Originally posted by TawnTawn:

Vanilla DD has a clean design. Abilities do 1-3 things to facilitate that clean design. It's actually insane that every ability in this has 5 overlapping lines of text. Why does the Arbalest have 75 percent stun chances randomly tacked on to some of her abilities? Why was HM's stress heal changed to remove horror, a debuff that barely exists in the game? Why is every ability in the game better? What does this accomplish exactly? Using "it supposed to be harder." as an excuse is not super valid because challenge stemming from a slot machine stabbing me in the kidney is not challenge, it's nonsense.

The black plague ending a run if you contract it is the stupidest game mechanic I have dealt with in a long time. Half HP and no deathblow resist? Do i really need to explain why that isn't in the base game? If you're going to add a million provisions, why is there not a provision that cures disease when the diseases are even more backbreaking than they are in vanilla? When i gave up my run after a single battle because 2 of my characters had the black plague, I went back to town to see if there was added camping skills to compensate for how deranged the diseases are and I didn't see any. Except bandage which has a 33 percent chance to heal. More RNG. More Grinding. Yawn.

What's fun about DD is that the difficulty of a run comes from making a composition that can deal with the hazards of the place you're going to be adventuring in and that's because DD is a card game. There isn't very much room for expression in the moment to moment gameplay because that isn't what the systems are set up to do. You make a plan, and then that plan can complete the goal every time because that's satisfying to do. Taking a simple series of mechanics and adding complexity does not make that system better it almost always makes it much worse and this is a good example of that. If DD isn't a game you want to play, you can just go play another game. You don't need to add 50 extra lines of text to every ability like they did in MTG.

Originally posted by TawnTawn:

Vanilla DD has a clean design. Abilities do 1-3 things to facilitate that clean design. It's actually insane that every ability in this has 5 overlapping lines of text. Why does the Arbalest have 75 percent stun chances randomly tacked on to some of her abilities? Why was HM's stress heal changed to remove horror, a debuff that barely exists in the game? Why is every ability in the game better? What does this accomplish exactly? Using "it supposed to be harder." as an excuse is not super valid because challenge stemming from a slot machine stabbing me in the kidney is not challenge, it's nonsense.

The black plague ending a run if you contract it is the stupidest game mechanic I have dealt with in a long time. Half HP and no deathblow resist? Do i really need to explain why that isn't in the base game? If you're going to add a million provisions, why is there not a provision that cures disease when the diseases are even more backbreaking than they are in vanilla? When i gave up my run after a single battle because 2 of my characters had the black plague, I went back to town to see if there was added camping skills to compensate for how deranged the diseases are and I didn't see any. Except bandage which has a 33 percent chance to heal. More RNG. More Grinding. Yawn.

What's fun about DD is that the difficulty of a run comes from making a composition that can deal with the hazards of the place you're going to be adventuring in and that's because DD is a card game. There isn't very much room for expression in the moment to moment gameplay because that isn't what the systems are set up to do. You make a plan, and then that plan can complete the goal every time because that's satisfying to do. Taking a simple series of mechanics and adding complexity does not make that system better it almost always makes it much worse and this is a good example of that. If DD isn't a game you want to play, you can just go play another game. You don't need to add 50 extra lines of text to every ability like they did in MTG.

• PBD is not more difficult than vanilla, but it is more challenging
  
• The Arbalest has added stun to an ability as a way to increase her synergy with other characters, and via the use of consumables that can increase stun chance
  
• Horror exists much more commonly in PBD than vanilla, and is very important to remove
  
• There are more ways to remove diseases in PBD beyond camping skills, but diseases being deadly is a core part of the challenge -- disease resistance is important, even though general chances to receive diseases is mostly lower than vanilla
  
• Getting two cases of the plague in a mission is definitely unfortunate, but if you think about how you obtained them, it was likely telegraphed in some way and could have been avoided
  
• It is much more important in PBD to plan your runs before you rush blindly in, the two tutorial missions emphasize this