Legendary Joker: Spell Sidearm

[mental herald]

Mechanics: You can equip 1 more spell. Max 1 card.

Description: "You bring more spells to a gunfight. You can equip one more spell."

Would need a new keybind and all, but it'd be a huge boon for all of us dedicated casters.

If more balancing is needed, it could extend the cooldown of all spells (+10-15%?) and the description would go something along the lines of:

"You bring more spells to a gunfight. You can equip one more spell, but your focus is split between them, increasing cooldowns of all spells by 10/15%."

Alternative balance: -20% weapon damage, since your focus with this joker is very much on spells.
"You bring more spells to a gunfight, to the detriment to your actual guns. You can equip one more spell, but your weapon damage is 20% lower."

Though the legendaries taking up 5 spots feels like a pretty hefty price already.

[steep ember]

Hmm, I'd probably gently nerf the overall strength of the extra spell chosen to compensate instead

[mental herald]

Aye, I thought about it, but the problem arises with "utility" spells - how do you nerf the "strength" of a portal or a jump? I went with cooldowns because all spells have them, and it's the one thing that can be ubiquitously increased 🤔

(And sure, jump can be slashed in height, for example, but the issue with things like a portal remain - cooldowns feel like a safer balancing point)

[steep ember]

for utility like mobility I'd increase the cooldowns
for support like heals / immortality, I'd cull their efficiency down a notch

such as: heals are only 85% effective. immortality is either reduced by an extra 4 seconds OR instead of immortality, you take 90% less damage

[mental herald]

In spirit, I agree, but I'm having doubts about the feasibility of stating it clearly to the players, on the joker card itself, without making the descriptions too long to fit on it. The "All cooldowns are X% longer." is for simplicity and clarity, in this case.

[steep ember]

there's ways to play with it but tbf I think this'd give the devs a nightmare to balance it out so come to think of it, I'd say just add longer cooldowns

[steep ember]

agreed

[mental herald]

Balancing on per-spell basis would make it incomprehensible without wiki-diving, and it's not a good practice to make players wiki dive. Hell, I'd hope the devs would eventually give us more info in-game (how much damage spells or weapons do etc. in pure numerical values, since going between spell/weapon vendor and firing range just to test a minor change can get a bit tedious at times).

[sharp scroll]

I was thinking of a spell sidearm as well, I think this would be super cool, especially as someone who loves the spell aspects of games (haha could you tell)

I was thinking it could be a "Focus" and the skins could be things like spellbooks, orbs (for pondering) and such!

[still sleet]

A spellbook sidearm sounds sick as hell

[pearl laurel]

i was literally about to suggest this

so i support it

[molten mason]

I was thinking about the same thing when I saw the suggestion title - a sidearm that is just a 4th spell slot which would also mean there's no need for another keybind

[vivid helm]

Wizard/sorcerer staff as a primary (more powerful spells) and/or a spell book (or magic wand) as a secondary (less powerful spells). Then you could potentially choose to equip all five categories at the same time.

Also mystic prestige, could combine different elemental spells together to cast as a single button press, doubling/tripling/etc. the total equipped spell count and therefore make automatic combos when cast.

[ruby hedge]

Maybe make the extra spell replace your secondary weapon

[crisp lintel]

I would love a grimoire style secondary that let you equip spells, it could be ammo-based cantrip-style spells where you rip pages out of the book to use like the cards.

Whichever element you pick lets you pseudo-customize the spells, some kind of low damage cantrip for the fire button and a lower damage aoe/utility for the aim button.