Heyyy,
Been playing grim dawn actively like 2 months or something and lately i got this idea why not grim dawn has a card game like all the other games with big and well created own universes? I mean Grim Dawn has a good amount of lore and world building in it, even can call its own universe. Other franchise like Warcraft, Elder Scrolls , Final Fantasy or Pokémon have adapted their universe to card games and they gaining really big money from them. Because making a card game is not really hard ( i mean making the game itself not balancing issues or artwork etc) and you already have the universe and artwork to make a hardcore card game. Look at blizzard they had the lore, they had the artworks even they had the warcraft tcg and then they only made it online and did some make up and boom. Now Crate has the universe, good backstory, some artwork, classes, monster, bosses, legendaries just need some programing and a few good ideas to make a card game. And I think i got some ideas if they are good or not, i dunno.
First of all i think this game needs its classes like hearthstone. Classes will use one of their abilites like hero powers. Let’s go with my favourite Inquisitor;
P.s. ( I will use other card games templates ofcourse :D)
and for hero power
Well now that you see flames of ignaffar (Foi) has 3 mana cost so lets talk about resource of the game. I think pay for spells and the other things (like monster fight for you, or items you equip to your hero) need to use seperate sources. Hero powers and other class specific spells/abilites will use energy. And items or the creature cards you will play, use iron bits. Game begins with 3 eneregy for each class and go to maximum for 10 turn by turn. Some spell heavy classes gonna get energy faster than other classes and have higher energy cap via their passive hero power ( other class like inquisitor can have +x damage with ranged weapons for their passive hero abilites but lets talk about passive powers later).
All the other things gonna use iron bits. You will get lets say 1000 iron bits starting everygame and this will be same for all classes. You will use these coins for equiping item cards, or summoning familar, monsters for you aid.
Hearthstone cardmaker dont give a chance to make xxx cost card, just 2 numbers. So that 10 is 100 really. Its a 100 cost 5 to 10 damage single target creature card.
if you see ironbound the card game earlier so you know that this game is little different than other games. Irounbound is all about items and abilities;
You equip item before any match but thats not our point. Our point is in ironbound items are forefront and in our card game items will be much more important than any other card games. Heroes can equip all pieces of a set. But still you need to draw that specific item card during the game and equip with it iron bit cost.
(Btw i think that some weapon type will be more meaningful and balanced when they be class specific like shields can be equiped to oathkeeper and soldier only.)
But iron bits can not be regenerate or you cant just get some coin for starting a new turn right? Thats not how to money earned. You gonna get iron bits with playing chest card in your deck. There will be different quality chests, more rare more coin.and you will get iron bits for killing enemy minions. So this will add a new strategic layer for playing minions or not.
All player will have 200 healt for the game and i think a match gonna be longer than any other games.
I have some other ideas but cant have the time. Thinking about what can be done with creatures types and interactions. Adding damage and resistance types or fire attack has a chance to burn , lightning has a chance to stun , cold to freeze, posion always got a continous damage or x damage for x turn, piercing gonna do extra damage or ignore the armor etc, the game Mythgard has some cool mechanics with the gameboard like turning zones from normal zone to a dune zone gives + attack to a dune cat standing on that zone, think about an aetherial gets bonuses from an aetheric zone.
But the point is hearthstone has more player than wow