Designer's Diary: Traits, Moods and Special Cards (Patreon)

As promised last week, we're going to finally get around to looking at the Traits, Moods and special cards in general! Traits and Moods are two sides of the same coin, in essence they boil down to providing modifiers for your monster's behavior and allowing for either "temporary"  states that happen during the showdown or permanent changes that can occur either during or at the start of the showdown.

What I mean is, Moods and Traits are actually the same thing when you get into the mechanics of what they do, but the difference between them is as follows:

Moods

Moods represent "temporary" changes in the monster's behavior, the key thing about a mood, and in fact the only thing that differentiates it from Traits is that Moods can be removed, sometimes they are removed by the monster drawing a new mood, sometimes they are removed by a trigger such as the Solar Flare (Sunstalker) or survivor death/injury (Lantern Frenzy, Bloodthirsty) or sometimes they can only be removed by the use of 'calming' gear such as Whips or the Whisker Harp. But they can be removed.

Moods typically sit inside the monster's AI deck (but they don't have to) and they are drawn during play. When they turn up they represent a change in the monster's behavior, the White Lion is the first place survivor's encounter moods and the species has a wide variety of them, ranging from the 'do nothing till attacked' Ground Fighting right up to the 'deal damage on the counter attack' Bloodthirsty and the straight up 'level up' that Enrage represents.  The White Lion is designed to be an education in a range of different things that monsters can do with moods, and it's one of the reasons why I often refer to it in design, your first monster should generally be an attempt at building a new 'starter' monster because if you can get that right, then you can go on to building more complex ones.  I've never released my first starter monster design, partially because I decided that the unique ideas I have were going to be saved for my own project and partially because I keep iterating on it more and more and it's honestly just not suited for Kingdom Death any more. But my first monster was indeed a White Lion analog.

Other monsters can either by less moody (for example the Gorm), or more moody (like the Sunstalker and Spidicules).  The Sunstalker and Spidicules in particular represent two different approaches to handling moods overall. In the case of the Sunstalker, it can have multiple moods in play via its 'bubbles', and these bubbles do little except sit there until a Solar Flare happens, this has a severe effect on the Monster's overall health which we will discuss below.

Spidicules in contrast can only have one mood in play at a time, it uses its moods to rotate how the Spiderlings behave, changing their attack types while it does this. Spidicules has an incredibly high 7 moods in its deck, but you only ever encounter one at a time  (it's also one of the only monsters with a legendary mood because of this design).  

Moods: Self Wounding

One of the "hidden" or at least less obvious things about moods is they represent the monster wounding itself, when you draw and play a mood it will leave the AI deck and not return until its return condition is satisfied (or it is harped). This means that each mood a monster generates represents the monster becoming closer and closer to death and when a mood returns to the deck the monster "heals".

In the case of the Sunstalker, those bubbles return to the deck when the monster Solar Flares, now the Solar Flare ability also puts AI cards onto a track, removing them from the deck as well, which can mean that the AI deck gets depleted a lot faster than you realise. In essence the Sunstalker's total health fluctuates from one turn to the next, getting smaller and smaller before the Solar Flare and then suddenly increasing right after the Flare triggers.  

The impact of this is very pronounced in the L1 version of the monster, because it has such a small health pool in the first place (10 AI cards total) just a couple of mood cards can chunk a huge amount of the monster's health (potentially it can have up to 6 cards tied up between the track and the various moods). So the L1 Sunstalker is deceptive because it feels very easy to kill if you time it right.  The L2 and L3 versions however have a lot more health (15 and 20 AI cards respectively) - they can absorb the fluctuation more easily and are more likely to reap the benefits of their bubbles because they can survive to Solar Flare.  This is one of the reasons why the Sunstalker jumps up severely in difficulty when you move to the L2 version. It's also why the Sunstalker is known to be a monster you 'burst down' because your aggression is amplified by the Sunstalker "harming" itself.

In contrast, Spidicules starts the showdown with a mood in play at every level, Frantic Spinning at L1, Feeding Time at L2 and the terrifying Necrotoxins at L3.  While there is a lot wrong with the Spidicules expansion, its AI programming is NOT a part of that and this is one of the excellent design decisions made. Spidicules has a staggering 10 moods in its AI deck, that's every single one of its Advanced cards and 2 of its legendaries. But because it always has 1 mood out and no more than 1 mood at a time they do not cause 'self wounding'. Spidicules is a very durable monster when you compare it to many of the other monsters in the game and this mechanic is a big part of that.

Just to run you through a few monsters here are their mood counts:

• White Lion - 4
• Gorm - 3 (1 legendary)
• Screaming Antelope - 1
• Spidicules - 10
• Butcher - 4
• Dragon King - 2
• DBK - 1
• Flower Knight - 4
• Lion God - 4
• Sunstalker - 4

Mood breakdown:

When a mood is drawn, 

We'll take a look at 3 of the White Lion moods and breakdown what they are doing so you have a better understanding of what makes for an interesting mood and a poorly designed one.

Alert does absolutely nothing when it is drawn, but in the case of this mood it's because the monster essentially 'saves' its attack and turns it into a basic action that its going to throw at a survivor who moves in a very large area. That's a 10x10 area, which is a total of 96 spaces on the showdown board.  However, this mood essentially 'weakens' the monster because the survivors get to decide who gets the basic action - and if they are already adjacent to the monster or have ranged weapons then Alert can do nothing at all except 'self-wound'. If Alert did something when it was drawn in addition to what it does then it would be a threatening card, but as it is - it represents a small, simple puzzle for the survivors to solve and an opportunity to kill the White Lion faster. This is part of what makes the White Lion a 'training monster' and why it's such an easy foe overall.

This mood is absolutely notorious, it represents a devastating attack if triggered, but the number of ways it can be avoided and the benefits of drawing this mean that Ground Fighting becomes a trivial tool (bring darts/founding stones/bows/spears) once it's done its thing once. Now this happens a lot of the problematic areas of KD:M, there are numerous hidden 'rules' that you learn by being P U N I S H E D once and then basically mitigate forever. For example, not using heavy gear, not having everyone be insane on a hunt, always bring a ranged weapon to fight the White Lion, jump through dozens of hoops for the Phoenix. It's honestly not good design, and it's even worse when there's no mitigation possible at all. I'll quote Yahtzee here:

 "It's not best practice to punish the player because of things they have no control over." -- Yahtzee 2019 

This is without even considering how Ground Fighting essentially becomes 'gather everything on the showdown board and then hock darts at the monster until it gets wounded'.  

Ground Fighting gets a huge 👎 💩 from me.
 

So lets look at a GOOD (if terrifying) White Lion mood.

I am sure that almost every single one of you has experienced this card, either from an L1 White Lion or even worse the Prologue White Lion.  Having the Prologue WL hit this mood is the main way that campaigns fail at the first hurdle. It's brutal, as brutal as Bloodthirsty - but this design is better than Bloodthirsty because its less book keeping (therefore easier to remember).  

What makes this Mood so well designed? At a start when you draw it the White Lion still does something, generally moods should either trigger a basic action when drawn (predictable, easy to design around) or they should hit a new AI card in a pseudo 'relentless' mechanic (Relentless is from the Lion God, great mechanic, but often misunderstood by players who think it means the LG draws its entire AI deck each turn).  

Additionally this mood is very threatening and scales with the monster level, at every level it represents an approx +100% increase in the average damage that the WL is dealing via attacks (less if the base damage on the AI attack is higher). That scaling is very well done and incredibly simple.

The removal effect is also very well done, losing a survivor is an increase towards the failure state for survivors, so having the monster discard such a threatening mood when it achieves this (or causes a dismemberment, which is less powerful but good flavor) is great design. The survivors are given a breather, but they know that this card is coming round again on the next shuffle.

Mood Summary:

Moods are a way of temporarily creating changes in the behavior of your monster, they should do something when drawn (most of the time) and then they have an effect that will be removed if a condition is met or 

The guidelines for Moods are as follows.

A good mood will have:

• Solid 'comes into play' effect.
• Flavorful behavior change that is 'constant'.
• Generate a meaningful threat for the survivors (either immediately or after a time).
• A way of being discarded by fulfilling a condition (either monster or survivor achieved).

A bad mood will have:

• No comes into play effect.
• Short effect - why isn't it just an AI intimidate or attack?
• Give the survivors opportunities to do whatever because the monster is passive
• Heal the monster (Quarries only, it's fine on monsters that don't generate resources from attacks).
• No way to remove it (it should be a trait then) or can only be removed with mood removal gear.

And as always, with guidelines, once you've learnt them and really got to grips with them, you'll learn when you can break them.

Traits

Traits are somewhat similar to moods in that they represent changes in the monster's behavior, however they are permanent changes, once drawn/played they are not going to leave the monster's dashboard, so the survivors will have to adapt to the new rules. Typically traits are set at the start of the showdown, but they can be drawn during the fight - this is caused by making the trait to be a non-special (S) card. You will see Legendary traits more often than anything else in the official design, things like Legendary Horns (Screaming Antelope) or Oversaturation (Sunstalker). Having a legendary trait that's drawn during the AI section can create huge variation in how a monster feels, if a survivor removes the trait as a wound then the monster is a lot weaker than a version who draws it. This can cause the occasional L2 monster to feel way more powerful than others of its ilk. 

Traits are otherwise much like moods, but this permanence makes them far more powerful and that is why they are used to change the rules when increasing in monster levels. L2 White Lion gaining Grab, L3 White Lion gaining Golden Eyes, L2 Spidicules gaining Spawn, L2 Sunstalker gaining Living Shadows, L3 Sunstalker gaining Monochrome and the most dreaded of all the L3 Dung Beetle Knight gaining Burrow.

These traits can utterly change the way that the fight goes by introducing conditions or monster behavior alterations.  In the case of Spawn (Spidicules) the Spiderlings are generated automatically by the monster in addition to all the previous spawning methods, this creates a swarm like situation where survivors can be swamped and combined with Spidicules' 'evasive' behavior you end up with a slog of a fight that really demands Surge or Amber Edge(s) to deal with.

Living Shadows means that the Sunstalker moves from being a single monster to being one with minions and Legendary Horns on the Screaming Antelope turns its beneficial mechanic (eating Acanthus) into a dangerous threat that demands the removal of those plants as fast as possible.

We'll take a look at what the White Lion gains before examining the kings of traits so you can appreciate just how dangerous and powerful Traits are as a tool.

Typically when you move from the L1 to the L2 version of your first monster, you don't want more than one trait being gained, this is because the testing of the monster's programming is a lot simpler. It also allows your players to get to grips with the new rules of the showdown.

Cunning is an exceptional trait, it is very simple and builds on what the White Lion was doing before (Grabbing things near it and running away). It also has counter-play built into it with that flow step.  This gives an opportunity for learning because it "teaches" players about the uses of Dash to avoid monster damage (dash-cancelling). It also heavily punishes simplistic tactics (stand next to the monster and all pummel it) with its random targeting. 

We'll take a look at the Gorm's version of Cunning now to contrast.

I like the top part of this card a lot, it's very flavorful and a fine 'rule' to bring in (it even has some uses, like making Daggers and Perfect hit weapons more desirable). It's punishing, but it has a 'reward' as well. Both stick and carrot.

However if you look at the second part, the Retch has no flow step. This means every single turn the Gorm is going to retch without a chance for the survivors to Dash out of the zone. Generally this results in one survivor a turn taking 2 damage to a random hit location that ignores armor. That's straight through a healthy survivor's body to the heavy hit and anything after that is immediate severe injuries to that location.  Even worse than that, the head doesn't have 2 wound locations before severe injuries, it has one. That means you have a 1/6 chance of having a 40% chance of dying, every single turn.

This makes the L2 Gorm an incredible increase in difficulty for unprepared players, while there is some counter-play, it's either temporary (Dried Acanthus on everyone) or hard to get (Fetarsaurus).  The power of this trait is so high for the approximate power level of the campaign at the time you're hunting L2 Early Game monsters that the L2 Gorm is overall more powerful for the time you should be fighting it than the L3 (which doesn't have Musth).

I don't think this trait is too strong per se, but it is absolutely too strong when compared to what the other L2 early game monsters do and that, in combination with the Gorm Den arrival/departure tables means that the L2 Gorm climbs a lot higher in power than you would expect.

So, think carefully when designing your L2 traits and test them a lot, if you're not sure if its right remember that quote from Yhatzee.

  "It's not best practice to punish the player because of things they have no control over." -- Yahtzee 2019  

Punish players with hard choices, risk vs. reward or carrot & stick, but never just 'rocks fall and everyone dies'.

Now lets take a look at two of the absolute kings of traits before we move on and briefly cap with a few details on special cards.

This elegant, simple and well illustrated (love that illustration) trait changes the way that the Lion God works by adding the relentless bar indicator to every single one of its AI cards.  How this works is as follows: Most basic cards in the Lion God's deck has the following text:

Against the L1 Lion God this means that the LG occasionally chains multiple basic actions together, stopping when it hits an advanced, legendary or the occasional basic card that doesn't have the trigger text on the bottom and not playing that card. This reveals what the Lion God's intent is next turn and sometimes chains multiple AI cards at once.

Against the L2+ Lion God this means that whenever you draw this card type you will always play the next AI card. It's like a weaker version of The Butcher's Berserker, but with the potential to hit many, many more cards in a single turn.  However, because of issues with the design of this trait, some people think that it means you keep drawing and playing every single card.  If you look around you'll find a lot of people who've made that 'programming error' and it's one of the reasons why people think that the LG is so hard (it's similar to the programming error players make with Screaming Antelope's Diabolical - it moves to its target, not in a straight line).  So you may need to be clearer in your card text, provide an FAQ answer in the rules document or just spell it out with an example. What matters here is how people who are not you interpret this. That's why having good playtesters matter, I'm lucky in that I have 4 groups of players who come from a range of nationalities so they catch a lot of the issues that would exist (and also point out when feedback from other members of the community is caused by their incorrect interpretation, not problems with the text).

It's a simple trait, but there are hidden consequences to how its used.

This one is a huge, HUGE, OW for players and it's why the L3 DBK is so, so, so much harder than you realise.  Burrow combines with the Century Carapce hit locations to transform that hit location from an impervious 'delaying tactic' into an absolute beating. 

Burrow costs a ton of survival to tank your way through and the DBK has multiple carapace plates plus ways of putting them back on via its instinct:

The developers of the game (via Zach B) expressed concerns that there was no way to kill the L3 DBK, they thought it might be impossible with the current gear available. This was one of the first challenges I took on and I was the first person in the community to succeed in killing the L3 DBK, something that's become far more commonplace now than it was (I lost 2 survivors in my first attempt, these days we can do it without losing anyone).  

Burrow's interlacing into the other parts of the monster is intricate and clever, it creates a situation where these very tough, durable sections of the monster become a massive issue to deal with, you can't keep CECing away these (Phoenix Crest Crown and Trash Crown are a different matter) and eventually survivors are going to have to tank the hits with their survival.  The L3 DBK fight is never a 'sure thing' and Burrow is a big part of why that is.  So it's my pick for how to do complex and challenging traits.  

I'd also quickly like to shout out that you don't actually need to always put in leveling up traits for your monster. The Dragon King is a brutal and enjoyable fight and it only has 3 traits total, 2 of which are standard and the 3rd (Smolder) is only used by the L3 Dragon King.

Trait Summary:

Traits are where you get to express the changes that your monster goes through as it ages and becomes older/more powerful. Good traits force the players to alter their playstyle but can be defeated, either with good play (White Lion, Spidicules) or with the aid of gear from the monster itself (Dung Beetle Knight).  Traits are inherently more powerful than moods and should be treated with more caution. They are how you give your monster unique flavor and how you can change the rules of the showdown. Don't like range attacks? Have the monster cover the showdown in thick, cloying darkness/debris which reduces range to 2 or 3.  Have problems with Luck? Then have a trait that builds a permanent "reaction" that only triggers on critical wounds.  Essentially look at the mechanical rules you want to change and use traits to change those.  Monsters are not going to interact with terrain or things other than survivors without Traits/AI cards that instruct them to do so.  This is your place for permanent programming or baseline stat changes that are not just tokens.

Finally, be willing to use traits from existing monsters if they do what you want them to do. There is no point reinventing the wheel and having a new card that draws 2 AI cards a turn when you already have The Butcher's 'Berserk' or having the monster perform a Basic Action at the end of the turn when you can just use The Phoenix's Zeal. Likewise if another homebrewer has used a trait which does what you want, ask them if you can use theirs and when they give you permission, credit them (please just don't use the Charged trait from the Storm Knight, it's terrible XD ). As someone who has had designs taken from me without asking for permission, I'm not going to point fingers at this time, but it sucked - it's great when someone asks for permission and gives credit, it causes problems in the community when you don't.

Special Cards

Finally, a quick mention about Special Cards, Special Cards are (almost) always traits, but not all traits are special cards.  Special Cards are used when you do not want the card to ever turn up randomly in the AI deck. If you want the card to only ever turn up when fighting X level monster then it should be an (S) card, but if you are fine with the trait turning up randomly (i.e. outside of your control) then you can make it a normal card. You see this in the case of (L) Traits on the Core Monsters (for example). Legendary Horns, Golden Eyes and Top of the Food Chain are all AI Deck cards that are used as traits by higher level versions of the monster.

Be aware that it greatly increases the variance of power in the monsters who can draw that card and having the Trait be an (A) or (B) card; or an (L) card that can be drawn by L2 monsters puts control of that trait in the hands of the players and chance. If you do this, you should ensure that there's some way that drawing the card rewards the players, look at the Legendary Horns/Golden Eyes traits and see how they give a benefit for being drawn. Players will otherwise do everything they can to ensure your exciting AI Traits are never seen, and that's no fun for anyone.

I think we're at a good point to stop for AI discussion here, so I'm going to open the floor to anyone asking questions about the AI portion of decks (if there is enough I'll go with a follow up article), and after that we're going to move on to looking at the other half of the monster's behavior with the Hit Location deck!