is already a really great find for non-endless runs

[scarlet cairn]

are you taking into account that the stored chips and mult only add to the the next played hand and then resets to 0 for both?

[arctic halo]

Yeah I just multiplied each affected hand by four since I think that's about how much you'd get from this if it just added the one discard

This doesn't let you stack multiple discards, does it? Cause that would climb WAYYY faster than you think it would

Linear increases on both sides act as exponentials in practice. 2^2 = 4, 4^2 = 16, 6^2 = 36 and all that

[scarlet cairn]

honestly depends, if there was a heavy chip and mult tax then yes multiple discards would stack, but if not then it may be best not to have them stack.

either direction has unforeseen consequences anyways (at least for me).

[arctic halo]

I'd say just from a "make the game fun" angle it'd be better to not have them stack. Otherwise every round you'd feel obligated to immediately use all of your discards for a single maxed hand (which would be optimal) and that just doesn't sound like fun imo

[scarlet cairn]

yeah, probably then go with a low chip and mult tax but they dont stack. that's probably easier to balance anyways.

[arctic halo]

Plus if it doesn't stack then you get a sort of risk-reward of "do I want to discard this good hand in order to increase my next hand's value, or will that screw me over and ruin my chances of PLAYING a good hand? If I have to use another discard to find something better after gettin screwed over, I'd be wasting the extra value I could be applying to my next played hand."

This is surprisingly complicated lmao

[scarlet cairn]

i honestly didn't think of that and i like the extra complexity you just revealed behind my silly little idea

now the question is. would it also trigger glass jokers to break now or would they be safe since they're getting discarded and not played?

or we could simplify it by jokers affected by chance not applying.

[arctic halo]

I was worried about that too, though the glass card description says "1 in 4 chance to destroy card after all scoring is finished", emphasis on scoring. This Joker does technically cause cards to score, doesn't it?

Glass cards aren't safe, and would probably be considered antisynergy for this. Which is good, glass cards are meta-defining in current balance.

[scarlet cairn]

thats what im thinking too to be honest. though it could synergize with glass joker a little depending on how easily you can duplicate glass cards.

[arctic halo]

Well that's a hidden synergy with another Joker which is also a good thing

[scarlet cairn]

now for the lucky card, since this rain check joker only stores the chip and mult value, would the cash option be allowed to trigger as well when discarding? cause that could also be beneficial

[worldly minnow]

I'd say no, since it isnt "triggering" Jokers is it?

Is it counting as if a full hand played out?

[arctic halo]

Uhhhh... maybe? I mean, I'd assume it'd have to if other enhancements are also triggered, but it does feel a bit weird.

[arctic halo]

I think it'd have to in order to calculate enhancement bonuses, yeah?

[worldly minnow]

Yeah, or it could be planet/base hand values, which tbf sounds weak so I assume that's not it

[wooden loom]

Just add the value without effect of joker that gives muits/chips, would more balance

[scarlet cairn]

could also apply the same tax to the money thats earned too. so if it takes 20% off the stored chip and mult value it could also then remove 20% of the cash earned too to keep it in check.

[arctic halo]

I guess that could be another angle to come at it from, it's less exciting since then it's essentially just planet card synergy though. I guess at a certain point this might be considered a bit TOO complicated if it takes enhancements into account though.

[worldly minnow]

And money, and a tax system seemingly

[worldly minnow]

Tho this is interesting

[scarlet cairn]

well we meant more so the lucky cards themselves. the jokers already werent going to affect the discarded hand's value.

[worldly minnow]

Ohhh okok

[scarlet cairn]

though i feel it should still trigger the joker to upgrade even if the joker itself isnt applying its buff to the discarded hand.

[arctic halo]

Taking a step back and just comparing this to other Jokers, there's wayyy more going into this general idea then pretty much any other Joker. I feel like we're trying to cram an entire subset of ideas into a single Joker at once.

[wooden loom]

1 in 5 chance is not so high without oa6s idk

[arctic halo]

Honestly base chips and mult might be the way to go, it's a bit more boring but it's still REALLY cool synergy with discards and still enables this to happen for the player while being way easier to balance.

[scarlet cairn]

to be fair, we're just trying to figure out how it interacts with the cards which would help if this idea ever gets picked up by the dev or a modder.

though yes, this card feels a bit more complex than the average joker (though i wouldn't know since im not an expert on the game)

[arctic halo]

Yeah I get that but this Joker is already

• The only Joker to have a multiple-per-round one time use effect
• The only Joker to have discards be affected by planet cards / hand types (apart from high card by proxy of Jokers having "only a single card" in the description)
• Makes the amount of discards at your disposal WAYYYY more impactful

I don't think this ALSO needs to fix the issues with card enhancements being unbalanced as well.

[scarlet cairn]

yeah, i guess it did kinda get out of hand

so you were suggesting it should just save just the hand types chip and mult value and nothing else?

[arctic halo]

I've got a small bit of practice with modding and honestly it doesn't seem super hard to add. Just have it store the base chips and mult of a discarded hand if there aren't already values stored, and when a hand is played add those values before scoring. Might take me a bit to make since I'm pretty slow at coding but I could probably make this like tomorrow night

[arctic halo]

Yeah the base values. It's still deceptively complicated and would honestly fundamentally change the way you play the game.

[scarlet cairn]

honestly if you do that would be great, could actualy test it to see if it's busted in practice or not.

god im not gonna get this idea out of my head for the rest of the week i feel.

[arctic halo]

LOL

[scarlet cairn]

i didnt expect this much discussion about a joker idea that i had pop into my brain while i was at work. i literally typed this suggestion while on break and didnt really have much time to put into describing it or thinking about the actualy complexity of it.

[arctic halo]

I do think that it might be a bit too complicated for base game (unless the next content update has really deep Joker concepts like this, which I'd be ALL for) but for a modded idea this is great

[scarlet cairn]

tbh, i feel like suggestions is a great place to get modding ideas from since a majority of suggested ideas probably wont get included by localthunk.

[arctic halo]

You have no idea how stupid the code behind this is

I'll DM the code when I get home tomorrow if ya want I'm going to sleep lmao