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Rezatta — VISION DESIGN PHASE
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Since psylian life isn't something that everyone necessarily has, that kind of ability wouldn't really make sense. It would be like having a card that removed energy counters from players. Useful in some situations, but not universal enough to be worth it.
I believe MagicChess is right, trying to remove psylian life from people would cause a lot of issues:
- As mentioned, it's too narrow. The slots are precious, we have other ways to keep pslian life in check without spending a card on a super specific mechanic hate card.
- Psylian life is life. Litterally every card that deals damage (which includes every creature) can remove psylian life from an opponent. If psylian life is a bit strong, we just add Lava Spike to the file.
- Energy is a good example of mechanics where WOTC tried to let you mess with your opponent's ressources and eventuallly decided to not do that because it causes a lot of frustration over what's the right play. We want players to play with our mechanic and enjoy it without feeling tricked.
@TezzeretofCarmot21
Yeaah the bear was the only antropomorphized illustration I got in water so I rolled with it but it's really a placeholder, a 4/2 isn't exactly a blue creature stats, barring weird set themes like Temur x)
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Also, here are a couple of designs to try giving more psylian life but in one-shot. The idea being that commons either give you 1 psylian life repeatedly or 2+ life in one-shot. I made cards giving 2 to 6 psylian life just to test how much psylian life breaks the game at common:
Rituals don't usually come in red
Au contraire. Rituals are almost exclusively in red, between Desparate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual, Manamorphose, Rite of Flame, Infernal Plunge, etc. Dark Ritual is the exception, as opposed to the rule.
But let’s remember it is just an example.
Also, adding on to what @Scott_Anderson said, in addition to it being strict life gain, it also produces 4 mana for only 2, which surpasses current modern rituals in power leve..
I know I don't usually comment on this thread, but my one suggestion is to avoid using psylian life in Blue and Red, as I can see no way to get around it being an absolute color pie break.
Edit: No way to Gain psylian life, there might be some other way for them to somehow receive psylian life without changing life totals.
0) CONCEPT CARDS
Quick introductory point to remind that they aren't meant to stay in the card file but voluntarily pull in all directions, to explore what works or not with each mechanic. I know we all already know that and nobody really said anything that suggest they forgot it but it's important we're all talking the same language here so I put this reminder anyway ^^
1) THE INSPIRATION FOR THE WHITE, BLACK, AND GREEN ONES
Ok, so what do those cards do and why did I chose those examples? I was trying to find staple effects at common that would synergize especially well with psylian life. The life-gain colours one (white, black, green) are quite self-explanatory, but I'm going to delve into some subtleties.
The WHITE card is based on the big life gain spell staple we often get, more specifically it's based on the Renewed Faith ratio, with the ability to cycle being replaced by the ability to pay that life back later for mana.
The idea is that it's a sorcery so you can either use the mana on the same turn and it becomes a 0-mana card that doesn't net you life but triggers your life-matters cards, or you can try to protect your life total for a turn and you will be able to convert whatever is left on following turns into ramp (admitting you want the 6 life being more than just life.
The BLACK card is based on vampirism cards which are the only black cards that actually deal damage to creatures instead of destroying them. More specifically, it's based on the Essence Drain ratio. It's actually strictly better than this card, but I'm not sure it is very good so I thought a 6-mana instant version for instance would have looked too bad. Note that I forgot the new templating, it shoudld have read "CARDNAME deals 3 damage to any target."
The GREEN card was the most difficult because Green does big life gain spell but it was already taken by the White slot. So my idea was to put this on a Reclaiming Vines kind of card. That way either you two-for-one the opponent at 5-mana, or you destroy one card and you get back two mana and a half so the destruction card only costed you 3 mana if you can play another card with the psylian life mana later.
2) THE RED RITUAL & THE BLUE TRICK
Clearly the RED card was not really understood, so we can already say we need to avoid this kind of cards at common in the actual file (I still think it's a good idea to test this interaction in the first playtest.) It's actually a Ritual card with the rate of Vessel of Volatility (which is 2 mana gives you 4 mana.) The idea is that you get 2-mana back in the form or red mana, and two mana back in the form of psylian life (2 psylian life = one mana.)
For the BLUE one, it's pretty straight-forward. I couldn't find any effect that would work with psylian life in blue, so I just stapled "You gain N psylian life" on a blue card and called it a day. The card is ratio is basically Turn the Tide ratio.
3) THE PROBLEM WITH BLUE AND RED LIFE GAIN SPELLS
Blue and Red simply don't gain life in normal Magic. Now the set is about life, and we have a very flashy mechanic that just happens to be life itself. So we have two options, and that's probably why it's important to playtest having a bit of psylian life in blue and red at first so we judge how weird it feels and how much design space there actually is.
A—As @TheCenterOfTheUniverse mentioned, we can simply keep psylian life out of blue and red entirely, they can care about life without gaining some.
B—We can have a little bit of psylian life in red and blue as a bend that comes from the set theme. It's something that has been done before with examples like big flyers in green due to a Dragon theme on Tarkir, or reanimation spell in blue due to a Graveyard theme on Amonkhet:
In those cases, the idea is to try to embrace the colour's philosophy in the bend. For instance, we can stick to very little amount of psylian life, no more than 2. Maybe the Red ritual deals damage to you at the end of turn, so you erase the life. Maybe we can find a way to say "2 of your life becomes psylian life" in a way that actually works. My best guess would be "You gain 2 psylian life and you lose 2 non-psylian life" but that has proven to be confusing to a lot of people already.
Maybe it could be worded:
Convert N life to psylian life.
Remember: If you can’t lose any life, there shouldn’t be gaining either.
We could try creating a new action word like "Convert" for it, but that's going really deep into the fabric of the rules, I'm not sure it would end up realistic. What I'm especially worried is that "You life total becomes N" is replaced by the rules by "You lose/gain life equal to the difference." We can always decide to ignore the rules, worst case scenario, but I'd rather do that only if it was something really important to the set. I'd like to find an elegant solution if possible. If we make a card that says "Convert N life into psylian life", I'm afraid people's reaction might mostly be "that makes no sense, they made a custom set and have no idea how the rules actually work" instead of rolling with it.
I'm not sure I understood what you meant by "If you can’t lose any life, there shouldn’t be gaining either"?
Awesome concepts. I think Ritual would be better as 3 Psylian life, but they all seem like pretty smart designs. I have to say I like how you got 2-6 in there though.
"Convert" seems a little weird. It would have to be "Lose x life and gain x Psylian life" because in the reverse, you would lose the psylian life you just gained.
I adjusted the green and red cards of the above cycle based on feedback so they look more like commons. The right choice would probably to replace the red one by something else entirely but I kinda want to see how it interacts with Rebirth, so I took the Ratio from Seething Song instead (5 mana for an investment of two.) I also transformed the blue one into a one-mana spell because I wanted to test a one-mana card that gives you 2 psylian life, making it kind of free from a mana point of view. The rate comes from Clutch of Current.
I like them! Maybe put a creature restriction on Delusion (CMC, Power, or toughness)?
For the one-mana unsummons, the rate is usually either 1-mana instant (unsummon) or 1-mana sorcery with upsides.
As Psylian Delusion is a sorcery, I think the rate is in line with other cards of this category without adding the restriction. Select for Inspection, an Unsummon with both a restriction and an upsides, is an instant for example.
The trick is that 4 psylian life = 2 mana, so it's basically Seething Song (5 mana for 3 mana). The fact that this confused multiple people certainly means it's doomed to end up being a regular "Add RRRRR" card if we even keep a common red ritual, but the very first playtest is a bit special, we want to try different things even if we end up changing 90% of those cards.
Nice, gotcha.