Monday, October 16, 2023

Proposal: Out of Chaos comes Order

Withdrawn, 0-4 with 1 DEF. Failed by JonathanDark.

Adminned at 17 Oct 2023 13:13:09 UTC

In the rule “Spells” add this text:

The Speed of a Spell is a non-negative integer that determines the order in which Spells are cast during a Duel and may be specified by a Wizard when communicating the Spell to be cast for that Duel to the Battle Master. It defaults to 0 if not specified. When a Wizard specifies the Speed of a Spell for a Duel, they must choose a value between 0 and the amount of Stars they have at the time that they communicate this information to the Battle Master.

and in the same rule replace “If a spell has a cost, the cost is deducted from a Wizard’s stars when they cast the spell, unless they have fewer stars than the cost, in which case the spell fails and has no effect.” with:

If a spell has a cost, the cost is deducted from a Wizard’s Stars in an action called Pay the Cost, as described in the rule “Commencing a Duel”, unless they have fewer stars than the cost, in which case the spell fails and is considered to have no effect for that Wizard when its Effect is resolved in this Duel.

In the rule “Engaging in a Duel” after the text “the name of the spell” add:

, optionally the Speed of that spell

and in the same rule replace the text “A wizard who is a participant in an open duel” with:

While there is no pending duel, a wizard who is a participant in an open duel

In the rule “Spells” if the text “immediately before the duel was resolved” exists, replace it with this text:

immediately before resolving the Effects of the selected Spells whose Speed matches the Current Speed

In the rule “Commencing a Duel” remove the bullet point starting with “Each spell selected for casting by a Wizard is cast simultaneously”. In the same rule, add the following text at the end of the rule:

When a spell is cast, apply the effect of that spell according to the spell list for the current duel, applying the effect to the caster of the spell unless otherwise stated. Idle Wizards who are targeted by a spell are still considered Wizards for the purposes of resolving a spells effects and so may still have their gamestate values changed by other spells, but do not cast spells themselves.

In the same rule, add the following bullet points to the beginning of the bulleted list:

* For each Wizard that specified a Speed for their selected Spell, decrease that Wizard’s Stars by that Speed.
* Set the Current Speed to the highest Speed among all of the selected Spells.
* Repeat the following sub-steps until every selected Spell of all participants in this Duel has been processed.
** Pay the Cost of all selected Spells whose Speed matches the Current Speed and that have a Cost.
** Resolve the Effects of all selected Spells whose Speed matches the Current Speed as if they were cast simultaneously. This step is when each of those Spells is cast.
** Decrease the Current Speed by 1.

A Wizard can spend Stars to try to get their selected Spell cast sooner than other Wizards, but it only applies to the next upcoming Duel.

Comments

Clucky: he/him

16-10-2023 16:55:58 UTC

I’d rather Celerity be privately tracked. That way there isn’t any sort of pressure to be extra online so that you can outbid others.

JonathanDark: he/him

16-10-2023 17:04:29 UTC

I see your point, but we’ll need other ways to spend Stars to make that work. Otherwise, it’s fairly straight-forward to see a Wizard’s Stars being spent between Duels and deduce that they’re increasing Celerity.

Clucky: he/him

16-10-2023 17:07:17 UTC

Send amount to spend on Celerity as part of the spell selection, but don’t spend it until the AA for Commencing a Duel

Kevan: he/him

16-10-2023 17:10:33 UTC

Yes, we’ll already be “privately communicating with the Battle Master the name of the spell and any inputs for that spell” - this could just be an additional spell input of ”...and the speed of that spell”, which costs Stars and defaults to zero if you don’t spend any.

JonathanDark: he/him

16-10-2023 17:25:10 UTC

Ah, that’s a good way of looking at it: an input to the spell rather than an attribute of the Wizard. I’ll re-write this Proposal with that in mind.

JonathanDark: he/him

16-10-2023 17:58:26 UTC

Ok, it’s been re-written to allow Wizards to optionally specify a Speed during Spell selection.

Clucky: he/him

16-10-2023 18:04:05 UTC

Does this work with https://blognomic.com/archive/between_stimulus_and_response and https://blognomic.com/archive/spell_economy?

I think you could speed cast doom for all your stars, and then doom casting would still succeed. But maybe that’s okay.

JonathanDark: he/him

16-10-2023 18:54:07 UTC

It does work and does not allow speed casting Doom Cloud using all of your Stars, because this part of the Proposal subtracts the Stars as the first part of processing the Duel:

* For each Wizard that specified a Speed for their selected Spell, decrease that Wizard’s Stars by that Speed.

So when Doom Cloud is processed, assuming “Spell Economy” is enacted, Doom Cloud with a cost of 1 Star won’t have any effect because a Wizard that spent all their Stars on Speed for Doom Cloud would not have enough Stars at that point. They should do “Stars-1” for the Speed if that’s what they want.

JonathanDark: he/him

16-10-2023 18:55:54 UTC

Although I see your point that “the cost is deducted from a Wizard’s stars when they cast the spell” might be slightly vague and could be tightened up, depending on your view of “when they cast the spell” actually occurs. I’ll add some wording to fix that…

Clucky: he/him

16-10-2023 18:58:01 UTC

But you have

—unless they have fewer stars than the cost, in which case the spell fails and has no effect.

and

—Whenever a Spell’s Effect relies on information about another Wizard’s personal gamestate in order to resolve (eg how many Stars that Wizard has, what kind of Style their Hat is etc), the frame of reference for that information is the moment immediately before the duel was resolved.

I believe that means the frame of reference for “they have fewer stars than the cost” is “immediately before the duel was resolved”, so you’ll still pass the “I have enough stars to cast doom” check even if you spend all your stars on something else

JonathanDark: he/him

16-10-2023 18:58:10 UTC

Oh, I guess I should also set it up so that it works with the bulleted list of “Spell Economy”.

JonathanDark: he/him

16-10-2023 18:59:33 UTC

Also, this Proposal is already replacing that phrase “immediately before the duel was resolved” with “immediately before resolving the Effects of the selected Spells of the Speed being processed”

Clucky: he/him

16-10-2023 19:15:14 UTC

ah okay. I think that should work then.

JonathanDark: he/him

16-10-2023 19:42:19 UTC

Re-written again, so please take another look. I know it’s getting wordy, but I’ve been trying to consider all of the corner cases. There were a few scammy spots I wanted to patch up as well.

Clucky: he/him

16-10-2023 22:07:40 UTC

imperial

this still feels a bit overly complicated but I do like the idea of paying to cast your spells first

Josh: he/they

16-10-2023 22:16:22 UTC

against Definitely overcomplicated, especially when we haven’t had a duel yet so we don’t really know what that feels like.

Zack: he/him

16-10-2023 22:55:32 UTC

against I think it would be much easier if spells just get casted in order of the ring or in a random order. Or if each spell could have a speed and the fastest spells resolve first, with ties being broken in order of the ring (or randomly).

Kevan: he/him

17-10-2023 08:03:41 UTC

against Mild against on the complexity this adds to the ruletext, and the fact that spell order doesn’t yet seem to matter much - and that we could maybe stick with the constraint that it should never matter.

JonathanDark: he/him

17-10-2023 13:01:55 UTC

against Withdrawn