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The Showman

The Showman
Master manipulator of the crowd and his cards, the Showman is the star of the Spire. Heavily inspired by base Slay the Spire characters in overall design, the Showman obliterates his enemy through distraction, cards, and trickery. By stashing cards up his sleeve to use later, setting up for future turns, and through the effortless draw of his starter relic and the many draw options in the class, his situational defensive options will often be more interesting than they seem at first glance. Without further ado: His keywords!

Exhaust
Something hidden up your sleeve? Or just happy to see me? Exhaust for the Showman is used less as removed for the combat, but rather as a place to tutor, generate cards from, or play cards from. He has many cards that care about the Exhaust pile, and even a starting relic that allows you to Exhaust cards that otherwise might not do so.

Fleeting
Not in my hand, not in my deck! Not something introduced by the Showman, but something absolutely used by him, a card with Fleeting will remove itself from your deck when played, as well as being purged from the current combat, ideal for keeping your deck thinned to just your key cards.

Stacked
Practice makes perfect, and as such the Showman is a character who thrives with a thin deck, where he can master a small number of tricks. To that extent cards with the Stacked keyword have their damage, block, and any other numbers on the card are reduced by the total number of cards left in your draw pile. To make up for this drawback, they have higher than average damage numbers, with most reaching average with about 5-7 cards left in the deck, and far surpassing average with less. This plays with the small retain, and heavy draw themes in his repertoire to allow you to set up moments of perfect Stacked when a cards numbers are not being reduced at all, and allow you to do massive amounts of damage, draw a ton of cards, or gain a significant amount of block for a small amount of energy.

Improvise
Do you know whats going to happen next? No? Well neither does the Showman. Rather, he adapts quickly to the situation at hand, and his performance is often masterclass. Improvise is a keyword that appears only on cards that draw cards, outside of a rare power, and trigger an effect based on what cards are drawn. This encourages careful attention to what cards are left in your deck, as well as whether there is the potential to overdraw, as any cards that would push you over your maximum hand size will fail to trigger their improvise.

Vulnerability
Exploiting the distraction of his act is a Showman staple, and what better way to exploit a targets distraction than by striking at their vulnerable bits? Expanding upon the base game mechanic of Vulnerability is a full suite of cards to both apply, and use a large amount of this debuff to deal massive amounts of damage.

Non-Block Defense
Better at deflecting attention than deflecting blows, the Showman specializes in defenses that are not block related. Reducing enemies strength temporarily, gaining buffer, or redirecting attacks entirely are all ways he escapes conflict unscathed. Keep your eyes out for these specialized defensive cards of his, they can help turn the tide of some of the more difficult fights in the game when played on the proper turn.

The Show Must Go On!
The Showman has been a passion project of ComingVirus and DontTakeMyKidneys, and was coded by our friend Left Click. Character art and assets for the VFX were created by Spleen (Commission him on Discord! Spleen#5864) specifically for use in this project. Special thanks to Vex for doing our beta art, as well as our numerous beta testers from the Official Slay the Spire Discord Modding Channel:
Raz
Levender
Nafen
Skyson
Sanik
Iryan
Capoke
Blizzare
Spark
DarkGlade
And to our streamer friends KDXanatos and Aragolt on Twitch, who have helpfully streamed Showman whenever DTMK and I found ourselves too tired to do direct testing ourselves, as well as allowing us to get bugs that we might have otherwise missed clipped for future analysis.

And a huge final thanks to the developers of Slay the Spire. This game is everything I wanted in so many ways, and has provided me with hours of replayability and content in ways I never expected. They also do a lot to engage the community, and have earned my respect for the small things they do that show they genuinely care.

Were currently waiting on final art for cards, so we wont always have MSPaint tier art. I just wanted to get the class released to the general public sooner rather than later.

This class falls on the more powerful side of fair due to the nature of thin decks, and how consistently powerful they tend to be. This, however, doesnt mean this character is an easy win by any means. Discipline is required. Or Showstopper. That works too.

This project wouldnt have been possible without everyones help in putting a level of polish on the final character that Im extremely happy with, but that being said if you have any concerns feel free to leave them below. Always happy to get constructive feedback to better set myself up for future designs!

-ComingVirus