Cartomancer (Destiny)

[tukkek]

The Cartomancer would be a special type of Dungeon NPC that would sell Card Items. These one-use cards would affect gameplay by allowing the player to affect the short-term future. This would be easily implemented by only allowing one card to be active at once (Cartomancer#active, which is persistent) and then have event hooks on very few places (such as before a battle begins).

Cards would come mostly in two flavors:

• Peaceful: things like "skip the next X encounters" (RandomEncounters and RandomDungeonEncounters only); "find safe haven" (either creates a Camp Dungeon Feature or casts the equivalent of a safe overworld rest spell); "find allies" (+20 to Diplomacy roll on next X encounters)... These could be named and generally inspired by real-world Tarot's Major Arcana for flavor and ideas. The level of these cards is mostly irrelevant, with the rank (1-5, 6-10...) being what determines its effects.
• Battle Enchantments/Conditions/Rituals: cards that when active will grant every party member the effects of a certain spell, as if cast right before/after entering battle. These would be named "Arcana of [Spell name]". The card's level would be equal to the spell level, or +1 or +2 to transform a individual spell to a Mass spell if that experiment is desired.

Cards in general would be prefixed "Minor, no-prefix, Major and Legendary Arcana" depending on rank. When generating a Card, have a fixed price based on the NPC level but have the actual level generated be NPC level+1d6-1d6 - this not only highly increases the resulting possibilities (as a given level could have only a couple level-appropriate Battle Spells or none at all) but also grants a level 5 Cartomancer a meaningful distinction from a level 1 as it's much more likely to create a higher-rank card. If unbalanced, these items are one-use only and can also be downgraded to +1d4-1d4 if required.

Perhaps the best approach is to generate a whole deck of Cards per Cartomancer (rolling per-level each time to generate these cards), which would allow more control rather than having many more Peaceful Cards over Battle Cards if the level range has very or few valid spells to use as base.

At first Cards would not be part of the normal Item pool, so would only be found at Cartomancers. This both circumvents generation issues but gives a more unique flavor to the NPCs and Cards.

Pricing should be easy to figure out based on official NPC spell-casting. services rules, as that's basically the same effect (and already implemented on Shrines).

Cartomancer services could also be provided from a District Building.

Template for when using a Card:

Minor Arcana of Bull's Strength: increases Strength for next battle. Cards are one-use items that affect the future. Do you want to activate this card? Note that only one card can be active at a time. If a previous card is active, it will be discarded. Press ENTER to activate this card, any other key to cancel...

Peaceful Cards are encouraged to have random parameters, adding a meta-game layer where player's may have to guess how long the card is active for. Not only this fits the tone of this mechanic, but it prevents micro-management by players keeping track of implied or learned effects and then using another card at the optimal moments. Battle cards may be harder to adapt this way but having spell cast for X battles or only on X units might be an interesting approach. One way to implement this across-the-board is to have a built-in "cancellation" chance per Card, so it may have a 50% or 100% chance of being spent after activation, making the player guess - this could be mildly tricky to balance and price (50% = 2x price?) but is a good solution overall.

Battle Rituals/Conditions/Buffs might need a review and possibly an overhaul. The same may be necessary for Runes as well #245 .

[tukkek]

Moons #36 would make for great Cards as well (and thematically appropriate!). An Arcana of the Blood Moon would ensure that the next moon is Blood Moon (made-up name).

[tukkek]

Ideas:

• Double the gold value next opened treasure chest (essentially rerolls the chest contnet if not a key or other special item)
• Find traps (as per spell, better implemented as part of the procedural mechanic itself)
• Shows all traps in the dungeon level (better implemented as a powerful spell and as part of the mechanic, but could be a Major card for starters)