Hit the Road Buff

[bitter ravine]

When a Jack is drawn to hand, discard it and gain X0.25 Mult
Resets at end of round
-# (Currently X1 Mult)

I think this would be a good way to buff Hit the Road, since it keeps the theming and gives it an interesting and unique new mechanic. Being able to automatically discard drawn Jacks is quite useful; you could use it to gain Tarots with Purple Seals, automatically discard for effects like Castle, Rebate, and Burnt Joker, or simply draw the cards you want. The more Jacks you have, the more powerful this effect becomes and the more mult you will gain. To offset this powerful effect, I figured changing the mult gain from X0.5 to X0.25 would make sense. Let me know what you think!

[bitter ravine]

@true shore Can you elaborate on your reason for the ?

[true shore]

automatically discarding all jacks out of the player's control is not a good idea

the reasons you mentioned are very niche, and i probably wouldnt even count burnt joker, because if you draw a jack then you cant control which hand levels up

[nocturne cradle]

How would this joker work with trading card?
Would it destroy your jacks if you draw just one before you discard any cards manually? (Similar to the hook bug with trading card)

[bitter ravine]

But you don't have to take it if you're not in a position where you can use it to your benefit

[bitter ravine]

If that's how hook works, then yeah I guess so

[bitter ravine]

That was mainly just some fun synergies

I neglected to talk about it in my original post (for some reason??? Idk why i did that), but it's useful even on its own

Automatically being able to discard Jacks means you don't have to use discards for them, meaning you can hypothetically activate it much more than you could otherwise

If you're against changing Hit the Road to work like this, do you think a brand new Joker with a similar effect could work?

[nocturne cradle]

I think the idea is unique and interesting but maybe it could spiral a lot out of control with enough deck fixing

When a jack is discarded, do you draw another card from your deck or do you have a smaller hand size for that round?

If you draw another card, then if your deck contains nothing but jacks, are they all discarded and then do you lose?

[celest cliff]

Does it draw another card? I’m not a fan of it potentially being infinite

Wow at the same time

[nocturne cradle]

:0

[fringe birch]

it wont be infinite but with a sufficient amount of jacks you fixed into with strengths and deaths youre reducing deck size by an effective like 10 or something

which is something

that kind of drawing power feels like it shouldnt have xmult attached ngl

[celest cliff]

Well not technically infinite but really big with infinite potential

[bitter ravine]

The idea was for it to draw another card, yeah

I guess you would lose if you had only Jacks, but like just keep some other cards

[celest cliff]

New word: bigfinite. It’s technically not infinite but it can be infinitely big

[bitter ravine]

I think the word you're looking for is limitless

[fringe birch]

you get both a smaller deck and an xmult joker usually utility and scoring dont come together

[celest cliff]

Yes but that sounds lamer smh

[bitter ravine]

You do have a point, I was originally worried it might end up being useless without some scoring utility but I think you're right

[bitter ravine]

Ok fine you're right bigfinite it is

[worthy steeple]

i don't think it needs this with the blue stake rework

just keep it as is

[bitter ravine]

Damn my suggestions are falling off 😔

By next week I'll be posting Basquiat Joker

[shrewd grail]

Personally I think this one is overhated, to me it sounds like the first good idea for a hit the road buff I've seen. This makes a cool hybrid effect with interesting synergizes. I don't see any real arguments against it except for the "but you could get infinite deck fixing", which will never happen in an ante 8 run and in any case is no stronger than just thinning your deck. There was also an argument that it is too niche that seems to completely skip over the detail that jacks are effectively removed from you deck with this joker, providing deck fixing, removing the requirement to waste discards and you get good scoring to boot just for digging through your deck. The last argument was that the deckfixing potential was too good to also have ×mult which seems to forget that when compared to trading card(an uncommon that for balance purposes we can consider a rare) gets a consistent -1 card per round, this slightly improves death, and to a niche extent strength. Death goes from increasing the amount of a presumably desirable card by 1 to destroying 1 card effectively and the same goes for strength. Changing from enhancing the composure of your deck to the size isn't that big of a jump. Let's look at your drawing potential, say you copied a 2 on a standard deck with death, you just went from a 4/52 chance of pulling a 2 to a 5/52 chance, increasing your odds by 25%. Now say you copied a jack with the new Hit the road. You now have a 4/51 chance of drawing a 2 effectively, a roughly 2% increase. The change isn't in my opinion an overpowered improvement.

[celest cliff]

It’s not even about strength necessarily, it’s just that I’m not a fan of limitless scaling mid round like that. You can only play so many hands, discard so many cards, etc. and that feels like an intentional limit compared to other card game roguelikes like Slay the Spire.

A joker breaking that limit is gonna be a for me, and is also why something like The Serpent being changed to not break handsize is something I agree with.

[shrewd grail]

It is capped by your deck size and fixing. It is no worse than say blue joker or campfire. The only difference between scalars like bull, blue joker, throwback and erosion and this is that this requires you to regain the scaling by deck digging each time. Your concern about limitless mid round scaling seems to be based on an abstraction that does not actually reflect how the joker works.

[celest cliff]

I understand how it works, but the fact that it breaks stuff like Rebate is a reason I dislike it

[shrewd grail]

At the point this breaks rebate you are already on an endless run.

And rebate will never always hit jacks either because deckfixing to only jacks kills you

[celest cliff]

What about only jacks and a single other card?

[shrewd grail]

Like, I said at that level of dedication you are not only on a won run but you are almost certainly in far endless.

[celest cliff]

I just don’t like the vibes it gives, just make it so it discards held jacks when you play a hand or something

[bitter ravine]

Then it's just HC slop though

[celest cliff]

I think it’s thematic with the other face card things, Baron and Shoot the Moon all function with held in hand effects

idk I’m throwing things at the wall here lol