A Little Vice (Trans Magical Girl fic)

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just like Uriel is a reference to one of the Biblical fallen angels,

AFAIK Uriel isn't fallen, unless there's a source I've overlooked. He's normally considered the fourth most prominent angel behind Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. He was decanonised by the Catholic Church however, who narrowed their official list of angels down to just the aforementioned three, so maybe you could call him 'fallen' in that sense
 
AFAIK Uriel isn't fallen, unless there's a source I've overlooked. He's normally considered the fourth most prominent angel behind Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. He was decanonised by the Catholic Church however, who narrowed their official list of angels down to just the aforementioned three, so maybe you could call him 'fallen' in that sense
You are correct, I'm not sure where I got that idea from. I'm silly, ignore me.
 
On a less silly note, I will say that the MTG convo made me think of potentially creating custom Yu-gi-oh cards. Sadly there already is an "archetype" of sorts where the connection is that they go by the letter "C"- Maxx "C", Retaliating ""C, Flying "C"- Only there the "C" stands for cockroach. Which admittedly given Chiro's self-image of herself when she went by that, it's oddly appropriate.
 
So I was thinking about Sharks. Did you know that Sharks don't make sounds and have electricity sensors instead. Imagine Chiro and Temperance bonding over there favorite animals and suddenly there's a power outage and Temperance panic clutches Chiro. Not because she's scared of the dark but because she can't sense any other source of electricity. Then the lights come back on and for the first time Chiro sees Temperance embarrassed.
 
So I was thinking about Sharks. Did you know that Sharks don't make sounds and have electricity sensors instead. Imagine Chiro and Temperance bonding over there favorite animals and suddenly there's a power outage and Temperance panic clutches Chiro. Not because she's scared of the dark but because she can't sense any other source of electricity. Then the lights come back on and for the first time Chiro sees Temperance embarrassed.
In this scenario wouldn't Chiro be yelling at random objects to figure out where she is, too?
 
More Magic Cards by Hestia&TheCourt
So JackAttack got us thinking about how we might go about designing our own ALV MtG cards (genuine thanks for getting us on that train of thought, by the way!), and now several hours later, we have a small batch of cards that people in this thread might be interested in. Are they balanced? Probably not!

We had fun making them, though, so that's what counts.






















 
So is Diligentia supposed to be aggressively awful? Because wow, that is... Bad. Really bad. I think a balanced version of her would be a 3/3, and her abilities would only cost one mana each.
 
So is Diligentia supposed to be aggressively awful? Because wow, that is... Bad. Really bad. I think a balanced version of her would be a 3/3, and her abilities would only cost one mana each.

*shrug* As I said, balance not guaranteed. I thought we had made her a 3/3, though, so some editing may be in order. And we can probably bump those ability mana costs down a bit too while we're at it.
 
Diligentia probably should be indestructible or have some funky recurrence like most god cards imo.

Granted, they seem more balanced around mtg 10-ish years ago, before the insane powercreep.
 
I'm looking at the new version of Invidia Bat in particular, and wondering if she's meant to have her drawbacks be so heavily obnoxious, or if transforming back into her weaker side is only meant to happen when she deals damage to a player rather than at all. Because it's already annoying to have her benefit from envy counters need her to attack even with that limit leaving her situational, let alone what happens if you can't even take advantage of an opponent not wanting to get hit or having a Planeswalker out.
 
I'm looking at the new version of Invidia Bat in particular, and wondering if she's meant to have her drawbacks be so heavily obnoxious, or if transforming back into her weaker side is only meant to happen when she deals damage to a player rather than at all.

Our thought process there was entirely "Invidia hurts someone, Chiro feels bad about it and runs off to detransform" tbh. Maybe we could bump up her stats to compensate or something.
 
...Oh God, you made a Fidget Spinner card!

And I can absolutely see why something with those abilities would be an absurdly frustrating problem for Team Good.
 
Okay, is Invidia supposed to turn back into Chiro? Due to how the Exile zone in MTG works, if the backside is exiled, she flips to her front in Exile, and then since it says 'enter the battlefield transformed', she enters the battlefield as Invidia. Otherwise, I really like her and Charlie. Humanitas's Tap ability could be X, T: Prevent X damage and she'd still be balanced. It's overcosted as is.

Castitas should probably have Vigilance, so she can attack and then burn an opponent. Or you could reduce the cost of the burn effect to like. RW.

Anything I would say on Diligentia has been said already.

Temperantia's abilities could stand to be cheaper. And as it is, since she has no self buff with her gluttony and has low stats, I'm probably never going to bother giving her first strike, since I'm never going to block or attack with her, since being able to shut down an opponent's blocker is way more useful.

Avarita is cool! She's unlikely to survive most fights, meaning that she's best used picking off your opponent's one power combo engines.

Superbia is really cool, but his math is going to start getting hard to track once he starts gaining counters and creating roles. I know most of my play group use the same dice we use for Counters to track a variable stat's creature's stats.

Onto the misc cards.

I actually think Flame Barrage is a pretty neat way of doing it, plus it combos well with cards that care about doing 1 damage to a player.

I honestly want Panicking Civilians to deal damage to their controller, but that's just because I've been brewing Auntie Blyte recently and I love hurting myself.

Embrace Virtue and Indulge in Vice are both pretty good executions of their thing, but they're a bit boring. I'd pick them in Draft, but I'd never run them in a Constructed or Commander deck.

Fidget Spinner's First ability is cool, but blocking and attacking are different than Fights, so the first ability would have to be worded as "When {name} blocks a creature, remove that creature from combat, and it fights a non-Fidget Spinner creature chosen at random".

The second ability is cool, but effectively it's the same as giving it Hexproof. I'd rework it to be something like "When a creature you control is targeted by a spell or ability, you may choose another valid target at random to change to become the target of that spell."
 
Our thought process there was entirely "Invidia hurts someone, Chiro feels bad about it and runs off to detransform" tbh. Maybe we could bump up her stats to compensate or something.
Maybe. I mean, I can see that as flavor, but her transformation is expensive, it's slow (I'm fairly sure exile and transform gives summoning sickness, where just 'transform' doesn't, and neither side has haste), her civilian form is extremely easy to kill, and it's so obnoxious that she loses everything even blocked by a creature she doesn't kill that even the very broad and powerful ability stacking she can get isn't worth it. Maybe if Chiro has Hexproof (to fit her being a 'safe' mode) and you made it "if a permanent Invidia Bat dealt damage to this turn dies", which is more extreme than just hurting them and thus less flavorful, but it triggering even on damage that is healed the next turn (or 'day') feels actually a bit farther than she goes in story, and I personally don't think she'd have a problem with hitting the masterminds behind either side (the players)?

Although...

Okay, is Invidia supposed to turn back into Chiro? Due to how the Exile zone in MTG works, if the backside is exiled, she flips to her front in Exile, and then since it says 'enter the battlefield transformed', she enters the battlefield as Invidia. Otherwise, I really like her and Charlie. Humanitas's Tap ability could be X, T: Prevent X damage and she'd still be balanced. It's overcosted as is.
Well, if Invidia comes back in as Invidia, that actually makes it a protective ability, getting her off the board and an invalid target for any retribution from her opponent, even if they're stronger than her. Which is funny, if a flavor fail.

And the other point I sort of thought of already, but which crystalized seeing the post I'm quoting: is she preventing the damage to each creature, and does it last over multiple turns if not used up? Because that's not how that wording would work out, but it feels appropriate for the cost.
 
@Hestia&theCourt
So is Diligentia supposed to be aggressively awful? Because wow, that is... Bad. Really bad. I think a balanced version of her would be a 3/3, and her abilities would only cost one mana each.
As a point of comparison: Many creatures have an ability that costs one red mana to give them +1/+0 until end of turn. Two mana for +0/+1 (or -1/-0) is pretty bad.

Charlie, Helpless Hostage is also useless. Pretty much any time an opponent plays a creature, Charlie is noping out of existence. Drop that ability, maybe reduce her to 0/1, that's my simple suggestion. My more complex suggestion would be to give her a completely different ability.

I'm confused about Chiro, Potential Saint//Invidia Bat, Beast of Envy. I assume she's supposed to flip-flop between being one and the other, but why does she create a 1/1 human token every time she goes batty?

Fidget Spinner seems like a fun gimmick card for MtG Arena but annoying to resolve in a physical game.
 
Charlie, Helpless Hostage is also useless. Pretty much any time an opponent plays a creature, Charlie is noping out of existence. Drop that ability, maybe reduce her to 0/1, that's my simple suggestion. My more complex suggestion would be to give her a completely different ability.
She's actually fairly decent, specifically because of her exiling herself. She comes back whenever the specific permanent that sent her running leaves the battlefield, triggering every effect that cares about her entering the battlefield, including her own. For a one drop, that's actually a very solid amount of lifegain, with the trigger to get her back being slightly inconvenient, but likely to happen several times per game if your opponent doesn't spend removal on her.
 
She's actually fairly decent, specifically because of her exiling herself. She comes back whenever the specific permanent that sent her running leaves the battlefield, triggering every effect that cares about her entering the battlefield, including her own. For a one drop, that's actually a very solid amount of lifegain, with the trigger to get her back being slightly inconvenient, but likely to happen several times per game if your opponent doesn't spend removal on her.
Definitely. Its so easy in white to include cards that care about creatures entering the battlefield that she's going to be getting a good tidy amount of life and triggers. Plus, it creates a fun little bounty mini game for the controller, where they get extra bonuses for using removal on a creature, even if it's not the really dangerous creature you might expect to use removal on.

Like, compare Norin the Wary. He's a 1 drop that all he does is a faster version of Charlie's bouncing. And in red. The Norin ETB decks built around him are well known and have a reputation for being dangerous and annoying.
 
So JackAttack got us thinking about how we might go about designing our own ALV MtG cards (genuine thanks for getting us on that train of thought, by the way!), and now several hours later, we have a small batch of cards that people in this thread might be interested in. Are they balanced? Probably not!

We had fun making them, though, so that's what counts.






















Castitas Flare Barrage would deal 0 total damage, as X is undefined as a variable, lol. Also, why does Embrace Virtue not grant flight? Everything else has it, so they wouldn't be able to block anything. Castitas also instakills Superbia with her ability, and superbia placed on the field alone literally just dies instantly. I just noticed that Diligentia is probably the worst of them. Still fun to read tho.
 
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Castitas Flare Barrage would deal 0 total damage, as X is undefined as a variable, lol. Also, why does Embrace Virtue not grant flight? Everything else has it, so they wouldn't be able to block anything. Castitas also instakills Superbia with her ability, and superbia placed on the field alone literally just dies instantly. I just noticed that Diligentia is probably the worst of them. Still fun to read tho.
X is defined. Castitas Flare Barrage costs 2 red mana and X colorless mana. So if you want the card to deal any damage you need at least 3 mana.
 
Castitas Flare Barrage would deal 0 total damage, as X is undefined as a variable, lol. Also, why does Embrace Virtue not grant flight? Everything else has it, so they wouldn't be able to block anything. Castitas also instakills Superbia with her ability, and superbia placed on the field alone literally just dies instantly. I just noticed that Diligentia is probably the worst of them. Still fun to read tho.
From a lore perspective, it is kinda silly that Superbia is as weak as he is. Then again, sometimes an ordinary philosopher could beat up an entire cavalry regiment, or a sea monster which dwarfs whales can be slain by a single halfling, a fancy dimetrodon, or an arrogant fop.
 
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