Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #609: Designing Direct Damage

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

This is another podcast in my "Designing _________ " series where I discuss how we design basic Magic effects. In this podcast, I talk about designing direct damage.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so I have a new series that I'm called Designing Blank, in which I pick a basic effect that we do in Magic, and I talk about designing for that effect. The first time I did this was Counterspells, so today I'm talking about designing direct damage. So first let me define direct damage. So direct damage means that the card is dealing some amount of damage to a player, a planeswalker, or a creature, or some combination of those. So mostly direct damage is in red. So I'm going to start by talking about it in red.

There are actually some direct damage in other colors. We'll get to that, uh, eventually. Um, so let's talk about designing a direct damage spell. Okay, so there's a bunch of different factors when thinking about a direct damage spell. Um, so let's walk through those. Um, number one is the target. Is what is it hitting? And there's two different categories of the target.

A is what kind of target. Is it hitting a creature? Is it hitting a player? Is it hitting a planeswalker? Is it hitting any target? Is it hitting a combination of targets? Second is, how many targets is it hitting? Is it hitting one thing? Is it hitting any target? Is it hitting a combination of targets? Second is, how many targets is it hitting? Is it hitting one thing? Is it hitting two things? Is it hitting all things?

Can you divide the damage up the way you want? You know, you have choices of how you want to do that. So the first thing when making a direct damage spell is figuring out sort of what, exactly what kind of spell are you making? What is it hitting? Obviously, the other big knob on a direct damage spell is the amount of direct damage. Now, be aware that a lot of times we'll do direct damage and we'll have riders on direct damage. One of the most popular things when we make new mechanics

is direct damage is a very easy thing to tie into almost any new mechanic that we make, assuming the new mechanic goes on spells. Also be aware that direct damage... I think when you think of direct damage spells, you tend to think of them as being instants and sorceries, but obviously you can also do direct damage on creatures or on enchantments. If you do it on a spell, it's going to happen at the time of casting. If you put it on something else, it could be an enter the battlefield effect.

It could be a death trigger. It could be something you activate. It could be a triggered ability that happens every turn at a certain time or when you attack. So there's a lot of different times that you can trigger and make direct damage happen. Okay, so let's start at common. Okay, so we're making red common. What would you expect to have at common for direct damage spells? So the first thing that you would expect, usually we have three or four common direct damage spells in red.

Traditionally, we have one that hits creatures, one that hits players, and one that can hit any target. Sometimes, a while ago, for a long time, you only could hit creatures or players, and that Planeswalkers had this called the Redirection Rule, where if you wanted to hit a Planeswalker, you would just hit a player, and then

redirect it to the Planeswalker. We decided that that was a little bit confusing, and so we changed it. So now we name what you can hit. So when I say you can hit a creature, sometimes we say or planeswalker, and when I say you can hit a player, sometimes we say or planeswalker. More often the time we tie planeswalker with player than we tie it with creature, but there are exceptions. Okay, so let's walk through the different kinds of spells. So first off, the spell that only hits creatures. So usually that is made as a, usually it's more of a limited thing.

In constructed, it tends to be the versatile direct damage spells that tend to be more played in constructed. So usually if you're making a creature-only direct damage spell, it's designed for limited. And it gets to be a little bit bigger. The damage gets to be a little bit higher. And the reason for that is the most that it can do is kill a creature. Now, one of the things that's important and the one things we keep in mind for direct damage is we want to keep a separation between

black's creature destruction and red's direct damage. Black and red are two of the colors that tend to blur the most, green and white being the other two. So one of the things that we try to avoid is, and obviously we have done this in the past, but it's something we do try to avoid, is having direct damage that does more than seven. And even at common, usually, we don't do much past four or five at common. But the idea is we can do up to about six damage, and then at seven damage,

it's not that different from a kill spell. You know, there's not too many things you just can't kill with seven or more damage. So we tend to avoid having red do 7 or more damage. The one exception which I will get to is X spells. Which is activated abilities or X spells in which you've got to spend a lot of mana to do that amount of damage is acceptable. It's like, okay, well, yeah, red can act like black when it spends a huge amount of mana. And that feels very different.

So we do make X spells that allow you to do seven or more damage. So the thing that can hit the creatures, more often than not, we will make it instant. Usually direct damage, we tend to err toward instant on direct damage, just because direct damage tends to be something that's interesting to be reactive. The reason we don't is,

it's one of the knobs we have to play with if we're trying to cost something. One of the tricky things about direct damage in general is there's only so many knobs to play around with. And so one of the knobs we will use is instant versus sorcery. Sometimes if we want to do something aggressively, we'll make it a sorcery instead of instant to allow us to sort of make it a little bit cheaper. Sorcery doesn't allow you to have the flexibility, obviously the instant does, makes it less reactionary, but it does, in limited, the ability to kill creatures is so important that you'll play cards regardless of whether they're sorcery or instant. You'll sometimes play sorcery, direct damage, and constructed, but usually, usually, instants are the ones people tend to play because they

want the reaction stuff. When hitting creatures, sometimes we'll have riders on it. There's a couple different kinds of riders that we will put on direct damage. One is stuff that prevents it from being countered. That's not normally a common. That's usually a higher rarity. But sometimes it can be countered.

Sometimes we'll have riders that prevent it from being prevented. That prevents damage prevention. We don't do that one much anymore because we don't do a lot of damage prevention anymore. Back in the day where we did a lot of damage prevention because white tended to be the color that did damage prevention red and white are enemies. We tended

to give red, white damage that couldn't be stopped. Another rider we often will give is things that instead of going to the graveyard get exiled that started in alpha with disintegrate the flavor is

I so destroy you there's nothing of you left you can't erase it from the dead there's nothing of you left I've burnt you to ash and so that's another rider we'll put on it from the dead. There's nothing of you left. I've burnt you to ash. And so, that's another rider we'll put on it. Sometimes we'll have riders where

you care about the creature that you've killed, but usually that's more in black kill spell than in red direct damage spells. There also are little riders sometimes we'll do. Like I said, direct damage works well with mechanics. So direct damage with Scry or Red has Rummaging, which is reverse looting where you discard and draw.

There's little tiny things that Red can do that often get put on to direct damage. Okay, at Common we also like to have a spell that hits players. Lava Axe kind of being the typical spell there. Usually that spell is... If you're going to hit a player, it usually is three or higher. We don't tend to do... I mean, if it's smaller than that and hit players, it's usually universal that you hit other things.

That if we're going to make you spend a sorcery... And usually, things that hit players are more often than not sorceries, if they don't have other targets. If all you can do is hit a player. Usually we make you commit to that on your turn. That if it's going to sort of go to the face, it's not a last minute surprise.

It's like you do it on your turn. Once again we have the same restrictions. Oh well. We have different restrictions on only hit players. Only at creatures we stop it at 6 because we don't want it to feel like a black kill spell. You don't have that problem

on damage to creatures because black will do... I'll get to black in a second. Black can do life loss and can do drain effects, which I'll get to in a second. So one of the things that when we're doing red, because black will do drain effects, we will usually do a little bit more damage

when we do damage to players. The typical one, Lava Axe, is five damage. That is usually around the space we're hitting players. And like I typical one, Lava Axe, is five damage. That is usually around the space we're hitting players. And like I say, whenever we hit players, we'll sometimes let you hit Planeswalkers. Usually we tie Planeswalkers to players and not Planeswalkers to creatures. Usually. Okay, let me real quickly, I'm realizing as I'm talking about black, let me talk a little bit about the other colors and where we'll use direct damage effects

just so I can as I'm explaining this black uses direct damage usually only as a drain effect which is do damage to creature or damage to player or damage to both and then you gain life.

The first card to ever do it, Drain Life, had you gained life equal to the damage, but now we tell you how much like, do three and gain three life. We don't necessarily, it's just more words to make because the way Drain Life

worked is you only gain the life that you dealt damage. So if I had a creature... If I had a three toughness creature, I could only ever get three life of it because I could only drain three from it. But now we just sort of say, do damage, gain life, and the flavor feels drainy enough that it's okay.

Black will make the player lose life, which is kind of like its version of Lava Axe. We were messing around for a while with Black doing damage to players to try to make it more universal in its template. Players didn't like that. It ended

up being wordier. So we have made the choice to roll that back. Black's going to go back to life loss. Not 100% of, as the time of this, you guys hear this recording, whether it's been instituted or not. It's been instituted in the future that I live in. I just don't know if it's hit you players yet.

But for those that like life loss in black, it is coming back. So a little, if I not mention that somewhere else, this might be the first place I mention that we're making that reversal. It was decided that it wasn't that hard to understand. The template was shorter, and it did give black a little bit different of a feel from red. So that's a good example of a spell

that's not technically a direct damage spell, but it sits in very similar space. Usually when black is doing life loss versus a drain it tends to be a little bit smaller in increments that we tend to we

often times for example it'll do incremental losses when it does that well it'll be like every time something happens the opponent loses a life we tend to like to do more drains than we like to do

just plain life loss only because the flavor's really good. Like, drain your opponent for one just feels like, feels extra black. Um, but we, black can do the life loss. Um, usually black drain effects are sorcery. Um, the default is to do sorcery. Don't do a lot of instance, not that it can't be done, but usually it's a sorcery.

Um, green. Not that it can't be done, but usually it's a sorcery. Green. So green does direct damage in two ways. One is anything that green is allowed to kill, basically being artifact creatures and flyers, we allow it to do as a means to kill them. We do let it have direct damage. We don't to do, as a means to kill them, we do let it have direct damage. We don't often do direct damage to artifact creatures, but we do direct damage to flyers

from time to time. Green and alpha did have hurricane, and because of hurricane, a lot of people think that we're willing to do direct damage to players in green. And the answer is not really. That is not in green's pie anymore.

That, I mean, hurricane, earthquake were kind of flavorful and they mirrored each other and everything. But green really isn't about sort of standing back. Green wants to do damage to its creatures. So we don't do a lot of, we don't really do direct damage to players in green from the player.

The other thing that green can do is it can do damage based on creature power. Sort of a one-sided fight. So green, for a long time we had trouble. Green's whole shtick is supposed to be it has problems killing creatures if it itself doesn't have creatures. We wanted to use its creatures to kill other creatures. And so we eventually came up with fight. Like, okay, green can have fights, but in order for green to win the fight, it wants bigger creatures.

Green's all about the bigger creatures, and it was very thematic. And for originally, we gave red what we called one-sided fight, which is this creature does damage to another creature based on its power, but that creature doesn't fight back. So it's like fight, but it's not a its power, but that creature doesn't fight back. So it's like fight, but it's not a true fight in that the creature doesn't fight back. We eventually decided that red just didn't need that. Red is overflowing with direct damage spells. And that green, one of green's restrictions is it needs to have creatures.

But, oh, one-sided fights still need to have creatures. And so we decided that we would put that into green. So green now has the one-sided fights in need to have creatures. And so we decided that we would put that into green. So green now has the one-sided fights in addition to the fight cards. I think... Anyway, that's technically direct damage. Then white. White does direct damage

usually to attackers or blockers. That we allow white to damage things in combat. And usually that's at instant speed because it's almost always at instant speed because it has to be during combat. So white's ability is instant. Oh, green, by the way. Green effects that kill flyers usually are at sorcery speed, and green effects that are one side of fights are usually at sorcery speed. So, green's direct damage is mostly sorcery speed, as is black's. White is different in that white's

direct damage, which usually is two creatures in combat, two attackers or blockers, is instant speed. Mostly that is because, I mean, in order to do that, you have to be, you have to be, it has to be instant because it has to be during combat. The one other thing that white will occasionally do, but very occasionally, is we occasionally do damage redirection, where white takes damage being done to it or its creatures

and then stops it or redirects it so it moves it so it hits something else. So the idea is you try to bolt White's creature

and White goes no, no, no we bolt this other thing you or another creature. We don't do tons of damage redirection just like we don't do a lot of damage

prevention. But it is something that we can't... I mean, it's not out of white's pie or anything. It's something doable. In general, white redirection is pretty powerful because not only are you preventing the damage, but you're also dealing damage. And so

we treat it a lot like we treat stuff like stealing in blue, where blue stealing is kind of like getting rid of a creature and getting a creature. So it's pretty powerful, and it tends to be little higher rarities when we do it. We don't do it at Common. Okay, sorry. Okay, back to red.

Okay, so at Common we're going to have a spell that hits creatures. Black will normally, at common, have a drain. Sometimes it drains creatures. Sometimes it drains players. Sometimes it drains either. I'm sorry.

I'm jumping around. Let me finish red, and then I'll talk about other colors and their rarities. I mean, and what they do at common. Okay, so red will have a spell that hits creatures. Red will have a spell that hits players. And then red will have a spell that is universal. We now say deals damage to any target. Oh, real quickly, let me explain a little templating thing.

You always have to state when you're doing damage, who is doing the damage. That is why the card is usually referenced. So if you have Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt deals three damage to target, to any target. And the reason you do that is cards care about, cards can care about what the target is. So, for example, let's say you have Hexproof from red or Protection from red. You have some ability in which you're protected from red. Well, a direct damage spell would be you couldn't target the creature with a red direct damage spell because it's the spell that's doing the damage and the spell has the quality of being red. because it's the spell that's doing the damage, and the spell has the quality of being read.

Also, just from a template standpoint, sometimes we use numerals, and sometimes we use number words. Direct damage, whenever you're dealing damage, that always uses numerals. Where other factors, like drawing cards or something, it's words that you write out. That doesn't... Magic doesn't

tend to separate... O-N-E and the numeral one, I think in Black Border Magic, I don't think we differentiate between those. You are able to... The reason that direct damage and life gain are right out as numerals is there's means to interact with those. And the other ones that are written out as number words, there's not a lot of interaction,

meaning you don't ever prevent the drawing of a card or something where you can prevent damage. You don't ever prevent the drawing of a card or something where you can prevent damage. Anyway, what I'm saying is direct damage, what we're talking about today, is written out as a number, a numeral, not as a number word. So Lightning Bolt deals three, number three, to any target. And now, if you're going to hit creatures and players and planeswalkers, we say to any target. If you're going to do less than all three of them, you spell it out. So you say to target creature or player.

I believe the way we do it is those three things are alphabetical. So if you want to hit a creature and planeswalker, you say creature or planeswalker. I think you say planeswalker or player. I think it's alphabetical. And then you say Creature or Player, because Creature comes before Player. If you're going to do all three, you don't spell them out anymore. You didn't say any target. Okay.

The general spell at common that tends to hit anything usually is an instant. The two reasons we make it a sorcery... The two reasons we make hit make it a sorcery the two reasons we make hit any target a sorcery one is a power level knob turning thing where to get the effect we want we need to make it a sorcery usually that comes about either it has to do with the numbers we're pushing

or it has to do with we have an extra ability we're connecting to it. We often take the keyword from the set and we tie it to drug damage. And sometimes to get the costing right, we will use sorcery. Another reason we sometimes use sorcery is if there's a rider on the card that we don't want happening in combat. Let's say, for example, we wanted to make a spell that... Oh, that's a good example. Did direct damage, but also...

I don't know. I'm trying to think of a good effect. Something you'd want to do sorcery speed. Let's say for example we want to do a spell that did direct damage and then stole a creature for the threat and stole a creature for the turn. That is something we do at a common. But let's say we wanted to make that spell. It's like oh I burn one

creature and that scares this other creature into now serving me temporarily. Let's like, oh, I burn one creature and that scares this other creature into now serving me temporarily. Let's say we wanted to make that card. We would have to make that a sorcery because Threatened effects in red are sorcery. We tend to use Steal effects in red aggressively and not defensively

so we don't put them on instance. So since the Rider would have to be a sorcery, we'd make the host spell a sorcery because the Rider effect needs to also happen at sorcery speed. So that's the two reasons we would make a direct damage spell at sorcery. The other thing, and this is the third reason. The third reason is we try to mix up our direct, because we make a lot of direct damage spells,

this is one of the reasons, for example, at Common, that one just hits creatures and one just hits players and one can hit any target, is we want them to feel different from one another. And the way we do that is, A, we can change between their targets. B, we can change how much damage they do. And C, we can change between instant and sorcery.

Those are the big things we can do. So one of the things you'll notice at common is usually of the three direct damage spells, and like I said, sometimes we'll do a fourth, but of the direct damage spells, usually some will be instants and some will be sorceries. They always will have some different combination of targets they can hit. And usually the numbers are different. Like at common, for example, it might be like, oh, deal three, you know, deal...

Oh, and the other thing that we mix up is the converted mana cost. That we try to make the spells cost a different amount of things. So a thing I can imagine us doing, for example, is we might have a spell that's a sorcery for R that deals three damage to a creature.

We might have an instant, a two-mana, a one-R, one and a red instant that can any target that's tied to the mechanic of the set. And a five-mana sorcery that does damage to the opponent. I was going to say five, we make a lot of acts. So the idea there is to mix up their different mana costs, their different amounts of damage, their different targets. One of the things about direct damage,

more so than any other mechanic that we make, is we make a lot of direct damage. In fact, I think there's no other ability that we put on as many cards as we do direct damage. Partly because it's very open-ended. Like, it's a game about sort of dealing with things, and damage is a very useful tool. And in some ways, I've made this point before, that when you think of white, for example, I don't think that you think about Wrath of God effects in the same space as you think about destroy target for example, I don't think that you think about wrath of god effects

in the same space as you think about destroy target attacking creature, let's say. But in red, sweeping the board of creatures and getting rid of a creature in combat would all be direct damage, and that you think of that as being one thing, where when you shift it to another color,

even though it has a very similar functionality, because it's not exactly direct damage, you think of them as being a little more different effects. So direct damage kind of has a wider sweep than most things. And so it gives Red a nice cohesive identity, but it does make it feel as if there's less going on in Red. That's one of the issues we have. It adds a little bit to Red's idea of more one-noteness,

of Red is more focused. So it gives Red the utility in a way that makes it feel like it has a little bit less flexibility, which is flavorfully cool, but anyway. We get complaints about that from time to time. Okay. What is the... Oh, okay.

Okay, so... What was I going to say? Oh, okay. So, um... I don't know what I'm going to say. Oh, let me talk about the other colors. Okay. Black in common is going to have a drain effect. The drain effect is usually... Well, it varies.

It can be creature or it can be player or it can be any target. Usually, a common will pick one of the two more often than not. And that if we do it uncommon, it's more like we'll do it flexible. You can hit either thing. I think we do more hitting of player than we do hitting of creature. And the reason for that is that black has... We're trying to mix up what black is doing. And normally we have a bunch of kill spells in black. So at common, we more lean toward draining player than we do...

And the most common drain player tends to be around drain three. That's our default. We can go up or down, but that definitely is our default. Okay. What else? Oh, black will sometimes also do a life loss. If black does a life loss to players, then black will drain creatures.

So in a set where we do a life loss at common, then we'll do drain players. We won't do drain player and life loss in the same rarity at the same time. And once again, part of black, so one of black's issues is, black has a bunch of different effects that work different ways. So drain a creature and giving a creature minus X minus X are somewhat similar. And so part of figuring out what direct damage we do in black is balancing other things.

Red is kind of balancing this direct damage against its other direct damage. Black is balancing its direct damage against other spells that have a similar function to them. So that is you know a little bit different when you're dealing with direct damage in black.

Black has more variance. Like red will almost always have three or four common direct damage spells. Black's a little bit different when you're dealing with direct damage in black. Black has more variance. Like, red will almost always have three or four common direct damage spells. Black is a little more, because if we're doing other things, we might be doing more or less of black direct damage. And once again, black to player isn't even direct damage anymore. It's loss of life. Although,

similar, obviously. And once again, that's we opted for wild that templated as damage, so it's not too far from damage. Okay. The next is green.

Green will normally have a fight card at common, which is pseudo direct damage, not exactly. Sometimes it will do a common spell that does damage equal to creature power. What we call bite. But that is... That's just sometimes we do that.

Usually, that's more often than not at higher rarity. But it can be a common. And then, green always has a flying kill spell at common. More often than not, it's plummet, which is just a damage spell. But every once in a while,

the reason we'll do direct damage instead of plummet is if somehow there's some synergy or something, or if there's some flavor we're trying to hit like I said plummet is the default but at common sometimes we'll do the

kill spell of flying as direct damage. White the damage to creatures, attacker blockers, we used to do more at common. We do it less than we used to, but we still do it from time to time. White doesn't necessarily have that,

and damage redirection is not something we ever do at common. So in a normal set, red will have three to four direct damage spells at common. Black will have three to four direct damage spells in common. Black will have one to two. Green will have zero to two, maybe. And white will have one at most, zero to one. Blue, by the way, blue doesn't really do direct damage.

Historically speaking, there's a period of time that we used to do prodigal sorcerer effects, which is creatures that can tap to do damage. If you go back to Alpha, for example, Prodigal Sorcerer did that. We used to call him Tim. Blue used to do that kind of effect. We then decided that Blue doing damage really was kind of out of flavor for Blue, and so we moved those effects into Red.

So Red now has those. And we moved those out of common. New World Order said to us that a prodigal sorcerer that style of fact a creature that can do one damage really really complicates math and so we tend to avoid doing that at common

to avoid some of the math issues I mean we still do it at higher rarities but we don't do it at common anymore that it just from a New world order standpoint, the common Torix of understanding,

like if I have three creatures and you have three creatures and they're all different powers, like the fact that any one of them could do one more damage with the creature just made things more complicated. We'll get to that in a second. Okay, that is common.

So uncommon red. Oh, the one other thing we... The one other thing we sometimes do a common in red is... We will sometimes do creatures that enter the battlefield and do damage to a player. Sometimes our lava axe type effect is as a rider on a creature. We don't tend to do it on... Oh, I'm sorry. If damage is done to a player, it's usually...

Well, I'm sorry, to a creature. Usually damage to a creature is done on uncommon because that's a two-for-one. So let's say I have a creature that enters the battlefield and does damage to something and it often will kill something. We tend not to do that at common because we tend to avoid one card that destroys two things at common. The one thing

we will do occasionally is we'll have a creature that does one damage to a creature because most of the time that's not going to kill something. I mean, every once in a while it can kill a small thing, obviously, but... So usually when we have a creature that enters the battlefield and deals damage to any target or to a creature, that tends to be uncommon. And at common, if it hits any target, it'll be one damage at most, and usually it'll hit players.

The other things we sometimes do are creatures that have death triggers that do damage. At common, we'll do death triggers that hit players. Usually if we're going to hit creatures more often than not that's an uncommon for the same reason that I have a creature I block my creature, I kill your creature

and when it dies I get to kill another creature it's a lot it's often two for one so we usually don't do that at common common also the other thing that we don't do that at common. Common also... Oh, the other thing that we don't do, we do at uncommon that we don't tend to do at common, is direct damage spells that hit multiple targets.

At common, we tend to hit one thing. At uncommon, we can start hitting multiple things, and there's a couple different ways to do that. One is we just could target multiple things, deal three damage to two different to two target creatures uh second is we we allow damage um splitting up damage we do that at uncommon so like oh do four damage divided as you like between any target or sometimes just between creatures um finally we also could do damage to all creatures we start doing that at uncommon.

We tend not to go much above two, so Pyroclasm is the traditional do two damage to all creatures. Usually red doing damage to all creatures, at least at uncommon, usually hits everybody. When we start having red do damage to all of opponent's creatures, or all of everybody's creatures but it creatures, we tend to do that at rare. Usually one-sided direct damage to multiple targets or to all targets that aren't yours.

We tend to do it rare. At uncom... Okay, so we'll do effects that hit everything but no more than two damage. We'll do effects that you can divide up. Once again, we keep within the restriction of not having enough damage that if it all went to one creature,

it wouldn't feel red. So usually we don't ever divvy up more than six. And usually because divvying up is powerful, it's slightly less than that. And we do a bunch of multiple targets. We also start putting more direct damage as repeatable. Like, we don't tend to do repeatable direct damage at common. At common, it's like you're doing it once, it's doing it one time.

At uncommon, we can start hitting multiple things, and we can start doing repeatable damage. For example, a creature that, when it deals damage to a player, can deal damage to a creature, or a creature or an enchantment that every turn can trigger to do damage. Those start showing up at uncommon. We don't tend to do those at common.

And if it's enough repeatable and it's doing enough damage, those start getting put at rare. So for example, if I'm going to do damage every upkeep, for example, like every turn I do damage, if I'm doing that at uncommon, it tends to be a small amount of damage,

one or maybe two at the most. If it's doing more than that, then that's going up to rare. The general sense of direct damage is that, as far as rarity goes, is we like to keep common simple. Usually it's one target, and there's not a lot of shenanigans. There might be some riders on it, but not too many riders on it. Now, stuff like can't be countered, can't be prevented, that usually isn't done to common. That's usually done at uncommon or higher. So things that

do damage that you can sacrifice, where you get it on the board and then you have the choice to sacrifice it to do damage later. We tend to do those in uncommon. For example, like, I have a creature that I play, and the creature has power and toughness, and I also have the ability to sacrifice that creature to do damage later. More often than not, we tend to do those things in uncommon. There's been exceptions, but usually

the default there is that they're uncommon. And, like I said, the prodigal sorcerer type cards or the prodigal pyromancer now tends to be an uncommon or higher that's a creature that can do damage to other creatures usually if it's repeatable damage to other creatures

if it can do it without restriction other than spending mana it's one damage or less if you have to jump to some hoop we sometimes let you have more. For example, if you're discarding a card, or if you're sacrificing a creature, or if there's

some resource that I just can't necessarily do it every turn, that's when we allow it to do more damage. And even then, if you're talking uncommon, usually it's capped at two, maybe three damage. If it's doing more than that, that's also going up to rare. That rare stuff in which, you know, rare tends to be,

I'm doing a lot of damage to a lot of targets, and either I'm doing it to a lot of targets or I'm doing it repeatedly. That, you know, I'm... Red direct damage at rare is usually much more explosive and having a lot more card advantage for you. Okay, the other thing is X spells. So an X spell means that my damage... Oh, well, okay.

There's three different ways to do damage. One is I tell you the number. One is an X spell where you I tell you the number. One is an X spell, where you get to dictate the number. And the last thing is, the spell just says what's going to do damage. For example, you know, flip up the top card of your library and do damage, you can

convert to mana cost. That's where you don't quite know how much damage you're going to do. There also might be things where, like, X spells, well, there's two types of X spells there's the mana X spells where X is the mana and as much mana as I pump into it is how much damage I do and when I mean X spells that's more what I mean

there also are spells where we use X as an undefined variable that you can control and that is sometimes where you're caring about how many cards are in your hand or other factors one of the rules about red from a color pie perspective is red can really do

just about any kind of direct damage it doesn't we tend to avoid if the things show up in other colors we mostly avoid them like red doesn't traditionally limit itself to hitting attackers or blockers just because that's white's thing. The one exception is when we do red-white hybrid,

because hybrid is so difficult, it doesn't kind of break anything to be in red. We just don't do it to separate it from white. But when red and white are trying to do hybrid cards, sometimes we'll do that. Likewise, I mean, red isn't really a life-gain color anyways, but we don't do drain effects in red, just so it feels more black. I mean the fact that red doesn't gain life helps because we're not really going to do that effect in red because of that.

Red will occasionally do damage to flyers. Red's number two in flying hate. Usually if it's referencing flying in red it tends to just do more damage to flyers. You know do two to any creature or four to a flyer. More so than just do damage to a flyer. You know, do two to any creature or four to a flyer. More so than just do damage to a flyer.

That tends to be more green. Anyway, X-Bells... We used to do X-Bells at Common because we were crazy. X-Bells now... Every once in a blue moon we'll do them at Uncommon. More often than not these days we do them at Rare. Just because they're so potent and limited that putting them at Uncommon just can cause problems. So we don't tend to put them at Un, just because they're so potent and limited that putting them at uncommon

just can cause problems. So we don't tend to put them at uncommon anymore. We tend to put them at rare. There are some exceptions. And the idea of an X-Spell basically is something in which you have control over how much damage the creature does,

usually by spending mana. The final category are, I'm going to do direct damage, but the direct damage is dictated by some other factor. You know, I'm doing damage equal to the number of cards in your hand. And these kind, from a flavor perspective, tap into two areas.

One is, I'm going to care about something that's mine, but the flavor is that thing is what's going to two areas. One is I'm going to care about something that's mine, but the flavor is that thing is what's going to damage you. So sometimes, for example, it might be, I do damage to you equal to creature's power. As I said, we move this to green mostly, but the flavor is, oh, the creature is doing the damage. Often, the other

category is where it's direct damage, and you care about something of the opponent, where I'm going to do damage to you based on a factor of you. Like, how many cards do you have in your hand? And that's flavored as I'm punishing you for having it. Usually that's how that's flavored.

Another thing that red will do a bunch of with the direct damage is punishing... They can be creatures, they can be enchantments. And the idea there is, whenever something happens, I'm going to trigger and do damage. And once again, these fall into two categories. There's a lot of splitting up of direct damage stuff.

This one is, there's proactive and there's sort of reactive. The proactive stuff is, when I do a certain effect, I get to damage you as reward for doing that effect and those spells might be you know every time I play a spell or every time I attack with enough creatures or you know I have to do something

and if I do it my reward is I get a damage you know any target or a player or whatever then there are ones where I say to my opponent, if you ever do something, this will damage you. Sometimes red will make stuff that's

universal that hits everybody. Whenever this happens to anybody, it'll be damaged. We've tended to move away from those effects. They exist early in Magic. It did a lot more of the universal effects. Now it tends to be, I'm punishing you, my opponent, or I'm punishing all other players, not me.

And so if anybody else does this other than me, it does that. Once again, by the way, whenever I talk about direct damage spells, remember that the targeting is always something that we use for variety's sake. The only... I mean, certain kinds of spells, mass creature spells obviously have to hit creatures. Something that we'll occasionally do in red, one of the problems we've been having in red is

trying to help red a little bit in commander. And direct damage in general is not particularly... often can cause problems for red. Usually where red is helpful with direct damage in commander is where it's hitting many things. Something like earthquake where it hits creatures and it hits players is very valuable in commander. And so we try to get... one of the things we've been trying to give red is a little bit more direct damage that... because the problem is, direct damage with a single target, if I use

all my spells and take out one player then I'm weak and vulnerable and other players take me out but the idea is if I can hit many things especially if it's an X spell an X spell can hit a lot of things it's something where you can sort of build up, build up, build up and then

make a bold move late in the game where I can maybe even take out multiple players in one big sweep. That is proven popular in Commander. As far as the other colors, the same basic rules apply, like black will do drains that come in that are single

effects. When you start getting up at higher rarities, you'll start seeing black do trigger draining, maybe draining multiple things. You start just getting bigger, more glorified things. And you start seeing repeatable things where

it triggers and I get to drain something or every time I do effect I get to drain something or it's punishment for my opponent doing something, I get to drain stuff. All the stuff I was saying about red, you can apply that to drain effects, and black can do most of that as a drain effect. The one thing is we don't tend to do a lot of repeatable drain as an activated ability, where we do do that in red and direct damage.

Green, I mean, we don't do a lot of flyer damage, but if we do flyer to multiple flyers, that would be higher than common. So if you want to do damage to all flyers or all non-your flyers, that would be at higher baronies than green. And the rabid bite type of one-sided fight tends to be uncommon and higher.

We'll occasionally do it in common, but usually those effects, because they're very effective and it's killing a creature without any threat of losing your creature, we tend to, well, we do them in common sometimes, but the ones that, whenever we're going to do that kind of effect, though,

and it's hitting more than one target, um, those will be done. Higher rarity is not a common. Uh, and white, once again, uh, the damage to attackers or blockers, we don't tend to do all that much. We don't tend to hit more than one thing all that often. If we did, that would be higher rarity. Um, so blue has almost no direct damage. White is very little direct damage.

Green is very little direct damage green has very little direct damage black has some so for those that care in order, red is number one by far black is number two with a huge gap and then there's a decent gap and you get to sort of green and white, both of which don't do that much

I think green does a little bit more than white and then you get to blue which other than very circular things does a little bit more than white. And then you get to blue, which other than very circular things, does very little damage per se. So one of the tricks, like I said, I'm almost to work. One of the tricks of doing direct damage is trying to make sure

that there's enough differential in the type of effects. I talked about the different things you can change. The other thing is the rider. There's a lot of things you can change. The other thing is the rider. There's a lot of flavor you can do with riders. Oftentimes, in standard legal sets, those riders are the mechanics of the set. Assuming that we are doing mechanics and the mechanics appear in red,

it is almost a given there will be a direct damage version of that. The only reason not is if it can't be done, well, even if it can only be done on creatures, creatures can do ETB effects and activated abilities and death triggers. So it is almost impossible to have a new mechanic and not have it interact with direct damage.

In fact, one of the running jokes in R&D is usually when we're first making a mechanic and starting to make cards with it, almost the go-to thing to do is direct damage. It's such an easy, clean, clear thing to do. One of the things about direct damage, as I explained today, is there's so many knobs on direct damage. You have so many choices of how to use direct damage that you have a lot of flexibility when trying to add riders to it. And so it makes it very easy to add riders. Plus, because we do so many

direct damage spells, the riders are pretty important. The other thing which I wanted to mention, something to think about is, we also try to differentiate in red, and this is a creative thing, but it's important, of we don't want everything to be the same. So if we're going to do three

common spells, we don't want all of them to be like fire spells. Like one will be a fire spell, and one might be lava, and one might be earth-based, and one might be sonic-based. You know, we find, one of the things we've done over the years is find many, many different ways

to sort of communicate that something, that we try to differentiate the flavor of direct damage as much as we try to differentiate the mechanical execution of it. And if you're making direct damage as much as we try to differentiate the mechanical execution of it. And if you're making direct damage spells, it's something to think about. You definitely want to mix things up a bit so that you're... Not only do you want the spells to mechanically be different,

but having the flavor be different just is sort of like, this is a shock spell, which is electrical damage, and that is a fireball. Just having those differences also just makes them feel a little bit different. And one of the things that's funny, real quickly, a funny story is, one of our problems whenever we make decks with Chandra is she's a fire-based

mage, so whenever we put spells in her deck, they're supposed to be fire-based. And a lot of times, we're like, oh, let's put shock in. No, no, no, no. Chandra wouldn't shock. She doesn't do electrical-based damage. She does fire-based damage. And so Chandra's always been a...

You might notice, for example, over time we've slowly filled out all the gaps with fire-based things. So when we do Chandra, we can use it. Anyway, that is my talk on direct damage. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Once again, I made this one before I got feedback on the Counterspell one

because I just thought you guys would like it, so hopefully you do. If this is, if designing blank becomes, players are picketing about how much

they hate me doing them, I'll stop, but I think you guys will like them. So anyway, that, my friends, is more than enough information. I actually had some traffic,

so extra today all about direct damage. But anyway, I'm now at work, so we know what that means. And this is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to make it magic. I'll see you guys next time.